Sometimes the popular critical taste matches my own. Four of the five films nominated for Best Picture are on my list along with two of the highest grossing films of the year. Sometimes I’m boring like that. Or sometimes the year is boring like that. I can’t tell which.
“Steroids? I love it if they’re on my team!”
It’s rare that a film makes me rethink my stance on an issue. I’ve always been pretty black-and-white on the whole steroid thing (though I certainly never thought it warranted congressional hearings). But Chris Bell’s private-and-public investigation of our national preconceptions and hypocrisy regarding better living through chemistry is a (highly entertaining, as it happens) eye-opener. Bell, a more likeable Michael Moore, approaches his own family’s history with steroids with the same candor he demands from the experts and public officials he interviews. The tragedy that occurred after the film’s release only makes the story Bell relates more poignant and more complex. More here.
9. Cloverfield
“My name is Robert Hawkins. It’s 6:42 AM on Saturday, May 23rd. Approximately seven hours ago, some thing attacked the city.”
I grew up on Godzilla, Gamera and King Kong. The bigger the monster, the happier I was. But I had the same fascination with these as with dinosaurs. I didn’t watch these films to be scared. I watched them to be awed (even by the crappy effects). But Cloverfield finds a way to inject that genre with true terror. It’s rare that somebody finds a new way to tell an old story. The cameraperson-as-character approach has been done (especially with horror, and especially recently), but to apply it to the giant monster subgenre, which is all about scale, is an ironic masterstroke – but only if you can pull it off. Matt Reeves and co. do.
“You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go ‘according to plan.’ Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all ‘part of the plan.’ But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!”
There’s really nothing left to say about The Dark Knight that hasn’t been said already. I will, at least, direct you to my initial reactions, which remain pretty intact after multiple viewings.
7. WALL•E
“These are called ‘farms’. Humans would put seeds in the ground, pour water on them, and they grow food – like, pizza!”
Making a feature-length film with very little dialogue = Ballsy. Making a feature-length kid’s film with very little dialgoue = Ballsier. Making a feature-length kid’s film that also happens to be an anti-consumerist diatribe = Ballsiest. And to do all of this and end up with a hugely entertaining result is nothing short of miraculous, but that’s what we’ve come to expect from Pixar. Oh, and this one also screened with the best. Pixar. short. ever.
6. The Visitor
“We are not helpless children!”
It’s the personal political statements that last. The intimate approach that writer/director Thomas McCarthy brought to the incomparable The Station Agent is employed here to tell a much more politically charged story without skimping on any of that film’s rich characterization. Both films, curiously, are all about connection, but here, instead of aching loneliness, it’s paranoid public policy that brings people together or tears them apart. And it is seeing the impact of that policy on the lives of characters we care about (brought insightfully to life by Richard Jenkins, Danai Jekesai Gurira, Hiam Abbass and – especially – Haaz Sleiman) that stirs the righteous anger that 100 news articles about how immigrants are treated in this country could never muster.
5. Frost/Nixon
“That’s our tragedy, you and I Mr. Frost. No matter how high we get, they still look down at us.”
One of the most compelling figures in American history now has two films to explore his dark, twisted depths. Where Oliver Stone’s Nixon took the longview of the Shakespearean tragedy, Ron Howard takes a more focused look and gets about as much bang for the buck. Peter Morgan’s adaptation of his own play crackles. In a rare move, the movie version keeps the same leads as the play, and it makes all the difference. While Michael Sheen holds his own (supported by an underrated Sam Rockwell), it’s Frank Langella’s riveting portrayal that brings it all home. We learn, ultimately, that the only man who can truly bring down Nixon is Nixon.
4. Doubt
“Sister, I don’t know if you and me are on the same side. I’ll be standing with my son and those who are good with my son. It’d be nice to see you there.”
It’s no coincidence that 20% of this year’s acting nods went to this film. Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman are in top form, and are still practically upstaged by Viola Davis’ ten minutes. And Amy Adams doesn’t exactly suck, either. The script (adapted by writer/director John Patrick Shanley from his own play) keeps you second-guessing yourself long after the movie’s over (click here if you’ve seen the movie and want to hear a popular alternate theory).
3. Milk
“Forty years old and I haven’t done a thing that I’m proud of.”
You make a great bio-pic the same way you make any great character study. You figure out what it is that you think makes this guy tick, and you explore it. The real tragedy, it seems, is that Harvey Milk (a career-best Sean Penn) cared too much for too many. The only difference between Jack Lira (Diego Luna) and Dan White (a truly brilliant Josh Brolin) is how they choose to deal with the fact that Milk cannot, in fact, be all things to all men. November 4, 2008 adds resonance in two very different ways. On the one hand, Prop 8 hammers home how much hasn’t changed. On the other hand, Milk’s message of hope is reflected by the other, far more positive outcome of that day.
“When somebody asks me a question, I tell them the answer.”
Danny Boyle has always been one of my favorites. He’s a director’s director. He can’t help but find a creative way to tell a story. Simon Beaufoy’s adaptation of Vikas Swarup’s novel is the perfect match for that talent. The most brutal love story put to film, mixing magical realism with totally fucking harsh realism, the movie manages to filter it all through the lens of a game show, offering the perfect escapist metaphor, as if it hadn’t done enough already. And through it all Dev Patel sells our hero’s hardened optimism, weathering the film’s tonal shifts effortlessly.
1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
“You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go.”
A lot of people thought it was boring. I thought it was brilliant and beautiful. I was happy to sit through all three hundred hours. And what David Fincher pulls off here is incredible. This is a meditation on mortality that is somehow infused with a sense of wonder. It has as much in common with The Seventh Seal as Forrest Gump.
Button feels like what would happen if David Fincher directed a Steven Spielberg film. You get all of the things that Fincher’s good at – a rich sense of texture merged with an almost gothic sense of drama (that’s opera you smell in Se7en, not realism) – mashed up with Spielbergian awe. As with There Will Be Blood, it’s impressive to see an already great director expand his palette.
Fincher’s not the only one growing. I’m used to seeing Brad Pitt play variations on Brad Pitt (Twelve Monkeys = unhinged Pitt, Ocean’s 11 = hip Pitt, Burn After Reading = goofy Pitt). But this is the first time he’s truly inhabited a character. Admittedly, he’s aided by fx that stretch the boundaries of what we call performance, but for a technophile like me, that only makes it more exciting.
As I was watching, all I could think was “This is how you make a movie.” In the very classic, traditional sense of Great Filmmaking. And while that’s a somewhat dull notion in theory, when someone actually pulls it off, it’s anything but.
wasn’t cloverfield from last year?
“dark night” and “curious case…” never would have made my top ten list. i still haven’t seen four of them (“milk”, “doubt”, “frost/nixon” and “bigger, stronger, faster”)
maybe it’s because i missed so many, was it just me or was 2008 a really weak year?
It wasn’t just you. 2008 was a weak-ass year. I think that’s part of the reason my choices were so obvious, but I’m not sure how that connects.