The Filmcake

While there are still a bunch of movies from 2008 that I still need to see (Wendy & Lucy and Slumdog Millionaire are but two),  I’m going ahead with my “final” Best of 2008 list. Without further ado:

1. Rachel Getting Married
2. Wall-E
3. Ballast
4. A Christmas Tale
5. Let The Right One In
6. Man on Wire
7. Paranoid Park/Milk (a Gus van Sant tie)
8. Flight of the Red Balloon
9. The Dark Knight
10. Happy Go-Lucky

Honorable Mention: 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days, Son of Rambow, Chop Shop, The Fall, Encounters at the End of the World

I love lists. I know as soon as they’re written they’ve lost any utility they may have fleetingly possessed. And I know they’re always inevitably incomplete. But they’re still kinda fun to come up with. So here’s my Top 10 Movies of 2008 (so far). I’ve still got a bunch more to watch. I plan on coming up with a more finalized list (along with Oscar predictions) sometime before the Oscar ceremony. That’ll give me time to see a few more contenders.

Dwight’s Top 10 Movies of 2008
1. A Christmas Tale
2. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
3. Wall-E
4. Man on Wire
5. Paranoid Park
6. The Dark Knight
7. Son of Rambow
8. Chop Shop
9. Milk
10. Trouble the Water

Still haven’t seen: Wendy and Lucy, Ballast, Happy Go-Lucky, Let the Right One In, Synechdoche, NY, My Winnipeg, Waltz With Bashir, Flight of the Red Balloon, Doubt, Revolutionary Road, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire.

Even though this blog is primarily focused on movies, I can’t resist including my music lists. While I did a piss-poor job at listening to music in ’08 (and came to it late at that), I did manage to come up with lists for my best albums and songs of the year.

Dwight’s Top 10 Albums of 2008
1. She & Him – Volume One
2. Fleet Foxes – s/t
3. Frightened Rabbit — The Midnight Organ Fight
4. Bon Iver – For Emma, Forever Ago
5. Jolie Holland – The Living and the Dead
6. TV on the Radio – Dear Science
7. Conor Oberst — s/t
8. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
9. Death Cab for Cutie – Narrow Stairs
10. (3-way tie) Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers — The Confiscation EP, The Decemberists — Always the Bridesmaid Singles, The Mountain Goats — Satanic Messiah EP

Dwight’s Top 10 Songs of 2008
1. “Mexico City/Corrido Por Buddy/Palmyra” – Jolie Holland (OK, it’s 3 songs. But it’s what I consider to be the best 13 minutes of music in ’08.)
2. “Valerie Plame” — The Decemberists
3. “Sentimental Heart” – She & Him
4. “I Will Possess Your Heart” – Death Cab for Cutie
5. “Skinny Love” — Bon Iver
6. “See Fernando” — Jenny Lewis
7. “We Call Upon The Author” — Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
8. “White Winter Hymnal” – Fleet Foxes
9. “Dancing Choose” – TV on the Radio
10. “Head Rolls Off” — Frightened Rabbit

November 24th – November 30th

Wall-E- Like the dystopian Pixar Earthof the future, it got a little dusty for me even upon this second viewing. I saw this on its theatrical release and really had a bunch of fun with it. So, when Black Friday rolled around and we found ourselves with an HDTV and a Blu-ray player, we figured Wall-E would be a decent first experience with the high-def format. While I still anticipate seeing a live-action dramatic film in high-def, Wall-E looked really, really good.

Bug- This one was written by and based upon a play by Oklahoma-born Tracy Letts. Tracy is the son of Billie Letts, author of the book Where The Heart Is(later made into a film starring Natalie Portman and Ashley Judd). He also just won a Tony and the Pulitzer for his play August: Osage County. While Bug may have made for an excellent play, it just didn’t seem to me to be all that cinematic. Moving from the stage to the screen didn’t enhance anything. The acting performances may have been compelling on the stage, but on the screen it tended to look silly at times. I imagine that the stage version would be a bit more ambiguous and less campy.

July 28th – August 4th

Wall-E – I really enjoyed this one. I don’t see that many G Rated movies. It was hell getting through a behind-the-scenes featurette and eventually a trailer for the upcoming Beverly Hills Chihuahua. Eck! But Wall-E was good enough that I’m looking forward to rewatching this one on DVD. There seemed to be a lot of little references that will make additional viewings enjoyable. I was most impressed with the portions that took place on Earth. Earth looked so dusty and grimy. And I could have watched Wall-E roaming around by himself all day. And while EVE and the Axiom are slick and futuristic, they lack the realism and individuality that a little dirt and rust add.

Stop-Loss – The second film (9 years after Boys Don’t Cry) from director Kimberly Peirce. I haven’t seen many of the narrative films that have come out of the Iraq war. But this one wasn’t horrible. Some of the video segments–meant to imitate the type of videos shot by soldiers–seemed quite authentic. The battle scenes were convincing. It wasn’t overly political yet still not timid either. And I’ll even admit that I was a bit smitten by Abbie Cornish. But it seemed to miss the mark on a few points. First, it seemed like a bit of a stretch that this guy would be stop-lossed as he was essentially walking out the door. It also seemed strange that he had to be told what stop-loss was (as it is spelled out for the audience as well). Second, the whole underground changing your identity thing and going to Canada seemed a bit contrived. Is the military really going to let you just slip away? Then again, they still haven’t found Bin Laden… Third, I think it presses its case a little too far by suggesting that every soldier is going to go through some sort of freakout (digging a foxhole in your girlfriend’s front yard, assaulting the MP and going AWOL, or committing suicide). It just seemed a bit over the top in that regard. Not everybody is going to suffer from PTSD.

Chop Shop – Ramin Bahrani’s follow up to 2005′s Man Push Cart. Like the previous film, this one is small, dark & dirty, and sympathetic towards those who don’t get to live the American Dream. It’s strange to realize–in this country where a man named Barack Obama is possibly 3 months from the Presidency–that this is an American film. Like Obama, Bahrani has a non-typical name, yet he was born in North Carolina. Bahrani’s films are shot in a style, with mostly non-actors, and in locations that seem more like foreign films than typical domestic films. And yet both of Bahrani’s films are very American. They are both about working to struggle to stay afloat in the dingy background of everything America has to offer. It is so important to remember–and easy to want to forget–that despair exists not only in the slums of Rio de Janeiro and other far away places but also right here at home.