Best in Film 2008

Rating: Not reviewed


1. The Dark Knight
While straightforward dramas continue to express post-9/11 and Iraq War concerns with didacticism and histrionics, it has fallen upon genre films like "Children of Men," "Cloverfield" and "The Dark Knight" to be a more accurate reflection of the uneasy state of the world. "The Dark Knight," perhaps even more so than "Children of Men," dares to look through a glass darkly and challenge the liberal and conservative politics that have led to the current general state of fear and loathing. Part of what was so wonderful about the "Dark Knight" phenomenon was how many viewers were willing to meet director Christopher Nolan's probing gaze. Even more firmly rooted in the real, War on Terror world than the already socially conscious "Batman Begins," "The Dark Knight finds Batman (Christian Bale) facing off against the Joker (an electrifying Heath Ledger), who, like the Ra's al Ghul of "Begins," is not-so-subtly presented as an Osama bin Laden stand-in. "The Dark Knight" becomes legitimate pop art by questioning Batman's increasingly murky tactics and morality – where "Begins" was a fight for Gotham City, "The Dark Knight" is a battle for Batman's soul. The film disturbs as much as it thrills: for every exhilarating, Michael Mann-worthy heist and William Friedkin-esque chase scene there are probing questions as profound as those in "Munich" about the loss of the U.S.'s moral authority and if the sacrifice in the name of national security was worth it.

2. Synecdoche, New York
Surreal and psychoanalytical, "Synecdoche, New York," screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's first film as a director, is a creatively unbound examination of unbound creativity and the way such creation can keep artists from living in the real world. As the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind the Spike Jonze-directed "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" and the Michel Gondry-directed "Human Nature" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," Kaufman created the neo-surrealist movement, but, even by those standards, he's working on an entirely different level here. Kaufman sets his story in a strange version of Schenectady, N.Y., in which people are in a constant state of decay, live in burning houses and have tattoos that come to life. The film unfurls with Kaufman's unique blending of the absurd and the heartfelt as the playwright Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) retreats from his painful real world of divorce and disease to create an unwieldy play in which he has staged a replica of a city block (and then a replica of a replica of that replica) that's meant to represent the authenticity he can no longer grasp on a personal level. The melancholy would be overwhelming, the weirdness too disconcerting and the meta-psychoanalysis too solipsistic if the film weren't also so profound.

3. In the City of Sylvia
José Luis Guerin's "In the City of Sylvia" may have been taken "Rachel Getting Married's" place as the most divisive film of the year if it had actually been given even a modest limited release rather than being confined to the art house ghetto. Assuming the film manages to acquire home video distribution, Guerin's hypnotic tone poem will be studied in film schools as the art work it is. The film (almost literally) follows an artist simply known as "Él" (Xavier Lafitte) as he observes the patrons at an art school café and then as he pursues a woman (Pilar López de Ayala) through the streets of Strasbourg in a silent, M.C. Escher version of "Before Sunrise." The slim plot serves as a playful master class of pictorial framing, spatial relationships, cinematic voyeurism and the Kuleshov effect. The film belatedly gives a context to Él's pursuit, but the film, for all its intellectually engaging and subtle visual poetry, is always one of yearning, of the hope in the chase.

4. WALL-E
In "WALL-E," the titular robot is an endearing machine reduced to a shadow of its former self as it peddles garbage until a new, flashy, seemingly Apple-affiliated robot brings renewed purpose to its life – the metaphor for what Pixar has done for Disney animation is even more apparent here than it was in 2007's "Ratatouille." "WALL-E" also happens to be radical in more meaningful ways, including daring to think children would be enthralled by a dialogue-free romance between robots that's as heartfelt as "City Lights" and a cautionary tale of pollution, over-consumption and dwindling intellect that echoes but is ultimately more effective than Mike Judge's "Idiocracy" because of its ravishing beauty.

5. Cloverfield
In "Cloverfield," the destruction of New York City at the hands of an H.P. Lovecraft-ian horror is created with an immediate realism that's psychologically rattling through the use of subjective "found footage" that, no mere gimmick, provides an intimacy and empathy Steven Spielberg's "War of the Worlds" attempted with its "everyman" perspective but failed at. "Cloverfield" is elevated to classic status because, like the best horror movies, it addresses current social anxieties. The attack on New York isn't a callous exploitation of 9/11 terror; it's an allegorical examination of the fears imbedded in a generation's psyche since 2001. Rob (Michael Stahl-David) and his friends' expedition through the chaos is an attempt to refuse hopelessness. Rob is a symbol of a generation derided for being apathetic, disengaged from the world and "in clover," as it were, who, against the expectations of his elders, rises to the occasion to save someone he loves. "Cloverfield" captures the video zeitgeist of this generation, but it also portrays its heart.

6. Still Life
Jia Zhangke's "Still Life" takes place in the Yangtze River town of Fengjie that, after 2000 years of existence, is being demolished and flooded as part of the Chinese government's mammoth Three Gorges Dam project. Mineworker Sanming (frequent Jia actor Han Sanming) arrives in Fengjie from Shanxi in search of the wife and child who left him 16 years ago, while nurse Shen Hong (Zhao Tao) searches for her husband so she can file for a divorce. Tellingly, Sanming and Hong are only explicitly connected by an archaeologist, Wang Donming (Wang Hongwei). Sanming, Shen Hong and Donming form a trinity that complexly addresses China's – and man's – relationship with the past. All three seek out the past for closure, but Sanming wants a permanent reconnection, Shen Hong wants to move on and the archaeologist realizes the past is already gone and may not even be able to be saved. Jia and cinematographer Yu Lik-wai gracefully compose the film in images that are as fluid and forceful as the Yangtze itself.

7. Reprise
"Reprise" begins with Norwegian friends Phillip (Anders Danielsen Lie) and Erik (Espen Klouman-Hoiner) placing their respective manuscripts in a mailbox at the same moment, an act that launches the film into a hyper-edited tour de force that's practically a short film unto itself of what their lives could've been if they're simultaneously hailed as the voices of their generation. The rest of Joachim Trier's directorial debut follows the actual fallout of that fateful moment, including the resulting acclaim, mental collapse, critical indifference and failed romances that result. It's an invigorating film about the passion of art and youth that's itself artful and youthful.

8. Rachel Getting Married
The detractors of Jonathan Demme's "Rachel Getting Married" find the wedding celebration too over-the-top, the drama too awkward and Buchmann family black sheep Kym (Anne Hathaway) narcissistic to the point of toxicity. But that's the point. The Buchmann's naïvely see the wedding of Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) as an opportunity to wash away the pain of past tragedies, and pain that deep requires an especially desperate celebration. Kym, as the main keeper of the family's sadness, only appears selfish in her constant need to let her family know how persistently she feels remorse for what she did through her self-flagellations. When Kym says she's "Shiva the destroyer, your harbinger of doom this evening" during her rehearsal dinner speech, she's saying as much about her role in the family as she is about being the downer to a good time. True, her grandstanding is self-serving. Then again, so is guilt.

9. The Band's Visit
"The Band's Visit" is a comedy of manners that's a study in hilarious awkwardness comparable to "The Office." Stern Arab Lt. Col. Tawfiq Zacharya (Sasson Gabai) and his orchestra arrive in Israel to play at the Arab Cultural Center in Petah Tikva, but the band mistakenly ends up in the Jewish desert town of Beit Hatikva that has "no culture. Not Israeli culture, not Arab, no culture at all." With nowhere else to go, the band is kindly taken in by fierce restaurant owner Dina ("Late Marriage" star Ronit Elkabetz) and her unemployed patrons. What's most remarkable about the film is that it's obviously about Israeli-Arab relations, but it never explicitly addresses the tensions between the cultures. The blossoming friendship between Tawfiq and Dina reveals the common ground between the ethnicities, and all people really, in the human attributes of kindness, sorrow and hope.

10. Standard Operating Procedure/Taxi to the Dark Side
Documentarian Errol Morris finds sympathy for the heretofore monstrously viewed soldiers who, the Bush administration would have the public believe, acted independently when they tortured and humiliated Iraqi detainees in Abu Ghraib prison. "Standard Operating Procedure" portrays Abu Ghraib as a place not where a few soldiers were allowed to run wild on their own accord, but where the soldiers were given orders to "soften up" prisoners for interrogation by any means and were part of a military culture where the torture of Arabs was acceptable and even expected. Morris portrays his subjects with surprising empathy that still acknowledges the atrocity of their actions, showing them to be scapegoats for a military, administration and country that, since 2001, often seems to have lost its moral bearings. The Oscar-winning "Taxi to the Dark Side" is the essential flipside to "Standard Operating Procedure." Alex Gibney's film tells the story of Afghan taxi driver Dilawar, who was held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan under suspicion of being the getaway driver for terrorists who attacked an American military camp that morning. Dilawar was tortured for five days before dying from blunt-force trauma. What Gibney details is a Kafkaesque nightmare for those imprisoned in U.S. camps: most of the detainees, like Dilawar, are arrested without substantial evidence by Afghans looking to collect a bounty, and who are never actually charged by American military police. Both films rile up a nation's moral indignation.

11. A Christmas Tale
12. Man on Wire
13. The Witnesses
14. Slumdog Millionaire
15. Milk
16. Waltz with Bashir
17. I've Loved You So Long
18. Paranoid Park
19. My Winnipeg
20. The Duchess of Langeais
21. Elegy
22. Taxi to the Dark Side
23. Wendy and Lucy
24. The Class
25. The Fall
26. The Wrestler
27. In Search of a Midnight Kiss
28. Hellboy II: The Golden Army
29. The Unforeseen
30. The Visitor
31. Nights and Weekends
32. Up the Yangtze
33. Pineapple Express
34. Gran Torino
35. The Last Mistress
36. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
37. Trouble the Water
38. Chris & Don
39. Kung Fu Panda
40. The Strangers
41. Rogue
42. Woman on the Beach
43. Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
44. Redbelt
45. Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!
46. Be Kind Rewind
47. Encounters at the End of the World
48. Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S.
Thompson
49. Teeth
50. The Ruins

Best Actor
Winner: Sean Penn in "Milk"
Runners-Up: Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler"; Ben Kingsley in "Elegy"; Sasson Gabai in "The Band's Visit"; and Richard Jenkins in "The Visitor"

Best Actress
Winner: Anne Hathaway in "Rachel Getting Married"
Runners-Up: Michelle Williams in "Wendy and Lucy"; Kristin Scott Thomas in "I've Loved You So Long"; Keira Knightley in "The Duchess"; and Sally Hawkins in "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Best Supporting Actor
Winner: Heath Ledger in "The Dark Knight"
Runners-Up: Robert Downey Jr. in "Tropic Thunder"; James Franco in "Pineapple Express" and "Milk"; Mathieu Amalric in "A Christmas Tale"; and Emile Hirsch in "Milk"

Best Supporting Actress
Winner: Penelope Cruz in "Elegy" and "Vicky Cristina Barcelona"
Runners-Up: Rosemarie DeWitt in "Rachel Getting Married"; Elysa Zylberstein in "I've Loved You So Long"; Emmanuelle Béart in "The Witnesses"; and Debra Winger in "Rachel Getting Married"

Best Ensemble
Winner: "Synecdoche, New York"
Runners-Up: "A Christmas Tale," "The Witnesses," "Rachel Getting Married" and "Milk"

Best Director
Winner: Christopher Nolan for "The Dark Knight"
Runners-Up: José Luis Guerín for "In the City of Sylvia," Matt Reeves for "Cloverfield," Andrew Stanton for "WALL-E" and Charlie Kaufman for "Synecdoche, New York"

Best Original Screenplay
Winner: Charlie Kaufman for "Synecdoche, New York"
Runners-Up: Arnaud Desplechin for "A Christmas Tale," Joachin Trier and Eskil Vogt for "Reprise," Dustin Lance Black for "Milk" and Laurent Goyot, André Téchiné and Viviane Zingg for "The Witnesses"

Best Adapted Screenplay
Winner: Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer for "The Dark Knight"
Runners-Up: Gus Van Sant for "Paranoid Park," Nicholas Meyer for "Elegy," Simon Beaufoy for "Slumdog Millionaire" and Pascal Bonitzer, Christine Laurent and Jacques Rivette for "The Duchess of Langeais"

Best Foreign Language Film
Winner: "In the City of Sylvia"
Runners-Up: "Still Life," "Reprise," "The Band's Vist" and "A Christmas Tale"

Best Animated Film
Winner: "WALL-E"
Runners-Up: "Waltz with Bashir," "Kung Fu Panda," "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who!" and "Bolt"

Best Documentary
Winner: "Standard Operating Procedure/Taxi to the Dark Side"
Runners-Up: "Man on Wire," "The Unforeseen," "Up the Yangtzee" and "Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father"

Best First Feature
Winner: Charlie Kaufman for "Synecdoche, New York"
Runners-Up: Joachim Trier for "Reprise," Eran Kolirin for "The Band's Visit," Philippe Claudel for "I've Loved You So Long" and Alex Holdridge for "In Search of Midnight Kiss"

Best Cinematography
Winner: Natasha Braier for "In the City of Sylvia"
Runners-Up: Michael Bonvillain for "Cloverfield"; Shai Goldman for "The Band's Visit"; Yu Lik-wai for "Still Life" and Anthony Dod Mantle for "Slumdog Millionaire"

Best Film Editing
Winner: Olivier Bugge Coutté for "Reprise"
Runners-Up: Kevin Stitt for "Cloverfield," Chris Dickens for "Slumdog Millionaire," John Gurdebeke for "My Winnipeg" and Núria Esquerra for "In the City of Sylvia"

Best Art Direction
Winner: "Synecdoche, New York"
Runners-Up: "The Dark Knight," "Cloverfield," "The Fall," "The Duchess"

Best Costume
Winner: "The Fall"
Runners-Up: "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," "The Duchess," "The Other Boleyn Girl" and "The Last Mistress"

Best Make-Up
Winner: "Hellboy II: The Golden Army"
Runners-Up: "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," "The Dark Knight," "Synecdoche, New York," and "The Duchess"

Best Dramatic Score
Winner: James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer for "The Dark Knight"
Runners-Up: A.R. Rahman for "Slumdog Millionaire," Max Richter for "Waltz with Bashir," Jon Brion for "Synecdoche, New York" and Rachel Portman for "The Duchess"

Best Musical or Comedy Score
Winner: Habib Shadah for "The Band's Visit"
Runners-Up: Thomas Newman for "WALL-E," Alex Beaupain for "Love Songs," Randy Newman for "Leatherheads" and Jon Brion for "Step Brothers"

Best Visual Effects
Winner: "Hellboy II: The Golden Army"
Runners-Up: "The Chronicles of Naria: Prince Caspian," "Iron Man," "The Dark Knight and "Cloverfield"

Best Sound
Winner: "The Dark Knight"
Runners-Up: "In the City of Sylvia," "WALL-E," "Cloverfield" and "Iron Man"

Best Sound Effects Editing
Winner: "In the City of Sylvia"
Runners-Up: "WALL-E," "The Dark Knight," "Cloverfield," and "Hellboy II: The Golden Army"

Best Song
Winner: "The Wrestler" performed by Bruce Springsteen in "The Wrestler"
Runners-Up: "Trouble the Water" performed by Kimberly Rivers Roberts in "Trouble the Water," "Up to Our Nex" performed by Robyn Hitchcock in "Rachel Getting Married," "Little Person" performed by Jon Brion in "Synecdoche, New York" and "Down to Earth" performed by Peter Gabriel in "WALL-E"

Best Soundtrack
Winner: "Shine a Light"
Runners-Up: "CSNY Déjà Vu," "Definitely, Maybe," "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" and "The Wrestler"

Biggest Disappointment
Winner: "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"
Runners-Up: "My Blueberry Nights," "George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead," "Tropic Thunder" and "Cassandra's Dream"

Most Overrated Film
Winner: "Ballast"
Runners-Up: "Frozen River," "George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead," "Frost/Nixon" and "The Flight of the Red Balloon"

Most Pleasant Surprise
Winner: "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl"
Runners-Up: "The Forbidden Kingdom," "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who," "The Stranger" and "Bolt"

Most Underrated Film
Winner: "Synecdoche, New York"
Runners-Up: "Cloverfield," "The Ruins," "The Fall" and "Be Kind Rewind"

Posted Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Link to this review:
http://filmzeus.pressbin.com/film/best.film.2008