2007 gave us some solid horror films and this Spanish inclusion, The Orphanage, presented by Guillermo del Toro, is often overlooked but it’s surely one of the scariest movies you’ve never seen.
Laura (Belén Rueda) has happy memories of her childhood in an orphanage. She convinces her husband to buy the place and help her convert it into a home for sick children. One day, her own adopted son, Simón (Roger Príncep), disappears. Simon is critically ill, and when he is still missing several months later, he is presumed dead. Grief-stricken Laura believes she hears spirits, who may or may not be trying to help her find the boy.
Ridley Scott’s 2007 period piece, American Gangster, is fictionally based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas.
Lucas (Denzel Washington) earns his living as a chauffeur to one of Harlem’s leading mobsters. After his boss dies, Frank uses his own ingenuity and strict business code to become one of the inner city’s most powerful crime bosses. Meanwhile, veteran cop Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) senses a change in the mob’s power structure and looks for ways to bring his opponent to justice.
Cronenberg does crime well. In Easter Promises, Nikolai (Viggo Mortensen) is both ruthless and mysterious and he has ties to one of the most dangerous crime families in London. He crosses paths with Anna (Naomi Watts), a midwife who has come across potentially damaging evidence against the family, which forces him to set in motion a plan of deceit, death and retribution. Best fight scene of 2007.
One of the Judd Apatow’s aughts comedies, Knocked Up came out in 2007 and made one-night stand pregnancies…funny.
Rising journalist Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) hits a serious bump in the road after a one-night stand with irresponsible slacker Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) results in pregnancy. Rather than raise the baby on her own, she decides to give Ben a chance to prove he is father material. However, he is unsure if he is ready to be a parent, and both wonder if they would be compatible lifetime partners.
Starring: Josh Brolin, Javier Bardem, Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson
While out hunting, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds the grisly aftermath of a drug deal. Though he knows better, he cannot resist the cash left behind and takes it with him. The hunter becomes the hunted when a merciless killer named Chigurh (Javier Bardem) picks up his trail. Also looking for Moss is Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), an aging lawman who reflects on a changing world and a dark secret of his own, as he tries to find and protect Moss.
Yippie kay yay…hero for the ages, John McClane, came back in 2007!
As the nation prepares to celebrate Independence Day, veteran cop John McClane (Bruce Willis) carries out another routine assignment: bringing in a computer hacker (Justin Long) for questioning. Meanwhile, a tech-savvy villain named Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) launches an attack on America’s computer infrastructure. As chaos descends around him, McClane must use old-fashioned methods to fight the high-tech threat.
Filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez pay tribute to exploitation films of the 1970s with two features in one. Tarantino directs Death Proof, a slasher film, and Rodriguez directs Planet Terror, a zombie movie. Fictitious ads and movie trailers run during each feature’s intermission.
DEATH PROOF
Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) is a professional body double who likes to take unsuspecting women for deadly drives in his free time. He has doctored his car for maximum impact; when Mike purposely causes wrecks, the bodies pile up while he walks away with barely a scratch. The insane Mike may be in over his head, though, when he targets a tough group of female friends, including real-life stuntwoman Zoe Bell, who plays herself.
PLANET TERROR
An ordinary evening in a small Texas town becomes a grisly nightmare when a horde of flesh-eating zombies goes on the prowl. Cherry (Rose McGowan), a go-go dancer, and Wray (Freddy Rodriguez), her ex-lover, band together with other survivors in a no-holds barred effort to escape the carnage. The odds become a bit more even when Cherry, who lost her leg to a hungry ghoul, gets a machine-gun appendage and lets the bullets fly.
Childhood lunatic Michael Myers gets an aughtsie make-over via Rob Zombie in this 2007 remake, which – rather boldly – fills in the gaps of Myers’ past, providing insight into the psychosis that drives the once blank-faced killer.
In an extended prologue, we meet Myers as a boy, abused at home and at school, and whose budding psychosis goes largely ignored — until the stabbing starts, at least. After that it all becomes rather familiar — fifteen years later, Michael returns home to celebrate the anniversary of his famous killings the best way he knows how (more killing).
Starring: Brad Pitt, Casey Affleck, Sam Shepard, Mary-Louise Parker, Sam Rockwell, Paul Schneider
Infamous and unpredictable, Jesse James (Brad Pitt), nicknamed the fastest gun in the west, plans his next big heist while he launches pre-emptive strikes against those looking to collect the reward the law has placed on his head. Jesse’s newest recruits, Robert (Casey Affleck) and Charley Ford (Sam Rockwell), grow increasingly jealous of the outlaw. When they sense an opportunity to kill Jesse, they gun him down, but their actions backfire when Jesse’s fame is elevated to near mythical status.
