|
FRAMED |
2. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant).
3. Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle).
4. The Secret of the Grain (Abdelatif Kechiche).
5. Chop Shop (Ramin Bahrani).
6. Boy A (John Crowley).
7. The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin).
8. XXY (Lucía Puenzo).
9. Man on Wire (James Marsh).
10. Doubt (John Patrick Shanley).
11. Milk (Gus Van Sant).
12. Roman de Gare (Claude Lelouch).
13. Tricks
(Andrzej Jakimowski).
14. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh).
15. Charly
(Isild Le Besco).
|
| 16. Momma’s
Man (Azazel Jacobs). 17. The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat). 18. The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette). 19. Sugar (Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck). 20. Pete Seeger: The Power of Song (Jim Brown). |
Most Disappointing Films of 2008: |
|
Though year's-end arrivals like Frost/Nixon, Doubt, Rachel Getting Married, Happy-Go-Lucky and the Cinderella surprise Slumdog Millionaire are impressive award contenders, nothing hit me in late 2008 as No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood did the year before, or had that unmistakable stamp of Great Movie on them. So I'd like to step away from the game of lining up the year's "best" for a moment and first highlight some films I especially care about. Technically US releases for the most part, these were hard to see outside the festival circuit or NYC. Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light, about adultery in a Mennonite community, is haunting and magical; it confirms that this still relatively little-known Mexican is one of the most distinctive and gifted directors working in the world today. Steve McQueen's Hunger astonished me; I'd never heard of this young Black UK artist. His first film about the Irish nationalist Bobby Sands's struggle to the death is as artistically elegant as it is emotionally strong--a stunning debut. Lance Hammer's Ballast was made with local first-time actors in the Mississippi Delta. It's the American indie debut of 2008 with the most integrity and authenticity. Other personal "prejudices" make me single out Gus Van Sant, Tarsem (Singh), and some new French films. Van Sant's Milk is another gay mainstream movie milestone, like Brokeback Mountain, and that's important to me as a gay person. Let's also remember that Van Sant's 2007 Paranoid Park, another of this most high-profile American gay directors' artistic visual poems about death and boyhood, and the most accessible of the stylized quartet that includes Gerry, Elephant, and Last Days, also technically had its US theatrical release this year. Tarsem (Singh)'s generally overlooked The Fall, a multiple-location, exquisitely-costumed dream vision, is a rare feast of visual exotica that puts middlebrow high-tech slogs like Benjamin Button to shame. France still produces great movies, and I admit I'm very partial to them: The Class, A Christmas Tale, Summer Hours (not a US release), and The Secret of the Grain are all fine, and movingly full of a sense of family, culture, and society. But it's Christophe Honoré's Love Songs, a film about young people in love and in mourning in the Bastille quarter of Paris, that went beyond admiration and became a real personal fetish of mine. Mark Olsen wrote in Film Comment that "Christophe Honoré's films aren't just films you like; you develop little crushes on them." That's true for me, at least this time. A very post-Jacques Demy French film musical, it really is something a lot of Americans don't seem to "get." At the Lincoln Center screening, a number of press people shook their heads and said it was terrible. Fortunately all of these recommendations of mine can be enjoyed on DVD away from critics and head-shakers. And when the Oscars are over, we'll see what matters most. Some other notes: Documentaries continue to be in far richer supply than in the past. So many are worth a look, it's impossible to list them all. Taxi to the Dark Side is the one essential one. The horrors perpetrated by the old regime aren't going to go away just because of a charismatic new leader: let Alex Gibney's film be a reminder of the grim legacy. In contrast, quite apolitical and even indifferent to matters of legality, Man on Wire is a movie whose exhilarating finale moved me more than any other "real" footage this year. Below are my formal lists, but I have not tried to give out prizes. You may be sure that they all contain the highest accomplishments in all fields, including acting. A few memorable performances came in films that aren't so special, notably Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler, Clint Eastwood in his own Gran Torino, and of course, the late Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. |
|
|
English
and American Directors: Best Foreign: Best Documentaries: American Teen
(Nanette Burstein) Most Overrated: |
|
If anything defined 2008 for me, it was disappointment. Too often I found myself on the losing side of popular movies that garnered much critical acclaim. There were exceptions to be sure (just check out the list below), but over and over again I left wondering just what all the fuss was about (Doubt features some great performances, sure, but it's also one of the most heavy-handed films in recent memory; Slumdog Millionaire is good, but the framing device grows rather tiresome and the last 20 minutes is the very definition of forced and contrived). Maybe that's why my list stops just short of 10. Here, in alphabetical order, are not my favorites (in fact, I'm still not sure I like one of them in particular), but the films that occupied my thoughts the most or stayed with me the longest after they were over.
A Christmas Tale
(Arnaud Desplechin).
|
|
This year, I think, more than ever, I was looking for a little humanism in my films. Here's where I found it: P.S. I Love You
(Richard LaGravenese). Happy-Go-Lucky
(Mike Leigh). The Band's Visit
(Eran Kolirin). Paranoid Park
(Gus Van Sant). |
|
2008 was remarkable...for the number of films I didn't see. Below are some notes on ones I actually saw, for one reason or other. Quantum of Solace
(Mark Forster). Burn After Reading
(Joel & Ethan Coen) The Dark Knight
(Christopher Nolan). Gran Torino
(Clint Eastwood). WALL·E
(Andrew Stanton). Tropic Thunder: I was late to this (I hate being late), so my overall reaction to it may have been discolored by that. It was good, but not great. Also, Ben Stiller bugs me. But Robert Downey, Jr. is an inspired lunatic. So happy that guy has returned from his personal abyss. Mamma Mia!: Haven't seen the stage musical, but I felt the film
version lacked. I don't think a straight adaptation from stage to film
is entirely successful when pretty much all points of exposition are sung.
It's not necessary. The film is watchable only because of Meryl Streep
and Amanda Seyfried, and the location photography. Note to Pierce Brosnan:
don't sing. Ever. (I do enjoy Abba's music though, immensely.) Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: I had a
dream back when I was a kid where Indiana Jones never woke up from that
waking-zombie trance that he was subjected to in Indiana Jones and
the Temple of Doom. Now under control of the agents of Evil, he was
co-opted to be a puppet for other nefarious forces like Nazis and telemarketers.
Little did I know that one of those agents would turn out to be George
Lucas himself. |
|
1. Forgetting Sarah
Marshall 2. Hellboy II: the Golden
Army 3. Kung Fu Panda 4. Leatherheads
(George Clooney). 5. Speed Racer
(Andy & Larry Wachowski). 6. The Dark Knight
(Christopher Nolan). 7. In Bruges
(Martin McDonagh). 8. Cloverfield
(Matt Reeves). 9. Iron Man
(Jon Favreau). 10. You Don't Mess with
the Zohan |
|
|
From my meager viewing last year:
Hamlet 2 (Andrew Fleming). |
In alphabatical order: The very worst: |
©2009 CineScene
Gus
Van Sant's Paranoid Park was the surprising
favorite this year, but the rest of our picks were all over the map. Thanks
to all who contributed! 
Hoping
to find a job in a fishing cannery in Alaska, Wendy (Michelle Williams),
a drifter in her twenties, travels to the Pacific Northwest from her home
in Muncie, Indiana with her most endearing companion, a golden Labrador
Retriever named Lucy. Wendy and Lucy is set near the Oregon/Washington
border in a small town that, with its roadside strip malls, gas stations,
car repair garages, and convenience stores, is reflective of rural American
cities and towns that have lost the character that once made them unique.
Like her 2006 film Old Joy, the film combines an intimate personal
story with a reflection of the malaise felt in the country today, Wendy’s
economic hardship typical of people adrift in a society in which they
no longer feel a part.
Van
Sant has fashioned a poetic and heartbreaking film that pulsates with
the truth of deeply felt experience. Paranoid Park refers to
a skateboarding park in Portland, Oregon used by lonely, disaffected teenagers
who congregate there each day to skate or just hang out. The film, however,
is not about the skateboarding subculture but about one boy’s interior
journey and how he interacts with his inner and outer demons. Alex (Gabe
Nevins), a shy, almost passive 16-year-old teenager, has a lot on his
plate. Though he has the optimistic cherubic looking face of a young Bob
Dylan, on closer look his face conveys a world lacking in emotional security
or intellectual curiosity, a life torn by the impending divorce and apparent
disinterest of his parents. As if that wasn’t enough, he must also
come to grips with his involvement in the bizarre death of a railroad
security guard that occurs close to the skateboarding facility where he
often visits with his best friend Jared (Jake Miller). 
Slumdog
Millionaire is the feel-good story of an orphaned, street-wise young
man trying to make it big on India’s version of the TV show Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire while hoping that the girl he has loved
since childhood is watching. Slumdog reflects the chaos of Mumbai,
India where it was filmed. Submerging the viewer in a cacophony of color
and sound, the camera swoops and swirls in an often dizzying pace, taking
us from the desolation of back alleys and garbage dumps to modern high
rises and the fantastic beauty of the Taj Mahal. With headlines telling
us daily that the economy is sinking and that climate change threatens
our very existence, a film that is a pure celebration of life is welcomed
with a grateful heart.
Winner
of best picture, director, screen play and actress at the 2008 Cesar Awards,
the only secret in the Tunisian-born French director Kechiche’s
The Secret of the Grain is how the director manages to seamlessly
weld together such disparate elements as the pleasures of great cooking,
the problems faced by immigrants, and the desire to leave a legacy to
children into a rich and satisfying experience. The picture is set in
the French coastal village of Séte on the Mediterranean. The grain
in the title refers to couscous, a diet staple of Tunisian immigrants
and a dish that Slimane Beiji (Habib Boufares), a laid-off shipyard worker,
hopes to use to fulfill his dream of turning a dilapidated old boat into
a fish couscous restaurant. Secret of the Grain is an astonishing tour
de force, and the opening of the restaurant combines exuberant delight,
sensual pleasure, and a perilous risk that threatens to undo all the hard
work and good will.
Alejandro
(Alejandro Polanco), called Ale for short, works at an auto-body repair
shop in what has come to be known as the Iron Triangle, a deteriorating
twenty block stretch of auto junk yards and sleazy car repair dealers
close to Shea Stadium in Queens, New York. For all its depiction of bleakness,
Chop Shop is not a work of social criticism but a poignant character
study in which a young boy’s survival is bought at the price of
his innocence. The film’s focus is on the charming, street-smart
12-year-old Ale, who lives on the edge without any adult support or supervision
other than his boss (Rob Sowulski), the real-life proprietor of the Iron
Triangle garage. In Chop Shop, Bahrani has provided a compelling
antidote to the underdog success stories churned out by the Hollywood
dream factory, and has given us a film of stunning naturalism and respect
for its characters.
Boy
A is a powerfully gripping film about what happens when we fail to
forgive ourselves for wrongdoing and give society the opening to move
in and assuage our guilt. As Jack (Eric) Burridge, a man recently released
from prison at the age of twenty four for a murder he helped commit when
he was ten years old, Andrew Garfield (
Forgiveness,
redemption, repentance, and connection form interweaving themes of Fatih
Akin’s complex and multi-layered film The Edge of Heaven.
Titled On the Other Side in German, the film is primarily character-driven
but is shaped by political, cultural, and family conflict that illuminate
the struggle between first and second-generation Turks and Germans and
their loneliness in exile. Though The Edge of Heaven is a realistic
drama, shifts in the timeline and dreamlike visions introduce surreal
touches that serve to enhance its intensity. With this film, 34-year-old
Akin has vaulted into the elite group of international directors whose
work has a universal appeal. The Edge of Heaven will have you
applauding not only for an emotional power reminiscent of Kieslowski,
but for its message of forgiveness and empathy, offered without pandering
or sentimentality.
Adapted
from a short story by Sergio Bizzio, XXY, a film by Argentine
director Lucía Puenzo, is the story of a fifteen year old girl
born with genitalia characteristic of both male and female. Puenzo, daughter
of Luis Puenzo who directed The Official Story, avoids sensationalism
while crafting a deeply touching and poignant coming of age story about
the pain of growing up without truly knowing who you are. Winner of the
Critics Award at the Cannes Film Festival, XXY features an extraordinary
performance by Inés Efron who manages to build empathy for her
character while turning it into a universal statement about all adolescents’
search for acceptance. 
On
the overcast morning of August 7, 1974, New York City pedestrians stopped
in their tracks to see what looked like an apparition, a man literally
walking in the sky. It was not a ghost, but Philippe Petit, a former circus
performer turned tightrope artist who magically traversed the 200 feet
between the newly constructed Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on
a wire cable, a quarter of a mile above the street. Not only did he walk
across the wire eight times in forty-five minutes, but he lay down in
the middle, unbelievably looked to the ground, and did a mocking dance
to entertain the police waiting on either end. That achievement has been
recreated in James Marsh’s documentary Man on Wire, a compelling
film that uses interviews, photos, archive footage, and black and white
re-enactments to capture the event. Though we know that Petit survives,
the thrill of seeing the feat accomplished is breathtaking.
Sister
Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) is a strict taskmaster at a private school
in the Bronx. The priest is Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who
is the closest thing to a progressive at the school. Suspicious of Father
Flynn, Sister Aloysius assigns Sister James (Amy Adams) to keep an eye
peeled for anything unusual in his conduct and her fears seem to be justified
when Sister James reports that Father Flynn had a private meeting in the
rectory with the school’s only African-American student, who was
upset after the meeting. Based on Shanley’s personal experiences
at Catholic School, Doubt explores the issue of sexual abuse
in the Catholic Church as well as conservative versus progressive religious
values and how far one can rely on suspicion in the absence of proof.
The film avoids easy answers and challenges us to view inflammatory issues
from a broader perspective, embracing the essential mystery of human behavior.
Ignoring
the experimental dream-like cinema that marked 
A
young woman, Huguette (Audrey Dana), is dumped at a gas station by her
fiancé on the way to her parent’s farm in the French Alps.
Stalked by an intriguing older man, Pierre Laclos (Dominique Pinon), who
is also a magician, she accepts a ride with him to the South of France.
Roman de Gare translates as "airport novel," a book
you might read on a trip and then toss when you arrive at your destination,
but the film is more than just lighthearted fluff. It is a smart and very
enjoyable suspense caper that is about pretenses and appearances and who
we really are behind our masks. Lelouch has fashioned a tale of intrigue
and deceit with a vibrant energy that bubbles along with the style of
a plot-driven Hitchcockian film of the sixties.
Stefek
is a bright and very observant six-year-old boy who lives with his teenage
sister Elka (Ewelina Walendziak) and their mother (Ilona Fornalczyk) in
a Polish village outside of Warsaw. Stefan has never seen his father (Tomasz
Sapryk) who abandoned the family before he was born, but from a defaced
picture in his wallet he thinks he recognizes him as a man boarding the
train each morning. Tricks is one of those rare films that you
wish would never end. Winner of the Europa Cinemas Film Festival, it is
a delightful blend of sensitivity, intelligence, humor, and magical realism
that transforms the simple truths of childhood into cinematic poetry.
30-year-old
Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is an optimistic primary school teacher who wants
everyone to be happy and is relentless in pursuing her goal, even to the
point of being downright annoying. As we get to know Poppy, however, we
discover that beneath her bubbly enthusiasm, there is a three-dimensional
woman with a heart who understands how people tick. Happy-Go-Lucky
is more of a slice-of-life character study than a film with a coherent
narrative, yet it is a rich and rewarding experience that sparkles with
genuine emotion and intelligence. Sally Hawkins makes you believe not
only in her own goodness, but in the idea that we can truly relate to
each other in a way that makes us more deeply connected. When asked about
her reaching out to others, Poppy simply replies “That’s what
mates do.” Life can be so simple.
In
twenty five-year-old director Isild Le Besco’s Charly,
a loquacious streetwalker helps Nicholas (Kolia Litscher), a fourteen-year-old
runaway, get his life together by pushing him to complete routine household
tasks. Charly is a tender, totally honest, and completely believable
look at two people who need each other but are unable to communicate.
Shot in a format that does not even fill up a normal movie screen, let
alone widescreen, the actors are mostly silent and the camera does not
move very much, yet the film is never static or dull. Julie-Marie Parmentier’s
performance as Charly makes the film come alive, especially in the sequence
when the two read aloud from a Wedekind play and act out crying and beating
each other, perhaps the nearest thing to intimacy that each is capable
of.
4
Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu).
Be
Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry).
The
Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan).
Encounters
at the End of the World
Man
on Wire (James Marsh).
WALL·E
(Andrew Stanton).
The
Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky).
A
trifle, perhaps, from a book I could barely make it through for the saccharine,
the film lifted me and brought me to tears, made short work of my contempt
for clichés, and diminished my distaste for Hilary Swank, whose
rough edges are the ideal corrective for LaGravanese's melodramatic excesses.
Forget its 39 rating on Metacritic, forget that even critics who warmed
to it treated it with disdain, every woman, at least, should put it on
the shelf for late night viewing and catharsis. Destined to be a delayed
classic of the Overboard / Must Love Dogs genre, the
film centers around a faith in love, a very nice assortment of very (very)
nice-to-look-at men (including some of my personal favorites: Oz's
Ryan O'Reily, Buffy's Spike, Grey's Denny, and King
Leonidas himself), lasting friendships, mother-daughter bonding, finding
oneself and moving forward.
An
animated (explicitly not rotoscoped) documentary from Israel about war
and memory, Waltz with Bashir (the moral premises of which I
share, the political premises of which I do not) captured me in its opening
moments and shook me to the core. Introspective and incendiary, its self-criticism
is far less interesting than its investigatory tack, and reveals even
in ways it does not intend the way experience shapes remembrance. The
film goes wrong in the final moments, both for its own logic and for my
tastes, but the skill of what comes before is utterly breathtaking. 
Subtle
may not be the best way to describe Leigh's most recent film, which sort
of dawdles around London with its heroine, a kindergarten teacher whose
upbeat rhythms and easy smile seem at first naive, and then border almost
on the twee...until we get to look more closely at just how hard it is...not
to be happy, but to care and still stay happy. Unrushed in its unfolding,
the film is focused more on its center than on its ending, which feels
exactly right. Deceptively light, profoundly touching, and utterly humane.
A
small Egyptian band winds up in a small Israeli desert village, miles
from the Tel Aviv suburb for which it was headed, and dry, ironic, understatement
ensues. The overt politics are very overt (the name of the town to which
they were going translates into "Gate of Hope;" the town at
which they mistakenly arrive is "House of Hope") -- the less-so
gurgle from beneath the surface obtrusively -- and yet, and yet...there
is something so unself-consciously earnest in the telling, with moments
of unmitigated sweetness, that it refreshes even with the familiar: eager
idealism punctuated with wry observation.
Another
exploration of adolescents in mortal crisis from Van Sant. For all of
the potential clichés it travels through, the film seems to land
on none. It feels fresh and honest and heartbreaking and it captures the
voice (and voicelessness) of adolescence with eerie perfection. Van Sant's
camera's caress of the young man is less predatory here than I've found
it in some of his other works...it brought me into the embrace, rather
than exclude me from it. It made me want to hug the boy, to lead him to
the human connections he needed...to shake the people around him. The
police watch, the parents drift in and back, the girls dance through overly
conscious and seeking to interpret, and in the background haunting, moving
music. Truly beautiful, truly sad, and truly heartfelt for all its stylistic
quirks.
A
solid follow-up to Casino Royale, with some sly filmic allusion
(the main villain's goal to steal water carries shades of Chinatown...is
it just me or does Mathieu Amalric favor Roman Polanski?). I am baffled
by the mixed reaction to the film. It continues to keep me guessing just
what Bond is going to do next; I hadn't cared for at least 20 years. 
One
of the two best films I've seen this year, and one of the few blockbusters
Hollywood has made recently that not only means something, but actually
matters. If the Academy truly wants to continue recognizing excellence,
then this should've snagged a Best Picture nomination, "comic book"
genre be damned. (Historical note: another comic bookish movie, Raiders
of the Lost Ark, was nominated for Best Pic in '81.) 
Another
chapter in Clint Eastwood's demonstration that he's just now making some
of his best work. It's also another critical response to his own tough-guy
past. Eastwood is nothing if not honest about himself. The song that plays
over the end credits is quite good; too bad the Academy's new rules prohibit
it from being nominated...
Cloverfield
(Matt Reeves).
Wanted:
from Russian director Timor Bekmambetov
Let
the Right
Dr.
Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: Joss Whedon's
The
Visitor
I
couldn't decide which movie to bump off for Mamma Mia, so I decided
to make it an addition. I know a lot of folks hated this movie, and I
totally understand all of those who did,