Top Ten Films of 2008

After some delay, here are my picks for the top ten films of 2008. Stay tuned for my Oscar predictions and picks later in the week.

10. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)



Jenny Lumet, daughter of legendary filmmaker Sidney Lumet, delivers a knockout with her first produced screenplay. Directed in an immersive, handheld style by Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married spends a weekend with recovering addict Kym as she deals with the wounds that are re-opened when the entire family reunites at home for her sister's wedding. While Anne Hathaway has deservedly earned an Oscar nomination for her performance, Bill Irwin, as I wrote earlier, is just as integral to the film’s emotional power. Raw and unaffected, Rachel Getting Married is an uncompromising look at a family where healing will be a lifelong process.

9. Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry)



Last year, joke newspaper The Onion ran a hilarious article with the headline: Michel Gondry Entertained For Days By New Cardboard Box. For anyone remotely familiar with Gondry’s work, the piece struck a chord as it probably isn’t too far from the truth. In his extensive and groundbreaking music video work, and in such films as The Science Of Sleep and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Gondry has displayed a passion for homemade (though not necessarily well made) special effects, over computer generated glitz, and childlike wonder and sincerity over contrived or manipulative emotions. Critics unfairly maligned Be Kind Rewind for it’s “unbelievable” premise - an entire video store has their VHS tapes erased and the staff sets out to make their own versions of the films to rent to customers – while missing Gondry’s joyous, heartfelt comedy that celebrates imagination, ingenuity and cinema itself. When so many comedies these days rely on cheap or crude humor for laughs, Gondry’s film derives them from the undistiilled joy of discovery and creation.

8. Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green)



If not raunchy, Pineapple Express, is certainly ridiculous and outrageously hilarious. Another Judd Apatow production, the film’s success is only all the more remarkable given the pedigree behind it. Who would’ve thought pretty boy and Gucci fragrance model James Franco would nail the role of a greasy, good-hearted, and eternally spaced out pot dealer so perfectly? Who would’ve thought indie filmmaker David Gordon Green, known for his tough southern gothic fare, would transition so effortlessly to a film that is an endless stream of stoner jokes and explosions? Falling somewhere between Lethal Weapon and Cheech & Chong, Pineapple Express is gut-bustingly funny, effortlessly charming and oddly affecting. It’s a stoner movie with heart, and an action movie for geeks.

7. Mister Lonely (Harmony Korine)



I’ve always regarded screenwriter and director Harmony Korine as little more than a provocateur. The man behind such films as Kids, Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy gained notoriety for the salacious nature of his works, rather than the substance. On the surface, this film, about a bunch of celebrity impersonators who decide to live on a commune together to forever indulge their fantasy lives, certainly comes across as a stunt. But Korine’s film reveals a deep humanity, contemplating notions of identity and the importance of faith and art. A parallel story involving Werner Herzog playing a priest to a bunch of skydiving nuns is as hilarious and bizarre as it is heart-wrenching and affecting. Mister Lonely is a proudly odd and surprisingly life-affirming film that marks a new, mature direction for Harmony Korine.

6. Låt den rätte komma in/Let The Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)



While every teenage girl in America freaked out this fall over the vampire soap Twilight, a little film from Sweden completely reinvented the entire genre. Let The Right One In is an astonishingly gorgeous horror film that refuses to rely on gore and cheap scares but rather on mood and atmosphere. Director Tomas Alfredson is refreshingly spare behind the camera, abstaining from the kinetic camera movements and narrative spoonfeeding that mark so many horror films these days. Instead, Alfredson let’s the film unravel slowly, allowing the mystery and dread to build to a feverish pitch right until the jaw dropping conclusion. But it’s the surprisingly touching relationship at the film’s core between the two lead children that really stands this film out from the pack. Bonded by their outsider status, twelve-year-old Oskar and the undead Eli find a way, however deadly and strange, to make it through the trials that mark the passage into adolescence.

5. Wall-E (Andrew Stanton)



The term “kids movie” has become a catch all for every loud, obnoxious, dull and uninspired animated film that Hollywood cranks out on a quarterly basis for parents looking for two hours of respite from their exhausting children. Usually loaded with bad music and worse jokes, for parents, these films are not just watched, but endured with the small reward that the kids were entertained and stayed in one place for one hundred and twenty minutes. But as usual, Pixar offers a not only a beacon of hope for parents but a reason for everyone to get to the theater as quickly as possible. Wall-E is another masterful achievement from the studio that seems to get even better and more ambitious with each film. While their last film , Ratatouille, found a hero in a food obsessed rat, this time around, Pixar has the audacity to start the film with almost half an hour of gorgeous, funny and touching animation with nary a line of dialogue to be heard. This tremendous sequence, in which we learn about Wall-E, and his small, but rich life, would be virtually unheard of at any other studio. Who would allow a lead character not to speak? Or dedicate the opening of a film aimed at children not have any songs or fart jokes? In fact, the titular Wall-E – a lonely trash compactor, slowly cleaning up the mess left on a now uninhabited Earth – doesn’t really speak at all, relying a series of endearing bloops, bleeps and a word here and there to communicate what he’s feeling. Pixar succeeds in the task in not only making it easy for the audience to understand his motivations, but care deeply about what is going to happen to him. Like the great silent comedies, Wall-E finds it’s heart and humor using extraordinary physical sequences, and a script that really makes the audience care about what becomes Wall-E’s quest for love. In a lesser project, the film’s sledgehammer approach to its environmental message in the third act would’ve been distracting, but we care too much about Wall-E and Eve to notice, and unless you have a heart of stone, the end is guaranteed to make you shed a tear.

4. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)



The Dark Knight arrived in theaters on a wave of fanboy anticipation, built on Warner Brother’s brilliant, nearly year long marketing campaign and the buzz and tragedy surrounding Heath Ledger’s final performance as the Joker. When the film finally landed like an atom bomb last summer, not only did it meet expectations, it blew them right out of the water. Christopher Nolan’s take on Batman placed him in a real, living, breathing metropolis. Gone were the candy-coated worlds of previous Batman films. Here was Gotham presented as any other major city in the world, which made the absolutely anarchic inclinations of the Joker all the more terrifying. The Dark Knight presents the most conflicted Batman/Bruce Wayne yet, forced between protecting the citizens of Gotham (who increasingly resent his presence) and creating a life that he can live publicly and be proud of. And in the Joker, with all respect to Jack Nicholson, Heath Ledger delivered the signature performance of Batman’s ultimate villain with an unstable mix of unpredictable lunacy and passionate nihilism that made him both compelling and horrifying to watch on screen. The total of Nolan’s film isn’t your typical spandex and special effects comic book film, but something much richer. Drawing on sophisticated crime dramas, and heightened by the immersive experience of IMAX, The Dark Knight is a comic book film for adults, that explores where the boundaries between good and evil and hero and villain intersect.

3. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)



While Gus Van Sant’s other film this year, Milk, is garnering all the awards season attention, it’s Paranoid Park that deserves the recognition. Falling in with his other more experimental films such as Last Days and Elephant, Paranoid Park uses the Macguffin of a murder mystery to explore the angst of a teenager trying finding his niche in the world. By turns funny, shocking, sensual and heartbreaking, Paranoid Park perfectly captures the feeling of disconnection of adolescence. Employing shot repetition, graceful tracking shots, judiciously employed slow motion and jaw dropping framing, Van Sant’s film is like a dream happening in a real life.

2. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky)



Randy “The Ram” Robinson is beat up, worn out and at the end of his career. Mickey Rourke, who plays The Ram, is also beat up, worn out and when this began filming, was also at the end of anything resembling an acting career, having alienated much of Hollywood. The result is a bravura performance from Rourke, reminding audiences why they were charmed with him the first time he gained acclaim on the silver screen. From director Darren Aronofsky, known for his heady, visually arresting films such as Requiem For A Dream and The Fountain, he’s stripped down, largely using a handheld, creating a quasi-documentary feel for the film. And what a film it is. Robinson’s journey as he makes peace with his past and what drives his very existence is at once heart breaking and life affirming. It’s a film that doesn’t demand much from its audience but proves to be far richer than the wrestling rings, strip clubs, grocery stores and bars it inhabits.

1. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen)



As New York’s longtime cinematic chronicler, it’s hard to imagine Woody Allen in another city, let alone another country. But movies need money, and as Allen continues to keep to his one film per year pace, well into the latter part of his career, European producers have opened their coffers to him. His latest unsurprisingly finds him in Spain, but where his previous trio of England based films were either contemplative crime dramas or slight comedies, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a gorgeous, funny and moving tale of art, love and life. Two American girlfriends on summer holiday in Spain become involved with a painter and his volatile ex-wife as they struggle to figure what they want from life and what it is that sustains them. This is all familiar thematic territory for Allen, but seemingly invigorated by the Spanish landscape, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is bracingly alive and fresh. Blessed with fantastic performances across the board and luminous work by cinematographer Javier Aguirresarobe, Allen’s latest is another entry into the growing canon of his top tier films.