5. Pineapple Express (My review)(Pre-order the DVD)
When this movie was disqualified from my 2007 list (unlike Trick ‘r Treat, I knew Pineapple would hit theaters), I feared that a crowded 2008 and distance would take the shine off. 2008 ended up not being as competitive as I feared, but even if it had, Pineapple Express would have more than held its own. Seeing it a second time a year after my first viewing and laughing just as hard this time around I felt really secure that this wasn’t a pick I would later regret. This movie is, quite simply, fucking awesome. Funny and filled with great, old school action, Pineapple perfectly melds the sensibilities of indie maven David Gordon Green and comedy king Judd Apatow. I’ve been a major fan of Green since George Washington, but I never imagined he had a movie like this in him. But I should have never doubted that he would direct some of the funniest actors today into characters who are fully realized and totally real, no matter how silly things get. It’s the genius of the Green/Rogen/Goldberg/Judd team that even the second string characters, like Craig Robinson and Kevin Corrigan’s hit men, feel like they could carry their own films.
Current rating: 10 out of 10
Contributing factors: A script that doesn’t ape Midnight Run but understands why it works. An amazing performance by James Franco, reminding us all that he’s a funny guy. And Craig Robinson, the killer comedy weapon of 2008 (see Zack & Miri Make a Porno). And LA medical marijuana dispenseries now sell weed called Pineapple Express.
Performance to savor: Danny McBride’s Red may be my favorite movie character of the year. ‘You just got killed by a Daewoo Lanos, motherfucker!’
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “I want to make a BFF locket I can share with Pineapple Express!”
4. Slumdog Millionaire (review coming, I swear!)
A movie can have sentiment without being sentimental. Danny Boyle instinctually understands this, and Slumdog Millionaire – his best film, without a doubt – is where he perfects the inclusion of sentiment without becoming cloying. There’s no doubt that Slumdog is, at its heart, a fairy tale, but it’s a fairy tale that is so grounded in reality that instead of feeling manipulated by the ending you feel levitated by it. Boyle’s film about a poor slum kid who ends up on India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire takes us on an almost Dante-like tour of the circles of hell in which some of the poorest people on Earth live. The film never blinks away from the poverty and crime and degradation and exploitation in which its characters live, but it also reminds us that even in these circumstances the best of our human traits can flourish and that we can get beyond our surroundings. The film will leave you outraged and elated. It will also leave you deeply touched.
Current rating: 10 out of 10
Contributing factors: Danny Boyle is a filmmaker who is really coming into his own. This Dickensian tale is given a serious shot of adrenaline with his electric direction and the driving, hip-hop meets bhangra soundtrack.
Performance to savor: The many child actors in this film will stun you with their lack of preciousness and abundance of talent, but it’s the beauty of Freida Pinto as older Latika that sold me on Jamal’s quest for her. I would go up against a mob boss for Latika too.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “I love this movie. And yes, that’s my final answer!”
3. Man on Wire (My review)(Buy the DVD)
Man on Wire is a documentary, but that word is so limiting. It creates a box in which you place the film before you see it, and that box is simply inadequate to contain this exhilirating, inspiring tale of one man’s mad dream – to walk on a tightrope between the then-tallest buildings in the world, the Twin Towers in New York City. Phillipe Petit is the kind of guy I usually hate – a French artist and street performer who talks in endlessly poncey poetic allusions – but I ended up loving him. It’s because he means it. A wire walker, Petite and his crew did an escalting series of walks leading up to the big moment. Director James Marsh brilliantly frames the story as a heist, since Petite and his crew didn’t get official permission to do their stunt. This device makes the movie one of the most exciting films of the year, and a proposed narrative remake seems superfluous – it’s all right here, and completely accessible and exciting!
Current rating: 10 out of 10
Contributing factors: Petite, a not-so-secret narcissist, recorded himself and his preparations quite extensively. These original films add much flavor to the movie.
Performance to savor: Petite is incredible. In his interviews, which are edited with archival footage and reenactments, he spins the yarn with such passion and beauty that you can almost close your eyes and get the full experience from his words.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Man on Wire has me balancing between love and adoration!”
2. Let the Right One In (Alex’s review. My shame is that I have not yet reviewed it)(pre-order the DVD)
I almost did a tie for first place. It’s kind of unfair to have to choose between what I’ve ranked as my #2 and my #1; putting art in some kind of order is stupid in the first place, but even worse is that I have to pick between two movies that touched me deeply and that reminded me what film is all about. Maybe I’ll look back and wish I had changed positions, but this is how it shook out.
Let the Right One In is, simply, a masterpiece. Tomas Alfredson has made a movie that will enchant, move and intrigue people for as long as they are watching movies. It is a film that will live forever; at first as a cult item and then, over time, as an accepted member of the canon of great films. Sadly it’s a foreign movie, so it’ll never have a chance to stand alongside the Great Movies that every schoolkid sees, but it’s probably better than half of those. The movie is so carefully constructed it seems like it was put together with tweezers, but it’s a film that utilizes a classic slow burn technique; it begins encased in darkness and ice and ends up in a blaze of light and pools of water. A touching coming of age story and a classic vampire tale all in one without sacrificing any horror for any art, Let the Right One In is the kind of movie that should make every filmmaker working today reconsider what they’re doing. It’s that good.
Current rating: 10 out of 10
Contributing factors: There’s not a single bad moment in this film, and picking out what is better than what else is tough. I will say that the pool scene is one of the few moments in years that satisfied the horror nerd and the film snob in me at the same time.
Performance to savor: Lina Leandersson is haunting as Eli, the vampire girl next door. It’s amazing that a young girl with such an eerily ageless quality was found.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “You should let the right one (you) in (to a theater playing this movie)!”
1. The Wrestler (review almost finished!)
Everybody else in the critical world saw The Wrestler before me. I had read the script a year ago (and marveled that a guy from The Onion could write a little movie as heartfelt as that), so I knew before it played Toronto that the movie would be good, but I was soon deluged with reports of just how good it was. I worried that the endless praise would poison me and the dreaded hypemonster would leave me feeling underwhelmed by the actual movie.
No dice. This is a great movie. I’ve seen it twice now and the impact is in no way lessened by repeat viewings. After Requiem for a Dream Darren Aronofsky earned a rep as a twisted, dark guy, and maybe some of the violent wrestling scenes in this will flash people back to that film’s harrowing passages, but Aronofsky is really a big softie. He’s one of the most earnest filmmakers working today, and he has so much compassion for his characters, even ones as royally fucked as Randy the Ram. Like Danny Boyle he just knows how to give us sentiment without hammering us over the head. Darren Aronofsky is a genius, and in case you didn’t believe it before, he gives you The Wrestler.
Current rating: 10 out of 10
Contributing factors: There’s such a tangible sense of place to this film. Every character is perfectly drawn and feels alive. In the hands of a hackier director, this would have been a big, heavy handed piece of shit Oscar bait. In Aronofsky’s hands it’s a perfect melding of Hollywood and indie.
Performance to savor: Mickey Fucking Rourke. The performance that validates this guy’s whole entire life.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “The Wrestler is a body slam of amazing!”
10. Burn After Reading (My review)(Buy the DVD)
Anybody who thinks Burn After Reading is a throwaway after the masterpiece of No Country For Old Men might not quite ‘get’ the Coen Bros. This movie is so much them, and so filled with their tricks and gags and winks that it only serves to heighten the alien nature of No Country when viewed against the rest of their filmography. This is a deliriously wonderful comedy, one that’s as black as coal and as hateful as Ebenezer Scrooge on the day before Christmas Eve. No one is unscathed by this film, and everyone is some sort of idiot, buffoon or asshole. And I’m dreading the ‘Performance to savor’ section below, since this movie is stuffed with astounding comedic work. I love No Country, but maybe I’m a heathen, since this is the kind of Coen Bros movie I tend to like the best. I know I’ll be watching this one a whole lot more than their masterpiece.
Current rating: 9.5 out of 10
Contributing factors: The paranoid thrillers of the 70s and the high tech espionage movies of the 90s are dated. This movie is how we understand the intelligence complex now: stupid, baffled and prone not to evil plots but idiotic pratfalls.
Performance to savor: Brad Pitt will probably get an Oscar nom for his zen-like Benjamin Button, but his best character work was with the dim but lovable Chad.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Your nose will burn after laughing when you spit up a Coke!”
9. Iron Man (My review)(Buy the DVD)
I was always a Marvel Comics kid. DC Comics, with its immortal pantheon of unstoppable heroes, always seemed like it was aimed at kids (and now with their endlessly dire series of grim heroes suffering it feels like they’re aimed at people whose child inside died and turned into some kind of hideous rotting zombie), but Marvel’s heroes with feet of clay and their realistic universe felt like it was aimed at me, a pretty bright 12 year old. Jon Favreau’s Iron Man made me feel not like that 12 year old but how that 12 year old felt when he would open up the pages of the latest Marvel Comic at the local Te Amo. And that cameo at the end made me remember what it felt like when Jim Shooter ran the company and Spider-Man would swing by the X-Factor Tower in his own title. It’s that sense of the joy of a shared universe before the shared universe became a goal in and of itself, and thus a burden.
Current rating: 9 out of 10
Contributing factors: While his action leaves something to be desired, Jon Favreau excels with his characters, and the secret that Marvel learned was that it’s all about the characters and not about what they’re doing. As long as you care about the people you’ll forgive less than stellar issues, or less than exciting action directing.
Performance to savor: Robert Downey Jr, of course. Here’s a secret I want to let a lot of genre fans in on: you don’t have to be either light and dumb or dark and heavy. You can be light and fun while being smart and having moral issues and flaws, and RDJ proves that in spades.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Heavy boots of lead fill the summer with fun!”
8. Timecrimes (My review)(pre-order the DVD)
Another Sundance movie! Nacho Vigolando is not a name you know right now, but with luck and some justice, he’s just a few years from being one of those directors whose every project gets you salivating. One of the earliest films I championed here at CHUD was Primer, a low budget time travel movie that is one of the best science fiction movies I have ever seen. Timecrimes is the Spanish, slightly freakier version of that. Vigolando’s script keeps doubling back on itself, and every time you think you’ve caught him in a paradox, he blows you away with the answer. At the heart is an every day schmo and a bizarre figure whose face is wrapped in bloody bandages. Timecrimes is thrilling, funny and incredibly intellectually satisfying.
Current rating: 9.5 out of 10
Contributing factors: Nacho’s script is tighter than the face of any of the Real Housewives of Orange County. Everything comes into play, and there’s almost nothing in the film wasted. Also, the design of the creepy bandage faced guy is the stuff of which iconic horror characters are made, which is why I love his origin all the more.
Performance to savor: Karra Elejalde plays Hector, the schlub at the center of all the chronal craziness, and he brings humor, goofiness, tenderness, physicality and a certain darkness to the role. Tour de force, as they say.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “I want to go back in time and see this movie again!”
7. The Wackness (My review)(pre-order the DVD)
While I’m no wigger, The Wackness spoke to me on levels that are almost creepy. The movie, which is a coming of age story with all of the hoariness that implies, is gracefully set against New York City’s most recent coming of age – the Giuliani years, when Disney kicked the dime bags out of Times Square. Those were monumental years for me too, even though I’m a little older than lead character Josh Shapiro. Director Jonathan Levine approaches the coming of age story and the period with such honesty and such reality that it transcends the cliches of which its made (and let’s be honest: many of those cliches are truths we’ve all experienced in our own lives) and becomes a whole other level of film. This is Levine’s second feature (his first is the shelf-stricken horror film All the Boys Love Mandy Lane), and it shows that he has a gift for real characters and simple honesty. I can’t wait to see what he does next.
Current rating: 9.5 out of 10
Contributing factors: Made up almost entirely of hip hop from 1994, The Wackness has the best soundtrack of any movie this year. And it has Olivia Thirlby, exactly correctly cast as the almost attainable dream girl.
Performance to savor: I guess Josh Peck was some children show star? And he was fat? You’d never know it from his spot-on Luke Shapiro. I went to high school with this guy. He sold me weed.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Yeah boyee, this movie is the dopeness!”
6. Trick ‘r Treat (My sort of review. A real one coming)(There’s no DVD. Order the awesome book instead)
Yeah, I’m cheating. Trick ‘r Treat didn’t come out this year. It also didn’t come out in 2007, when it was supposed to hit theaters. And I don’t know that it’ll come out in 2009. I went back and forth on including the film here, and in the end decided that this fucker quite simply earned the spot. Trick ‘r Treat is the best Halloween movie ever made, a film that, if Warner Bros knew what they were doing, would be an iconic seasonal treat that gets replayed in homes on DVD every October 31st and revived in cool theaters every Samhain. An interconnected series of short horror tales, Trick ‘r Treat plays out like Creepshow if Spielberg had gone dark and directed it. Imagine if those suburban Amblin kids didn’t meet lovable aliens and delightful supernatural beings but rather violent, bloody death. You’ve imagined Trick ‘r Treat. I love this film, and if Warner Bros hasn’t gotten their act together by October 31st of 2009 and released this sucker in theaters, I’m going to be leading the charge to organize a cool screening here in Los Angeles, at the very least.
Current rating: 9.5 out of 10
Contributing factors: Instead of setting the movie on Halloween, writer/director Michael Dougherty infuses the film with Halloween legend and ritual. While I, like everybody else, love Halloween, that movie could take place on almost any other day of the year. Trick ‘r Treat, though, could only take place in one 24 hour period.
Performance to savor: Just when you got past Dylan Baker as a pedophile in Happiness he plays a grade school principal with a penchant for poisoning the Halloween candy he hands out.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Let’s all TP the Warner Bros studio lot until they release this horror gem!”
My top fifteen list points out a real problem with me in 2008 – I simply didn’t write enough reviews. A large number of the films on this list were not reviewed by me in 2008, and I have no excuse for that. To make up for this, I’m going to be working on getting all of these movies reviewed in the coming weeks – hopefully before the New Year – so that you’ll have a chance to read my longer thoughts on the best films of the year. Except maybe for #13. That film still intimidates me intellectually.
This year’s top fifteen is an eclectic mix. Looking back at 2008 it wasn’t a stunner of a year for movies, but it did have some of the best genre films of the last decade, and a number of smaller, effective films than last year’s epics of greatness and bombast. 2008 feels like the year the movies took a breather.
There are a couple of exclusions that will likely get folks up in arms. Sorry, I’m just listing the 15 that were the best and my favorites. I didn’t have to search hard to fill a spot that would have otherwise gone to The Dark Knight or Wall*E, and those films were never serious contenders for my list. Films that did almost make the cut, though, were movies like Rambo, Punisher: War Zone, Doubt, Dear Zachary or a number of other documentaries that I loved this year. That said, I do have one film on this list that was not a 2008 release, but I saw it this year and I think it’s important to have it represented because it may never get an actual theatrical release. Another movie that I saw in 2008 that I loved, The Brothers Bloom, has been bumped to 2009; Rian Johnson’s sophomore effort will have to fend for itself on next year’s list.
For those of you interested in nostalgia, here’s what came before:
My top fifteen of 2007
My top fifteen of 2006
My top fifteen of 2005
My top fifteen of 2004
And so… my top fifteen of 2008.
15. Towelhead (My review)(pre-order the DVD)
Four of the films on my top fifteen were Sundance movies. That speaks to their power, that nearly a year later they stay with me. Towelhead was a film that gutpunched me but seemed to leave any of my colleagues cold. Maybe it’s the subject matter – Jazeera, a young Iraqi girl in the suburbs during the Gulf War experiences her sexual awakening and her first sexual victimization at the hands of the handsome military man next door – or maybe it was… no, it was the subject matter. Alan Ball, writer of American Beauty and creator of Six Feet Under and True Blood, tackles the taboo of adolescent sexuality, a taboo all the more hypocritical as we continue to sexualize adolescents in fashion and society. He does it with heart and compassion for almost all of his characters, but most importantly he does it with tact while not pulling any punches.
Current rating: 8.5 out of 10
Contributing factors: Working from Alicai Erian’s novel, Ball’s film – which at one point was retitled Nothing is Private until everybody got their balls back – does what the best television dramas do: it weaves a multi-character story that doesn’t rush to the ending and yet remains remarkably focused. A big plus is Peter Macdissi in an often funny turn as young Jazeera’s dad.
Performance to savor: Aaron Eckhart gives a performance of incredible depth and complexity as the grown man who inexplicably finds himself drawn to this girl. Open minded viewers will see him as not quite a monster but also not quite someone who deserves our sympathy. It’s a tough place for an actor to go, and Eckhart gives it his career best.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “You’ll be happy to let Aaron Eckhart have his way with you in Towelhead!”
14. Funny Games (My review forthcoming)(Buy the DVD)
Actually, five of my top fifteen were Sundance movies, but I missed this one at Sundance. I finally caught up with it on home video, where it left me in awe. Michael Haneke’s shot for shot remake of his own 1997 Austrian film seems like a critique of the current world of ‘torture porn’ but it actually predates it by almost a half decade. A pair of clean cut, well-scrubbed young killers take a family hostage and torment them throughout the night. These two boys seem like forces of nature, ids gone wild. Or more like plot devices come alive, creatures without backgrounds or motivations (concepts used to much more chilling ends here than in a summer superhero film, which feels like it lifted its villain from Haneke’s original), beings who live only to go from house to house, recreating a horror movie again and again. And they’re very aware of what they’re doing and the universe in which they live. The film is brutal, relentless and really fucking smart.
Current rating: 9 out of 10
Contributing factors: Haneke is a master of suspense. He is able to extend it and deflate it to fit his purposes at any given time. He has complete control of the cinematic form, and when he breaks the rules – as he does aggressively here – it’s exciting and shocking.
Performance to savor: Michael Pitt is, to me, sort of Emile Hirsch lite (Hirsch is, without argument, the finest young actor working in major motion pictures today), and his weird blankness and pudgy, baby-like face clash with the cruelty he dishes out and the pleasure he takes from it. It’s a truly frightening performance.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “A movie for – and against! – the sick fucks out there!”
13. Synecdoche, New York (Don’t hold your breath for a review)(pre-order the Blu-Ray)
I really wanted to write about this movie, but it defeated me. Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut is not an easy film; I wouldn’t recommend it to those who felt that Adaptarion and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were annoying cerebral, for instance. The movie is incredibly self-indulgent, but to hold that against it is missing the forest for the pine cones, since Synecdoche, New York is an incredibly self-indulgent film about being an incredibly self-indulgent artist. The movie, which has Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a playwright whose magnum opus sees him creating his whole life inside of a warehouse, is fractal in narrative, and it’s fractal on a meta-level as well, as Kaufman pours himself, his neuroses, his fears and his dreams into the picture. It doesn’t always hold together as a coherent thing, and it really loses its way at the end, but it’s audacious and brilliant and thrilling to sit through – if you’re the kind of person who finds massively self-indulgent semi-surreal, partially absurdist art movies thrilling.
Current rating: 9 out of 10
Contributing factors: Beautifully designed and shot, Synecdoche proves that Kaufman was paying attention while making those movies with Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. It’s also a delightful headfuck that keeps getting more twisted as the plot loses its own thread in a funhouse of navel gazing.
Performance to savor: Casting Emily Watson and Samantha Morton as doppelgangers is brilliant.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Holy shit, I need a pitcher of beer and three hours of conversation to dissect this.”
12. The Foot Fist Way (How did I not review this?)(Buy the DVD)
I thought Danny McBride was going to hit a little harder this year. He’s in two of the films in my top fifteen, and he’s great (if a little subdued (for him)) in Tropic Thunder, and he just seems like the next guy everybody who reads this site should love. But maybe he’s more an acquired taste, and I acquired him after seeing him first steal Pineapple Express and then give life and soul to this great movie. It’s important that you understand that The Foot Fist Way was made by guys who were greatly influenced by The Office – and I’m talking about the cringe-inducing British show, not the fluffy, sweet, hijinks-filled American one. They were influenced by The Office and sought to outdo it, creating a character in Fred Simmons who, like David Brent, skirts the edge of the cliff of unlikability with alarming regularity. But while Fred has moments that will make you squirm in your seat or put your face in your palm, he’s also a complete, real human being – one who you can get behind. If you’re not cheering at the end when he’s telling off his wife (laughing at the same time, probably hysterically, since McBride’s delivery is simply awe-inspiring), you’re heartless.
Current rating: 9 out of 10
Contributing factors: Co-writer Ben Best kills as Chuck ‘The Truck’ Wallace, and director Jody Hill threatens to rob the film from McBride as fifth degree black belt Mike McAlister, but the film’s real charm comes from the realism of the dojo and the world these fuck ups inhabit.
Performance to savor: Julio. The movie’s secret weapon. He’s up to nothing.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “The Foot Fist Way is terrific for laughing, but it’s also a deadly serious killing system!”
11. Rachel Getting Married (My review forthcoming)(Pre-order the DVD)
Wait, Jonathan Demme is back? How did this happen? It turns out that following a string of big budget, low quality films (two remakes of classics back to back), Demme did some documentaries – including Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains and Neil Young: Heart of Gold – and maybe they helped save his soul. Whatever the case, he returns with this small (yet large in cast) and intimate (yet sort of sprawling in emotion and tenderness) story about a woman who gets married and how her selfish, abusive and hot addict of a sister almost ruins it all. Demme’s handheld style brings us into the preparations for the wedding, and after a while you feel not like you’re watching a movie but like you’re participating in this momentous occasion. A few choice missteps (like the dead brother’s baby plate showing up at an innopportune, but dramatically huge moment) kept this one just out of the top ten, but this movie should earn Anne Hathaway an Oscar. Not a nomination, but the actual award.
Current rating: 9 out of 10
Contributing factors: Some have complained about the unspoken of interracial aspect of the wedding and thus the wedding party, but to me it only elevates this into the first post-Obama movie, even if I saw it well before the election. The infusion of music – both sides of the family are musical – helps make this movie more than a little transcendent.
Performance to savor: I mentioned Anne Hathaway’s Oscar earning turn in the main body so I could call out the wonderful Bill Irwin. Yes, the clown. He’s a joy to watch, and his clown training allows him to turn every movement and facial expression into a small bit of poetry.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Just say ‘I Do’ to this wonderful film!”
