NEWS: SuicideGirls' Top Ten Films of 2008

CELEB: SuicideGirls' Top Ten Films of 2008

SuicideGirls' Top Ten Films of 2008
by Ryan Stewart

The 2008 year in film effectively began on January 22, when, while riding a bus through the snowbound Sundance Film Festival, I noticed people checking their Blackberries and whispering about reports that Heath Ledger had been found dead in New York. There would be no other major topic of conversation for the remainder of the fest — it was a pretty dull year for Sundance — and that set the tone for a generally below average, hit and miss year that was light on quality and big on bloated franchise spectacle, particularly the re-animation of long-dead franchises. Rambo came back after a twenty year absence to turn the entire Burmese army into hamburger patties, and that was fun, but then the memory pirates known as Spielberg & Lucas also rode in and delivered a root canal of a film that allegedly had something to do with Indiana Jones. Major missteps from respected filmmakers such as M. Night Shyamalan, Spike Lee, David Fincher and Clint Eastwood would also appear on the menu in 2008.

This was also a year in which the business itself became a big story, as a tough economic climate forced most Hollywood studios to shutter their indie distribution arms, leaving much doubt about how independent film will thrive going forward. If that wasn't bad enough, newspapers also initiated a mass wave of layoffs of film critics that by year's end have left the ranks more or less decimated. Factor in the winter strike that had the effect of disrupting 2009's slate of films and there's truly no telling what next year will look like. Merry Christmas! In all seriousness, though, there were, as always, a handful of truly exceptional films that shone through all the muck this year, and it's my job to point them out, so here we go.





1. Wendy and Lucy

Imagine having no safety net of any kind, no family or friends to count on, no job or savings and no roof over your head — only $500 in cash and a barely-functioning old car. Then the car breaks down. Wendy and Lucy tells the gripping, no-frills story of a twenty-something girl in just such a situation, on her way to Alaska to work at a fish cannery when she's waylaid by fate and trapped in a featureless strip mall town with her hungry dog Lucy to consider and her options shrinking by the hour. Where can she turn? How will she survive? Influenced by Umberto D. and other classics of Italian neorealism, this micro-budgeted film masterfully dramatizes just how terrifying life on the margins of American society can become for those who fall through the cracks.





2. Let the Right One In

"I can't come in unless you invite me," says twelve year-old Eli to her playmate, Oskar, at his apartment door. She's not being polite — she's a vampire and of the two of them, she's the more normal one, accepting that she must kill to survive and is contemptuous of her father for trying to prevent her from doing so, and in a sense, growing up. As for Oskar, he's a small, effeminate boy channeling the rage he feels from intense school bullying into unhealthy knife and serial killer fetishes. What can Eli teach Oskar about living in a world of remorseless violence? And what to make of the scene where these sexless beings lie naked in bed, comforting each other? An amazing story of friendship and survival at all costs, this Swedish gem inspired more conversation than any other film in 2008.





3. Man on Wire

It was an act of high-stakes art, undertaken with all the precision planning of a bank robbery but having nothing to do with money. On August 7, 1974, a French daredevil named Philippe Petit completed a high-wire walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, something onlookers could barely comprehend and police seemed embarrassed to label a crime. Man on Wire, an immensely absorbing documentary, chronicles the walk and pushes for answers to the deeper questions: What was in it for Petit, and who is he? What kind of mind could absorb that much imminent danger and still perform like a ballerina? What made others want to join in and help him accomplish his goal? There are hardly any real answers, of course. As one conspirator says in the film, "The important thing is that we did it."





4. In the City of Sylvia

In the city of Strasbourg, there's a man searching for his lost love, but further details are scarce. We know that they connected briefly, six years ago, and then lost each other. We don't know his name or why that sidewalk cafe he plants himself at is central to the quest or whether he has any real expectation of finding her again, but the search is what sustains him as he sketches and admires other beautiful women who pass by and allows all of the majesty of city life to enter his pores. This elliptical, uncommonly beautiful French film from Jose Luis Guerin is highly abstract and certainly not for all tastes, but should strike a chord with anyone who's ever been haunted by a face on a busy street and been unable to shake the memory even years later.





5. Happy-Go-Lucky

Is real happiness reserved for children, morons and religious fundamentalists? Mike Leigh's latest film doesn't have an answer, but it asks the question. Sally Hawkins gives the performance of a career as Poppy, an emphatically upbeat young woman who responds to her bicycle being stolen in the film's opening scene by musing that, "We never even got to say goodbye." Ain't nothin' gonna break her stride as she skips through modern-day London where she encounters neurotics, psychotics, racists, and other walking black clouds who fail to do anything to dim her innate cheerfulness. Is Poppy crazy? Does she know something about the nature of the universe that no one else does? Is she a "happiness fascist" as one critic declared? Is she hiding something deep and dark? These questions become terribly compelling the longer the film goes on.





6. Revolutionary Road

The old Ink Spots song "The Gypsy" plays as Frank first notices April dancing with another man from across the room and begins to fall for her. She notices him as well and the sparks fly. It's all downhill from there! This story of a crumbling marriage between two attractive young suburbanites in 1950s New England is made palpably painful for the viewer because it stars Kate & Leo, the universally agreed-upon Great Screen Couple of our generation. Virtuoso acting abounds as they rip each other to shreds for two hours and we, the audience, silently entreat them to just keep giving it one more try. Come on, Kate — you jump, he jumps, right? Director Sam Mendes appropriately dials down his usual stylistic eccentricities and although the source novel is somewhat overrated, the well-structured screenplay serves everyone well.





7. Iron Man

What was it George Carlin said? Billionaires don't care about you. That's the unburied ethos of Iron Man, a well-made, fun to watch and almost believable superhero film that puts the lie to all of Bruce Wayne's tiresome moralizing. No self-respecting billionaire industrialist would concern himself with personally thwarting the activities of deranged criminals in a crumbling city and then agonize over whether he's endangering citizens. Such a person might, however, build a mansion-sized man cave on the Malibu coast, tinker with advanced metallurgic toys in the basement at his leisure and hire a Gwyneth Paltrow look-a-like to serve as his live-in personal assistant/surrogate mommy/arms-length love interest. And if the press started asking too many questions about his nighttime excursions in an unlicensed flying body suit? "I am Iron Man. Fuck you."





8. Nothing but the Truth

Rod Lurie films offer small pleasures, but pleasures all the same. When sitting down to watch a Lurie film you know you're going to get the kind of socio-political drama that every other filmmaker in Hollywood gave up on making around 1987, only with Lurie's special brand of "ripped from the headlines" immediacy. With Nothing but the Truth, he pilfers the Valerie Plame saga to tell the story of Washington reporter Rachel Armstrong, (Kate Beckinsale) who stumbles onto the secret identity of Erica Van Doren, a brash and sexy CIA agent played by Vera Farmiga. What Armstrong and her paper do with that info and the political shitstorm that results makes for a robust, entertaining little drama that delivers on multiple levels. Also, did I mention that Vera Farmiga plays a brash and sexy CIA agent?





9. Redbelt

Handicapped fighting, an offshoot of mixed martial arts in which the combatants draw colored marbles to see who will have to fight with an arm or a leg tied down before the bout begins, is completely fictional, though you'd never know it watching Redbelt. David Mamet has created one of his best films in years with the story of Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a jujitsu instructor in low-rent Los Angeles who finds himself getting pulled into a seedier world than his own — Hollywood — and must extricate himself from an elaborate gambling ring con before it swallows him up. Like all of Mamet's best films, this one is richly, sometimes maddeningly layered, as well as filled to the brim with exciting cameos, unexpected twists and poignant moments of decision that strip away the characters' illusions about who they really are.





10. The Wrestler

Randy "the Ram" Robinson drives around New Jersey in an old van, blasting 80s power ballads as he goes from one tiny gig to the next, living on chump change. It's the life of a 50-something professional wrestler whose glory days were never all that glorious, although Randy came closer to stardom than most, showing kids at his trailer park a Nintendo game featuring his likeness. His real name isn't even Randy — it's Robin — as we learn when he's forced to don a name tag and do counter shifts at a deli. The Wrestler is an ingenious, but hellish updating of Rocky in which Adrian is now a capricious stripper, Apollo Creed is a car salesman who plays the baddie on weekends to make a few extra bucks and the fans who show up want victory, but they'll settle for injury.




Honorable Mentions: Timecrimes, Cassandra's Dream, The Strangers, Wanted, The Reader, Stuck, Married Life, The Bank Job, Valkyrie, Fugitive Pieces.

Check out our 2007 Top 10 film list for you holiday DVD viewing pleasure.