BEST FILMS OF YEAR re-cap

To re-cap my top picks of the year, they were:
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
10. Waltz With Bashir



That's not to say I didn't like some other excellent films like Bolt (in 3-D natch) or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button the latter of which took the best picture award from the Houston FIlm Critics Society. Below is a list of the top honors bestowed by the Houston Film Critics, an org consisting of 17 voting members:

Best Picture – "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Best Director of a Motion Picture – Danny Boyle, "Slumdog Millionaire"
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role – Sean Penn, "Milk"
Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role – Anne Hathaway, "Rachel Getting Married"
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role – Heath Ledger, "The Dark Knight"
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role – Viola Davis, "Doubt"
Best Performance by an Ensemble Cast – "Doubt"
Best Screenplay – Simon Beaufoy, "Slumdog Millionaire"
Best Animated Film – "Wall-E"
Best Cinematography – Claudio Miranda, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"
Best Documentary Feature – "Man on Wire"
Best Foreign Language Film – "Mongol"
Best Original Score – "Miracle at St. Anna" by Terence Blanchard
Best Original Song – "Down to Earth" from "Wall-E"

Additionally the HFCS awarded best achievement honors to the following:

Outstanding Achievement in Cinema – Andrea Grover and The Aurora Picture Show
Outstanding Achievement in Film Programming – Marian Luntz curator of the MFAH Film Department
Outstanding Achievement in Film Criticism – Roger Ebert

The Reader

Kate Winslet's back must be really sore because she carries The Reader all by herself. It's not that the other fine thesps drop the ball - actors like Ralph Fiennes, David Kross, Lena Olin - it's just that Winslet's Hanna Schmitz has the burden of the film's spine and is the only character I felt any affinity for.
The Reader chronicles Schmitz affair with a teenage boy Michael Berg (Kross) in post-war Germany. One day he shows up at her apartment for their usual rendezvous only to find the place empty. Later in life the lad has become a law student and while attending a heavily publicised trial, to his shock, he sees Hanna is one of the defendants. She's being tried along with several other women for their complicity in the deaths of concentration camp victims.
The Reader has a simple enough framing device with Fiennes as the older Berg (no relation I swear) looking back on the events trying to make sense of it all. The film's production has more drama than the movie what with one-time producer Scott Rudin taking his name off after a skirmish with Harvey Weinstein. As directed by Stephen Daldry (The Hours) the film never really reaches altitude but Winslet will amaze with her performance.