Nominees: The Dark Knight, Let the Right One In, Still Walking, Man on Wire, Wendy and Lucy, Goodbye Solo, Gran Torino, Waltz with Bashir, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Two Lovers
Oscars pick: Slumdog Millionaire
Nominees: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader
Going over the year I was finding one wonderful movie after another. I accumulated so many that I finally had to force myself to stop at 13 nominees (which doesn’t include the popular WALL-E – a film I thought was phenomenal at the start before it slipped into the standard Pixar formula - extended slapstick chase sequence stuff and all. Among animation releases, Waltz with Bashir (nominated for Best Foreign Language Film) and Sita Sings the Blues were its betters – though Sita was ineligible for Oscar consideration as it was tied up in legalities over the use of PD music).
08 offered small treasures – Like the warm and funny Somers Town, which simply follows two boys who become friends and fall for a beautiful waitress. And Wendy and Lucy, which features Michelle Williams at her finest. What I liked about Williams in films like Synecdoche and Blue Valentine and here, in the neorealistic Wendy and Lucy - is that she is authentic and lacking in any Hollywood gloss. There’s not a false note in her performance, no artifice or ostentation. She is as honest a performer as I’ve ever seen. Wendy isn’t a high octane, emotionally charged, big tears n’ screams, flashy type performance - the kind that grabs Oscar’s attention. It’s simply as real and as true as life itself – and with every gesture and look, William’s subtly conveys the loneliness, hurt and frustration within her character.
As to the big blockbusters? The Superhero genre saw the release of the two of its very best – the bright and funny Iron Man, and the grim, thematic masterpiece, The Dark Knight, which overshadowed “Begins” and set a new standard for comic book movie maturity and excellence. It was also buoyed by standout Oscar-winning performance from Heath Ledger as the demented Joker and is highlighted by one breathtaking scene after another (e.g. the car chase through Gotham)
My favorite foreign fare was Let the Right One In. A Swedish vampire film about the friendship between a withdrawn, bullied boy and a little girl... who isn't a little girl. It's sparse, stylish, haunting - very atmospheric and in a strange way, beautiful. Not a good vampire flick if all you want is slam bam violence and gore in your horror films (though that is present)... but if you can appreciate the poetic melancholy infused throughout the piece, you might become as enthralled by it as I was.
Not far behind it was Hirokazu Kore-eda's thought-provoking Still Walking – a film that recalls Ozu's examinations on the family dynamic, especially in the way the camera work and movement were so fascinatingly choreographed.
There were also great documentaries, among them Man on Wire. Which is a look at a high wire performer who crossed the twin towers.
Best picture winner Slumdog Millionaire? Yeah, I liked it a lot and am okay with it winning, but I liked other movies more. At the top of the list is Writer Charlie Kaufman's directorial début Synecdoche, New York - and while It divided viewers and crashed at the box office - I think it's the best film in a year loaded with movies I prize.
And yet, how to describe something so unorthodox, so... huge in scope? It's bizarre, unsettling - time is out of balance (some characters age, while others don't). It’s about loss and missed opportunities and self-destructive tendencies -- and it expresses ideas about the mundane, empty nature of life, and the need to live it to the fullest.
Philip Seymour Hoffman plays a troubled theatrical director, Caden Cotard, who searches for authenticity by re-creating his world in a play, set in a massive warehouse+. So you have an exploration of a life within a life within a life. It's an ambitious film that attempts to examine existence in all its intricacies. I was awestruck and challenged to think. With its many layers, it imparts something new with each viewing.
The picture can be irritating, solipsistic - it's bitingly funny and sadly tragic - It's confounding and wonderful. It's extremely detailed (look in the backgrounds, note small items like the two newsstand sets, one completely functional, the other –indicating your in the set within the set, just being built). It's impossible to view this passively and without introspection. It's a film that is very personal, and because of that, it's not something one can be completely objective about. People loathe it, or they hail it as the greatest film of the decade. I personally am so blown away by it, that it overshadows even my high regard for Let the Right One In and the Dark Knight. It's the 8 ½ of our age and my winner for the Felix.
+Cotard, as reviewer Aaron Hillis put it, “Is deteriorating physically, artistically, romantically, spiritually... (he is) wrestling with onscreen angst from the deepest, most depressing of human worries: the finite constraints of creativity, love, and mortality, and whether existence itself is at all relevant.
Honorable Mentions:
Melissa Leo, Frozen River * Sally Hawkins, Happy Go Lucky * Kristen Scott Thomas, I've Loved You So Long * Maria Heiskanen, Everlasting Moments * Tilda Swinton, Julia * Karoline Herfurth, A Year Ago in Winter * Yolande Moreau, Séraphine * Kate Winslett, The Reader
Honorable Mentions:
Michael Fassbender, Hunger * Brendan Gleeson & Colin Farrell, In Bruges * Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler * Josef Bierbichler, A Year Ago in Winter * Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino * Sam Rockwell, Snow Angels * Vincent Cassell, Mesrine I & II * Richard Jenkins, The Visitor
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Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (pictured above)
Other movies I enjoyed (and not mentioned above) include: The Chaser, Quantum of Solace, Ghost Town, Mrs. Pettigrew Lives for a Day, In Bruges, Chocolate, Frozen River, Summer Hours, Happy-Go-Lucky, Wanted, Revolutionary Road, Doubt, Everlasting Moments, Frost/Nixon, Bolt, Departures, A Christmas Tale, The Bank Job, Definitely, Maybe, The Cove, The Class and the Visioneers.
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Other movies I enjoyed (and not mentioned above) include: The Chaser, Quantum of Solace, Ghost Town, Mrs. Pettigrew Lives for a Day, In Bruges, Chocolate, Frozen River, Summer Hours, Happy-Go-Lucky, Wanted, Revolutionary Road, Doubt, Everlasting Moments, Frost/Nixon, Bolt, Departures, A Christmas Tale, The Bank Job, Definitely, Maybe, The Cove, The Class and the Visioneers.
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