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With the Oscars just around the corner, with the box office setting records this holiday season, with just about anyone who loves films anxious to catch all of the possible Oscar contenders, the time has come for VanRamblings to weigh in on the best films released thus far in 2008.
We do so with one proviso, though. We have not caught all of the films which will be considered Oscar contenders for 2008, including: Laurent Cantet’s Cannes’ Palme D’or winner, The Class (opening January 16th in Vancouver); Mickey Rourke’s comeback vehicle, The Wrestler (January 9); Gus van Sant’s sure-to-be-nominated, at least for Best Actor for Sean Penn, Milk; John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner, Doubt; Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road; Clint Eastwood’s much-
anticipated Gran Torino; the Dustin Hoffman / Emma Thompson starrer, Last Chance Harvey (January 23); director Edward Zwick’s Defiance (January 16); and Kate Winslet’s controversial new film, The Reader.
The criteria for our Best Film list are this year, the same as last and all previous years: that each film is affecting, honest, poignant, authentic, and transporting; that the filmmaker and the actors take you so far inside their lives that you become one with the characters on screen; that, in the main, the films are low-budget, independent releases, which is to say, outside of the mainstream; and, heck, that each film simply moved us: to tears, to laugh, and to ruminate on the joy and tragedy, and the meaning of life.
We’ll update our Best Films list, as necessary and as we catch the remaining films that will find themselves nominated come January 22 2009.
VanRamblings’ Best Films of 2008 list continues after the jump …
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Wendy and Lucy: Overall, looking back on 2008, we would have to say that the film the Toronto film critics were brave enough to choose as their Best Film of 2008, Wendy and Lucy was, overall, our favourite film of the year. A small, achingly poignant independent drama by talented indie filmmaker Kelly Reichardt – with a luminous, award-winning central performance by Michelle Williams – Wendy and Lucy tracks a young woman, Wendy Carroll (Williams), who is driving to Ketchikan, Alaska in hopes of a summer of lucrative work, and the start of a new life with her dog, Lucy. When her car breaks down in Oregon, however, the thin fabric of her financial situation unravels, as she confronts increasingly dire economic decisions. Opens January 23rd, in Vancouver.
Silent Light: Absolutely stunning, beautiful and heartbreaking, this Cannes Jury Prize award-winner offers an allegorical tale of subtle strength and depth set within an isolated minority community of Mennonites in northern Mexico. Enfant terrible, writer-director Carlos Reygadas has created an austere, almost documentary-like fictional story that in its sheer, mesmerizing intensity portends ominous doom, all the while finding images — of children bathing, trees rustling, clouds passing — that offer a truer sense of the world than you’ll find in any ‘horror film’ released in 2008.
The Edge of Heaven: Evocative, moving and emotionally intricate, German-Turkish writer/director Fatih Akin’s multi-layered cross-cultural story about a professor of German literature (Baki Davrak) who travels to Turkey to atone for his father’s crime while a Turkish political activist (Nurgul Yesilcay) flees to Germany and on her journey finds refuge and love, emerges as nothing less than a masterwork for Akin, while for the rest of us The Edge of Heaven becomes a soulful, politically astute, sensual thunderbolt of a movie, a film that is at all times fascinating, brilliant and authentic in its depiction of the connections we create through our shared humanity.
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Frozen River: A Grand Jury Prize winner earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, and recently nominated for six Independent Spirit awards, writer-director Courtney Hunt’s powerful, understated début feature, Frozen River, is that rare film that while telling its twisty tale of hardscrabble survival manages to infuse an honest sense of hard-won hope for the future. Naturalistic, grim and heart-breaking at times, Hunt’s keenly observed portrait of impoverished rural life, and Melissa Leo’s uncompromising, sympathetic, honest portrayal of a mother scrambling just to survive and provide a home for her sons is never less than bracing, breathtaking and revelatory in its wary, often harrowing journey towards redemption.
Elegy: Was there a more joyous, poignant and devastating portrait of old age, love and family dysfunction than Elegy that was released in 2008? Not only featuring honest, unparalleled performances by Ben Kingsley and the always wonderfully lovely Penélope Cruz, Elegy also features a devastating cameo by Peter Sarsgaard as a son who accuses his father of familial crimes and misdemeanours, the specifics of which he can’t even recall. Spanish director Isabel Coixet’s impeccably crafted low-budget feature translates author Phillip Roth’s meditation on lust and mortality with a fierce wit and intelligence, in the process creating adult entertainment of the first order.
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Happy-Go-Lucky: An unsentimental, British kitchen sink comedy, Happy-Go-Lucky introduces certain Oscar contender Sally Hawkins to North American audiences, and in the process transforms our understanding of what true happiness really means, as a state of mind and a state of being. For all of its relentless good cheer, director Mike Leigh’s new film still manages to preserve the notion of film as a social canvas, all told within the context of an edgy character study whose message only gradually emerges. Hawkins is nothing short of amazing, while co-star / possible Oscar nominee, Eddie Marsan, creates one of the most indelibly dour, angry and half-insane screen characters that emerged on film in 2008. A must-see.
Doubt: One of the most beautifully shot films of 2008, John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony award-winning Broadway play brings to the screen a gripping story about the quest for the truth of whether a priest has molested one of his young parishioners, the forces of change in the Catholic church in the 1960s, and the devastating consequences of blind justice in an age defined by an unyielding moral certainty. Although Meryl Streep’s turn as the fiercely guarded and iron-gloved Sister Aloysius Beauvier plays as a little over the top, her absolutest performance is all the more entertaining for its lack of shades of grey. Phillip Seymour Hoffman, as the challenged priest, is more low-key but just as entertaining and even more watchable. A taut, high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse that plays as a sort of creepy, Hitchcockian thriller, Doubt offers viewers a cautionary tale, and a sombre, absorbing and intense as hell psychological thriller.
The Secret of the Grain: Unsentimental, deeply moving and radiating a familial and sensuous charm throughout, Abdellatif Kechiche’s César award-winning emigré drama, The Secret of the Grain, emerged as one of the hits at the 27th annual Vancouver International Film Festival, this past October. A superbly made, well-acted family drama that packs a powerful emotional punch, this sprawling, masterfully rendered family melodrama tells an entirely involving story of a multi-generational family, their Arab working-class immigrant culture and a sometimes intolerant reception in France. Beautifully acted, thoroughly engaging, and so naturalistic in its presentation that you feel you’re a part of the extended family onscreen.
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Appaloosa: With its mournful, seductive, easygoing rhythm, Appaloosa may be traditional genre fillmmaking, but if you’ve got a hankerin’ for a first-rate prairie duster, a western easily as well made as Open Range, and 2007’s superb oater, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, then this is the film for you. Director-star, Ed Harris, clearly loves the characters he presents and gives them plenty of room to talk plain and mess up. As he quietly complicates matters until the story becomes a meditation on friendship, professionalism, sacrifice, love, corruption, Appaloosa emerges as winning filmmaking of the first order. DVD release on January 14th.
Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Woody Allen’s most engaging and entertaining film in years, Vicky Cristina Barcelona offers a blissful summer idyll and an inspired riff on the unique, unpredictable nature of romantic relationships, all wrapped up within a beguiling tragicomedy about two young Americans (Scarlett Johansson and a splendid Rebecca Hall) who spend a summer in Spain, and meet a flamboyant artist (Javier Bardem) and his beautiful but slightly deranged ex-wife (Penélope Cruz). Wonderful performances abound, with much laughter and good cheer (no mean feat, that). Loopy, exhilarating, bittersweet, and most definitely one of the best films of 2008.
The films above represent the first ten of what we expect will be 20 films that VanRamblings will single out as the “best” on film in 2008. In a future posting, we’ll alert you to the publication of additional titles (there will be more films to write about … coming, probably, next week). See you then.
