The final 2007 round-up.

I promise this will be the last 'Best of 2007'-related article you will see on this website, but I wanted to share the Top 10 lists of the other critics here in Greensboro.

What I like about Glen Baity from Yes!Weekly and Orson Scott Card from The Rhino Times is that both of them usually stray from the national critical consensus. A lot of professional critics from New York and LA tend to parrot each other's reviews, and part of the reason for this is that many of them watch their movies at the same time in the same auditoriums. So if one of them shares a point of pleasure or contention about a movie they've just watched while exiting the theater lobby, you'll usually see it appear in about five other reviews. The late Joel Siegel was pretty much able to torpedo Kevin Smith's Clerks 2 in this fashion, by turning his walkout into a major production for all the critics at his screening.

But because Glen and Orson don't live in New York and L.A., and movie studios almost never pay for critics' screenings here in Greensboro, they see most of their movies the way you and I do: After the release date with an auditorium filled with regular moviegoers. In a way, their approach prevents their criticisms from being tainted by outside opinions.

Also keep that in mind when you read their top 10 lists, that these guys didn't sell out like Mike and me. The movies on their lists were actually released in 2007. Mike and I, phonies that we are, got to watch a lot of screenings/screeners. So remember, one of the biggest reasons their lists are so different from ours is that they ultimately knew how to, "keep it real."

Glen Baity's Top 10:
1) No Country for Old Men
2) Juno
3) Once
4) Hot Fuzz
5) American Gangster
6) Superbad
7) In the Valley of Elah
8) Breach
9) Knocked Up
10) Live Free or Die Hard

Bottom 5:
1) I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
2) Balls of Fury
3) The Heartbreak Kid
4) Lions for Lambs
5) Good Luck Chuck

To find out why each film made Glen's lists, click here.

Orson Scott Card's Top 8
1) Dan in Real Life
2) Ratatouille
3) The Bourne Ultimatum
4) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
5) Enchanted
6) Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married?
7) Surf's Up
8) Becoming Jane

Bottom 2
1) Shrek the Third
2) Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

Because he was too busy writing novels, film scripts, and a funny book, Orson says he was too busy to find the time needed to see all the movies it would require to make a genuine top 10 or bottom 5 list this year. He also says he avoided any film involving the war like the plague.That said, there are other films he mentions as being either 'Noteworthy' or 'Well-meaning failures'. You can read Orson's entire list here

And while this Mark Burger is from Winston-Salem, I figured I would mention his picls as well.

Mark Burger's Top 10:
1) Zodiac
2) No Country for Old Men
3) Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
4) Michael Clayton
5) There Will Be Blood
6) Things We Lost in the Fire
7) Talk to Me
8) The Hoax
9) Operation Homecoming
10) Starting Out in the Evening

Bottom 10:
1) August Rush
2) Freedom Writers
3) Sydney White
4) Captivity
5) War
6. License to Wed
7) I Know Who Killed Me
8) Georgia Rule
9) Norbit
10) Resident Evil: Extinction