2008 films ranked

Submitted by ephender on Thu, 01/03/2008 - 12:42
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  1. ***
  2. WALL·E (Andrew Stanton) [* The first 45 minutes is so fantastic that it almost makes me want to swap out the shorted-out parts later on, much like WALL·E does to his own rusted interior. Sure, PIXAR has wisely eschewed injections of hipster irony, but does the converse have to be Oscar-bait message-movie homilies?]
  3. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme) [* would detractors prefer a PERFECT movie about an imperfect family? Talk about inhuman.]
  4. Viva (Anna Biller)
  5. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
  6. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh) [* had to sleep on this one; wasn't sure there was any depth; ended up sorry for Poppy, and had to ponder why.]
  7. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-hsien)

  9. **½
  10. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin) [* "The forks, the lap." Guy Maddin does "Tarnation," only much gayer. Me likee.]
  11. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant)
  12. Razzle Dazzle: The Lost World (Ken Jacobs) [* "a laptop Decasia with its conscience raised" is about right.]
  13. Otto: or, Up with Dead People (Bruce LaBruce) [* review.]

  15. **
  16. Milk (Gus Van Sant) [* the doc version is still preferable, but it's neat this one ignored Milk's closeted life as irrelevant (which is the point). I will say this: it trojan-horses radicalism in through a quintessentially conservative genre much better than did Brokeback.]
  17. Inside (Bustillo/Maury) [* the joys of motherhood as presented by two grindhouse-breastfed punk French boys. I feel nurtured by this.]
  18. Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle & Loveleen Tandan) [* like Ed, I cherish not so much its attempts at magical realism as its revelry in pop ethos.]
  19. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson) [* Freeze-grafting the self-parodistic emotionlessness and perpetual nocturnal landscape of Swedish cinema with the vampire ethos is, perhaps, an obvious stratagem, but it does have a creeping dignity. Also one-ups the cat scene from Argento's "Inferno."]
  20. Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood) [* don't remember Frogtown being like this, but it has admittedly been awhile since I lived there.]
  21. The Memory Thief (Gil Kofman) [* the riffs on misplaced Holocaust sympathy come faster than gags on an episode of Laugh-In, though only occasionally with any greater depth.]
  22. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg) [* not as pleasurably throwaway nor as intriguingly non-Judeo-Christian as Temple of Doom, but still its heart(lessness) is in the right place.]
  23. Burn After Reading (Joel & Ethan Coen) [* Only they could get away with a movie where the most perceptive characters auto-critically confess that whatever it is that's going on, if indeed anything is going on, doesn't mean anything. They sell themselves a little bit short, but not much.]
  24. Che (Steven Soderbergh) [* I imagine I'm in the minority for preferring the second half, flipping train aside.]
  25. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher) [* bizarre flatline when it comes to the narrative momentum, but I like the idea of an "introverted" epic.]
  26. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan) [* I guess this is the beneficiary of Empire Strikes Back syndrome, because I found the rampant self-importance and pomposity at least tolerable this time around. Maybe because instead of a superhero movie, this is an urban panic dystopia. Movies like this and the wildly superior Children of Men and War of the Worlds are our disaster films.]
  27. Man On Wire (James Marsh) [* hate to fall back on the standard formalist-film-snob doc criticism but ... great story, merely decent film.]
  28. Bolt (Howard & Williams) [* in which the entertainment world is rejected because reality is even zanier and more candy-coated.]
  29. Doubt (John Patrick Shanley) [* mostly a showcase for actorly calisthenics, so I'll just rank the performances: Streep, Davis, PSH, Adams.]

  31. *½
  32. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky) [* Rourke favors Def Leppard to that pussy Cobain, but he and his movie are definitely more the latter.]
  33. Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes) [* a surprisingly committed marital deathmatch. Mendes' unremitting devotion to good taste is thankfully overcome by Winslet's becalmed, focused hatred. I don't buy it any more than I bought "American Beauty," but here at least clumsy metaphors are kept to a minimum. And Michael Shannon wisely recasts the entire thing as the Edward Albee play it so clearly wishes it were.]
  34. Miracle of St. Anna (Spike Lee)
  35. Smiley Face (Gregg Araki) [* actually, Anna Faris is about 8 million times as funny in Scary Movie, and where is Neil Patrick Harris?]
  36. Theater of War (John Walter)

  38. *
  39. My Mexican Shivah (Alejandro Springall) [* buries multiple cultures with equal abandon.]
  40. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen) [* moment when I checked out with no hope for being won back: when Cristina is persuaded to reject her perfectly fine D-SLR for some clunky, "realer" piece of antiquity.]
  41. The Favor (Eva Aridjis) [* no, verisimilitude and nuance are not enough.]
  42. The Reader (Stephen Daldry) [* hate to make the joke, but I bet it was better as a book … Actually, probably not.]

  44. ½
  45. The Visitor (Tom McCarthy) [* that Jenkins is the only one getting Oscar buzz out of this whole cast highlights just what's wrong here. The movie basically recommends the only way to rouse people to care about immigration reform is to rouse middle-class white males into giving half a shit.]
  46. Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild (Todd Stephens) [* movies like this don't help.]
Author Comments: 

Leading Performances
- Juliette Binoche, Flight of the Red Balloon
- Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married
- Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky
- Sean Penn, Milk
- Mark Webber, The Memory Thief

Supporting Performances
- Vlad Ivanov, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
- Eddie Marsan, Happy-Go-Lucky
- Ann Savage, My Winnipeg
- Tilda Swinton, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- Debra Winger, Rachel Getting Married

Hottest Piece of Ass in a Piece of Crap Movie
- Haaz Sleiman, The Visitor

Cosgrove05/13/2008

Dude. Your review of VIVA for Slant, for me, pushed that film from "Gee, that sounds interesting" to "God, I wanna see that right fucking NOW."

Also jesus is SMILEY FACE ever not funny. But you can't blame Ms. Faris, who gives her all.

ephender05/16/2008

Haha, Lord. I forgot to update with the two new movies I've seen this year. Stick a fork in me w.r.t the new stuff, apparently.

Cosgrove01/21/2009

it trojan-horses radicalism in through a quintessentially conservative genre much better than did Brokeback.

If I could write like you, I'd never leave the house.

ephender01/31/2009

You're uncannily right. I never leave the house!