Pride Unprejudiced

	..MCN Reviews
	..Movie City Indie

I can't wait to get de-listed. Two hundred-plus top 10 lists, even cursorily glimpsed, can turn the minds of men and mice to mush. What I wish I'd worked up across the seasons is a perfected litany of instants of transcendent cinematic transport. But this pile-up of taxonomies is all I can offer up.

Sea changes in production and distribution surround us, but I wouldn't complain about the movies I've been able to see this year. I missed some larger events, and I bet there's a lot more to admire from 2008 out there, even if it's only another fistful of sweet grace notes. The two most magnificent sound-and-image experiences of my year were witnessing a moving masterclass by Terence Davis at Thessaloniki International in November, and the deafening-blinding My Bloody Valentine concert at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom in September. Several DVD collections of note: the immaculate, ambitious Murnau, Borzage and Fox; Budd Boetticher; Irma Vep; and a set of films I still need to figure out how to write about, the exceptional, heart-wrenching, singular Bill Douglas Trilogy. (See these amazing films.) I'd match the late filmmaker's compact legacy against anything on this list. The restoration and distribution of The Exiles also deserves special note.

What am I looking for? Mostly the quality Françoise Sagan found in jazz: "an intensified feeling of nonchalance." The ineffable, the inevitable, the effortless. Two movies brought me the most pleasure of that sort on repeated viewings: James Marsh's Man on Wire and Joachim Trier's Reprise.

1. Reprise + Man on Wire

2. Silent Light, Carlos Reygadas. A universe inspired by a screensaver.

3. The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan. Why not so serious?

4. Happy-Go-Lucky, Mike Leigh. Sally fuckin' Hawkins.

5. A Christmas Tale, Arnaud Desplechin. So much generosity from a consistently great director.

6. Slumdog Millionaire, Danny Boyle. Choose life; choose love; choose Dickens.

7. Edge of Heaven, Fatih Akin. The globalization of grief.

8. My Winnipeg, Guy Maddin. I know Winnipeg and now I know My Winnipeg.

9. Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman. A stubborn bad dream, timeless and sadly, timely.

10. Let the Right One In, Tomas Alfredson. "Oskar, I'm not a girl."

11. La France, Serge Bozon. Another mad French musical; austere and voluptuous.

12. Still Life, Zia Zhang-ke. I like how this man glimpses the world.

13. Paranoid Park, Gus van Sant. Chris Doyle and Kathy Rain Li: extra eyes on limpid, imagistic storytelling.

14. Milk, Gus van Sant. Not what the naysayers say: this is trim filmmaking elevating potentially hagiographic form.

15. Summer Palace, Lou Ye. A vital epic of youth and lost innocence with hints of Truffaut.

16. Che, Steven Soderbergh. Process.

17. Battle for Haditha, Nick Broomfield. Frightful faction.

18. Flight of the Red Balloon, Hou Hsiao-hsien. Golden light plays; a child's gaze drifts; Juliette Binoche in white Chuck Taylors.

19. Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, Peter Sollett. Seemingly more collaborated upon than his great debut, Raising Victor Vargas, N&N is partly personal topography of a lost New York (likely the era when Sollett was his characters' age in the 90s), with the most agreeable pair of fated-to-love dorks in ages. The last scene is ideal; Michael Cera is male gawpiness in concentration; Kat Denning's character is an indelibly charismatic goof.

20. Snow Angels, David Gordon Green. Sledgehammer.

21. Ballast, Lance Hammer. Birds in flight.

22. The Silence of Lorna, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne. Arta Dobroshi's fearful eyes holding hope.

23. The Duchess of Langeais, Jacques Rivette. Guillaume Depardieu's haunted gaze.

24. The Promotion, Steve Conrad. The essence of Chicago as Tativille. Give this man another chance with a different distributor.

25. Revolutionary Road, Sam Mendes. Zoe Kazan's expression when she drops the sheet and snatches it up again.

26. Woman on the Beach, Hong Sang-soo. Soju much?

27. Wendy & Lucy, Kelly Reichardt. The tune Will Oldham wrote for Michelle Williams to whistle.

28. The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky. The body fails. The mind denies.

29. Diary of the Dead, George Romero. The garish final scene, Goya in the age of Bush.

30. Yella, Christian Petzold. Precision in a haunted landscape.

31. Rachel Getting Married. Is there a more endearing, enduring portrait of uxorial admiration than the sustained closing shot of Demme's emotion-jagged caravanserai; he and Declan Quinn rest the camera through the duration of the credits of one character's gaze upon the beloved while silhouetted foreground, and then crossing the frame, kneeling, and the image fades: a shared life begins.

32. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, David Fincher. Why is an entire hummingbird to be preferred over a single white feather?

33. The Witnesses, Andre Téchiné. Eyelines.

34. Momma's Man, Azazel Jacobs. The anxiety of confluence.

35. Son Of Rambow, Garth Jennings. Kidful glee.

36. Take Out, Sean Baker. Long-delayed release of a sharp, neorealism-steeped day in the life of a Manhattan Chinese restaurant deliveryman.

37. Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood. Is that all there is?

38. Firaaq, Nandita Das. The portmanteau narrative done up with great passion by an Indian actress in her first feature.

39. Frownland, Ronald Bronstein. Well-considered container of unspeakable anxiety.

40. Lakeview Terrace, Neil LaBute. Real estate: let it burn.

Best Performances – Female (Alphabetical)

Asia Argento, The Last Mistress, Boarding Gate.
Juliette Binoche, The Flight of the Red Balloon.
Catherine Deneuve, A Christmas Tale.
Kat Dennings, Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist.
Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married.
Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky.
Nina Hoss, Yella.
Lena Leanderssson, Let the Right One In.
Melissa Leo, Frozen River.
Kristin Scott Thomas, I've Loved You So Long.
Michelle Williams, Wendy and Lucy.
Kate Winslet, Revolutionary Road.

Best Performances – Male (Alphabetical)

Mathieu Amalric, A Christmas Tale. The prodigal son of the year.
Michel Blanc, The Witnesses. Complexity without undue complication.
Benicio Del Toro, Che. Dude! Si.
Clint Eastwood, Gran Torino.
Richard Jenkins, The Visitor. He's good, this one.
Ben Kingsley, Elegy, The Wackness. Late-stage masculine crisis has found an unlikely diminutive, bald muse.
Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon.
Sean Penn, Milk. Penn laughs!

Best Supporting Performances – Female (Alphabetical)

Juliet Binoche, Flight of the Red Balloon. The frisson of frazzle,
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona. "No, I don' wanna speak English!"
Viola Davis, Doubt. Mother superior.
Emmanuelle Devos, A Christmas Tale. Anything she wants, tout le monde.
Ronit Elkabetz, The Band's Visit.
Ann Savage, My Winnipeg. Mother! Blood!
Hanna Schygulla, The Edge of Heaven.
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler.
Debra Winger, Rachel Getting Married.
Nurgul Yesilcay, The Edge of Heaven.
Zoe Kazan, Revolutionary Road. A doozy of a doe.

Best Supporting Performances – Male (Alphabetical)

Josh Brolin, Milk. If you must telegraph, send Josh Brolin.
Richard Dreyfuss, W. Cheney you.
James Franco, Pineapple Express. Beamish boy.
Bill Irwin, Rachel Getting Married. Could've done without the dishwasher derby, but the way this man's face folds with fatherly despair…
Ken (and Flo) Jacobs, Momma's Man. Look at our son.
Toby Jones, W. Far finer than Turdblossom deserves.
Anil Kapoor, Slumdog Millionaire. Oil!
Danny McBride, Pineapple Express. The only good thing in Tropic Thunder is pretty swell here.
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road, Shotgun Stories. Precisely mad.

Five Fantastic Film Follies

Speed Racer, The Wachowskis. The first glimmers of lysergic digital bubblegum? The lovely, loving self-conscious nod to Muybridge suggests their subversive intention.

The Fall, Tarsem. An eyeful if not mindful.

Adam Resurrected, Paul Schrader. Maybe now the workprint of The Day The Clown Cried can be pried loose from Jerry Lewis.

Australia, Baz Luhrmann. Jumping the wombat in epic fashion.

My Blueberry Nights, Wong Kar Wai. I've seen two cuts, and the U.S. version omits some longeurs, but who's counting? A Wong misfire still teems with sweet fingerpaint.

Three Best Directors

Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky. The master juggler of acting styles makes much of Sally Hawkins' bravura talents, but Sally's encounter with a muttering man in the bowels of the old Battersea station is a heightened metaphor for much of his method of working as well as fine fright and a slip into the blighted night that belonged to Naked's Johnny.

Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire. Take the man out of the studio and watch what happens.

Tomas Alfredson, Let the Right One In. Patience. Suddenness.

Best Screenplays

Fatih Akin, The Edge Of Heaven. Forceful narrative dovetailing: the year's most cosmopolitan passage.

Joachim Trier and Eskil Vogt, Reprise. Vigor, virtue, grief. From a former Norwegian skateboarding champion!

Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog Millionaire. Gratifying structure elevates a Dickensian tale grafted onto Bombay's back-alleys.

Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York. A film I actively loathed but then loved having the chance to talk to Kaufman about a couple of times. I wish I'd seen the film Roger Ebert had seen, but there's something obstinately… Kaufmanesque? … about the pileup of contortions in the directorial debut of Donald Kaufman's all-too-reall brother.

Martin McDonagh, In Bruges. "You fucking retract that bit about my c--- fucking kids!" "I retract that bit about your c--- fucking kids."

Best Domestic Nonfiction

Encounters at the End of the World, Werner Herzog. There's even more Herzog-aloging on the commentary track. "Nature's not in it," sang Gang of Four, but of course it is, when the garrulous Bavarian meets a mad penguin dashing miles to the horizon to certain death.

The Order of Myths, Margaret Brown. The racial divide that remains in contemporary America stands out in Brown's patient, perceptive look at parallel, segregated Mardi Gras celebrations in her hometown of Mobile, Alabama.

At The Death House Door, Steve James, Peter Gilbert. The witness of a man who walked dozens to their death. Fierce and beautifully made.

The Unforeseen, Laura Dunn. An intricate look at the cascading effects of man's indifference to his effects on nature, nearby and far.

Dear Zachary: a Letter to a Son About his Father, Kurt Kuenne. Ache-plus.

Best Foreign Nonfiction

Man On Wire, James Marsh.
Of Time and the City, Terence Davies.
Waltz With Bashir, Ari Folman.
Up the Yangtze, Yung Chang.
|The Power of Lie$, Anna Bronowski.

Some Swell Undistributed Films

24 City, Jia Zhang-Ke.
35 Shots Of Rum, Claire Denis.
The English Surgeon, Geoffrey Smith.
Liverpool, Lisandro Alonso.
Voy a Explotar (I'm Going to Explode), Gerardo Naranjo.
Sita Sings the Blues, Nina Paley.
Finally, Lillian And Dan, Mike Gibisser.
Prince of Broadway, Sean Baker.
Goliath, Zellner Brothers.

Stuff I hope to see eventually: Mad Detective, Sparrow, Bank Job, Before I Forget, Tulpan, Serbis, Hunger, The Romance of Astrea and Celadon, Secret of the Grain, The Man from London.

January 14, 2009