The Year in Film

This was not a year of perfect, universally adored movies. The best films of the year all contain the kinds of quirky appeal that tend to divide audiences, and all of them are flawed. But quirky, flawed movies can often be the most compelling, interesting, and endearing.

In years like this, no two “best of” lists will look alike. But here are mine, with the caveat that there are several movies that, while they’ve attracted praise, I haven’t seen, including Frost/Nixon, Wendy and Lucy, The Reader, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Let the Right One In, Revolutionary Road, and The Wrestler.

Top 10 Movies

1. PARANOID PARK (director Gus Van Sant)

Before the bigger and more prestigious Milk, Gus Van Sant directed this small work about a 16-year-old skateboarder who accidentally kills a security guard. The film indulges in long silences and casual conversations, and like Van Sant’s 2003 release Elephant (about a Columbine-style school shooting), Paranoid Park is as much about the ordinary lives of teenagers as it is about the more extraordinary and violent parts of the story. The result is riveting.

2. RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (director Jonathan Demme)

Rachel Getting Married is simultaneously joyful and awkward, not unlike most actual weddings. The wedding here goes beyond the typical, though, thanks to the just-out-of-rehab sister of the bride, played stunningly well by Anne Hathaway. The entire cast is pitch perfect, and Jonathan Demme’s direction is characteristically affectionate. While the families coming together in Rachel Getting Married are not quite ordinary, the experiences depicted are impressively real and identifiable.

3. MILK (director Gus Van Sant)

Gus Van Sant sacrifices a great deal of the experimental creativity he brought to Paranoid Park (and most of his other more independent fare) in Milk, delivering a disappointingly conventional film. Still, the script is abnormally intelligent, and the ideas explored should be of interest to anybody who cares about how to effect political change (and not just in the area of gay rights). The movie is both intellectually stimulating and emotionally powerful, especially in its first hour, and its obvious parallels to contemporary political movements make it the most relevant film made in recent memory.

4. THE DARK KNIGHT (director Christopher Nolan)

What made The Dark Knight special was not that it used a superhero story as a parable about contemporary political issues – the X-Men movies covered that ground first. The Dark Knight stands out because it asked more questions than it answered. Not unlike reality, the movie gave rise to a wide array of plausible interpretations, from neoconservative apologia to liberal internationalist rebuke. That’s the result of complex, layered storytelling, far more interesting than a lot of the more preachy, obvious commentary Hollywood has produced in the past couple of years.

5. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (director Danny Boyle)

Slumdog Millionaire is filled with hokey sentimentality, and while the story provides for an interesting look at life in India, it is otherwise pretty hackneyed. But it’s also genuinely exciting and fun to watch, thanks mostly to Danny Boyle’s energetic direction and a very good soundtrack (which includes everybody’s new favorite song, M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes”).

6. SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (director Charlie Kaufman)

Do not go see Synecdoche, New York if you want to see something uplifting (if that’s your cup of tea, Slumdog Millionaire is right up your alley). Synecdoche is far from a pleasant experience, though I think it would be wrong to say that it is depressing. Ultimately it is about the danger of self-importance and the need for real human connection. It takes a while to reach that conclusion, and it’s not always a fun ride getting there, but it is just as weirdly fascinating as we have all come to expect from Charlie Kaufman.

7. 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS AND 2 DAYS (director Cristian Mungiu)

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is a powerful movie that tells the story of a young woman helping another young woman receive an illegal abortion in communist Romania. The awfulness of the experience is related in disturbing but meticulous detail, and it is not easily forgotten.

8. WALL-E (director Andrew Stanton)

A lot of film critics I respect have put Wall-E at the top of their lists, and I certainly don’t want to give the impression I didn’t find it an immensely entertaining and innovative film. But I also found the social commentary a little obvious, certainly not of the caliber Pixar delivered in The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Still, Wall-E achieves something extraordinary as a matter of storytelling, and its first half hour is just amazing.

9. CLOVERFIELD (director Matt Reeves)

Cloverfield (along with The Dark Knight and The Bourne Ultimatum) is the sort of movie that future generations will screen in intro to film classes to demonstrate the influence the 9/11 attacks had on American filmmaking. Just as the advent of nuclear technology gave rise to cautionary tales like Them! and the original The Day the Earth Stood Still, 9/11 gave rise to Cloverfield, a movie about an unexpected and inexplicable threat emerging out of nowhere to destroy New York City. It is at once supremely entertaining and anthropologically captivating.

10. MAN ON WIRE (director James Marsh)

A documentary about a French guy who in the 1970’s illegally walked on a high wire across the World Trade Center towers without a net, Man on Wire is exhilarating, suspenseful, and life-affirming.

Honorable Mentions: Burn After Reading, Funny Games, Iron Man

Top 5 Casts

1. Rachel Getting Married
2. Burn After Reading
3. Milk
4. Synecdoche, New York
5. The Dark Knight

Best Leading Performances

Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married)
Sean Penn (Milk)

Top 10 Supporting Performances

1. Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight)
2. Emile Hirsch (Milk)
3. Bill Irwin (Rachel Getting Married)
4. Josh Brolin (Milk)
5. Samantha Morton (Synecdoche, New York)
6. Rosemarie DeWitt (Rachel Getting Married)
7. Aaron Eckhart (The Dark Knight)
8. Brad Pitt (Burn After Reading)
9. Michelle Williams (Synecdoche, New York)
10. Tom Newton (Synecdoche, New York)

Honorable Mentions: Frances McDormand (Burn After Reading), Debra Winger (Rachel Getting Married), Michael Caine (The Dark Knight)

Top 5 Directors

1. Gus Van Sant (Paranoid Park)
2. Jonathan Demme (Rachel Getting Married)
3. Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire)
4. Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight)
5. Andrew Stanton (Wall-E)

Honorable Mention: Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche, New York)

Top 5 Screenplays

1. Dustin Lance Black (Milk)
2. Charlie Kaufman (Synecdoche, New York)
3. Gus Van Sant (Paranoid Park)
4. Jenny Lumet (Rachel Getting Married)
5. Joel & Ethan Coen (Burn After Reading)

Honorable Mention: Christopher & Jonathan Nolan (The Dark Knight)