BEST DOCUMENTARY:
ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD
Werner Herzog's latest documentary, this one about the crazy outcasts and scientists who live and work in Antarctica, is beautiful, haunting, philosophical and funny.
ROOKIE OF THE YEAR:
THE BOOK OF CALEB
I stumbled across this coming of age comedy via digital download. The film didn't have an official wide release in 2008, but played festivals and limited engagements and has seen a DVD release. This film is from a group of beginners and could use a bit of polishing, but is incredibly good considering how independent it is. Writer/director Matthew Von Monahan should havea great career ahead of him.
BEST ANIMATED FILM:
WALL-E
Another miracle from Pixar. Just when you think these geniuses can't top themsleves, they go ahead and do it anyway. Funny, poignant and beautiful.
BEST MADE FOR TV MOVIE:
RECOUNT
What? One of the best films of the year went direct to HBO? This is the frightening and frustrating story of the election problems in Florida back in 2000. This retelling almost makes sense of a confusing situation, until you realize it's impossible to make any sense out of it. The great thing here is the variety of good roles and good performances, specifically Laura Dern as Kathryn Harris, but also Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary and Tom Wilkinson.
BEST COMIC BOOK MOVIES:
IRON MAN
THE DARK KNIGHT
IRON MAN took a second tier super hero and made a first tier super hero movie out of him, propelled by a great performance from Robert Downey, Jr., who seems made for the part. Director Jon Favreau approaches the material head on and doesn't try to play cute, which counter-intuitively makes for a rather light-hearted and fun sci-fi/adventure film. The killer special effects don't hurt, either.
Christopher Nolan delivers on the promise of his previous Batman films with THE DARK KNIGHT, the second highest grossing film of all time. Best super hero movie ever? Maybe. It's a great example of its genre, but in achieving greatness it transcends the genre and becomes something else, which is something most great films have in common.
A lot has been said about Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker, which is as chilling as it is creative and compelling. Whenever Ledger's on screen, you're on the edge of your seat. Even more has been said about Ledger's too-early demise. Less attention has been paid to the rest of the cast, and the filmmakers behind the scenes.
The emotional heart of the movie lies with Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, the one guy who's trying to do the right thing and play by the rules at the same time, in a city where no one's doing the right thing or following the rules.
The strength of the story-telling comes from the incredible magic trick Nolan plays on the audience -- he takes a conventional crime story and convinces the audience anything can happen. Nolan somehow balances a film that ultimately turns out to be a crowd pleaser with constant threats that things may not turn out the way we want them to, and that's quite a trick when you're dealing with the kind of movie everyone thinks they already know.
BEST COMEDIES:
FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL
TROPIC THUNDER
FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL is one of the best romantic comedies ever made. It benefits from a big cast, every member of which is funny, from the atypical leads to the colorful supporting characters. The Hawaiian resort setting gives it a warm vibe that's hard to resist and Jason Segel's writing clearly comes from sharp and critical observations of his own experience as well as a healthy amusement with human nature.
TROPIC THUNDER is something we haven't seen in a long time -- a big budet comedy with just as much spectacle as laughs. This one's a little more over the top and erratic, but I'd compare it in a sense to films from the 80s like GHOSTBUSTERS where the special effects were in service of the comedy, unlike the crass and cynical so-called action comedies of recent years which merely feature bad one-liners between explosions. In what's becoming a running theme this year, the film benefits from its strong (and varied) cast -- Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Tom Cruise and Robert Downey, Jr., all at the top of their game, lampooning Hollywood, war movies, celebrity culture, and pretty much everything else.
MOST AMBITIOUS:
CHE
Steven Soderbergh and Benicio Del Toro unabashedly turn in a gigantic, sprawling, insane, in your face, no holds barred biopic about the revolutionary whose face college kids love to put on their dorm room walls and t-shirts: Ernesto Che Guevara.
The film resists most of the usual crutches of the biopic genre -- we don't get to know the characters very well, we don't get much insight into people's motives and the "Why "of things, and we don't waste time dealing with interpersonal relationships. What we know about Che we know from the look on Benicio Del Toro's face, buried beneath wild facial hair, dirt and sweat.
It's difficult to think of the entire epic as one single film, since even watching it in one day you see it in two sittings separated by an intermission. I went into the film expecting to like the first half better, since it deals with the stuff I thought Che was most famous for -- the Cuban revolution. This was when things went right with Che, when he set out do something and did it.
I was worried I wouldn't enjoy the second half because I wasn't familiar with that part of history, I'd be seeing it after already sitting through two and a half hours, and it would be the shitty part of Che's life when everything goes wrong. I was mistaken -- I liked the second half quite a bit, possibly better than the first -- an intense, action packed descent into madness and futility.
BEST FILM OF THE YEAR:
THE WRESTLER
This flick reminds me of STAR TREK. Granted, so does everything else. But check this out:
In STAR TREK VI, faced with a changing universe, Spock asks the following of his old buddy Kirk:
"Is it possible that you and I, in our old age, have outlived our usefulness? Would that constitute a joke?"
My answer to Spock would be that you could look at it either as a joke, or a tragedy. In THE WRESTLER, even though some might consider The Ram (Mickey Rouke) a joke -- a washed up relic of a bygone era, the definition of having outlived his usefulness -- he is actually a tragedy, and so is the film. The Ram's fatal flaw? He likes to do what he's best at, and it's killing him.
Meanwhile, the stuff he's not so good at, like relationships, would only make him stronger if he'd be able to sort them out. But, wrestling is easy for The Ram, working on relationships is hard, and little setbacks easily become insurmountable obstacles.
In another era, The Ram might have been a warrior, or a hunter. He might have died defending his country or providing for his people. Even if he wasn't in action, people in those days didn't live as long as they do now. In another time, The Ram wouldn't have had to face the last half of his life. He would have gone out on top.
Now that humans live so long, it's not always enough to build up some for of success for yourself. You have to keep it going, for the rest of your life. Or, you have to be satisfied. Otherwise, you've got a long road of disappointment ahead of you -- a slow march to the grave.
There is something bittersweet about the abuse The Ram takes in and out of the ring. Because of the physical torture he endures, Marisa Tomei's exotic dancer character compares The Ram to Jesus Christ -- at least, the Jesus Christ she saw on screen in Mel Gibon's PASSION. But, The Ram also absorbs emotional pain. Just watch as he soak in the hatred as his estranged daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) screams at him. He just sits there, head bowed, and takes it, just like he takes it in the ring.
I've liked Mickey Rourke ever since I saw him in BARFLY, in which he played a bum who hung out in bars picking fights and shacking up with broken women. In BARFLY, Rourke's character also happened to have a way with words -- his brief poetic interludes hinted at something else going on beneath the tortured surface, a glimmer of hope that there's something more to life than boozing and brawling, even for this guy.
The Ram's own personal outlet doesn't have the same built in elevated status as something like poetry. Wrestling isn't glamorous, or artistic, and the kind of people who put THE WRESTLER on their list of favorite movies for the year are not the kind of people who watch pro wrestling on TV, though the people who do watch pro wrestling will probably love this film when they find it on DVD.
Because The Ram is forced to live through the down half of his life, much like Benicio Del Toro's Che, the audience is forced to live through it, too. A lesser movie would end just as The Ram seems to be putting things back together -- he has the strength to give up wrestling for his health, he's making a go of it at his minimum wage job, he has a successful outing with his daughter. Most movies would roll credits there and let the audience imagine the rest. But THE WRESTLER understands there are downs after the ups, and shows us what happens after the end credits.
Some complain the ending, when it finally comes, is too ambiguous. They ask, what's the point? I'd have the same complaints if it didn't end the way it did. As it is, it's near perfect. "Sweet Child O Mine" comes on the soundtrack, I get goose bumps, The Ram makes one last leap, and Bruce Springsteen counts down.
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