2008 Movie Year in Review - 49 Movies
I saw 49 movies in the theater in 2008. This sounds like a lot of movies, and compared to pretty much anyone I know (except maybe theferrett and zoethe) I guess it is. Which doesn't change that it's still my lowest total, by nearly 15 movies, since 2002. Heck, I had an entire month where I didn't attend a single movie, and two more where I only saw one. In addition, if you cut out the movies from the Cleveland International Film Festival the vast majority of the films I saw were relatively mainstream. Cedar Lee and Cinematheque attendance was down. I must be losing my edge. Or I'm going mainstream. Could be either, really. At any rate, 49 movies is still more than enough to have some strong opinions about what my friends should check out.
Best of the Best
I wrote up an extensive review of I'm Not There when I saw it back in February. My favorable opinion has not changed. It's a brilliant piece of work absolutely worthy of its topic, Bob Dylan, and one of the best movies of recent years.
My favorite comedy of 2008 was a very black comedy from the Cleveland International Film Festival call The Substitute. I'm sure that this Danish film will be remade in English at some point; it's too funny for that not to happen, but I urge you to track down the original and watch it first. An alien hears that "Humans are invincible because of love." Because it wants to be invincible, it lands on Earth and seeks out an author who wrote a scholarly book on love. The alien quickly decides that the best way to get to the author and learn the secret of invincibility is to pose as a leggy blonde substitute teacher for his son's middle school class. 'She' quickly charms all the parents of the students, but the kids are suspicious. Will they be able to convince their parents that their teacher is actually a space alien who plans to abduct them all? I very strongly recommend this movie; it's smart, funny and disturbing as hell.
We saw a lot of the mainstream blockbuster type movies from the summer. Overall, the quality level of these films was quite high; very few made my brain hurt from their sheer stupidity. Although I'd have to concur with the general opinion that The Dark Knight is the best of these, I personally had a lot more fun watching Robert Downey Jr portray Iron Man. Heck, that movie made Gwyneth Paltrow a halfway decent actress, which is a bigger surprise than anything Lee, Ditko or Kirby ever came up with on a comic book page.
In a similar vein, I don't think anyone really disagrees with the premise that Wall-E was the best animated film of the year, stretching Pixar's run of unbroken greatness out for another year. However, I personally had a really great time watching Kung Fu Panda and found it to be much more fun.
And now, on to some subcategories:
Animated
Persepolis is an animated biopic of a little girl who lives through the Iranian revolution. It is pretty good, but I found the unrelenting black and white to be a bit grim. It's not a happy movie at all. The Tale of Despereaux has some gorgeous visuals and strong voice acting, but it is right on the line between "kids film" and "family film", which is polite way of saying that the plot wasn't very good and it might not hold the interest of an adult.
Comic Book/Action
If you like monster movies and don't have motion sickness issues you need to see Cloverfield, preferably on as large a screen as possible. I'm sure that most of it had been done already in some Japanese monster movie, but they found new and horrifying ways to destroy New York City and for that I thank them.
Everything after that on the list may be avoidable based on your personal preferences. If you like Bond and Dr. Jones, you'll certainly enjoy the latest offerings, but neither Quantum of Solace nor Crystal Skull was really worthy of its predecessors. Hancock took an interesting idea and ended up wasting it, sadly. The Hellboy sequel was very pretty and had a much better plot than the first one, which admittedly didn't take much. The Forbidden Kingdom was bad, but at least it was bad in the entertaining kung fu movie sense of the word bad. Flash Point was also was a kung fu film, but it didn't have the same sense of fun as The Forbidden Kingdom and can be skipped by all but the hard core kung fu fans. Jumper and The Spirit were an utter waste of time and I can't recommend them at all to anyone, unless you enjoy Samuel L Jackson chewing the carpet; he's the best thing about both movies, which may actually be an insult to him now that I think of it.
Comedy
I'm not at all a fan of stupid comedies. Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell and the like leave me cold. Fortunately, 2008 had a lot of very intelligent comedies. I've already discussed my love for The Substitute. Zack & Miri Make a Porno is the best Kevin Smith film since Dogma, and arguably the one that is most likely to appeal to non-Smith fans. If you hate his other stuff this one may be worth your time anyway. Otis... Otis sort of defines black comedy. A serial killer kidnaps a girl and chains her up in the basement. She escapes. Her family decides that rather than involve the cops, they'll torture the guy to death all by themselves. Except they catch the wrong guy... and things begin going very wrong indeed. War, Inc. deserved much more attention than it got and is worth a rental. I personally enjoyed Priceless, which is a French romantic comedy about a gold digger on the Riviera and the bellboy who falls in love with her. Hamlet 2 is as close to a stupid comedy as I saw this year, but although uneven it had plenty of moments worth seeing. If you really like Bruce Lee and/or the films of Christopher Guest, you might like Finishing the Game, which is a mockumentary about the efforts to film additional footage and release Bruce Lee's final unfinished movie. If nothing else, it proves that doing a film in the style of Christopher Guest is really fricking difficult for people who aren't Christopher Guest.
PS - Did you know Christopher Guest is a Baron who used to regularly sit in the House of Lords? You can't make this shit up. Thank you wikipedia.
Musicals, More or Less (no particular order)
Featuring the music of Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Abba and Joy Division, plus a really bizarre movie that wants to be the Rocky Horror Picture show and sort of succeeds. Across the Universe is about 30 minutes too long, and sometimes it is too cute for its own good. However, when it's good it's very good; see, for instance the brilliantly disturbing animation during the sequence for "I Want You". Mamma Mia! has a lot of famous actors and actresses who for the most part can't actually sing much better than the people I know, but somehow it works anyway. Also, it turns out that I know a lot more Abba songs by heart than I'm really comfortable admitting. Control isn't really a musical so much as a biopic of Ian Curtis of Joy Division, but it's as close to a Joy Division concert as you're going to get without a time machine.
Repo... Repo is interesting. Interesting as in "science experiment interesting." People get their organs ripped out. People gouge out their own eyes. They sing dramatic gothy-sounding musical numbers. Paris Hilton is addicted to plastic surgery. No, really, this happens in Repo. I guess this is one of those movies where if you watch the preview you'll know instantly whether you like it or not. I did.
Sweeney Todd was just ok. Johnny Depp sings better than Pierce Brosnan does in Mamma Mia! That's about as far as I'm willing to go.
Documentaries
I saw all of these at the CIFF. Why weren't there any more? Because most of the documentaries at the Cedar Lee this year were various exposes about assorted horrible things that the Bush administration did, and they just didn't interest me. At some level of outrage it just gets hard to get angrier, so why bother. Since all of those documentaries failed commerically, I must not be the only one with that opinion.
Anyway, none of these was amazing. If you like Public Enemy, you might like the documentary about them, but you'll probably be annoyed by the various musician talking heads. Yeah, Henry Rollins is interesting. Tom Morello isn't. At all. And although they spend a lot of time talking about Chuck D and Flava Flav, the rest of the group is briefly touched on (Terminator X gets less than a minute, and everyone else other than Professor Griff less) and various controversies get papered over or not even mentioned (like Griff's comments about Jews). Torn From the Flag was about the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviets, and is well done but not great. Fighting For Life, ditto but about the treatment of US casualties in Iraq.
Grab Bag - No Particular Order
Yeah, I know you heard about Juno. It's overrated, which doesn't make it bad. That's what happens when people who don't normally see intelligent movies are convinced to see one. Stardust was underrated. It's a sweet (as in cute/romantic, not as in awesome) fantasy that most people reading this would enjoy. Plus, how often do you get to see Bobby De Niro as a pirate / transvestite? Hint: not often. There Will Be Blood could be subtitled "Daniel Day Lewis shows that he is a better actor than anyone else" and probably wouldn't get much argument. Less often mentioned is that the film is absolutely gorgeously filmed. Roman de Gare is a French term meaning "Beach Book", but despite the title it's really a psychological thriller that's quite entertaining. Choke is... weird. Good, but weird. It's a movie about sexual hangups, family and historical reenactments. Sukiyaki Western Django makes Choke seem positively normal and mainstream. If you like uber-stylized violence and bloodshed similar to the final samurai battle in the first installment of Kill Bill then you may wish to see it. I particularly like the 'sword versus gun' battle at the end. Changeling shows that even when Clint Eastwood is off his game the movies he directs are still eminently watchable. Plus, serial killers! Let the Right One In is a novel twist on the vampire story. It's being remade for America, so see the original instead of the pap that the studios think you aren't smart enough to enjoy.
Here's the full list:
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - WL, 1/01
Control [Joy Division] - C, 1/04
Finishing the Game: The Search For the New Bruce Lee - C, 1/06
Juno - CL, 1/14
Cloverfield - WL, 1/18
Stardust - CF, 2/01
Across the Universe - CF, 2/08
Persepolis - CL, 2/12
I'm Not There - C, 2/25
There Will Be Blood - WL, 3/01
Jumper - RR, 3/03
32nd Cleveland International Film Festival - Tower City Cinemas - 13 total
She's a Boy I Knew - Su 3/09
Return of the Cuyahoga - Su 3/09
Fighting for Life - M 3/10
Bliss - T 3/11
The Trap - R 3/13
Exodus - F 3/14
Midnight Shorts Program 2 - F 3/14
Unspeakable - S 3/15
Torn From the Flag - S 3/15
Public Enemy: Welcome to Terrordome - S 3/15
Otis - S 3/15
Flash Point - Su 3/16
The Substitute - Su 3/16
Iron Man - WL, 5/08
Diary of the Dead - C, 5/10
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - WL, 5/26
Priceless - CL, 6/02
The Forbidden Kingdom - GFK 4, 7/04
Roman de Gare - CL, 7/11
Hancock - WL, 7/14
Batman: The Dark Knight - WL, 7/19
Mamma Mia! - RR, 7/29
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army - VV, 8/02
War, Inc. - CL, 8/18
Wall-E - VV, 8/30
Hamlet 2 - WL, 9/05
Choke - WL, 10/15
Kagemusha - C, 10/17
Kung Fu Panda - CF, 11/08
Zack & Miri Make a Porno - RR, 11/12
Quantum of Solace - WL, 11/14
Sukiyaki Western Django - C, 11/14
Changeling - RR, 11/17
Repo: The Genetic Opera - CL, 11/21
Let the Right One In - CL, 12/06
The Tale of Despereaux - RR, 12/24
The Spirit - VV, 12/25
January - 5
February - 4
March - 15
April - 0
May - 3
June - 1
July - 5
August - 3
September - 1
October - 2
November - 6
December - 3
What You Should Rent In No Particular Order
Best of the Best
I wrote up an extensive review of I'm Not There when I saw it back in February. My favorable opinion has not changed. It's a brilliant piece of work absolutely worthy of its topic, Bob Dylan, and one of the best movies of recent years.
My favorite comedy of 2008 was a very black comedy from the Cleveland International Film Festival call The Substitute. I'm sure that this Danish film will be remade in English at some point; it's too funny for that not to happen, but I urge you to track down the original and watch it first. An alien hears that "Humans are invincible because of love." Because it wants to be invincible, it lands on Earth and seeks out an author who wrote a scholarly book on love. The alien quickly decides that the best way to get to the author and learn the secret of invincibility is to pose as a leggy blonde substitute teacher for his son's middle school class. 'She' quickly charms all the parents of the students, but the kids are suspicious. Will they be able to convince their parents that their teacher is actually a space alien who plans to abduct them all? I very strongly recommend this movie; it's smart, funny and disturbing as hell.
We saw a lot of the mainstream blockbuster type movies from the summer. Overall, the quality level of these films was quite high; very few made my brain hurt from their sheer stupidity. Although I'd have to concur with the general opinion that The Dark Knight is the best of these, I personally had a lot more fun watching Robert Downey Jr portray Iron Man. Heck, that movie made Gwyneth Paltrow a halfway decent actress, which is a bigger surprise than anything Lee, Ditko or Kirby ever came up with on a comic book page.
In a similar vein, I don't think anyone really disagrees with the premise that Wall-E was the best animated film of the year, stretching Pixar's run of unbroken greatness out for another year. However, I personally had a really great time watching Kung Fu Panda and found it to be much more fun.
And now, on to some subcategories:
Animated
- Wall-E
- Kung Fu Panda
- Persepolis
- The Tale of Despereaux
Persepolis is an animated biopic of a little girl who lives through the Iranian revolution. It is pretty good, but I found the unrelenting black and white to be a bit grim. It's not a happy movie at all. The Tale of Despereaux has some gorgeous visuals and strong voice acting, but it is right on the line between "kids film" and "family film", which is polite way of saying that the plot wasn't very good and it might not hold the interest of an adult.
Comic Book/Action
- Iron Man
- The Dark Knight
- Cloverfield
- Quantum of Solace
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
- Hancock
- Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
- The Forbidden Kingdom
- Flash Point
- Jumper
- The Spirit
If you like monster movies and don't have motion sickness issues you need to see Cloverfield, preferably on as large a screen as possible. I'm sure that most of it had been done already in some Japanese monster movie, but they found new and horrifying ways to destroy New York City and for that I thank them.
Everything after that on the list may be avoidable based on your personal preferences. If you like Bond and Dr. Jones, you'll certainly enjoy the latest offerings, but neither Quantum of Solace nor Crystal Skull was really worthy of its predecessors. Hancock took an interesting idea and ended up wasting it, sadly. The Hellboy sequel was very pretty and had a much better plot than the first one, which admittedly didn't take much. The Forbidden Kingdom was bad, but at least it was bad in the entertaining kung fu movie sense of the word bad. Flash Point was also was a kung fu film, but it didn't have the same sense of fun as The Forbidden Kingdom and can be skipped by all but the hard core kung fu fans. Jumper and The Spirit were an utter waste of time and I can't recommend them at all to anyone, unless you enjoy Samuel L Jackson chewing the carpet; he's the best thing about both movies, which may actually be an insult to him now that I think of it.
Comedy
- The Substitute
- Zack & Miri Make a Porno
- Otis
- War, Inc.
- Priceless
- Hamlet 2
- Finishing the Game: The Search For the New Bruce Lee
I'm not at all a fan of stupid comedies. Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell and the like leave me cold. Fortunately, 2008 had a lot of very intelligent comedies. I've already discussed my love for The Substitute. Zack & Miri Make a Porno is the best Kevin Smith film since Dogma, and arguably the one that is most likely to appeal to non-Smith fans. If you hate his other stuff this one may be worth your time anyway. Otis... Otis sort of defines black comedy. A serial killer kidnaps a girl and chains her up in the basement. She escapes. Her family decides that rather than involve the cops, they'll torture the guy to death all by themselves. Except they catch the wrong guy... and things begin going very wrong indeed. War, Inc. deserved much more attention than it got and is worth a rental. I personally enjoyed Priceless, which is a French romantic comedy about a gold digger on the Riviera and the bellboy who falls in love with her. Hamlet 2 is as close to a stupid comedy as I saw this year, but although uneven it had plenty of moments worth seeing. If you really like Bruce Lee and/or the films of Christopher Guest, you might like Finishing the Game, which is a mockumentary about the efforts to film additional footage and release Bruce Lee's final unfinished movie. If nothing else, it proves that doing a film in the style of Christopher Guest is really fricking difficult for people who aren't Christopher Guest.
PS - Did you know Christopher Guest is a Baron who used to regularly sit in the House of Lords? You can't make this shit up. Thank you wikipedia.
Musicals, More or Less (no particular order)
- I'm Not There
- Across the Universe
- Mamma Mia!
- Control [Joy Division]
- Repo: The Genetic Opera
- Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Featuring the music of Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Abba and Joy Division, plus a really bizarre movie that wants to be the Rocky Horror Picture show and sort of succeeds. Across the Universe is about 30 minutes too long, and sometimes it is too cute for its own good. However, when it's good it's very good; see, for instance the brilliantly disturbing animation during the sequence for "I Want You". Mamma Mia! has a lot of famous actors and actresses who for the most part can't actually sing much better than the people I know, but somehow it works anyway. Also, it turns out that I know a lot more Abba songs by heart than I'm really comfortable admitting. Control isn't really a musical so much as a biopic of Ian Curtis of Joy Division, but it's as close to a Joy Division concert as you're going to get without a time machine.
Repo... Repo is interesting. Interesting as in "science experiment interesting." People get their organs ripped out. People gouge out their own eyes. They sing dramatic gothy-sounding musical numbers. Paris Hilton is addicted to plastic surgery. No, really, this happens in Repo. I guess this is one of those movies where if you watch the preview you'll know instantly whether you like it or not. I did.
Sweeney Todd was just ok. Johnny Depp sings better than Pierce Brosnan does in Mamma Mia! That's about as far as I'm willing to go.
Documentaries
- Fighting for Life
- Public Enemy: Welcome to Terrordome
- Torn From the Flag
- Return of the Cuyahoga
- She's a Boy I Knew
I saw all of these at the CIFF. Why weren't there any more? Because most of the documentaries at the Cedar Lee this year were various exposes about assorted horrible things that the Bush administration did, and they just didn't interest me. At some level of outrage it just gets hard to get angrier, so why bother. Since all of those documentaries failed commerically, I must not be the only one with that opinion.
Anyway, none of these was amazing. If you like Public Enemy, you might like the documentary about them, but you'll probably be annoyed by the various musician talking heads. Yeah, Henry Rollins is interesting. Tom Morello isn't. At all. And although they spend a lot of time talking about Chuck D and Flava Flav, the rest of the group is briefly touched on (Terminator X gets less than a minute, and everyone else other than Professor Griff less) and various controversies get papered over or not even mentioned (like Griff's comments about Jews). Torn From the Flag was about the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviets, and is well done but not great. Fighting For Life, ditto but about the treatment of US casualties in Iraq.
Grab Bag - No Particular Order
- Juno
- Stardust
- There Will Be Blood
- Roman de Gare
- Choke
- Sukiyaki Western Django
- Changeling
- Let the Right One In
Yeah, I know you heard about Juno. It's overrated, which doesn't make it bad. That's what happens when people who don't normally see intelligent movies are convinced to see one. Stardust was underrated. It's a sweet (as in cute/romantic, not as in awesome) fantasy that most people reading this would enjoy. Plus, how often do you get to see Bobby De Niro as a pirate / transvestite? Hint: not often. There Will Be Blood could be subtitled "Daniel Day Lewis shows that he is a better actor than anyone else" and probably wouldn't get much argument. Less often mentioned is that the film is absolutely gorgeously filmed. Roman de Gare is a French term meaning "Beach Book", but despite the title it's really a psychological thriller that's quite entertaining. Choke is... weird. Good, but weird. It's a movie about sexual hangups, family and historical reenactments. Sukiyaki Western Django makes Choke seem positively normal and mainstream. If you like uber-stylized violence and bloodshed similar to the final samurai battle in the first installment of Kill Bill then you may wish to see it. I particularly like the 'sword versus gun' battle at the end. Changeling shows that even when Clint Eastwood is off his game the movies he directs are still eminently watchable. Plus, serial killers! Let the Right One In is a novel twist on the vampire story. It's being remade for America, so see the original instead of the pap that the studios think you aren't smart enough to enjoy.
Here's the full list:
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street - WL, 1/01
Control [Joy Division] - C, 1/04
Finishing the Game: The Search For the New Bruce Lee - C, 1/06
Juno - CL, 1/14
Cloverfield - WL, 1/18
Stardust - CF, 2/01
Across the Universe - CF, 2/08
Persepolis - CL, 2/12
I'm Not There - C, 2/25
There Will Be Blood - WL, 3/01
Jumper - RR, 3/03
32nd Cleveland International Film Festival - Tower City Cinemas - 13 total
She's a Boy I Knew - Su 3/09
Return of the Cuyahoga - Su 3/09
Fighting for Life - M 3/10
Bliss - T 3/11
The Trap - R 3/13
Exodus - F 3/14
Midnight Shorts Program 2 - F 3/14
Unspeakable - S 3/15
Torn From the Flag - S 3/15
Public Enemy: Welcome to Terrordome - S 3/15
Otis - S 3/15
Flash Point - Su 3/16
The Substitute - Su 3/16
Iron Man - WL, 5/08
Diary of the Dead - C, 5/10
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - WL, 5/26
Priceless - CL, 6/02
The Forbidden Kingdom - GFK 4, 7/04
Roman de Gare - CL, 7/11
Hancock - WL, 7/14
Batman: The Dark Knight - WL, 7/19
Mamma Mia! - RR, 7/29
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army - VV, 8/02
War, Inc. - CL, 8/18
Wall-E - VV, 8/30
Hamlet 2 - WL, 9/05
Choke - WL, 10/15
Kagemusha - C, 10/17
Kung Fu Panda - CF, 11/08
Zack & Miri Make a Porno - RR, 11/12
Quantum of Solace - WL, 11/14
Sukiyaki Western Django - C, 11/14
Changeling - RR, 11/17
Repo: The Genetic Opera - CL, 11/21
Let the Right One In - CL, 12/06
The Tale of Despereaux - RR, 12/24
The Spirit - VV, 12/25
January - 5
February - 4
March - 15
April - 0
May - 3
June - 1
July - 5
August - 3
September - 1
October - 2
November - 6
December - 3
What You Should Rent In No Particular Order
- The Substitute - If you don't laugh at this, you may have some humor issues. Consult a doctor.
- Otis - Unless you have a problem with ordinary people torturing somebody to death.
- Iron Man - I AM IRON MAN!!!!
- War, Inc. - If you like Grosse Point Blank or American Dreamz, snag this one.
- I'm Not There - It will reward the interested viewer.
- Wall-E - Arguably the finest Pixar film yet. Of course, there's a lot of competition, but this is good in so many different ways that I'd have to give it the edge, barely.
- Kung Fu Panda - Remember, there is no charge for awesomeness. Or attractiveness.
- The Dark Knight - Duh.
- Stardust - Deserves a Princess Bride-like cult following. Won't get it. Oh well.
- There Will Be Blood - Or oil, as the case may be.
- Zack & Miri Make a Porno - Kevin Smith makes a great movie and it gets largely ignored. I guess Jersey Girl really did kill some loyalties.