OPC's Best Movies of 2007

One of the themes of "One Poor Correspondent" has been the way in which contemporary culture has been unshackled from its temporal limits and is now available to us regardless of when the work itself was produced. Pretty much every major movie ever made is now available to you whenever you want to see it. And this doesn't just extend into the past but into the future as well. I would like to see 2007's I'm Not There, but there is no need for me to see it in 2007; I can just wait five months and rent the DVD.

It's similar with music. It used to be that you'd have to go select whatever record you wanted to listen to, which was often something new, and older records often got pushed to the back of your collection. Now, with most of them set on shuffle, your iPod is as likely to cough up Len Barry's "1-2-3," from 1965, as it is Feist's "1 2 3 4," from this year. Or mine is, anyway.

So the best movie of 2007 is probably Notorious or McCabe & Mrs. Miller or something like that. They are certainly as much a part of my 2007 reality as any movies made and released this year.

The bottom line is, I didn't see enough movies that came out this year to produce a Top Ten of New 2007 Films. Let's see, there was:

Ocean's 13
The Darjeeling Limited (plus The Hotel Chevalier)
The Lives of Others
Once (and I can't wait for the sequel, just to see what it will be called: Once Again? Once More With Feeling? Twice?)
La Vie en Rose
Alvin and the Chipmunks
National Treasure: Book of Secrets


That's about seven and a half, and the last one wasn't good enough to be on a Top Ten list anyway. So I'll be able to come out with my Top Ten New Movies of 2007 probably in about 18 months or so.