Top 100 of 2008 (91-100)

I'm skipping commentary here. None of these films really warrant a second thought outside of not being quite as awful as 100-110.

91. Cloverfield

92. Ben X

93. The Fall
94. A Christmas Tale 95. Pineapple Express 96. Happy-Go-Lucky 97. Mamma Mia! 98. Son of Rambow 99. Summer Palace 100. Transsiberian

Top 100 of 2008

I slacked off on this blogging crap for awhile, but I figured I might as well make an attempt to resurrect the site. And what better way to do that than to post my thoughts on 2008 films, since I didn't get around to it last year. There are still a few films I haven't seen that I'd like to get to, most notably, The Class, which won the Palme D'Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival.

I think I'm going to refrain from posting detailed thoughts on every film, and probably just reserve commentary until the top 10 or something like that. But, to get things started, here are the films that missed the top 100. I should also proudly add that I did not pay to see a single one of these in theaters:

101. Sex And The City: The Movie
The show was funny in half hour increments. But the franchise has become somewhat of a relic of its time, and really... did we really need close to two and a half hours to tell this story?

102. Flawless
Some film titles just set the joke up far too easily. Silly heist film. Demi Moore struggling with a British accent. Just sort of unintentionally funny.... but just sort of.

103. Baby Mama
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler are funny. But the movie wasn't.

104. W.
Seemed like Oliver Stone just wanted to be the first out of the gate to make a biopic about this jackass. I'm sure more will come. But this film doesn't know what it wants to be, but doesn't work on any level.

105. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
Kind of like a French version of The Naked Gun, but not funny or clever. Just stupid with subtitles. But the French had a thing for Jerry Lewis too, so maybe I just don't get some French humor. In which case, I suspect Carrot Top and Dane Cook are HUGE over there.

106. Kabluey
I can only imagine that this was the product of some talentless, frustrated screenwriter being stuck in L.A. traffic, looking out the passenger side window, seeing some poor sap dressed in a corporate mascot outfit and thinking "Hey! Nobody's every done a movie about THAT guy!" Well, apparently, for good reason.

107. Chicago 10
Just a complete mess. It's amazing how 2008 landed two animated documentaries at either end of the spectrum. One shows it can work. This shows that it can also fail miserably.

108. Tropic Thunder
This was pretty much aggressively not funny. I just don't understand how anyone liked this at all, yet so many people think this shit was hilarious. Seriously... I just don't understand it. There has to be some sort of pharmaceutical explanation behind people's enjoyment of this terrible, terrible movie.

109. The Wackness
What an annoying piece of shit. I wanted to throw things at my television when I Netflixed this one. Amateur night all the way. Not only was it a complete waste of time, the extent to which it irritated me lasted the rest of the evening.

And the worst film of 2008...

110. Mongol
This movie was tedious as hell, looked like it was filmed through a lens that was smeared with crap, corny effects, and just completely devoid of anything worth recommending. yet this got an Oscar nod for Best Foreign language film in 2007, when amazing films like 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, Persepolis, XXY, and The Edge of Heaven can't make the list, and of the submissions, I could say that this is the last film that should have been nommed for anything, makes it all the more frustrating that the Oscar nomination process for foreign films is completely screwed up.

Bad Blogger!

I don't think anyone actively reads this thing anyway, but I sort of let things slide and got lazy about the film blogging.

So, it's mid-December, and there are only a handful of films left on the plate that I have yet to see. Some I'm looking forward to, others not so much.

I did attend the Cineworld Film Festival again this year, so I will just post some brief notes about each of the films I saw, in descending order of preference...

The Wrestler: Loved this one. Every accolade you've heard is true and outstanding job by Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei.
Waltz With Bashir: Amazing visuals (so much so, that it was hard to take your eyes off long enough to read the subtitles, so I felt like I missed stuff). In any case, I look forward to watching it again.
Slumdog Millionaire: I had some problems with the story, but not enough to bea dealbreaker. Enjoyable, but I think it may be a victim of being overpraised a little. Danny Boyle does a pretty great job in his direction, and I enjoyed the storytelling device with the "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" show setting the backstory in motion.
Fighting For Life: A pretty fascinating documentary about the medical teams in the armed services frmo the frontlines in Iraq and Afghanistan all the way back to Walter Reed. Very insightful.
Let The Right One In: Good, moody Swedish film that's sort of a hybrid of a coming of age tale and a vampire movie. Enjoyable, but part of me was left disappointed.
The Great Buck Howard: Nice cast (John Malkovich, Colin and Tom Hanks, Emily Blunt) and mildly entertaining, but when it opens in 2009, just make it a netflix selection.
Yonkers Joe: not bad, just an utterly unnecessary film. Christine Lahti was quite good, but not really worth the effort.

2008: A Progress Report

So, I figured this at about the same point where I usually do a "halfway through" update. The next few months hold the potentially great films, and some of the smaller ones come out on DVD. At this point, I'd say that my top 3 is fairly interchangeable based on my mood, and I only saw 5 that were completely worthless.

At this point last year, I was at 52. This year, I'm at 51. The economy has changed, so I haven't been to the theater as much, and I also had to give up my Tampa Theater membership (Smart time to increase membership from $100 to $500!), so that has impacted my viewing habits too. Nice to know though, that I'm not that far off last year's pace. In any case, here are the top 51 movies I've seen from 2008:

1. Taxi To The Dark Side

2. The Visitor

3. Mister Lonely
4. Snow Angels
5. The Dark Knight
6. Tell No One
7. The Edge of Heaven

8. The Strangers
9. Young @ Heart 10. Elegy
11. Burn After Reading
12. The Counterfeiters

13. Bigger, Stronger, Faster*

14. Reprise
15. The Bank Job
16. Shotgun Stories
17. Funny Games

18. Roman de Gare
19. Hamlet 2
20. Under The Same Moon

21. Forgetting Sarah Marshall

22. The Other Boleyn Girl

23. Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day

24. Vicky Cristina Barcelona

25. Man On Wire

26. Chop Shop

27. Before I Forget

28. Momma's Man
29. Diary Of The Dead

30. Be Kind Rewind
31. In Bruges
32. Cassandra's Dream

33. Married Life
34. The Year My Parents Went On Vacation

35. Savage Grace
36. Stop-Loss
37 When Did You Last See Your Father?

38. Beauty In Trouble

39. Caramel

40. Teeth

41. My Blueberry Nights

42. The Fall

43. Pineapple Express

44. Son of Rambow

45. Summer Palace

46. Sex And The City: The Movie

47. Flawless

48. Baby Mama
49. OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies

50. Kabluey

51. Chicago 10

Hurricane Film Festivals!

So, one of the sad facts of life when you are a Florida resident is that you will at some point deal with a hurricane. For as big and bad as the can potentially be, more often than not, they're really just a grand inconvenience.

You're stuck inside all day, and mostly, everything on TV is about hurricane coverage. Trust me, the more you watch it, the more crazed and worried you will become. I mean, sure, you obviously want to stay up-to-date on what's happening, but at the end of the day, you just can't obsessively watch the coverage. It just makes you paranoid.

Now, there are all the obvious preparations that need to be done, such as stocking up on water, beer, non-perishables and the like. But, you also need to stock up on entertainment. After all, you're going to be stuck inside for a day. Now, if you subscribe to Netflix, hold off on watching your movies since you can watch them all during the time you're stuck inside.

And if you know one is on it's way, rearrange your queue so you have some variety coming your way in time to ward off boredom. If you don't subscribe to Netfilx, let me tell you a few things I discovered in my past dealings with these things.

Back in 2004, Florida went through a number of hurricanes in rapid succession. And while they were all damaging in some way, I found the worst one of the bunch to be Hurricane Jeanne. Jeanne may not have been as destructive as Charlie or Ivan, but that storm was a monster, and a slow-moving monster at that. Just to give you a visual...

Okay, so this thing stayed over us for three days. Three days in which you could not leave the house, and more irritatingly, it fell on Labor Day weekend, so the three-day weekend I had been longing for was completely wasted.

So, in preparation, I figured that in addition to my three Netflix movies at home, it may be wise to swing by Blockbuster and pick up some additional titles.

The thing you'll find; however, is that by the time you get there, a lot of things have been picked over. However, given people's reluctance to dive into the unfamiliar, the foreign films and documentaries remained completely untouched. And quite frankly, I was far more satisfied using my confinement watching films like Z, 8 1/2, and Through A Glass Darkly than I ever would have been renting the latest straight-to-video Steven Segal film because it was the only thing left on the new release wall.

Even if you have a reluctance to get into foreign films or documentaries, give it a shot, and you may find yourself opening a brand new door and finding a whole new world of cinema to choose from that you enjoy.

So, when the video store is picked over, delve into those sections, and trust me, you're going to find some classic gems that no one else seemed to bother with.

The Dark Knight (2008)

So, I imagine I should have chimed in sooner on this one, since I saw it last Tuesday at a critics' screening, but since I don't think anyone is checking this for daily updates, I didn't get around to it until now.

Upfront, I feel like I should throw a couple of disclaimers in here. Truth is, I'm not really a fan of the superhero/comic book genre. Even back in the day with the Christopher Reeves-era Superman, I just wasn't terribly impressed. I've largely avoided most of these films, but even when I caught Spiderman on a plane, I just felt like I would never quite understand what so many loved and appreciated about these films. To each their own I suppose.

I've never seen the predecessor, Batman Begins, so when I got the call, I figured I'd go since it was free, but I wasn't really looking forward to it like so many apparently have been. And, I figured that for all the hype that was attached to the film, I would have the ability to be a bit more objective than most.

I have to say though, I was really quite impressed. I think a lot of the credit for this should go to director Christopher Nolan. I think he did a stellar job in bucking the trends and cliches that I (negatively) associate with the genre, instead opting to maintain a sense of realism. Now, I can't exactly call a film about a dude flying around town dressed as a bat "realistic" necessarily, but the glossy veneer is stripped away, the story is gritty, and a lot of the staging makes it seem as though it could really happen.

The cast deserves a good share of the praise as well. As Bruce Wayne, Christian Bale does a pretty good job as the man beneath the mask. I had a slight problem with him, or more specifically, his voice when he was in the Batsuit. He almost sounded like an obscene caller than anything else, and it did elicit a few unintentional laughs from me. But, from an actor I tend not to care for, I have to say that Bale did a strong job. Now, I would be interested in seeing what half a dozen other actors could do with this, but, Bale's fine.

In that same vein, Nolan is able to get a nice performance out of Gary Oldman, who is another actor I tend not to care for. I think Oldman can be a fine actor, but only when there is a strong director there to reign him in. All too often he's completely over the top, so he often comes off as a laughable cartoon to me (see: Hannibal, Bram Stroker's Dracula, True Romance, The Professional, etc.) But he gives a solid, understated performance here, which I was pleased to see.

As I mentioned earlier, I've not seen Batman Begins, but it seems that the consensus is that Katie Holmes was a clear weak link in the cast, but I don't think the same can be said of Maggie Gyllenhaal. She is, as usual, quite good in her role. Although her role, in retrospect, seems a little underwritten, it never shows, which I think is a testament to how skilled of an actress she is. And it's nice to see that unlike most of her performances, she has a film and a cast around her that measure up to her performance.

Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent factors into the film a lot more than you'd think - arguably the most important role to the story, and he does a perfectly respectable job. I think Eckhart has a pretty good niche cut out for himself as the straight man who brings a little more wit and a little swagger to the table, so he's never quite a bore, but never outshines the rest of the cast. And he carries this along pretty well.

Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman, don't have a whole lot to do, but they do it well, and clearly seem to be having fun with it.

But, of course, the real story here is Heath Ledger. His version of The Joker pretty much reinvents what you come to think of as the comic book villain. He brings his usual intensity to the role, making The Joker a diabolical manic presence and walks the line between "creepy, but oddly funny" with precision like I've never seen. He isn't necessarily in the film a whole lot, but that's sort of what makes it effective to me... sometimes the fact that you know the villain is lurking in the shadows is more suspenseful than it is to have them in the forefront the entire time. But when The Joker does appear, you don't need that looming score to let you know that something big's about to happen. He is that scary music personified.

Some credit really does have to go to the screenplay though as well. The story takes so many unexpected turns that it makes it stand out. And I think one of the reasons why I find that the superhero/comic book genre is so shitty is that you're almost conditioned to expect things to play out in a certain way, this throws the long-held conventions out the window, and opts for the more challenging route.

So, this one defied and exceeded my expectations in every way. And while I'm prepared to go back and check out Batman Begins now, I think (simply based on what I've read about the original, that this is one of those freak circumstances where the sequel surpasses its predecessor.

The Strangers

TRAILER

So, I had the opportunity to screen this one in advance, and I have to say I really liked it, despite some flaws.

Personally, the horror genre, as of late, has offered little of interest: the endless parade of remakes and sequels don't interest me, and the "torture porn" genre just doesn't get what equals scary to me. Often, the use of silence and dread is what works, not massive amounts of gore. And while there is certainly some blood shed in the film, it doesn't revel in it like so many others do.

Oddly enough, on paper, this film would've seemed incredibly skippable to me, but once I saw the trailer, I was instantly hooked, though prepared to be disappointed when I walked into the theater. Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman aren't exactly actors who are going to interest me based on their attachment to the film, and the premise is not that far away from countless other horror films or thrillers. But, I think this is a case where a familiar story is told and shot so well, that I admired it right away.

First, before the action is set in motion, I liked how the story unfolded. It has elements not unlike a small, thoughtful indie movie. Speedman and Tyler are given enough room to let us into their characters so we care before the shit hits the fan. And without giving anything away, in most horror films, I just find myself wanting to yell at the screen because the characters just act so incredibly stupid. This time, though, they seemed to be somewhat bright, and even their missteps seem to be the result of sheer panic more than anything else.

I also really liked the production values... it just seemed so fitting. The yellowed images seem to fit the situation. The music all worked without being overbearing or cluing you into the fact that "something scary is about to happen!"

Now, it does have it's flaws, and one of the biggest, for me, would be the final moment, which seems to be meant as a throwback/possible homage to a 70's horror film, but it has been copied so often that it seems to be less than what the film deserves, after having been smart so long. But it wasn't enough of a detraction for me to deride the film, since I liked so much of what preceded it. While part of my embracing the film relies on so much upon avoiding what most horror films don't do, it was a minor disappointment to see that be the end note you walk out of the theater with. But, for me, it just really worked, and I was not in the least bit let down here.