Best movie I saw in 2008 that I can’t put on my list due to my own rules:
Timecrimes (dir. Nacho Vigalando)
By mid-January Timecrimes will have a somewhat wide release, but in 2008 it was only officially released in New York and Los Angeles. I can’t really count that as a “wide release.” If and when it makes its way to your town, you should definitely watch it. It’s a time travel thriller, somewhat in the mold of Primer, and that’s all I can really say without giving away too much.
Best movie I didn’t see this year:
Milk (dir. Gus Van Sant)
Circumstances repeatedly conspired against me whenever I made plans to see Milk, so I’ll probably end up having to wait until it comes out on DVD. This really sucks, because by all accounts it’s great, and I’m anxious to see anything Van Sant does.
Alternate-history Top 20 films
If this had been any other year, these movies probably would have made the top 20. As it stands, though, they didn’t quite make the cut for various reasons. However, they’re still damned good and worth watching!
1. Tropic Thunder (dir. Ben Stiller)
Tropic Thunder just barely missed my top 20– I kept going back and forth over whether to include it or Zack and Miri Make a Porno. Tropic Thunder is really, really ridiculously funny, and Tom Cruise is jaw-droppingly awesome in it.
2. The Strangers (dir. Bryan Bertino)
This one was kind of tough to sit through, but mostly in a good way. Seriously, if they’d go back and chop the first minute and last minute or two, it probably would have made my top 20. As it stands, the embarrassing voiceover at the beginning and (SPOILER ALERT!) jump-scare at the end cheapen the experience of the film considerably. Still a great, tense film that any horror fan should see.
3. Wanted (dir. Timur Bekmambetov)
I think I’ve been using the word “ridiculous” a lot, but it completely applies to Timur Bekmambetov’s insane live-action cartoon that pushes the action film entirely out of the realm of remotest possibility and into a magical fairy-land of curving bullets and foul-mouthed Morgan Freemans.
4. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army (dir. Guillermo del Toro)
It actively hurt me to leave this one off, but despite a lot of awesome character designs and better use of returning characters’ screen time, Hellboy 2 fell just short of making the list. Maybe it’s a little too goofy for its own good, but that’s hard to avoid when your hero is a hulking demon who loves cats and pancakes.
5. Baghead (dir. Jay and Mark Duplass)
Sony sneaked this into some theaters after picking it up after a successful festival run, and it was well worth tracking down. Baghead took the “victims stalked in the woods” formula and wed it to a super low-budget comedy about four friends who decide to make a movie about themselves being stalked in the woods by a guy with a bag on his head, and the result was a great, original, very fun take on both slashers and indie comedies.
6. Pineapple Express (dir. David Gordon Green)
Another one that just barely missed my top 20 somehow. Literally any other year this probably would have been on there– David Gordon Green completely reinvents the buddy crime comedy by making every character (even the villains!) likeable and real. Danny McBride completely steals the show, but the cast is phenomenal across the board. Sort of falls into action-film routine by the end, but the ride to get there feels like something completely new.
7. Burn After Reading (dir. Ethan Coen)
The Coen Brothers apply the structure and tone of deadly-serious spy movies to a story about a bunch of idiots causing mayhem and bewildered government agents who can’t make sense of their actions. It’s nowhere near as good as last year’s No Country for Old Men, but Burn After Reading is still good Coen Brothers. It’s just not great Coen Brothers.
8. RocknRolla (dir. Guy Ritchie)
Guy Ritchie gets divorced from Madonna and, perhaps not coincidentally, makes his best film since Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels. The infuriating pretensions of Revolver are nowhere to be found, thankfully, as Ritchie returns to what he does best. An intricate network of characters are set on collision courses with each other that are a joy to watch as they play themselves out. Let’s hope he can keep up this pace with the supposed sequels that are on the way.
9. The Machine Girl (dir. Noboru Iguchi)
The bastard stepdaughter of Monty Python and Takashi Miike, The Machine Girl sprays so much blood across the screen that every film before it– even Dead Alive– looks positively restrained by comparison. The film opens with a shootout and barrels forward through a predictably depraved and bizarre origin story before catching up to itself with a finale that may cause epileptic seizures. Its companion piece, Tokyo Gore Police, proves that anything that goes even further than this risks completely numbing the audience by pure sensory overload.
10. Be Kind Rewind (dir. Michel Gondry)
I’ll admit that part of why this film didn’t make my top 20 is because it was released on DVD with no extras, but there’s a Blu-Ray version that’s packed with bonus content. This couldn’t possibly be more at odds with the film’s story and message. Oh well. It’s still a very funny, pointedly satirical celebration of film and the fact that it’s an inherently collaborative art. It’s probably the most joyous film I saw all year, although even it is undercut with a sense of bittersweet nostalgia for the era of VHS.
My least favorite films of 2008:
1. The Spirit (dir. Frank Miller)
Frank Miller pisses all over Will Eisner’s awesome character with this garish, bizarre film. The Spirit has powers? We spend half the movie staring at The Octopus? His henchmen are idiot clones? Why is he in Nazi regalia in that one scene? Why is Plaster of Paris in this at all? Who the hell is Gabriel Macht? And why does it look so much like Sin City? UGH.
2. Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer (dir. Jon Knautz)
Sub-sub-sub-Sci-Fi Original take on horror comedy. A better title would have been Jack Brooks: Plumber in Therapy, since that’s the first seventy minutes of the movie. The last 20 minutes are actually spent with a monster or two, so I guess that’s where the title comes in. Just go watch Evil Dead 2 again.
3. Saw V (dir. David Hackl)
I have no idea why anyone would continue to go see entries in the Saw franchise after Saw IV, but audiences packed theaters like they were punching a clock and made Saw V #1 at the box office for a week or two. It’s an appropriate comparison– Saw V is a chore to sit through, a shockingly boring extension of the series’ increasingly tiresome interconnected storyline. The tagline on the poster was “You won’t believe how it ends,” but would be better as “You won’t remember how it ends” since I was having trouble recalling anything that actually happened in the movie the day after I saw it.
4. The Happening (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)
People are already starting to re-evaluate their take on The Happening, a practice that I will do all I can to discourage. Angry over the failure of Lady in the Water, M. Night Shyamalan set out to give audiences and critics a blockbuster-sized middle finger. On that level he succeeds in grand style. There’s not a line of dialogue in this film that feels like something any human would actually ever say, and everybody just looks kind of awkward and embarrassed all the time. Make no mistake, Shyamalan thinks you’re an idiot. Don’t encourage him.
5. Quarantine (dir. John Erick Dowdle)
The more I thought about Quarantine, the more I hated it. It lifts hefty chunks of its running time directly from [REC], of which it is a remake, but exchanges that film’s character development for some audience-insulting moments like using the camera to beat someone to death. The camera keeps working and all the blood comes off the lens, so that’s good since otherwise the movie would be over. OH WAIT THAT WOULD BE PERFECT. Suck it up to read some subtitles and find a copy of [REC], it’s a hundred times better than this garbage.
6. Run, Fat Boy, Run (dir. David Schwimmer)
See, Simon Pegg is fat and he’s a lazy asshole, and then his ex gets a responsible, seemingly decent new boyfriend and he has to uh, run a marathon to prove he’s not a lazy asshole. Except he is. You just can’t have a romantic comedy with such a spectacularly unlikeable lead, and here’s the proof. Even worse, the film makes the new boyfriend seem like a good, reasonable guy until it becomes convenient to make him the world’s biggest prick. As lazy and forgettable as its lead character.
7. Mother of Tears (dir. Dario Argento)
This year saw two legendary directors hammer out highly-anticipated films that were both pretty damned awful. Argento’s is slightly worse, though, which is to be expected since his filmography is wildly inconsistent anyway. He’s in “incoherent gore” mode here, assaulting the audience with painfully loud cues on the soundtrack in case the stuff sticking out of people didn’t give you enough of a jolt. Also, a few scenes are edited in such a way that it’s hard to tell what the hell is going on, and the ending would have been hilariously anticlimactic if we hadn’t been waiting 30 years for it.
8. Diary of the Dead (dir. George A. Romero)
Here’s the other one. Romero starts with a promising setup, and there are enjoyable moments along the way, but he hammers away at his talking points and comes across as preachy. They’ve never really been models of subtle social commentary, but for the first time in the Dead series it feels like he’s talking down to his audience. Despite a few inspired moments, Diary of the Dead gets bogged down with endlessly repeated footage and embarrassing “technology” montages that make it seem like Romero didn’t shoot enough footage for a feature.
9. W. (dir. Oliver Stone)
Another one that I hate more and more when I look back on it. Stone inexplicably thought it would be a good idea to make a film about a president in office while we have no real historical perspective on the effects of his actions, which I guess is why the film ends in 2003. What!? Some genuinely great performances, but it sort of feels like wasted effort. And it’s hard to imagine that it had any impact on the presidential election, regardless of what Stone might think. Bleah.
10. Repo, The Genetic Opera (dir. Darren Lynn Bousman)
This movie is a complete mess. While I admire director Bousman’s commitment to making something so unusual, I have to wonder if the finished product was really worth it. It looks great, the cast is perfect, and it’s an interesting story… too bad about the music, then. The production is slick, but the music is almost entirely devoid of hooks, and unless you’ve listened to the soundtrack album a few dozen times you’ll probably miss half of what’s being said/sang. The Rocky Horror crowd seems to have latched onto it already, though, so I guess that’s nice. Any other audience might just wonder what the fuss is about.
10 Awesome Movies I saw this year I’d Never Heard of:
1. Nothing Lasts Forever (dir. Tom Schiller, 1984, US)
So Tom Schiller, a writer for Saturday Night Live, somehow managed to get this film made and released by MGM, who quickly buried it. It stars Zack Galligan (Gremlins) as a young man who returns to New York from a trip abroad, only to find that the city is now completely controlled by the Transit Authority. He wants to be an artist, and falls in with a group of hipster artists and eventually… well, I can’t really explain anything else without giving everything away. It’s sort of like Kafka’s The Trial meets The Hudsucker Proxy– it’s dreamlike and surreal, but it’s brightened by an unyielding optimism. I have no idea how a movie this great disappears, but it’s really tough to track down. Maybe we’ll get a 30th anniversary edition in a few years?
2. Wicked, Wicked (dir. Richard L. Bare, 1973, US)
The only film ever made in DUO-VISION! This basically just means that 95% of the movie is in split-screen. Most of Wicked, Wicked is a mystery about someone knocking off lonely blondes at a seaside resort, and it’s not too graphic until its rather surprising conclusion. Wicked, Wicked often feels like a parody of early 1970s films (I wonder if De Palma had a good laugh over the DUO-VISION thing), but it’s 100% real. Should be a huge cult classic, but inexplicably barely exists outside occasional television broadcasts and a long out-of-print VHS release.
3. Ice Palace (dir. Per Blom, 1987, Norway)
This heartbreaking film, based on an acclaimed short novel by Tarjei Vesaas, concerns two 12-year-old girls in Norway in the 1930s. Unn, troubled and sad, invites Siss over and suggests they undress. They do, but Unn clearly feels immediately guilty; Siss is confused and innocent and has no idea anything is wrong, but is upset by Unn’s behavior. The next day, Unn slips on a hill on her way to school and ends up trying to make her way back up by going through a frozen waterfall while Siss goes to school. It’s a brief but devastating coming-of-age story, a film of undeniable power. However, due to a few nude shots featuring its young protagonists, it’s unlikely the film will see a US release.
4. Black Snake (dir. Russ Meyer, 1973, US)
Any film fan is familiar with Russ Meyer’s name even if they’re not acquainted with all of his films. For example, I had no idea he made a “race film” to capitalize on the blaxploitation craze. Black Snake features the sort of delicate racial commentary you’d expect from the man who made Vixen, and it’s packed with scenes that will put your jaw on the floor. Still, it’s undeniably entertaining, and if anyone can tell me what the hell happens at the end I’ll buy you a drink.
5. Executive Koala (dir. Minoru Kawasaki, 2005, Japan)
Kawasaki has apparently made a name for himself in Japan with utterly bizarre films such as this and Calamari Wrestler, which is about a giant squid who is also a professional wrestler. Executive Koala is the story of a salaryman whose girlfriend is killed. He suffers from blackouts and may have killed her, and he is pursued by a determined police detective while strange hints about his past pop up from unlikely sources. Also, he’s a human-sized koala. The film plays completely straight, and feels like a made-for-TV “mistaken identity” thriller for about the first half, and then it gets weird. Like really, really weird. You can get this one from Netflix, and I’d recommend it. Japanese insanity at its most mind-blowing.
6. Boss Nigger (dir. Jack Arnold, 1975, US)
There’s at least one really, really obvious reason this movie doesn’t get a lot of replay on cable, video, etc. Although there is a DVD in the works under the title Boss, so hopefully soon a lot more people will be able to enjoy this highly unique mix of blaxploitation and Western genres. Boss (Fred Williamson) and his sidekick Amos (D’Urville Martin in a hilarious supporting role) ride into a town whose former Sheriff has been killed by a group of outlaws that hold the town in an iron grip. The two newcomers decide to become the law in the town, something the all-white populace doesn’t take kindly to. Directed by Jack Arnold (yes, Creature from the Black Lagoon Jack Arnold!) and starring blaxploitation legend Williamson, it’s just as bad-ass as you’d expect it would be.
7. Faceless (dir. Jess Franco, 1988, France)
Jess Franco is another one that film fans will at least know of, even if they haven’t seen all of his prolific output. Franco is even more wildly inconsistent than Argento, fully capable of making films so inept that you wonder if anyone working on it has even heard of movies before. So I was surprised to learn this year that one of Franco’s most highly-regarded films is this slick Eurotrash remake of Eyes Without a Face. It’s every bit as amazing as that sounds, with gruesome effects and a cast of beautiful, soulless monsters. It’s easily the most accessible of Franco’s films I’ve ever seen, and it’s actually pretty easy to get hold of (Netflix has it). Just be careful if you start poking around Franco territory after watching it…
8. New Year’s Evil (dir. Emmett Alston, 1980, US)
New Year’s Evil is another film that plays like a parody of films from its era, thus proving that there is always some artifact from any time that is beyond parody. Pinky Tuscadero… sorry, Roz Kelly plays Diane Sullivan aka “Blaze, the First Lady of Rock.” Blaze hosts a New Year’s Eve broadcast that celebrates the new year in all the US time zones– unfortunately, someone has threatened to kill someone close to her every time the clock strikes midnight somewhere during the show. And then her son puts some panty hose on his head. And the killer starts knocking off completely random people. And the same two bands seem to be playing the entire four-hour-plus show. New Year’s Evil is hilariously inept on just about every level, but it’s one of the most hilariously inept films I’ve seen in recent memory.
9. BLOOD (dir. Andy Milligan, 1974, US)
After reading Jimmy McDonough’s excellent Milligan biography The Ghastly One, I felt compelled to seek out all of his existing films. Milligan was basically a theatre-obsessed sociopath who made 29 movies during the course of his career, 15 of which are known to have survived. BLOOD is arguably the best of the lot, an insane ride on a rickety wooden roller coaster that constantly threatens to jump the rails. Freely mashing up elements of The Wolf Man and Dracula movies, along with some Little Shop of Horrors for good measure, Milligan shoves his cast through scene after scene of rapid-fire dialogue that pushes the nonsensical story forward. It’s probably the best example of Milligan’s style; if you ever only see one of his films, it should probably be either this or The Ghastly Ones (which is a lot easier to get hold of).
10. Elevator Movie (dir. Zeb Haradon, 2004, US)
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: an anal-sex obsessed atheist virgin and a former slut turned devout Christian get in an elevator together. On the way up, the elevator stops. Awkward minutes turn into panicked hours as the two try to make the best of their predicament, and we watch as their relationship develops as they spend months together in the elevator. Shot with what sounds like the first 16mm camera ever made (you can hear it grinding away in almost every shot), Elevator Movie looks like the cheapest film ever made. It’s surreal and often very funny, if you can go along with its weird premise and even weirder character developments. Again, you can get this one on Netflix, and I highly recommend it– just wait to read the other user comments until after you’ve seen the movie.