Best Direction, 2008

Jonathan Demme, Rachel Getting Married (82 points/13 votes)

"The skills of many of the people who work on a film are visible on screen. The participation of the actors and cinematographers and production designers is obvious and can be graded pretty easily. The script is in evidence with every line of dialogue or turn of the plot. Even the editor, whose work is often best when it's almost invisible, can be judged in the pacing or coherence of a film. What about the director? The role is a little more nebulous so how can you differentiate the best from the rest? Put another more specific way: why did I single out Jonathan Demme as the best director of 2008?

"From the comfort of my theater seat, I approach each film differently. In the case of Rachel Getting Married I was most impressed by the acting. Of course this can be chalked up to the talented cast assembled for the film, but surely Demme deserves a lot of credit for drawing out such raw, personal and vulnerable performances in roles that weren't always sympathetic.

"The Buchmans are a flawed family with a long history and they're captured at a moment of high family stress in the kind of situation that seems to bring out the worst in people. Most ugly family dysfunction goes on behind closed doors, but in Rachel Getting Married, the audience is given a front row seat to witness the carnage. It's rough going for the audience and must've been for the cast as well. Somehow though, Demme created an environment of trust where each actor was comfortable putting herself or himself on the line without the safety nets of charm or likeability to fall back on.

"If not for the full commitment Demme inspired in his cast, Jenny Lumet's brutally emotional script might've fallen flat, but the director was able to draw out edgy, natural and sometimes unpleasant performances from his talented ensemble and the scenario came to gritty, believable life. The result is a searing, challenging film that is also one of the best of the year.

"If that's not directing, I don't know what is." ~ Craig Kennedy

Runners-up:
(tie) Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight (78/12)

"Many film-buffs like to ponder the notion of cinematic perfection: does it exist, is it possible to achieve, et cetera. I used to be a skeptic on the topic. After all, for a movie to be perfect, wouldn't it need to tackle every genre, tone, theme, and narrative structure flawlessly at once? Perhaps others would disagree with my definition, but I think that part of being perfect is mastering everything about the field in which one is striving for perfection.

"Then I watched Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, which is by no means the best movie I've ever seen, but it is perhaps the movie to come the closest to the above definition of perfection. With the help of an unrivaled cast and crew, Nolan fashioned a film that is at once an adaptation of a comic-book, a nifty action movie, a classic American epic, an examination of celebrity, a glimpse at criminal madness, a Shakespearean tragedy, an uplifting superhero movie, a story of enduring love, a political parable, a hotly-anticipated Hollywood sequel – the list goes on and on.

"The Dark Knight can be read and analyzed as all of the above movies, each with its own set of merits. But what's truly remarkable is that Nolan was able to anchor them all together into a tight, seamless whole that works for fanboys, film school students, and mainstream viewers alike. He allows his picture to play as a roaring opus, but gives it the focus of an intimate drama.

"There's a legitimate way to delve into the specifics of Nolan's work, but it's beyond the scope of this short piece. When one is dealing with as intricate a work of art as The Dark Knight, sometimes one must simply sit back and appreciate the work's grandeur. What is clear is that Nolan has achieved a breathlessly versatile motion picture that has something for everyone and, at over two and a half hours in length, it is never anything short of engrossing. That the logline for the movie could've easily been 'A caped crusader battles a guy wearing smeared white makeup,' just goes to highlight the vastness of Nolan's layered accomplishment." ~ Danny Baldwin

(tie) Andrew Stanton, WALL*E (78/12)

"The concept of directing an animated feature is so nebulous and under appreciated, I myself wavered as to whether or not to even vote for Andrew Stanton--let alone award him my number one spot--despite the fact that the film he directed, Wall*E, is far and away my favorite film of the year. Is it even possible for a singular voice to emerge and dominate on a film with thousands of animators, artists and technicians? Does a film that launched a thousand Happy Meals and corporate tie-ins truly have one author?

"Yet Stanton's guiding hand has shaped the film for the better part of a decade, navigating the film through an endless development and design process. From the smallest of alterations to a full scale reworking of the material. Overseeing the design of the characters and the deeply textured world in which they inhabit. Stanton not only had to meet the impossibly high standards of Pixar (as well as topping his own masterful Finding Nemo) but craft something that appealed equally to undemanding family audiences and high brow cineasts alike.

"What Stanton created though, along with his Pixar collaborators, was something above and beyond a summer blockbuster or mere "kids flick." Equal parts Isaac Asimov and Buster Keaton, built around a first act so desolate and devoid of dialogue it could be mistaken for There Will Be Blood, Wall*E's greatest achievement is the humanity it instils in its artificial subjects. Through creased binocular flaps, animatronic chirps and whistles and the body language of something that can only be described as a garbage compactor on tank treads, Stanton re-contextualizes basic human responses such as curiosity, wonder and yes, even love, by gifting them to creations that have not yet lost their capacity for emotion and the desire to change the world around them.

"Whether soaring through piles of dirt caked refuge or flying down sterile hallways of a future society grown so apathetic it's literally become infantilized, Wall*E is ultimately (and appropriately for the time we now live in) a film of hope. That the human spirit lives on even when humans have seemingly lost all use for it. Blending elements of slapstick, post apocalyptic science fiction, musical (whoever would have thought Hello, Dolly! would ever become relevant again) and melodrama, Stanton maneuverers one hairpin curve of a tonal shift after another, earning our laughs and our tears without ever playing to the cheap seats. It's bold, visually dazzling, soaring filmmaking all created from nothing with only ones and zeros." ~ Andrew Dignan

Darren Aronofsky, The Wrestler (75/14)
Charlie Kaufman, Synecdoche, New York (71/11)

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Muriels Addendum #2, Also-Rans (Miscellaneous)

Although this year’s winners had a lot of support from our voters (duh), they were hardly the only nominees who elicited passion amongst the voting body. So, like last year, I asked some of the voters to write about cinematic achievements from 2008 that got them particularly excited. Today, I’ll begin with some of the submissions in miscellaneous categories, with the performances to follow tomorrow and Saturday, and finally the films themselves on Sunday. Enjoy!



Best Body of Work: Roger Deakins, cinematographer

The spookily prolific cinematographer Roger Deakins had a career defining year in 2007, with No Country for Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and In the Valley of Elah. Last year wasn't as strong – few can be - but Deakins' four efforts: Doubt, Revolutionary Road, The Reader (co-credited with Chris Menges) and a role as "visual consultant" in WALL-E, all benefited from what may become his specialty: an equal feeling for the epic and intimate. All of these pictures afford a D.P. considerable opportunity to show his stuff: large vistas, period recreations, etc, but none of them shortchange their considerable casts' faces, we're allowed the inner and outer stories – the moments normally left in the wrinkles of the actors' skin.

WALL-E was the best picture last year to feature Deakins' name. I don't pretend to know the extent of his role as visual consultant, but the PIXAR film, their best, had the sort of mastery of crystal clarity that we've come to expect from Deakins. Every money shot, a desolate wasteland, a city of fatties, has a tactility, an urgency of perfection, that still manages to avoid upstaging the robot characters, it actually further humanizes them – lending their confusion and loneliness an ironically beautiful counterpoint. Doubt was also a success: John Patrick Shanley's adaptation of his Pulitzer Prize winning play came as close to bringing the theatre to the multiplex as a film has in years. Shanley and Deakins alternate crisp, beautiful medium shots – of streets, trees, the church – with close shots closer than any vantage point you could find in the theater, and many of those close shots are askew – twisting out of the characters' desperation and claustrophobia. I generally find the gonzo angle device as hoary as the next, but everything is of a piece in Doubt – the picture is a laser beam of anger and panic. In the cramped, inescapable angles, the actors still shoot for the moon as they would on the stage, while still seeming, at the same time, to be shrinking away from the camera. The effect is overpowering and shockingly intimate.

I didn't like Revolutionary Road, but the picture's ghostly beauty is possibly worth seeing it once for (along with the lead performances). Deakins imbues the typical symbols of conformity - identically dressed men walking to work in unison, chain smoking and drinking, the hats, the houses – with that same, eerie, unforgettable perfection that can be found in No Country, Jesse James and WALL-E, again without overshadowing the raw, rattled work of the actors, most importantly Winslet and DiCaprio. Deakins, as much as any other current cinematographer, understands the relationships between people and their environments, and his work is rich with implications, some fulfilled by the director, some not. But you should always see his movies - Deakins is as close as we've got to a sure thing, he makes messes beautiful without shortchanging the mess. ~ Chuck Bowen

Best Breakthroughs: Charlie Kaufman (director/screenwriter, Synecdoche, New York) and Lloyd Kaufman (director/screenwriter, Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead)

Many would argue that the time for a Breakthrough award for Charlie Kaufman would have been back in 1999, when he burst onto the scene with his screenplay for Being John Malkovich. They’d be right. The film, directed with aplomb by Spike Jonze, was funny, somber, disturbing, daring, haunting, and almost completely original, instantly announcing Kaufman as a force to be reckoned with. He followed that up with two imperfect but interesting screenplays (Human Nature and Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind) and two more brilliant ones comparable to …Malkovich (Adaptation. and Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind).

In 2008, though, he crossed a bridge as yet uncrossed by directing his own screenplay with Synecdoche, New York. Stepping forward like this and not entrusting his work to be interpreted by visually inclined artists like Jonze and Michel Gondry took some nerve, especially since this particular film is such a bleak and lacerating self-dissection, and that’s why I nominate him for Breakthrough recognition.

Many were turned off by what they perceived as a pretentious and self-obsessed work, but I think that it was quite brave to use his unique, imaginative-egghead writing style for a painfully honest, warts-and-all examination of his own mind. And for it to simultaneously feel like such a universally true study of mankind’s struggle with self-expression and mortality (as well as just as visually impressive as Gondry’s and Jonze’s films based on his screenplays) is pure gravy.

Meanwhile, another native New Yorker named Kaufman produced a highly personal kind of masterpiece in 2008. Only this one was called Poultrygeist: Night Of The Chicken Dead and included geysers of blood, gay chicken sandwiches, chicken-fucking rednecks, projectile vomiting, explosive diarrhea, Native American-possessed chicken/human zombie hybrids, more bad puns than an America’s Funniest Home Videos marathon, and…yes, incisive social commentary. (Catchy songs, too!)

Lloyd Kaufman has run the gloriously tacky Troma Entertainment for over 30 years now, directing many of their now-signature films (like Tromeo & Juliet, Terror Firmer, and the one that made them famous and gave them their mascot, The Toxic Avenger).

I am far from a Troma expert – I haven’t seen all of their films and certainly haven’t liked all the ones I have seen. But with Poultrygeist, Kaufman and Co. have made a breakthrough. They have made all the pieces come together. It is everything that a camp-tastic, blood-drenched, musical zombie extravaganza should be. It’s got great characters, inspired performances (including Kaufman himself), songs that are actually catchy and memorable, and it’s smart, utterly hilarious and even emotionally involving. Perhaps most importantly (for a film of this type), it doesn’t run out of steam half-way through, sustaining a high level of energy and laughs for nearly its entire 103 minute running time. And it’s one of the few Troma films to get to an honest-to-goodness theatrical run (during which it garnered mostly favorable reviews) instead of just going straight-to-video.

Though it’s evident just by watching the film that Kaufman poured every bit of himself into this film, it’s important to note that he is still the ever-charming, self-deprecating, likeable yukster he’s always been. In the funny DVD intro to the film, he only registers disappointment for a brief moment when he realizes that the theatre is empty on opening night because everyone’s seeing the new Indiana Jones movie instead. He simply shrugs and heads over himself to see Harrison Ford whip some alien butt.

Not to worry, Lloyd - people will be talking about your chicken zombies and gay talking sandwiches long after they’ve forgotten crystal skulls and CGI ants. ~ Jason Alley

Best Film-Related Web Site: Theo's Century of Movies

When I grow up I want to be Theo Panayides.

Never mind the fact that we both turned forty this year. Panayides, who more or less retired from movie reviewing in January after a twelve year run at Theo's Century of Movies, has always been a favorite of mine. I've long admired the way he turned a phrase and dug at the subtext of movies high- and low-brow. I came to his site, like many people, through Mike D'Angelo's The Man Who Viewed Too Much. It was 1998 and even at that early time, there was plenty for me to chew on. I spent hours scouring the site, reading every paragraph-long blurb. Ten-plus years later I was heartbroken to find that Theo's Century of Movies was, in his own words, "...essentially closed." The online cinephile world will surely miss his insight and wit nearly as much as I will, although I suppose there is always the chance of a return from retirement at some point in the future. ~ Scott W. Black

Best Cinematic Moment, 2008

WALL*E – space dance (104 points/9 votes)

"Computer-animated robots performing a graceful pas de deux among the stars is an unlikely candidate for the year's most romantic moment on film, yet WALL-E's expression of boundless joy comes from an old cinematic tradition. WALL-E, a mechanical descendant of Chaplin's Little Tramp, presents his beloved EVE with a sprouting plant, a gesture that lifts her prior blindness to his attentive care and generates a literal spark.

"For the squat, lonely hero of WALL-E, a space dance with the sleek EVE is the fulfillment of his tender longing. The universe's vastness is suddenly less empty as they dart among rocket boosters to the accompaniment of Thomas Newman's twinkling score. Director Andrew Stanton presents the scene mostly in wide shots, all the better for communicating how the right connection can produce intimacy in an enormous space.

"Conversely, the humans in WALL-E are together alone due to not looking much beyond their own noses. The metaphorical distance between two of the spaceship's inhabitants is finally breached in this scene through their observation of the androids' lovely, entwined movements. What they see between WALL-E and EVE is neither leading nor following but rather unrestrained mutual passion in motion. This beautiful sight not only awakens the slumbering human characters but also floats outside this excellent film as an exquisite standalone moment." ~ Mark Pfeiffer

Runners-up:



The Wrestler – Randy’s first day behind the deli counter (94.5/9)

“This moment comes along at just the right time, both for Randy (Mickey Rourke, of course), and for the audience. After seeing his wrestling career sidetracked by age and ill health, Randy has struggled to find his niche. Unable to make his rent, out of touch with his daughter and hopelessly stuck on an also-aging stripper, Randy is adrift, with nothing of consequence to anchor him to the world. Compared to his golden boy days in the squared circle, working behind a deli counter seems pretty humdrum. But Aronofsky wisely lavishes a great deal of attention on Randy (now going by his given name, Robin), even before he actually begins serving customers. The use of crowd noise as he approaches the entrance to the deli is an inspired touch, cluing us in to Randy’s anxieties and process of putting on a face for the punters. And once he emerges to serve the customers, the movie observes him in detail and at length, first as he struggles with his new responsibilities, then as he gets the hang of it, flirting and joking and BS-ing like the natural performer he is (‘what can I get ya, spring chicken?’). Some people will complain that this scene is too long, but that’s just impatience. I for one would gladly watch another reel or two consisting entirely of Randy’s experiences behind that deli counter, making the job his own and even getting to know the regulars a little. That way, when the other shoe inevitably drops, it would hit that much harder.” ~ Paul Clark



Encounters at the End of the World – deranged penguin (90/8)

"At the beginning of his latest fascinating documentary Encounters at the End of the World, director Werner Herzog assures us that 'this will not be a film about fluffy penguins,' and indeed it is not. There is a brief penguin sequence in the movie, however, and it should come as no surprise that it's a uniquely Herzogian one. Who else would think to ask the question, 'Is there such a thing as insanity among penguins?' Herzog answers by showing us a penguin separating himself from a group heading towards their feeding grounds, instead waddling on his own across the ice toward mountains some 70 kilometers away. There is no changing his mind, a researcher explains; even if captured and brought back to the colony, the penguin would immediately turn around and head back into the void. The penguin fits the mold of the typical Herzog protagonist: irrational, obsessed with an impossible quest, attracted to the wild but underestimating the natural world in such a way that will lead to certain doom." ~ Scott Von Doviak

The Wrestler – The Ram vs. The Ayatollah and the final Ram-Jam (64.5/7)




Burn After Reading – Clooney/Pitt reunion [SPOILER!] (63.5/6)

And just for the heck of it, some more voter favorites:



The Dark Knight - How about a magic trick?




Man on Wire - Between the towers




In the City of Sylvia - sketching the coffee shop patrons




The Dark Knight - Nurse Joker leaves the hospital




Cloverfield - Lady Liberty's head




Still Life - one character to another

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Muriels Addendum #1: Gone, But Not Forgotten

Yesterday, we recognized Heath Ledger as our choice for the Best Supporting Performance by a Male in 2008. And while Ledger’s turn as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was easily our favorite in this category- by a rather decisive margin, I might add- we also thought it appropriate to pay tribute to the entire career of this talented actor, who was taken from us far too soon. Sadly, Ledger wasn’t the only Muriels contender who passed away during the last calendar year. So, with help from my Muriels partner in crime Steven Carlson, I thought it only fair to devote some space to a handful of other late greats who got a little Muriels love from the voters- three very different performers who may be gone, but will now live forever in the cinema.

Ann Savage, 1921-2008


It's about having presence. Ann Savage was 86 when My Winnipeg was filming. She hadn't appeared in a film since Fire with Fire twenty years prior. Yet from the first shot, from her repeated fiery intonation of, "Was it the boy on the track team or the man with the tire iron?" it's clear why the ever-nostalgic, ever-hindward-facing Guy Maddin chose her to play his surrogate mother in his latest docu-fantastic slice of madness.

What he couldn't have known for sure at the time is that the role would be her last, yet it seems a fitting epitaph. My Winnipeg is among other things a film about the secret lives of things, about unseen influences and the effects of forces beyond our control. Chief among these influences is "Guy Maddin's" mother. For such a role, to do so much with a small slice of screentime, you'd need an actress with forceful, unshakeable presence. Enter Ann Savage, aged but still possessed of a violent temperament. The carnal, castigating brutality of her signature role in Detour (another Muriel voter once exclaimed, "Her performance makes you feel like you just had really rough sex"), with time, evolved into an ice-cold imperiousness even stronger than a Manitoba winter.

Infirm yet iron-willed, her face held in a near-perpetual haughty sneer, Savage is thoroughly convincing as the kind of woman who could tear you apart with naught but a glance, the kind of woman who could inflict the kind of Freudian psychosis that drives Maddin's films. The iconography is obvious and deliberate, and it's to Savage's and Maddin's credit that she successfully plays to her most famed type while also stepping just enough to the side of it so that the whole thing works as a typically Maddin-esque exercise in joyous, fevered deconstruction - finding the truth of things through artifice and ruin.

To that end, there's also fleeting glimpses of tenderness or vulnerability to round out the picture; when she starts a relationship with Maddin's "brother," or when she flails about helplessly in her bed as her beleagured children undertake a cruel act of revenge, the caricature suddenly becomes briefly, honestly human. She's believable as the kind of sneering tyrant who would drive a man to suicide every day for fifty years and just as believable as the kind of woman who could talk - nay, demand - the same man back off that ledge. The film may not be about Savage, but she possesses it. Her ghost haunts it. What a way to go. ~ S.C.

Guillaume Depardieu, 1971-2008

By any indication, Guillaume Depardieu didn't have the easiest life. It's one thing to have a troubled relationship with your father; it's entirely another for him to be one of France's most famous and iconic actors and to have him publicly disown you in a major publication. Lots of people get into motorcycle accidents, but not all of them have a leg voluntarily amputated in the wake of said accident. His was a life marked by equal parts bad luck and bad temper, with his death from pneumonia at the age of 37 marking an especially nasty example of the former.

His death strikes me as untimely not only for his relative youthfulness but for the trajectory his career was taking at the time of his passing. Things were falling into place. He was moving out of his father's formidable shadow, and much of that can be attributed to his exemplary work in Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais. If it is the artist's job to transmute pain into beauty, if one must suffer for one's work, then what we have here is a master class in the art of sublimation. Depardieu, as war hero Armand, shows us a man who is a seething cauldron of violent emotion locked in a battle of wills with a woman he can never actually have, yet the roil of his desires stays just concealed by his noble, "proper" exterior.

So Depardieu's temper gets channeled into repressed frustration, the threat of an explosion that never comes (even after a midnight abduction of Jeanne Balibar, playing the titular character). His permanent limp becomes an expression of agonized longing, with his every move bearing the pain of a love that circumstances and society will not allow. The love turns to sly gamesmanship, the gamesmanship turns to rage, the rage turns to hatred, the hatred finally becomes grief. What we're watching is practically an exorcism. His steely gaze betrays nothing and gives away everything. Without moving a muscle, Depardieu is tearing himself open. Who is to say where he could have gone from here. Sometimes fate is stupid. ~ S.C.

Fred Knittle, 1925-2009

Stephen Walker’s Young @ Heart isn’t a particularly distinguished documentary. But damn if it didn’t work on me like a charm. You might say that I was primed for it- my grandfather had passed away only a few months before (on the eve of last year’s Muriels), and it had yet to really hit me emotionally.. Additionally, I was in a crucial early stage of my relationship with Angela, which no doubt left my heart somewhat tenderized, albeit in a very good way. Because of these factors, I’m not sure I trust my initial reactions to the film, especially considering how annoyed I was in retrospect by Walker’s use of MTV-style music videos starring his senior citizen-aged subjects.

But amidst it all, there’s still one transcendent scene- Fred Knittle’s rendition of Coldplay’s "Fix You," backed by the rest of the group. More than any other scene I saw this year, this simple, straightforward musical number struck me as the perfect marriage of content and context. The knowledge of the number’s significance not just for Fred but for his fellow Young @ Heart performers goes a long way toward explaining why it works so well. In particular, there’s the idea that the song was originally intended to be a duet with another beloved member of the group, Bob Salvini, who passed away only weeks before the song’s first public performance. In light of the then-recent deaths of Bob and several other Young @ Heart-ers, the lyrics of the song take on an added poignance, especially when he sings of "when you lose someone that you can’t replace."

Not being a Coldplay fan myself, I found myself surprised how much more affecting "Fix You" was when sung by a deep-voiced octogenarian. Could it be that whereas when Chris Martin sings the song it comes off like a fairly standard sensitive ballad, in Fred’s hands it actually sounds like it’s backed up by a lifetime of pain, loss, and regret? In short, Coldplay may have performed it first, but from here on out, it’s Fred who owns the song. To his credit, Walker stays out of the way of the scene, content to behold while Fred and the group weave their spell. As Fred sits, bone-weary, in a chair onstage, the lyrics punctuated by the noise of his respirator, the scene works a rare magic that had me bawling like a baby, one of the few movies in recent years that has gotten me choked up. And even on subsequent viewings, it’s still extremely affecting.

Fred Knittle passed away on New Year’s Day 2009, at the age of 83. Young @ Heart was his only big-screen appearance, but it was more than enough to make a big impression. Farewell Fred, and may lights guide you home. ~ P.C.

Best Supporting Performance (Male), 2008

Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight (232 points/32 votes)

“At nearly every awards show this year, The Dark Knight writer/director Christopher Nolan has accepted the supporting actor honor for Heath Ledger, who arguably played the scariest superhero-movie villain ever in his final complete performance. It's hard not to tense up the moment Nolan begins to speak, because Ledger's turn as the Joker has been so endlessly buzzed about analyzed that it would be impossible for Nolan to do the performance and its reputation justice in a mere 30 seconds. But just because it's difficult to express the effect Ledger's work has had on filmgoers doesn't mean we should stop thinking about the miracle that the late actor achieved.

“Ledger's Joker appears in the first sequence of The Dark Knight, unmasking to reveal his creepy facial profile after a bank robbery that only a character named for his tricks could be clever enough to think up. The moment achieves an eerie quality mainly because the viewer already knows of the actor's untimely real-life fate. When we all first saw the movie last July amidst unbelievable hype, this shot of the character's messily made-up grimace, accompanied by the film's score lingering to a momentary crescendo, dramatically forced all of our lofty expectations for the performance to come rushing to the forefront of our thoughts.

“When the Joker re-enters the picture to perform his now-infamous pencil trick, exterior prior knowledge is not as much a factor, though it remains an undercurrent throughout The Dark Knight. This is because Ledger commands the following scenes so fully. As is the case with all great performances, you forget you're watching acting, which is a true testament to Ledger's work given the aforementioned baggage. Then there's the fact that he's playing an infamous comic-book character that had rarely before (if ever) transcended cartoonishness.

“What was the method to Ledger's madness? It's hard to say for sure, but I would suggest that it was his unrelenting emotional authenticity. Some would dismiss the notion before even allowing me to explain myself because, after all, the Joker is by all accounts off in his own world. But the Joker feels just as real as any of the maddest criminals you've ever heard of: he's pathological, conniving, and—more than anything else—unbelievably smart. It may be difficult to call the character human—and I'm not sure we should—but his emotions are so evil it seems that only a human could be capable of them. Just because said emotions are foreign and insane does not mean they don't exist. Ledger somehow taps into these and makes the viewer confront them, a deeply unsettling and altogether fascinating experience. It becomes very clear who's good and who's evil in the movie. And it's in this very conflict that The Dark Knight finds much of its thematic substance on the nature of justice.

“Through it all, Ledger's Joker works superiorly well even if trivialized as the mere comic book character the performance transcends. The actor's mannerisms make for just plain good drama and shock-value. He's never unwilling to go for broke, just like the character. An unforgettable scene in which the Joker blows up a hospital is haunting in all kinds of ways, not the least of which is how Leger appears nearly possessed. If we peel back the layers, we realize that the reason he makes such an impression is the aforementioned way he confronts a universally-feared unknown. Hannibal Lecter seems charming and relatable by comparison. While some speculate Ledger's seemingly impenetrable commitment to his craft may have contributed to his ultimate demise, his performance in The Dark Knight stands alone as one of the best in cinema's history and typifies everything we loved about him as an actor. ~ Danny Baldwin

“Immediately following the announcement last January of his sudden death at age 28, the previously subdued Oscar buzz about Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight became a ubiquitous clamor. Not surprisingly, by the time the film was released worldwide in July, the rumble had reached a fever pitch and the first ever Oscar win for the celebrated young actor appeared to be all but in the bag. Even Ledger's co-star Christian Bale helped arouse obnoxiously anxious fanboys in the days before The Dark Knight opened: ‘He completely immersed himself. He stayed under. When he was the Joker, he was the Joker throughout — absolute commitment to that. He portrayed him in a way that has not been portrayed before — this kind of anarchic, punk, A Clockwork Orange approach to it — and Heath's done such a damn good job.’

“Finding someone who thinks otherwise after seeing The Dark Knight is nearly impossible. Ledger made Jack Nicholson's portrayal of The Joker seem uncomplicated and almost clownishly charming, which isn't a knock on Nicholson so much as it is an acknowledgement that Ledger took the iconic character into a realm that few had imagined possible, if they had imagined it at all. In recent weeks, a group of reverent fans has even developed a petition calling for Warner Bros. to retire the The Joker forever, thus preventing any other actor from portraying the character on screen again.

“Whether they are actually successful may not matter, since Ledger was so chillingly unforgettable in the role that even the most courageous actors may think twice before auditioning for the part in a future sequel. Somehow, Ledger was able to construct a thoroughly monstrous villain improbably imbued with humanizing elements. Not only was it arguably the best performance of his career, but it may have been the best on-screen performance of 2008, period – lead role or supporting role, male or female.

“But that's not really an important or even interesting point to consider, because doing so might distract from the reality that we have lost this incredibly talented actor forever. According to Christopher Nolan, before his death Ledger only saw the prologue of The Dark Knight, which happens to be a frightful introduction to his character. It was one of the best opening scenes in what many considered to be one of the best movies of the year, and therein lies a tragic metaphor: in The Dark Knight, we saw one of the best early performances in what many considered to be one of the most promising careers in Hollywood." ~ Daniel Getahun

“Heath Ledger had balls. Not only did he face the pressure of portraying an esteemed and storied villain -- he also had to take on the legacy of Jack Nicholson. Attempting to inhabit the Joker in the face of fanatical and skeptical comic-book enthusiasts requires more than cojones. It also demands chops, which Ledger somewhere dredged up in spades, as if unearthed from a sinister place.

"There's much that's memorable in Ledger's oddly beautiful portrayal. His reckless bursts of energy, his ever-changing mood. His song-like vocal stylings, his perpetual dry mouth. His disarming wit, his nightmarish cackle, his shocking pencil trick. Yet everything about the wild, larger-than-life Joker seems confidently grounded by an intelligent, if broken mind. There's no doubt that Ledger's having the time of his life, exploring the physicality of evil, while delivering juicy quips and soliloquies. More thrilling, though, is that the fun transfers to the viewer. We revel in the blackness and embrace his cool demeanor. And when the Joker disappears for extended stretches of the movie, we long for his return.

"The fact that Ledger delivers this career-defining turn in what has become his penultimate film only makes the news that much more tragic. He appeared to be coming into his own as an actor with notable roles in Brokeback Mountain and I'm Not There, while continuing to pursue challenging projects like the upcoming Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. Bittersweet as it is, his performance in The Dark Knight establishes a new acting benchmark for bad guys in movies for years to come, in comic-book films or otherwise. Jack Nicholson will continue to embody Jake Gittes, Jack Torrance and R.P. McMurphy. For now, the clown belongs to Heath Ledger.” ~ Patrick Williamson

Runners-up:
Brad Pitt, Burn After Reading (98/17)
Robert Downey Jr., Tropic Thunder (92/15)
Michael Shannon, Revolutionary Road (64/11)
Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges (60/11)

Click here for complete results

Best Supporting Performance (Female), 2008

Rosemarie DeWitt, Rachel Getting Married (139 points/19 votes)

"‘She’s the saint, and I’m the nightmare,’ says the sarcastic,narcissistic and deeply troubled Kym (Anne Hathaway), joking truthfully as she grabs the microphone at a pre-wedding dinner to pay squirm-inducing tribute to Rachel, her more stable, conventional sister. That described dichotomy might have easily and neatly been allowed to sum up not only the Rachel-Kym relationship, but also the Rachel character as a stoic and relatively colorless depository for all the frustrations and jealousy to be meted out by her disturbed sibling. Fortunately, Rosemarie De Witt, who plays Rachel with seemingly as much courage as it took Anne Hathaway to create Kym (a much more ostentatious character), is the possessor of a pair of searching eyes which compellingly indicate the roiling waters that lie just beneath her cool composure— she must bear witness, with increasing disbelief and expressed anger, to the dysfunctional family dynamics that threaten to overshadow what should be her happiest hour and figure how to best express her displeasure without sacrificing her patience or her sympathy.

“De Witt, rather like JoBeth Williams before her, has a rather lyrical way of suggesting tension with silence and a searing glance. She welcomes her acid-tongued sister back to the family with some initial nostalgic sisterly conversation, but the movie drops this mutual dance of improbable ease quickly. We expect the egocentric impulses that only semi-consciously compel Kym to sideswipe the family celebration, and Hathaway brings them off with an awe-inspiring empathy while sacrificing none of the character’s unpleasant bite. What is more surprising is the degree to which De Witt treads the same thin line with a character we rather more instinctively expect to take the high road. It’s easier for us, looking in from some distance, to feel uncomfortable but at the same time see the good intentions behind Kym’s ill-advised dinner speech and forgive her all the biographical diversions taken to get at honest expression of feelings for her sister. But for Rachel, all the feelings of emotional abandonment she’s worked hard to put behind her come rushing back, and she begins to demand explanations, from Kym and from her concerned father (who coddles Kym in her dysfunction as a way of keeping the waters calm) as to why Kym’s troubles have always outranked her own well-being.

“De Witt miraculously cruises avenues of empathy for a character who could easily be drawn as shrewish and insensitive; she makes us understand Rachel’s point of view and effortlessly creates a forceful characterization which protects that point of view, never letting it get buried for us as viewers the way it did for the rest of the family when Kym’s personal hell first enveloped them all. She tempers her character’s own narcissism and barely suppressed histrionics with a desire to maintain composure, as if that effort is the only thing preventing a complete collapse in the family dynamic, and yet somehow she never becomes strident or self-righteous. Rachel finally explodes when a series of lies told by Kym in the past are revealed, and here De Witt’s laser-sharp instincts for modulation allow her to display a rather awesome sense of control; her seething anger seems precisely right, yet never calculated, as if it were being exposed, to us, and to her, for the first time.

“And the force of that anger never dissipates even when it is suddenly removed— the memory of it is what helps make Rachel’s wordless reconciliation with Kym so moving, when she quietly bathes her sister in the aftermath of more emotional and physical violence. Rachel discovers a tattoo on Kym’s shoulder, permanent evidence of the brother whose death Kym caused, and without a word De Witt, with each tending touch on her sister’s body, transmits a rush of empathy, an understanding of how Kym, and perhaps she too, will never entirely be consigned to the healing of time and memory. Nearly as wordlessly, it is De Witt who gingerly guides the terms of her own good-bye to Kym (and to us), not allowing her to escape without acknowledgment, opening the door to forgiveness, and then hanging around to listen to the lovely music that continues on the front lawn even now that the wedding is over. She sits, back to the camera, allowing us to relax with her, and she draws us in again with this simple concession, feet tucked under her legs, listening for the sounds of what comes next. It’s an intuitive moment and a beautiful coda to an entirely marvelous performance." ~ Dennis Cozzalio

“It comes as little surprise that Anne Hathaway's performance in Rachel Getting Married, as a celebrity out of rehab for her sister's wedding, is the only one honored during awards season in the aforementioned film. It's perfectly fine, perfectly daring for a celebrity of Hathaway's caliber, and it is perfectly memorable.

“Hathaway's performance is only as successful as her character's antagonist and sister, Rachel, played by Rosemarie Dewitt. Rachel, a cynical, college educated bridezilla is given the heart of the film, unexpectedly. It is through Rachel that Kym admits her past mistakes and present failings; it is with DeWitt that Hathaway is able to shine.

“If there is a single scene that exemplifies the breadth of DeWitt's skills, my vote would be just the post-rehearsal dinner moments at the family home. Rachel's intolerance for Kym's toast at the dinner, which was mostly self-pitying and narcissistic, is dissected blow for blow, until Rachel can no longer defend with confidence. Instead, with the grandest copout of all, Rachel reveals: ‘I'm pregnant.’” ~ Michael Lieberman

Runners-up:
Marisa Tomei, The Wrestler (126/21)
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona (106/16)
Samantha Morton, Synecdoche, New York (103/17)
Viola Davis, Doubt (74/12)

Click here for complete results

Best Screenplay, 2008

Synecdoche, New York- Charlie Kaufman (116 points/17 votes)

"The screenplay for Synecdoche, New York by Charlie Kaufman is an almost impossibly ambitious, spaciously sprawling and cerebrally impassioned piece of work. What may most exceptionally distinguish it is Kaufman's fidelity to his own overarching vision, and that is especially crucial to an enterprise in which he is not only creator of the battle plan but commanding general. Kaufman's screenplay displays the kind of visionary foresight that a screenwriter-director must possess. The screenplay's early emphasis on bright sunniness, and a seasonal atmosphere of relative pleasantness, connoting a wistful liveliness is gradually smothered by starkly gray interiors and overcast chilliness with the implacable approach of death. Thus Kaufman's visual prowess as a first-time director is buttressed by his astonishingly complex but narratively sound screenplay.

"Kaleidoscopic and potentially confounding, Kaufman's screenplay is, like his previous stupefying yarns, anchored by his sincere interest in people. Philip Seymour Hoffman's Caden Cotard is an artist set on an intellectual and emotional journey that essays the the very question, “What is the meaning of life?” Kaufman's sensitivity and sentiment have always been tempered by the disenchantment that so often imbues the odyssey of life with despondency. With Synecdoche, New York, he makes the morbid mordant, and the melancholic mirthful. That does not diminish the sadness at the film's heart, but it does make the entire experience more gracefully bewitching. And this screenplay is proof that Kaufman is still growing, by leaps and bounds, as an artist himself. " ~ Alexander Coleman

Runners-up:
In Bruges- Martin McDonagh (110/18)
Burn After Reading- Joel and Ethan Coen (101/17)
Rachel Getting Married- Jenny Lumet (94/15)
WALL*E- Andrew Stanton and Jim Reardon, from a story by Stanton and Pete Docter (92/15)

Click here for complete results

Best Ensemble Performance, 2008

Rachel Getting Married (141 points/20 votes)

"In Rachel Getting Married, the team consisting of director Jonathan Demme, screenwriter Jenny (daughter of Sidney) Lumet, and the extraordinarily talented cast accomplish a very difficult thing. They make a group of actors, unrelated to each other and likely strangers before beginning this project, feel like a family nearly as real as your own. I remember how this struck me very early on when I watched it the first time. After Kym (a livewire Anne Hathaway) is picked up from rehab and she’s talking with her father (Bill Irwin) and stepmother (Anna Deavere Smith) on the way to the homestead for the titular event, the familiarity with which they’re conversing with one another (and the lack of overly expository dialogue in the screenplay) sets an immediate tone of refreshing realism. Even without that expository dialogue, we can tell so much about these three characters, their personalities, and their relationships with each other.

“The entire film is just like that car ride. The actors work together seamlessly in their portrayal of a real family of individuals who have known each other their entire lives, and know each others’ past troubles, hidden resentments, pet peeves and shifting moods. The very first scene between Kym and Rachel (Rosemarie De Witt, in the one of the year’s most satisfying ‘who is this lady and why does she rock so hard?’ performances) reminded me of the first scene between Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh in last year’s underrated Margot At The Wedding in that we find out so incredibly much about these two sisters, how different in temperament they are, the subtle grudges they hold, and most importantly, the underlying unconditional love, simply by hearing them talk to each other. Because they don’t seem like actors, they seem like sisters.

"There’s no doubt that Lumet deserves lots of credit for a script that portrays a family so realistically, but without such a capable group of actors who blend with such an unforced familial intimacy, it wouldn’t be the same.

"Right through the splendidly-held final shot, the ensemble cast makes us feels we’re actually spending time with the characters they’ve created together, and that’s really something." ~ Jason Alley

Runners-up:
Burn After Reading (136/22)
Synecdoche, New York (120/18)
Milk (112/20)
A Christmas Tale (85/13)

Click here for complete results

Best Music, 2008

The Dark Knight [original music by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard] (100 points/16 votes)

"‘The sound in my life enlarges my prison,’ said the British artist Tom Phillips. He might feel differently writing about the music of The Dark Knight.

“One of the two composers, Hans Zimmer, when asked how he found collaborating with his partner James Newton Howard when he was used to working alone, replied ‘Have you ever walked down a dark alley really late at night in a bad neighborhood? It's much better to have a friend with you.’

“This prison or dark alley is constrained and defined by throbbing. Tentative at first, spiking as the opening burglary becomes nervous low strings turning over the stark and shadowed Gotham facade. It only fades in the echoing parking garage, returning when the real Batman appears to save the day from the amateurs.

“Low and throbbing, that's our theme. Part bizarro Vangelis, and part circling dog, the pulse of the piece is like the animal closing in trying to find a first strike. And then, when the Joker is around, dissonant chords: jet engines crashing in out-of-sync disharmony.

“The throbs, like earthquake waves, come in different rhythms. They are quick in stabs, a staccato patois of string and synth and drum. They are also deep waves of cresting volume, tightly wound to the action on screen. The crest rises and fades, rises higher and fades, but never crashes. It just teases, never releases. What I felt for the bat and clown, I felt largely through my ears and the beat of my heart that followed the pulse of the soundtrack." ~ Martin McClellan

Runners-up:
WALL*E [original music by Thomas Newman; music supervisor, Tom MacDougall] (84/13)
Slumdog Millionaire [original music by A.R. Rahman] (79/13)
Synecdoche, New York [original music by Jon Brion; music supervisor Bonnie Greenberg] (66/10)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [original music by Alexandre Desplat] (59/10)

Click here for complete results

Best Cinematography, 2008

The Dark Knight- Wally Pfister (118 points/19 votes)

"In filming The Dark Knight, cinematographer Wally Pfister’s challenge was twofold: imbue the film with the anticipated visual pleasures of a mega-budget summer smash, and at the same time present us with a world with characters and settings we find identifiable. And what a job he does: the film transmutes the absurd into the eerily familiar, the outlandish into the visceral. Seemingly every other thing written about The Dark Knight mentions its realism, no small feat for a movie about costumed heroes and villains.

"Christopher and Jonathan Nolan’s script is brought to life more as hard-edged thriller than comic book cash cow, with the terrible moral dilemmas of a tragedy merged seamlessly with the spectacular scenarios expected of such an adaptation. Eschewing the CGI wizardry of so many other comic book blockbusters, Pfister’s lens brings to life a vision of Batman and his universe as populated with individuals who cope with the world’s poison in dazzlingly bizarre ways. We’ve never seen it done this way before: the Joker as a diseased, feral, tic-ridden monster. Batman as a looming specter emanating both fear and hope. Two-Face as the mutilated reverse side of Batman’s coin. Here, simply looking at the characters is a rush. Even Gotham City is a character of its own, a modern metropolis pulsating with violence and rotting from within due to corruption, seen from the seediest part of the underworld to the highest skyscraper and everywhere in-between.

"The excellence of the photography is uniform despite myriad of demands a project of this magnitude presents. Pfister merges the dramatic (Bruce Wayne’s lovelorn plea with Rachel Dawes) with the exhilarating (the convoy assault), the surreal (the Joker sliding down a mountain of cash), and the shocking (the disappearing pencil). Never before has the jump from comic book page to celluloid been so wonderfully realized, and it’s unthinkable without Wally Pfister. " ~ James Frazier

Runners-up:
Paranoid Park- Christopher Doyle and Kathy Rain Li (105/16)
Slumdog Millionaire- Anthony Dod Mantle (55/9)
My Blueberry Nights- Darius Khondji (50/8)
Let the Right One In- Hoyte Van Hoytema (49/9)

Click here for complete results

Best Body of Work, 2008

Robert Downey, Jr. [actor- Iron Man, Tropic Thunder] (131 points/20 votes)

“There is an established tradition that a good-looking young actor who has been in enough hits to establish that he's not going anywhere will appear in a "serious" role in a "serious" movie and suddenly be hailed in the media as not just a bankable star but also a Fine Actor. But Robert Downey, Jr. has never gone in for the conventional approach, and this year, when Iron Man hit the multiplexes, he became the first actor I can think of to receive this treatment in reverse: after some twenty-five year in the business (not counting his earlier childhood appearances in the films of his father), Downey set off a wave of ecstatic press attention over the discovery that he was fit, sober, and insurable enough to be permitted to carry a blockbuster popcorn movie. It's not as if there were any reason by then to doubt his talent. To judge from some of this year's cover stories about him, the conventional wisdom is that we all found out how good Downey was when he starred in Chaplin, the 1992 Oscar-bait biopic by Richard Attenborough.

“Actually, the fullness of Downey's range was pretty well established by the fall of 1987, when he followed up his charming work as the comic romantic lead in James Toback's The Pick-Up Artist with a beautiful, heartbreaking performance as a self-destructive junkie in Less Than Zero. Characteristically, while Iron Man was still in theaters, he went right back out to the edge with his satirical creation Kirk Lazarus, the Method actor in Tropic Thunder who has so much faith in his tranformative powers as an artist that he ill-advisedly decides to transcend race. How great is this performance? So great that even as Downey keeps you laughing at Kirk's clueless pomposity, he sort of makes you feel that the crazy son of a bitch just might be able to pull it off. Downey has always been great at playing all varieties of lunatics and sleazes, because he doesn't sell any of his characters short; you might not want to be trapped in a phone booth with some of them, but you never get tired of watching him.

“How does Downey get his effects? How does he do this stuff, especially considering that for years he was often able to do it brilliantly even when, he was apparently in a state where most of us would find it a challenge to tie our own shoes? Attenborough marveled at how his lack of formal training was canceled out by his work ethic, his willingness to do whatever it took for as long as it took to get a part down. Yet the effort never shows, any more than you could see Fred Astaire counting off the steps in his head. In interviews, he's dropped a few clues that Kirk Lazarus, the tireless advocate for "authenticity" at every level, is his comment on those who do it a different way; Kirk, he told one writer, is "nuts." (He also told a TV reporter that the character was based on himself, which may just have been his way of making it possible for him to look Russell Crowe in the eye with a straight face and an unsnapped neck.) On some level, I'm not sure I want to know how Downey does it, any more than I want to see footage of Astaire soaking his feet and moaning. When Downey is cooking, which over the course of his long, varied career has been more often than not, he seems stripped down to pure imagination, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere he can't go; he doesn't seem to be constrained by the things that hold back other actors, never mind the rest of us. I don't mean piddling things like material and budgets, either. I mean stuff like gravity.” ~ Phil Nugent

Runners-up:
2. Gus Van Sant [director- Paranoid Park, Milk] (93/15)
3. Richard Jenkins [actor- The Visitor, Burn After Reading, Step Brothers, The Tale of Despereaux] (89/14)
4. Philip Seymour Hoffman [actor- Synecdoche, New York, Doubt] (79/14)
5. James Franco [actor- Pineapple Express, Milk] (62/11)

Click here for complete results

Best Cinematic Breakthrough, 2008

Martin McDonagh [director/screenwriter- In Bruges] (68 points/11 votes)

Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges is a major announcement by a singular, boisterous new voice. McDonagh’s debut feature is packed with mischievous humor and splashes of brutal violence, yet it still manages to somehow mix together tender male bonding, existential contemplation and even a racist American midget. Who knows what madness is brewing inside McDonagh’s head, but I for one am more than pleased to see such a brazen, uncompromising imagination come from a new personality in the film world. Between the devilish thrills of In Bruges lies a touching examination of real, identifiable themes; McDonagh never reduces the material to lewd emptiness or violent excess. There’s a depth of real-life experience beneath the surface of the characters, a maturity to the story that elevates a lean dark comedy to something greater than one might initially expect. It’s impressive, memorable filmmaking by a talented artist breaking into an entirely new field of storytelling (McDonagh is a successful playwright), a debut that hopefully marks the beginning of a tremendous career in film. ~ Ari Dassa

Runners-up:
2. James Franco [actor- Pineapple Express, Milk] (67/11)
3. Mickey Rourke [actor- The Wrestler] (49/8)
4. Sally Hawkins [actor- Happy-Go-Lucky] (47/7)
5. Anne Hathaway [actor- Rachel Getting Married] (41/7)

Click here for complete results

Best Film-Related Web Site, 2008

The House Next Door (70 points/10 votes)

"Like so many things, it all comes back to The New World. When The House Next Door first opened its doors (so to speak), it was as a forum for then-critic Matt Zoller Seitz to write about and champion Terrence Malick's epochal masterpiece, and that's how I first discovered the site. Having seen and loved Malick's film, I was desperate for someone to really engage with what Malick was attempting, and Seitz was doing it with a passion and clarity that is all too uncommon in film writing. Eventually, Seitz would expand the focus of his blog away from The New World, but his voice never wavered: eloquent, insightful, discerning but never unfair. He quickly became one of the writers most admired by legions of cinephiles for his clear love of the medium and his ability to make some seriously heady, in-depth analyses not just fresh and eye-opening but downright fun.

"If The House Next Door had remained Seitz's alone, it would still probably be getting some notice for this award. But after the tragic passing of Seitz's wife, he opened The House up to several other contributors who helped to keep the site running in his temporary absence. And it kept going from there: more writers were continually added to the roster, each with his or her own unique sensibility and voice. The site's perspective was broadened beyond movies into television, politics, music. Eventually it was Seitz's site only in name; he was the editor, but The House belonged to the community. This was borne out last year, when Seitz retired from print journalism to pursue a filmmaking career. He stepped down, handing control of the site to editor Keith Uhlich, who has brilliantly maintained the project Seitz begun, adding more writers and helping to foment the site's reputation as the absolute best our new media culture has to offer: community and free thought as an aid to, rather than an inhibitor of, intelligent discussion. It's a place where Spielberg and De Palma can be discussed just as critically as Jia or Costa, where Speed Racer is just as worthy of serious thought as Flight of the Red Balloon, where it's okay to diss The Dark Knight, and where a sophomore film student studying abroad can get a gig covering the Cannes Film Festival just by shooting the editor an e-mail. What started as a house has become a neighborhood." ~ Matt Noller

Runners-up:
Internet Movie Database (56/8)
Roger Ebert {includes Roger Ebert’s Journal} (50/9)
The Man Who Viewed Too Much {includes Listen Eggroll} (46/7)
The Screengrab (41/7)

Click here for complete results

10th Anniversary Award for Best Picture, 1998

Rushmore [Wes Anderson] (145 points/22 votes)

“I can safely say that I’ve never met anyone quite like you.” ~ Miss Cross

With his debut feature Bottle Rocket Wes Anderson showcased the kind of dialogue driven, off-balance comedy with a heart that has since become his trademark. But it wasn’t until Rushmore when given a considerably bigger budget to work with that his capabilities as a Writer/Director were put on full display. Using Bill Murray as his one big ticket item, Anderson put his trust in a cast of largely unknown actors and seemingly spent the rest of the studio’s money on production design with an obsessive attention to detail and some very well chosen sound cues. The script was co-written with Owen Wilson and according to Bill Murray remained largely in tact through the course of shooting - a testament to Anderson’s sure footed vision for the film before the first frame was shot.

Bill Murray was the film’s early box office draw but as great as his character Herman Blume is, there is no question that the star of this show is Max Fisher. After an exhaustive, year long casting search Anderson found Jason Schwartzman who, in his very first role, was able to bring Max to life with a performance that perfectly balances a teenager both wise beyond and his years and painfully naive. Unlike other movies that reference a character’s various talents but never bothers to show them Anderson goes well out of his way to put them all on display here. Some of the best scenes of the movie remain Max’s completely over the top plays (including a theatrical staging of Serpico). Max’s other various clubs and interests are captioned and woven together in quick shot montages. The ability of these sequences to transfer so much information within a short amount of time is one of the film’s real strengths and something advertisers will seemingly never tire of ripping off (See the recent Cars.com Super Bowl spot for continued proof).

The unique look of the film, developed with veteran Cinematographer Robert Yeoman, featured beautiful framing and a brand new retro look that was often filled with oddly intimate panoramic shots that remain focused on the characters while deftly capturing the film’s elaborate backgrounds. The dialogue-free sequence where Max goes to war with Mr. Blume has a rare synchronicity where all the elements of the filmmaking process seem to be working together in stylized precision.

It has been argued that some of Anderson’s more obvious influences (The Graduate and Harold & Maude among others) may seem a bit exposed at certain points but this film still manages to feel like something all its own 10 years later and is now considered somewhat of a cult classic in its own right. ~ Bryan Whitefield

Runners-up:
The Thin Red Line [Terrence Malick] (111/17)
The Big Lebowski [Joel Coen] (109/18)
Out of Sight [Steven Soderbergh] (102/15)
Buffalo ’66 [Vincent Gallo] (87/14)

Click here for complete results

25th Anniversary Award for Best Film, 1983

Sorry, Kent.

The King of Comedy [Martin Scorsese] (124 points/19 votes)

"Released less than three years after John Hinckley's assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy is a darkly comedic fable about obsession and the shortcuts to fame. A thematic sequel to Taxi Driver, the film that Hinckley would later cite as an inspiration, The King of Comedy gives us Rupert Pupkin (a disarmingly oblivious Robert DeNiro), a grown man living out of his mother's basement, possessing no discernible talent and the desire, above all else, to be as celebrated as his hero, talk show host Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis at his most prickly). After several predictably disastrous attempts to insert himself into Jerry's life, Rupert takes the drastic step of taking his hero hostage and bartering his way into the national spotlight.

"Scorsese views celebrity with equal parts annoyance and bemusement, depicting Jerry as an isolated figure, imprisoned by his notoriety and the unending demands of his public. Rupert meanwhile demonstrates no real desire to entertain or develop his supposed craft as a performer, but rather fantasizes of using his success as a means to validate his own existence and prove his critics wrong. Living simultaneously in a self-congratulatory world of make believe and in a reality where he only hears what he wants, Pupkin is one of DeNiro's most glorious creations; a resolutely unsympathetic character every bit as creepy as Travis Bickle only swathed in a cloak of flop sweat and mediocrity as an added bonus.

"Yet what's so remarkable about the film, in addition to how prescient it would become (there are elements of Pupkin in everyone from Paris Hilton to people who rush onto the field during sporting events) is how unnervingly funny the film is, building humor out of skin crawling faux pas, needy desperation and cataclysmic social interactions. Furthermore, the film has gone on to inspire such artists as Ricky Gervais, Larry David, Ben Stiller, and Jon Favreau as well as give life to the entire Cringe Humor movement in stand up. Misunderstood at the time of its release and still underrated to this day, The King of Comedy is perhaps Scorsese's most uncompromising and angriest film." ~ Andrew Dignan

Runners-up:
2. Videodrome [David Cronenberg] (111/18)
3. The Right Stuff [Philip Kaufman] (68/10)
4. Local Hero [Bill Forsyth] (60/9)
5. Scarface [Brian DePalma] (57/10)

Click here for complete results

50th Anniversary Award for Best Film, 1958

Vertigo (238 points/32 votes)

Even within Alfred Hitchcock's body of work, Vertigo sticks out as something of an odd duck - a slow-moving, languorous movie from a director known, at the time, for his colorful and action-packed thrillers, a strangely meditative and operatic movie in which the ‘mystery' is solved well before the climax, with a messy plot, a downbeat ending, a pair of major stars performing in distinctly un-starlike ways, and a vision so embarrassingly personal that the movie was shrugged off by critics and audiences alike, resulting in one of the rare flops in Hitchcock's career.

But Hitchcock, more than usual, was simply ahead of his time, harnessing the full power and scope of the Hollywood dream factory to create his own personal nightmare. No other movie of the 1950s makes as much use of the full array of cinematic tools that were at Hitchcock's command, from the lavish locations and sets to the the thundering yet dizzy score by Bernard Herrmann, and Hitchcock's own mastery of image and mood. Most importantly, this film relies on the completely dedicated, anguished performances of James Stewart and Kim Novak, never better, as a man and woman each in love with something they can't quite grasp.

In a sense, the film is a grand folly - one of the great control freaks in cinema history baring his soul to tell the story of a man's futile attempt to create and control something impossible - but to a modern audience, we can see this film as one of the grand personal expressions of the 20th century, an era in which fantasy and tragedy had never been more entwined. And this peculiarly modern, complex film's legacy lives on in works from admirers as varied as Chris Marker (La Jetee), Mel Brooks (High Anxiety), Terry Gilliam (Twelve Monkeys), and Brian DePalma (uh, most of his movies). ~ Jeff McMahon

Runners-up:
Touch of Evil (205/29)
The Hidden Fortress (91/16)
Mon Oncle (57/10)
Elevator to the Gallows (40/7)

Click here for complete results

She's chomping at the bit...

Starting tomorrow, this year’s installment of everyone’s favorite (OK, maybe second-favorite) movie poll is hitting the Internets. That’s right, it’s time once again for the Muriel Awards!

What, not excited yet? Well, you should be. After all, we’ve got plenty of new goodies to go along with all of your old favorite Muriels traditions- that is, if you can call something two years old a tradition. I’d tell you what they are, but that would ruin the surprise, now wouldn’t it?

One thing I can tell you is that we’ve almost doubled our voting body since last year to a whopping 37 (shaddup, Clerks fans) voters. This year’s Muriel Awards perpetrators are:

Jason Alley
Danny Baldwin
Kent Beeson
Andrew Bemis
Scott Black
Chuck Bowen
Sean Burns
Steven Carlson
Alexander Coleman
Dennis Cozzalio
Ari Dassa
Evan Derrick
Andrew Dignan
Jim Emerson
James Frazier
Daniel Getahun
Craig Kennedy
Adam Lemke
Michael Lieberman
Benjamin Lim
Craig Lindsey
Matt Lotti
Martin McClellan
Jeff McMahon
Lucas McNelly
Matt Noller
Phil Nugent
Jason Overbeck
Mark Pfeiffer
Nathaniel Rogers
Jenny Sekwa
Justine Smith
Hedwig Van Driel
Scott Von Doviak
Bryan Whitefield
Patrick Williamson
… and, of course, me.

So tune in tomorrow night for the announcement of this year’s first Muriel Award. And come back every night thereafter for the presentation of another award, leading up to the announcement of the Golden Muriel for the Best Picture of 2008 on Sunday, February 22. That’s right, Muriel’s taking on the Oscars, and we’re confident that she’ll school them with her impeccable taste.

Bring back lettuce. Priority one. All other priorities rescinded.

Coming this week! See the sidebar for this year's logo.