Lists. Chicago Reader.

"[W]hen it comes to the list of movies making their Chicago premieres, 2007 may be the best year I can remember," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum, introducing his 21st (and perhaps last) "best of" list for the Chicago Reader. "For me, the two dozen movies most worth celebrating include a dozen masterpieces that finally showed in Chicago in 2007 even though they were made earlier, one as long ago as 1959. These movies are disparate on many levels, but at least half share one significant trait: they abolish most of the distinctions commonly made between fiction and nonfiction. This is a characteristic central to my idea of cutting-edge cinema, and there's not much new studio fare that has it."

His #1 is a collection: "I'd only seen one of Pedro Costa's six features before they came to the Gene Siskel Film Center this year. When I finally saw all of them, the impact of his work astounded me."

"[L]ooking over my ten favorite movies of 2007 - Atonement, Away From Her, Gone Baby Gone, In the Valley of Elah, Into Great Silence, Lake of Fire, My Kid Could Paint That, Reservation Road, Strange Culture and Things We Lost in the Fire - I'm struck by how many of them turn on the question of responsibility," writes JR Jones.

Posted by dwhudson at January 4, 2008 7:05 AM