Just about to roll the year-end Mamo, so I guess there's no harm in finally publishing this:
What a weird, bad, troubling year it was for movies. Nominally, I assign a top ten list to the films I've seen in a given year - but some years just don't get there. In my head I call these "A.I. years" - because 2001 was the best recent example, a year where the overall offerings were so poor (or at least, the ones that I saw were so poor) that I ended up, not with a top ten or even a top five, but in that case with a top four - a "hopeful" top five list where I left an empty seat at the table for a guest to arrive later. (I ended up filling that fifth slot with A.I., not because the movie is good, but because Chris and I spent the better part of the next 2 years having occasional, enthusiastic discussions about just what in the hell we were supposed to make of that movie. It affected the moviegoing landscape profoundly for the year, which was more than I could say for most of the rest of the flicks out of 2001.)
This year came out about the same. For a year where I saw a handful of films that I pretty much loved as much as any others I've ever seen, 2008 was a film year without a middle class - a few greats, a number of goods, and an almost overwhelming slew of "mehs." You can tell you're in a year like this by examining the reviews of your three favourite critics: I guarantee they will not agree. Two of the critics I greatly admire put Benjamin Button on their Top Ten list; the third thinks the film is profoundly misguided and unsettling. Perhaps this is par for the course, but it felt like the waters were more troubled than usual in 2008; subjectivity ruled. Picking and choosing from among the informed masses was pointless. I returned to the basic set of tools: find out what a film's about (but not too much), who made it and who's in it, and go with your gut. The result, though, was a pretty wobbly year.
As a result, 2008 has a top five instead of a top ten, and even that just barely. I was tempted to leave an "empty seat" again, given that there are a number of films I haven't seen yet which might otherwise have proved list-worthy. Among those are Valkyrie, Man on Wire, Doubt, Rachel Getting Married, Milk and of course Revolutionary Road. In the meantime, though, the films of the year are...
- The Dark Knight
- Let the Right One In
- Wall-E
- Ché
- It Might Get Loud
Sure, it's become unseasonably fashionable to skewer The Dark Knight since its release; American culture (and ours by inevitable association) is nothing if not bipolar in its twin barrels of a) insistence upon enormous achievement, and b) resentment of same. Now, six months later, even some of the same people who were singing in the rafters about the newfound strength of the comic book movie in July, are down in the church basement fucking alter-boys a billion dollars later. Everybody hates a winner. But a winner it was, glossy and canny, and between The Dark Knight and Let the Right One In, 2008 continued one of this decade's key filmic movements - the LOTR-inaugurated march towards fully exploiting and expurgating the mythic strengths of archetypal stories. Fantasy is a genre in glorious bloom, unlike almost any other genre in movies right now. For a comic book movie and a Swedish vampire movie, these two films were, also, among the most cunning excisions of American political, moral, and sexual mores that have graced our screens this year. Not bad for "pop."
WALL-E, of course, is pop beyond pop; it is not a film of subtlety in its razing of American consumerism, but doesn't need to be, because it is furthermore such a lovingly enraptured tale of two individuals just plain needing each other - a strength in Let the Right One In, as well - that it's difficult not to be utterly beguiled. Love seemed to return to the movie screens this year after a long absence - real love, love where each partner completes the other and thereby opens the boundaries of the possible, not the grim (and dramatically facile) tragedy of love-of-the-doomed. 2008 held a number of refreshing returns to stories that say that great love does not need to end in poisoning, sinking ships, or Alzheimer's.
Ché gains the list almost by virtue of sheer mass; in essaying a guerrilla movie about guerrilla war (using guerrilla cameras, no less), Soderbergh generates enough electricity in 5 hours of running time to more than overwhelm any 2-hour entry on the list. The distinct halves of Ché, though, are also sharp, entertaining, and thoughtful, refreshing the memory of the landscape of possibilities of a filmmaker, a camera, and a sense of artistic fun. This was true of It Might Get Loud as well, to a surprisingly strong degree; for such a humdrum premise (2 hours on the cultural importance of the electric guitar?) it's stunning how much this film makes you want to run outdoors with a camera(/the artistic tool of your choice) in your hand and just make something beautiful.
Honourable Mentions
In spite of the overall weakness of the formal list, this was the year of Honourable Mentions. The Honourable Mention slot, for me, goes to the film that was quite usefully distinct in the overall viewing, but "missed it by this much" because there's something about it that just doesn't seem inherently list-worthy. Normally, I pick one. This year, I picked four:
- Citron and Flame, the movie Valkyrie wishes it could be
- Ce'st pas moi, je le jure, another meaty and grim essay of troubled boyhood that would make a fine real-world companion piece to Let the Right One In
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, one of those rare films which was actually originally included in my top five but slowly dropped as the days since I saw the film passed. Its strengths do not linger, and its weaknesses gain scale after the fact.
- And for whatever reason, I am quite after-the-fact obsessed with Sauna, a movie which everyone (and me) didn't think very much of at the Toronto Film Festival, but which has sort of kicked around the back of my head since then. It would probably earn the "A.I. slot," if one were available. Flawed, disturbing, fearless.
I would also heartily suggest that while Cloverfield might not belong on this list, it belongs on some list, somewhere, because from a purely technical perspective, it is one of the great achievements of the year. Would have loved it if they'd come up with some miraculous solution to the clichés, but it's still film school in a can for anyone who wants to deconstruct the Bourne run-and-gun filmic style. Additionally, obviously, it is a master class in film marketing, and unlikely to be challenged in that regard for years. (Incidentally: if you watch the film with the presumption that at the instant of the attack, Hud goes completely insane and can no longer rationally assess "reality," the movie works significantly better.)
Worst film of the year
There was no clear winner this year for worst film, either, probably because I just didn't end up going to anything that really made me want to skullfuck my eyes out at the Van Helsing level of awfulness. Even Martyrs - certainly the worst filmgoing experience I had this year - is too disreputably vile to be counted against real movies; it is not so much "bad" as "horrid," and as useful to me as rotten salad.
Instead, I am going to name Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in this slot, which is unfair and whiny; it is not a terrible film nor even a terrible disappointment, but certainly ended up being the most negative relationship I had with a movie this year. For such an underwhelming and ultimately unimportant film, Indy 4 sure irritates the fuck out of me, and my empathy for the Phantom Menace haters grew tenfold this year. It's foolish to think that your "childhood" is some sovereign territory that lives for your agency only, but it's also horrible when you willingly allow some piece of it to be despoiled by fallen men. We should all be stronger.
Best technology of the year
Nonsensical made-uppy category, but shinybludisks made a major impact in my film enjoyment this year. It took a while, but I am apparently turning into the sort of loser who would rather be home with his home theatre than out at the Scotiamount with the assholes. (Well, the Scotiamount sucks regardless.)
Other and miscellany
Best original score: The Dark Knight
Best performance: Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler
Best sequence of a boat hitting another boat: At the Edge of the World
Better on Blu than at the movies: Encounters at the End of the World
Best Blu-Ray overall: The Dark Knight (picture), WALL-E (features & extras), Lost: The Complete Fourth Season (watchability), Juno (huggability)
Most overrated film of any length: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
You'll never see it, but you really should: Medicine for Melancholy
Biggest disappointment: Hellboy 2
Best karate kick... to my heart!: Jean-Claude Van Damme's soliloquy in JCVD
Best... something: Synechdoche, New York
Unexpected words to live by: "If I run, you run." (Mila Kunis to Jason Segel in Forgetting Sarah Marshall)
Might be the inevitable reality that I so very, very much need my vacation, but whatever it is, September can't come soon enough. And if everything goes according to plan I'll be able to walk home from Midnight Madness... outstanding.