CHOOSING the film of the year is always a tricky task. This year you may as well toss a coin. And call it.
It’s been a year of coins flipped in the air, from the deadly Chigurh (Javier Bardem) menacing an ageing shop clerk in the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men ...
To The Dark Knight’s Harvey ‘Two-Face’ Dent (Aaron Eckhart), whose repetitive coin tosses reflected the central choices of Christopher Nolan’s shimmering, superlative Batman movie – the choice between good and evil, between the Caped Crusader and Heath Ledger’s devilish Joker, between hostage and terrorist, family and anarchy.
No Country For Old Men saw a veteran lawman befuddled and out-thought by a criminal element that exists and thrives in a moral environment so far removed from anything he has known that the perpetrators may as well be from another planet.
While The Dark Knight brilliantly weaves into its action-packed, beautifully-constructed whole the deep, dark, recurring question – how far will the good guys go to stop the bad guys?
The echoes of rendition flights and Guantanamo were there for all to hear. And the indelible image of Ledger’s scarred, face-painted villain torching a mountain of cash seems now to have foreshadowed the world financial crisis.
Finance, God and the Devil were also to the fore in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, maybe the best of the lot (toss a coin, remember?), with Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis delivering another gigantic performance.
Anderson’s movie managed to be formally expert, elegant and classically assured, but also unpredictable and even experimental, all at the same time.
Juan Antonio Bayona’s The Orphanage benefited from an effective economy and real impetus in its storytelling as it successfully melded fairytale, fantasy and horror elements in a way that nodded to the work of its celebrated producer, Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy).
The Orphanage – surely destined for a US remake? – also delivered some effective shock moments and was graced by one of the year’s best female performances from Belen Rueda.
Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution also benefited from a stunning female performance, by movie debutant Wei Tang, as a student and actress recruited into a plot to assassinate a senior secret serviceman in World War 2 Shanghai.
Some of the most explicit sex scenes in a major picture and a protracted murder sequence that recalled a similarly excruciating killing in Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain were part of another passionate, eye-opening drama from Taiwan-born director Lee (Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain).
The peerless Tony Leung (In The Mood For Love, Infernal Affairs) also delivered a masterclass in screen acting that left much unsaid but little untapped.
With a wide and varied CV, Lee may be difficult to pin down as a predictable auteur. But he is developing a body of work tough to match in its international influence and impact.
Britain’s Turner Prize-winning artist turned feature film maker Steve McQueen made his own international impact with Hunger, a harrowing but unmissable insight into the Maze hunger strikes that claimed the life of Republican protester Bobby Sands (a superb Michael Fassbender).
Movie year 2008 also saw the usual raft of sequels and remakes, including Elizabeth – The Golden Age, Chronicles Of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor, Transporter 3, Saw 4, Saw 5, Rambo and Michael Haneke’s US version of his own Funny Games.
Daniel Craig continued to prove there was life in the Bond franchise post-Bourne in Quantum Of Solace, a slick, tight, engaging action picture that featured a sequence in an Austrian opera house that was among the year’s top slam-bam set-pieces.
The revival of the horror movie continued with the likes of 30 Days Of Night, The Mist, Teeth and Eden Lake. And it was another fine year for animation, thanks to Persepolis, Waltz With Bashir, Pixar’s Wall-E (a work of genius, at least for 40 minutes or so) and the surprisingly engaging and impressive Kung Fu Panda.
A string of movies tackled Iraq and the War On Terror – In The Valley Of Elah, Redacted, Rendition, Lions For Lambs. And what was Cloverfield if not a look at the American condition post-9/11? A damn fine monster movie, that’s what.
The top-profile trio of Sex And The City, High School Musical 3 and the Titanic-busting Mamma Mia! were all box office successes, but none could claim to be great movies. Phyllida Lloyd’s Abba fest earned few plaudits for its writing, the staging of its musical numbers or its direction. But it was cleverly marketed to win an army of fans, spawned special sing-along screenings and is already a massive hit on DVD.
A number of acclaimed, established and/ or veteran moviemakers offered up fare which failed to achieve the praise, poise and/ or power of their very best work – Wong Kar Wai’s My Blueberry Nights, the Wachowski brothers’ Speed Racer, M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, Ridley Scott’s Body Of Lies, George Romero’s Diary Of The Dead, Oliver Stone’s W, Francis Coppola’s Youth Without Youth and Nic Roeg’s Puffball.
Two veterans, however, succeeded in impressing many critics – Sidney Lumet with Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead and Mike Nichols with Charlie Wilson’s War.
Clint Eastwood – now 78 – followed up his 2006 double whammy of Flags Of Our Fathers and Letters From Iwo Jima with Changeling, another beautifully-made and engrossing drama based on true events.
Angelina Jolie’s powerhouse central performance was backed up by one of the year’s best supporting ensembles with Jeffrey Donovan, as a corrupt LA police captain, and the young Eddie Alderson unforgettable stand-outs.
Eastwood’s movie was a mystery, a passionate exposé, a women’s issue picture, a disturbing crime thriller, a Chinatown-style study of corruption in the City of Angels and more.
Sean Penn’s Into The Wild was inspired by another true story, that of Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch), a privileged young man who dropped out of society and rejected family life to take off into the wilderness.
Penn’s film was spectacularly photographed, heartfelt and gripping, and graced by a remarkable late cameo by veteran Hal Holbrook.
One of Britain’s most passionate and unique but still somehow under-appreciated film talents, Terence Davies (Distant Voices Still Lives, The House Of Mirth), delivered a masterpiece documentary-cum-memoir that was a vital experience of pure cinema.
Davies’ Of Time And The City was a moving, funny and highly personal peek into his love-hate relationship with his native Liverpool, juxtaposing music, images and the director’s narration in a highly-emotional treat. It was as brilliant as it was irreverent – the Queen, the Pope and The Beatles all get both barrels.
If The Dark Knight was the year’s best comic book movie, Iron Man was next best while The Incredible Hulk disappointed (Ang Lee’s Hulk was better).
Iron Man himself, Robert Downey Jr, spun cinema gold with Tropic Thunder’s madcap concept of a white actor playing a black guy in a movie about actors in a war movie caught up in a real “war", if you follow.
His “never go full retard” scene, aimed at screen stars willing to go that extra mile in desperate search of an Oscar nomination, is surely worth a nod from the Academy itself.
But what was YOUR film of the year? Juno? Enchanted? Son Of Rambow? Or I’m Not There, Paranoid Park, The Diving Bell And The Butterfly? 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days?
All had their admirers, as did Lars And The Real Girl, The Edge Of Heaven, Mongol, In Bruges and Ben Affleck’s superior, hard-nosed crime picture, Gone Baby Gone.
Affleck directed his baby brother, Casey (The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford) in an intense, intelligent movie delayed for six months in the UK due to “spooky, or what?” similarities to the Madeleine McCann case.
Gone Baby Gone’s twist-cum-moral dilemma and its deep, dark undercurrents made for uncomfortable but essential viewing.
Staying on the crime beat, screen acting legends Robert De Niro and Al Pacino teamed up again for Righteous Kill, but this much-anticipated outing lacked Heat. While Italy’s detailed and disturbing Gomorrah revealed the true horror behind the big-screen myth of an “honourable” Mob.
Gomorrah was real, in-your-face and desperately tragic as the underworld crime machine sucked dry, chewed up and spat out an entire community.
The Coens were back towards the end of the year with Burn After Reading, a dark screwball comedy with an all-star cast, pooh-poohed by some but, in its own way, as incisively critical of America’s modern moral morass as No Country For Old Men.
It was also one of the most beautifully lit, photographed, cut and scored films of the year.
Top 10
No Country For Old Men
Dark Knight
There Will Be Blood
Of Time And The City
Hunger
Gomorrah
Changeling
Lust, Caution
The Orphanage
Into The Wild