Top films of 08

The average person sees five to seven films a year, but chances are that people reading this article are above average film-goers.
Film mavens can always muster enthusiasm for a year that delivers movies as diverse as Wall-E and The Dark Knight as well as more iconoclastic choices like Steven Soderbergh’s four-hour Che, or British director Steve McQueen’s amazing feature about imprisoned Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands, Hunger. There’s even the first-ever animated feature from Israel, Waltz With Bashir.
How odd is it that Tell No One a French film from 2006 grossed right around $6-million and it’s considered the most successful foreign film domestically released in 2008 whereas The Dark Knight has topped $530-million and is not only the year’s most successful film, but the second highest grossing film ever behind Titanic. Obviously there’s no relation between quality and the amount of money a film makes.
As good as some of those films are 2008 pales with 2007 a year that saw bona fide classics like There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men, not to mention more esoteric pleasures like The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.
That said, my top ten list for 2008 unwinds as follows:
1. Man on Wire
2. Tell No One
3. Slumdog Millionaire
4. Miracle at St. Anna
5. Ghost Town
6. Revolutionary Road
7. The Wrestler
8. The Fall
9. Synecdoche, New York
And at number 10. Waltz With Bashir

If I had a top twenty there’d be a few more foreign titles and a couple more late year platforms and even a Disney cartoon (Bolt not Wall-E), but why complicate things in a weak year? The thing about the films listed one through ten was the sense of not wanting any of them to end. When they did finish was a feeling, although I may return to any of them in the future, of completion and satisfaction at having met a new friend.
Many of the titles have already opened and a couple of them are rolling out in January. Waltz With Bashir (opening January 23 at the Angelika) was such a combination of agitprop and animation that I didn’t even know where to start with my admiration. This cartoon docudrama tells the tragedy of the massacre in the Sabra and Shatila camps during the 1982 Lebanon War. The story’s told from the point of view of director Ari Folman, who was a teen soldier in the Israeli army at the time. Waltz With Bashir recreates Folman’s memories through present day conversations with other soldiers who were also there and surreal scenes that illustrate their memories. The film ends with actual footage shot in the camps (dead children) and you realize that the horror was real.
Man on Wire simply is one of the best docs ever made. It moves with the tempo of a suspensful crime thriller. Everybody who saw Tell No One that I know said they liked it. I watched this murder mystery based on a novel by American author Harlan Coben a couple of times. This is the kind of movie where the smallest parts are as interesting as larger roles.
Ghost Town and Miracle at St. Anna are way underrated but then by the end of January maybe Revolutionary Road and The Wrestler will also be under appreciated, they just haven't opened yet. The Fall's helmer Tarsem is second unit director on Benjamin Button. Other titles to keep your eye peeled for would include Che, which explores the mindset of living in the jungle and engaging in guerilla actions, and Gomorrah, an Italian crime film with a bouncy soundtrack and Mafia intrigue that will remind some of Goodfellas in its scope.