Top Ten of 2008

by James Rocchi on December 31, 2008 · 0 comments

(This is the list I submitted to CInematical, to MSN Movies, to Movie City News and, in this form, actually wrote up for my work with Redbox. It’s worth noting that I did not see a few things — Secret of the Grain, Let the Right One In, and more — that many of my peers have adored; still, that’s the nature of this gig.)

As 2008 draws to a close, movie writers everywhere scratch and puzzle over their lists — to a degree that you can find collected lists of lists out on the internet, as everyone from your local paper’s film critic to your friendly neighborhood web writer chimes in. I keep a Top Ten, contributing the same list to all the people who ask me, with some perspective — I don’t think I’m walking down from the top of any mountain with this list carved on two tablets, and these are the films that I really enjoyed — but, then again, if it inspires you to check out one of the films on this list you haven’t heard of (some of which are on DVD and some of which aren’t even in theaters yet), then I’m doing my job. I tend to use the same rule for consideration as the Academy does for the Oscars and make my lists for any given year out of films that have played theatrically in L.A. and New York for at least a week in 2008; with that said, and in no particular order leading up to #1, here’s my Top Ten Movies of 2008. …

Waltzwithbashir
10) Waltz with Bashir

An animated documentary — with artists creating visions and visuals based on interviews with real people — about war, youth, memory and loss, with brilliant, bizarre images and human, heartfelt emotions.

9) Funny Games

Full of cruel tricks and grim treats, this horror-thriller is almost a kind of magic trick — director Michael Haneke warns you that he’s going to trick you and then does it anyway, leaving you not just scared by a movie but thinking about all scary movies.

8) Man on Wire

The year’s best documentary showing how Phillip Petit, a French tightrope walker, managed to break into the World Trade Center in 1974, string a wire between the two buildings and step out between them with the city — and the world — looking up in awe. Exhilarating, exciting, and more than a little sad — 9/11’s never mentioned, but it hangs over the film’s wonder and joy — Man on Wire’s a great story of inspiration, celebration and gutsy glory.

Darkknight
7) The Dark Knight

Yes, it’s a comic-book movie; it’s also the year’s best meditation on right, wrong and the struggle to figure out the difference between the two. It also has some amazingly pure action moviemaking — and it’s ultimately a great example to big-studio Hollywood that you can make a great movie that still makes plenty of money.

6) Ballast

One of the standouts of the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, Ballast is hard to sum up, as three people connect and clash in the gray flatness of a Mississippi winter — and even harder to forget, with incredible performances and a haunting realism that the movies too rarely have.

5) Reprise

A lesser-seen foreign film that speaks in the universal language of youth and young manhood, as two friends and novelists in their ’20s kinda know they’re clichés and don’t quite know how to change that. Reprise tackles some real stuff, but it’s also fun — brilliantly cut and shot and edited, with energy and ambition leaping off-screen in every frame.

Milk
4) Milk

One of the best performances in the year, as Sean Penn plays the murdered San Francisco politician and gay rights leader with smart, sly acting that, as I noted when the film came out, shows us that while Harvey Milk may have been a martyr, he was no saint. Milk’s not a one-issue film, either; it’s one of the best movies about modern American politics we’ve had in a long, long time.

3) Slumdog Millionaire

A big, old-fashioned movie set in 21st-Century fast-forward India, as a brave, smart street-born kid (Dev Patel, in a winning performance) gets a chance to win it all on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? — and  more importantly, just maybe, reunite with his lost love. Tough and exciting and hopeful and honest, and immensely rousing.

2) The Wrestler

Mickey Rourke makes his comeback as a broken-down ‘8os pro wrestling superstar making do and getting by in low-rent matches and with what remains of his faded glory — until a heart attack forces him to face the idea of life after the ring. A brilliant script, smart direction and a great cast (Rourke’s amazing, but Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood also put unexpected moments in what could have been cliché parts) make The Wrestler a thrilling, funny, scary and very American story.

Che
1) Che

For this two-part epic about the life of, yes, revolutionary Che Guevara, Steven Soderbergh combines his indie roots (sex, lies and videotape, The Limey) with the big-screen scale of his studio films (Out of Sight, Ocean’s Eleven) to make a historical epic that doesn’t try to tell you everything about its subject’s life, and one that shows us a vision of the most important political figures of the 20th century without making our minds up for us. Part one is thrilling, exciting action; part two is a sad slide into the darkness, and the two compliment each other perfectly. Benicio Del Toro is great as Che, but it’s Soderbergh — shooting on location, on digital video, with fully independent financing - who’s the star here, making the most ambitious, flawed, exciting and fascinating movie of the year.

(Almost, but not quite: WALL-E, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, A Christmas Tale, Encounters at the End of the World, Gomorra, Rachel Getting Married, Synecdoche, New York, The Class.)

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Rochi’s Retro Rental — Pickup on South Street

by James Rocchi on December 31, 2008 · 0 comments

“I spent some of the holiday week catching up with books I had missed, in part because the barrage of end-of-year-screenings had left me a little movie-d out — or, rather, end-of-year-screenings plus Adam Sandler’s Bedtime Stories, about which less said, the better. One of the books I’ve been idly leafing through is A Third Face, Samuel Fuller’s memoir — “My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking,” as the subtitle elaborates. You may have never seen a Sam Fuller movie, but plenty of people who you respect as moviemakers did — Martin Scorsese provides the introduction for A Third Face, and the just-released DVD of White Dog, shelved for decades due to controversy, is one of the hottest discs of the year. Fuller’s not exactly a name that springs to mind when we think of the great directors of the past, and at the same time, he’s got a real style — whether you’re watching one of his Westerns (I Shot Jesse James), or his war films (The Big Red One) or his dramas (Shock Corridor) or his two-fisted crime films — like this week’s Retro Rental, a movie I went back to after reading Fuller’s book, Pickup on South Street.”

– From this week’s Rocchi’s Retro Rental

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Surfer, Dude

by James Rocchi on December 31, 2008 · 0 comments

Surferdude“It’s a familiar thought: If there were a link between how much fun it is to make a film and how much fun it is to watch it, then Cannonball Run II would be the greatest movie ever made. This comes to mind watching Matthew McConaughey’s Surfer, Dude, which looks like it was plenty of fun to make, but may, on-screen, test your patience for the Citizen Kane of surfer-stoner-sunshine comedies. It’s not that Surfer, Dude is a bad movie; it’s just a very small movie. …

If someone other than Matthew McConaughey were playing Steve, a) this movie would not have been made and b) even if it had, you would want to punch Steve in the face; something about McConaughey’s charm and relaxed energy make the film fairly easy to watch. Actually, it may just be the pleasure of watching McConaughey freed from the weight of box-office expectation; much of the time, McConaughey’s movies have him alongside Kate Hudson or saving the world, neither of which look entirely natural for him. Here, his issues are simpler — surfing, doing right by his friends and trying to make his way in a wicked world — Surfer, Dude proves that these smaller concerns can be carried, and carried well, by McConaughey’s easy smile, broad shoulders and ridiculously well-developed abs.

McConaughey even offers a commentary track on this DVD, which is possibly more diverting than the film itself: "Let’s take a little walk through this journey, do some commentation. …" Commentation may not be a word, but McConaughey makes it sound like one. Directed by S.R. Bindler (who shot the brilliant documentary Hands on a Hard Body), Surfer, Dude goes through some fairly familiar paces. Steve is tested by life; Steve vows to change his life until the joy, and the waves come back - even forsaking weed and women; Steve meets Danni, a good woman who brings out the good in him (Alexi Gilmore); Steve learns that he can change some things for the better and make some things better by not changing. ”

– From my Redbox Review

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Valkyrie

by James Rocchi on December 26, 2008 · 0 comments

“The action is not only roughly historically accurate but also actually exciting; as a bomb-maker explains that ” … Any problem on Earth can be solved with the application of enough plastic explosive ….” we get a little education in bomb-making. Later, as von Stauffenberg tries to do the delicate work of bomb-setting with war-wounded hands, we enjoy the suspense even more because we’ve been told what we need to know early and well and we understand what’s going wrong. The supporting cast is great — including Kenneth Branagh, Eddie Izzard and Terence Stamp as co-conspirators — but the story is the star in Valkyrie, with Singer showing us all the things we didn’t know, so that the twists and turns of a story where we know the final act somehow still pushes us to the edge of our seats.  Valkyrie was notoriously moved from the end of this year to early next year and then moved back again; the fact is, Valkyrie plays a lot better as a diverting summertime action thriller than it does as an earnest end-of-year Oscar-contender drama. At the same time, there are flashes of beauty and dark wonder in Valkyrie, like von Stauffenberg’s first meeting with a conspirator in a gorgeous cathedral, the next wide shot pulling back to reveal how the roof over the altar’s been destroyed by bombs; there’s no safe place, and everything good will be destroyed if the war goes on much longer.  It’s a simple moment, but an effective and unexpected one, a moment of grace and spooky beauty hidden in-between the shouting and shooting. Valkyrie’s brawny and big and bold, but it’s also stronger, slicker and smarter than you’d think.”

From my Redbox review

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Bedtime Stories

by James Rocchi on December 24, 2008 · 0 comments

“Trying to pull our heart strings and tickle our funny bones, Sandler (who, as star and producer, had his longtime crony Tim Herily re-write Matt Lopez’s original script) and Bedtime Stories don’t manage to do either terribly well. Kids won’t understand Pearce’s big musical number; the parents accompanying them to the theater will come to hate the comedy-relief animated hamster with every fiber of their being. Bedtime Stories tries to be charming and whimsical, but while charm and whimsy, like love, can be helped by great sums of money, charm and whimsy, like love, cannot be created by great sums of money. That sense of hollow spectacle makes Bedtime Stories feel forced and fake and flabby, and Sandler’s need to play the best guy ever is a little obvious. The creepy finale involves us not only seeing Skeeter succeed, but also witnessing his enemies fail, so Sandler gets to both win and rub it in. With a needlessly complicated story that’ll bore kids and shallow, silly jokes that’ll exhaust adults, Bedtime Stories runs a real danger of living up to its name not with sweet storytelling, infinite imagination and childlike wonder but instead by putting audiences to sleep.”

— From my Redbox Review

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A Bridge Too Far

by James Rocchi on December 23, 2008 · 0 comments

“They don’t make movies like A Bridge Too Far anymore, which is simultaneously a good and bad thing; I have a hard time wrapping my conscience around any war film that looks like too much fun, but at the same time, good heavens, A Bridge Too Far is great to watch — big, sprawling, messy, full of tricks and nonchalant moments of heroism and bravery. Goldman, who also wrote All The President’s Men and The Princess Bride notes in his memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade that he had to cut so many amazing true stories from Ryan’s book that it broke his heart, just because there were too many moments of dumb luck, brilliant decision making and impossible bravery at Arnheim to get into a three-hour movie. A Bridge Too Far, like Valkyrie, is a movie that turns a known historical fact into a great suspenseful game of coulda, shoulda, woulda, where anything — a shift in the wind, a single shot fired at the right time — could have changed everything, and didn’t.”

From this week’s Rocchi’s Retro Rental

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The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

by James Rocchi on December 23, 2008 · 0 comments

“I saw The Curious Case of Benjamin Button weeks ago, and yet every time I tried to think about it — whether it was to contemplate a decision in David Fincher’s direction, a deviation from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s story, a moment in Eric Roth’s script or a note in the performances of Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett — I would soon find myself, invariably, distracted from the large-scale visions and moments of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and instead contemplating the smaller-scale moments of my own life. This was at best annoying; what did it say about the film that I couldn’t hold it in my attention? What did it say about my attention that I couldn’t even focus it on a film? But Zen gives us the parable of the master who points to the moon, and the student who looks at the master’s finger. Fincher, Roth, Pitt and Blanchett have all, in their way, made a film of true sincerity and (ironically enough in light of its technical achievements) real simplicity; resting your gaze on the film, without directing it onto the things it encourages you to look at, seems like staring at the pointing finger.”

– From my Cinematical review

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The Women

by James Rocchi on December 23, 2008 · 0 comments

“Finally, the (in The Women) characters aren’t just isolated; they’re unlikable. Ryan’s a doormat; Bening’s hateful; Messing’s naïve; Pinkett-Smith’s smug; Mendes is a cheap temptress. If you showed The Women to a space alien who had never met human beings, he would think the female gender of humanity is devoted solely to shouting, shopping, speeches and screeching — because that’s pretty much all you get in this film. If there’s a single highlight in the film, it’s Cloris Leachman as Ryan’s long-suffering, strong, blunt and bemused nanny; if English had given us a film about her alone, I would have far preferred that to the glossy clichés and phony ‘tests of character’ English serves up with this misshapen, miserable mistake of a re-make.”

– From my Redbox review of The Women

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St. Louis Radio with Paul Harris

by James Rocchi on December 21, 2008 · 0 comments

I had the pleasure this Friday of appearing with Paul Harris on KTRS St. Louis, talking about the year in movies and other events in film. Aside from a early stumble — “It’s a pleasure to be black, I mean back” — I feel it went very well; Paul’s a gentleman and a scholar, and always a pleasure to talk to. You can listen below. …

On The Paul Harris Radio Show, KTRS

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The Wrestler

by James Rocchi on December 18, 2008 · 0 comments

“After winning top honors at the Venice Film Festival, Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler rapidly became the must-see of the Toronto International Film Festival, with huge lines at the press and industry screening this afternoon seemingly unaffected by the news that Fox Searchlight had purchased the film. After seeing The Wrestler for myself, I feel the need to extend a note of caution about the film, which sailed into Toronto buoyed by advance raves for Mickey Rourke’s performance as Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a low-level professional wrestler — and we soon see how really, both those words could be in quotation marks — whose ’80s glory days are long over, scraping by at low-level, low-paying matches until a heart attack forces him to leave the ring and look at his life in the shadow of death. Many have already written about the parallels between Mickey Rourke and the swaggering, scarred wrestler he plays — early success, fame and notoriety, a series of mis-steps and mistakes taking it all away bit by bit as the years advanced — and the charge Rourke’s own rise and fall offers a filmmaker like Aaronofsky looking to explore ruin and redemption.

But don’t believe the hype — or, more importantly, look past it; if a complicated, messy personal life were all it took to deliver a great performance, Paris Hilton and O.J. Simpson would have more Oscars than Katharine Hepburn. Rourke’s work as Randy is physical, invested, powerful and sprawling — but it’s also quiet, sad and hauntingly wounded, too. And The Wrestler offers viewers far more than just Rourke’s performance — which, it must be said, is excellent — if they’re willing to not flinch from what it has to say: The Wrestler is a fascinating, rich, unblinking look at the dark, hunched mean streak that lies curled and poisonous inside of so much American popular entertainment and of so much American life. It’s early to say this, but The Wrestler is one of the most grimly exciting, magnetically repellent movies we’ve had in a long time; it’s flat-out one of the best American movies of 2008.”

– From my Toronto International Film Festival Review

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