The Best Films of the 00s: 2008

by Tony Dayoub

This is a somewhat reworked repost of my 2008 end-of-year wrap-up, originally published on 1/23/09. The main difference is my inclusion of Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys) on the list instead of as an honorable mention. It replaces a television show (In Treatment) I included on the original list; not because I regret the original decision to include it, but because this series is really dedicated to discussing the decade's cinematic offerings.

I started blogging in 2008 so you should see a marked difference in my selection of films. This isn't by design, necessarily. 2008 just afforded me the opportunity to watch more movies through press screenings, screeners, and invitations to film festivals, now giving me additional access I wouldn't normally get in Atlanta. Some reminders: I cannot judge movies I haven't seen, so if you feel a film you like was unjustly left out, it might be that I haven't seen it; also, if I already wrote a review for it, I'll include a link back to the original review.

And now, in alphabetical order, the best films of 2008...

Best of 2008: The 10 Best Films of the Year

Wrapping up this week's Best of 2008 series, I present my top 10 films of the year. While the first half of 2008 was somewhat weak, I managed to find some underrated gems released during that period. And I think that the year in general was not as bad as some other recent ones. It was hard enough to narrow the list down to 10, so I didn't try to rank them in anything but alphabetical order. I also list 10 additional films I feel deserve an honorable mention. You might be surprised at how wide I cast my net in deeming some of these entries as films, but I prefer to be as inclusive as possible. Of course, my list's only requirement is that the film be released in the U.S. (in a festival, at the very least) sometime in 2008. If the title is hyperlinked, you'll also be able to see what I wrote when I first reviewed it which should be interesting as I've only been blogging for about a year. Feel free to post your own list, and agree - or even better - disagree with any of my selections. Che (Roadshow Edition), director Steven Soderbergh - A gutsy attempt to shed light on a polarizing figure, Che is actually two movies that must be seen together. The first part, The Argentine, is surprisingly the more marketable, despite being the one with potential for controversy. Shot like a traditional war movie it depicts Guevara as the hero of Cuba's revolution. The second part, Guerilla, is the more damning and difficult movie. Here, Guevara is a remote and weak character, stubbornly pursuing his lost cause. Together, they give us an understanding of why he is seen as both hero and monster by so many. Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale), dir. Arnaud Desplechin - Desplechin's look at family dynamics is the best film I saw this year. And even though this family shares some disdain for each other, one gets the feeling that they love each other in a way that one can understand only when one is part of such a group. Bitter and warm. Elegy, dir. Isabel Coixet - This is the first time I think I ever saw a sign of the real Ben Kingsley in a performance. And it was truly fascinating to watch. The story of a womanizer and his greatest character flaws - insecurity and possessiveness - was also illuminating. The Fall, dir. Tarsem Singh - Simply the most visually stunning film I've seen since Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. Gran Torino, dir. Clint Eastwood - From a response I wrote to a reader's criticism at Some Came Running:

Allow me to reference "The Searchers" in order to make another point, and I preface this by asserting that I am in no way elevating "Gran Torino" to the same class as that classic film. In Ford's film, John Wayne's Ethan Edwards is the protagonist, is a racist, frequently uses epithets against the Native Americans in the film, yet still musters the tolerance to work with Jeff Hunter's Martin - a half-Native American - to pursue his quarry. For about 115 minutes of its running time (and years, in the film), Edwards is committed to killing his own niece (Natalie Wood) simply for being presumably defiled by the Native Americans who kidnapped her. And then in the last few minutes, Martin convinces Edwards to let her live. Happy ending, save for Edwards extricating himself from the life he can't be a part of due to his inherent and unresolved feelings for the Native Americans. The plot remarkably tracks similarly with "Gran Torino". So why can we give Ford a pass for the "bait-and-switch" at the end of "The Searchers"? Or the comic relief that Hank Worden's Mose so jarringly injects into every scene he's in? And why can we be so cavalier towards Ethan Edwards' own racism yet admire his heroism? Is it because the fact that Ford's film is a Western it adds another layer of distance or archetypal reduction to the events in "The Searchers"? Had "Gran Torino" been a Western with Native Americans replacing the Hmong would we even be having this conversation? I found Eastwood to be unusually direct and economical in his storytelling, a relative rarity in his recent films. And I applaud the fact that he trusts us to do the heavy lifting, rather than get anymore on-the-nose than the movie is already accused of being.

In Treatment, producer and developer, Rodrigo Garcia - Yeah, I know... it's a TV series. But its curious format is what made it compelling enough to list along with these fine films. Gabriel Byrne plays a psychologist with marital problems. Each weeknight, the show would follow him with a different patient, except for Friday when he would see his own psychologist (Dianne Wiest) to discuss his relationship issues. If you only cared to follow his sessions with Patient A, you'd only have to tune in on Monday nights; Patient B on Tuesday nights, etc. But for the complete picture, and to really get to know the psychologist, you would watch all week, as one session often impacted others during the week. A series that truly demonstrates what the long form is capable of exploring. Shotgun Stories, dir. Jeff Nichols - Nothing much happens in it... externally. But the internal is what's interesting in this one, and Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road) acutely conveys so much of the devastation that one man can cause by leaving one family to start another. The Strangers, dir. Bryan Bertino - It is a truly terrifying film in which the camera forces you to be an unwilling accomplice. Not innovative per se, but that perspective has been sorely missed in this age of "torture porn". I'm gratified to see such a style make a comeback. Synecdoche, New York, dir. Charlie Kaufman - This mindbending indie pushes the limits of how far imagination can take you on a limited budget when a writer like Kaufman is given the keys to the car. Wall·E, dir. Andrew Stanton - So many of us were touched by this film, an even more amazing feat once one remembers that the characters are computer generated robots. Honorable Mention: Burn After Reading, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Happy-Go-Lucky, Iron Man, Rambo, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, L'Heure d'été (The Summer Hours), Üç Maymun (Three Monkeys), Waltz with Bashir, The Wrestler For more on the Best of 2008: Best of 2008: Animated Features Best of 2008: Performances and Creative Achievements Best of 2008: Oscar Nominations Open Thread

Movie Review: Synecdoche, New York - Charlie Kaufman as Auteur

As an auteurist, it is difficult for me to assign even a screenwriter the role of creative force behind a film. But when that screenwriter is Charlie Kaufman, it's hard not to. Now that Kaufman has made his confident directorial debut, it becomes academic. His newest film, Synecdoche, New York, is most assuredly of a piece with the rest of his oeuvre, solidifying the argument. Like in Adaptation (2002), the protagonist in Synecdoche is a writer, a playwright in this case. Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is also depressed, pessimistic, and completely self-centered. His wife Adele (Catherine Keener) absconds to Berlin with their young daughter, Olive, ostensibly to promote her art show (she paints tiny thumbnail-size portraits). But in reality, she is setting up house with her maybe-more-than-friend Maria (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Just like Nicolas Cage was playing a version of Charlie Kaufman (literally, as that was the character's name) in the earlier film, Hoffman seems to be channeling the same spirit. His self-absorption manifests itself in the form of severe hypochondria; a lack of self-esteem that somehow makes him more charming to women, not less; and his greatest enemy seems to be a lack of confidence in his writing. While Cage's character felt a block at the idea of adapting another writer's work, here Cotard's impediment is mounting an autobiographical play that will have enough scope to rival the enormity of his life. Cotard may lack self-esteem, but he doesn't lack artistic hubris. This is where we start to realize that Cotard inhabits a surreal world not unlike that in another of Kaufman's films, Being John Malkovich (1999). You'll recall that as the film where John Cusack's Craig, a schlub puppeteer, ends up working as a filing clerk at a company whose offices are on the 7 1/2 floor of a Manhattan office building. In Synecdoche, Cotard purchases the largest warehouse one can ever imagine, and proceeds to mount a play with the largest cast ever assembled in what will eventually be a life-size version of New York City. Yeah, don't worry. Just like it made sense to find a portal into actor John Malkovich's consciousness on that 7 1/2 floor, it makes a weird kind of sense when you see Cotard's play being staged in this movie. Synecdoche's world is an odd one where it's not unusual to hear a former flame of Cotard's, Hazel (Samantha Morton), tell him that she's got to leave to meet her husband and the twins, and she proceeds to rattle off three children's names instead of two. When Hazel goes house-hunting, she buys a burning house because it's more affordable. The picture above is of Hazel entertaining Cotard in said house after she's moved in. Surrealism is not used simply for the sake of piling on non-sequiturs. There is a moral dilemma being explored here through the prism of surrealism, just like in Kaufman's most accessible work, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). In that film, Joel (Jim Carrey) was dismayed to find out that his former lover, Clementine (Kate Winslet), was so over their relationship she decided to have the memories of it erased from her mind. Consenting to the same procedure as an act of revenge, he instead finds he does not want to lose the memories. Synechdoche's dilemma concerns introspection. It asks, at what point does self-examination become more than a way to improve oneself, and become instead, a way of exiling oneself from one's own life and its significant events? Cotard is so fearful of dying of some disease he ambitiously tries to capture the meaning of life in his grand play, ignoring every event or person that would give his life the importance he seeks. This is a theme that runs through all of Kaufman's work, the denial of elements in one's persona in the pursuit of answers to the mystery of same. Whether it's Joel discovering this trap a little too late into his memory-erasure of Clementine; or Craig's decision to hide behind John Malkovich's appearance in order to both advance his career as a puppeteer and win a woman's attention; or Charlie trying to gain personal redemption in adapting someone else's story; all have Kaufman's distinct imprimatur. Synecdoche, New York is our first opportunity to see Kaufman's unexpurgated vision of reality unfold before us, and it is a resounding success.