My Favorite Movies of 2007

It looks like a theme for me this year is the contemplative experience: simplicity and stillness.

1. Into Great Silence. A nearly three-hour experience of monastic contemplative life, sublimely pieced together. Sounds dull to me, too. I was riveted.
2. The Pool. Set in India, a poor, 18-year-old man/boy's tentative quest for a better life. The story is so simple, the acting so natural. Even a surprise ending. And none of it maudlin.
3. The Savages. Adult brother and sister find themselves taking care of their estranged father. So funny and touching both.
4. Gone Baby Gone. A young private eye gets in over his head, procedurally and morally.
5. The Golden Door. Immigrants journey to the U.S. at the turn of the 20th C. A visual feast of the imagination.
6. The Lookout. A young man reconciles himself to a car accident in this simple, elegant character study.
7. Once. Two unavailable musicians meet, collaborate, and chastely love. An exquisite scene when he teaches her one of his songs.
8. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. A young woman helps her friend get an illegal abortion in communist Romania. Long, contemplative takes root this thriller.
9. Happy Desert. A 15-year-old girl in Brazil falls into prostitution. Heartbreaking yet transcedent.
10. August Evening. Two undocumented workers, a middle-aged man and his daughter-in-law, stick together as they both grieve the loss of their spouses. His acceptance of life as it comes to him is deeply moving.

Other favorites from 2007: In the Valley of Ellah, Grace is Gone, A Mighty Heart, Breach, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Wristcutters: A Love Story, Snow Angels, Bug, Echo