Everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t we? The staff at RowThree had a round table meeting and decided to put together our favorite ten films of the year. And you thought we forgot; shame on you. We’ve got an individual list from each contributor so you can see to whom your tastes most closely relate. These individual lists were scientifically examined, collated and using complicated logarithms, extrapolated and integrated into one final, definitive, best ten films of the year; period.
With so many contributors at RowThree and so many great films in 2008, it’s obvious that no one will ever totally agree with someone else. It’s also doubtful that anyone has actually seen all that was offered up out there over the past 12 months (that includes all of us!). So if you gain nothing else from this list, write down a couple of titles that you see here that maybe didn’t show up at your local cinema or you never had time to check out. It’s even probable there are some titles here you’ve never even heard of – hidden gems indeed! Watch for them now and in weeks to come at your favorite online movie distributor or local video store.
Criteria:
Each writer had his/her own criteria for putting this list together. Aside from a couple of festival screenings, most of these titles were released in wide circulation in North America at some point in the calendar year 2008.
UPDATE: If you are using Internet Explorer as your browser, please be sure it is the latest version (version 7) or some other browser (like Chrome or Firefox) to view the lists. Otherwise they may not appear correctly. Thanks!
enough rambling, on to the lists…
————————————————————————————————–
 |
 |
|
10) Cloverfield / Speed Racer Because surprising filmgoers is never an easy thing and 2008 proved to be a year of great surprises. Though initially not a film that resonated with me, Cloverfield has managed to come to mind on more than one occasion, not for the acting involved but for the unrelenting ride that it provided and which, surprisingly, it continued to provide on DVD. Though arguably heavy on the gimmick, the choice to shoot this handheld added to the film’s effectiveness. Where as Cloverfield pushed for the “look” of low budget, Speed Racer went the other way, puting every dollar on the screen. Some found it blindingly loud in its colour and style but I loved that the Wachowski’s pushed the envelope of what film looks like, bending expectations and blending together animation, anime, live action and manga to create a feast for the eyes. 9) Mothers&Daughers Bessai’s most recent film came as a surprise, a low budget story of women and their relationships. Part of the film’s brilliance is the script and naturalism of the action and Bessai flexes his artistic muscle, letting the women take the roles and run with them. The resulting film is far from “rough around the edges”. Though clearly lower in budget than some of his other projects, it’s still wonderfully rendered though it’s the performances that put this beyond average. A small picture that gets at the realities and difficulties of women’s lives and particularly the tumultuous relationships between mothers and daughters, this is a film to look forward to in 2009. 8 ) Let the Right One In Vampire films are always difficult for me to overlook but it’s been years since I’ve been able to push for one which is quite this memorable. Few have looked or been as excellent as Tomas Alfredson’s; not only is the film a gorgeous marvel, it also provides some of the most poignant and memorable commentary on the awkwardness and difficulty of being a pre-teen. Add in the vampires and there’s a whole lot more to dig into. One of the film’s great strengths is it’s ability to beautifully mix the reality of tween life with the supernatural story of the vampire. Terrifying and beautiful, this is a vampire tale for the ages. 7) Silent Light Carlos Reygadas’ film made me feel both disoriented and grounded in reality. From early on I had a feeling of unease which only grew worse as the story unfolded and which was only heightened by the closing scenes of the film. I have been patiently awaiting the opportunity to see it again – if only to attempt to understand the closing minutes. 6) Anvil! The Story of Anvil Though stories of bands “almost making it” are a dime a dozen, few have been captured as beautifully as Anvil’s. Not only is this a story of perseverance and people doing what they love (at all costs) but it’s also one of the most touching and emotional stories of the highs and lows of friendship. A film that made me both cheer and cry in only a matter of minutes, it’s a great triumph for both the band and filmmaker Sacha Gervasi. 5) Of Time and the City I knew little of Liverpool going into this film and to be quite frank, I still know little of Liverpool after seeing it but Terence Davies’ approach to the city of his childhood is both haunting and beautiful. The collection of music, images, video footage and Davies’ recollections of his youth had me under a spell and built a city that was as much reality as a figment of the imagination. I would happily have sat through another hour of material – if he had provided it. 4) Chop Shop Ramin Bahrani’s story of a young boy and his sister’s struggles growing up in Queens could easily have fallen into the typical formula but instead the film follows a much more artful approach, looking in on a little boy’s turbulent life from a much more quiet and reserved place and, against the odds, allowing the character to be somewhat successful in the face of adversity. This feels like real life; bitter sweet. 3) Carts of Darkness The best “message films” are the ones that seem to care the least about the messages and Siple’s documentary which captures the lives of a group of homeless men and their affinity for riding shopping carts is touching, powerful and, surprisingly, adrenaline filled. An unexpected combination that makes for an entertaining and informative documentary. 2) Boy A A film that came and went in the blink of an eye, I took a chance on this after seeing the trailer caught my eye. I walked away knowing that I’d seen a good film but I never imagined that a number of scenes would still be with me months after seeing it. John Crowley’s direction is certainly worth mentioning but it is Andrew Garfield’s performance that stands out. It’s a story of inner struggle and turmoil and Garfield creates an unforgettably tormented character which will keep this tale of heartbreak lodged in your mind for long after the credits have rolled. 1) Ballast A simple story of loss and survival, Lance Hammer’s debut film manages to be breathtaking, heartbreaking and beautiful all at the same time while also capturing the feeling of a place unlike any other film I’ve seen. Though likely too slow for most audiences, there’s a melody to the silence of the Mississippi delta; a melody that Hammer captures beautifully. At times startling in its honesty and beauty, it’s a film that has haunted me since the moment I walked away from it. A new American classic. - – honorable mentions: Revolutionary Road, Waltz with Bashir, The Wrestler, Hunger, Twilight |
10) Trouble the Water The Sundance Grand Jury Prize winning documentary about the New Orleans ninth ward experience pre-, during, and post- Hurricane Katrina. Before a professional documentary filmmaker was even around, a twenty-dollar camcorder in the shaky hands of ninth ward resident, Kimberly Roberts, became the sole narrator of the story in the days leading up to and during the hurricane. As the waters rose and her family crouched in the attic fearing death, Kimberly kept the camera running, along with her mouth, talking her way through the events with the same kind of determination she would continue to show in the aftermath. As fortunate as the footage she captured was for conveying a level of drama that no amount of artifice could possibly duplicate, the real find was in fact behind the camera. My favorite straight up documentary of the year (although there are two quasi-documentaries elsewhere on this list). 9) Waltz with Bashir Not since Waking Life has an animated film graced my end of the year lists. Any preconceptions I had of the second-rate importance of genre films or particular modes of expression like animation all but disintegrated in 2008. Maybe its the rotoscoping that affords a kind of intermediary realism that allows me to enjoy Waltz with Bashir on an emotional level, where so many animated films do not. Nonetheless this quasi-documentary about an Israeli soldier’s attempt to recollect his experiences in the Lebanese War was a feast for the eyes and mind. Give me the disarming visuals of this picture over Wall-E any day. 8 ) Funny Games (US) This was the first of the two versions that I had a chance to see, and afterwards, having watched the nineties original, I still prefer this one. Granted not much has changed from this near copy of Haneke’s original depiction of a family terrorized by a pair of fun-loving nihilists, other than the performances. Naomi Watts tipped the scales as the tormented mother/wife, and Michael Pitt’s natural baby-faced innocence made his performance as sadistic alpha male all the more unnerving. 7) Hunger During the Thatcher era, IRA prisoners were denied political status and in an act of rebellion a group of them orchestrated what meager protests they could in confinement, one of the final acts being the hunger strike. An entrenched film of the prison genre film that goes deeper than most at exposing the institutionalizing effects of confinement, gritty by way of Midnight Express, with a mesmerizing performance by relative unknown Michael Fassbender as the emasculating spirit of hope. This directorial debut by Steve Mcqueen heralds the coming of a future master of cinema. 6) The Wrestler Every bit as good as you have heard, but none of the flash that one expects from an Aronofsky film. A very subdued tender story about the Willy Loman of wrestling, while inside the ring its Passion of the Christ. Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, and Rachel Evan Wood are awesome. 5) Let the Right One In Genre snob that I am, it took awhile for me to give into peer pressure and watch this ‘vampire’ film, but I am so glad I did. While people tend to sell this film as not really a vampire film but more of an oddly tender coming of age story, they are actually undercutting just how damn fine a vampire story it is as well. The little ‘girl’ vampire Eli is ceaselessly fascinating to watch as she/it tries to befriend a bullied boy in a snowy Stockholm suburb. 4) My Winnipeg About as close to an auteur film as they come. This abstraction of poetry, half-remembered memories, stock footage and recreations, once assembled depicts the Winnipeg within Guy Maddin. A sometimes autobiographical, sometimes fantastical merging of ideas, My Winnipeg clips effortlessly in its stream of consciousness, more a trance than a film-going experience. 3) Synecdoche, New York Everyone I have talked to who has seen this film appear to have the same impression: unsure if they liked it after it was finished only to feel a momentum to their reflections that give it near masterpiece-level status in retrospect. There are probably flaws, there are things that do not make a whole lot of sense if you think too deeply about what they mean, but much like one of those 3-D illusions once you let go of the interest in the details and let the whole overwhelm your senses something truly magical appears. 2) Revolutionary Road Amidst the familiar terrain of bored housewife suffocating in a world of unrelenting conformity, Revolutionary Road slows down the clock to allow every inflection of this implosion reveal itself. The result is a haunting vision of life draining out of people as they succumb to their scripted lives. Director Sam Mendes gave lip-service to suburban malaise in American Beauty, here he nails it, getting a lot of help from the cinematography of Roger Deakins, the performances of Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio, and the foreboding score of Thomas Newman. Very. very close to being my number one film of the year, practically a tie. 1) Rachel Getting Married And you thought your family had problems? Jonathan Demme’s handheld masterpiece of a wedding spectacle with all the pins bared makes for exceptional family drama with every performance operating on a frequency beyond the fray. Anne Hathaway’s Kym, the black sheep of the family, remains the most perfectly realized character I have had the pleasure of seeing all year. - – honorable mentions: Blindness, The Dark Knight, Pontypool, Man on Wire, Snow Angels |
————————————————————————————————–
 |
 |
|
10) Chicago 10 I’m a sucker for films that delve into the turbulent era of the 60′s, and this is one of the finest I’ve seen in quite some time. The animation, vibrant and compelling, is coupled with provocative archival footage of the 1968 Democratic Convention and the high drama that surrounded it. As entertaining as it is challenging. 9) The Wrestler I’m a Mickey Rourke fan from way back, and always thought he had it in him to be one of the greats. After a long hiatus (one littered with self-destructive behavior), it seems as if he might finally be back on track. A moving little film made much bigger by Rourke’s award-worthy turn. 8 ) The Orphanage Guillermo Del Toro may have only produced this film (it was directed by Juan Antonio Bayona), but his unmistakable style is present in every frame. A film that generates an equal amount of shivers and tears. 7) The Killing Of John Lennon Andrew Piddington’s account of Mark David Chapman and the days leading up to his assasination of John Lennon is (as one might expect it to be) quite disturbing. This is due in large part to the chilling performance of Jonas Ball, whose character stumbles through a reality that only he can understand. The film does not glorify Chapman, nor does it damn him outright; it simply looks to tell his story, from his perspective, and is very successful at doing so. 6) Doubt I’m not sure how much of it was due to my Catholic upbringing, but I found myself completely in tune with this film. A movie made great by it’s perfromances: Hoffman and Adams are superb, as is Viola Davis in a small role, yet the film belongs to Meryl Streep. Despite her status as a perennial nominee, I’d still have to think Ms. Streep is a true contender for this year’s Best Actress Oscar. 5) Blindness Of all the films I’ve seen in 2008, Fernando Meirelles’ adaptation of Jose Saramago’s novel is the one I long to see again. By introducing a variety of fascinating characters, then studying them on both personal and societal levels, Blindness is a work that I feel demands multiple viewings to fully appreciate it’s charms. 4) Let the Right One In A movie that successfully combines Vampire mythology with a touching love story. The two youngsters are excellent as the pre-teen love interests, one of whom just happens to be a vampire, and the innocence they exude goes a long way in shaping their relationship, giving it true depth of feeling. Yet, surprisingly for a film of this ilk, the supporting characters are also well fleshed out, and do more than serve as mere window dressings (or midnight snacks). 3) Snow Angels David Gordon Green grows as a storyteller with each passing film, and Snow Angels is certainly his darkest work to date. Yet, what makes Green’s film so compelling, so different from other works of this nature, is that his characters do not spend large amounts of time wallowing in this darkness; they live their lives as they see fit, interact with each other to the best of their abilities, and go out of their way to make it all seem as normal as it can possibly be. In the end, it’s the darkness that seeks them out, setting up a climax you will not soon forget. 2) Boarding Gate Olivier Assayas’ Boarding Gate is a film that did not deserve the critical bashing it recieved. Asia Argento exudes an overwhelming sexual energy throughout, one I can only describe as hypnotic, putting her smack at the center of a thriller that is genuinely thrilling. I’m sure time will be much kinder to Assayas’ film that the critics have been. 1) Rachel Getting Married As mentioned above, Meryl Streep will (and should) be given serious consideration for the Best Actress Oscar at this year’s awards ceremony. That said, the award clearly belongs to Anne Hathaway, who is so very strong as the troubled young woman let out of rehab to attend her sister’s wedding in Rachel Getting Married that I doubt she will ever top her work in this film. And yet, as strong as Ms. Hathaway is, she’s but one aspect of Jonathan Demme’s tremendous achievement that I feel should be singled out. Along with Hathaway (and Demme, who, if justice were served, would recieve serious consideration for Best Director), I offer up, for your consideration, Bill Irwin as Best Supporting Actor for his role as the always-supportive father; Rosemarie DeWitt as Best Supporting Actress, playing the title character whose wedding is thrown into chaos by the arrival of her troubled sister; and Jenny Lumet’s script for Best Original Screenplay, taking a topic as mundane and over-explored as a wedding and injecting such a high level of emotional depth that the familiar transforms into something wholly unique before our eyes. Finally, I put forth Rachel Getting Married as the Best Film of the year. In my estimation, it is this, and so much more. - – honorable mentions: Funny Games U.S., WALL-E, The Dark Knight, Wendy and Lucy, My Blueberry Nights |
10) Elegy A complicated, intelligent, and mature examination of relationships, aging, sex, lust, and most importantly, emotional commitment. Not as brilliant as the novel it is based on (Philip Roth’s The Dying Animal), but still a mostly faithful adaptation that pulls some remarkable performances from all involved, especially Kingsley who shows how great he still is when he wants to be. The film thankfully spares the melodrama and provides a realistic glimpse into the tortured mind of an aging college professor. 9) In Bruges Funny. Thrilling. Intelligent. Thought-provoking. An absolutely great movie in every respect, with some surprisingly awesome performances from Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, who play off each other as though they’ve been best friends for years. 8 ) Milk Gus Van Sant created one of those rare beautifully-made and powerful political films that is touching, inspirational, and important. The acting is the strongest point, with Sean Penn and Josh Brolin doing some of their best work, as well as James Franco proving when given the right roles, the guy can act. 7) Burn After Reading What can even be said? Joel and Ethan Coen do it again and continue prove why they are gods among men in Hollywood. 6) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Visually, it is no argument, this movie is outstanding. It is an otherwise fine film, an unsentimental romance with two of the best performances of the year in Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. Chalk up another winner for David Fincher who proves to be one of the more unique directors working today. 5) Let the Right One In Wow! If only all vampire films were so captivating. This is one of the most unique horror films, one of the most captivating love stories, and one of the best movies about loneliness and being a child to come out this decade. This is an instant classic. 4) The Dark Knight The best superhero film ever made. Flawed, sure, and that becomes more apparent with each viewing, but as far as summer action blockbusters go, Christopher Nolan perfectly blends action, style, and substance, proving that all summer movies don’t need to be junk food for the mind. Of course, the film still belongs to Heath Ledger who, as I said in my review, created “an iconic and memorable villain worthy to stand by the likes of Anton Chigurh and Darth Vader alike.” 3) Revolutionary Road Leonardo DiCaprio shows once again why he is the strongest actor of his generation, conveying so much emotion with only a simple look of strain or devastation. This is perhaps his finest work to date. Kate Winslet is outstanding with one of her best performances and Michael Shannon’s provides the most surprisingly entertaining supporting role of the year. It’s depressing, it’s relentless, it’s unsentimental – in other words, it is everything I love in a film. 2) The Wrestler This film should give every aspiring filmmaker hope as it proves what you can do with just a camera and a brilliant actor. Mickey Rourke’s performance is legendary as the washed-up former pro wrestler. The film isn’t flashy, the story is a bit cliché, but even for someone like myself who was never a big fan of professional wrestling, the honesty and raw emotion in the film was enough to leave me sitting there staring at the screen for a long while after the credits were done rolling. 1) Slumdog Millionaire If you have ever tried to explain the plot to a friend who has never heard of it, you’ll realize how ridiculous it sounds coming out of your mouth – but this is a wonderfully made modern day fairytale about love and fate. That could be used to describe your average chick flick, sure, but this is anything but that, with an original story that is uniquely structured, put together brilliantly by director Danny Boyle. I had a large grin for much of the film as it is a blast to watch, although it is often just as unrelentlessly brutal. Most of all though, it left me feeling all warm and gooey inside – which is a little refreshing for a guy like myself who (see above) generally prefers the depressing and morbid. It also doesn’t hurt that Freida Pinto could be the most gorgeous woman alive. - – honorable mentions: Appoloosa, Dear Zachary, Choke, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Snow Angels, Vicky Christina Barcelona, Wall-E, Wendy and Lucy |
————————————————————————————————–
 |
 |
|
10) Hancock People complain about the change in tone. I’m the opposite on Hancock it is the willingness of the movie to go some place different that makes this a completely rewatchable compelling story as opposed to the paint by numbers story of the Marvel movies. 9) Doubt This one is all about the actors and their performances. All four main and supporting actors knock it out of the ballpark. Every moment of their performances had me transfixed. 8 ) Man on Wire Take a compelling yet light story of a documentary and mash it up with an Ocean’s 11 style crime caper and you get a movie about celebrity, the beauty of the moment and an overall compelling wonderful movie. I generally do not enjoy documentaries either so it means something when one ends up on my top 10 list. 7) Public Enemy No. 1 Part 1 (Ennemi public n°1, L’) I can’t think of another biopic that is this over the top with violence and action. The movie never lets up from beginning till end. I can’t wait to see part 2 to see how the downfall of Jacques Mesrine comes about. Oh, and you have to see the daylight attack on the full security prison by Mesrine to believe it. 6) Let the Right One In Sure, this one is getting a lot of love amongst the genre fans but it really should be seen by all film lovers. It is so much more than just a vampire movie. It is a beautiful dark tale of first love with a really dark bitter yet beautiful conclusion. 5) Pontypool A small zombie film that feels so much larger than it really is due to the great performances and intelligent story. It combines smart comedy with bursts of horror. What really forces me to love Pontypool is the learning process the characters go through. The are truly in the dark as to what is going on and slowly learn more and more throughout the majority of the movie until the point when all hell truly breaks loose at the station. 4) In Bruges I am still amazed at how little mainstream recognition In Bruge has gotten up until now. It has great performances from Farrell and Gleeson and has a really wonderful dark sense of humour to it. 3) Sparrow Johnie To often ends up on my best of the year list and this year he does so with his homage to French Cinema. In addition to a fun quirky story it is the the rain soaked pick pocketing climax that puts this one up high on my list. I’ve seen dance movies only wish that they could be as smooth and as graceful as this one. 2) The Good The Bad The Weird What starts out as a pretty much fluff action, comedy western really ends up having some meat to it. Hidden within the amazing action sequences you will find a good look at how split up parts of China really were with multiple cultures all bouncing off of each other. Song Kang-ho is great once again. 1) Slumdog Millionaire I’ll admit right off the bat that I had an amazing movie going experience that will likely not be matched for a while but even if I discount that I still love the story, the characters, the combined darkness and light of the world in which the characters exist in. Unfortunately, I think this one is going to suffer under the same problem as Juno. It is getting too much hype and too much love so people will start to hate it just to be cool. Don’t listen to them, this one is is one of my favourite movies for the past few years. - – honorable mentions: Wall-e, Shotgun Stories, Tokyo Sonata, The Dark Knight, Burn After Reading, The Wrestler, Redbelt, The Strangers, Tell No One |
10) Man on Wire The ten spot was a difficult position this year. Coveted highly by several films, I just couldn’t get Man on Wire to stop nagging the back of my brain. The more I think about it, the more I realize how wonderful of a story this is for so many reasons. I don’t think any “talking head” documentary has ever been told by such an animated character. No fiction writer could have created such a compelling story. Nope; only in real life could something be this compelling and edge of your seat. 9) Silent Light Here is one that completely came out of the blue for me. This is the most gorgeous looking film of the year – period. It is perfectly directed by Carlos Reygadas and he deserves any and all accolades he receives (or doesn’t receive). For those of you who appreciate Terrence Malick or Kim Ki-duk, you will be enthralled by Silent Light. BEAUTIFUL. 8 ) My Blueberry Nights Walking out of the theater from this one, I was baffled by the negative press I had read. What a warm film; full of richness and the drama that is the human experience. Norah Jones was astonishingly decent in the lead role and this is maybe my favorite of the Natalie Portman characters. Hey, when a movie can make me like Rachel Wiesz, that’s really saying something. 7) Let the Right One In Twilight can suck it! 6) Elegy I can’t find one thing to complain about with this film. Oddly overshadowed by Penelope Cruz’ other stellar performance this year in Vicky Christina Barcelona, Elegy gives us a much deeper film in terms of relationships and the fear of aging. Not to mention far better performances across the board from Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley – and even Dennis Hopper. 5) Doomsday The wild card film that you won’t see on anyone else’s list. But I didn’t put it on here just to be different, I put it at the number five spot because it kicks all sorts of unholy ass. I was riveted with this film from start to finish. Start to finish! If you’re a John Carpenter or Mad Max fan, this is high amplitude ass-kickery at its absolute cinematic finest with just enough uniqueness for it to not be a rip off, but a more than worthy homage. One of only two films I saw more than once in the theater (and paid full price!). 4) Blindness Wrongfully and shamefully bashed by critics and movie goers alike, Blindness took an interesting concept and went for broke. With a great directing style, a fascinating concept, thrills and brutality at every scene and an allegorical tale that leaves the viewer with so much to think about, what’s not to like about Blindness? 3) The Wrestler What Pulp Fiction did for Travolta, so does The Wrestler for Mickey Rourke. Except in this case, “The Ram” is not some pulpy fun character you love to be annoyed by. No, Rourke brings a quality to Randy “The Ram” that no one else ever could have. NO ONE. 2) Rachel Getting Married About an hour into this film, my roommate leaned over to me and said I’ve never sat so still in a movie… ever. Yeah, it’s that compelling and beautifully human. Perfect across the board; not the least of which is the stunning performances. 1) 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days Of all the films I saw this year, nothing hit me in the gut harder than 4,3,2. It maybe isn’t my favorite of the year (RGM), but in terms of pure cinematic rawness, storytelling and emotion pulling, it’s likely the best film I’ve seen over the past five years. - – honorable mentions: Slumdog Millionaire, Revolutionary Road, Wanted, 4Bia, Dear Zachary, Happy-Go-Lucky, Frozen River, Snow Angels, Hunger, Boy A |
————————————————————————————————–
 |
 |
|
10) Boarding Gate Take a potboiler corporate espionage/murder plot and remix it as a patient Euro-art picture and you end up with Olivier Assayas’ Boarding Gate. The spiritual sequel to his overlooked 2002 film Demonlover has Asia Argento at her most raw, riveting, desperate and sexy. What would normally be a couple minute exposition scene between her and Micheal Madsen (wit the purpose to breaks up a pair of lovers and and set the plot in motion) ends up to be a riveting and significant chunk of the film. Transcending genre into to poetry. Its all in the execution, and really this is one of the most unique genre film entries of 2008. 9) Pontypool Probably the worlds first semiotic zombie film, the film defies expectations at every turn and plays out much more like a science-fiction chamber piece. A career topping performance from character actor Stephen McHattie, who gets to chew mightily on Tony Burgess’s sharp screenplay. If language and meaning and communication are of any interest to you, look past the Z-word (which is never uttered in the film) and give this one a shot. It is nice to see that there is a number of intelligent genre flicks coming out of Canada. 8 ) The Wrestler The Wrestler is built kind of like the sport that it is set in. The story is familiar, a bit shop-worn, even contrived, and perhaps a bit faked. While things are playing out on screen, it archives a genuine emotional workout: the best kind of cinematic magic. The film is a weepy and a crowd- pleaser in the best sense of both of those terms. Above all, it shows a talented filmmaker at the pinnacle of his career, working with two actors at the pinnacle of their game. All those rough years boxing and slumming serve Mickey Rourke’s features well in this one, and he carries the film mightily. While it may or may not do any favours to legitimize the modern cartoon that is WWE, it is a strangely positive love-letter to the sport (witness the charming ‘shop talk’ in the Wrestlers greenroom) and those who grind themselves away practitioning it. 7) Let the Right One In A low-key Swedish vampire love-story with young children that shows Twilight to be merely playtime. The film begin to pick up momentum on the festival circuit and had a modest cinema release, yet was criminally underseen. Perhaps one of the most praised films of 2008 that nobody outside of the usual film circles actually saw. Let The Right One in is delicate, subtle and patient film which is executed with the tone of Guillermo del Toro’s Cronos yet mines similar ‘immortality sadness’ themes as Tony Scott’s (obviously much more bombastic) The Hunger. It is also a fabulous mix of coming of age sweetness with distant emotional storytelling (so often found in Scandinavian cinema). The film has visual smarts (it shows the story as opposed to ‘telling it’) to burn but keeps things always grounded in the story of 12 year old Oskar and his young initiation into love and violence. Let The Right one in insists on keeping the audience on its toes with quiet unpredictability. 6) Che A highly unconventional Biopic that boasts not only of a key performance from Benicio del Toro, but also a very solid supporting cast that gives not so much a dramatic narrative, but more of an ecosystem of a revolution. This is compelling storytelling and a beautiful movie to boot. The two parts are necessary for the complete story, but do not necessarily have to be seen in a single sitting to get the full impact. 5) White Night Wedding White Night Wedding is very likely the best film from Icelandic director Baltasar Kormákur. The film is a whopper of an ensemble piece that sees a lot of characters who all have many motives and schemes on the go (the film is loosely adapted from a Chekhov play). Everything culminates and collapses and recombines in one of the most intense forms of celebration: The Wedding. It is not often that a dramatic comedy is the ‘full package’ in terms of emotional resonance, humour, wit and pathos. And I now have a new favourite character actor: Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, who entertains in broad strokes as the vibrant best man and piano player in the film. 4) Blindness Surprisingly Fernando Meirelles adaptation of Nobel laureate José Saramago’s novel was met with either indifference or disdain by the mainstream critics at both festivals and during its not so successful commercial release. Blindness is a rich allegorical fable on support and dependence (and the use of power). All that pedigree may give the illusion that the film that is wearing a dinner jacked and bow tie (Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf is perhaps the closest analogue). When the clothes comes off (literally at points) it reveals the stinking humanity contained underneath and pulls no punches. While I did not care for the last couple minutes of the film (which were unnecessary and perhaps even facile without the film continuing for another act), everything up to that point is stylish, brutal, and above all questioning on how different people utilize a particular privilege (such as sight) when it is handed to them in the strangest of circumstances. The international cast are great, but it is the stylish direction and boiled-down script which seal the deal. 3) Rachel Getting Married Just when the wedding film seemed tapped out of fresh possibilities, Jonathan Demme and Jenny Lumet deliver an intimate melodrama that puts the viewer smack dab in the middle of a wedding in progress through the eyes of the ostracized black sheep of the family. It is the fly on the wall aspect and the fact that many viewers can relate to some of the people or events that give the film power and moments of grace. The film reveals its treasures at a measured pace, one that is worth savouring more than once. 2) Tokyo Sonata I do not believe I have ever witnessed a Japanese director implode the social mores of their native country, and then rebuild them up from scratch so elegantly, emotionally and delightfully as Kiyoshi Kurosawa. Unequivocally earning labels such as Masterpiece and Auteur (putting him very much on the level of the more famous Kurosawa – that would be Akira), Tokyo Sonata is brimming with ideas and complicated social situations involving family, ego, desperation and desire. At no point did the picture feel manipulative or dishonest, and the unabashed tears (from this viewer) are earned in the final act. If you see one Kiyoshi Kurosawa film (and shame on you then for just watching one), it should be this one. 1) Synecodoche, NY Sure to batter folks around on an intellectual level as well as (by the end) and emotional level. This is clearly screenwriter Charlie Kaufman’s 8 1/2. One of the most stunning graduations of screenwriter to director, the film is akin to starting at the dark center of those Russian dolls and peeling your way out, shell by shell. A large ensemble of the best actors working today give the heady stuff the emotional and human resonance the picture needs. It may not sink in right away, but this is one for the ages. - – honorable mentions: Happy-Go-Lucky, The Reader, The Dark Knight, Man on Wire, Redbelt, The Sky Crawlers, My Blueberry Nights, Wall E, Tears for Sale, Vinyan, JCVD. |
10) Boy A A little bit of an “under the radar” film, Boy A made just enough of a splash on DVD and local arthouse cinemas to crash two of our lists plus a couple of honorable mentions. While it takes its time, the middle and third acts of the film are strong and hard hitting. Hence, Boy A just kisses our top ten. 9) Snow Angels It’s no secret we’re fans of director David Gordon Greene around here. With a one two punch of films this year, it makes Snow Angels all the better, knowing how much was on the director’s plate and how different it is from his other entry on the year, Pineapple Express. 8 ) Boarding Gate It’s not often you’ll see a true genre picture making a top ten list – certainly not one seen by so many of the contributors. Still, somehow Asia Argento and Michael Madsen helped pull it off. Well done. Look for this movie right now on DVD. 7) Synecdoche, NY We’ve said it once, twice and so on: this is one of only a small handful of films this year that critics and cinephiles will look back on 20 years from now and consider a classic. Kaufman proves he can handle the big man’s chair and the cast works wonders. Maybe the only film on the list that truly defines the word, “brilliant.” 6) Slumdog Millionaire Taking top honors at The Golden Globes solidifies an Oscar nomination and very likely a win for best picture. Though hokey at times, it paints a beautiful picture of the world at large encompassed within a small, intimate love story about loss and pain. Throw in the gimmicky angle that actually works pretty well and we have a film that is pretty much unanimously enjoyed. 5) Revolutionary Road Sam Mendes has done it again with his amazing eye and storytelling that is a lot deeper upon examination than at first glance. With stellar, STELLAR performances by the two leads and technical prowess that supercedes almost any other picture this year, it was a favorite in the third row. 4) Blindness Despite the movie going public’s general apathy towards Blindness, we here in the third row absolutely loved it. For what it has to say and what it allows its viewers to ponder on their own, its incredibly engaging and thought provoking. Adding in the post apocalyptic angle to this already compelling story and we’re sold! 3) The Wrestler If you get a chance to catch Mickey Rourke’s comeback in a theater, do it… twice. It’s worth every penny and tells a story so human and heartfelt that director Darren Aronofsky may have even outdone himself; ironically taking a step backwards in showiness and depth and just telling it like it is with raw, emotional power that works on every level. PS – on your Oscar ballot this year, if you don’t check Rourke’s name, you’re an idiot. 2) Rachel Getting Married Near unanimous love around these parts from contributors and readers alike, everyone absolutely fell in love with the joy, sadness and drama that takes place over the weekend as this family comes together to celebrate a union of matrimony. Anne Hathaway and Rosemarie DeWitt deserve co-Oscar wins for their incredible portrayals. This is honestly a perfect film (well, some of us think so – enough of us for it to climb all the way to #2). 1) Let the Right One In It’s unanimous! A Swedish vampire movie is on every one of our lists this year with no effort at all to easily become our #1 film of the year. Beautiful and terrifying at the same time with touches of brutal realism and sheer cuteness, how can we overlook this one when it incorporates all of this into what is essentially a genre picture? Yeah, it’s great… and SOOO much better than that “other” vampire movie this year. - – honorable mentions: Wall-e, The Dark Knight, Pontypool, Happy-Go-Lucky, Wendy and Lucy, Hunger. |
Once again, for the cheap seats (and something easy to copy and paste to tell everyone about the definitive list), here is Row Three’s top ten films of 2008:
10. Boy A
9. Snow Angels
8. Boarding Gate
7. Synecdoche
6. Slumdog Millionaire
5. Revolutionary Road
4. Blindness
3. The Wrestler
2. Rachel Getting Married
1. Let the Right One In
Discuss.
If the list is not appearing correctly for you, please read the UPDATE near the top of this post.
I plan on seeing Of Time and the City this month at the Cinematheque, look forward to it.
Still haven’t seen In Bruges, will need to catch it. Boy A I refuse because of how bad the director’s first film was.
I would have thought the top three consensus picks, Let the Right One In, Rachel Getting Married and The Wrestler are foolproof films that everybody who has seen them recommends… but then there is Mr Gamble.
All of the films on my top list were on here somewhere except for Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, that played at TIFF. I know that general movie going audiences are seemingly tired of war movies at this point, but this DESERVED a release, as I think it is the best war film in a decade.
@whitechapel – I’ll be posting the trailer for The Hurt Locker over the next day or two- looks fantastic. Unfortunately it’s not in the online edition but the most recent edition of Cinema Scope features an excellent interview with Bigelow. Worth checking out.
Marina gets the award for most original top ten, seriously you have one film in common with the rest of us. I was sure there was going to be a lot of overlap but I guess not.
I put my list together without the benefit of looking at what I’d seen for the year but I figured if it didn’t come to mind it wasn’t worthy of being on the list hence it’s a bit of an oddball.
I meant to post that the only films I didn’t get to see before posting my list were The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and The Fall. The prestige films were, for the most part, solid but none of them really resonated with me as much as the titles that made my list.
Wall-E is the only one I’m a bit torn on. I really loved it walking away from the theatre (hence the perfect score) but it hasn’t stuck with me and I couldn’t even sit through it when we tried to see it a second time on DVD.
good lists overall. Blindness is WAY high though. it really wasn’t that good. decent, but not nearly great.
Blindness was higher on my list halfway through the year, I think I gave it 4/5, but it just fell below the ten for me. A good not great film.
lets take the consensus top five, excluding Blindness, and see, does this make a plausible Best Picture nomination list for the Oscars:
Let the Right One In
Rachel Getting Married
The Wrestler
Revolutionary Road
Slumdog Millionaire
I would be happy with that.
I can live with that. Not a chance in hell for Let the Right One In though – not even in the foreign category I don’t think. Shame.
I wouldn’t be surprised to see LTROI win the best foriegn language award.
All of those awards skew heavily towards commercial success (ie. films that the public has actually seen / heard of).
Since we’re on the topic. I hate to be That Guy but while I admired the artistry of LTROI I found it unbearably slow. I would give it a respectable but unenthusiastic review.
Apparently Sweden didn’t submit Let the Right One In for the Oscars, so it won’t be considered.
And yay for Speed Racer love and yay for Hurt Locker mention in the comments.
Ok then I am calling this as the 5 Academy Awards nimoniees for Best Picture:
Rachel Getting Married
The Wrestler
Revolutionary Road
Slumdog Millionaire
The Dark Knight
If Frost/Nixon is anywhere near that list then, lets face it, its who you know, not what kind of product you have in Hollywood.
I have to compliment you on including Speed Racer, Marina. It’s gotten a lot of flack (even made some worst lists this year), but I found it very entertaining. I just love the look of the film and the fact that it captured the old anime so perfectly. The Wachowskis really went out on the limb with this one.
Wow. I wanted to see it before, but now I definitely have to see Lat den ratte komma in (Let the Right One In). I understand Overture and Hammer Films (yes, THAT Hammer films) are doing an English remake. I worry that it won’t be nearly as good as the original!
A Toronto area podcast I listen to, MaMo, one of the guys on it had Speed Racer as his #1 of 2008.
to which I audibly say: ugh.
Rot, what about Milk?
Speed Racer was no. 6 on my list.
A friend of mine sent me the Japanese Speed Racer poster. It made me think more people would better appreciate it/understand it if it actually HAD been in another language.
Anyways, whenever I finally get BLu Ray that will be the first thing I pick up, suck it rot
I liked Milk a lot, not quite a top ten film though. As for best pic nod, I doubt it. Has Van Sant every had a nomination?
So where is everyone else’s top tens?
10. Postal
9. Sukiyaki Western Django
8. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
7. Hellboy 2
6. JCVD
5. Slumdog Millionaire
4. Sita Sings the Blues
3. Encounters at the End of the World
2. Sell Out!
1. Let the Right One In
Best films I saw in the theatre last year were old ones. Passion de Joan d’Arc & Raider of the Lost Ark: adaptation.
These lists are really nice, every one of my top ten for the year is mentioned here.
I was surprised to see some movies mentioned for top ten, there are a few that would definitely not make my top ten list:
Hancock – Enjoyable yea, but not top ten for the year.
Doomsday – Its awesome the same way 30 days of night was awesome, but still not top ten of the year worthy.
Speed Racer – This movie was very visually appealing but felt hollow to me. I know its not worthy of a top ten list because the thought of watching it on DVD makes me cringe.
Andrew James is simply put – A Genius.
I watched In Bruges again today. The first time I saw it I thought it was merely okay, but lacking something extra to make it great. I think I was wrong, and that this is among the best of the year. Knowing certain things were coming actually made me care a lot more for the characters, it really brought it more to life for me.
4.5/5
ON In Bruges, I basically agree Goon, It’s a very good movie. I had a real problem with Ralph Fiennes and the last 20 minutes of the movie are pretty ass. Almost everything else was fabulously entertaining and really, really well done.
In Bruges feels like it has the weight of a good script behind it, and that makes it solid. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
What Kurt said.
In the last 20 minutes, you can sort of guess whats going to happen, but the second time again – I really didn’t care.
And I liked Fiennes especially a lot more in the repeated viewing. THe first time you just notice that he’s ripping off Kingsley in “Sexy Beast” – this time I just knew in advance and let myself have fun with it, and it worked.
Just came back from Revolutionary Road here. What a disappointment. I love Sam Mendes, but this is just a boring piece of emotional infancy. The leads that you praise were awful, in the worst hollywood-acting sense, flailing their hands and arms about like upset birds. Basically their acting boils down to “When you say “Me”, point at yourself, when you say “You” point at the other person, and do the rest of the dialogue like that”, and the emotional content and point boils down to men needing a gun and women needing a cock. I can’t think of a more stereotypically american worldview.
I guess if Sam Mendes is trying to make a point that america in the 50s was emotionally infant, unable to figure anything out and whatever other nonsense people like to pretend to say in order to exploit human emotions, then I guess he can defend himself till his death, but for me, as a thinking person, this is a boring waste of time/piece of shit.
Oh and the score is ridiculous. Sounds like it’s the bad stuff they threw out when they did Road to Perdition.
I like Henrik’s first paragraph.
I’ll let everyone else bother with the second if they take it personally.
is their a context where you would accept people raging against each other with arms flailing? Just curious, because I am well aware it exists in the world, and the circumstances under which these two characters are encountering would warrant it, and in Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage there is just such a ‘physical’ scene of anger. Maybe you have an aesthetic preference towards simmering emotion, but I do not see at all this criticism of the performance. Take a walk around New York, tell me there isn’t something inherent to the gesturing that goes on there that maybe doesn’t exist in Denmark.
Do you understand the stakes? Its existential, its not about guns and dicks (I have absolutely no clue where that observation comes from). Its being squeezed to a point of suffocation and April is someone who hits a breaking point and its like her mind stops functioning, she keeps saying give me a minute, and she rages blindly on… as for Frank, he is confronting the opportunity to prove he is worth something but ultimately does not feel he is worth something and that crisis manifests in him playing off of April’s theatrics, both intensifying…
Not sure how people fight in the Henrik household, but I am well accustomed to gesticulating fury, trying to fight out the words.
The score sounds like a song from the period, it so perfectly fits the mood and ambitions of the film I am incapable of understanding how someone can have fault with it.
It’s the exact score from Road to Perdition, only simpler and more boring.
I can tell you that in my experience, when people talk to eachother, unless they are hysterical, they don’t worry about portraying emotion. People don’t point, gesticulate out of thin air whenever they talk, but they always do in hollywood movies. My guns and cocks remark is uttered in the film, in a long shot DiCaprio waves his hands and arms about talking about how war is the only thing that makes him feel alive, and Winslet responds that she only felt alive when she was being fucked.
Comparing this to scenes from a marriage is obvious, and in terms of acting there is no comparison. It’s not even in the same artform what they do in Scenes vs. Road. The physical scene you talk about is in no way representative of the acting, and it comes after hours and hours, and before hours and hours, of naturalistic acting. In Scenes, whenever actors are together, I see people talking. In Road, I see actors acting, almost to the point of some scenes where I felt like they were having a contest to see who could portray to most emotions. Well, I’ve got news for you, that’s not what human beings are concerned with when they talk.
There are circumstances under which flailing arms could be defended I’m sure, but in regular conversations? No. Stop the pointing, please. I’ve come to expect from DiCaprio because he has done it in every film I have seen him in, but Kate Winslet is supposedly this great actress, and she can do nothing with this material, she can use it for nothing, pull nothing from it, do nothing other than act it out. Not impressed.
It is the amount of emotion that feels forced and fake. Nothing in the movie is everyday, nothing is day-to-day life, even a birthday song becomes an existential moment that has the character almost burst into tears. With Bergman, his films are FILLED with everyday, that is what makes them wonderful, and that is what’s so impressive, that he never forgets reality.
” talking about how war is the only thing that makes him feel alive, and Winslet responds that she only felt alive when she was being fucked.”
ok, I remember that. Well, lets see, if there are two contexts in which to feel most alive, I would probably have them at the top of my list as well. Neither of those points are dwelt on beyond that mention, though, hence my original confusion where you got that from. They may have these ideals of what should be happening in their lives but most of the energy is focused on Paris, this notion of starting your life over.
I look forward to seeing the film again, to see if any of these criticisms play out the second time. I think the performances were largen than life only because you were dealing with emotional AND intellectual infants… in Scenes from a Marriage they have the intellectual facade, and so they know how to dance artfully around the issues and let it simmer. These characters are representative of a large sect of people that never developed, Frank thrown into a war at early age is his excuse, April living in a suffocatingly limited scope of what a wife in the fifties was supposed to do… they go through it blind, and rage against the contradictions as infants. I thought it was very realistic considering the kinds of people they represent.
“Well, lets see, if there are two contexts in which to feel most alive, I would probably have them at the top of my list as well.”
Well, I don’t know if you’re american or not, but like I said, this seems like the most stereotypically american notion I could ever think of. I would call you an intellectual and emotional infant.
Call it facade, that’s how real life works. You don’t go around shouting and crying and pointing at people when you say “You” and wave your hands about to portray desperation. You talk, you try and find the words, when you’re agitated you stumble over the words, you run out of breath. Actors are trained in never stumbling over words, never running out of breath and it shows in a movie like this.
lets not forget, April’s ambitions are for the theatre so there also is justified a theatrical bent to how she relates to the world.
One thing I would like to say, and Matt on Filmspotting is guilty of this also, but this notion that acting is a craft and focusing so intently on that without taking into consideration the context… I remember him bashing Rachel Evan Wood’s performance as not playing off of Mickey Rourke… I watched it again to see what he was talking about, and he is just wrong. If you look at the character, she has been let down over and over again, she is a clearly a damaged teenager, the big emotions she let’s fly is entirely in keeping with character.
As is the performances that come from Kate and Leo, they are getting at the stunted lives of the characters fairly well, their showiness exists at any kitchen table amongst individuals stunted in their emotional and intellectual development.
I think there is far more theatrics going on in people’s homes than you are letting on. I remember seeing a cinema verite doc on the tv once of a New York couple in the sixties I am guessing, and how they were imploding, it was exactly like Revolutionary Road. These were real people and they were bouncing off the walls.
Eh, they were in front of a camera and edited together mate. Not exactly what is supposedly portrayed in Revolutionary Road.
Evan Rachel Wood acts the exact same way that they do in RR, but I can let it slide more (although I still feel it’s bad acting) because she is a emotionally distraught teenager who has issues.
Her being an actress is a lame excuse. I guess any sort of performance issues are excused because she is playing a bad actress.
No matter what you think goes on in anybodys home, no matter how much people shout and cry in real life, you must at least acknowledge that when they do, they stumble over words, they lose their breath, they lose their train of thoughts, they look pathetic to the eyes of people not in the same emotional state, they look more like Peter Parker crying on a bridge like a pathetic fool than Leonardo DiCaprio shouting with a perfectly pitched voice so as to not make his voice crack.
I think you let your aesthetic preferences get in the way of your judgment… you want subtle naturalism even if the subject does not require it.
Frank and April are the equivalent of emotional distraught teenagers… THAT is the point!!!
“Her being an actress is a lame excuse. I guess any sort of performance issues are excused because she is playing a bad actress.”
again putting craft expectations over context expectations… so by this reasoning one could never depict a struggling actress in a film who carries over her theatrical nature into her social life, because that would be TOO easy and TOO much of a cover-up for acting quality. Do you see how short-sighted that is? You are unwilling to let certain kinds of characters be depicted because of this craft expectancy foremost in your mind.
Now to your point about not stuttering or falling over each other, this staginess to the whole exchange of the scene… this I can accept, this was not verite, nor aspiring to it… it is stylized to a degree, Mendes comes from a theatre background, theatre is full of this bigger than life expression to resonate to the back seats. I see no fault in some stylization, for me it is not about the performances but the ideas that are being dramatized.
Preach it rot, preach it. Cinema has a wide array of expression borrowing small parts from many other artistic sources. while I didn’t like Rev. Road as much as you did, I can totally see your points, especially this one:
“Frank and April are the equivalent of emotional distraught teenagers… THAT is the point!!!”
That’s what I said to begin with, that if you want to go that route and defend the movie like that, you can, but I don’t find it an honest exercise, like I said, it’s exploitation of human emotion.
I’m not making a grandstand on the actress thing that you seem to think I am, I just think in this particular case it doesn’t really matter all that much, and it seemed that it came from you born out of finding a defense, rather than something you thought of during the movie.
“Mendes comes from a theatre background, theatre is full of this bigger than life expression to resonate to the back seats.”
Sure but he also made Road to Perdition. A great film, featuring powerhouse acting. The exact opposite of the americanized hollywoodacting that is in RR, and the characters are better off for it.
“for me it is not about the performances but the ideas that are being dramatized.”
This is what I talk about when I say these kinds of movies exploit human emotion. These types of films do nothing for me, it’s impressive when somebody can dramatize ideas AND keep it in the real world. And RR does take place in the real world, nothing is otherworldly about it, except for the fableling about talking about “The Wheelers” as this mythical fragment of american history, the little couple that couldn’t, the generation that was a child, ruined by war or whatever else you want to put in there. YOu can do put all of this in there, but that doesn’t make the film for me. I am interested in human beings.
again, a self-contained idea of what human beings should be, much like your rhetoric in general about how people should behave, you project yourself and your ideals on everything and value it discerned by how well it lives up to this preset standard.
That is just as bad as the film critic who comes at the films as schematic relationships to formulas that need only be acknowledged and his work is done. Or political pundits who, like at yesterdays Obama inauguration, can talk about every way in which his speech relates to past speeches, to who he referenced, to the motivations underlying it being said, but ignore completely what it is in fact being said.
as Goon, said, not seeing the forest for the trees.
We all have our aesthetic preferences, and actually, I agree with you Henrik, I like versimilitude in my cinema, if I had to choose between two films with all others things being relatively of equal value, I would go for the verite, but, it seems, unlike you, I can have stories told in different ways some more stylized than others and come about at dramatizing ideas differently and not be caught up in how it COULD have been but look at how well it did what it did in CONTEXT of what it was trying to do.
On a scale of 1 to 10 I would say RR is a 4 in stylization, mostly aspiring for reality but embedded within this nostlagic notion of americana that it takes liberties with. The staginess at times did not bother me because I have never seen the fifties otherwise, it has a natural inclination towards artifice… you can tell a story in the present and there is immediate reality you can compare it to… fifties america is more an idea than a reality, and so I accept the artifice… but I still defend that the characters were true to themselves in the performances, its only the arching of the scenes that is less natural, play-like in its sequencing.
Well, I don’t like this lie then. Be it a self-contained package working perfectly within itself or subject to criticism even within it’s own universe, either way, it’s something that I don’t like.
“a self-contained idea of what human beings should be, much like your rhetoric in general about how people should behave, you project yourself and your ideals on everything and value it discerned by how well it lives up to this preset standard.”
This is useless rhetoric in and of itself. You’re trying to make it seem like I was born with an idea and discard everything that doesn’t fit into it. My ideas are based on observations made in the real world. It is afterall the only world we have. If what I see in a realistically portrayed human being doesn’t add up with the human beings I have encountered in the actual world, then that is a problem. If it’s me who hasn’t met enough people, well fuck you, guess who is doing the talking? ME! From my own viewpoint, based on the life I have lived and continue to live. And you know what? 100% of the time I’m right, so my opinions can’t be that bad.
Ultimately, what turns me on, are human beings. Not dramatizations, not ideals, not fucking parables, these have to be absolutely exquisite to work, ie. Dr. Strangelove, which doesn’t happen often. Not even once a decade.
It’s the human beings that are the reality. They are what is interesting. If you want to make a film about suburban life in american 50s and how the people were in general, don’t hold two people hostage and pretend they are real when all they are, are representatives, just make the fucking representatives. I don’t have to have emotional content in order to be interested in what you have to say, that’s for the morons who can’t enjoy Hellboy 2 without a pregnancy. Strive for more.
I know we talked about this before, and I talked about Nietzsche’s idea that if you are eighty and hold the same opinions you had when you were twenty than you have learned nothing.
If your aesthetic preferences are so rigid that you will not allow for any deviation, any acceptance of a film on its own terms, than you will only keep perpetuating this same preference, polishing this same self-important ideal, as the rest of the world goes by you as indifferent to you as you are to it.
our opinions must evolve, to evolve they must be open to conflicting arguments, conflicting ideas. They must be able to accept the other on its own terms, process it, and than take from it what seems true.
Each film should be taken on its own terms, processed, and then afterwards you can discern what if anything was of value. If you have a pre-set agenda, that only one kind of acting technique or one kind of style is tolerable than you filter out all the potentially good stuff without giving it a chance.
that said, it doesn’t mean you are obligated to see everything, we have a general idea of the stuff that will work for us and gravitate towards that, but being able to take on the stories of different kinds of storytellers, different ways of telling stories, that can really only benefit you, give you a wider opportunity to see destabilizing works of art.
In this top ten I had to admit shortsightedness and give it up for genre films I would of usually stayed away from.
Art is always on the cusp of what you know, never what you know.
I get what you’re saying, character rather than plot… I have the same preference.
if we were talking literature you would prefer first person narration rather than third person.
I don’t think that Leonardo DiCaprio’s pisspoor acting is a statement on 50s America ultimately though. So it’s not about accepting the film on its own terms, it’s also about pointing flaws out when they are right there in your face. He acts the same way in this film as in The Departed, The Aviator, Gangs of New York and Titanic.
I missed a lot so I’m just going to bow back and just watch.
But this
“It’s the exact score from Road to Perdition, only simpler and more boring.”
Yup. The score is probably the most overrated thing about this movie. There’s a way to play the same two notes and set a haunting mood (Eyes Wide Shut) and then there’s this, which makes me want to strangle Thomas Newman and scream
CANT YOU DO SOMETHING NEW YOU ASSHOLE? DOES EVERY “SERIOUS” FILM HAVE TO BE THE SAME SHIT? I SAT THROUGH FUCKING LEMONY SNICKET AND KNOW YOU’RE CAPABLE OF DOING MORE. IS IT SO HARD?
Thomas Newman does alot of good stuff. His American Beauty score obviously set a trend for movie and TVscores for the past decade, and his scores for Meet Joe Black and especially Road to Perdition are good. Road to Perdition pretty astonishing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJuyVikJG7w&feature=channel_page
I hate when scores does repeat a theme over and over again. Last of the Mohicans is the THE WORST in this regard. Other movies have done it and I have pointed it out as I go along to people, but can’t remember any now. The only one I CAN remember, is the one that did it amazingly – Lady in the Water.
Compare the Road to Perdition piece to this boring knockoff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsOpWO2BM68
I would agree Leo doesn’t show much range in his performances, although he has done Gilbert Grape, he can extend, but he has this zone he stays to and he works within it. In RR that didn’t bother me because, like I said, there is something theatrical about the film, this could be Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman.
I guess this comes down to me being closeminded and supposedly missing out on some good stuff (I still don’t get whats good about, it’s still about men needing a gun and women needing a cock as far as I can tell from the arguments), but you wanna know what? You make a film, you make choices. You choose to put human beings in there, have them act like fucking human beings, otherwise I’m going to take you to task, because there is no challenge in the lie. There is no challenge in the stereotype, the archetype, the charicature, the personfication of an idea. The challenge is in capturing the reality, AND still having it be about these ideas. That’s where ‘the touch’ is needed, and I think Road to Perdition had the touch, whereas this wasn’t even close.
To get back to Newman’s score, I would like to throw out the idea that musically, simplicity works for me. I could care less how many notes are being played if you can capture a mood, and I think this score totally does that. One of my favorite musical pieces is Arvo Part’s Spiegel Im Spiegel and you cannot get more simplistic than that and yet it sets a mood perfectly. The Beattles are another case of using simplicity in music to great effect. Music is unique, as Ayn Rand noted, because it entirely circumvents reason, whereas the other arts filter through reason.
In the visual arts Warhol’s soup cans do not have that privilige of being directly felt, there is nothing to feel in them because they aspire entirely to an intellectual conceit, and you have to take it on that level.
I don’t know I am interested in this idea of the almost mystical power of simplicity when done right (Jeanne D’Arc comes to mind in this regard) but it needs to be a pinhole that opens into a vast scope of experience, like Spiegel im Spiegel, a few notes but what it creates is so much more magnificent than any of the mathematical combinations fo Bach.
which is to say, I don’t look at the Revolutionary Road score as a failure because it is a few notes, its derivative of his past work, I look at how it works within the film and it gets at that mood nicely.
“which is to say, I don’t look at the Revolutionary Road score as a failure because it is a few notes, its derivative of his past work, I look at how it works within the film and it gets at that mood nicely.”
Sounds like the sort of argument you might hear from an Iron Man supporter.
Visual effects can be “judged” in much the same way. After The Matrix beat out Episode 1 for best effects back in ’98(?), one of the voters said that he thought the SW effects were far and away better than anything that had been done that year, but the effects in The Matrix were not only ground breaking, but they brought more emotion and feeling out of the story. They weren’t just there to be showy, they actually meant something.
except film is film, and music is music, as per Rand’s observation. My point is the same kind of qualities would not as easy work in a film (like Iron Man) because it is something that is processed through reasoning, through the comprehension of a specific story… it’s simplicity is unavoidable, whereas with music, no thought need occur, you feel it or you don’t.
Another way to put it: music can get at your bones directly,
film must get their via the brain (unless abstract non-representational). It makes sense to have rational hang-ups with a film because the experience is parsed that way, but particularly with instrumental music, it makes no sense to assume the authenticating of the experience is because of anything pertaining to reason, because you do not use reason to feel the music.
I don’t agree completely. Bergman said film and music both bypass reason and go straight into the sensations, and I think some films do. About the same amount as music.
There is music out there that makes me feel as stupid as I feel watching Iron Man. When I hear something like Revolutionary Road, I can’t help but feel unimpressed, let down and sit there thinking that they took the easy way out. It didn’t touch me at all, I felt “heard it, and heard it way better”.
http://www.moviecitynews.com/awards/2009/top_ten/00scoreboard.htm
I finally caught In Bruges, everyone was right, it is a damn good film, unexpectedly so. Marketed like a Tarantino film, but actually more substantial.
watching the blu-ray of Zodiac, possibly the most gorgeous transfer I have seen since I went blu-ray. Forgot what a masterpiece the film is, and how far from the mark Benjamin Button is if you were to compare between Fincher projects.
Has only Andrew seen Frozen River? ANd for that matter, are people still not up to speed with seeing the Visitor?
Saw Frozen River yesterday finally – in a word: Solid. Its not much to look at, but theres a good story and Melissa Leo really is that damn good in this. She’d have been my second choice for best actress behind Hathaway.
4/5
I haven’t seen the Visitor yet, but I did catch Frozen River and I thought it was dull. I am completely baffled how it made it to contention, considering Rachel Getting Married was not, or the Wrestler, or Revolutionary Road.
I am reading Richard Yates’ novel Rev Road, and I am noticing how Mad Men borrows from the book too. The book is fucking amazing. And I am calling you out Jonathan, but I think he is better than Cormac in his control of language, descriptions and psychologies are so effortlessly rendered, and it flows like nothing I have read. I mean I am only 80 pages in but I can see why this book has been talked about for making a film for quite some time. And reading the book I see how faithful they have been so far, the entire fight scene outside the car after the rehearsal is beat for beat from the book.
“I am completely baffled how it made it to contention, considering Rachel Getting Married was not, or the Wrestler, or Revolutionary Road.”
Um… like RGM and Wrestler, Frozen River only had an acting nom as well. I dont know wtf you’re talking about.
I liked RGM well enough but it’s one of those movies that only people from a very specific background would get anything out of. It reminds me of a point I made in the comments somewhere. Rot said that Death Proof was “low” art because it objectively didn’t have anything to say about “life”. I said a car nut might not agree. What Death Proof is to gear heads; RGM is to white new england culture.
As for Frozen River. It was good but I was a little disappointed by it. It reminded of Crash (in a this-is-like-Ronin type of way) for two reasons.
1. They share the same sense of overwrought melodrama.
2. The scene with the baby. It’s the same thing as the invisible cloak fiasco. It’s done better, but it’s the same thing.
I’m not gonna look it up, cause it’s about oscar shows and I’m sure Andrew will be along to straighten us out about it, but I think Frozen River had a screen writing nomination as well as a best actress one.
Rachel was my favourite film last year, and I don’t think I have a whole lot in common with the characters in it. Yes, I’m white, but I grew up comfortably, but certainly not in the same class as the Buchman family in the movie. It’s just a great great film and I don’t think you have to be from a certain background to appreciate it.
Frozen River didn’t do much for me. I agree with Rusty’s comparison to Crash. I really didn’t like Melissa Leo’s character, though I agree the performance was very good. The actress nom that didn’t make any sense to me was Angelina for Changling. Michelle Williams deserved the fifth spot for Wendy and Lucy.
The Visitor is a fantastic film, another one of my favourites last year. A shame so few people have seen it.
“1. They share the same sense of overwrought melodrama.
2. The scene with the baby. It’s the same thing as the invisible cloak fiasco. It’s done better, but it’s the same thing.”
I absolutely disagree, for a couple reasons
1 – I couldnt get shocked by the baby thing because I knew about it in advance, no twist for me, for better or worse
2 – the directorial approach to this film is so hands-off, so free from telling you what to think, that any comparison to Crash is moot. So much in filsm its not the content that is manipulative, its how it is handled, and Frozen River’s bleak apathy to everything insulates it from any such accusations from me. If there had been a more apparent score, or if this material had been handled by someone with a strong directorial style, this film could very well have annoyed me. As it is, it doesnt, and it lets the characters and actors themselves carry it all through, and its more realistic and plausible for it.
I dont see how one could look at FR as overwrought drama and not think the same of the Visitor…
Jenny Lumet got no nomination for script of RGM, Frozen River did. That was my concern chiefly.
AS for RGM being set to a specific audience… I have not heard one dissenting voice on the film yet… I mean here or to anyone I know, it is a unanimously well-received film. I know that does not mean it should have an oscar nomination because that is about something altogether different, but it is disappointing.
The film Frozen River has a lot in common with of last year is Wendy and Lucy, there is a term for this kind of film, I forget, like Misery Porn or something. But for me, Frozen River has an agenda, and continues to drive it home, while at the same time trying to be something stark and realistic, and it just felt clumsy to me. Whereas Wendy and Lucy has no agenda, it keeps defying any effort to impose story upon it, it takes it to the extreme and just lets you observe this character outside of plot, a person untampered with by script forced motivations.
I guess my point with Frozen River is if you are going to go misery bleak, then I need more than a clever device to propel character motivations forward in that bleakness, it needs to be the bleakness I know from experience, the ennui of life, and to do that you need to go whole hog and dispense with plot altogether. Ennui doesn’t need nor should it have an arc… its like American Idol nominees trying out grunge tunes, it misses the point altogether .
“But for me, Frozen River has an agenda, and continues to drive it home, while at the same time trying to be something stark and realistic, and it just felt clumsy to me. Whereas Wendy and Lucy has no agenda….”
Um, to me W&L has a much MUCH clearer agenda and things to say about how fragile the social net is and how we treat the poor…. I dont think FR has an agenda, its just showing how things are.
I just dont get what you’re saying…
“it needs to be the bleakness I know from experience, the ennui of life”
Having to scrape together money to afford to live in a fucking trailer and get your kids a better meal than popcorn is not “ennui”, thats desperation, and if you cant attach yourself to that for at least a short time because its not something you’ve experienced, i dont see how thats the movies problem.
I am talking about this pang of misery about the insurmountable realities of life, depending on where you are in your life, which can manifest as ennui, the slow burn of misery if you will. And before Frozen River starts you get the sense the characters have been living in this state of slow burn, and then they are thrown together to make a story about overcoming the situations and thats fine, thats the film they want to make. Its not the film I want to see on the subject. It rings false.
There are some things, like war combat, which I can lay no claim to foreknowledge of and so I can extend myself and not need the film to live up to some standard of realism according to my experience of war… but I do KNOW ennui, I know the slow burn and depression, and for me if you are going to frame your film as this independently nuanced reproduction of reality, than I have problems with how the subject matter is treated. Its more about the story in Frozen River, a buddy picture and a new concept and the realities are more decoration in that film, whereas Wendy and Lucy, its the whole film… nothing builds to anything, it embodies hopelessness and misery by never giving in to drama, never giving in to any arc or clear trajectory. People would fault it for its lack of any cinematic aspirations, but I see that as its strength considering its subject matter. As for the supposed subtext of the film, it was made before the economy became a big issue, there is no explicit subtext to it… its about Wendy, who embodies no one or thing in particular, and it is about her frail existence on the cusp of poverty. The world is by and large indifferent to her (and not completely, it is not antagonistically so) and she coasts through it… that is a very different and better in my opinion representation of that state of existence, depicting by being, rather than depicting by story artifice.
The Dardenne Brothers do this very well also, and Ballast from last year captures the state of existence better than Frozen River.
some themes I can tolerate being dramatized, and each film comes with its own rules of engagement, and so something like Rev Road is explicitly dramatic on the same theme but because it never aspires for verite realism I do not feel conned by it. FR aspires for a kind of gritty realism on a theme of slow burn desperation, and I just don’t feel with those choices preset, that it pays off then making this a dramatic story with a complete arc, the two are at odds in my opinion. I admit that is an aesthetic opinion.
If you want naturalism, than the film should aspire to be naturalistic and not follow a formula, its like painting a landscape with all the right colours and shades to seem like nature but done in a cliche river, moonlight and mountains composition that it deadens the whole aspiration for realism.
Completely agreeing with Rot here on the FR/W&L debate. One thing that bugged me about Frozen River was the way Ray’s priorities were so out of wack. She couldn’t afford the new trailer she wanted or food for her children, but she was fine making payments on the rent-to-own TV and she have enough to support her smoking habit. Now I understand that’s a character flaw and perhaps completely intentional on the filmmaker’s part, but it still bothered me. The part of the movie that did work for me was seeing the lawlessness of the reservation. That whole aspect of the story rang true for me. I don’t know if the whole illegal alien smuggling happens or has happened across a frozen river, but I know a lot of ridiculous stuff goes on in the First Nations community, and the police have no jurisdiction to control it. I’m glad the film finally exposed that to a somewhat wider audience.
Wendy and Lucy on the other hand is a near perfect film. We know nothing of Wendy’s past and that worked for me. I loved the phone call to her sister, the tension there, we don’t know what their relationship is like at all, but just with that phone call, even with no details, we can come up with our own ideas. And I think the “message” of that movie, if there is one, is how there’s always someone who cares, even when it seems like no one does. Ugh, that sounds cheesy. People who have seen it should know what I mean.
I’m not probably going to have time to get to anything more than what I’m going to pick at than this, but seriously…
“Its more about the story in Frozen River, a buddy picture and a new concept and the realities are more decoration in that film, whereas Wendy and Lucy, its the whole film… nothing builds to anything”
FR…. a buddy picture? there’s nothing buddy about that whatsoever. These are two people using each other, and the ending has nothing to do with friendship, it has to do with responsibility towards each other for their choices, making up for where the people who fucked those two characters over, failed. There’s more depth to FR than W&L, easily… whereas…
Wendy & Lucy – nothing builds to anything? All the tension and crap she has to overcome is built into finding that dog, its taking advantage of peoples love and concern for animals to make them bite their nails, and is all about building to that final scene, all the while pushing the point of how every person is just one or two steps or decisions away from being in a predicament like Wendy’s.
“One thing that bugged me about Frozen River was the way Ray’s priorities were so out of wack. She couldn’t afford the new trailer she wanted or food for her children, but she was fine making payments on the rent-to-own TV and she have enough to support her smoking habit.”
This is why I never respond to so many of your posts. This is just like your bizarre complaints about Roger and Me. You miss the entire point and want to blame the film for not bowing to your actual tastes, even if the film is completely realistic. It’s as annoying as people who complain that characters in dark comedies are unlikeable.
Why the hell would this bother you? The character has to make the right decisions? You think she’s supposed to be presented in a light that makes her pure and sympathetic? I’ve known people on welfare who lived off of juiceboxes so they could afford cable TV packages my upper middle class household could not afford. If I were to write a realistic welfare character, even if overall they were a protagonist, something like that would probably show up.
Fuck, this fucked-up-priorities-of-poor-people thing is nothing new to drama OR comedy. Like Eddie in Christmas Vacation, who complains that they don’t have any money to give the kids a good Christmas, while he packs humongous bags of expensive dog food onto a shopping cart.
“FR aspires for a kind of gritty realism on a theme of slow burn desperation”
I even disagree with this.
FR is simply cheaply made, TV movie cheap, and put out by a director who doesn’t have the chops to make something as textured or as purposefully naturalistic as Wendy and Lucy.
And yet it still works mildly better than W&L, if only by accident, because Melissa Leo turns out to be a better naturalistic actress than Michelle Williams (and I am on the record of loving Williams and her performance). In comparison, W&L thrusts its naturalistic filming style onto Williams’ performance, whereas Leo’s naturalistic performance pulls everything around it up to a higher standard.
My disagreements with you over W&L vs. FR have a lot less to do about which is a superior film, bu tmore to do with how off I feel you are about both, what they are and what they intend to accomplish.
sorry, what I meant by ‘buddy’ is two people coming together for a mutual need, there would be no movie if these two characters from different sides of the street were not thrust together, and in the end they do become buddies, they help one another out. In the end the film is about exploiting a particular idea that has not been done in a film before, and the gritty reality is decoration to that conceit.
You can excuse FR all you want for its aesthetics by nature of budget, but what I see onscreen is zero stylization, its entirely in situ, and the dialogue also aspires to be natural. For example virtually nothing is spoken between the characters in the car as they do the job. On the one hand the film wants you to think of it as unstaged and yet the script keeps arranging things into a staged formulaic arc, and that is my problem.
AS for Williams performance in Wendy, I never saw the Oscar consideration to it. Like everything else in the film I felt it was subdued, it is an experiment in reduction, the whole film is that way. As for Wendy having an arc to it, ok, lets be clear here, lets go back to my analogy because it works in this case:
you would recognize a hackneyed composition of a landscape with its trees and river and moonlight and mountains, the sort of kitsch familiarity from being done over and over. This is what I equate with a film following a familiar arc of storytelling… no matter how life-like the individual parts are made to seem, they are still being artificially composed. Now any landscape will have features similar to the kitsch composition by nature of using similar subject matter, but that doesn’t mean it is always the case that it is kitsch.
Wendy and Lucy has an arc of loses dog, finds dog, gives up dog. That is about as sparse of story as you can get, that is the faintest resemblance to what one expects of a conventional composition. If you look at each part, there is no character development, no pitted opposition to overcome, because the world is not out to get Wendy, the world is indifferent to her, and yet not entirely. Things happen to Wendy but they never occur in a conventional way, she doesn’t find her dog being sold to some dog fight, no she phones the pound every day and one day the dog is found, a virtual non event in storytelling terms. she is confronted with a dangerous hobo one night but nothing happens to her, nor does it change her outlook on anything, she keeps going the way she is going. The guard befriends her but its not like he befriends her and gets her out of the predicament by paying for her car, he gives her a couple of dollars, thats the ‘arc’ of that story. most of the film is showing Wendy get around the town, the sort of stuff you would usually edit out to get to the ‘story’. it embodies the lethargy of her experience, it doesn’t outsource the theme to a conventional narrative structure like FR does.
I don’t think all characters in all movies have to be likeable, pure, or good decision makers at all. What I think of the film is not objective, and I do believe that Frozen River was a good film, if not great on that objective level. I think I gave it three stars in my book. But subjectively, I have problems with it, I don’t relate to these characters, and that’s fine, I acknowledge that they exist and I’m sympathetic for them, but I can’t personally relate to them, so this is not a movie I can truly love or that I can watch over and over again. If my opinion seems shallow to you, I’m okay with that.