Muriels Addendum #3, Also-Rans (Performances- Part 1)

"Poppy’s emotional trajectory in Happy-Go-Lucky seems fairly predictable. Her overly chipper, optimistic manner must inevitably be hiding some deep-seated insecurity or emotional pain; it’s just a matter of time before an accident or terminal illness cracks the façade, revealing the broken woman underneath. But—wait a minute—that never happens. Happy-Go-Lucky is a movie very much about forcing us to question our initial impressions of Poppy, but if Mike Leigh eventually gets too aggressive in this project, Sally Hawkins never does. Yes, Poppy is a force of nature, and Hawkins stays true to that—all beaming smiles and squawking laughs—but she’s also resolutely, recognizably human. That’s thanks to Hawkins—and Leigh, whose greatest strength has always been his skill with actors—who understands that Poppy’s personality comes not from ignorance or obliviousness but that it is a conscious, respectable choice about how to act in the world. And while Leigh gets bogged down jerry-rigging his deterministic universe, Hawkins remains firmly planted in Poppy’s reality.

"Bad things do happen in Happy-Go-Lucky. One of Poppy’s students turns violent and reveals a history of domestic abuse, and her driving instructor is, like, a total dick. But they don’t break Poppy. She responds, sensitively, believably, while still holding true to her principles. What Hawkins lets us see—a masterfully subtle touch within a seemingly showy performance—is the ongoing process of choosing to be, and struggling to remain, a positive force in the world. Like all choices, hers has consequences (and when she does cause emotional harm her driving instructor, her reaction is heartbreaking), but she soldiers on. Because Poppy is not silly or simple or dumb; she’s strong. Hawkins knows that, and so we do, too." ~ Matt Noller


“It's a tricky balance, giving the best performance in an ensemble drama. You have to find a way to stand out, without taking over, to own, without dominating. So many actors would attempt to take over a film, to make their mark with a searing performance that leaves the overall narrative in its wake, to chew scenery, to audition for another film. And while that's the sort of performance that gets people's attention in the trailer and plays well on Oscar Night, it sort of goes against the whole idea of being a supporting actor. A supporting actor is one who makes everyone else in the film better, sometimes at the expense of himself. It's a rare talent that can both support and stand out. Think of Claude Rains in, well, everything.

“Part of what makes the role of Henri in A Christmas Tale so difficult is the number of things he's asked to do. He's the chief culprit in the family schism, yet it may or may not entirely be his fault. He's the savior and the villain, a man that's been blamed by various family members for pretty much everything. For this he's a little mentally unstable (or his mental state is the reason he's been blamed, depending on how you look at it). Amalric plays these contradictions as a man unsure, struggling with himself and this identity he's created. In a lot of ways he's at war with himself, just as he's at war with his sister.

“For me, though, the real value of this performance is how Amalric somehow manages to give Henri his own gravitational pull. His performance affects every other performance in the film. He makes everyone else better, and not just in the scenes he's in, but the scenes that are simply about him. Hell, he even affects the scenes that don't involve him at all. His talent bleeds out of the frame. Whereas Catherine Deneuve is the family's rock, the stabilizing force, Amalric is the shadow that looms over the family, threatening to ruin everything. And then, like most shadows, he's entirely different than you'd expect. He's just a man who's a little mixed up, a man who doesn't know what to do with himself, a man who can fall face-first into the street.” ~ Lucas McNelly

From her sure-to-be iconic first scene to her final declaration, Meryl Streep is a mesmerizing presence as Sister Aloysius in Doubt. Maintaining a borderline draconian rule over the students at a Catholic school, Streep's principal is a ferocious characterization. Basing her power in fear--which she believes makes the school's entire disciplinary system work--and behaving like a crusading prosecutor against Philip Seymour Hoffman's Father Flynn, the character would be in grave danger of being an unsympathetic, one-note figure. Streep, however, works against this. She finds the truly abundant humanity in Sister Aloysius, burrowing into and invigorating it. As with all of her performances, she gently evinces her character's most crucial properties. In this instance, her interpretation intrepidly renders Sister Aloysius' genuine care for the betterment of the children who attend her school as a palpable trait that ensures she is not a mere vessel of villainy or malevolence.

In her extended scene with Viola Davis--which has been met with deserved praise for Davis--Streep etches a powerful tableau of amazement and bewilderment that both complements and counters Davis's loving assuredness and determination. There is a particular, singular submission to the process of Streep's performances; and that transcends the remarkable diversity of accents and mannerisms she has acquired throughout her career. Streep's Sister Aloysius is one of her best efforts because she, herself, finds the wounds that mark the character, while keeping them appropriately veiled from the audience. When she admits to having sinned, her equal parts vulnerability and receptivity--even to the man of whom she thinks the worst--is startling. And though the closing scene of Doubt plays too much like a playwright's final tenuous conceit, Streep's force of will makes the reservoir of emotion just a little scalding. ~ Alexander Coleman


“She calls herself Cassidy, but her real name is Pam.

“Turning in two great performances for the price of one, Marisa Tomei comes on strong, sultry --and it must be mentioned-- quite gloriously naked in The Wrestler. During her night-life as a stripper, ‘Cassidy’ is in complete control of every situation. She’s skanked out in tattoos, nipple-rings and fetish-wear, gazing upward adoringly at her “clients” while semi-facetiously drawing out every syllable into the sort of sexy purr and inane small-talk the crowd of drunk dirtbags paid hard-earned money for.

“So banal is this workplace conversation, she can’t quite process things properly when Mickey Rourke’s smitten ‘Randy The Ram’ steers a chat into personal territory. Barely lit, sitting impatiently in the front-seat of his ramshackle van, Tomei sputters and stalls – she likes him. But does he dig *her*, or is he just into the illusion she works so hard to present onstage every night at the club?

“The Wrestler is a movie all about the war between public and private personas, so the ultimate glory and tragedy of it all comes with Rourke’s realization that he’d rather go out as ‘Randy The Ram’ instead of ‘Robin The Grocery Store Schmuck.’ This internal psychodrama (a rather piercingly relevant one in our brave new world of Facebook friends and incongruous online personalities) is constantly refracted and played out in miniature during his every interaction with Cassidy/Pam.

“Our introduction to the real Pam is downright shocking. In daylight she’s willowy, buttoned up in an oversized down-coat, giggling girlishly. Outside the hermetic confines of that sleazy strip club, Tomei is achingly vulnerable – the actress seems far more naked when her clothes are on. The push-pull, tug-of-war in Randy and Pam’s relationship manifests itself within subtle shifts behind Tomei’s eyes. Whenever threatened – especially after a sloppy barroom kiss -- she shuts down, goes blank, and starts talking like ‘Cassidy’ again.

“Tomei toggles back and forth between Pam and 'Cassidy' throughout The Wrestler, donning the nudity like a suit of armor, before finally breaking hearts all over multiplexes when she scraps the defense mechanism, fully committing to her own better self -- and at long last admitting: ‘I’m really here.’

“If only he was, too...” ~ Sean Burns


There are ensemble pieces, and then there are those movies where every character only exists in reaction to the others. Where the interactions are exactly what the movie is about. Rachel Getting Married was a great ensemble piece, but there could have been a movie made about a number of its characters independent from the others. The movie is a small window into their larger lives. Burn After Reading, though, feels to me like the kind of movie that exists as a perfect storm of moments that bring the company together. Take one character away from the narrative and they would probably only last as a mildly amusing five minutes on YouTube as they dissolve into caricature.

“Frances McDormand and Brad Pitt stand out. The tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumb of the story, driven by vanity and (mostly self) adoration. Her intensity and his ridiculous smiling bobblehead, even up until his last moment when he flashes a mouthful of straight white choppers as he's discovered in that closet.

“They're on each other like a pair of siblings working through their fantasies of wealth and success. They seek to suck everyone else into their madness.

“The two characters who are completely disengaged -- Malkovich and Clooney -- are disengaged in completely different ways. Malkovich pulls deeper into himself, a product of his professional paranoia. And Clooney who acts out his disengagement through sexual conquest and obsessive jogging, but who really shows his true self through his basement tinkering.

“But it's the McDormand and Pitt who I remember the most, and I remember them laughing and cheering as they realize they just might have gotten their big break in the world.” ~ Martin McClellan

As a sometime actor, I find myself not just enjoying but learning from each new Kate Winslet performance. April Wheeler, the actress-turned-housewife who fights to break free from an airless existence on Revolutionary Road, is the latest in a series of Winslet characters attempting to find their own truth regardless of the consequences. Similarly, Winslet's performances often feel as though the actress is defying expectation; intelligent and fearless, she finds layers of meaning to characters (such as Titanic's Rose) that posess little depth on the page and makes the task of bringing a highwire act like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s Clementine to life look positively easy. Perhaps this is what draws her to characters, like April, who are raging against complacency; few actors of Winslet's generation are as consistently, unpredictably and beautifully alive.

In one of Revolutionary Road's most emotionally wrenching scenes, April confesses to her drunk, infatuated neighbor her belief that she and her husband Frank were destined for great things, and the realization that they're hardly special at all. Winslet, whose emotional directness is a perfect match for the blunt, unsparing style of Richard Yates' novel, allows us to feel, with razor-sharp precision, April's grief for the loss of the life she'd imagined. While both Yates and director Sam Mendes make it clear that the Wheelers are, indeed, not as exceptional as they'd like to think, April is hardwired with the burden of (to paraphrase Vonnegut) a life not worth living and an iron will to live. When April calmly warms Frank, mid-argument, that if she touches him again she'll scream and then does exactly that, it's clear that such an act of emotional violence is the only form of outburst she has left. If this is the point where Winslet steals the movie from DiCaprio (underrated as Frank), it's only because Frank is supposed to be an ineffectual dweeb, while April is the film's soul. It's her determination to take control of her own fate that brings Revolutionary Road to its almost unbearably downbeat climax, and thanks to Winslet's capacity for empathy for her characters in their most unsympathetic, even inexplicable moments, Revolutionary Road succeeds in bringing Yates' heartbreaking horror story for marrieds to life. ~ Andrew Bemis


Kate Winslet seems to be becoming the go-to actress for roles that feature women suffocating in a mental prison of their own design. She actively resists the common actor's need to be likeable, instead embracing her characters flaws and inhabiting their space, be they rotten or delightful. Her performances often have a Rorschach quality to them; is her affair brave or cowardly in Little Children? Is her housewife in Revolutionary Road the wronged party or ungrateful for what she has?

It’s in The Reader that Winslet takes on the most morally challenging role of her career. Her Hanna Schmitz is an illiterate war criminal, a statutory rapist who never demonstrates remorse or guilt onscreen. Even Hanna’s final attempt at atonement is regarded as pathetic and inconsequential by one of her war-time victims. Yet it’s through Michael (David Kross as a youth and Ralph Fiennes as an adult) we comprehend her callousness, her capacity for using others for her own ends and discarding them.

Winslet’s portrayal of Hanna is one of a woman rendered complex more from events than persona. Hanna’s seduction of young Michael is bluntly sensual yet aware of the youthful joy and anxieties that come along with sexual discovery, and Winslet conveys her character’s desperation and loneliness with a cool precision that keeps her at a distance from both her lover and the viewer. Later, when at trial for her crimes during the war, we see that desperation surface as it hasn’t before, a panic overtakes Hannah that demonstrates a shame so intense that it results in a perversion of justice that incidentally further scars Michael. Her final scene as an elderly woman withholds absolution, instead allowing her wounds and regret to linger untended.

The film offers precious few answers about her; was her unusual treatment of prisoners an awkward attempt or kindness or a particularly selfish cruelty? Is she an evil woman or her own kind of victim? Why does she find confessing to her illiteracy so much more shameful than taking credit for mass murder? Winslet’s candor as an actress affords us the option of drawing our own conclusions about her character. Hanna is damned and easily dislikeable, and it's part of the skill of Winslet's intricate performance that we can find her sympathetic, despicable, or both. ~ James Frazier

“Lucy is not movie-star gorgeous. Sure, she's unquestionably beautiful, but she is an actress, not a glamorized Best in Show-breed matinee idol. Her off-screen companion and on-screen collaborator, writer-director Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy), who cast her in Wendy and Lucy, makes low-key, low-budget films -- the last two in collaboration with fiction writer Jonathan Raymond and set in and around Portland, OR. They're not slick, romanticized, commercial pictures. And Lucy, an un-affected nonprofessional in the tradition of Neorealist heroines, is not a "movie dog." She is not called upon to perform cute tricks, to make faces that can be anthropomorphized in the cutting room. She is an authentic presence, a dog playing a dog.

“To be sure, her performance (watch her submissive stance when Wendy scolds her for barking outside the fateful market) depends on the interaction with her expert co-star, Michelle Williams, whose character name makes up the other half of the title. Theirs is an off-hand, give-and-take exchange -- one performance unthinkable without the other, like Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in In Bruges. Like the best actors, Lucy knows how to listen. It's a testament to both performers that Lucy is a captivating creature when she's on screen, and a compelling absence when she's not. Being separated from her is as heartbreaking for us as it is for Wendy.” ~ Jim Emerson

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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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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)

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