My top fifteen list points out a real problem with me in 2008 – I simply didn’t write enough reviews. A large number of the films on this list were not reviewed by me in 2008, and I have no excuse for that. To make up for this, I’m going to be working on getting all of these movies reviewed in the coming weeks – hopefully before the New Year – so that you’ll have a chance to read my longer thoughts on the best films of the year. Except maybe for #13. That film still intimidates me intellectually.
This year’s top fifteen is an eclectic mix. Looking back at 2008 it wasn’t a stunner of a year for movies, but it did have some of the best genre films of the last decade, and a number of smaller, effective films than last year’s epics of greatness and bombast. 2008 feels like the year the movies took a breather.
There are a couple of exclusions that will likely get folks up in arms. Sorry, I’m just listing the 15 that were the best and my favorites. I didn’t have to search hard to fill a spot that would have otherwise gone to The Dark Knight or Wall*E, and those films were never serious contenders for my list. Films that did almost make the cut, though, were movies like Rambo, Punisher: War Zone, Doubt, Dear Zachary or a number of other documentaries that I loved this year. That said, I do have one film on this list that was not a 2008 release, but I saw it this year and I think it’s important to have it represented because it may never get an actual theatrical release. Another movie that I saw in 2008 that I loved, The Brothers Bloom, has been bumped to 2009; Rian Johnson’s sophomore effort will have to fend for itself on next year’s list.
For those of you interested in nostalgia, here’s what came before:
My top fifteen of 2007
My top fifteen of 2006
My top fifteen of 2005
My top fifteen of 2004
And so… my top fifteen of 2008.
15. Towelhead (My review)(pre-order the DVD)
Four of the films on my top fifteen were Sundance movies. That speaks to their power, that nearly a year later they stay with me. Towelhead was a film that gutpunched me but seemed to leave any of my colleagues cold. Maybe it’s the subject matter – Jazeera, a young Iraqi girl in the suburbs during the Gulf War experiences her sexual awakening and her first sexual victimization at the hands of the handsome military man next door – or maybe it was… no, it was the subject matter. Alan Ball, writer of American Beauty and creator of Six Feet Under and True Blood, tackles the taboo of adolescent sexuality, a taboo all the more hypocritical as we continue to sexualize adolescents in fashion and society. He does it with heart and compassion for almost all of his characters, but most importantly he does it with tact while not pulling any punches.
Current rating: 8.5 out of 10
Contributing factors: Working from Alicai Erian’s novel, Ball’s film – which at one point was retitled Nothing is Private until everybody got their balls back – does what the best television dramas do: it weaves a multi-character story that doesn’t rush to the ending and yet remains remarkably focused. A big plus is Peter Macdissi in an often funny turn as young Jazeera’s dad.
Performance to savor: Aaron Eckhart gives a performance of incredible depth and complexity as the grown man who inexplicably finds himself drawn to this girl. Open minded viewers will see him as not quite a monster but also not quite someone who deserves our sympathy. It’s a tough place for an actor to go, and Eckhart gives it his career best.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “You’ll be happy to let Aaron Eckhart have his way with you in Towelhead!”
14. Funny Games (My review forthcoming)(Buy the DVD)
Actually, five of my top fifteen were Sundance movies, but I missed this one at Sundance. I finally caught up with it on home video, where it left me in awe. Michael Haneke’s shot for shot remake of his own 1997 Austrian film seems like a critique of the current world of ‘torture porn’ but it actually predates it by almost a half decade. A pair of clean cut, well-scrubbed young killers take a family hostage and torment them throughout the night. These two boys seem like forces of nature, ids gone wild. Or more like plot devices come alive, creatures without backgrounds or motivations (concepts used to much more chilling ends here than in a summer superhero film, which feels like it lifted its villain from Haneke’s original), beings who live only to go from house to house, recreating a horror movie again and again. And they’re very aware of what they’re doing and the universe in which they live. The film is brutal, relentless and really fucking smart.
Current rating: 9 out of 10
Contributing factors: Haneke is a master of suspense. He is able to extend it and deflate it to fit his purposes at any given time. He has complete control of the cinematic form, and when he breaks the rules – as he does aggressively here – it’s exciting and shocking.
Performance to savor: Michael Pitt is, to me, sort of Emile Hirsch lite (Hirsch is, without argument, the finest young actor working in major motion pictures today), and his weird blankness and pudgy, baby-like face clash with the cruelty he dishes out and the pleasure he takes from it. It’s a truly frightening performance.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “A movie for – and against! – the sick fucks out there!”
13. Synecdoche, New York (Don’t hold your breath for a review)(pre-order the Blu-Ray)
I really wanted to write about this movie, but it defeated me. Charlie Kaufman’s directorial debut is not an easy film; I wouldn’t recommend it to those who felt that Adaptarion and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind were annoying cerebral, for instance. The movie is incredibly self-indulgent, but to hold that against it is missing the forest for the pine cones, since Synecdoche, New York is an incredibly self-indulgent film about being an incredibly self-indulgent artist. The movie, which has Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a playwright whose magnum opus sees him creating his whole life inside of a warehouse, is fractal in narrative, and it’s fractal on a meta-level as well, as Kaufman pours himself, his neuroses, his fears and his dreams into the picture. It doesn’t always hold together as a coherent thing, and it really loses its way at the end, but it’s audacious and brilliant and thrilling to sit through – if you’re the kind of person who finds massively self-indulgent semi-surreal, partially absurdist art movies thrilling.
Current rating: 9 out of 10
Contributing factors: Beautifully designed and shot, Synecdoche proves that Kaufman was paying attention while making those movies with Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry. It’s also a delightful headfuck that keeps getting more twisted as the plot loses its own thread in a funhouse of navel gazing.
Performance to savor: Casting Emily Watson and Samantha Morton as doppelgangers is brilliant.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Holy shit, I need a pitcher of beer and three hours of conversation to dissect this.”
12. The Foot Fist Way (How did I not review this?)(Buy the DVD)
I thought Danny McBride was going to hit a little harder this year. He’s in two of the films in my top fifteen, and he’s great (if a little subdued (for him)) in Tropic Thunder, and he just seems like the next guy everybody who reads this site should love. But maybe he’s more an acquired taste, and I acquired him after seeing him first steal Pineapple Express and then give life and soul to this great movie. It’s important that you understand that The Foot Fist Way was made by guys who were greatly influenced by The Office – and I’m talking about the cringe-inducing British show, not the fluffy, sweet, hijinks-filled American one. They were influenced by The Office and sought to outdo it, creating a character in Fred Simmons who, like David Brent, skirts the edge of the cliff of unlikability with alarming regularity. But while Fred has moments that will make you squirm in your seat or put your face in your palm, he’s also a complete, real human being – one who you can get behind. If you’re not cheering at the end when he’s telling off his wife (laughing at the same time, probably hysterically, since McBride’s delivery is simply awe-inspiring), you’re heartless.
Current rating: 9 out of 10
Contributing factors: Co-writer Ben Best kills as Chuck ‘The Truck’ Wallace, and director Jody Hill threatens to rob the film from McBride as fifth degree black belt Mike McAlister, but the film’s real charm comes from the realism of the dojo and the world these fuck ups inhabit.
Performance to savor: Julio. The movie’s secret weapon. He’s up to nothing.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “The Foot Fist Way is terrific for laughing, but it’s also a deadly serious killing system!”
11. Rachel Getting Married (My review forthcoming)(Pre-order the DVD)
Wait, Jonathan Demme is back? How did this happen? It turns out that following a string of big budget, low quality films (two remakes of classics back to back), Demme did some documentaries – including Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains and Neil Young: Heart of Gold – and maybe they helped save his soul. Whatever the case, he returns with this small (yet large in cast) and intimate (yet sort of sprawling in emotion and tenderness) story about a woman who gets married and how her selfish, abusive and hot addict of a sister almost ruins it all. Demme’s handheld style brings us into the preparations for the wedding, and after a while you feel not like you’re watching a movie but like you’re participating in this momentous occasion. A few choice missteps (like the dead brother’s baby plate showing up at an innopportune, but dramatically huge moment) kept this one just out of the top ten, but this movie should earn Anne Hathaway an Oscar. Not a nomination, but the actual award.
Current rating: 9 out of 10
Contributing factors: Some have complained about the unspoken of interracial aspect of the wedding and thus the wedding party, but to me it only elevates this into the first post-Obama movie, even if I saw it well before the election. The infusion of music – both sides of the family are musical – helps make this movie more than a little transcendent.
Performance to savor: I mentioned Anne Hathaway’s Oscar earning turn in the main body so I could call out the wonderful Bill Irwin. Yes, the clown. He’s a joy to watch, and his clown training allows him to turn every movement and facial expression into a small bit of poetry.
CHUD.com Pull Quote: “Just say ‘I Do’ to this wonderful film!”