Found

The Year in Film, 2008: Top 10s, plus some

By Susan Gerhard

Welcome to SF360.org’s third annual year-end film poll. As has been our habit, we asked a variety of critics, programmers, exhibitors and filmmakers about their favorite films of the year. This year, however, we also asked them what trends are affecting them most, what technology has helped them along, and what films we’ve all been missing. Today, we offer Top 10 picks for the year (some unnumbered by author request). By Tuesday afternoon, expect to see a list of the best not-yet-released films of the year—festival films, one-off screenings, or films coming soon to a theater near you (although a few of these appeared in Top 10s). Wednesday, SF360.org gives free rein to the ideas, trends and inventions that made the year just that much bigger, faster, stronger and stranger. New Year’s Day, critic Matt Sussman wonders what women wanted in ’08 and assesses what they got. And Friday, our own Dennis Harvey, a Variety regular, handicaps the Oscars.

SF360.org’s Top 10 survey, 2008

Jeffrey M. Anderson
Critic, Combustible Celluloid, SF Examiner, Oakland Tribune

1. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, Spain/USA)
2. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan/France)
3. Still Life (Zhang Ke Jia, China/Hong Kong)
4. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, USA)
5. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, USA)
6. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, U.K.)
7. Burn After Reading (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, USA/UK/France)
8. Gran Torino (Clint Eastwood, USA)
9. My Blueberry Nights (Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong/China/France)
10. Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, USA)

Rod Armstrong
Programmer, San Francisco Film Society

1. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
2. Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K./USA)
3. Alexandra (Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia/France)
4. Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane that Crashed on the Mountains (Gonzalo Arijón, France)
5. Elegy (Isabel Coixet, USA)
6. Times and Winds (Reha Erdem, Turkey)
7. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, USA)
8. The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat, France/Italy)
9. Forbidden Lie$ (Anna Broinowski, Australia)
10. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)

Peter Canavese
Critic, Groucho Reviews

1. Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel/Germany/France/USA)
Waltz with Bashir works equally well as a potent anti-war film and as a creative examination of the nature of memory. Mature and possessed with significant psychological depth, Ari Folman’s animated film is an autobiographical documentary as much as it is anything else. Folman, unable to reconstruct the events of his time as a teenage Israeli soldier in Lebanon, seeks out his oldest friends to sort out the past. In episodic fashion and with flexible style, Folman explores different perspectives of the shared common experience of the modern ground warrior, one the director concludes is cruel and absurdly pointless.
2. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)
A sincere "Dear John" letter to the great, tumultuous loves of director Guy Maddin’s youth: his family (including his mother, played by ’40s femme fatale Ann Savage) and his city, which he pegs as turning its back on its own idiosyncrasy in hopes of becoming a modern destination. Despite the incredible specificity of this “docu-fantasia” as one man’s take on one city, the wistful Winnipeg achieves a powerful universality. It can be intuitively understood by anyone who’s ever had a love-hate relationship with home, anyone who has obsessed over the formative years, anyone who has lived long enough to look longingly to the past and nervously to the future.
3. The Class (Laurent Cantet, France)
An anthropological study of a year in the life of a school and, in particular, one class, Laurent Cantet’s The Class is a great achievement in cinematic realism, recognized with the Palme D’Or at Cannes. In a brilliant stroke, Cantet cast co-screenwriter Francois Begaudeau (on whose non-fiction book the film is based) as the young teacher struggling day in and day out to educate his students to the best of his ability. Each class period is a running debate that blurs lecture and dialogue, and as insulated as it may seem, the classroom is also breached by uncontrollable forces in the outside world. Parents, teachers, and students alike have their failings and vanities, more than their grace notes. When conflict arises, and it frequently does, the filmmakers refuse to instruct us on who’s right and who’s wrong, making the film its own kind of Socratic lecture.
4. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, USA)
The chaos of untamable evil tests moral resolve and political ethics in The Dark Knight. Plus, Christian Bale dresses up like a bat and kicks ass. Christopher Nolan’s zeitgeist-y masterwork of pop cinema challenged us to pick a lead story: the script that turned a comicbook movie into a political allegory wrapped in a crack crime drama: Heath Ledger’s brilliant performance as the Joker, or Wally Pfister’s sleek photography, groundbreaking in its use of IMAX to tell a larger-than-life story.
5. Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, USA)
Writer-director John Patrick Shanley does a fine job of making his Pulitzer Prize-winning parable Doubt more than literally larger than life on the screen. The plot is the essence of simplicity, delicately twisted into something maddeningly complicated: At a New York parish in the 1960s, Meryl Streep’s nun becomes convinced that Philip Seymour Hoffman’s priest has abused a black boy. The priest has a bully pulpit on his side, but the nun has seemingly unwavering conviction. The rub is that in the absence of more than circumstantial evidence, we are never sure whether or not the priest is guilty, putting us in the same position as another nun (Amy Adams). Along with Viola Davis as the boy’s mother, the actors are uniformly excellent, and the film’s cause for reflection on the natures of belief, faith, guilt, and doubt are cumulatively profound. Doubt is good to the last drop: the final line is a prism revealing new facets of character and theme to ponder on the way out of the theater.
6. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, U.K.)
The latest comedy-drama from the legendary Mike Leigh. Sally Hawkins’ Poppy is a life force who, by nature, gives everything its most positive spin (she has fun even when being jostled on a bus or racked with back pain). There’s significant comedy in Poppy’s determination to make a joke at every possible moment, particularly in driving lessons taught by Eddie Marsan’s sour instructor, a borderline Travis Bickle. Obviously, not everything in life is fun: Sometimes Poppy’s cockeyed optimism can bring light to the darkness, and at other times, she can provoke anger instead of calming it—it’s a provocative but true notion that our world is seldom prepared to handle someone who’d like to teach the world to smile.
7. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, USA)
Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as a theater director from Schenectady who’s dealing with artistic frustration, a failing marriage, and the onset of an undiagnosable disease. Or he’s dead already, which would explain the bizarre, dreamlike nature of his existence. Though Kafka is aptly invoked, it’s impossible not to think about 8 ½, Fellini’s tale of an artist surrounded by women (the supporting cast here is stellar: Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emily Watson, and Dianne Wiest). In ruminating on the obsessive pursuit of truth in art and the disorienting nature of life and death, Synecdoche, New York seems designed to appeal to a niche audience of artists who are pathologically depressed and/or suffer from degenerative diseases.
8. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan/France)
A "take-off" from Albert Lamorisse’s classic short film The Red Balloon. Critical darling Hou Hsiao-Hsien doesn’t exactly make movies for the masses—he constructs his films out of naturalistic longueurs that send some viewers for the exits. But Juliette Binoche’s brilliant performance as a harried single mother (magically conjured mostly from unscripted character improv) makes Flight of the Red Balloon the director’s most accessible and emotionally satisfying work to date.
9. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden)
This down-and-dirty vampire picture (the best kind) locates brilliant Gothic horror in the snowy Swedish suburbs. If this were only a story of true love between 12-year-olds, it would be original enough, but when one is actually a centuries-old androgynous vampire, you know you’re in for something special. Bullied boy Oskar naturally gravitates to Eli, an outsider with a secret. The film’s allusion to Romeo and Juliet is apt: The title alludes not only to the requirement of an invitation before a vampire can enter a home but also to the embracement of love.
10. Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)
The right movie for the right time, Gus Van Sant’s political saga finally gives San Francisco politico Harvey Milk, as played by Sean Penn, the narrative tribute he deserves. Ably filmed on location, Milk daringly proves that the political trumps the personal, in art as well as in life. All bets are off with the intrusion of wild card Dan White (well played by this year’s canniest George W. Bush impersonator, Josh Brolin).

Brian Darr
Critic, Hell on Frisco Bay

1. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
2. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan/France)
3. Baghead (Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass, USA)
4. Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, USA)
5. Opera Jawa (Garin Nugroho, Indonesia/Austria)
6. Ballast (Lance Hammer, USA)
7. Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K.)
8. Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea)
9. Momma’s Man (Azazel Jacobs, USA)
10. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)

Michael Fox
Critic, SF360.org, SFWeekly, J.

1.My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)
Guy Maddin’s fantastical reverie about his hometown and family set a new high-water mark for first-person docs.
2. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Roumania)
Without frills or contrivance, this Romanian drama drew viewers heart-stoppingly deep into the lives of its desperate female characters.
3. Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K.)
James Marsh’s splendid documentary about the cocky Frenchman who walked between the Twin Towers in 1974 made the most of the haunting echoes of 9/11.
4. The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy, USA)
A transformation tale that earned its credibility (and avoided exploitation and sensationalism) with a studied blend of personal drama with national travesty.
5. Jellyfish (Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret, France/Israel)
In a year of first-rate Israeli films (Beaufort, Waltz With Bashir), this bittersweet debut feature by fiction writers Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen deserves to be remembered.

Max Goldberg
Critic, SF360.org, Flavorpill, S.F. Bay Guardian

1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Roumania)
2. Flight of the Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan/France)
3. My Name is Albert Ayler (Kasper Collin, Sweden)
4. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)
5. The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat, France/Italy)
6. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden)
7. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, France/USA)
8. Still Life (Jia Zhang-ke, China/Hong Kong)
9. Trouble the Water (Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, USA)
10. Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (Matt Wolf, USA)
11. The Witnesses (André Téchiné, France)

Susan Gerhard
Editor, SF360.org

1. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden)
2. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA)
3. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme, USA)
4. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, France/USA)
5. In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerín, Spain)
6. The Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin, Germany/Turkey/Italy)
7. Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris, USA)
8. Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K./USA)
9. Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel/Germany/France/USA)
10. Snow Angels (David Gordon Green, USA)

Pam Grady
Critic, FilmStew

1. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)
2. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, USA)
3. Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, U.K.)
4. JCVD (Mabrouk El Mechri, Belgium/Luxembourg/France)
5. Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, USA)
6. What We Do Is Secret (Rodger Grossman, USA)
7. Boy A (John Crowley, U.K.)
8. The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy, USA)
9. Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)
10. In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, U.K./USA)

Dennis Harvey
Critic, Variety, SF360.org, SF Bay Guardian

1. Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, USA)
2. Battle For Haditha (Nick Broomfield, U.K.)
3. My Brother Is an Only Child (Daniele Luchetti, Italy/France)
4. Kenny (Clayton Jacobson, Australia)
5. The Class (Laurent Cantet, France)
6. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
7. The Signal (David Bruckner, Dan Bush, and Jacob Gentry, TK?)
8. I Served the King of England (Jirí Menzel, Czech Republic/Slovakia)
9. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, U.K.)
10. Planet B-Boy (Benson Lee, USA)
11. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, France/USA)
12. Brideshead Revisited (Julian Jarrold, U.K.)
13. Bigger, Stronger, Faster (Chris Bell, USA)
14. Reprise (Joachim Trier, Norway)
15. Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, USA)
16. The Violin (Inbar Gilboa, USA)
17. Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel/Germany/France/USA)
18. Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, (USA)
19. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, USA)
20. Viva (Anna Biller, USA)

Hilary Hart
Director of Publicity, SF Film Society

1. Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, U.K.)
2. Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)
3. Alexandra (Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia/France)
4. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, USA)
5. I’ve Loved You So Long (Philippe Claudel, France/Germany)
6. The Edge Of Heaven (Fatih Akin, Turkey/Germany)
7. Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K./USA)
8. *Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane that Crashed on the Mountains (Gonzalo Arijón, France)

Michael Hawley
Critic, Film-415, The Evening Class

1. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
2. Synechdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, USA)
3. The Duchess of Langeais (Jacques Rivette, France/Italy)
4. Still Life (Jia Zhang-ke, China/Hong Kong)
5. Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane that Crashed on the Mountains (Gonzalo Arijon, France)
6. The Pool (Chris Smith, USA)
7. My Father, My Lord (David Volach, Israel)
8. Stuck (Stuart Gordon, Canada/USA/U.K./Germany)
9. The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat, France/Italy)
10. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Romania)
11. Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green, USA)
12. Persepolis (Vincent Paronnaud, Marjane Satrapi, France/USA)
13. The Dark Knight: The IMAX Experience (Christopher Nolan, USA)
14. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)
15. Baghead (Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass, USA)
16. Battle For Haditha (Nick Broomfield, U.K.)
17. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden)
18. Transsiberian (Brad Anderson, UK/Germany/Spain/Lithuania)
19. Wind Man (Khuat Akhmetov, Russia)
20. Man On Wire (James Marsh, U.K./USA)

James T. Hong
Filmmaker, A Portrait of a Sino-American Friendship

1. Rambo (Sylvester Stallone, USA/Germany)
The best theatrically-released film was definitely Rambo—a film actually directed by Rambo.

Marcus Hu
Co-President, Strand Releasing
1. Before I Forget (Jacques Nolot, France)
2. Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)
3. The Class (Laurent Cantet, France)
4. The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, USA)
5. Vicki Christina Barcelona (Woody Allen, USA)
6. Be Kind Rewind (Michel Gondry, USA)
7. The Edge Of Heaven (Fatih Akin, Turkey/Germany)
8. Hunger (Steve McQueen, U.K.)
9. Savage Grace (Tom Kalin, Spain/France/USA)
10. Ballast (Lance Hammer, USA)
Full disclosure, we are the distributors of both the Nolot and the Akin, but they’re still my favorites of the year.

Steven Jenkins
Director of Finance and Administration, San Francisco Film Society

1. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
Desplechin’s best film to date, endlessly imaginative and richly novelistic, reminding us what narrative cinema is capable of in the hands of a director who truly loves life more than movies, people more than characters, and the music of Paul Weller most of all.
2. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days(Cristian Mungiu, Roumania)
3. Alexandra (Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia/France)
4. Forbidden Lie$ (Anna Broinowski, Australia)
5. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, France/USA)
6. The Romance of Astrea and Celadon (Eric Rohmer, France/Italy/Spain)
7. Water Lilies (Céline Sciamma, France)
8. The Man from London (Béla Tarr, France/Germany/Hungary)
9. Timecrimes (Nacho Vigalondo, Spain)
10. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden)
11. Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel/Germany/France/USA)
12. Before I Forget (Jacques Nolot, France)
13. Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K./USA)

Arne Johnson
Filmmaker, Girls Rock

1. Up the Yangtze (Yung Chang, Canada)
Wow, as close to what Werner Herzog calls the ecstatic truth of documentaries. Closer than he has gotten, in fact.
2. Secrecy (Peter Galison, Robb Moss, USA)
I loved that this movie knew exactly what it was and what it came to do. The problems at its heart are somewhat insoluble, but it never stops looking and asking.
3. Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, USA)
What can you say? Pixar may be the first 1,000-person living breathing poetry factory.
4. Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, U.K.)
Fun, over the top, bracing. Not as great as everyone says it is, a little over-amped with Danny Boyle’s usual tricksiness, but still a dang good time.
5. Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K.)
Just about a perfect documentary of its kind. Aside from some slightly haunting moments, mostly just a good story well told. Didn’t stick to my ribs much, but it’s so refreshing to see a documentary told with skill and verve I didn’t much care.
6. Operation Filmmaker (Nina Davenport, USA)
It’s not always clear that the things that are fascinating about this movie are done on purpose, but the filmmaker is so deeply involved it doesn’t really matter any more. One of the more interesting post-screening discussions I’ve had.
7. Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, USA)
This feels a little like Herzog went down to Antarctica and didn’t quite get what he was looking for, so he lathered it up with some Herzogian sturm und drang. But man, I love his drang!

Jonathan Kiefer
Critic, Sacramento News & Review

1. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden)
A viscerally moving tale and a stylish genre reboot, all without a single false note
2. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Romania)
Brilliantly controlled and performed. It has perfect pitch.
3. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, U.K.)
A surprising, mysterious, buoyantly humanist achievement for Mike Leigh and for movies in general. Hawkins was marvelous, of course, but I think Eddie Marsan too was magnificent.
4. Ballast (Lance Hammer, USA)
Such a gorgeous example of environment as character, such surety of vision.
5. Flight of The Red Balloon (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan/France)
Bow before Binoche! Also: Beautifully orchestrated imagery, amazingly attentive, dreamlike camerawork.
6. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA)
Politically astute and elegantly realized; I think it might be an instant classic.

Mick LaSalle
Critic, San Francisco Chronicle

1. Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, (USA)
Great portrait of marital delusion, and also of a 1950s marriage.
2. Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)
Best American film of 2008.
3. I’ve Loved You So Long (Philippe Claudel, France/Germany)
Great performance, great ending, and I don’t see any script problems. Worrying about plausibility is the same as worrying about "believability." It’s too naive a concern for criticism.

Graham Leggat
Executive Director, San Francisco Film Society

1. Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, U.K.) Best film of the year, hands down
2. Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane that Crashed on the Mountains (Gonzalo Arijón, France)
3. Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, USA)
4. Snow Angels (David Gordon Green, USA)
5. Secret of the Grain (Abdel Kechiche, France)
6. Appaloosa (Ed Harris, USA)
7. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, UK)
8. Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, USA)
9. Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K./USA)
10. Water Lilies (Céline Sciamma, France)
11. Days and Clouds (Silvio Soldini, Italy/Switzerland)

Chris Metzler
Filmmaker, Plagues and Pleasures of the Salton Sea

1. Appaloosa (Ed Harris, USA)
2. Trouble the Water (Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, USA)
3. La Corona (Amanda Micheli and Isabel Vega, USA)
4. Girls Rock! (Arne Johnson and Shane King, USA)
5. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA)

Gary Meyer
Co-Director, Telluride Film Festival, owner, Balboa Theatre

(In no particular order)
4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Romania)
Alexandra (Aleksandr Sokurov, Russia/France)
Band’s Visit (Eran Kolirin, Israel/France/USA)
Chris & Don: A Love Story (Tina Mascara and Guido Santi, USA)
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, USA)
Frost/Nixon (Ron Howard, USA/U.K./France)
Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, U.K.)
In Bruges (Martin McDonagh, U.K./USA)
Iron Man (Jon Favreau, USA)
Jar City (Baltasar Kormákur, Iceland/Germany/Denmark)
Lola Montes (Max Ophuls, France/West Germany)
Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden)
Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K./USA)
My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)
Om Shanti Om (Farah Khan, India)
Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, France/USA)
Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, U.K.)
Taxi To The Dark Side (Alex Gibney, USA)
Tell No One (Guillaume Canet, France)
Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, USA)

Very good but missed the top list
Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer (Robbie Cavolina and Ian McCrudden, USA)
The Bank Job (Roger Donaldson, U.K.)
City Of Men (Paulo Morelli, Brazil)
The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, USA)
Doubt (John Patrick Shanley, USA)
Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, USA)
I’ve Loved You So Long (Philippe Claudel, France/Germany)
Jellyfish (Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret, France/Israel)
Jodhaa Akbar (Ashutosh Gowariker, India)
Medicine for Melancholy (Barry Jenkins, USA)
Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)
My Brother Is an Only Child (Daniele Luchetti, Italy/France)
The Reader (Stephen Daldry, USA/Germany)
Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, Spain/USA)
And When Did You Last See Your Father? (Anand Tucker, U.K./Ireland)
The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, USA)

Rob Nilsson
Filmmaker, 9 @ Night film series, who sent in his ballot while on Isla Mujeres, revising Woman 1, his screenplay about Willem de Kooning.

Nocturnal Jake (Deniz Demirer, USA)
The film I most enjoyed this year was Nocturnal Jake, directed by Deniz Demirer, Director of Photography, Jonathan Silvio, featuring David Boyce, from the Broun Fellinis. It works in many film traditions to consolidate a unique non-linear synthesis of story and thought. I lament the fact that it has been shown only in private screenings.

In Vanda’s Room (Pedro Costa, Portugal/Germany/Switzerland/Italy) and Colossal Youth (Pedro Costa, France/Portugal/Switzerland)
I was also interested in Pedro Costa’s In Vanda’s Room and Colossal Youth. Both were hard to watch and difficult to forget. He works with a marginalized population with exactly opposite goals and methods than I used in 9 @ Night. I don’t agree with most of his ideas but he never asked me.

Burning Man: Voyage in Utopia (Laurent Le Gall, France)

Jenni Olson
Filmmaker, The Joy of Life and Director, E-Commerce & Consumer Marketing, Wolfe Releasing

Bolt (Byron Howard and Chris Williams, USA)
I was really pleasantly surprised at how good this film was. These days I see almost every kids movie that comes out and they tend to be pretty mediocre. Bolf has some genuinely laugh-out-loud funny stuff in it and the animation was terrific.

B. Ruby Rich
Critic, author, and professor and chair of Community Studies at UC Santa Cruz

(In alphabetical order)
Best dramatic films
Ballast (Lance Hammer, USA)
Frost/Nixon (Ron Howard, USA/U.K./France)
Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden)
Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)
Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, Israel/Germany/France/USA)
Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, USA)

Best documentaries
Derek (Isaac Julien, U.K.) *I.O.U.S.A. (Patrick Creadon, USA)
Pray the Devil Back to Hell (Gini Reticker, USA)
Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris, USA) *Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane that Crashed on the Mountains (Gonzalo Arijón, France)
Trouble the Water (Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, USA)

George Rush
Attorney, SF360.org columnist

1. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, USA)
2. Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, U.K.)
3. Forbidden Lie$ (Anna Broinowski, Australia)
Most original and entertaining documentary I’ve seen in a while.
4. Religulous (Larry Charles, USA)
5. Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)
6. Tell No One (Guillaume Canet, France)
7. The Order of Myths (Margaret Brown, USA)
8. Trouble the Water (Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, USA)

Joel Shepard
Film and Video Curator, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

1. Viva (Anna Biller, USA)
2. Ballast (Lance Hammer, USA)
3. Before I Forget (Jacques Nolot, France)
4. Pineapple Express (David Gordon Green, USA)
5. Cargo 200 (Aleksei Balabanov, Russia)
6. The Godfather 2008 restoration by The Film Preserve (Francis Ford Coppola, USA)
7. Shine a Light: The Imax Experience (Martin Scorsese, USA/U.K.)

Matt Sussman
Critic, Flavorpill, SF360.org, S.F. Bay Guardian

1. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden)
2. Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)
3. The Last Mistress (Catherine Breillat, France/Italy)
4. Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K./USA)
5. Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, U.K.)
6. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)
7. Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell (Matt Wolf, USA)
8. Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, USA)
9. Lola Montes (Max Ophuls, France/West Germany)
10. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, USA)

Chris Wiggum
Director of Public Relations and Business Development, Global Film Initiative

1. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden)
Tragic, romantic, beautiful, and undead. A great metaphor for so many relationships I’ve been in. "Twilight" with beauty, heart and Swedes. Oh how I love this movie.
2. Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K./USA)
A work of art, a suspense film, an examination of ego.
3. Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, USA)
They got so many things right, example: Sigourney Weaver as the ship’s voice – classic!
5. Shotgun Stories (Jeff Nichols, USA)
A quiet and sad movie about a family feud in the South. I wish more movies could be so focused and deliver performances of such nuance. It stars Michael Shannon and I’m glad his work is at least being recognized for Revolutionary Road.
4. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
and…
5. The Class (Laurent Cantet, France)
Incredible French cinema in another year with several strong films coming out of that blessed land of filmmaking.
6. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen, Spain/USA)
Angst, sex and Gaudi, without being gaudy. So good!
7. Burn After Reading (Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, USA/UK/France)
Just a great time at the movies, featuring one of my favorite John Malkovich performances of all time.
8. I Served the King of England (Jirí Menzel, Czech Republic/Slovakia)
Invigorating filmmaking from a septuagenarian master.
9. Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, France/USA)
I love how this movie unfolds. Watch it a second time—it’s an entirely different experience.
10. Elegy (Isabel Coixet, USA)
I didn’t like this movie at first, but it stuck with me. After being unable to shake it for weeks, it lands in my top ten.

Caveh Zahedi
Filmmaker, I Am a Sex Addict

1. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, USA)
2. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, U.K.)
3. Standard Operating Procedure (Errol Morris, USA)
4. Man on Wire (James Marsh, U.K./USA)
5. The Visitor (Thomas McCarthy, USA)

Addenda from the editor

Top 10 #1 in search of a byline (Please comment in the talk-back box if the comments below belong to you.)
1. Wall-E (Andrew Stanton, USA)
2. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, USA)
3. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, Canada)
4. Milk (Gus Van Sant, USA)
5. The Fall (Tarsem Singh, USA)
6. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, U.K.)
7. Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, (USA)
8. Up the Yangtze (Yung Chang, Canada)
9. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
10. 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, Roumania)
This was on my list for last year’s top 10, but apparently it’s been discovered by the East Coast press as an ’08 film, and it didn’t even play here until then.

I know that this is a mainstream-looking list. Even opening myself up to accusations of being in the tank for the Mouse, I have to call Wall-E this year’s best movie by several miles. It’s not indie as such, but it was made in the East Bay by left-wing East Bay types. And sorry, Josh Brolin, no one does W. like Fred Willard.

Top 10 #2 in search of a byline (Please comment in the talk-back box if the comments below belong to you.)
1. 9@Night Film Series:
Noise (Rob Nilsson, USA)
Used (Rob Nilsson, USA)
Attitude (Rob Nilsson, USA)
Singing (Rob Nilsson, USA)
Stroke (Rob Nilsson, USA)
Scheme C6 (Rob Nilsson, USA)
Need(Rob Nilsson, USA)
Pan (Rob Nilsson, USA)
Go Together (Rob Nilsson, USA)
I have seen all nine in order several times and still discover something new, some new relationship or clue to a moment in another of the films with each viewing. The films stand alone, but viewed together it is amazing the way the stories and characters weave throughout—no one seems to be doing work like this—and it is fascinating that these films also star and tell the stories of real people from the streets—this is reality—not reality TV, which is totally scripted…I think we are perhaps afraid to see and experience our societal truth which is evident in this body of work.
2. Tell No One (Guillaume Canet, France)
I enjoyed this film though it is somewhat mainstream it was done in an unpredictable way.
3. I Served the King of England (Jirí Menzel, Czech Republic/Slovakia)
I thought this a beautiful film.

_Thanks to Miriam Wolf for help editing and formatting.

topics: actors, bay area, critics, critics year end polls, directors

12.28.2008