A worthy 10-best list, imho


Excuse the long post. Consider it an intro to Dustin Putman, a decent
reviewer you may not have heard of:

http://www.themovieboy.com/essays_2008bestworst.htm

Nobody's a hundred-percenter, obviously, but I have to like a guy who
articulately defends CLOVERFIELD as his #3 movie of 2008 ...not to
mention including several of my other personal favorites. (Hell, now
I may even look forward to MARLEY & ME...)

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#10Marley & Me – A late-in-the-year surprise with more going on in its
heart and head than the cheery, kid-friendly trailers and television
ads would have a consumer believe, "Marley & Me" was a tough,
realistic, perceptive slice-of-life. Directed by David Frankel and
adapted from the best-selling memoir by John Grogan, the film
accurately portrayed a marriage and career while discussing weighty
existential topics we all must go through. Less about a dog's wacky
antics and more about how a pet can become a meaningful—and then
fleeting—part of a family's life, "Marley & Me," again and again, hit
notes that rang true. Manipulative or not, it worked here. This
decade's answer to "Terms of Endearment," you didn't have to be a dog
lover to be touched to tears by "Marley & Me," you only needed to be
human.

#9In Bruges – Sort of a travelogue of the Belgium city, the opening
thirty minutes of "In Bruges" are visually stunning—the cinematography
throughout takes full advantage of locations that one character
accurately describes as "a fairy tale come to life"—as well as
ruminative and poetic in its collision of the Old World with the New.
When the full details are finally revealed about the circumstances
that have brought tourists Ray (Colin Farrell) and Ken (Brendan
Gleeson) to Bruges, that lulling feeling of safety begins to tear
apart. And, by the time Ray starts to question how he can go on with
his own life while knowing what he has done and Ken is sent on a
deadly new mission that he is unsure whether or not he can carry out,
all bets are off. Written and directed by Martin McDonagh, "In Bruges"
was a bravura, genre-twisting gem, a film involving hitmen that, at
last, wasn't like every other past movie involving hitmen.
Effortlessly able to shift between pitch-black comedy, soul-searching
drama, and riveting suspense without missing a beat or losing sight of
the grander scheme, this was one picture that packed a wallop.

#8Changeling – Directed by Clint Eastwood, "Changeling" told of a
gripping true story, stranger than fiction. An almost epic tale of
child loss, police corruption and serial murder set against the
backdrop of a burgeoning 1920s and '30s Los Angeles, Angelina Jolie
led the way in a phenomenal performance as a single mother whose world
cracks, then shatters, after her nine-year-old son goes missing.
Soundly woven together, all the pieces fascinatingly connecting (or
suggesting connection) over the passage of time, "Changeling" never
lost steam as the story developed and the characters were faced with
seemingly indomitable hurdles. At the head of it all was Jolie, in a
ravishingly poignant portrait of Christine Collins, a woman fighting
to be heard while keeping her son's memory alive. If there has to be
evil on the planet, or right next door, Christine signified that one's
natural propensity for goodness was just as much a crucial constant.

#7Rachel Getting Married – A wedding is the catalyst that reunites an
ailing American family in "Rachel Getting Married," a searing drama
that cut to the bone. Directed by Jonathan Demme, the film was
wrenching and uncompromising, but not without an all-important glimmer
of hope in its façade. In essaying the role of Kym, the mentally
unstable sister of the bride, Anne Hathaway delivered a revelatory
performance—bold but not flashy, achingly real but never saccharine,
breathtaking in its fearless modulations while remaining steadfastly
naturalistic. So honest in the tough places it went, and so suggestive
and intuitive of the way family members interact in a variety of
situations, that it never felt like anything other than a documentary.
A great one.

#6Snow Angels – Based on the richly textured novel by Stewart O'Nan
and adapted for the screen by David Gordon Green, "Snow Angels" was a
searing portrait of three interconnected families living in a small
Pennsylvania town, their lives affected and, in some cases,
irretrievably altered through a series of tragic events. In a film of
emotionally rattling moments, it was in the smaller, quieter
interludes of interpersonal connection and reflection that were often
most poignant. Both in Green's depiction of a wintry landscape of lost
souls and in his painfully accurate portrayal of characters struggling
to make their way in a world that oftentimes seems cruelly unfair and
confusing, "Snow Angels" hit all the right notes. Beautifully acted by
an impressive ensemble—Michael Angarano, Kate Beckinsale, Sam
Rockwell, Olivia Thirlby, Amy Sedaris, among others—Green handled the
tough material with a necessary rawness, lending equal weight to both
the extraordinary and deceptively mundane moments of life in motion
that make all of us startlingly, stingingly and intensely human.

#5The Wrestler – In the comeback turn of the year, Mickey Rourke gave
the performance of his lifetime. "The Wrestler" was a small film,
unflashy and naturally gritty, and that worked in its favor. One
didn't watch the picture so much as he or she lived it, wincing all
the way through its raw, painfully intimate character study of an
aging one-time professional wrestler at the end of his ropes,
struggling to reclaim the glory he once had even as he self-destructs.
Frequently brutal and sad, playing out with the messiness of real
life, the results were mesmerizing. For the tough-looking but weary,
imposing yet mortal Mickey Rourke, and for Darren Aronofsky's
exquisitely minimalist direction, and for Marisa Tomei's and Evan
Rachel Wood's sharply tuned supporting work, and for a revealing story
never quite shown in this stark a light, "The Wrestler" was a film not
to be missed.

#4The Dark Knight – Batman came of age with "The Dark Knight,"
rendering all previous big-screen incarnations of the caped crusader
close to obsolete. At last, this was the motion picture that
audiences, whether they be fans of the DC comic book or viewers who
still believe superhero movies are for kids, had been waiting for.
Equally nihilistic, imaginative and emotionally gratifying, "The Dark
Knight" was in many ways a groundbreaking triumph, and perhaps the
best superhero film to date. Really, to label it as such almost
doesn't seem right; director Christopher Nolan masterfully
deconstructed what a comic book adaptation could and can be, and to
what depths it can endeavor to go to. A sprawling, densely plotted,
thematically rich epic, "The Dark Knight" worked both as a thoroughly
riveting summer blockbuster and a mature, thoughtful, sumptuously
layered crime drama. Nolan surely outdid himself, and so did the late
Heath Ledger in his bone-chillingly unforgettable posthumous role as
the psychopathic Joker. Bruce Wayne had finally met his match, and
then some.

#3Cloverfield – As haphazardly as "Diary of the Dead" aped on the
POV-"let's-pick-up-a-camera- and-shoot-it" style of "The Blair Witch
Project," "Cloverfield" perfected it. Doing for grand-scale monster
movies what that terrifying 1999 gem did for late-night hikes, the
picture brought to breathless, nightmarish life what it might really
look, sound and be like if a giant creature invaded a city. Following
a group of partygoers as their evening of fun turns to terror and,
ultimately, a fight for survival, "Cloverfield" is just about as
authentic and large in scale as the genre has seen. That the film was
made for a reported $25-million is frankly amazing and proves that a
budget of hundreds of millions is unnecessary. The visual effects in
bringing the monster(s) and the disaster itself to fruition were close
to seamless; for an hour and a half, the audience was led to wholly
buy into the idea that Manhattan had become an apocalyptic landscape.
Filled with visions destined to seep into the viewer's memory and not
let go, "Cloverfield" ended not on death and destruction, but on a
quiet moment between two characters, enjoying a quiet day at an
amusement park, unaware of how quickly their existences were about to
turn. This unforced comment on the unpredictability of life was
devastating, raising "Cloverfield" above and beyond even what it
seemed to strive for.

#2Synecdoche, New York – The two best motion pictures of the year
share a lot in common. While one is more commercially palatable than
the other, at their center is the same notion about the natural
process of life and death, and the desire we all have to make
something of ourselves before our limited time has run out.
"Synecdoche, New York" was the astounding, at times dangerously
unwieldy directorial debut of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. The
picture, just about as surreal as David Lynch on his quirkiest day,
was, at once, staggering, baffling, morose, frightening, hilarious,
continuously inventive, and unspeakably touching. Like stage director
Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman), Kaufman set out to make his
filmmaking masterwork, a cinematic exploration so thematically rich
and boundlessly meaningful that it also might work as a piece of art
to be looked at and deciphered in different ways by each individual
viewer. The conventional laws of linear storytelling did not apply to
Kaufman's lyrical madness, almost every scene set weeks, months or
even years after the last. This could be disconcerting at times, but
in the best way. The film, like Caden, like ourselves, uncontrollably
careens to its final demise, and where it ends up is unexplainable and
awe-inspiring.

#1The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – In a motion picture that was
as much of a masterpiece as the cinema saw in 2008, perhaps the most
astonishing aspect of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was its
near-perfect depiction of a person's complete life spread out over a
series of significant moments, observations and memories. In just a
smidge under three hours, director David Fincher encapsulated in all
its messiness, heartbreak and glory the journey of living, loving and,
ultimately, dying. That the title protagonist (Brad Pitt) whom we
follow happens to age backwards gives the story an extra shot of
whimsy, but also an added dose of eye-opening existentialism. Though
he becomes more youthful on the outside as the people around him, like
loving mother Queenie (Taraji P. Henson) and one true love Daisy (Cate
Blanchett), start to grow old and pass away, there are otherwise very
few differences between him and the rest of the world. Like everyone
else, he is faced with the internal ravages of time, and the unknown
of what is to come after he has breathed his last breath. Upon first
viewing, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was undeniably and
lastingly powerful. Upon second viewing, with the foreknowledge of
where things were headed and what was to come, the experience was
transformative and transcendent. In response to its beauty, to its
heartbreaking truth, and to its impacting comment on how nothing
lasts, tears began to fall from the film's fifteen-minute mark and
continued for the next two-and-a-half hours, all the way until the end
credits. For such a sustainable period of time, that had never
happened to me before. Fittingly epic without losing sight of its
intimacy, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" plays like a symphony
in the language of film.
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