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Phil Parker: It was a year for villains on the big screen

By Phil Parker
Friday, December 28, 2007

Phil Parker's best of 2007

Top 10

1. "American Gangster"

2. "There Will Be Blood"

3. "Rescue Dawn"

4. "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"

5. "Eastern Promises"

6. "Grindhouse"

7. "The Lookout"

8. "Stardust"

9. "Lars and the Real Girl"

10. "28 Weeks Later"

Honorable mention: "Zodiac," "No Country for Old Men," "The Bourne Ultimatum," "Knocked Up," "Black Snake Moan," "Michael Clayton," "Gone Baby Gone," "No End In Sight," "Halloween"

Wish I'd seen: "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead," "I'm Not There"

Worst: "Year of the Dog." By far.

Best director: Tim Burton, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"

Best actress: Helena Bonham Carter, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"

Best actor: Daniel Day Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"

All-time favorites: "The Godfather," "Memento," "The Usual Suspects," "Midnight Run," "Slap Shot," "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," "Chasing Amy," "Pulp Fiction," "Aliens," "Heat"

No. 1 on my list of 2007's best movies is "American Gangster," a film so searingly entertaining I saw it twice in four days and still hadn't had enough.

The movie is a marvel of violence, intrigue and powerful characterizations. One great scene blends into another until its 160 minutes have blazed by. This, to me, is moviemaking at its best - the next great crime flick in the tradition of "The Godfather," "Goodfellas," "Scarface" and "Heat."

My choice for top spot was complicated, though, after seeing director Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood," which should hit Albuquerque in January. I want to call it the 21st century's "Citizen Kane" - it's just about that good, with big, powerful themes.

And Daniel Day-Lewis.

In the defining performance of 2007, Day-Lewis stars as Daniel Plainview, the embodiment of oil lust and everything insidious in capitalism. Plainview is a savvy oilman who loathes mankind intensely. He travels to a tiny California town swollen with the liquid gold and begins buying up land, promising the town's people better education and more food.

He clashes magnificently with a cash-obsessed faux preacher named Eli until the film's astonishing final scene, when a knockout punch is finally thrown in the boxing match between personifications of business and religion.

Day-Lewis changes his voice, movements, look - everything - in becoming Plainview. No other actor transforms for roles this way or surprises so completely.

Interactions between Plainview and the men around him throb with tension, even when they're cordial, because he seems so capable of horror. It's in the sharp looks he throws, with one eye pointing like a knife. It's in that electric, one-of-a-kind voice that takes care to give each syllable bite.

His work was a remarkable cap to 2007. More than anything else, this was a year for actors, where there were more great performances than great movies. For 11 months - until Day-Lewis showed up and set the screen on fire - no race was closer than Best Actor:

Christian Bale physically changes shape over the course of "Rescue Dawn" and portrays the drawn-out agony of POW life to perfection. Lt. Dieter Dengler never lost hope and made it home after battling starvation, angry guards, insanity and a thick, nasty jungle. You don't just watch "Rescue Dawn" - Bale brings soul to the ordeal in a way you feel. There was no more intense experience at the movies this year.

Denzel Washington was in full-blown bad-guy mode for "American Gangster." Frank Lucas was a chilling, old-school killer with savvy notions on profiting from the suffering of others. He was also a devoted husband and son. In one of the film's too-numerous-to-tally fantastic scenes, Lucas looks into the face of his cousin, charged with turning thousands of dollars into drugs, and tells him coolly, "I'm a busy man; I got no time to be going to anyone's funeral." The camera zooms in tighter on this line - director Ridley Scott knew what he had - and there's something special there; it's difficult to pinpoint. Lucas isn't smiling, but it feels like he should be. He's threatening murder without it coming off as such. I don't think many actors could have made the same choice - maybe they'd have gone more menacing. It's a complicated villain's moment.

Jamie Foxx won an Oscar in 2004 for a terrific performance as Ray Charles, but he hits a career-high as FBI agent Ronald Fleury in "The Kingdom." The film turns terrorism into sensational entertainment, and Foxx makes the movie in a dominating performance. Fleury couldn't flinch in the face of two governments as he led a team investigating a suicide bombing that killed dozens of Americans. We learn early in the film that an agent killed at the scene was a dear friend of Fleury's. As the amazing last line of "The Kingdom" demonstrates ("We're gonna kill them all"), he was less an investigator and more a man hellbent on revenge. Fleury's focus never thaws - there's too much at stake. (Ashraf Barhom holds his own against Foxx as Colonel Faris Al Ghazi in an Oscar-worthy supporting turn.)

Russell Crowe turned in a classic as Old West outlaw Ben Wade in "3:10 to Yuma." His first scene isn't a short one, but he doesn't say a word. He makes a perfect sketch of a bird and sticks it onto a tree branch. Then he rides out to his men and just looks around at them. These dudes are psychotic, we'll learn, and later in the film Wade boasts that he must be a special kind of cunning to lead such a gang of dangerous men. He seduces every woman he meets. By the end of "3:10 to Yuma," he's killed several people. It might be the year's most confident performance.

(Bale was also in "3:10 to Yuma." He took the lesser role of a loser rancher so Crowe could drive. Crowe did the same thing for Washington in "Gangster." These men are great actors and team players.)

Tommy Lee Jones climbed back into the pantheon with his best performance in more than 10 years in "In the Valley of Elah." He was great in the Õ90s in "The Fugitive," "Blown Away," "Natural Born Killers," "Cobb" and "Men in Black." The century change wasn't kind, but this year was a rejuvenation. When his character, Hank Deerfield, is told his Iraq-vet son has been found dead, Jones dials in acting at its pinnacle. Deerfield is just so devastated. Jones hits that note and holds it for the rest of the movie. He was also great as the heart of "No Country for Old Men."

That movie, though, was a showcase for Javier Bardem. What a ruthless, awesome villain he channels as Anton Chigurh. There's a lot of technique to the dead-cold voice, the stilted movements, the way he looks at people as though they mattered less than trash. Chigurh's interaction with others is awkward and funny, despite eyes that seethe with murder. His cattle gun and silenced shotgun are like extensions of his body - with them he shares a similar indifference toward humanity.

Killers, soldiers, gangsters and cops are juicy roles for such powerful performers, but Ryan Gosling's sweet portrayal of Lars Lindstrom in "Lars and the Real Girls" was also an achievement. He should have won the Oscar last year for playing a gritty, crack-addicted teacher, and Lars represents another step. The character is crippled with social anxiety and deluded in his interactions with others, but never once do you not like him. "So what if his girlfriend's a sex doll?" you'll think along with his friends. "As long as he's happy." Gosling smartly doesn't go too far, finding perfect ticks - posture, eye movements - to craft the most likable dink since Forrest Gump.

These were the best performances of the year. Tough to leave out are the explosive efforts of Viggo Mortensen ("Eastern Promises"), Johnny Depp ("Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street") and George Clooney ("Michael Clayton"). They were absolute highlights.

Then Day-Lewis blew them all away.

"I have a competitiveness in me," Plainview hisses at one point, "I want no one else to succeed."

He wins. "American Gangster," I thought, was the best film of the year. But Day-Lewis' performance stands alone as the finest individual effort in any movie. He's playing chess while everyone else plays checkers.