It’s been a long time coming but we finally singled out the best and worst of 2008 as chosen by Cinema Crazed. Please to enjoy.
10. Gran Torino
This film is essentially about Clint Eastwood at the end of his road admitting his age. His car the Gran Torino is a capsule of his youth and vigor and as such he contains it and waits for the right person to pass it on to. His character, a racist simple minded man, is too obsessed with his past to really focus on the present, and is too polarizing a personality to even be accepted by his son and their family. But he finds one final purpose with next door neighbors, a group of Asians whom are at the clutches of a local gang. Eastwood finds himself in the middle of their turmoil with their manipulation, constant threats, and impending violent attacks, all the while taking two under his wing and setting them down the right path. Eastwood doesn’t so much recall a superhero as he does a regular man trying to leave something worthwhile behind aside from a classic car and it’s a gut wrenching morality play.
9. The Happening
Calling to mind the awareness and somewhat goofy paranoia of Global warming and the environment, M. Night Shyamalan takes his first approach toward R rated gold with a horror film that is both a staunch commentary on the environment’s imminent threats, and cautionary tale on the living and breathing being is nature. Basing the film’s premise off of actual plants with defense mechanisms, M. Night sets down on a reality where Planet Earth has finally had enough torment and has decided to completely destroy humanity in an effort to save itself. Filled with disturbing imagery, sharp performances, and a surprise twist, this is a daring film from M. Night and one that is quite harrowing considering our insistence on hurting mother Earth, woefully unaware the planet is a being that perhaps can strike back if ever given the consciousness to do so.
8. Iron Man
In one fell swoop indie director and movie bit player Jon Favreau took a D list superhero named Iron Man, one of the most enduring running gags in Marvel Comics and turned him in to a bonafide A lister worthy of being revived for a new generation. In a matter of one movie, director Favreau completely re-imagined the Iron Man for a bold new generation and turned him in to a superhero many people could get behind.
Like a brighter Batman, “Iron Man” is a mysterious superhero with his very own customized suit filled with gadgets and tech operated by a self-aggrandizing billionaire intent on saving the world when his apathy no longer becomes a necessity in his life. Filled with excellent performances, a top notch script, and some eye catching action pieces, “Iron Man” stuck true to the original mythos of Old Bucket Head while also re-thinking him for a new era, and transformed a walking joke in to a titan that could roll with the likes of Superman and Spider-Man.
7. REC
This found footage film is very much in the tradition of “The Blair Witch Project” and is a truly frantic and intense gem following a news crew in to a random apartment tenement when while spotlighting a local fire department causes them to report on the scene of a mysterious attack. What begins as an isolated incident involving a rabid old lady spirals out of control when bites begin turning its victims in to rabid monsters, the authorities outside the building seem oddly intent on keeping the tenants inside against all costs, and the news crew finds out for better or for worse what is ravaging these apartment dwellers and how to stop them. “REC” is a film not intent on being hopeful or positive and is probably one of the most chaotic horror films made in the last ten years. You’d be hard pressed not to enjoy this and the bonafide scares it offers up for the audience.
6. The Life Before Her Eyes
Regardless of how far we enter in to the new millennium the shooting at Columbine will always have a profound effect on the American consciousness and the way we look at the seemingly safe environment that should be the local school system. “The Life Before Her Eyes” is a thought provoking and gripping look in to two girls whom are affected when they find themselves in the middle of a horrible school shooting one day at school. Held at gun point by the angry student gunman, they make a decision that costs them a life, and causes one to reflect on her life without her best friend. Remembering moments in her life involving lovers, boyfriends, her troubled friendship, her turbulent marriage and rebellious daughter, she journeys back in to the past to re-visit the fateful day and hopefully make one final decision that could help or hurt someone in the long run.
5. Cloverfield
If there was anyone who could take the buzz away from Michael Bay and his adaptation of “Transformers” it would be JJ Abrams and his group at Bad Robot. Originally placed before “Transformers” as a teaser without a title or premiere date, “Cloverfield” was the sensation of the internet garnering massive debates among movie geeks about what the teaser is that they’d seen and what it had in store. Was it a movie trailer? Was it a commercial for a TV show?
Was it a very well made ad for a new product? In either case, “Cloverfield” blew people away and had them talking right through “Transformers.” 2007 was all about “Cloverfield,” and JJ Abrams met with massive expectations offering up a glorious monster movie about a calm January night in New York when a massive monster slid out of the ocean and wrought havoc on the entire city. Filled with great special effects, an excellent story, and some disturbing imagery, “Cloverfield” is a masterpiece of monster cinema.
4. Diary of the Dead
With this generally misunderstood horror film, director George A. Romero completely re-thinks his formula for “Night of the Living Dead” except re-works it for the modern age based around and obsessed with technology and voyeurism. Rather than the confines of a farm house, he sets his story in the confines of a camera lens offering up a startling and disturbing look at the end of the world brought down by the hands of the walking dead and our inability to cope with it often using the internet as a form of escape even when our doors are being brought down by them. With a sardonic sense of humor, surprise twists, and a haunting climax, George A. Romero is a man constantly on the fringes of our society’s mindset and knows full well how to reboot his entire dead series by restarting judgment day and keeping the brilliant elements that set him and his work in to legendary status.
3. The Dark Knight
If you would have told me five years ago that there would be a director who could completely revive the territory that Warner Bros. completely trashed and turned in to campy homoerotic junk and would come aboard and revamp a series in limbo turning it in to a credible piece of filmmaking, I would have laughed non-stop. Lo and behold Christopher Nolan has slapped on a grit and adult tone that turns this second outing of his Batman in to a complex crime thriller filled with themes, and undertones and dread that makes it a bonafide masterpiece, and while it is yet another comic book movie about a superhero, Nolan looks beyond the costumes and face paint and focuses on a man hiding a dark identity that could destroy the city he resides in, a man struggling to come to grips with his dark side through a memento, and a man who has embraced his darkness so much he’s barely human. “The Dark Knight” is an exciting and epic genre masterpiece and one I will likely re-watch a thousand times over.
2. Funny Games US
Both Loathsome and riveting, this beat by beat remake of the original is something of a marvelous demon, a sick and maddening experiment in torture and depravity, a look at the director playing the God and this God incidentally enough is on the side of the villains. Offering up a look at victims being ravaged by two menaces with cherubic faces, and twisting the conventions of the narrative and plot twist, “Funny Games US” is an excruciating film that I found very compelling and hypnotizing at the same time. Filled with sharp performances and a truly demented sense of humor, it will ultimately alienate and compel respective viewers. And likely both, as it did us.
1. Wall-E
Pixar’s latest masterpiece entitled “Wall-E” is without a doubt a celebration of sight and sound and the exercise of storytelling without words that relies on its audience to witness the unraveling of events rather than holding our hands through endless dialogue and puns about nonsense. Primarily a silent film and then a science fiction fantasy about consumerism, apathy, sloth, and corporate greed, “Wall-E” is a gorgeous and magical romance about a robot who is created to clean Earth.
When the world becomes so overwhelmed and choked by its own garbage and filth, he is left behind to clean up after us for all eternity unaware that he can stop and should stop. But he finds a way to ease his loneliness through artifacts from the past creating a museum of our lives and culture and finding a way to live more than the humans who created him in the first place. Finding companionship in another robot named Eva, Wall-E learns to love and feel and surely enough he realizes that he can think outside of the box and finds a dimension beyond Earth where he can seek personal fulfillment. Pixar’s science fiction fantasy is a whimsical tale and one that enraptures every time it’s watched.
Honorable Mentions: The Spiderwick Chronicles, Hell Ride, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, Let the Right One In, Poultrygeist
* Favorite Guilty Pleasure: Jumper
* Biggest Disappointment: Harold and Kumar 2
* Most Overrated: Mamma Mia!