10. "Cloverfield" & "Quarantine" (tie) - These two films used the shaky POV shooting style used by "The Blair Witch Project" and, to a certain extent, the Jason Bourne movies, and took it to a whole new level. "Cloverfield" is the bigger, more epic of the two: a group of Manhattan socialites celebrating the night before one of their friends leaves for a new job in Japan are interrupted when a giant monster appears and proceeds to tear apart the city. It's essentially a Godzilla movie shot by the people trying not to get smooched by the monster. "Quarantine" is smaller but far more scarier and realistic: a reporter and cameraman spending a night with the local fire department travel to a distress call at a small apartment building and soon find themselves trapped in the building along with a bunch of survivors trying to fend off people infected by a mysterious disease that turns them into ravenous killers. It's a zombie movie, but the POV style gives the film a more intimate and intense feeling that's often missing from modern day horror films. A lot of people don't like it when movies are shot like this, but I love it.
9. "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" - It's a simple story: a guy and a girl meet and fall in love in the course of a night while navigating the indie music scene in New York City looking for a secret gig by their favorite band, Where's Fluffy? But, while that story line is enjoyable, it's the supporting characters that really make this film so enjoyable. Newcomer Ari Graynor pretty much steals the entire movie as Norah's best friend Caroline, who ends up going on her own hilariously drunken adventure through the city. Personally, I think this movie ranks alongside "Juno" as an enjoyably modern teen romance.
8. "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" - To say that writer/star Jason Segel really puts himself out there in this movie is an understatement. Yes, there's almost as much penis in this film as there was in "Watchmen," but where Segel really goes all out is by making his character such an emotional sad-sack of a human being. He spends almost half of this movie sobbing, and you can't not feel sorry for the guy (especially since a lot of this stuff apparently happened to Segel in real life... including the naked break-up). But this is by no means a depressing movie; rather, it's a story about getting over a broken heart and finding new love, and going after your dreams, no matter what anybody else thinks about it. Of course, when your ex-girlfriend is Kristen Bell and your new object of interest is Mila Kunis, your life probably isn't all that bad.
7. "Let The Right One In" - This is a hypnotic and very creepy film about a very un-"Twilight" romance between a human and a vampire. Shot in Sweden and based on a popular novel, it tells the story of Oskar, a lonely young boy who is regularly the victim of bullies at school. One day (or night, incidentally) he sees two people move in next door: an older man and a mysterious young girl. He ends up meeting the girl, named Eli, and soon they enter into a sweet puppy-love type of relationship. However, he also learns that she is a vampire, and this development takes the story into some very dark and strange places. This is not a film for everyone; casual filmgoers will be put off by some of the more extreme violence and a few other elements of the story I'd rather not give away here. But if you liked "Pan's Labyrinth" and that kind of fairy-tale-for-adults story, you'd be remiss not to check this one out. Besides, Hollywood's already got a remake planned, and there's no way it'll be as weirdly twisted as the original.
6. "Milk" - Sean Penn deserved the Academy Award he got for his work in this powerful film. Harvey Milk was the first openly gay man elected to public office in America in San Francisco in 1977 and his quest for, among other things, legal rights for homosexuals. A year later he was assassinated, along with SF Mayor George Moscone, by Dan White, a colleague of Milk's who went on to commit suicide years later. It's a sad story, but this is not a sad movie. Rather, it's a film celebrating the life of a person who fought for the rights he believed everyone deserved to have, and it's a story that's very relevant to the times we're currently living in. Even more so than "Brokeback Mountain," this is a film that can be appreciated by anyone regardless of where they stand on the issue... but all the same, it's the kind of movie I really think a lot of people opposed to homosexuality ought to see (even though most of them won't).
5. "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" - With this film, director Guillermo del Toro took the world he brought to life in the very good original film and mixed in a big heaping dose of the fantastical imagination of his last film, "Pan's Labyrinth" (aka, my favorite movie of 2006). The results are amazing. I can't wait for the third Hellboy film, although it's going to be a while considering del Toro's massively busy schedule.
4. "Secret" - I stumbled across the trailer for this Taiwanese film accidentally while searching for something else. I was lucky, because this is an amazing movie. A young man begins attending a prestigious school for musically gifted students, and on the first day he meets a young woman hiding in an old music room. The two bond and become friends, and a romance begins to develop between them. But there's something strange about this girl; in particular, there's a song she plays on the piano that she won't tell him anything about it, other than it's called "Secret" (hence the title of the movie). She has a few secrets of her own, and from there I will not say anything more about what happens in the film, other than it goes places that you won't see coming. Unfortunately the film isn't officially available in the US right now, but you can find this movie if you look hard enough, like I did. You'll hear from me when it finally gets an official American release, but I'd strongly advise you to look for it. A word of warning, though: when looking it up be careful how much you read about the film; the less you know about what happens before watching it the better.
3. "Slumdog Millionaire" - The out-of-nowhere success story of this year (ever since "Napoleon Dynamite" it seems there has to be one each year), not to mention Best Picture Oscar winner, is a truly wonderful film. It's essentially a Charles Dickens story set in India, telling the life of young Jamal Malik as he competes on the Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." As he inexplicably answers each of the questions correctly, the film flashes back to various moments in his life to show us how he seems to have been heading for this moment all along. It's a fable, to be sure, but it works when set against the harsh realities of growing up poverty-stricken in the slums of Mumbai.
2. "WALL-E" - Just when you think Pixar can't outdo themselves, they go ahead and prove you wrong. Set 700 years into the future, "WALL-E" tells the touching and funny story of a lonely robot who falls in love after meeting a sleek new model named EVE. But this is told against the backdrop of a much deeper and darker storyline: the human race has grown so wasteful and lazy that they've polluted the planet to the point of it no longer being able to sustain life. So they leave it behind and send robots out to clean up after them until they can finally return and live on the world again. It's easily Pixar's most accomplished film (not counting this year's "Up," which I haven't seen yet), and it proves just how good of a storytelling medium animation is.
And the number one film is (drumroll please)...
1. "The Dark Knight" - Come on, were you really expecting anything else? It's the second-highest grossing movie of all time for a reason! With his lack of superpowers and darker story lines, Batman has always been my favorite superhero. But the movies never came close to achieving the right feeling of the Batman universe until Christopher Nolan took the reins in 2005 for "Batman Begins." In his follow-up to that great film, Nolan raises the level of quality in every aspect. The story line effectively asks philosophical questions about the cost of taking a stand against evil and whether it's acceptable or even necessary to sink to the same level in order to accomplish it. But the film also doesn't skimp on action: the extended car chase through Gotham City is astonishing. And, of course, the late Heath Ledger is mind-blowingly awesome as the Joker; he's funny and scary. He absolutely deserved the Oscar he won... but why this film was shut out of a Best Picture nomination over stuff like "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" and "The Reader" is beyond me.
Posts
