The Oscar nominations this year confirmed what a dismal year the movies had in 2008. Benjamin Button was a horrible bore. Milk and Frost/Nixon were decent films, but nothing to get overly excited about, or want to see a second time. Everybody’s favorite, Slumdog Millionaire, was overbrimming with energy, and the concept was brilliant, but my implausibility detector kept me from ever fully engaging, until the encore, which was a whole different thing. When I saw part of Juno on TV, I said to myself, Now there was a movie!, a movie you wanted to talk to your friends about, a movie with moments you recalled days and months afterward. And that was just my 4^th best film of 2007! Nothing this year hit me over the head like No Country for Old Men, or I’m Not There, or Once, or even Gone Baby Gone. So, I’m tempted to skip a Top Ten for this year; but tradition being what it is, I was able to come up with ten films, and ten films only, that I felt comfortable recommending to others. I’ve put them in order, but don’t take that too seriously. None of these are “award-winners,” but all are movies I’m glad I saw.

 

1.Amal. So far as I know, this was never commercially released, but it was my favorite film from the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Set in a very real India (not the heightened India of Slumdog), it recounted an O’Henry-like short story about a rickshaw driver who was happier living his simple life than those around him who were chasing a fortune. “Sweet” is a dangerous word to apply to a film, but, unlike some Amy Adams vehicle, there was so much poverty, greed, dishonesty and honest emotion surrounding the driver that his good-spiritedness was both thought-provoking and heartwarming.

 

2.Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The Screenwriters Panel at this year’s SBIFF said that creating characters was more important than plot, and there is no better proof than this Woody Allen movie. Not much happens – certainly nothing important – but the four main characters are all fascinating and beautifully acted. What happens is the evolving relationships among them, and you have to ask the moviegoers with you, Which one did you relate to, or like, or understand? I’m not much on cinematography, but when I think back to all the films on this list, the vivid colors of Barcelona jump out. Bravo Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall!

 

3. Man on Wire. Climbing Everest or robbing Brinks seems mundane compared to walking on a wire suspended between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, especially when the whole stunt has to be done surreptitiously. Easily the best of the nine documentaries I saw this year, this film benefited from a wonderfully French supporting cast; and Philippe Petit himself, wirewalker, magician, storyteller, provocateur, made you wonder why it took someone 33 years to make this movie.
4. The Visitor. The Oscar-nominated performance of Richard Jenkins was perhaps the smallest virtue of this sensitive study of the currently intractable issue of illegal immigration. The Arab son and mother and African girlfriend lit up the screen, captured our hearts, and then broke them in an ending that owed more to real life than the movies.

 

5. Rachel Getting Married. Here, the Oscar-nominated performance, by Anne Hathaway, was all. Her character was infuriating, insufferable, but you couldn’t turn away, from fear of missing the next transgression. Bill Irwin and Debra Winger were perfectly mismatched parents, quite capable of producing a self-centered monster, as well as her overshadowed and resentful sister. The film was ten minutes overlong, but in all, a field day for the pop psychologist in each of us.

 

6. The Band’s Visit. Another highlight of the SBIFF (seeing films in a modest setting before they get reviewed helps), this was another sensitive portrayal of a seldom-starring group, Arabs – in this case a Columbia-blue-uniformed group of musicians who found themselves stranded in an Israeli town that wasn’t expecting them. It wasn’t that the band members were presented as heroes, but more that they were shown as a typical cross-section of humanity, just like the rest of us, as they tried to relate for one night to the strangers who, not always willingly, took them in.

 

7. A Christmas Tale. Quel plaisir to spend 152 minutes with a French family, even one as dysfunctional as this. It took a while to figure out who was who, let alone why, and then part of the fun was deciding whom you liked the most and why. Catherine Deneuve as the mother was a treat for the eye, as usual, but she was topped by Anne Consigny as her daughter. Although life and death were at stake, it was the personal relationships that really mattered. We could only watch from the outside, mesmerized.

 

8. Frozen River. Who would want to watch a bedraggled single mother, losing her car and her home, helping equally desperate immigrants illegally enter upstate New York in the dead of winter, with a half-blind, lost-her-child Native American as a sidekick? Yet Oscar-worthy Melissa Leo’s performance, nuanced and achingly real, gave richness and color to the empty-of-promise, black-and-white landscape of the frozen river.

 

9. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist. It’s the oldest storyline in cinema – Average Joe thinks he loves bodacious bombshell, not noticing the ‘friend’ who secretly loves him– but when the leads (Michael Cera and Kat Dennings) are endearing, the side characters entertaining and the rock score energizing, it’s still a formula that’s hard to beat. And we always need a New York fix from time to time.

 

10. Dark Knight. A clever balance between earthbound characters, emotions and acts of violence and the fantastical cartoon razzmatazz made this far more engaging than I expected. Minute-after-minute came a surprise, a new bit of deviltry, another wrinkle to fathom; and it was not just Heath Ledger, but also Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman who deserve credit for their supporting roles.

 

P.S. As usual, movies released in Minnesota (or Santa Barbara) during the year do not coincide with the NY/LA releases that qualify for a given year’s Oscars. The Kite Runner would have further strengthened my Top Ten list for 2007 had I seen it in time. At this point I still have not gotten around to viewing The Reader, Gran Torino, Waltz with Bashir, Wendy and Lucy, Doubt, Revolutionary Road or The Class, to name films receiving 2008 awards that are still current in Minneapolis in mid-February. Maybe they won’t affect the above discussion, but in any case I don’t want their exclusion to imply rejection.

 

Oscar Selections Limiting myself to the Academy’s nominees, I would vote as follows:

Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire

Best Actor: Sean Penn

Best Actress: Anne Hathaway

Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger

Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz

Best Director: Danny Boyle