Cinema Spectacular — 2008

This seems to be written in this space every year, but I must write it again: What a great year for movies.

After more than 100 years of filmmaking in America, there are still unheard stories, unfilmed subjects and unknown dramas. This year in film seemed to accentuate the human drama that exists in our world: good and evil (The Dark Knight), kindness (Happy-Go-Lucky), love (Wall•E) and personal triumph (Milk, Slumdog Millionaire). There is so much we can still learn and feel from film, and 2008 proves it. Here is the evidence.

— Michael Clawson

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1. Wall•E

The most human movie of the year stars a robot, which should hardly be surprising from Pixar, a film studio that could bring meaningful life to a jelly donut if a story called for it. Pixar’s talented storytellers and animators — and voice artist Ben Burtt — have done more than inject life into Wall•E, though: they have transplaneted real personality, humanity even, into their little trash-compacting robot. Abandoned on a junk-covered Earth, Wall•E chugs away at his clean-up directive while scooting around to Hello, Dolly! songs. After meeting a vegetation scanner named Eve, Wall•E embarks on an intergalactic rescue mission that changes the course of human history. As much satire as it is an environmental plea, Wall•E is fundamentally, at its core, a brilliant character study, where the robot’s actions, motivations and heart-wrenching love for Eve are on full display. It's so rare to even think this, let alone type it, but here it goes: Wall•E is a perfect movie.

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2. Slumdog Millionaire

So authentic are the Indian locations of Danny Boyle’s cultural and visual extravaganza that the stench and filth seem to waft from the screen in hazy plumes, but the characters and culture are so captivating you’ll want nothing more than to see it firsthand, slums and all. Films tend to romanticize India, but Slumdog shows it as it is: a collision of squalor, crime and decay (India’s past) with engineering marvels and a burgeoning computer industry (India’s future). Stuck in the middle is Jamal (Dev Patel), who’s appearing on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?, where he gives more correct answers than a poor “slumdog” should. Between show tapings he’s beaten by a local police officer to find out how, or even if, he’s cheating. The movie is Jamal’s life story as he tells it to the police detective: orphaned young, living on the streets, conning tourists at the Taj Mahal, begging for change, crime with his brother and love with a girl from his old neighborhood. Slumdog’s a travelogue, a romance and a great tragedy all at once. It’s also so much more — it’s food for the soul.

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3. The Dark Knight

Yes, Heath Ledger is very good. As is Christian Bale; when is he not? But The Dark Knight is a monumental film because of writer and director Christopher Nolan, who extends his themes — mainly, the duality of man — way beyond those two-dimensional comic pages. He also creates real mythology for his hero and villains: “You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Nolan has not only made a human drama with depth, but he’s created an intense thrill ride, spectacular visual effects, a compelling romance, rich dialogue and characters that matter not just to the plot, but to us. And that shot of the Joker hanging out the car window as it weaves through Gotham is perfect in its composition and its lunacy. Every piece of The Dark Knight works and works skillfully.

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4. Milk

Milk is a brave movie because it presents Harvey Milk, America’s first openly gay elected official, with all his character flaws. It doesn’t deify him, but shows him to us just as he was: devilishly funny, romantic, charmingly blunt with a distinctive speaking style and occasionally very single-minded. It helps, of course, that Sean Penn plays him the way only Sean Penn can, with great humanity and honesty. Here's an interesting observation: Picture Penn as Penn talking in his own voice. I can't do it; I just his characters. That is an actor.The Gus Van Sant film follows Milk as he moves to San Francisco’s Castro district, falls in love, starts a business and, after witnessing ratcheting persecution against gays and lesbians in the area, runs for a city office on a gay platform. The movie dangles tension above our heads when Milk meets another city official, Dan White (Josh Brolin), who will eventually go on a shooting spree in city hall. Yes, I’ve revealed the end, but it should be a historical fact, not a spoiler. The movie presents a dilemma that still rages today: is sexual orientation a religious issue or human rights issue? Milk knew the answer. He lived the answer.

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5. Gran Torino

So Dirty Harry retires. Clint Eastwood directs himself in one of the most provocatively racist films ever made. Snarling to no end, he plays a retired Korean War veteran who’s at odds with his Hmong neighbors, who annoy him for simply being Hmong, or anything that’s not white. In between his racial tirades and unrepentant Catholic shame, Clint accepts his neighbors as his friends and saves them from the Asian gang that terrorizes their street. But the movie is more than that. It’s an examination of two generations: the old generation, which is callous to the new world and all its integrations, and the young one, which is quick to forgive. Clint Eastwood is a treasure to the pictures, this one in particular, but he might be upstaged at times by his younger actors, who smile through his snarls and accept him for the curmudgeon he is.

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6. The Reader & Revolutionary Road

Kate Winslet excels at everything she touches. A Colgate commercial with her in it would make for riveting television. This was her year, too. In The Reader, she plays a teenage boy’s first lover, who is later revealed to be a former guard at a Nazi death camp. The movie, which should not be mistaken for a Holocaust picture, is a careful examination on shame, particularly with the boy, who refuses to speak up at a pivotal junture. In Revolutionary Road — in which Winslet is directed by her husband Sam Mendes and reunited with Titanic star Leonardo DiCaprio — she is a loving ’50s-era housewife who’s not ready for life in the suburbs and dreams of a trip to Paris that never comes. Here she plays the role society wants her to play — homemaker — only to abandon it when her husband perpetuates a myth that never happens. Winslet doesn’t just memorize her lines for her films; she becomes the characters. And she also plays them with affection, as if she really liked who they were, or at least understands their motivations. She’s one of the most gifted actresses working now and these are two prime examples of her craft.

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7. The Wrestler

Mickey Rourke guts himself, his real self, right up there on the screen in The Wrestler. Yes, Randy “The Ram” Robinson is a fictional character, but you can’t look at The Ram and not see Rourke. Randy is a has-been wrestler — fake television wrestling, not real Olympic wrestling. His life oozes from all sides, fading away into oblivion. His muscles ache so he takes steroids. Wrestling gigs in VFW halls don’t pay well so he becomes a supermarket butcher. His love life is gone so he socializes at the topless bar. You can’t look at Randy and not feel pity, or just great sadness. But director Darren Aronofsky doesn’t frame him that way; he gives Randy and Rourke room to move, to show their gentle spirits resonating behind the tough exteriors. And Marisa Tomei, in one of the performances of the year, plays a stripper who needs a second chance as much as Randy.

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8. The Visitor

A man returns to an apartment he has not lived in for several months. There is a couple sleeping in his bed, using his things; they’ve been duped into paying rent to a man who doesn’t own the place. Who’s the visitor here: the intruding couple or the man who owns the apartment? The movie is a meditation on that and other questions about visitors, sometimes called immigrants or aliens, or maybe even illegal aliens. The star is Richard Jenkins, who performs his role so carefully that it’s almost a whisper. His character befriends the couple and then, curiously and inexplicably, learns to play the drum as a form of expression. Eventually there is an arrest and a threat of deportation, and a mother appears to give a son guidance. Again, the issue comes up: Who is the visitor? The answer is either everyone or no one, but not both.

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9. Happy-Go-Lucky

Sally Hawkins’ character in Happy-Go-Lucky, a lovable sprite named Poppy, could have been a blissful caricature. Instead it’s so real it’s heartbreaking. Mike Leigh’s movie is all about Poppy. There are other characters, but everyone and everything revolves around her. There’s no plot really, just adventures with Poppy, who lunches with friends, visits a sister, talks to a homeless man and takes driving lessons. Poppy is infectiously happy, so much that it makes others uncomfortable. Her sister views her smiles as sarcastic insults on her suburban lifestyle. The driving instructor mistakes her kindness for attraction. Everyone seems to take issue with her optimism. It’s a parable on the world we live in, where we feed off negativity. More than anything, though, it’s a character study on Poppy. And Hawkins aces it.

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10. Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

Director Guillermo del Toro is the visionary this age of filmmaking not only desires, but requires. He has taken an absurd story about a kitten-loving demon and made it into a rich fantasy of equal parts dream and nightmare. This is not the first time he’s toyed with our imaginations (remember Pan’s Labyrinth?) and it’s unlikely to be his last now that he heads into The Hobbit. Hellboy, played by Ron Pearlman, is a gentle giant with a mean left hook. He’s poetically glib about everything, except Liz (Selma Blair), who he adores to no end. The story is fun, and it’s told using humor and wit, but really the showpiece here is del Toro’s dark creature creations and elaborate fantasy settings.

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Honorable Mention: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Here is my guilty pleasure. It’s a Judd Apatow comedy with a third-rate star (Jason Segel) and a pointless series of romantic comedy setups. But it has heart, and it’s not afraid to break it to serve its theme. When the male and the female can finally vent to each other why their relationship never worked they come to this realization: they both failed, which is an observation that is entirely too honest for a movie this dumb to be sharing. Like Lil' Wayne sampling Chopin. Somehow, though, amid Segel's wiggling penis and Kristen Bell's winking bikinis, the movie finds a relationship's decaying soul and mercy kills it in one crushing swipe. You will hear echoes from your own failed relationships in this movie, and listening to these characters’ struggles can be cathartic. And that Dracula song from the puppet musical is the best song to emerge from a movie all year long.