Making a list

We're making a list and we're checking it twice. While my cosmology allows for more than a mere Ten Best List, that is what the Houston Society of Film Critics require. So on my list are about 20-plus killer films from 2007: This list will get shorter as time goes on, but for now it stands as a document of the year's top cinematic accomplishments.

• I'm Not There
  
• Into the WIld
  
• Deathproof
  
• Lars and the Real Girl
  
• The Diving Bell and the Butterfly
  
• No Country For Old Men
  
• The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
  
• There Will Be Blood
  
• Sweeney Todd
  
• No End in Sight
  
• Gone Baby Gone
  
• Lake of Fire
  
• Superbad
  
• Hot Fuzz
  
• Michael Clayton
  
• Zodiac
  
• Once
  
• The Bourne Ultimatum
  
• Atonement
  
• Juno
  
• Darjeeling Limited
  
• Lust, Caution
  

Of course the best line of the year may have been in a throwaway movie like Die Hard 4: Live Free of Die Hard courtesy of Justin Long. Let's see Diablo Cody write a Bruce Willis adventure script. I've already revised this list twice, and there's still a number of films - Eastern Promises, Rescue Dawn, Beowulf, Redacted, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Control - that are up there, just not in the toppermost.

Atonement

There are multiple levels of drama and subtext going on during Atonement that basically broadside you. You don’t see the ending coming because you’re distracted by the layers before. All of a sudden there’s a time shift decades to a conclusion that’s devastating with a quaint summation of humanity.
Keira Knightley and James McAvoy topline while the character of Briony Tallis is played by three actors. The young Briony, not unlike the grandmother in Cold Comfort Farm, sees something nasty, in this case not in the woodshed but rather in the garden fountain.
A period drama set in the years leading up to and including WWII Atonement grabs your attention with the following: repeated shots of people in water, perhaps in negligees or bathing in a tub, again perhaps diving into a dirty lake; a soundtrack that uses a typewriter percussion track to propel the action; and the constant repetition of certain images not unlike the mind trying to erase a constant memory.
McAvoy, the goatboy from Chronicles of Narnia but also the impressive lead of The Last King of Scotland, is accused of a crime he didn’t commit and gets the shaft. But his service during the war has a way of healing even while killing. The most impressive technical part of Atonement comes during the war sequences.
A non-stop continuous take shows tens of thousands of Brit troops evacuating to the Bray Dunes in June of 1940. The camera swirls from tableau (horses being executed, jeeps having their radiators smashed, nothing is left for Jerry) to tableau in such an accomplished manner you forget this was once a Masterpiece Theater romance.

Atonement Premiere Photo

The Golden Compass

The Golden Compass is also called an alethiometer, and the way it is large and round and pops open it looks like Juno's hamburger phone. The Golden Compass mixes cosmic mythology, parallel universes, and CGI animals that are as watchable if not more fun than Enchanted's Pip.
A docket of name stars in supporting roles - Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Nicole Kidman, Sam Elliott, Derek Jacobi, Christopher Lee, the voices of the Ians (McKellan and McShane) - will launch this film worldwide but newcomer lass Dakota Blue Richards gives the film an energetic gravitas as the girl who must save her world from dust particles that can unite or destroy entire planets. Or something like that.
Some talking amoured polar bears are pretty cool when one needs to traverse snowbound landscapes while also providing calvary over the hill relief. There are the bad guys who want to kidnap kids for a nefarious experiment that strips them of the souls. Only in this narrative a person's soul is an animal that walks (and talks) alongside you. For children the souls, or demons, can change shape at will.
The whole magilla is the first part of a trilogy known as the Dark Materials. For a PG-13 film Golden Compass doesn't quite push the boundaries like Beowulf but does provide the prerequisite amount of visual splendor for a fantasy film. Look for comparisons to Lord of the Rings (a franchise trilogy) or Harry Potter (alternative religious symbolism), because people are always searching for similarities in such endevours. Golden Compass has the ability to match those films in their darker aspects while being intelligent enough to skew older audiences with its combination of fantasy, cowboys, talking animals, conspiracies and witches.

Enchanted

Fairy tales can come true, it can happen in a Disney film. The first ten minutes are animated as we meet stock characters with a Snow White cosmology. Then the evil queen tosses the aspiring princess down a well and she ends up in present day New York City. Enchanted has a solid cast that gives this concept a spine with arch portraits of storybook reality. It's a - repeat - Disney film so be prepared for 80-percent schmaltz, and 20-percent hilarious take offs of cartoon iconography. The best scene has the princess, Amy Adams, cleaning up a Gotham apartment with the help of rats, cockroaches, and pigeons. At one point a pigeon eats one of the cockroaches. There are several in-joke moments that register according to how much you know about Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. Take the kids and your cell phone to pass time during the schmaltz.