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Gerald Cooperberg
01-21-2009, 04:01 PM
The obligatory/arbitrary summary:

Wished I'd seen: Every year-end list is punctuated for me by the specter of the films I didn't get to see; films that came and went in theaters at inconvenient times, films that never opened here in fly-over country, films that I only heard about when other folks started to summarize their favorites. This year, that list includes Synecdoche, NY, Wendy & Lucy, The Class, Ballast, Trouble the Water, Full Battle Rattle, I've Loved You So Long, and Nothing But the Truth.

Pleasant surprise: If you had told me that a three-hour Christmas movie would have ranked among my favorites, I would've told you to put down the pipe. That was before I saw Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale, a beautiful, confounding film about a dysfunctional family coming together for the holiday. By turns uncomfortably realistic and lyrically fantastical and grounded by performances from a universally stellar cast including Catherine Deneuve, Matthieu Almaric, and The Diving Bell & the Butterfly's Anne Consigny, Desplechin's film is a graceful triumph.

Auspicious debut: The opening moment's of Joachim Trier's Reprise knocked my breath away, and the echo of that opening that closes the film is absolutely devastating. In between, Trier crafts a keenly observed, challenging, and continually inventive work that both echoes the French New Wave and newer bravura filmmakers like Alfonso Cuarón while never quite ripping them off.

Opening sequence: I love a film that grabs you immediately, like the aforementioned Reprise. Better still is David Mamet's Redbelt, featuring a mesmerizing Chiwetel Ejiofor leading a jujitsu class. Mamet's rhythmic editing, strong characterization, and unflinching depiction of men pushed to their limits are all on display within that defining first scene.

Scene-stealing performance: Michael Shannon practically single-handedly made the achingly self-important Revolutionary Road bearable, but this was the year of Heath Ledger: not only did he continue to show acting depth not hinted at pre-Brokeback Mountain but he erased Jack Nicholson's defining depiction of the Joker in a rout. There wasn't a single moment of screen time for Ledger in The Dark Knight that wasn't queasily riveting. And that nurse's uniform!

Commanding performance: There were many to point to in 2008, from Sean Penn's totally immersive Harvey Milk to Frank Langella's subtle evocation of Richard Nixon to actors that created their own unique characters that seemed so familiar, like Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky and Chiwetel Ejiofor in Redbelt... but try to find a better ten minutes in film than Michael Fassbinder's crucial dialogue with a priest that gives way to a long monologue at the center of Hunger as imprisoned IRA member Bobby Sands.

Guilty pleasure: Oliver Assayas' nonsensical "erotic thriller" Boarding Gate featured some of the most incomprehensible plotting, ludicrous locations, and wooden acting (he casted Kim Gordon, people!) ever committed to digital video. And yet it was strangely beautiful, anchored by a physical, urgent performance by Asia Argento. Just try not to crack up at her intimate, suspensful conversation with Michael Madsen about financial magazines.

Underrated: Perhaps the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading seemed lightweight to some folks after No Country for Old Men, but that doesn't diminish its standing as a tightly and wickedly plotted film that elicits some uproarious performances from A-List actors and is perhaps their funniest satire since... well, since Raising Arizona, in my opinion.

Overrated: God, there was enough chaff in this year's "prestige pictures" (from obvious Oscar bait like The Reader to the stunningly awful Forrest Gump retread whose title I don't even have to mention) that this could be a potentially long list, but how could any film be more overrated than this year's fanboy favorite, The Dark Knight? Sure, I liked it. It had some challenging moral questions at its core, featured great production design and a career performance from Ledger, but c'mon-- anyone annointing it one of the greatest pictures of all time is purposely overlooking its incredibly bloated running time, exhaustingly portentious tone, ridiculous lisping performance by Christian Bale, laughably distracting CGI rendering of Harvey Dent's face, and conviction that human nature can only be truly tested and understood through violence. Count me among the detractors.

Tear-jerker (tears of laughter edition): Burn After Reading leaves me gasping upon multiple viewings, but I could watch about three hours more of James Franco's loopy non-sequiturs in Pineapple Express and keep on laughing.

Tear-jerker (take the side entrance out of the theater edition): There are so many absolutely shattering scenes in Rachel Getting Married that I lost count. That we so thoroughly understand these characters and the mistakes that they are unable to leave behind by the end of the movie makes the uplift of the extended wedding scenes that much more emotional.

Most in need of repeat viewing: Waltz With Bashir doesn't provide any easy answers in its narrator's quest to understand his role as an Israeli soldier in a 1983 massacre in Lebanon, but it's multiple dreamlike sequences often hold a beauty of their own even when they don't provide any illumination to the questions at the film's core. But rarely have I seen a film as strange as Carlos Reygadas' slow-burning Silent Light, about Russian Mennonites in Mexico. The movie builds a intensely off-putting tone for its first hour-and-a-half, then takes such an abrupt turn in the closing scene that I immediately wanted to watch the entire picture again.

Least favorite film of 2008: I confess I sat through my fair share of not-enjoyably-bad-just-bad films like Chris Waitt's supremely self-indulgent "documentary" A Complete History of My Sexual Failures and the inane Surfer, Dude (it was morbid curiosity, I swear), but nowhere was squandered potential more evident than in the Chuck Palahniuk adaptation Choke, devoid of both laughs and provocation. Even Sam Rockwell could not acquit himself. Fiasco!

Favorite film of 2008: I'd recommend Rachel Getting Married and Reprise to anyone but the most die hard action fan, but my personal favorite of 2008 was Fatih Akin's intricately crafted The Edge of Heaven, a meditation on parents and children, what can be reclaimed and what is lost forever, and how the paths we choose in life often intersect, double back, or barely miss fate in surprising ways. The final shot of the film, holding steady as the credits roll, is as satisfyingly prolonged as No Country for Old Men's ending was perfectly abrupt.

-Coop

Kam
01-21-2009, 10:18 PM
The obligatory/arbitrary summary:


-Coop

geebus. i thought i was gonna sound informed when i mentioned Balast.