Keeping with the year-end theme of looking back, I've decided to post some brief thoughts on some of my favorite movie moments from 2007. These aren't necessarily my five favorites, nor are they from my five favorite movies of the year. However, they're all treasured cinematic memories from this past year, each for its own reason. I'll be posting two today and three more tomorrow, and I encourage all of you to give a shout out to some of your favorites in the comments section.
"If You Want Me", Once
Once was one of the year's best surprises, a movie that had few of the trappings of the big-budget musical but many of that genres pleasures, plus more than a few of its own. Most critics singled out the getting-to-know-you number "Falling Slowly" as the film's best, but for me the one that really captures the charms of Once was "If You Want Me." The scene is simplicity itself- the film's female lead (played by Marketa Irglova) walking back from the corner store in her pajamas and slippers, while she tries out her freshly-penned lyrics to a backing track given her by male lead Glen Hansard. It'd be a gross oversimplification to say that Once's triumph is due primarily to what it lacks- no elaborate production numbers, no fancy orchestration, and definitely no polished direction or gorgeous cinematography. But I think it's important to remember that director Glen Hansard is the bandmate of Hansard in The Frames, and because of this he was more inclined to trust the music to bear much of the movie's emotional weight, which a more experienced director might not have done. More than any scene in recent memory, this scene boils a musical number down to a character and the song she carries inside her.
Giant tadpole gone berserk, The Host
The creature feature has fallen on hard times lately, with most multiplex audiences preferring their villains in humanoid form. Who could have predicted that the best monster movie to hit American screens in 2007 (sorry, fans of The Mist) would bypass the big chains and take up residence in the arthouse? But The Host is no genteel latte-swilling night at the movies. Director Bong Joon-ho has made a full-blooded throwback to the genre movies of yore, easily the best movie of this kind since Jaws. Few films of 2007 delivered more pure thrills than The Host, beginning in an early showstopper of a scene. With a flair for crowd-pleasing suspense equalling that of a young Spielberg, Bong masterfully shows us a day by the river gone very, very wrong. As more people realize there's something in the water, they begin to gather by the river bank. And then the creature appears in the distance, charging at the people, and all hell breaks loose. The scene is tense as all hell, and a big reason why it works so well is the way Bong shows the creature approaching. The creature itself is a marvel, less a graceful killing machine than a gigantic amphibious St. Bernard. It's an inspired creation- detailed enough to be frightening, but so lovingly rendered to be just as endearing as the classic movie monsters.