Well, I didn't expect "No Country for Old Men" to be knocked from my top spot of '07

And I sure as hell didn't expect Juno to be the one to do it. Going in, I was expecting a comedy about on par with Lars & the Real Girl, light, "cutesy indie comedy" that dealt in a roundabout way with the basic issues of life and love, with a really good actress, I would tear up a little, smile a little and put it in the 9-12 range [with the added twist that Juno is EXACTLY, not sort of, not "hey that kind of reminds me of her", EXACTLY like one of my very good friends]. But as it went on, I kept expecting the movie to turn somewhere, to lean even a little bit to the left or to the right, to give me a sense of cinema, to strike a note that was false, and every time it seemed like it was going to either tug on heartstrings [The divorce, and the suggestion of an almost possible love interest for Mark and her...I was dreading the eventual hesitant kiss and Vanessa finding them or pull a false happy ending [Using the divorce as an excuse, then her and Bleeker getting together, keeping the baby and a happily ever after no problems there she kept the baby yay! bullsh-t, and it just...never went there. It stayed right on the even keel, and I believed it every f-cking step of the way. This isn't Little Miss Sunshine with stock dysfunctional characters spouting arbitrary "wacky" symptoms, this is...life. And that's all it can be, and all it needs to be. Sweet, intelligent, sensible, good-natured, honest, and just...as good as that film could possibly have been with the possible exception of Ellen Page making out with me in a major Hollywood film. [Grade: A] [Rank in my now-Fifty-Six of 2007: #1] I can't stop smiling.