The 10 Best Films of 2007

Among the oil prospectors, Dylan impersonators, and serial killers favored by our top half-dozen film writers, a local son stands out: Redmond schoolteacher Steve Wiebe, the vintage vid-game master of the SIFF-favorite documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters. That film's director, Seth Gordon, went to high school here in Seattle, where producer Ed Cunningham also played football for the U-Dub. Below, the aggregate rankings of our cinema scholars Scott Foundas, J. Hoberman, Nathan Lee, Jim Ridley, Ella Taylor, and Robert Wilonsky.

1. There Will Be Blood The Texas tea bubbles up from the ground like primordial blood at the start of Paul Thomas Anderson's turn-of-the-century oil-prospecting epic (see review at left). Nearly three hours later, the blood spilling across the floor of a Beverly Hills bowling alley looks suspiciously like crude. In between, we are held rapt by a big, bold, iconic story of the greed that drives some men to greatness and just as often proves their undoing. S.F.

2. I'm Not There Semiotics, symbolist poetry, and Velvet Goldmine are not without their use when contemplating the intricacies of Todd Haynes' deconstructed biopic—not to mention everything ever written about Bob Dylan. But for this non-boomer, having lived through none of the era chronicled, knowing little of Dylan's life, and caring not much more for his music, I'm Not There struck me—hard—as an emotional experience unencumbered by historical baggage. N.L.

3. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days The title of Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's Cannes Film Festival prizewinner refers to the length of a pregnancy—specifically, the one a college student named Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) seeks to terminate in a midsize Romanian town circa 1987, when Ceausescu is still in power and abortions are illegal. Those who accused Judd Apatow's Knocked Up of being a thinly veiled Family Values polemic may find 4 Months more to their liking, but it becomes clear early on that Mungiu is less interested in the life-versus-choice debate than in the way people living in a socially repressive society adapt to circumstance. Opens Feb. 8. S.F.

4. (tie) Killer of Sheep Poetic in the very best sense—the exaltation of bedrock existence through concrete detail, closely observed—Charles Burnett's 1977 film about a Watts family man making ends meet with a literal dead-end job proved to be the triumph of the year in its long-delayed theatrical release. Uncommercial, eh? Milestone's successful distribution showed that its audience was narrowly focused, all right—to roughly anyone who's ever come home beat and soul-sick from a day at work. J.R. Southland Tales Muddled. Self-involved. Overbearingly ambitious. Insufferable. Funny how the critical mud slung at Donnie Darko on release has the same consistency as the shit storm that raged against Southland Tales, yet another—how dare he!?—ultra-convoluted sci-fi satire from the incorrigibly precocious Richard Kelly. Southland Tales looks and feels more like life in 2007 than Juno, In the Valley of Elah, and Michael Clayton combined. N.L.

5. Zodiac Obsessed with codes, graphs, symbols, and technology, David Fincher returns the serial-killer genre to its roots. This is a movie for number crunchers, systems analysts, archeologists of the analog era, and anyone interested in how we came to inhabit the cognitive chaos depicted in Southland Tales. N.L.

6. Ratatouille Not just a gourmand rat, or a beautifully animated French kitchen, but, as with Brad Bird's other work of genius, The Incredibles, Ratatouille makes a witty argument for passion and co-operative excellence. E.T.

7. Colossal Youth In this heroic film by Portuguese director Pedro Costa, a Cape Verdean immigrant named Ventura wanders dazedly between the gutted-out remnants of his former residence in a Lisbon housing tenement and a couple of prospective new ones, crossing paths with a succession of fellow travelers whom he refers to as his "children." Difficult to describe, but impossible to forget, Costa's film is like a waking dream. It played one day at Northwest Film Forum; soon to be on DVD. S.F.

8. (tie) Eastern Promises Like A History of Violence, David Cronenberg's Eastern Promises could almost pass for an exceptionally well-made B movie—in fact, this gangster flick is a dark, rhapsodic fairy tale set in a world populated by angels, devils, walking corpses, and human wolves—and most impressively by Viggo Mortensen. J.H. The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters Cynics will grouse that this isn't as important as Sicko or No End in Sight—when, yeah, it kinda is. Not because Seth Gordon's doc about two dudes vying for the title of World's Best Donkey Kong Player in the History of Ever will change the world, but it might just change your life. Who doesn't want to be awesome, even at something totally pointless? R.W.

9. Regular Lovers Parisian hotties riot in the street, smoke dope, boogie to the Kinks, fuck, mope, pose, lounge, and stare beautifully at the walls of beautiful apartments in Philippe Garrel's film. This, mes amis, is why cinema was invented. Expected soon on DVD. N.L.