Panopticon Blog

Top Ten Films of 2008

Though I found many of 2008’s prestige films, from Rachel Getting Married to Milk to Slumdog Millionaire somewhat overrated — in some cases VERY overrated — some of the obvious Oscar-bait lived up to its billing. Also, a couple of films that critics dismissed, I think, are worth another look. Here, in alphabetical order, are the ten films I saw in 2008 that had exceptional qualities. On any given day, most of these films could have been the best film of 2008.

Burn After Reading

As The Big Lebowski was to hard-boiled detective noir films like The Big Sleep, Burn After Reading is to all those all-star, oh-so-important socio-political intrigue flicks like Syriana. What makes the Coen Brothers more than mere satirists is how deeply they understand the construction of these films and invert them 180 degrees – they hold a mirror up to the genre, and expose its innate artificiality. It’s a bonus that the film is hilarious – John Malkovich, Brad Pitt and JK Simmons are pitch-perfect – and that it’s written and directed with the consummate (though ridiculous) skill that the Coens deliver to their films, serious and absurd alike.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

David Fincher, one of our darkest, least compromising mainstream directors, may seem like an odd fit for a fanciful tale of a man who ages in reverse. But in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fincher’s chilly intellectualism and screenwriter Eric Roth’s warm humanism fuse into a compelling, captivating and heart-breaking cocktail. To say nothing of the film’s technical virtuosity (from the stunning mahogany cinematography to the flawless reverse aging effects applied to the never-better Brad Pitt), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button spookily evokes the evolution of America while consciously staying tangential to history. It’s an absorbing, lonely film, and its breathtaking third act is possibly the most masterful stretch in Fincher’s already impressive filmography.

The Dark Knight

The Bush years, in their almost constant state of crisis, find their finest cinematic mirror in the unlikeliest of places – a big budget superhero movie. If Batman Begins intriguingly mined contemporary relevance in Bruce Wayne’s Gotham City, The Dark Knight foregrounds hot topics with Shakespearean intensity. Yes, the bank heist and car chase are spectacular (kudos to director Christopher Nolan for keeping the action mostly CGI free), but it’s the film’s unnerving, constant moral grayness that made The Dark Knight the year’s most discussed movie. Heath Ledger, in his brilliant rendition of the Joker, epitomized the (inter)national feelings of nagging fear and anxiety that have gripped our lives.

The Fall

By normal standards, The Fall is not a great film. The story — about a depressed stunt-man weaving a tale for an injured little girl — is jumbled, the acting is inconsistent, and the tone is often confused. That being said, The Fall is worth seeing because its very existence boggles the mind. Director Tarsem Singh, between high profile commercial directing gigs, shot The Fall in some of the world’s most spectacular, unusual locations – it is a fantasy film, completely devoid of computer effects, shot in the world’s most fantastical locations. In terms of sheer visual storytelling, it’s one of the most impressive films I’ve ever seen.

Frost/Nixon

Adapted from Peter Morgan’s screenplay taken from his own successful Broadway play, Ron Howard proves the ideal director for Frost/Nixon. Though Howard’s work can sometimes suffer from ordinariness – take the absurdly overrated A Beautiful Mind – he also has the professionalism to stand back and let a very, very strong script do its work. It helps immeasurably that Frank Langella and Michael Sheen import and resize their Broadway performances for the big screen – Langella’s guilt-stricken, competitive Nixon burns a hole in the screen, and Michael Sheen nails the trickier performance as David Frost, a man so driven by finance and ego that he almost misses his chance at professional redemption.

Happy-Go-Lucky

Mike Leigh’s largely improvised, socially conscious dramas are usually films I admire more than I love – that’s not the case with Happy-Go-Lucky, partially because the film is such a change of pace for the writer/director. Sally Hawkins, in the year’s best performance, plays Poppy, an unflaggingly optimistic 30-ish London kindergarten teacher; a character that could have been a caricature if not for Hawkins’ and Leigh’s gradual inclusion of Poppy’s more serious side that exposes her optimism as a choice rather than a mental affect. Poppy’s driving lessons, and her interaction with the tightly-wound instructor ingeniously played by Eddie Marsan, are the backbone of the often anti-narrative film, and are amongst the most gripping acting displays in recent memory.

Let the Right One In

Director Tomas Alfredson’s wintry, unnerving, oh-so-European vampire film has often been referred to as a “coming of age” film or, more strangely, a touching story of friendship. These descriptions may hint at the surface of the profoundly unsettling Let The Right One In, if only because the main characters are both twelve-year-olds (well, one is a vampire in arrested development at age twelve). Pop cultural rules of vampire films are both followed and subverted in the film’s brilliant screenplay. Let The Right One In has its fair share of bloodletting, but its final, violence-less scene is more disquieting than any horror machinations that come before.

Wall*E

For about 45 minutes, Wall*E is the best Pixar movie ever made – high praise, considering they’re responsible for Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille and others. Not only have they raised their technical game – the film’s vision of a junked, dead Earth are as striking as any post-apocalyptic committed to screen – but the wordless courtship between the adorably analog Wall*E and his high-tech love interest EVE is a masterpiece of slapstick storytelling. That the movie’s second half is too preachy and too stuffed with action sequences is disappointing, but the relationship between Wall*E and EVE remains gorgeously subtle throughout.

Waltz With Bashir

The best films dealing with Mideast strife practically bathe themselves in political and moral murk, but Waltz With Bashir is the first to weave this uneasiness into its physical presentation. This hypnotic animation/documentary/memoir from Israeli director Air Folman circles the truth behind the 1982 Israeli/Lebanese conflict, beginning with swooping, surrealistic vignettes recalled by former Israeli soldiers and eventually centering on Folman’s own recollection of the event (he was in the Israeli military as a young man). The vivid animation allows for striking visual metaphor (including the titular “Waltz with Bashir” danced by an Israeli soldier) that ultimately give way to a devastating face-to-face look at the grim reality of war.

The Wrestler

After a triptych of formally inventive, intellectually astute films – the black and white theoretical math thriller (!) Pi, the punishing Requiem for a Dream and the searching, vastly underrated The Fountain – director Darren Aronofsky has changed gears. Giving Mickey Rourke the comeback role of a lifetime as worn-out professional wrestler Randy “The Ram” Robinson, The Wrestler is both a fascinating look behind the scenes of the “fake” sport of pro-wrestling and the limits of a life lived selling one’s body (both Rourke’s character and Marisa Tomei’s not-as-cliché-as-it-sounds role as a sympathetic stripper). But The Wrestler is Rourke’s moment, carrying the film’s tender, bittersweet emotional resonance on his broad shoulders.