Waltz With Bashir
Ari Folman’s friend Boaz is having terrible dreams, and Folman has a strange memory of the part he played in the Lebanese War in the early ’80s. Folman’s attempt to understand both dreams and clarify his memory turns into a journey through suppressed reality and the morality of war. Animated in a stark but beautiful style, this Israeli documentary is the best war film I saw this year. Through colorful, lucid but dreamlike animation Folman explores his suppressed war stories, but his narration and the interviews with other surviving soldiers grounds the story firmly in the real.
Current rating: 8.9 out of 10
Contributing factors: Stunning animation, a looping, recursive structure that puzzles out memory and meaning, and a real attempt at an honest telling of a terrible act of war.
Performance to savor: Ari Folman, who with his design and calm voice-over draws us into a puzzle of memory and morality.
CHUD.com pull quote: “The cure for post-traumatic stress disorder we’ve been looking for.”
Milk
Some will say that Gus Van Sant’s account of the life and achievement of Harvey Milk is too bound to the classic biopic structure. I say it legitimizes the biopic. In depicting the political rise of Milk, the first openly gay San Francisco City Supervisor, the movie takes very few chances. But that lets Sean Penn shine as the ebullient community leader. We focus on what he achieved, and how, rather than on Gus Van Sant’s telling of the tale. If there’s a criticism, it’s that the film stakes out much of the same ground covered by the excellent documentary The Times of Harvey Milk. But a dramatization can lend extra mythical qualities to a story, and if there’s any recent real drama that deserves to be preserved larger than life, it’s this one.
Current rating: 9 out of 10
Contributing factors: Van Sant’s patient hand; a recreation of period San Francisco which rival’s that of Zodiac; support from Emile Hirsch and Alison Pill; the refusal to make murderer Dan Brown’s motivations into something they weren’t.
Performance to savor: There are many, such as James Franco’s measured, caring companion and Josh Brolin’s jealous, upset Supervisor. But I keep coming back to Penn’s Milk, which both captures the spirit of the man and shatters the dour mold Penn has crafted for his screen performances in the last decade.
CHUD.com pull quote: “Vote Milk!”
Funny Games
In Michael Haneke’s 1997 film Funny Games, two polite, well-spoken and quite amoral young men menace a vacationing family with severe physical and psychological violence before sailing off into the sunset to do it again with new victims. This remake, also by Haneke, could be viewed as what happens to the next family…and that the young men’s actions are exactly the same is very much the point. The obvious question: why did this accomplished director remake his own 1997 film shot for shot? The obvious answer: because it is more relevant than ever. The boys commit atrocities for our pleasure, and Haneke doesn’t let us get off easily. But some can rest easy; if the setup doesn’t sound appealing, Haneke isn’t aiming the film at you.
Current rating: 9.0 out of 10
Contributing factors: Haneke’s unflinching, clinical eye. Michael Pitt’s best work. Forty ounces of pure courage from Tim Roth and Naomi Watts. Remote controls. John Zorn.
Performance to savor: The desperation of Tim Roth, of whom we haven’t seen enough in recent years.
CHUD.com pull quote: “I’ve never wanted so badly not to see what a movie refuses to show!”
Man On Wire
Art can claim territory meant for other purposes, and it can also reclaim that territory when it becomes locked into a specific context or meaning. Philippe Petit has been part of that process twice with respect to the World Trade Center in New York. In 1974 he strung a wire between the rooftops of the Twin Towers, and by dancing on it made them, if for only a few minutes, into something more than office buildings. By revisiting his stunt, he helps reclaim the Towers from the auspices of 9/11. James Marsh’s film, which blends interviews, recreations of loads of vintage footage, is a heist movie, a lively story about the power of art, and a wonderful piece of filmmaking.
Current Rating: 9.2 out of 10
Contributing factors: Petit’s contagiously energetic presence; the treasure trove of vintage footage showing his other stunts; Marsh’s eye for combining real and recreated footage to highlight both fact and imagination; the re-use of Michael Nyman’s scores originally written for Peter Greenaway movies.
Performance to savor: Petit is an obvious nomination, but for me it’s the original interview with one of the cops who met him at the top of the Towers. The flatfoot’s admission of wonder shows that Petit’s stunt had all the power he hoped it might.
CHUD.com pull quote: “You’ve never seen a high-wire act to match Man on Wire!”
The Wrestler
Raw, searing and disarmingly tender. Darren Aronofsky has built towards this movie since he debuted with Pi. His under-the-skin direction, voyeuristic tendencies and love for people on the fringe of society all come together, balanced almost to perfection. As the wrestler who has burned almost all of life’s bridges, Mickey Rourke commands the screen in a way he never did as a hot young leading man. Marisa Tomei matches his depth and intensity step by step. And Aronofsky looks on, never blinking as his camera eye urges understanding and compassion when their lives threaten to burn out.
Current Rating: 9.3 out of 10
Contributing factors: The stunning physicality of Rourke and Tomei. An oddly perfect hair-metal soundtrack. Bruce Springsteen’s closing tune. Maryse Alberti’s cinematography, which is close and inviting, but never invasive.
Performance to savor: Mickey Rourke, who lays his soul bare.
CHUD.com pull quote: “Nothing is faked in this triumphant achievement!”
Son of Rambow
Slumdog Millionaire came up at year-end to steal the feel good movie crown, but I still love this boyhood story. Imaginative, earnest and honest without being cloying, I’ve seen few other films that grasp the big wonders and horrors of childhood like this one. Add to that a bold love for movies and a playfully impish look at the way kids interact with them, and this becomes a unique and beautiful little picture. Only two years after his mushy adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, director Garth Jennings is redeemed.
Current rating: 8.3 out of 10
Contributing factors: An eye for movies that I can very well respect; the understanding that children are the most terrible things on earth; a more intuitive grasp of young friendship than most movies even glance at.
Performance to savor: Will Poulter as Lee Carter, the tough, wounded bully/best friend to end them all.
CHUD.com pull quote: “Rambo ruled, but it’s time for his son to take over!”
Let the Right One In
Freezing frost, the slow glistening drip of congealing blood, distant screams. The year’s most atmospheric movie was also the best vampire movie in recent memory. Even better, this cold Swedish tale of a child and his childlike vampire companion appears to be a love story, but as with some of the best romances is actually a tale of coercion, manipulation and control. Not only does Tomas Alfredson’s film refuse to elevate and romanticize the vampire’s inhuman behavior; he implies a cycle of destruction that cuts back to the heart of true horror.
Current rating: 8.3 out of 10
Contributing factors: Brilliantly frozen cinematography to rival Werner Herzog’s trip to Antarctica; the many faces of Lina Leandersson; Alfredson’s willingness to let the story breathe; that last-ditch scene of violence before the real horror comes home.
Performance to savor: Lina Leandersson, the vampire implied in the title, whose face can be innocent, knowing and bestial in a sequence of three frames. She’s otherwordly and frightening.
CHUD.com pull quote: “Sharp and cold as a sliver of frozen blood!”
Paranoid Park
The last year and change was a good time for Gus Van Sant. While Milk (which you’ll find later in this list) is grand mainstream filmmaking, Paranoid Park is the culmination of his experimental quartet that includes Gerry (a movie I really like), Elephant and Last Days. This is the most grounded of the four, though it uses a similar sense of dreamlike unreality to describe how a teen skater’s life starts to fracture as he tries to accept the consequences of an unintentional horrible act. Van Sant’s use of non-actors doesn’t always work. But I was drawn into the persistently revised confessional of Gabe Nevins’s slumped skater Alex, and couldn’t look away as his life became a nightmare.
Current rating: 8.4 out of 10
Contributing factors: Gabe Nevins’s natural performance; imaginative sound editing; Van Sant’s deft touch with the lives of fringe kids.
Performance to savor: Christopher Doyle (who also cameos as Alex’s uncle) who lends just the right touch of unreality to the movie’s images.
CHUD.com pull quote: “Hey Larry Clark, how’d this one feel?”
Burn After Reading
This is hardly the first Coen Brothers movie to put down roots that penetrate deep into memory and my estimation of their considerable abilities. But it might be their meanest and most savage. No Country For Old Men? A walk compared to this teardown of our current national character. And yet Burn is wildly, eccentrically funny, and clever without being as self-aware as other Coen films. Right now, this feels like a scathing indictment of the Bush era but I know that in twenty years, after a couple more administrations have come and gone, we’ll be able to see it as a much more broad and consistently accurate screed about how selfish and pointless we can all be when left to our own devices.
Current rating: 8.4 out of 10
Contributing factors: George Clooney’s obsession with floors; that terrifying sequence between Malkovich and his father; Coming Up Daisy; Manolo; the inner workings of the CIA.
Performance to savor: Brad Pitt, who internalizes every William Shatner joke in the book before spitting them back out as a real character.
CHUD.com pull quote: “The Coen Brothers didn’t give us the comedy we wanted; they gave us the one we deserve.”
Synecdoche, New York
I’m still not quite as comfortable with Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut as I’d like to be, but I suspect that’s part of the point. I’m also OK with one of the common questions about the movie: is it truly banal, or a depiction of the full nothingness of a misguided life? Kaufman’s movie is a titanic puzzle, and a thing very much like the weird, creative life it seeks to chronicle. So, yeah, it’s tough and sometimes dull, but it’s also sharp and able to get to the point, even if it’s got to walk the long way around to get there. There’s a life and vitality here, but it takes a little settling into in order to see. There are very few movies like this, and for that I celebrate and appreciate Charlie Kaufman’s creation.
Current rating: 8.8 out of 10
Contributing factors: A big, wild and ambitious script; the casting coup that has Samantha Morton and Emily Watson playing two halves of one character; Philip Seymour Hoffman’s dedicated, damaged acting; Kaufman’s willingness to go as far as he must to make this one work.
Performance to savor: In a movie full of great big satisfying performance, it’s Jennifer Jason Leigh’s small character work that gave me a few blissed-out laughs and kept me focused on the ridiculousness of it all. Her German accent still kills me.
CHUD.com lyric snippit: “Be you/or be me/it’s all the same to Charlie/down in Synecdoche!”
One day I’ll post my year-end list during the actual calendar year. This time I have a halfway decent excuse for the delay: I wasn’t able to see The Wrestler until December 30, and I’d no sooner make a ‘best of ’08’ list without seeing that than buy a subway token so I could lick the third rail.
Aronofsky’s movie was an instant hit in my book, but I wanted to sleep on it for a couple days. You leave a movie like The Wrestler wholly infatuated with the experience, and I didn’t want to propose after the first date. There were too many other worthy contenders. (Some of which I still haven’t been able to see, such as Dear Zachary and Silent Light.)
The balance of the problem is that this was a lousy year for great movies. It was a perfect breeding ground for decent films. I saw a lot that I liked, and as you’ll see below, my estimation of more than a few mutated quite a bit over time. But when it comes down to stacking and ranking, there aren’t many that deserve a spot on the list. Coming up with fifteen I believe in took more work than I’d like to admit.
The Dark Knight
I had little intention of listing this movie based only on my one summer viewing. But going back to Gotham City on DVD, I reconfirmed that Heath Ledger’s performance was just as striking as I remembered. More than that, what made the experience stick out was the cinematography, which is so calm and clear. (Ironically, while I saw the film projected at the Arclight, I’ve been far more visually taken with it on Blu-Ray.) I still dislike several things about Christopher Nolan’s second take on Batman, but those two aspects, combined with the simple but ideal use of score, is enough to make this one of the definitive film versions of a comic book world.
Current rating: 8 out of 10
Contributing factors: The camera, which glides at ease through the troubled, awful city of Gotham; that keening, droning and perfect Joker theme; Gary Oldman’s increased presence as Jim Gordon; the hospital scene, which stands as one of the best supervillain encounters on film.
Performance to savor: Ledger, with his lolling animal tongue, and forceful sense of movement that drives an increasingly broken body.
CHUD.com pull quote: “Set down your Killing Jokes, geek nation; there’s a new Joker in town!”
The Visitor
This movie comes on quiet with a remote, almost frightened performance from Richard Jenkins and a filmmaking style free of pretense. When Jenkins’ aging, bored professor encounters two illegal immigrants living in his New York apartment, it seems like the story might veer into forgettable ‘midlife awakening’ territory. Instead it takes a weird but uncomfortably realistic turn and quickly hits stride as a minor-key rant against shadowy immigration policies. I can’t get behind all of Thomas McCarthy’s most insistent images and editing, which stand in contrast to the understated Jenkins. Yet I love what his movie tries to do, and that it accomplishes so much without grasping at gimmicks.
Current rating: 8 out of 10
Contributing factors: An increasingly oppressive sense of bureaucratic weight; the reliable Jenkins in a rare leading role; the first drum circle (on film or in real life) I haven’t wanted to destroy.
Performance to savor: Hiam Abbass, who captures refinement, composure and despair in a single glance. I can’t wait to see her in the new Jarmusch film later this year.
CHUD.com pull quote: “So…I get to hang out with Richard Jenkins, but I have to go to jail? Good deal. Sign me up!”
In Bruges
The first time I saw In Bruges, I was distracted by some of the resolutely silly plotting and hammer-driven themes and symbols. But six months later I checked it out again (spurred by our Kid Kills list) and I turned around completely. Since then I’ve watched the film a couple more times, and each viewing leaves me thrilled with the three fantastic core performances: Colin Farrell, looking vulnerable and having fun doing it, Brendan Gleeson, worldly and sad as he comes to the realization that he’s in his last days, and Ralph Fiennes, as principled as he is quick to anger. I have a great time watching the intersection of these actors, and this turned out to be the escapist entertainment I hoped for from Iron Man, The Dark Knight and other big movies.
Current rating: 8.1 out of 10
Contributing factors: A scripting/directorial one-two from Martin McDonagh, which keeps the film out of the realm of Tarantino-lite; Eric, the poncy skinhead; and yeah, fucking Bruges, which is a little like a dream.
Performance to savor: Ray Fiennes, who comes on all Sexy Beast before showing some human tenderness. And because he’s kind of a cock.
CHUD.com pull quote: “I love fucking (In) Bruges!”
Slumdog Millionaire
It’s the movie to love this year, but I found that I couldn’t love Danny Boyle’s trip to India as thoroughly as other people did. The structure, which felt so archly built, keeps this out of the top 10. But the saving grace is a host of performances that all feel just right, and Danny Boyle’s infectious directorial energy. (Aided by Indian co-director Loveleen Tandan.) All make the film feel genuinely a part of the place it inhabits. Even before we get to the final dance scene, Slumdog feels as brash, crowded and insistent as the slums of Mumbai. It is infinitely more uplifting to be a part of, however, which makes the faults easy to overlook in favor of the buoyant lift you’ll have when leaving the theater.
Current rating: 8.2 out of 10
Contributing factors: Tandan’s sharp eye for casting, which helps keep characters on track through different ages; Chris Dickens’s editing, both fluid and wild; the tone changes which breathe life into the story without sending it off balance.
Performance to savor: Anil Kapoor, as the smarmy, defiantly selfish host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
CHUD.com pull quote: “What, only one dance sequence?”
Standard Operating Procedure
More
than usual, this year-end review is highlighting how films can evolve
and change over time. This Errol Morris documentary had a lot of
ingredients I loved: revealing interviews, the ability to
explain complex scenarios in detail without confusion, and an
investigator’s patience to piece together a single reality from many
fractured accounts. But on first viewing I also found the film
sprawling and unfocused. I still think the final edit could me more
powerful, along the lines of The Fog Of War,
but I can’t deny the lingering effect Morris had on me, thanks to this
film. His methods and insight made me question once more the way I look
at media and the world, and even how I do my terribly unimportant job.
Current rating: 8.2 out of 10
Contributing factors: Morris’s
ever-fluid touch with presenting information and recreations; the
sequences where photographs create a timeline, which is visualized in a
way I haven’t seen in documentary before; the many honest and horrific
first-hand accounts of Abu Ghraib.
Performance to savor: Lynndie
England, whose confessional interviews highlight how the media can
paint an overly simplistic portrait of public figures.
CHUD.com pull quote: “Military malfeasance magic!”
