... continued from here...
5. "Wendy and Lucy" (Kelly Reichardt, heartbreaker). A couple bad breaks and a stubborn act of unkindness push a girl and her dog over the edge, from a marginal migratory existence into near-invisibility. Wendy (Michelle Williams) is driving to Alaska with her dog Lucy to find work in the fishing industry, probably in a cannery. (Note to Eastern critics who found this notion strange or fanciful: It's not even unusual. Many people, especially young people, in the Pacific Northwest head to Alaska for good-paying seasonal work.) Only a few acts of kindness manage to keep her from falling off the map entirely. This (almost) opening shot (again, I present only a chunk from the middle) is scored to the humming in her head, and represents a perfect miniature of the movie as a whole: Wendy and Lucy walking in the woods, playing fetch, moving in and out of the frame, passing through light and shadow, occasionally disappearing behind trunks and thickets, then emerging on the other side. (Christopher Long has a beautiful appreciation of the shot and the film at DVDTown.)
4. "Pineapple Express" (stoner comedy, bromantic comedy, genre parody, crime, action, gangster, Ninja movie). OK, I won't rehash the conceptual comedy that, for me, turns decent stuff into giddy hilarity, but the context and the execution provide the awesome high here. Take this brief exchange between Dale (Seth Rogen) and his dope dealer Saul (James Franco). This is a moment of joy in a budding friendship -- a minor conversation that Saul takes as an affirmation of worth: "Thanks, man." Is there a better depiction of how friends can make you feel better about yourself -- especially new friends, or friends who haven't really become your friends yet? (The poster on the wall, about a man who had a dream of footprints in the sand, provides hilarious foreshadowing: "It was then that I carried you...")
3. "A Christmas Tale" (Arnaud Desplechin; family comedy). More frames, mirrors, windows, doors, reflections, screens...! Young Paul, who has been seized by disorienting mental disturbances, arrives in the big old ancestral home of his maternal grandparents, where he sees Max Reinhardt's 1935 "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on TV, and a wolf in the doorway of an adjoining room. That's nothing compared to what's going on in his multi-layered extended family, gathered under one roof for the first time in ages. As John Magary phrased it in the introduction to a splendid interview with Desplechin, "A Christmas Tale" "breathes jolly, sulphuric air into that old bucking bronco we thought we'd whipped: the dysfunctional family holiday. Tireless, goofy, enraging, laughing in the face of Dull... 'How does he make these things?' I wondered." Yeah, me too.
2. "The Edge of Heaven" (Fatih Akin; network-narrative drama). A Turkish professor who teaches Goethe at the University of Hamburg, his father, a prostitute, her daughter, her daughter's lover, her mother, a German book store in Istanbul, a prison, a hotel room, an underground network of militant political activists, murder... These are some of the elements in the narrative web of "The Edge of Heaven," and they don't begin to give you an idea of what the movie is "about," or what it feels like as it unfolds. And that's about all I want to say about that right now, except to note that the gradual intersection of two converging roads -- as depicted in the first shot in the excerpt used above -- was among the most exhilarating moments in movies this year.
1. "In Bruges" (Martin McDonagh; gangster comedy, metaphysical thriller, travelogue, homage nod-of-the-head). Two Irish Catholic sinners (hitmen, actually) spend some time in an in-betweeny place, a gorgeous fairy-tale tourist trap that's also "the best-preserved Medieval town in Belgium, apparently." The paternal Ken (Brendan Gleeson) wants to take in the sights -- the churches, the museums, the "old buildings." The impetuous and incorrigible boy (Colin Farrell, a five-year-old in a young man's body) wants to get drunk and get laid. They've been told to stay put and keep a low profile until they hear from Harry (Ralph Fiennes) about their next job. And there's a gorgeous girl in the Belgian film industry who's working on a Dutch film that's shooting in town. About a midget.
The two finest, funniest, most moving male lead performances of the year (one is unthinkable without the other) in the directorial debut of the year -- a film that's riddled with profane humor and unexpected poignance, and that treats violence as shocking and painful again (McDonagh studied Peckinpah), something few post-"Pulp Fiction" films besides "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" have been able to do so effectively.
+ Bonus: "Che" (Steven Soderbergh; instructional documentary, with re-enactments). Though most of the film is presented like "How To" manual for cult-of-personality socialist revolution (Part I: How To...; Part II: How Not To...), this is a Mizoguchi shot. A few men wade into a river. These men, this river. Here, now. But the ripples from their actions will be felt around the world, throughout history...
Coda: The dreamer, having awakened, returns to her slumbers.
But the ripples from their actions will be felt around the world, throughout history...
Brilliant observation, Jim. ¡Venceremos!
What about Synecdoche, New York?
I was my favorite this year.
What I think would be an interesting idea is if someone polled several hundred people whose opinions on films were worth asking and had them give their opinions on the Best Picture/Actor/Actress since 1927. Sort of like Danny Peary's "Alternate Oscars," only this time it could include foreign language films. And it could also suggest what the runner-ups were. We have no idea how close oscar races were, though simple probability suggests that best pictures that won a lot of oscars (Gandhi, Titanic) won by a larger margin than those that didn't (Chariots of Fire, Chicago). We could start with the National Society of Film Critics.
Anthony -
Synecdoche, New York seems to be a love-it-or-hate-it kind of film, and Jim's firmly in the latter group amongst viewers.
Well, In Bruges is my ninth favourite film of the year, and The Edge of Heaven is my tenth favourite (might've ranked a bit higher if the near-misses between converging characters didn't get so cute on a few occasions). Pineapple Express was amongst the five weakest films I saw from 2008 (not altogether "bad", but limited to a few scattered chuckles in its second act), and I'll check out A Christmas Tale and Wendy And Lucy on DVD.
As for the other list of five, if The Fall is anything like Tarsem's The Cell, I expect a colourful two-hour music video...pretty but empty. Let The Right One In is my sixth favourite of the year, and Shotgun Stories is somewhere around #12 of those I've seen...nothing groundbreaking, but quietly compelling. And I'll certainly give Chop Shop and Still Life a look on DVD.
I love how eclectic your list is. I'm surprised at your choice of Pineapple Express. Its mix of slapstick and extreme violence didn't work for me. But James Franco was hilarious; he stole the show.
It's a crime that Franco isn't up for an Oscar.
"In Bruges" was the movie that grew on me this year. As of today, I've seen it thrice. Yes, some of the jokes lose their initial bite. (Though I'm sure that'll come back if I stay away for a while.) The movie, overall, gets better.
I enjoyed the movie in theaters as charmingly peculiar, off-the-beaten path entertainment but I didn't really take its themes and 'poignancy' that seriously. The final shootout lost me in how 'contrived' it is (and that I'd seen shootouts before and was disappointed by that ending given how original the rest had been up until).
Seeing the film again, I felt differently. I knew what would happen to you-know-who and you-know-who and you-know-who and watched all their scenes with that in mind. I felt bad for them knowing their eventual fates. The tragedy took hold of me. I noticed how every scene dancing up to those final scenes was not obviously moving towards it - the problem seems like it will solve itself many times along the way. But it doesn't because of the flaws, virtues and/or naivety of each character (except one who is the only adult) and how this causes them to interact in painfully truthful ways.
The character at the center of attention is reckless but also a man-child who just didn't know any better. And he's really a good guy at heart. Just not much going on upstairs. An understanding person feels compelled to forgive him. A lonely understanding person will go as far as to sacrifice themselves to stop him from being killed by a boss who, you can tell by the look on his face, feels he's doing something wrong but has his 'principles' he thinks he must live up to or else all hell will break loose. In the end, all hell breaks loose because of those principles. But then even the boss is redeemable because he lives up to his own law. So the character that really just got the short end of the stick in all this mess is the last guy you'd want to get killed. But life has a cruel way of making the innocent parties pay for the mistakes of the ignoramuses.
Nothing contrived about it. Happens all the time.
But I don't wanna make the movie sound like it's just a sad, human tragicomedy. Cause, on top of all that, it's a blast of sheer fun. I was reading Ebert's Great Movies review of "Planes, Trains and Automobiles" and how it's one of the only movies he watches once a year. I think "In Bruges" could become that film for me.
JE: I've watched it three times so far, too. It's one of those movies that plays like music, from the imagery to the dialog to the performances. You make me want to see it again!
Pineapple Express is a top-5 movie for me, too. Just, one of the funniest and most enjoyable theater experiences I can remember. There is not enough thanks to go around to give a film that can make you smile that much its due. But, top 5. Definitely.
And I really need to see In Bruges, but I have to wait till the shot of (SPOILERS!) a main character dying suddenly, from one of your editing videos, has completely left my memory. So it could take years. But eventually I'll get to it, it just seems like my kind of movie.
JE: I'm sorry -- there was a spoiler warning on that one! But, even so, it's not quite the way it appears...
So I had no idea what 'industrial comedy' was either. I did a google. Is this what you meant by it Jim?
"Industrial comedy" describes the most important and most predominant form of comedy on German stages from 1919 to 1933. Discoveries, reversals, mistaken identities, and abrupt plot twists were its stock-in-trade.
JE: I was attempting to show how some of these movies confound generic labels. So, I combined and made up some of my own to fit what they're doing. If you've seen "Still Life," for example, "romantic/industrial comedy" seems both peculiarly apt (a deadpan-funny, dead-end romance in a decaying industrial landscape -- with some science-fiction elements thrown in) and, inevitably, hopelessly inadequate. That was the idea.
IN BRUGES was my favorite film of 2008...until I saw SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK. Something just fit into place and clicked like it never has before. That movie IS life.
Then I saw THE WRESTLER and MILK which moved me on a "human" level that was not as all-encompassing and all-moving as Kaufman's brilliant film.
If I ranked beyond the top 2 (or in this case 3 as the latter two are a tie), I'd put IN BRUGES 4th (but it's in my alphabetical "rest of the best" of the year list)
Jim,
Funny, I absolute love your 5-8 movies (and I haven't seen Shotgun Stories or The Fall) and they're all in my Top 10 as well. But I wasn't a big fan of any of the 1-4 films.
I have been mildly surprised at your fondness for Edge of Heaven. As someone who didn't care for Crash or Babel, I wouldn't have expected you to warm to a film with a similar narrative structure. I'll grant the major difference among these films is that Edge of Heaven doesn't have a message that it pounds home like a sledge hammer and it's certainly a much better film than either of those, but I still found it to be another entrant in the rather shallow "we're all connected" cycle (or network-narrative, as you reference) of films that have been popular lately. It's not a structure that I respond to at all... at least not positively. It was, however, wonderful to see Hanna Schygulla again.
I would have liked In Bruges if it wasn't for the people in it. I found it a very moving evocation of setting - I wanna be in f***ing Bruges! - and it captured a wistful, melancholic mood that I felt I could settle into very comfortably. But I just didn't "buy" any of the characters other than Brendan Gleeson. He was marvelous. But Farrel's existential crisis never felt real to me, and their snappy banter was irritating as often as not. And as for Ralph Fiennes... it just hasn't been a good few years for him. There are some movies where he sticks out like a sore thumb and brings everything to a crashing halt. That's true here and it would have been true of The Reader if there was anything to bring to a halt.
But I won't complain about any list that promotes the sheer brilliance of the playful, mournful, and downright gonzo film that is "Still Life," perhaps the finest movie by the world's greatest under-50 director.
JE: I'm glad you describe "Still Life" as "gonzo." (I'd apply that term to "Christmas Tale," too.) No question my "best favorites" are so labeled because they work for me on emotional wavelengths (well, "Che" not so much) as well as critical ones. "Edge of Heaven" didn't feel schematic to me the way "Babel" (for example) does, and I found the imagery (and the music, and the faces) thrilling in ways that reminded me of my response to "Still Life." I can see how you might find the characters in "In Bruges" grating. To me, the language was precisely composed music and the actors like extraordinarily adept musicians (performing McDonagh instead of, say, Coen). And that Irish playwright knows how to put images together!
Interesting how many here seem to have a 'top 10' of the year and, furthermore, know exactly what position each movie is in. "So and so was my Xth favorite." Is each movie on your list really a tenth better than the one before it? Why do people still insist on numerical ranking? It's perfectly understandable to say "OK, these are the best" or "OK, this is THE best" of the year but is #6 all that different from #8? #7 from #9? Different movies. Both worth watching. Yet do you notice the difference in quality? Maybe once a decade... at best. So why do we still do this? When can we abolish numerical ordering altogether?
I just saw "The Edge of Heaven" a few weeks ago on DVD, and while its occasional clunky stabs at connecting its various storylines did make me wince a bit, I think it's considerably better than "Crash," "Babel" and other American samples of the "network narrative," mostly because writer-director Fatih Akin seems to actually care about trying to understand his characters as people, not just using them as stick figures to demonstrate a thesis, as many of those other hyperlink films do. It's deeply moving as human drama in ways those films just aren't.
Btw, I like (to varying degrees) many of your other choices, Jim; I'm especially gratified by the pick of "Still Life," which alternates with Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Flight of the Red Balloon" as my favorite film of 2008 depending on my mood. Your classification of it as "romantic/industrial comedy" is inspired; it's a film that is overflowing with life---both with its dual central narrative and in its margins---amidst its ostensibly depressing surroundings. (Fwiw, the only ones I didn't care for were "Pineapple Express," "A Christmas Tale" and "Che"; still haven't seen "In Bruges" or "The Fall.")
"Interesting how many here seem to have a 'top 10' of the year and, furthermore, know exactly what position each movie is in."
I can only speak for myself, Karlos, in stating that though I've had one or two favourite films that stood out in past years, this is the first time I've tried keeping a running tally of what I've seen, and placed them in a relative pecking order. The only reason I remember what number I have each film at is because each time I've seen a film, I've added it to the list. It's basically an issue of "I liked it a bit better than that, but not quite as much as that". All that said, I'm not keeping track when it comes to 2009 films, as I don't really dig the pecking order nonsense either...opinions are fluid and ever-evolving.
I quite liked Henry Selick's Coraline, though.
Cheers.
Karlos,
Speaking only for myself, I provide numbered top ten lists because it's fun and it's one way of organzing information (both the list itself, and then the numbering.) In general, I am significantly more enthusiastic about my top few movies than the ones lower on the list but you could probably usually swap around 5-10 or 5-12 or whatever relatively easily. It's arbitrary and nobody should take it too seriously, but who would?
I only look at these lists as snapshots at a specific point in time. And of course they're limited to what I've seen from each year which is a major limitation for just about anyone. They always change. I'd like to see critics re-post their "Best of" lists for a year in five years to see what changed, but I imagine reader interest in that is non-existent.
I've looked back on lists I've submitted in polls and even saw a few titles that, if you had asked me today I would have said I wasn't all that keen on (Did I really put Junebug in my top 5 just a few years ago? Why?). However, if I look back at my top 1 or 2 from each year, I still think of them as the great films of recent years: Colossal Youth, The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Helvetica (the best film I never heard of that Jim drew my attention to), Tropical Malady, Grizzly Man, Offside, Syndromes and a Century. Yeah, they're all still up there for me.
Wow, there's even a film on my "Honorable Mention" list from 2005 that doesn't even sound remotely familiar. "Nobody Knows." Apparently I saw it and I liked it. Thank goodness for lists. I'd have never remembered. (After an IMDB check: Oh yeah, that one!)
Karlos,
Your question (and the replies already posted) is interesting to me, partly because I have no interest in ordering my own favorites numerically--and find it pretty much impossible, anyway--but really appreciate it when other people/critics do it. The reason is simply that there are so many movies out there that it's good to have some kind of system for figuring out what to watch next, then next, then next....
Wow. You didn't pick Synechdoche, New York for any spots in your top ten. Wow, I just can't believe how continually disappointing you are. To not be able to see the beauty, brilliance and insight in Kaufman's movie is astounding for someone who professes to love film art so much. In Bruges and Pineapple Express are wonderful films, yes, but to totally ignore Synechdoche is blatantly bizarre to me. Sounds like you missed the boat. Again. You miss the boat a lot.
But it doesn't matter, Jim. We all know your real #1 is The Dark Knight. It doesn't matter how many times you called it "thematically ridiculous" or "light entertainment" or "lacking in imagination," you spent more time and effort discussing and analyzing TDK than the other movies on your top 10 combined. It obviously effected you more than any other movie this year - why else would you so often become childish in your defenses of your criticisms against it? It's okay - that's what it did for everyone else who saw it. The Dark Knight is the film of 2008, and you made as good an argument for that statement as anyone else. This top ten list is trivial.
Godwin's Law states that the longer an Internet thread lasts, the higher the probability that someone will mention Hitler or the Nazis.
I believe it is time to coin Emerson's law. The longer a thread on a film blog, the higher the probability that someone will declare The Dark Knight to be the greatest film of 2008. Circa February 2009, it appears that probability rapidly approaches 100%.
JE: I'm waiting for somebody to claim that I've equated "TDK" with Naziism. Has that happened yet?
Just saw In Bruges. Was absolutely mesmerized until about the last twenty minutes, which feel way less nuanced and way more choreographed than everything that leads up to it. A fine film though. Enjoyed the way it tinkers with your expectations. One moment I'm catching a whiff of Prizzi's Honor, the next moment it feels like Of Mice and Men and so on and so forth. Colin Farrell does incredible work here, doing more acting with the crease between his eyebrows than most actors do with their entire face.
Where is the Dark Knight.
JE: I think it's on my "Amazing Phenomenon But Not Really A Very Good Movie" list.