HFCS Top Films of 2007

Your humble scribe, representing Free Press Houston, is one of the original members of the Houston Film Critics Society. The 15 member group will see two members leave in 2008 because they were laid off from the Houston Chronicle, but no doubt the total membership will benefit from other news and media organizations in town. Right now the critics of the HFCS review movies for websites like Comingsoon.net and Filmthreat.com, as well as radio stations KUHF and KILT, the Chronicle, and syndicated outlets not located in Houston. Likewise local outlets like the Houston Press are not repped because all their film critics are located in Dallas, New York or Peoria. The following selections are the results of the HFCS balloting for 2007. Special recognition was awarded to the Coen Brothers as honorary Texans for shooting parts of No Country For Old Men in and around Marfa; to Philip Seymour Hoffman for three powerhouse performances in a row (Charlie Wilson's War, The Savages, and Before the Devil Knows You're Dead were all released within weeks on each other.), and the Greenway Three Theatre for over three decades of dedicated service to movie fans.
BEST PICTURE – "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN"
BEST DIRECTOR OF A MOTION PICTURE – TIM BURTON, "SWEENEY TODD."
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE – DANIEL DAY LEWIS, "THERE WILL BE BLOOD"
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE – JULIE CHRISTIE, "AWAY FROM HER"
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE – JAVIER BARDEM, "NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN"
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE – AMY RYAN, "GONE BABY GONE"
BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ENSEMBLE CAST – "HAIRSPRAY"
BEST SCREENPLAY – DIABLO CODY, "JUNO"
BEST ANIMATED FILM – "RATATOUILLE"
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY – ROGER DEAKINS, "THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD"
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE – "THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS"
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM – "THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY"
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE – "ATONEMENT" BY DARIO MARIANELLI
BEST ORIGINAL SONG – "FALLING SLOWLY" FROM "ONCE"
HONORARY TEXAN AWARD – JOEL AND ETHAN COEN
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMA – PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN CINEMA – THE GREENWAY THREE THEATRE FOR OVER THIRTY YEARS OF SERVICE TO HOUSTON'S ART-HOUSE FILM COMMUNITY.

THE HOUSTON FILM CRITICS SOCIETY TOP TEN FILMS FOR 2007:
1. NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
2. JUNO
3. ATONEMENT
4. MICHAEL CLAYTON
5. INTO THE WILD
6. SWEENEY TODD
7. THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY
8. BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU'RE DEAD
9. CHARLIE WILSON'S WAR
10. I'M NOT THERE

Munk

The Savages

You know the phrase feel good movie? Well, The Savages is a feel life movie, as in feel the pain of living and dying. On some level The Savages could be called a comedy, the poster suggests a touching and happy reunion of siblings. Only the comedy exists on a purely subtextual level. It wouldn't be out of place to compare the experience of The Savages to the theatre of cruelty. It's a beautiful rose only when you grasp the stem it pricks a vein.
Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney topline as a brother and sister who must deal with their infirm father, the equally excellent Philp Bosco, in the thrall of dementia. Here the events get personal as far as dealing with nursing homes and the inevitability of death. In a year of such films as Away From Her, a movie that examines the effects of Alzheimer's on a couple and how it undermines their marriage, The Savages won't be called ground breaking but rather a tough meal to chew. Go ahead and ask the next three people you see if they want to view a frothy comic movie or a drama that confirms your suspicions that dying sucks.
Aside from the subject matter The Savages offers the kind of quality acting that confirms Hoffman and Linney (and Bosco) to be among the best of their contemporaries. Linney plays average and depressed so well with none of the high society matron habits of her turn in Nanny Diaries. Likewise Hoffman, who's over the top in a good way in Charlie Wilson's War and caught between drugs and robbery in Devil Knows You're Dead, gets into the heart of his character, a well meaning but basically souless professor. Hoffman's so caught up in competing with his sister it prevents him from being able to reach out to her. The Savages demands an elite audience versed in drama and human behavior because the average savage just won't get it.