Films What Todd Likes: 2008 In Review

As 2008 comes to a close the time comes for the dreaded - by me, anyway - year end review. Why dreaded? Because I see somewhere in the range of two hundred and fifty films per year and it's bloody difficult to pare those down to a manageable list. This year I've taken things down to my top twenty five - getting it down to ten would've been far too painful - chosen by a completely random and arbitrary process that basically boiled down to my really, really liking it. It's important to note that I base this lists on when I actually saw the films rther than when they had public release and every year there are a few big titles that I just never quite fit viewings in for and so they get left off by default. There ended up being some surprising omissions this year - neither of the year's big buzz Korean titles made my final cut - but at the end I've come up with a list of films that I'm proud to heartily recommend.

A Film With Me In It
Ian Fitzgibbon's blacker than black Irish comedy made me laugh so hard it hurt thanks to its sharp writing and a stellar cast. Dylan Moran finally gets the chance to really do his thing in a big feature role while Mark O'Doherty plays the hapless straight man to perfection. To my knowledge this still has not found a North American home, a situation I consider baffling in the extreme as it's got the potential to be a nice little sleeper hit.
My review here

Adrift In Tokyo After a string of well received but generally middling features, writer-director Miki Satoshi vaulted into Japan's top tier with Adrift In Tokyo. The deceptively simple story of a down on his luck college student forced to accompany a yakuza debt collector on a lengthy walk through Tokyo is a wistful road movie run in slow motion, a love story to the city and the damaged souls who live on its fringes. My review here

Azur and Asmar The latest from Kirikou director Michel Ocelot may hit a couple bum notes in the early going but once it gets going it is pure magic. Arabic fairy tales burst to vibrant, colorful life while Ocelot weaves in cautionary notes on racial tolerance. He may be less prolific and less well know but Ocelot is just as vibrant a force in global animation as is Hayao Miyazaki. A true master. My review here

Burn After Reading After enduring a bit of a weak patch the Coen Brothers are back in full force. Awards folk may not look as kindly on the comedic Coens as they do on the dramatic Coens but Burn After Reading and No Country For Old Men make as strong a back-to-back one-two punch as any director could ever hope for. It's wittier than it is laugh-out-loud funny, loaded with razor sharp satire and a cast that just won't quit. My review here

The Dark Knight Now, I'm not actually one of those hailing The Dark Knight as the greatest thing ever as I really believe that the film has some serious flaws. It's overly long, the script is surprisingly messy for a Nolan film, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are largely wasted and there's surprisingly little development to the Batman character himself. But here's the thing: The Joker is arguably on of the most compelling and morally complex characters in all of comic history and every decision made with the part here is achingly, perfectly correct. It'll be a crime if Heath Ledger doesn't win the Oscar for his performance here.

De Usynlige (Troubled Water) I've said it before and I'm saying it again: Why Norway's Erik Poppe is not considered one of the giants of world film is an absolute mystery to me. Though he has only three features to his name all three of them are stunning pieces of work, none moreso than his latest effort. The story of a young man trying to outdistance a horrible crime commited in his youth it's painful, brilliant stuff. My review here

Detroit Metal City Certain people have the gift of elevating stupidity to an art and Detroit Metal City director - and frequent Takeshi Kitano collaborator - Toshio Lee is most certainly one of those people. The concept - an aspiring feel-good pop songwriter forced to front a Satanic metal band - is wafer thin but Lee works it for every ounce of comic potential. Landing Gene Simmons from KISS for a key support role just pushes things up that much higher. My review here

Doomsday Yeah, yeah, it got ripped apart by critics but you know what? Doomsday is exactly the film that Neil Marshall set out to make and it was an absolute blast on the big screen. History is going to be kinder to this one than audiences were on initial release, I think, and I stand wholeheartedly by my position that Marshall is the absolute top of the heap of current Brit genre directors and one of the very best in the world today. My review here

Embodiment of Evil If there's one call I'd like to take back from 2008 it's recommending against Embodiment of Evil for festival play. My first viewing of the new Coffin Joe picture came on a slightly glitchy DVD version of a work-in-progress cut of the film and on the small screen without all of the bells and whistles the picture just did not work for me. But on the big screen the Brazilian cult icon comes to glorious life and this picture was one of the big highlights of Sitges 2008 for me. My review here

Fighter Natasha Arthy's Fighter was one of the big surprises of the year - part coming of age story, part cultural tension story, part martial arts fight flick. That the script was as well written as it is wasn't so much the surprise, nor was the quality work behind the camera. No, the big surprise came with lead actress Semra Turan - a first time performer and real life national martial arts champion who turns in a fantastic, nuanced performance. A fight film with story and character? That's a rarity to be treaured. My review here

Gachi Boy: Wrestling With A Memory By all accounts Norihiro Koizumi's Gachi Boy should have been nothing more than a goofy little footnote on the year. I mean, how much can you really expect from a film about a college student with short term memory loss trying to become a masked wrestler? Well, it's time to raise those expectations because Koizumi turns in one of the most unabashed and most successful tear jerking, triumph of the human spirit films in years, a film that plays the underdog sports tropes so well and is filled with so many heartfelt, charming performances from a cast game enough to perform all of their wrestling stunts themselves that it's impossible not to stand and cheer. This film made me cry. Twice. My review here

JCVD I'm beginning to feel like a bit of a broken record heaping praise on JCVD, Jean-Claude Van Damme's comeback film. Living somewhere in the same neighborhood as Being John Malkovich, JCVD deconstructs the private life and public persona of its star to create a compelling portrait of the man himself. And, wonder of wonders, this thing proves that in all of his years of straight-to-video hell Van Damme has actually learned to act. My review here

Let The Right One In Was there any doubt Swedish vampire picture Let The Right One In would be on the list? We've been singing the praises of this one for the entire year and have watched with pleasure as it has swept up awards and praise all around the world on its hugely successful festival run. For bloody coming of age romances Twilight shouldn't even enter the picture, this is one of the best vampire films ever made. My review here

Martyrs Pascal Laugier's Martyrs was quite easily the most hyped, most controversial and most divisive film on the international horror scene this year and deservedly so on all three fronts. This is vicious, nasty film making with a surprising layer of satire and commentary, one of the most difficult viewing experiences of the year and - in my opinion - one of the most satisfying. Martyrs should be a touchpoint film for years to come. My review here

Not Quite Hollywood Mark Hartley's Not Quite Hollywood takes the notion that documentary film making needs to be dry and boring then kicks it in the nuts, vomits on it, sets it on fire, blows it up, throws it off a cliff, and surrounds it with dancing naked women. This look at Aussie exploitation film is the most fun I've had in a theater all year. Movies simultaneously this informative and this entertaining should be illegal. My review here

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest Of Spies I believe Michel Hazanavicius' OSS 117 is the oldest film on this list but since I didn't actually see it until the lead up to its belated US release it qualifies. And how. A revival of a 1960s era French spy series the film and its perfectly cast star - Jean Dujardin takes the lead - is both a note perfect recreation of the era - it could easily be a lost film from the time - and a hysterically funny send up of the same. It's not really parody, more a loving nod to the excesses of the past, and it is brilliant. My review here

Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea Ponyo may well be a fairly minor film by Hayao Miyazaki's standards but when you're dealing with Miyazaki, 'minor' is still worlds bette than the best of what most other people could ever hope for. Though the subplots are a little cluttered and poorly developed the core story of a little boy falling in love with a magical fish is - appropriately enough - pure magic. For fans who have waited for Miyazaki to return to Totoro-era simplicity Ponyo will be just what the doctor ordered. My review here

Slumdog Millionaire Forget about those wretched posters - whoever is responsible for those should be fired, pronto - Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire won the Audience Award at the Toronto International Film Festival for a very simple reason: it's very good. Boyle proves once again that he's one of the very best in the world when it comes to working with young actors and he juggles timelines, stories and moods with a master's hand. Yes, Boyle can be inconsistent but when he's on he is ON and this is one of his very best. My review here

Sky Crawlers After veering into extreme philosophy with Ghost In The Shell 2 and self indulgent goofing with Tachiguishi Retsuden, director Mamoru Oshii makes a very deliberate return to a more commercial style of story telling with aerial war picture Sky Crawlers. Now, "mainstream" by Oshii standards is still more thoughtful and contemplative by far than anything you'll see coming out of Hollywood but this is handsome, epic story telling that feels more like Jin Roh to this viewer than anything else Oshii has done in recent years. And considering that I think Jin Roh is easily the best film Oshii has ever been involved with it should come as no surprise that Sky Crawlers makes the list easily. My review here

Synecdoche New York Yes, it's too long and too abstract by far for the multiplex crowd but I would not cut a minute of beloved writer Charlie Kaufman's directorial debut. Clever, tragic and quietly heartbreaking Synecdoche, New York represents a major talent truly coming into his own with Kaufman putting aside the pranksterism of Being John Malkovich and over-the-top neurosis of Adaptation for what feels like an older, wiser, more mature take on Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind. My review here

Tokyo Sonata Kiyoshi Kurosawa trades in his ghosts and scares for family dysfunction with his latest and the results are quietly powerful stuff. Pay attention to the subtext and you'll see he's not straying nearly as far from his normal stomping grounds as you may think, instead approaching his standard obsession with relationship breakdown and isolation from a different angle but that shift in approach is enough to put some fresh wind into his sails. My review here

Tony Manero The Pinochet dictatorship, disco dancing, John Travolta lookalike contests and serial murder? What's not to like about Pablo Larrain's Tony Manero? Not very much, apparently, as it's been sweeping up awards since debuting at Cannes and has become Chile's submission for the Oscars. It's raw, potent stuff that demonstrates once again why Chile is a nation to keep an eye on. My review here

Wall*E Of the original collection of Pixar talent, director Andrew Stanton was the easiest to overlook. How times have changed. Finding Nemo made ti clear he was a significant talent on his own and Wall*E puts him next to Brad Bird as the very best commercially minded animators working in America today. The opening act - played almost entirely without dialogue - is pure movie magic, an homage to silent-era legends that proves that the magic of cinema transcends all boundaries of time and technology.

Waltz With Bashir
If the concept of an animated documentary seems counter-intuitive at first - it certainly did to me - then that is purely because you have not yet seen Ari Folman's Waltz With Bashir, the Israeli director's attempt to reconstruct his years spent fighting in the Lebanese war. Folman was on the fringes of a true genocide during the war, an event he had blocked from his memory, and Waltz chronicles his attempt to put everything back together and understand his own role in things, and the shifting nature of memory is perfectly captured by his choice to animate rather than shoot live action. A bold piece of work unlike anything else I've ever seen.
My review here

White Night Wedding
Much like Kurosawa did with Tokyo Sonata, Iceland's Baltasar Kormakur here trades in his standard genre - noirish thrillers in this case - for domestic dysfunction and the results are every bit as powerful as they were in Kurosawa's case. Working closely with the actors who brought this material to life previously as a stage play Kormakur has created an intimate, clever, tragic, funny piece of work.
My review here

The Wrestler Just go ahead and give Mickey Rourke the Oscar, okay? Yes, he really is that good in The Wrestler, the film that will revitalize the careers of both Rourke and director Darren Aronofsky who badly needed a hit following The Fountain. Rourke is a powerhouse in this and Aronofsky smart enough to simply stand back and let Rourke do his thing. Thank god The Wrestler didn't move ahead with Nic Cage instead, as was originally announced. My review here