You are currently browsing the daily archive for January 24, 2009.
This list is accurate as of post-date. So many films and not enough time to see them all, the potential for future change is inevitable, but as of today here are the best …
I don’t know what precipitated 2008 being the year of the World War II movie, but of the 100+ releases I saw, six of them concerned it in some regard. The year saw more than its share of war from all decades with Che, Stop-Loss, Waltz with Bashir, and even Tropic Thunder, however, the Holocaust spent a lot of time on top of the list for movies on the verge of award glory. Only one received a nomination for the coveted Best Picture Oscar, and it was one of my least favorites, The Reader. The two that really impressed me with their fresh take on the psychology of the genocide, Adam Resurrected and Boy in the Striped Pajamas saw no love, but then that’s why I make my own top ten list. A film may be well-made, perfectly acted, and precisely paced, but to me technical genius isn’t the end all be all. No, to me, I need to be touched emotionally somehow, either by the story or the visuals. My favorite films of 2008 were the ones that I left the theatre contemplative and altered in some way. You won’t see many at the Oscars this year, but that’s ok … I can watch and shake my head when lesser films take the golden bald men my ragtag bunch of cinema deserved.
Films not seen yet that have potential of creeping into the top 10:
Appaloosa; Changeling; Frozen River; Happy-Go-Lucky; Saibogujiman kwenchana [I’m a Cyborg]; My Winnipeg; Surveillance; Synecdoche, New York; Towelhead; Transsiberian
Honorable Mention (in reverse order):
Milk, review: In a genre that doesn’t usually appeal to me, Milk really did it right. Showing just a specific period of Harvey Milk’s life, without boring us in mundane details or glossing over important facts to fit in more life-story, Gus Van Sant tells the tale with love and objectivity. Sean Penn deserves Best Actor; I just hope he doesn’t win it, (but more on that later).
Son of Rambow, review: Garth Jennings shows the heart he infused Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy with, only on a more touching scale. It portrays two boys living out their imaginations and a surprising friendship to make their lives meaningful amongst the hardships of growing up. Funny, touching, and inventive—it’s British all the way and great throughout.
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, review: A staggering documentary showing that even a planned film can take turns no one could expect. What was to be a story documenting a fallen friend becomes a letter to a son that would never see his father. And then, in a disturbing twist of fate, becomes something completely different. Needs to be experienced firsthand to fully grasp the devastation and hope for the future.
Dark Knight, The, review: Could it be the best superhero movie of all time? Yes, it can, if I could truly call it a superhero film. The Dark Knight rises above those conventions and stereotypes to become a magnificent feat of cinema. And with a stirring portrayal of chaos by the late Heath Ledger will be very hard to top, even for Chris Nolan if he decides to make a third.
Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The, review: Yes, I’ve heard and understand the comparisons to Forrest Gump, but I believe that even if this is a copy, it is a better one. You must buy into the fantasy of it all to enjoy it, however, with the performances, stunning visuals, and incomparable special effects in aging, it’d be hard to not believe it all.
The Top Ten of 2009 (in reverse order):
10. Brothers Bloom, The, review: Rian Johnson follows his stellar debut Brick with something that may at first seem lighter, but ends up being just as taut a suspense thriller. A memorable addition to the “con-man” genre of crime capers, the humor and heavy emotional drama meld together perfectly.
9. My Blueberry Nights, review: People tell me I should not like this film, that it is lesser Wong Kar-Wai and doesn’t even deserve mention. However, despite a couple flaws in acting, I was enthralled throughout. Both mesmerized by the stunning cinematography and the subtle beauty of Norah Jones, it grabbed a hold and never let go.
8. Låt den rätte komma in (Let the Right One In), review: Complete with possibly the best sequence shot all year—a static frame of a school swimming pool, you’ll understand when you watch it—the atmosphere is so cold and sterile that the creepiness of this vampire film never lets up, especially with the warmth and love attempting to come across between our two young leads.
7. Snow Angels, review: It will land a devastating blow to your stomach as the bottom finally drops after over an hour of tense set-up. A tragedy by the definition of the term, I am so glad this was my introduction to David Gordon Green and not Pineapple Express (although I loved that one too).
6. Seven Pounds, review: I know I shouldn’t have this film so high on my list. I know it’s sentimental and contrived and tugs at the heartstrings. However, I’d be lying to myself if I left it off. Will Smith shines and the story stayed with me well after the credits rolled. And for me, that means so much more than whether it was original or substantial in an artistic sense.
5. Revolutionary Road, review: A powerhouse performance from Kate Winslet, (more deserving of an Oscar nomination than her turn in The Reader), and the supporting role of the year from Michael Shannon if not for Ledger’s sure win, Sam Mendes got the emptiness of suburbia as well as, if not better then, contemporary Todd Field. A character piece more than a plot-based narrative, you will see yourself superimposed in these lost creatures and hope you find a way to get your life on track so you don’t suffer their same fate.
4. Slumdog Millionaire, review: Feel good movie of the year? Most definitely. Danny Boyle can do no wrong as he takes a script that actually uses contrivances and “lazy writing” to make it succeed. A boy’s life had just the right experiences in it to answer the questions on a game show to win a million dollars and find the love of his life. It shouldn’t work, it shouldn’t take us for an amazing journey, and yet it is all the more successful because it does just that.
3. Rachel Getting Married, review: Was there an accidental family murder caused by drug abuse in my family? No. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t see myself, and my immediate family members, transposed over the characters in Jenny Lumet’s screenwriting debut. At times hard to watch and at others tough to get the smile off your face, Jonathan Demme crafts a film so real that you feel as though you just watched your own home movie.
2. Wrestler, The, review: Is the story any more unique than the last down-on-his-luck ex-celebrity clawing his way back into the one thing he’s ever been good at? Absolutely not. But when you watch Mickey Rourke play that part, a mirror image of his own resurrection in Hollywood, you can’t help but believe it is. My hope for Best Actor and a continuation of Darren Aronofsky’s perfect filmography, The Wrestler shows us how we all live in multiple worlds and, while we hope they can all go on simultaneously, we know that in the end one must be chosen. Life is only worth living if you can find love somewhere in it. If it’s from your family, your lover, your fans, your dog, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that you learn to love yourself and what you are as a testament to it.
1. Fall, The, review: Tarsem Singh creates a visionary epic that he himself says in a documentary on the DVD will fail if the hospital scenes do not work. Without the success of Roy and Alexandria’s relationship to make the fantasy sequences relevant, the film would be nothing more than a long music video. Fortunately, young Catinca Untaru is marvelous and her journey with Lee Pace’s Roy in reality and in their minds envelops you completely. Stunning from start to finish, if it really did take Tarsem three years to complete, I congratulate him for sticking with it, because he molded a masterpiece.
Some films to keep on the radar in 2009 are: Coraline; Funny People; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince; The Informers; Star Trek; Taken; Terminator: Salvation; Up; Watchmen
What is guilt? I believe this is the central question behind Stephen Daldry’s new film The Reader. Based on the novel by Bernhard Schlink, the story asks its audience what a true monster is. If you are doing your job, afflicted by a handicap that others will use against you, can you be held responsible for your actions if your own demise would be the result of standing against orders? Should you be held to blame for not killing yourself once you found out the bigger picture of that small task you were forced to participate in? If you know a secret, one that could exonerate someone from being found guilty of murder, should you help her even though you know she’s accepted her guilt despite being unable to stop it? What if that person was someone you loved? There is some heavy material thrown about in the second half of this film, emotions run high and people must make decisions concerning some very dire situations. One thing is for sure, though, once that decision is made, no matter which side of the fence you fall on, some shred of guilt, some feeling of remorse, is inevitably going to follow you around for the rest of your life. This is what we call being human, because as Bruno Ganz’s Professor Rohl says, “our justice is governed by laws, not morals.” It doesn’t matter whether something was right or wrong, it’s whether it was legal or illegal. Unfortunately our souls don’t work that way.
As said, these moral quandaries crop up in the brilliantly paced and constructed second half of the film. The power involved in the characters’ actions all weigh heavy on those they touch. Perhaps the weight would not feel as palpable without the events of the first act, but either way, that portion of the film is too light and innocuous. We learn about young Michael Berg’s, (a wonderful turn by David Kross, who is the true star of the film), affair with an older woman named Hanna Schmitz. This woman is very troubled and in a state of constant flux where her emotions are concerned. She loves Berg, but can never quite allow herself to fully commit to that feeling, her past continuously nagging at the back of her head, remembering what it was she used to do with those who read to her. Kate Winslet’s performance as Hanna is quite good, but like the film itself, doesn’t come into its own until the second act, when all the secrets finally become uncovered.
It is a good beginning, the unabashed love of a young 15 year old and his first sexual partner. He becomes her orator of stories and partner in romance, but they both know it could never last. School would be commencing and Berg would see the young girls his age, ever comparing them to Hanna, and her manifesting his feelings with her own jealousy, knowing that she must let him go … this time sending herself away rather than those she “befriended” of her past, those she sent off to whatever fate awaited them. Whether this violation became so deeply rooted in the boy, I’m not sure, but when he goes off to law school and crosses paths with his first love again, this time as she awaits charges of Nazi war crimes, he is torn on what is morally correct. It becomes his obligation to let the truth come out, despite the activities she partook in during the Holocaust. According to the law, he must divulge the information for justice, but his moral compass may not be able to do so.
The story truly is wonderfully acted and directed, pulling at the audience’s emotions and engaging them throughout. However, while the second half is the most intriguing and resonant, it also contains the one activity that I found abhorrent. Now older, Michael Berg is played by Ralph Fiennes, a lawyer, recently divorced and with a daughter. His journey back home, to his mother that has all but given up on him as a distant figure unable to open up to those that love him, becomes one of returning memories. Discovering the books he once read to Hanna almost two decades earlier, the guilt of what he didn’t do makes him set upon a mission to right that wrong. But the way in which he does so is really quite wrong to me. He seems to condemn her for what she did still and only creates cassettes of stories to send her to assuage his own selfish need for forgiveness. He never appears to care about her, because if he did, he would have made different choices in that courtroom years before. Berg shows the selfishness that followed him the entire story and really got me thinking that maybe he was a worse human being than Hanna. It’s an interesting dynamic to be sure, one that subverts the somewhat “touching” conclusion the filmmakers seem to want to attempt.
The Reader is an interesting look at German guilt and the people’s need to place blame on others for the Holocaust in order to somehow absolve their own indifference of doing nothing when they themselves knew what was going on. One of Berg’s classmates gets the whole issue correct in a little tirade about the absurdity of the trial. Here they all were, guilty themselves of knowing what went on in the thousands of camps, yet putting on trial only six women because a survivor, (interesting to see Lena Olin play a mother and daughter—the beauty of a film spanning decades), wrote a book fingering them. Just as Germany needed to place blame, so did Michael Berg. Rather than put it on his own shoulders though, like Hanna eventually selflessly does, he decides to side with the masses, sitting back silently and then trying in earnest to deal with his eventual guilt, not to apologize to the person he let down, but to somehow forgive himself. It is quite the despicable act and I’m not sure if that was the filmmakers’ intent, however, that is the lasting impression it left on me.
The Reader 7/10
photography:
[1] Kate Winslet and David Kross star in Stephen Daldry’s The Reader. Photo by: Melinda Sue Gordon © 2008 The Weinstein Co.
[2] Ralph Fiennes is Michael Berg in Stephen Daldry’s The Reader. Photo by: Melinda Sue Gordon © 2008 The Weinstein Co.
jared mobarak's film reviews blog 