1. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE – Who’d have guessed that
Slumdog Millionaire would clean up so many major awards at the Golden Globes? Or that it’d be the frontrunner for a Best Picture Academy Award? Nobody – at least, not until recently.
Slumdog Millionaire isn’t the kind of movie people make thinking they’ll get an Oscar, which makes its success all the more rewarding. It’s hard to think of a director besides Danny Boyle who could have captured the energy of Mumbai in such an authentic way – I cringe to think of so many other directors tackling this material and glossing it up, Hollywood-style. It takes a rough-around-the-edges auteur like Boyle to bring such an incredible story to life, and that he does. The film is fully alive in every frame, from the cinematography to the music to the performances (mostly by unknown-to-America Indian actors). What American audiences
can connect to is the all-too-familiar music and format of
“Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?” The cheesy televised game show is a ridiculous extreme to the orphaned boys’ tough childhood on the streets.
Slumdog Millionaire what you’d get if you crossed Regis Philbin with an Eastern Charles Dickens and added a dose of Scorsese. It makes no compromises and fits no mold – it’s unlike any movie that has come before it. No concession has been made to make it more palatable to the average moviegoers who made
Paul Blart: Mall Cop the top-grossing January opener of all time, but against all odds,
Slumdog Millionaire is winning audiences over because it is fresh, genuine, and original. Let that be a lesson. While
Slumdog Millionaire does depict some darker moments – crime, torture, child prostitution – the overall tone is light; it's a fun, feel-good movie. (So there. After choosing
Zodiac, United 93, and
Crash as my previous #1's, I've finally lightened up!) Hopefully
Slumdog Millionaire’s success means more daring, less conventional films will have an easier time finding support in the future. No need to ask the audience or phone a friend - it looks like
Slumdog’s underdog-gets-lucky story is about to be mirrored in real life at the Academy Awards.
2. FROST/NIXON – It’s unlikely that even the real Richard Nixon was quite as fascinating and complicated as the man portrayed in Ron Howard’s searing drama, which is a credit to writer Peter Morgan and especially to Frank Langella’s dynamic depiction of Tricky Dick. (Morgan wrote the stage play, which Langella also starred in.)
Frost/Nixon plays with history a bit, giving us an insight into America’s most-despised president (until recently, anyway) – though we have no way of knowing how accurate that insight is. It doesn’t matter. The showdown between Nixon and Aussie TV host David Frost makes for some fascinating drama, an underdog-against-all-odds story in which the stakes are truth, justice, and all that other stuff Americans hold in such high regard. (Funny, that it takes an outsider to finally hold an American president accountable for his actions.) Michael Sheen gives a compelling performance as the man who inexplicably risks everything on a TV interview, but it’s Langella who steals the show, commanding the screen no matter what he’s doing. (Amazing, considering that most of Langella’s more subtle work here would not have come across on stage – he must have had to totally reinvent his performance.) With help from Morgan’s complex study of the man, Langella makes Nixon an even more larger-than-life persona than he already is, lending credibility to moments and dialogue that might sound theatrical coming from a less capable actor. The movie never hits a false note – just plenty of great ones.
3. WALL-E – A truly visionary piece of work,
Wall-E manages to be a crowd-pleasing family film while featuring two robotic leads who have little conventional dialogue and at the same time delivering a not-so-subtle environmental message. No small feat. Here, Pixar’s usual visual razzle-dazzle is matched by a story that feels just as groundbreaking as the animation. It should come as no surprise that these talented animators are able to make a love story between two robots not only feel credible, but also incredibly moving, but even so,
Wall-E takes romance to a new height using a starry backdrop and repurposing the soundtrack to
Hello, Dolly! (Recycling – how green.) More than just a clever adventure,
Wall-E dares to challenge its viewers by pointing a finger back at them, depicting humans as lazy and easily distracted, if ultimately good-natured and strong-willed. It’s a highly entertaining cautionary tale – and hey, it’s never too early to get kids to think about saving the planet. But
Wall-E would have no right to challenge us had the movie not raised the bar on itself: by exploring uncharted territory for family-friendly fare, elevating the ideas and emotions in an animated feature to infinity and beyond.
4. RACHEL GETTING MARRIED – The awkward title sets the offbeat tone for this intimate family drama, in which the characters feel so lived-in it’s hard to believe you’re not sitting there with them. (As if to prove that point, a couple sequences are frustratingly long, giving us a hint of the boredom we might feel if we actually were at the wedding. When the dancing starts, feel free to get up and refill your popcorn, go to the bathroom, validate your parking – it goes on awhile.) More than that, though,
Rachel Getting Married features some of the best performances of the year, most unlikely to be recognized by the Academy. There’s plenty of buzz around Anne Hathaway, who we watch like a train that’s about to derail at any moment (and rest assured, it eventually does). But just as good are Rosemarie DeWitt, phenomenal as the titular Rachel, who inhabits the role so well she feels like your own sister, and Debra Winger in a briefer but no less acute appearance as the girls’ distant mother (in the film’s most electrifying scene, she’s the one that causes the aforementioned train wreck). Jenny Lumet’s observant screenplay and Jonathan Demme’s fly-on-the-wall direction deserve equal credit for pulling off this sharp character study that captures family drama in a way that few other films have managed.
5. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON – A curious case, indeed – the big studio movie that boldly explores themes like mortality without playing it safe or laying on the sap. It’s easy to imagine Ron Howard, Robert Zemeckis, or even Steven Spielberg going astray with this material – tugging the heartstrings a few too many times, getting caught up in the sweeter moments. David Fincher, on the other hand, turns out to be the perfect director for this brand of magic realism, not only because of his mastery of the film’s astounding aging and anti-aging effects – but also because of the darkness and gravity of his ouvre, the weight he lends this subject matter. He doesn’t add saccharine to the film’s examination of what it means to get older, or the inherent tragedy that is (for Benjamin and for all of us) the inevitable decline back toward a state of infancy. As an elderly Cate Blanchett takes care of Benjamin in his final years, as a young boy and finally a baby, Fincher makes the heartbreaking point that the nature of love changes as we age, too – the lovers of our youths might end up serving as nurses and mother figures when we’re once again feeble-minded and helpless. At nearly three hours,
Benjamin Button doesn’t feel long at all – in fact, spanning the entirety of a man’s life just makes you want to see more of every moment. (I could have done with a little less childhood and a little more of Benjamin’s later life, and not just because
that Brad is just so pretty.) A Hurricane Katrina backdrop and the casting of mega star Pitt lend an extra air of despair – if not even Brad Pitt can escape getting old and less hunky, what hope is there for the rest of us?
6. REVOLUTIONARY ROAD – Kate & Leo! Together! Surviving! Living happily ever…oh, wait, no. This is not a love story. It’s a hate story – or rather, a story in which we watch love dissolve and eventually succumb to hatred, as “the American dream” strangles a young couple’s more intimate, individual dreams. If
Revolutionary Road doesn’t exactly break any new ground in portraying the suburbs as a place where brittle happy facades just barely cover secret longings and infidelities (see
Little Children and
American Beauty, for starters), it certainly delves even deeper into the loneliness, the sacrifice, the misery, the hunger for more…the dark heart of suburban America. By using the iconic 50’s as the backdrop – a time we’re more likely to associate with smiling housewives and happy-go-lucky husbands returning home from a hard day’s work than the very modern-sounding quarrels these two have –
Revolutionary Road is all the more shattering in showing the perfunctory dysfunction at the core of America’s standard way of living, and the hardships faced by those who even dare to dream they’ll break out of it. Sam Mendes echoes his sublime
American Beauty as he directs wife Kate Winslet and her best friend Leonardo DiCaprio in tackling uglier extremes than they’ve been asked to explore. Kinda aakes the death-by-hypothermia conclusion of
Titanic's lovestruck duo seem like the happier ending after all.
7. THE DARK KNIGHT – Why so serious? The titular darkness of Chris Nolan’s Gothic drama makes Tim Burton’s
Batman films seem as light and frivolous as, well, Joel Schumaker’s. (Though I still say nothing beats the Bat, the Cat, and the Penguin in
Batman Returns.) In a twist that shocked everybody, turns out the public likes their superhero movies pitch-black, thought-provoking, and “so serious,” so much so that a comic book action hero sequel became the second-highest grossing film of all time, trailing behind
Titanic. With its near-epic running time and emphasis on tortured souls and tragic character arcs,
The Dark Knight is given a scope more akin to
The Godfather than
Spider-Man (if not quite the nuance or gravitas). Of course, what pulls it together is Heath Ledger’s magnificent turn as The Joker – there’s no way he’s not winning the Oscar. There will almost certainly be another Batman film, but unfortunately there will never be another one with a performance quite like his.
The Dark Knight is a cinematic milestone that may allow for more big budget blockbusters to be moody, thought-provoking and, hey, perhaps even Oscar-worthy. Holy golden statuette, Batman!
8. BOY A – Andrew Garfield is superb as Jack, a likable 24-year old guy experiencing young adult life for the first time, all at once: his first job, first date, first kiss, first alcoholic beverage, and so on. The reason: he’s been in prison since childhood for murdering a young girl. (Just what his involvement is isn’t shown until near the end of the film, but the film doesn’t let him off the hook too easily.) His parole contact Terry serves as mentor and father figure, guiding Jack through everything from losing his virginity to ordering a meal in a restaurant for the first time – and he’s the only person in Jack’s life who knows that he’s really the child killer known as “Boy A” that the media's been hunting. With insightful flashbacks, skilled direction, and all-around solid performances,
Boy A is quiet and unsensational given the subject matter, even when the new life we’ve watched Jack build suddenly collapses like a house of cards around him in the film’s tragic denoument.
9. HAPPY-GO-LUCKY – Mike Leigh’s virtually plotless character study of a woman named Poppy has been classified as a comedy – which might be accurate, since there are quite a bit of funny moments throughout. Just watching Sally Hawkins awkward, borderline-obnoxious (in a good way) performance is bound to provoke laughter – but what I found while watching it is that I laughed in places others did not, and vice versa. It’s all because this unique film refuses to take any conventional paths, instead challenging viewers to spend two hours with a very cheerful woman who has the most positive of attitudes…and wrestle over their feelings of whether or not they want to punch her in the face. It brings up questions about our own happiness – and how much happiness in others we’re willing to tolerate. Does human nature go against being blissfully content? Golden Globe-winner Sally Hawkins has a well-deserved good shot at an Oscar for Best Actress, which ought to give her something else to smile about.
10. IRON MAN – Two superhero movies in my Top 10? Must’ve been a rough year for drama! While artsier fare like
The Wrestler fought for the tenth slot on my list, something about putting
Iron Man here just felt right. Robert Downey Jr.’s performance is every bit as crucial to this film as Mickey Rourke’s is to
The Wrestler, but you can see that everybody involved did their part to elevate this material above the mediocrity that bogs down pretty much every other comic book movie. Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts is particularly winsome – I hope they find a way to keep the same sparkle in her relationship with Tony Stark in the sequel. I admire
Iron Man for fulfilling its genre obligations while also being a movie that smart people with good taste can enjoy. Given the pressures on mega-budget films like this, Jon Favreau must be commended for proving that in a blockbuster, big need not necessarily be synonymous with dumb. Now keep it up!
