MONDOmagazine

We got love for Wall-E.

By Jacob Kaufman, Leo K. Moncel, Sam Linton and Shane McNeil

I think we all had an especially good time at the movies this year. It looks like a couple of us even learned how to sneak into TIFF screenings without being caught. Our top five lists range from the (deservedly) well-travelled to the slightly off road, but generally the films that impressed our crew in 2008 were bold, high-energy, and gutsy.

Jacob Kaufman’s List

5. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Dir: Nicholas Stoller)
I probably should have put Milk or Doubt or one of those movies in this slot, but I didn’t see them. Let The Right One In may have Swedish vampires, but Forgetting Sarah Marshall has singing vampire puppets.

4. Iron Man (Dir: Jon Favreau)
Robert Downey Jr. dominates this movie by playing a character like himself, but who also is a billionaire genius-inventor. This movie may not have been as deep as The Dark Knight, but it was far more fun.

3. The Dark Knight (Dir: Christopher Nolan)
This brilliant epic kicks ass while asking serious questions about justice and the nature of society. And, of course, hosannas to Heath Ledger, who made a guy in bad clown make-up genuinely terrifying.

2. Wall-E (Dir: Andrew Stanton)
This movie turns a machine that looks like a box with binoculars into something more human than most people you will ever meet. Its first half is almost a silent film and feels like poetry on the screen.

"Will you come down from that tree!?"

1. Burn After Reading (Dir: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)
First of all, I don’t think I have ever laughed harder in a theatre (much to the chagrin of my neighbours). The Coen Brothers sketch five original, idiosyncratic main characters with perfect economy. The contrast with, for example, The Ladykillers, shows how the Coen Brothers have recovered their ability to create a comedic storyline that is truly character-driven. Every lead actor has found the pulse of their character, and the humour comes from their commitment to what they’re doing, however absurd. Special credit should go to the scene-stealing performance from J.K. “Juno’s Dad/ Spiderman’s Boss/ Nazi Gang Leader” Simmons as the no-bullshit CIA Director. This comedy does not pander to the audience’s expectations – it ruthlessly subverts them with an ever-rising sense of grimness.

Leo K. Moncel’s List

5. Detroit Metal City (Dir: Toshio Lee)
A gentle, meek young man who writes pop songs about dolphins and picnics must perform as Sir Kaiser, a filth-spewing metalhead monster, to make ends meet. A hilarious send-up on the public/private life divide: so universal, yet so Japanese.

4. Slumdog Millionaire (Dir: Danny Boyle)
Better believe it! This movie’s energetic, panoramic, and totally wild, and yet grounded in the real. The ingenious structure of the screenplay and its fluid handling of compressions of time what was what left me cheering.

3. Wall-E (Dir: Andrew Stanton)
A really impressive example of silent storytelling and character development. The games played with viewer expectations are brilliant. A landmark dystopic film for kids.

2. Food, Inc. (Dir: Robert Kenner)
Oooh, my goodness. Following the work of folks like Michael Pollan, this polished documentary pulls back the curtain on how agribusiness run amok has devastated our food’s quality and safety, not to mention the welfare of our species and planet. Eye-opening, sometimes shocking, yet never dismal.

He had it rough.

1. The Dark Knight (Dir: Christopher Nolan)
I have to give it to The Dark Knight. This movie is the Taxi Driver of its genre. It is richly complex without being complicated. True, it’s all about The Joker, but The Joker is fascinating not just for Ledger’s performance (though this is every bit as charged and detailed as people insist), but because he proceeds with a very definite thesis. Through all of the apparent chaos, the Joker is really just out to prove that anyone, given the right conditions, is capable of horrific brutality. He is arguing for nurture over nature. His presence therefore implies a sad and terrifying history of mis-nurturing that transformed him into the twisted wreck of a human being before us. It was a bold choice by Nolan and company to plant themselves so deep in the darkness. It’s resulted in a film of rare quality.

Sam Linton’s List

5. Wall-E (Dir: Andrew Stanton)
I love Pixar’s films, and this film had everything that I love them for: memorable characters, jokes not dependant on a steady stream of up-to-the-minute, pop-cultural minutia, and that intangible quality I sometimes hear referred to as “heart.”

4. Iron Man (Dir: Jon Favreau)
This was the movie Marvel fans were waiting for, and the one that finally, after far, far, far too long, washed the putrid taste of X-Men III out of my mouth.

3. Burn After Reading (Dir: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)
The main complaint I hear (implicitly) leveled against this movie is that it’s not as thematically heavy as No Country for Old Men. But of course it’s not going to be as “heavy”; it’s a Horatian satire, a light (for the Coen brothers, anyways – the body count does pile) comic exposée on the climate of paranoia running through American society. The perfect 2000s-era comedy.

2. The Dark Knight (Dir: Christopher Nolan)
Yeah, it was pretty obvious this one was coming. The film’s thematically tight (order vs. chaos, to be glib), well-written, and carried by amazing performances from Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, and Gary Oldman. The thinking man’s action movie.

Annyeong haseyo, motherfucker.

1. The Good, The Bad, The Weird (Dir: Ji-woon Kim)
Surprise! Are you surprised? I sure was! I only got to see this once at TIFF, but it blew me away! A Korean Western set in Manchuria during the Japanese occupation? Lord, yes! Director Ji-woon Kim pulled all the stops out to make a visually thrilling, modern spaghetti Western that seldom disappoints. Did I like this film as much as The Dark Knight? Honestly, no, but I’m throwing the value of the surprise together with the entertainment value of the film to give it a slight edge over its North American rival. I fully expected to like Batman; this movie caught me entirely off guard. Unfortunately, it seems to still be in search of a North American distributor. Hopefully, it will find one soon, so 2009 will be the year to catch the best film of 2008!

Shane McNeil’s List

5. In Bruges (Dir: Martin McDonagh)
“Homage is too strong a word,” says a beautiful European stagehand. Self-aware and entertaining. Gotta love that.

4. Slumdog Millionaire (Dir: Danny Boyle)
You’ll love it, it’s almost unavoidable. Maybe if it had tried a bit less, I’d have loved it more. I still loved it.

3. Let the Right One In (Dir: Tomas Alfredson)
A vampire movie where the vampire herself is the least of the threats to the hero. Sweet and simple.

2. Pontypool (Dir: Bruce McDonald)
Only our Bruce McDonald could have made such an innovative, inexplicable, and wildly original, entertaining mess.

Docusurrealism.

1. Waltz with Bashir (Dir: Ari Folman)
It is unlike any other animated film you have ever seen. Same for the documentary. It probes the soul of a filmmaker to find the one horror he wishes he could forget. It’s stylish, heartbreaking, insightful, and sometimes even funny. It does with drawings what the cinematic eye almost wouldn’t permit with a live camera, and then has the nerve to give us a glimpse of it anyway. Waltz is already receiving recognition as both an animated film and a doc, and that trend could continue well into Oscar season. With all apologies to Wall-E, which almost cracked this list, it is easily the best animated film of the year and perhaps the best animated work I’ve ever seen.