2008
January 8th, 2009 by Mike K.MIKE KING:
A caveat:
Despite being only a few hours away, moving to Madison in June severely curtailed my ability to keep up-to-date, even by flyover standards. As evidence, here are the top ten new films I read about on Cine-File but haven’t had the chance to see:
BALLAST (2008, Lance Hammer)
FULL BATTLE RATTLE (2008, Tony Gerber & Jesse Moss)
HUNGER (2008, Steve McQueen)
JCVD (2008, Mabrouk El Mechri)
OF TIME AND THE CITY (2008, Terence Davies)
SERBIS (2008, Brilliante Mendoza)
SPARROW (2008, Johnny To)
TOKYO SONATA (2008, Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
24 CITY (2008, Zhang ke Jia)
WENDY AND LUCY (2008, Kelly Reichardt)
Chicagoans don’t know how good they have it. That said, here are the best American features to first cross my path in 2008 (nearly half of which still haven’t hit Madison):
WALL-E (2008, Andrew Stanton)
Best film of the millennium.
GRAN TORINO (2008, Clint Eastwood)
In a year when actioner also-rans Bruce Campbell and Jean Claude Van-Damme sought to cash in on their negligible iconographies with winks and smirks, Dirty Harry’s bizarre deathbed penance is all the more astounding for its gravity. More than just a misfit sibling to UNFORGIVEN, GRAN TORINO is a rare descendent of Sam Fuller: literal, introspective, and socially engaged, tonally strange and pitch perfect.
THERE WILL BE BLOOD (2007, Paul Thomas Anderson)
BE KIND REWIND (2008, Michel Gondry)
SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (2008, Charlie Kaufman)
The beloved duo behind ETERNAL SUNSHINE splits up and actually makes movies worth rewatching - one a misanthropic curlicue and the other a beatific paean to movie love. A friend (who disliked it) termed SYNECDOCHE “the death of meta.” Yes, but not only that, it’s a viking funeral. Situated on the other end of the indulgence spectrum, REWIND is a homespun “take back the media” advocacy campaign. And a surprisingly persuasive one at that.
BILLY THE KID (2007, Jennifer Venditti)
AFTERSCHOOL (2008, Antonio Campos)
CLOVERFIELD (2008, Matt Reeves)
The most aesthetically rigorous blockbuster ever made?
CHOP SHOP (2007, Ramin Bahrani)
THE WRESTLER (2008, Darren Aronofsky)
Two quicksilver downers that bask in the entrancing dilapidation of their subjects: the iron triangle and Mickey Rourke.
Honorable Mention:
Tim and Eric, Awesome Show, Great Job! (Adult Swim)
Tim and Eric Nite Live (superdeluxe)
Abso-lutely the best editing anywhere, and a reinvention of that ineffable quality known as comic timing. Rather than cutting to the punchline, Tim and Eric are demonstrating that the cut is the punchline.