2007 Top Ten: Matt Hauske

(Lotta people say I look a lot like him.)

Alberto, I admire and applaud your restraint, a quality I sorely lack, as you are well aware.

R. Emmet, I'm glad you wrote "punish myself" rather than "abuse myself." I don't think my mind-grapes could handle that.

Of the 134 movies I saw this year, only 25 of them were released this year. That makes for an easy top ten list. I suspect it would have been even easier if I had had a chance to see There Will Be Blood, or if I could include personal revelations like Otto Preminger's Bonjour tristesse, Ebrahim Golestan's The Brick and the Mirror, Altman's California Split, Svankmajer's Faust, Raoul Walsh's Manpower (maybe my most highly recommended film of the year--a bizarre must-see), Irving Lerner's Murder By Contract, Anand Tucker's Shopgirl, and a bunch of stuff by Preminger, Tati, and Kurosawa. But since I can't include them, best not to even mention them. They're gone.

I also shouldn't bring up several of the films my list tells me I saw but that I have little to no recollection of seeing, including but not limited to: Wimbledon, Space Cowboys (yes, this belongs in a category with Wimbledon), The Mascot (Wladyslaw Starewicz, France, 1934)(???), The Long Gray Line (John Ford, 1955), It (Clarence Badger, 1927), Donnie Brasco (apparently for the second time), and Bananas. I don't want to be rude by saying I don't remember seeing them, so I won't even mention I saw them.

While I'm not being rude, I'd better also not mention the absolute dreck I saw. You know, films like 28 Weeks Later, Brand Upon the Brain!(!!!), House (Steve Miner, 1986, a movie up Singer's alley), I Think I Love My Wife, I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With, Lions for Lambs (Robert Redford's soooo [about to have a broken] hip!), and the not-glorious mess that is Preminger's Skidoo. It's hard enough to make a movie without some snot-nosed PhD student telling you your movie sucks. Especially when you used to be cool and now you're just an old douchebag. (Thanks for drawing our attention to these important issues, "Bob.")

So I won't bring up those shitty, awful wastes of celluloid and time. It would be tasteless and rude. And no one likes that.

Speaking of tastelessness, here's my Top Ten List of movies that made me want to exuberantly drive a car backwards off a parking garage.

The Bourne Ultimatum (Paul Greengrass)
Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Shnabel)
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Tim Burton)
Darjeeling Limited (Wes Anderson)
Juno (Jason Reitman)
King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Seth Gordon)
Black Book (Paul Verhoven)
Zodiac (David Fincher)
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg)
Any pie Judd Apatow had his fingers in (e.g. Blades of Glory, Knocked Up, Walk Hard, Superbad, Funny Or Die clips, etc.)