2008 year in film

Errol Morris is officially the Kubrick of the documentary.

The "director-detective's" latest visual assault is a kinetic meditation on the arcane nature of images in the digital age. Through his trademark craft --combinations of dazzling cinematic reenactments, first-person confessionals, atypical theatrical scoring (Danny Elfman replacing Philip Glass here), and haunting interludes of archival footage--- Morris creates an expressionistic collage out of the media-circus that surrounded the Abu Ghraib scandal.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE provides a buffet of food for thought through its many informative angles, but mostly through its compelling interviews with Lynndie England, Megan Ambuhl and Sabrina Harman (and countless others) about how those infamous photographs came to be and how they affected their lives.

Errol Morris' dynamic observations become frightening dissections of how those unfortunate grunts, some mean spirited, some emotionally weak, and some just flat out dumb ass ignorant kids, sadly became scapegoats for military higher ups who encouraged and gave the orders for the despicable acts. Several elements made up the way those still photos were perceived by the media: their content obviously, the way they were arranged, and how some of the frames were even actually manipulated digitally.

Morris inventively illustrates how a lot more than meets the eye went down that month in 2003. The most shocking and eye-opening part of this whole film for me is the sequence that highlights which of the photographed behavior was considered legal or illegal by the CIA. It really solidifies my understanding of how potentially subjective all images really are.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE does not ask you to forgive these individuals but it does, along with Sabrina Harman's voice over renditions of letters she wrote home, put a depressingly human face on the whole Abu Ghraib mess.

Already one of the best documentaries of the new millennium I've seen and Errol Morris' personal best since THE FOG OF WAR (2003).

Just as A BUG'S LIFE invites comparisons to Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI, Pixar's latest gem WALL*E is a fancy sci-fi riff on Chaplin's silent Little Tramp character, particularly MODERN TIMES and CITY LIGHTS. You could also mention that the small trash compactor himself is influenced by many children's cinema archetypes ranging from R2D2 to E.T.

But to dismiss WALL*E as merely a cute homage is a cowardly evasion. Like anything else the Pixar animators dish out, this film has more spark and originality in its frames than most animated films do in a 10 year period.

For a children's movie distributed by the Disney corporation, WALL*E speaks volumes about the negative aspects of consumer culture. Behind its bleak message about the future of garbage, lies a hopeful and romantic portrait of love and kindness. Everything about this mechanical protagonist (with oddly human peepers) and his love interest EVE, paints a romantic picture of the importance of our species collective inheritance. He's learned everything about us from studying our crap, and oddly enough, in return, he glorifies our greatest redeeming virtues: like hard work, responsibility, creation, fidelity, and the nobility of selflessness.

It's kind of sad that for the most part the only thing Disney has going for it anymore in the animation field is the possession of distribution rights over Lasseter's Pixar Studios.

The amount of bizarre and imaginative sub-cultures writer/director Andrew Stanton can conjure up never ceases to amaze me. I will be very surprised if I see a better animated film for 2008.

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For a film based on a comic book super hero,THE DARK KNIGHT achieves an atmosphere of mesmerizing, otherworldly dread.

As it's been said over and over, the film is unquestionably a product of our terrorism shrouded era. From the adrenalized opening heist to Commissioner Gordon's pragmatically optimistic closing dialogue, every element of this post noir fantasy is fine-tuned to near perfection for me.

The two key cinematic weapons, of many, added to Chris Nolan's filmmaking arsenal for this triumphant sequel to BATMAN BEGINS (2005) are obviously Heath Ledger's Joker, and writer sibling Jonah Nolan's ability to smack genre upside the head with brains and style. Although their complexly layered script does not exhibit the fragmented narrative of THE PRESTIGE or their 2001 breakthrough MEMENTO, it obtains a brilliance identical to both of those art house hybrids.

THE DARK KNIGHT is essentially hard boiled pulp, super gritty crime story adorned with David Mamet quality tough guys, then melded with a prismatic series of jaw dropping sequences. It's a relentlessly thrilling triumph of sight and sound to me that disects codes of masculine honor. It frequently shows up many other brilliant genre gangster flicks like THE UNTOUCHABLES (1987). In more ways than one, THE DARK KNIGHT is spiritual counter part to that De Palma film. As in that brooding mafia/policier classic about Elliot Ness and his battle against Al Capone, Nolan's film focuses on a lonely, figurative samurai devoted to a governing code.

This newer, bleaker, and highly aestheticized direction the Nolan brothers have taken the Batman story goes far beyond most comic book movie conventions, maybe even a bit too far at times. Beneath its slick genre exterior lie a series of ambiguous questions concerning morality, justice, and the price of peace.

Set free of origin story demands, this new story deals with Bruce Wayne/Batman, do-gooder Commissioner Gordon, passionate lawyers Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes, and brilliant inventor Lucius Fox's war on Gotham City's criminal underworld. Batman's fight contains a central paradox that the writers latch onto: a lot of Gotham cities problems wouldn't have risen about if it weren't for Batman's particular brand of vigilante justice. The Joker would never have risen to power had it not been for Batman. THE DARK KNIGHT painstakingly charts the moral trajectory of the protagonists, whose idealistic good intentions slowly crumble in the face of this agent of chaos. It's fair to say the film's outlook, for most of its running-time, is a cynical one.

It's no mistake that Nolan incorporates dark compositions of haunting post 9/11 imagery: an abandoned burning fire truck, buildings that suddenly explode, disturbing hostage video, a lone Batman somberly posed in the foreground of fire men overlooking a building's fallen rubble, etc.

The movie's nightmare-like aura is greatly indebt to Heath Ledger's brilliantly menacing and nihilistic performance. He returns the Joker character to his picth balck graphic novel roots (particularly THE KILLING JOKE and THE LONG HALLOWEEN). He transforms this sometimes overly clownish character into a poster boy for society's worst contemporary fears of fanatical extremists. His maniacal crab like body language, piercing wild eyes, and his scarred expressionistic face radiate a sinister and a fatalistic resignation to the unalterable nature of how fragile our cozy modern age can be.

The most exciting passages in the film revolve around this sadistic character's demands and the backlash to them. Every difficult challenge he lays out for the Caped Crusader are a suspenseful doozy, and they all find the Nolan brothers working at the height of their conceptual powers.

Like many of the director's previous cinematic puzzle games (INSOMNIA, FOLLOWING) this films cares less about tricking its audience than it does about plumbing its protagonist's psyche in a way both intensely analytical and thrilling.

The screenplay's expertly navigated good/evil/chaos/order balance is epitomized by the fall of people's champ Harvey Dent. After many tragic events brought on by the Joker, his transformative Two-Face story arch comes to personify a plethora of fallen communal hopes. For a super hero movie THE DARK KNIGHT is frequently on the level of great tragedy. Aaron Eckhart's performance does take a back seat to Ledger's, but it's still completely amazing in different ways and should not be overlooked. Same goes for all of the other actors; Gary Oldman is amazing as Gordon, Christian Bale once again conveys a level of torment far removed from prior portrayals of Bruce Wayne/Batman, and Maggie Gyllenhaal is excellent replacing Katie Holmes (one of my only problems with the casting of BEGINS).

All of the acting coupled with Nolan's entrancing mise-en-scene and Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard's driving and thunderous score generate a mood of romantic pessimism. Although not as unabashedly political as Frank Miller's landmark graphic novel DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, this film does address a lot of current hot button issues. Many intuitively comprehend what the film has to say about wrath, violence, the way the free world should and should not deal with zealotry, and civil liberties in the digital age. I love that Nolan is unafraid to play with blurring the lines between right and wrong concerning these ideas. It's that ever present dissection of reactionary morality and those ideas that justify for me the majestically bleak way the film is done.

THE DARK KNIGHT further solidifies Christopher Nolan's status as a master stylist in the tradition of David Fincher (SEVEN) and Michael Mann (MANHUNTER). I would also like to point out that he never once uses over used post-Matrix slow-motion. His craft here is a thing of beauty. the pacing flips from grandiose one minute to measured and patient another, maintaining an intense concentration on the particulars of each character's verbal and physical activities. This clear-eyed focus is married to a cinematographic color palette of chromatically bleak grays, blues, oranges and slightly askew compositions that, shot by Nolan's expert lenser Wally Pfister, seem oddly surreal and natural. The filmmaker finds a middle ground where realism and the entrancingly theatrical seamlessly blend.

The brutal and sporadic hand-to-hand combat is almost on par with fighting in the BOURNE movies, and the car chases exceed the technical splendor of Frankenheimer's RONIN(1998).

One of the most memorable sequences is easily a climactic showdown on an empty Gotham street between Joker (via 18-wheeler) and Batman (via Bat-Pod), partially because it has stunningly complex stunt choreography, I mean come on, they made a diesel truck do a hand-stand without CGI, but also because the scene has the audacity to evoke Tim Burton's classic 'Bat-wing VS. Joker hand cannon' stand-off from 1989's BATMAN- a sequence that's since become, like a Western pistol duel on an empty street, iconic in the Batman mythos. But that whole segment of Burton's film was distinctly a product of his silent film sensibilities, which is more Gothic fantasy in spirit. Nolan does with that sequence exactly what he's been doing with his new franchise, he brings it down to a level that shies away from the expressionistic comic book world. He injects his action with a degree of viscerally jarring intensity that feels too real at times.

This refreshing sociologically charged film is thankfully never a mindless parade of violence to me. Almost all the aspects of THE DARK KNIGHT perfectly coalesce; its revisionism and critique of the formulaic super hero film, its narrative twists, and its overt articulations of theme. It's one precise, invigorating portrait of how difficult doing the right thing can be in chaotic times..

Of the 5 short films nominated for Academy Awards in 2008, this is the best one I saw.



Handsomely directed by Reto Caffi, ON THE LINE is an intimate morality tale that explores the nature of choice and guilt in very immersing ways. Always compelling, never gimmicky. I'd say it's as good as, if not better than, most of the feature lengths of '08.



It brought to mind the work of director Krzysztof Kieslowski.

Among this films thousand identities, it's first and foremost an emotional psychic vision planted on the screen directly from its creator's mind. I believe THE FALL is a clumsy but ultimately unfiltered visionary work of surrealism in bedtime fable form.

Music video director Tarsem's feature film debut was the science-fiction J-Lo vehicle THE CELL (2000), which had dazzling hallucinogenic segments inside its serial killer's mind but lacked sorely in other fields. I've always wished Tarsem could have just made an entire film out of those bizarrely beautiful abstract images he creates, but then what studio is gonna financially back that type of expression and make a gamble of that magnitude? Heaven forbid you alienate a J-Lo audience.

It was a small American audience that embraced Jodorowsky's HOLY MOUNTAIN in 1973, and today that type of audience is even smaller. Films like THE FALL and THE FOUNTAIN have a pretty limited appeal, and it is usually restricted to the most idiosyncratic and hip crowds.

Our serial TV culture makes a film like THE FALL look pretty inaccessible. Its chances of being embraced, or even understood tonally, are slim. But for those brave souls willing to get lost in this earnestly romantic-philosophical endeavor and its hyper stylized smorgasbord of images, I can almost guarantee you you'll come out happy and excited about the possibilities of the moving image.

THE FALL is set in 1915 at a Los Angeles hospital, and deals with the story of a depressed and suicidal Hollywood stunt-man named Roy (Lee Pace) who has suffered a career ending injury. He tries to trick a child patient named Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) into stealing some morphine for him by way of telling her an elaborate story (most likely lifted from a plot from one of the films he did stunts for) that will involve her interaction.

I've heard people compare this film to PAN'S LABYRINTH (2006), most likely because of its fantasy elements and because it features an adorable little girl who is distinctly European (Untaru has some serious Shirley Temple charisma!), but I have to say it's never as grim or explicit as Guillermo Del Toro's gloomy war drama to me. In a way you could say it has more in common with THE PRINCESS BRIDE, if the Fred Savage character in that film had the imagination of Salvador Dali? That comparison makes a little more sense to me, only because its narrative also deals with an adult telling a child a story and it's a lot lighter in-spirit than the amazing PAN'S LABYRINTH. There really isn't another movie quite like this one, and that's saying something for a film based on another film (YO HO HO-1981) and influenced by many other stylists.

Most of the film is shot from Alexandria's imaginative perception of the stories Roy tells, and director Tarsem uses that narrative vantage point to exploit an endlessly open visual canvas. Different types of people Alexandria comes into contact with at the hospital on a day-to-day basis end up becoming quirky WIZARD OF OZ-type alter egos in the story world.

The odd band of imaginary heroes in this film make it good companion viewing with Terry Gilliam's underrated ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (1988) and its humorous pack of characters.

The visual splendor and dynamic craft of THE FALL is silent-film in spirit, every single frame and special effect is ingeniously simple. As far as I can tell, there aren't any computer generated images in its entire running time. Shocking, I know.

If shooting a film in loads of different countries over a four year period, as this film was, is what it takes to get a breathtaking work of this magnitude then so be it. In a lot of ways THE FALL is the anti-300. Its insane style parades front and cente, makes use of vibrant colors, different frame-speeds, and exotic costumes, but Tarsem's wildly analog film has loads of whimsical story substance that warrant its overt style, I think the stylistically impotent 300 (unlike SIN CITY) adapted Frank Miller in a lazy uninspired digital manner just for the sake of looking cool. Both pictures are cut from an egocentric cloth, but Tarsem's refreshing film is in the tradition of classic surrealist paintings, Zack Snyder's movie is rooted in the WWE and every boss-level from every old videogame. For me it's like the difference between grape kool-aid and full bodied wine, or softcore porn and hardcore porn. Call me an elitist, I believe forgettable films like 300 are a dime-a-dozen wasted opportunities, and THE FALL is nothing shy of an avant-garde epic. It strives for a spirituality of the purest nature via an absurdist tale that is profoundly strange but always engaging. It's a brave search for genuine sentiment through operatically spaced-out fantasy.