Cast: Ari Folman

Director: Ari Folman

Screenplay: Ari Folman

Running time: 1 hr 30 mins

Genre: Animation/Documentary



CRITIQUE:


Perhaps very rarely one can recite a truly great film that comes from Israel. Well that popular ignoramus, folks, is soon to be changed. Waltz with Bashir will surely penetrate the filmic universe, and a kind of movie that will be talked about even twenty years from now. Yes, that’s serious credibility. By the knowledge that this is the first ever animated-documentary, one would inevitable muster: “what the hell were they thinking?” Of course, the concept is frighteningly inappropriate. After all, how could animation enliven the harsh brutality of war? Having seen the film, there’s no doubt of the medium employed. In fact, there could have been no other way this film could tackle such a deep, subconcious issues of war, trauma and psychological wounds, all inflicted by the Lebanese-Israeli war.


The film starts with a nightmare, a cluster of raving dogs haunt Ari Folman, as he is disturbed by a presence of a distant memory at the back of his mind. He recollects to try and stop the nightmare but fails despairingly. So he sets into an odyssey of recollections, interviews of co-soldiers (who have now lived different lives since theh aftermath). Remember that this is a documentary, but still the subjects were animated and so is the rest of the craft. It is visually striking, it transcends graphic contemporary art. Watch the slow-motion scene in a forest where soldiers march in, it glides with classical elegance. So innovative and subsequently effective, as the film assembles memories, hallucinations, images, all like warped or heightened sense of reality that delves deeper into the subconsious of humanity. Memory, the film puts, has the tendency to recreat events that didn’t occur or exist to cover a certain trauma. This borders of the psychological, but as the film steeps in the pysche of its protagonist – it’s ultimately the personal level that soars the most. Haunting and bleak, Folman is a man whose innocence is ravaged by war; scenes show him shooting aimlessly at fields, killing everyone at sight, and has a memory that shows a vision of an orange-tinged nightscape lit by flares, as a city massacre is about to befall, yet has a mind that doesn’t acknowledge the painful fact that he’s part of it. As most great war films go, it points out that war is not only hopeless but pointless, an exercise of authority and human greediness. Thanks to Folman for sidestepping clichés, and pulls this celluloid down to a personal portrait. This film is a confrontation of the memory, of all its nook and crannies, so when that final footage appears, a real reel of the result of war, it’s genuinely disquieting.


VERDICT:

Beautifully poetic and immensely devastating, never has a war film taken to a deeply personal level since Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Waltz with Bashir is daringly inventive, audacious and a transcendent portrait of the fallibility of memory and the painful pangs of a traumatic past. Unmissable!




RATING: A

Cast: Kelly Reilly, Michael Fassbender

Director: James Watkins

Screenplay: James Watkins

Running time: 1 hr 31 mins

Genre: Horror



CRITIQUE:


The histrionics of the Brit horror Eden Lake treads familiar territory. A dashing Londoner couple goes for a holiday trip down a beautiful lake surrounded by woodlands. Their skin-dipping is disturbed by a local gang of youths, and what was supposed to be a starry-eyed romantic weekend turns out to be a knife-toting nightmare. Of course, in the slasher flick genre, all goes wrong, characters are tortured, and damsels run like in a marathon. It feels like we’ve seen it before in common American horror fare – but what then makes Eden Lake so bloody terrifying to watch? Perhaps because of its Britishness. First time director James Watkins winds the suspense control to full amplification and creates the torturers so disturbingly believable, the ones that you see wearing hoods in your streets. Call them chavs or hoodies, never has a film been an indictment towards the nation’s teenage and knife culture since Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Easy watchers will find themselves visually battered, as flesh is cut, blood is spilled. But it doesn’t hurt one’s intelligence either; there are twists in the plot and smart orchestration of violence. Here violence is not gratuituous and unnecessary, it comes in abrupt shock. One certain scene shows the heroine enraged and starts to fight back, and inadvertently kills a person who’s willing to help. The performances by Kelly Reilly and Hunger’s Michael Fassbender (whose face now suddenly turns up in many British films of late) are of a visceral level that it requires them to be tortured, stabbed, mud-covered and blood-soaked. The teenagers of this film are as convincing as they could be, and comes the film’s ending – so dismal and bleak, and morally unpleasant, that it points a big, sullen finger to the adults, the parents, for being the cause of malignance of their children.


VERDICT:

Gut-wrenchingly good. Eden Lake is so harrowing, nightmarish, bitter and disturbing that it leaves a metallic tang in your mouth. This is 2008’s horror event.



RATING: B+

Cast: Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams

Director: John Patrick Shanley

Screenplay: John Patrick Shanley

Running time: 1 hr 48 mins

Genre: Dramas



CRITIQUE:


If there is a thriller that should be revered in 2008, it should be Doubt. Not that it is genericallly a thriller, but it is a tautly conceived drama, so intense and intellectually enthralling that it could literally pull a whole audience to a full stop and dead quiet. One can also perhaps consider this as war film – but with words as missiles and Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman as nuclear machines launching onscreen explosion. There is a confrontation scene between Streep’s bloodcurdling Sister Aloysius and Hoffman’s furious Father Flynn that requires them to let loose a verbal sparring, so tightly choreographed, ferocious and uncompromising that it would make Incredible Hulk and Abominator’s showdown look like fighting toys.


This tale of a spiritual crisis in a Bronx Catholic school, where a priest is suspected of paedophilia (a term you wouldn’t hear being mentioned in the film, but succinctly implied), is utterly beguiling that viewers wouldn’t know who to root for: Father Flynn who’s accused of the God-forsaken debauchery but remains tactfully innocent, or Sister Aloysius whose one woman crusade for the uninstalling of a priest with no weapon other than self-belief and instinct. No proof, no certainty, and we don’t know who’s telling the truth. That’s the genius of John Patrick Shanley’s screenplay and assured direction; he considers St. Nicholas school, ruled by an unswerving draconian fist by Sister Aloysius, as the rink to which this fight befalls and he lets these power-players deliver the punches and have audience watch in awe. Whilst Hoffman nails the ambiguous Flynn (there could be no other finer actor to play this role), Streep is still in form to stamp down the title of being the greatest actress alive at the moment. It’s a fierce, merciless, incredible turn as an embittered-woman-turned-nun, relaying an attitude that repels the forces of change around her (she loathes ballpoint pens, and borders as a racist, unconsciously discriminating blacks and homosexuality), but then draws a stunning character arc about the sexual savages she encountered and her own personal questions about faith. Hands down as well to the excellent Amy Adams as Sister James, who happen to witness certain details of the case but is often self-deluded about becoming a paragon for social justice, and the brilliant Viola Davis as the boy’s mother, whose scene with Streep, the two of them walking in ten full minutes onscreen, creates a performance level that ignites. It is a tour-de-force of an appearance, as quickly as her character fades, it leaves a mark as a conflicted mother forced to sacrifice her beliefs for the welfare of her son. These four characters, along with the walls and environs, are framed impeccable by Roger Deakin's cinematography balancing the beginning's autumnal look and then desolates it with bitter force as the shades turn to bleak greys. That final shot of Sister Aloysius confessing her "doubts" is as compelling a portrait of loneliness could be.


VERDICT:

Doubt is the cinematic equivalent of fireworks. The quartet of performances literally ignite in front of you. It has Oscars written all over this portrait of religious ambivalence and moral fickleness. Streep creates one of cinema’s most ferocious monsters.


RATING: A

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem

Director: Woody Allen

Screenplay: Woody Allen

Running time: 1 hr 36 mins

Genre: Comedy/Drama



CRITIQUE:


You’ve got to hand it to Woody Allen. Throughout the decades, there is barely a mainstream film in his directorial (or screenwriting) CV, and his oeuvre is certainly not everybody’s cup of tea – but he remains a master dissector of human relationships. That he’s probably the most European auteur of all his American leagues makes him a constant harbinger of interesting cinema. After the brilliant Match Point and the little-seen Scoop, he reunites with his modern-day Diane Keaton, Scarlett Johansson, and takes a trip to the sexy, sultry city of Barcelona where anything goes. Yes, even a ménage-a-trois. Thanks then to Allen for unexploiting the subject matter, albeit the concept of Javier Bardem as the maverick Spanish painter, Penelope Cruz as the feverish, suicidal/homicidal ex-wife, and Johansson’s free-spirited, sexually deviant Cristina all tangled up in a knotty threesome is a ravishing one; Allen barely gets them all hot and sweaty together – but rather emphasises the importance of screenplay and his characters.


Narrated by a matter-of-fact voice, it manages to be delightful and amusing, with characters’ morals constantly shifting as sands. Comparable to Keaton, Johansson is sassy but at the same time susceptible to her own weakness and indecisiveness. Rebecca Hall as the straightforward Vicky stands out. We can see a fine actress at work here when we see her eloquent American manners and ideals start to break down by Bardem’s Bohemian ideals. Then enter Bardem and Cruz, two Spanish players that gives such zest and vitality to their roles; Bardem shunting the stereotyped tortured-genius caricature and provides a warm soul to his character, and Cruz obviously had more fun playing the megalomaniacal mistress throwing tantrums. The whole portrait of complex relationships is the focus here, as much as it is set against the exotic landscape of Barcelona, as gorgeous and exquisite as its well-rounded up cast.


VERDICT:

Vicky Cristina Barcelona extracts dark comedy from the its complex, tragic canvas of relationships, and here Woody Allen is clearly having fun writing, directing and vacationing under the splendid sun of Barcelona. And so are its excellent cast.



RATING: B+

Cast: Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber, Jamie Bell

Director: Edwark Zwick

Screenplay: Clayton Frohman

Running time: 2 hrs 17 mins

Genre: Drama/Action



CRITIQUE:


After the serious heavyweights of The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond, director Edward Zwick had sought for even more critical topic, the Holocaust. This compelling tale of three Jewish brothers in the Nazi-occupied Belarus who bonded up and resisted the genocide by subsisting in the forests, saving 1,200 Jews along the process, that’s a hundred more than Oskar Schindler saved, people. So we’re reminded that these Bielski brothers should be honoured (and they deserve to be so), and that the Jews had not been entirely passive and defenceless, as most Holocaust films depict them. And this film is supposed to change all that we know about the Jewish image, that some of them had actually dared to defy. As remarkable that true story is – where does Defiance go wrong, when it could have been a great film?


As a film, it stumbles in many places. Defiance is typically a Hollywood film. The screenplay and narrative perfunctorily picks up where most epic films leave its clutter. The film opens in black-and-white documentary reel, promising authenticity, but the rest that follows are laden with artifice. Its beautifully shot, there are sights in the forest to behold, but the rawness and immediacy of its subject matter is absent. Even more so, the relationship between the brothers (the brooding, blustery, reluctant hero Daniel Craig, the irresolute Liev Schrieber, and the adequate Jamie Bell) consists of strange emptiness; we meet them straight ahead of the tale, with parents dead, and venturing into the wild, gathering participants, with very little knowledge of their backgrounds, making us care less. This film offers little to what should be a strong ethos of family. Secondly, perhaps nobody have had a bright idea to advise Zwick to recheck Schindler’s List or Braveheart, in which one certain scene required Craig mounted on a white horse, tossing out pre-battle speech in front of a suddenly inspired audience (cue sweeping score by Howard) – this is pure, plain cliché. The first half trudges and even miniature but significant details were ignored (like how the hole in the wall on a ghetto manned by SS guards was duly unnoticed). This might be called nitpicking, but for a story that assures legitimacy, the screenplay is littered with deux-ex-machina. The last half picks itself up, giving room for action (to which Zwick is obviously is more capable of) that might please historical battle fanatics, but then leads to a conclusion that rather feels contrived when it’s supposed to be blusteringly inspiring.


VERDICT:

Defiance conveys the message well enough, but that is free from art, grace and cinematic density. It boasts an astounding story but it disappointingly sticks with the how-to-make-a-Hollywood-epic rulebook. This material is in serious need of a better direction.



RATING: B-

Cast: Salvatore Abruzzese, Gianfelice Imparato, Maria Nazionale

Director: Matteo Garrone

Screenplay: Maurizio Braucci

Running time: 2 hr 15 mins

Genre: Foreign Film



CRITIQUE:


Matteo Garrone’s Italian cinematic oeuvre is a remorseless one. This gritty, unflinching look into the brutal streets of Naples sings no sonata to the Hollywood gangster opera that the world has been familiar of. The blood-drenched viciousness of Gomorra makes The Godfather saga look like a musical. From its opening, an ultraviolet-filtered scene in a tanning shop, we downrightly see people being shot, and enters a rather Godardian title template – it sets the scene for what is about to come, bold and uncannily real. Here there are no black-suited, sharp-looking men, or patriarchal figures in white tuxedos lounging around mansions whilst stylised crimes flit beyond its walls, whilst in Gomorra there are only grubby-looking people, youngsters in the streets, morally-corrupt locals, all walking around the decaying urbanity of Italy. Romanticism is shredded off, and it shows an unruly core via cinema verité.


For all its entire swathe of violence and realism, it’s easy to see why critics esteem this cinematic work; it takes its camera into the role of a watcher, where we see no heroes but everyday characters, a thirteen-year-old boy corrupted into social obligation, two Tony-Montana-wannabe renegades who steal weapons for personal gains, and a tailor in his fabric industry. These are vignettes of life pushed to the brink in a society where guns and drugs are basic as food, and human carnage serves as dessert. That at the back of these is a sprawling underworld organisation that infiltrates almost every aspect of Italian life, and more shockingly, the world. From the trade industry down to the local shops, and even the fashion world; Garrone succinctly shows a television reel of Scarlett Johansson in the red carpet in Venice Film Festival wearing a ‘cream’ dress, whose fabric’s making had gone through bloodshed and claiming of lives. It’s a terrifying scenario, almost to the point of documentary. Where the film succeeds as an incredible, unabashed portrait of Naples, it somehow lacks a sense of narrative, the camera leaping from one storyline strand to another. Audience are merely watching snippets of daily life that adds to a bigger, coherent whole. For a film whose source author has now been living in hiding, dodging threats from the crime organisation Comorra, it takes bravery to make this piece of cinema.


VERDICT:

An acrid, horrifying look into the gun-and-gangster culture in the heart of Italy, Gomorra ruthlessly strips any sentimentality, romanticism, and optimism in this bleak, uninvolving at times, but blistering cinema, one of 2008’s bests.



RATING: A-

Mes Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust by Sigur Rós
Elegiac and wonderfully sublime, this is 2008’s testament of euphoria. Listen to the second track’s split-second pause and then bursting into vibrant life, and to Ára bátur’s glorious boy-choir backdrop of sheer beauty. This is the Icelandic quartet’s most acoustic, most accessible, jolliest and rawest.

Cast: Takashi Shimura, Toshiro Mifune, Yoshio Inaba

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Screenplay: Akira Kurosawa

Running time: 3 hrs 28 mins

Genre: Action/Adventure



CRITIQUE:


Renowned as the greatest Japanese movie ever made and the pioneer of all epic action films, it takes a stout soul to shrug the magnificence of this Akira Kurosawa magnum opus. Before your blustery Bravehearts or your shoddy Troys and Alexanders, there was once Seven Samurai, which seized the world’s attention and opened eyes to the richness and gravity of Japanese cinema. Now Kurosawa is hailed as a master to whom many filmmaker followers unworthily bow down to. Even Hollywood has paid a rather early tribute, a Western remake replacing swords-and-kimonos by guns-and-horses The Magnificent Seven. And those who pay proper attention would recognise the plot in Pixar’s A Bug’s Life. Extremely long, clocking above three hours (those days it needs an intermission inbetween), and involves men with swords sporting gruff demeanours, there’s no denying Seven Samurai intrinsic command and technical virtuosity, shown in Kurosawa’s excellent set-pieces: the bandit-raided village, the training and the final rain-lashed, mud-soaked battle, one of the best sequences in cinema you’ll ever see.


Shot in entire black and white, this tells the tale of the titular samurais (ronins, meaning they bow to no master) who are employed by a local farming village to save their souls and lands from looting bandits. The price is a set of meals a day. What is deemed to be a baseless deal turns out to be a rigorous fight for survival in a blood-soaked showdown between trained village spearmen, samurais and gun-toting brigands. Using Kurosawa trademark wipe-out, paced editing and artistic use of lighting, the tale comes across as surprisingly sincere to the Japanese culture and samurai codes, showing Japan’s 16th century feudalism, the division between classes. Yet for its total running time, a bum-number for many, it never prioritise spectacle over substance, giving way for vibrant characterisations and human depth: a major stand-out is the boisterous, adrenaline-jammed Kikuchiyo, whose backstory gives a sense of poignancy behind his mad antics. Visually poetic, too, look at the lovers chase in the forest ground filled with white flowers, the face-off to two samurais in the market place, the flapping of flags in the wind, the sweeping dust aloft in the wind – this is done in 1954, way back Hollywood became littered by epics of any sort.


VERDICT:

A technical virtuoso, Kurosawa most acclaimed masterpiece Seven Samurai is a blazing torch in impressive filmmaking. Powerful, poignant and majestically orchestrated, it stamps its ground as one of the finest epic action/adventure films made both in and out of Hollywood showground.



RATING: A+

Cast: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes

Director: Martin McDonagh

Screenplay: Martin McDonagh

Running time: 1 hr 47 mins

Genre: Comedy/Thriller



CRITIQUE:


“Where is Bruges?” That place, my friend, is now clearly in the cinematic map – thanks to this terrific, “fooking” film In Bruges. This British gangster caper set in the titular medieval town in Belgium is not only one of the most beautifully shot films of the year 2008, but also one of the most enjoyable. The comedy is black as pit, the performances are impressive and the sceneries are fabulous, thanks to first-time director Martin McDonaugh for eschewing familiar urban-thug movie truisms and chucks guns at a bunch of hitmen and become holidaymakers in a foreign land. However that opinion is probably limited to this commentator, for its filthy, foul-mouthed dialogues and unwelcoming subject matter would surely not appear to all, as it might not be everybody’s idea of fun, running around on a shooting spree, blowing heads and splashing blood in a gorgeous European vacation spot.


That is not the point of the film, though. It veers between comedy and seriousness, between noir and crime thriller, and it is very funny down British humour lane. If you don’t ‘get’ Brit humour and doesn’t know how not to take yourself seriously, avoid this. And at some moments, it is subtle and sometimes mysterious, putting a light touch on morality. Two hitmen Ray and Ken (incredible performances by Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, respectively) are dispatched to Bruges after a mission-gone-berserk in London. But they’re not exactly on a holiday, there are plot twists and turns here. This is perhaps what we would like to see in what most gangster films seem to miss, the basic human lives of these killers. Beneath the racist gags, involving a midget, pranks on prostitutes, drugs and sex – there’s actually a surprisingly gentle core in its characters. Farrell is apparently in his comfort zone, a whimsical, delightful performance that his former roles have seem to overlook. His comedic timing is spot on, and he interpolates genuineness behind those puppy-looking frowns. Gleeson serves as his perfect foil here, channelling Farrell’s lightness, in a temperamental yet patriarchal personality. Ralph Fiennes also stars as Harry, the profane, megalomaniacal villain, a London underworld boss who sputters “fucking” as every adjective to his sentences and then surprises you with his ethical code at the film’s ending. Along with Hunger, Happy-Go-Lucky and Slumdog Millionaire, In Bruges gives vitality to the British films in the bygone year.


VERDICT:

Fresh, funny and feverishly black, In Bruges satisfies the cinematic appetite for a good film. Once you get through the impenetrable plot, you’ll find that this might be one of the most absurdly pleasing films of 2008, with mesmeric performances by a trio of Brits, Farrell, Gleeson and Fiennes.



RATING: A-

Cast: Sean Penn, James Franco, Josh Brolin, Emile Hirsch, Diego Luna

Director: Gus Van Sant

Screenplay: Dustin Lance Black

Running time: 2 hrs 8 mins

Genre: Drama/Biopic



CRITIQUE:

Character biopics like Milk reek of a material that could have descended between camp or kitsch, or both – except this one doesn’t. That director Gus Van Sant is certainly not an average Hollywood director, saving this Harvey Milk biopic with a flush of ace filmmaking. Seesawing between mainstream and indie, Milk is rightly deserved as his mainstream comeback after the highly-successful Good Will Hunting. For a movie that is centred on a certain controversial era, there is barely a newsreel montage with hits-of-the-decade soundtrack, and rather shows us to Sean Penn’s Milk, the first openly gay politician in the States, and his meeting with his lover Scott Smith (a spot-on James Franco in an unpretentious performance) where he announces with despondence in his fortieth birthday that he “never done anything in my life.” In the moment of his assassination ten years later (it’s not a spoiler, everyone knows what happened to this bloke), there is a flashback to this moment where the core of this film glows with poignancy, that he wasn’t a man who had entirely done nothing but became a trailblazing voice for the homosexuals, both gays and lesbians, and inspired a political revolution in the 70s. Its resonating power is on the scene of America right now with the infamous Proposition 8, quietly nailing its resounding echo. The villains of this film are not brought to actor personas, but were maintained as newsreel icons, making them more intimidating and detached.


A warm kudos then to Sean Penn who completely disappeared into the role of Harvey Milk, a testament to this outstanding actor who can necessarily, and effortlessly, adopt mannerisms and certain tics of this political character. Yet he doesn’t make Harvey Milk swelling with a splendid caricature: he sleeps around, drinks, smokes and swears, making him a wholly tangible human being. He is supported by an incredibly adept cast: the unrecognizable Emile Hirsch under the curly wig of Cleve Jones, a quietly restrained, enigmatic performance by Josh Brolin as the family-man pragmatist Dan White, and a depressed Jack Lira played by Diego Luna. Come Oscar hour, here’s the prediction, that golden man statue will be decided between Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke of The Wrestler.


RATING:

This film about the 70s homosexual humanist/activist Harvey Milk skilfully illustrates how-not-to-make clichéd biopics. Amen to Gus Van Sant’s artistic direction and Sean Penn’s galvanising performance that both shows compassion to this material. Milk has also one of the best acting ensembles of the year, mind.



RATING: A-

Pretty much, as one would recapitulate, the Brits have landed ashore at Hollywood and sunk that anchor deep down Golden Globes ground. Come February, they might start raiding Oscars, too. British Danny Boyle's pitch-perfect note of a movie, the Indian crowd-pleaser Slumdog Millionaire, banged the gong and triumphed with Best Motion Picture Drama, and deservedly so. Astonishingly, English rose, five-time Oscar-nominated Kate Winslet literally swept this awards arena with not just one, but two major acting awards, both Best Actress - Drama for her heartbreakingly-trapped dreamer April in Revolutionary Road and Best Supporting Actress - Drama for the dark romance Holocaust drama The Reader - who, in her own words, "not used to winning". (Does anybody know that this girl is from Reading, an unassuming, extraordinarily down-to-earth lass? How cool is this woman?!) She now goes down to history for winning two in a single Golden Globes awards night; the last one to do so was Sigourney Weaver for Gorillas in the Mist and Working Girl in 1989. And leaping right now is British actress Sally Hawkins for her adorable performance in Happy-Go-Lucky, grabbing the Best Actress - Musical or Comedy. Even Irish trash-mouthed Colin Farrell won a Best Actor - Musical or Comedy! Grace notes are Mickey Rourke winning Best Actor - Drama for The Wrestler, and another posthumous win for Heath Ledger for Best Supporting Actor for The Dark Knight, in which a subsequent standing ovation is a deeply felt one. One of the best highlights was Jennifer Lopez's hilarious rant, when everyone was busy clinking their wine glasses and chattering away: "Hellooo, hellooo, momma talkin', momma talkin." Lastly, Angelina Jolie of Changeling and Brad Pitt of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button might not have brought any trophies home with them - but aren't they trophies themselves already?

Here are the complete winners:


BEST MOTION PICTURE - DRAMA
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Frost/Nixon
The Reader
Revolutionary Road
Slumdog Millionaire

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE - DRAMA
Anne Hathaway - Rachel Getting Married
Angelina Jolie - Changeling
Meryl Streep - Doubt
Kristin Scott Thomas - I've Loved You So Long
Kate Winslet - Revolutionary Road

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE - DRAMA
Leonardo DiCaprio - Revolutionary Road
Frank Langella - Frost/Nixon
Sean Penn - Milk
Brad Pitt - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Mickey Rourke - The Wrestler

BEST MOTION PICTURE - COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Burn After Reading
Happy-Go-Lucky
In Bruges
Mamma Mia!
Vicky Cristina Barcelona

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MOTION PICTURE - COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Rebecca Hall - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Sally Hawkins - Happy-Go-Lucky
Frances McDormand - Burn After Reading
Meryl Streep - Mamma Mia!
Emma Thompson - Last Chance Harvey

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE - COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Javier Bardem - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Colin Farrell - In Bruges
James Franco - Pineapple Express
Brendan Gleeson - In Bruges
Dustin Hoffman - Last Chance Harvey

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
Bolt
Kung Fu Panda
WALL•E

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
The Baader Meinhof Complex (Germany)
Everlasting Moments (Sweden/Denmark)
Gomorrah (Italy)
I've Loved You So Long (France)
Waltz with Bashir (Israel)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE
Amy Adams - Doubt
Penelope Cruz - Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Viola Davis - Doubt
Marisa Tomei - The Wrestler
Kate Winslet - The Reader

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MOTION PICTURE
Tom Cruise - Tropic Thunder
Robert Downey Jr. - Tropic Thunder
Ralph Fiennes - The Duchess
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Doubt
Heath Ledger - The Dark Knight

BEST DIRECTOR - MOTION PICTURE
Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire
Stephen Daldry - The Reader
David Fincher - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Ron Howard - Frost/Nixon
Sam Mendes - Revolutionary Road

BEST SCREENPLAY - MOTION PICTURE
Simon Beaufoy - Slumdog Millionaire
David Hare - The Reader
Peter Morgan - Frost/Nixon
Eric Roth - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
John Patrick Shanley - Doubt

BEST ORIGINAL SCORE - MOTION PICTURE
Alexandre Desplate - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Clint Eastwood - Changeling
James Newton Howard - Defiance
A.R. Rahman - Slumdog Millionaire
Hans Zimmer - Frost/Nixon

BEST ORIGINAL SONG - MOTION PICTURE
"Down to Earth" - WALL•E
Music by: Peter Gabriel, Thomas Newman
Lyrics by: Peter Gabriel
"Gran Torino" - Gran Torino
Music by: Clint Eastwood, Jamie Cullum, Kyle Eastwood, Michael Stevens
Lyrics by: Kyle Eastwood, Michael Stevens
"I Thought I Lost You" - Bolt
Music & Lyrics by: Miley Cyrus, Jeffrey Steele
"Once in a Lifetime" - Cadillac Records
"The Wrestler" - The Wrestler

BEST TELEVISION SERIES - DRAMA
"Dexter" (Showtime)
"House" (Fox)
"In Treatment" (HBO)
"Mad Men" (AMC)
"True Blood" (HBO)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION SERIES - DRAMA
Sally Field - "Brothers & Sisters"
Mariska Hargitay - "Law & Order: Special Victims"
January Jones - "Mad Men"
Anna Paquin - "True Blood"
Kyra Sedgwick - "The Closer"

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A TELEVISION SERIES - DRAMA
Gabriel Byrne - "In Treatment"
Michael C. Hall - "Dexter"
John Hamm - "Mad Men"
Hugh Laurie - "House"
Jonathan Rhys Meyers - "The Tudors"

BEST TELEVISION SERIES - COMEDY OR MUSICAL
"30 Rock" (NBC)
"Californication" (Showtime)
"Entourage" (HBO)
"The Office" (NBC)
"Weeds" (Showtime)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A TELEVISION SERIES - COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Christian Applegate - "Samantha Who?"
America Ferrera - "Ugly Betty"
Tina Fey - "30 Rock"
Debra Messing - "The Starter Wife"
Mary-Louise Parker - "Weeds"

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A TELEVISION SERIES - COMEDY OR MUSICAL
Alec Baldwin - "30 Rock"
Steve Carell - "The Office"
Kevin Connolly - "Entourage"
David Duchovny - "Californication"
Tony Shalhoub - "Monk"

BEST MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION
"A Raisin in the Sun" (ABC)
"Bernard and Doris" (HBO)
"Cranford" (PBS)
"John Adams" (HBO)
"Recount" (HBO)

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Judi Dench - "Cranford"
Catherine Keener - "An American Crime"
Laura Linney - "John Adam"
Shirley MacLaine - "Coco Chanel"
Susan Sarandon - "Bernard and Doris"

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Ralph Fiennes - "Bernard and Doris"
Paul Giamatti - "John Adams"
Kevin Spacey - "Recount"
Keifer Sutherland - "24: Redemption"
Tom Wilkinson - "Recount"

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A SERIES, MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Eileen Atkins - "Cranford"
Laura Dern - "Recount"
Melissa George - "In Treatment"
Rachel Griffiths - "Brothers & Sisters"
Dianne Wiest - "In Treatment"

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A SERIES, MINI-SERIES OR MOTION PICTURE MADE FOR TELEVISION
Neil Patrick Harris - "How I Met Your Mother"
Denis Leary - "Recount"
Jeremy Piven - "Entourage"
Blair Underwood - "In Treatment"
Tom Wilkinson - "John Adams"

Cast: Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Tilda Swinton

Director: David Fincher

Screenplay: Eric Roth

Running time: 2 hrs 47 mins

Genre: Drama



CRITIQUE:

Of David Fincher’s new magnum opus’s nearly three-hour running time, there is a moment when The Curious Case of Benjamin Button studies a ‘what-if’ theory, a deconstruction of a series of events where the most miniature details have a significant ramification of a whole outcome. Devastating that may be to a character, this is perhaps where the film unpeels its core – an ebullient, if not philosophically befuddling, meditation on the passing of time and the clockwork of destiny. To note also that this scene is set in Paris, it is worthy of a Jean-
Pierre Jeunet.


And what a gorgeous picture this is. The murky, earthy visual palette of Fincher in his previous works Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac has been replaced with an elegant dark beauty, golden-hued in its flashbacks sequences, chronicling the titular characters growing-down, and cold and greyish in Daisy’s deathbed whilst a hurricane Katrina rages outside. From a director whose common filmic diet is the gloomy side of humanity, he nevertheless paints his picture with elements of death, devastation and the cruel vistas of fate. Yet he tells this in such a poetic visual eloquence; the reverse playback of soldiers in an explosive battlefield, Benjamin’s encounter of a hummingbird, Daisy’s ballet dance in the shadows and a constant narrating of an ageing character’s thunder-strike episodes in an antique ocular fashion. These enigmatically captivating moments are laid within an equally, enigmatically flawed film.


That central enigma is Benjamin Button, a man who ages backwards, born as a shrivelled, wrinkled old creature and grows into his youthful adolescence, where Brad Pitt looks startlingly young, way younger than one would recall him in Legends of the Fall. If that doesn’t make sense, so was the origin material, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story which was also ridden with logic impasse. Resembling little from its paper source, many details were tweaked for cinematic purposes for a lengthy film that spans decades. Fincher does not rush towards Button’s dazzling arrival of his ‘perfect’ age, as Cate Blanchett’s Daisy puts it. Instead he carefully glides this tale through Button’s wizened life in the care home where death is as natural as a dying plant, and through his shipman’s affair with an English aristocrat’s wife (an excellent Tilda Swinton), dawn rendezvous in a hotel kitchen where love is swift and unspoken. It all crosses epochs, the two World Wars, and even the contemporary disaster of Katrina in the New Orleans, it sustains an epic proportion of its own.


Both leads, Pitt and Blanchett, are impressive in their roles, both traversing through different stages of life and age, assisted with flawless CGI and prosthetics. Their performances shine through this dark tale. Pitt is a reserved, sympathetic figure who has conceded to his oddity. And there’s something extremely sad to his Benjamin, a solitary human who grows younger while watching everyone around the world die. It takes a lot of subtlety for an actor as underrated as Pitt, and he gives it here. He is, without a doubt, one of Hollywood’s best working actors. Unsurprisingly for Blanchett, she delivers her Daisy with panache, a woman impelled to realise that time is the bitter adversary of love. And for a film that has constraints in logic, sometimes it’s rather better to accept its fantastical premise and let it awash your senses, for there are deeper meanings here worth the immersion.


VERDICT:

This profound reflection on the passing of life works like a mesmerising dream. But although handsome as the film may be, with beautiful performances and a tender storytelling, this epic leaves us philosophically mystified rather than gloriously swept.



RATING: A-

Cast: Mickey Rourke, Marisa Tomei, Evan Rachel Wood

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Screenplay: Darren Aronofsky

Running time: 1 hr 45 mins

Genre: Drama



CRITIQUE:

Films that encircle the boxing rink have Raging Bull, Rocky and Cinderella Man. In the rarely explored arena of wrestling, perhaps due to the fact that this is fraudulent, pathetic exploitation of violence for the sake of entertainment and screamfest glee, we have now Darren Aronofsky’s genuinely affecting The Wrestler. Lay down your guards, this is not a clichéd underdog-goes-soaring-champ via Rocky Balboa, but is seriously pulled down to a very human level without pretensions and flashy cinematography, or even slow-motions when an opponent smashes somebody else’s face. The tale centres on Randy “The Ram” Robinson (played to an astonishing conviction by Mickey Rourke), who is a fading star, an ageing wrestler whom after decades of fame, shown in a series of paper cut-outs in the title montage, he lives a rather bleak life. It’s a quiet evocation of loneliness, a man stripped from the only job he loves doing, and exist in doing. As soon as we see him, through documentary hand-held camerawork, we feel the realism of his character without entirely being manipulative; living in a trailer park, courting an equally-ageing stripper (a subtle performance by Marisa Tomei) and working in behind a meat counter as his other job. Whilst these all feel conventional, the film really triumphs in wrestling scenes.


Ironic to the sport which is known to be a gaudy, garish celebration of glam-rock costumes, circus-like makeup and preposterously created stage monikers, this film is free from the artifice. Those behind the gaping wounds, blood and swelling muscles are deliberate manoeuvres designed to calibrate a form of entertainment. And yes, it is violent at times, as the camera prods us closer to the physical wounds of the wrestlers; one shows Rourke in a backroom sequence where he just emerged from a fight involving broken glasses and barbed wires. It’s both a physical and emotional performance for Rourke, as the tale swings into redemption mood, where he reconnects with an embittered daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) he abandoned years ago. There are moment when it feels like treading a familiar ground, and sometimes flirt with melodramatic sentimentality, but Aronofsky pulls back, and he makes sure that he hammers home the cruel, heartbreaking message of his film – that there are people out there who are fixated to something they only know doing. Without it, they couldn’t function as a whole. To wit with Rourke’s line: “I only get hurt out there.” Physical wounds are nothing compared deep emotional scars.


VERDICT:

The Wrestler is that rare intimate, compassionate picture. A violent, bloody sport film overshadowed by more painful pangs of loneliness and self-destruction, nailed to a calibre of a performance by Mickey Rourke, both to sheer physicality and deep emotionality.



RATING: A-

Cast: Kate Winslet, Leonardo DiCaprio

Director: Sam Mendes

Screenplay: Justin Haythe

Running time: 2 hrs

Genre: Drama



CRITIQUE:

Sam Mendes, the bold genius behind the Oscar-winning American Beauty, has already been familiar of the neatly trimmed hedges of Americana suburbia encircling wonderfully white houses peopled with business suit-clad husbands, tidy wives and cheerful children – yes, that picture you see in breakfast cereal ads. He advocated that beneath the comfy, postcard-perfect picture are actually unfulfilled lives, crumbling relationships and desperate souls being repressed. Now, he reunites Titanic supernovas Leonardo DiCapri and Kate Winslet (the director’s wife) into the screen with a concept and anticipates a collision of stars. Revolutionary Road turns out to be a retread.


There’s no denying that this is a bold, blustery picture of a husband and wife battling it down bourgeois suburban lane. Seen in the first reel, we get past their courtship all too quickly and then cut to their bleak lives in almost endless verbal shouting matches. The talents of the lead here ignite and they convince us of the plausibility of their characters, Frank and April Wheeler (DiCaprio and Winslet respectively), who are both stuck with their mid-life crisis, the conformity of their marriage that they barely understand themselves. As April’s suggestion to relocate to Paris, a folly it may be, seems the only thing that would save their relationship, but to Frank’s dithering twat of a husband behaves careless and easily pulled into orthodox existence. Which lead us to sympathise more on Winslet’s April, this five-time Oscar-nominated actress draw a depressed idealist whose walls around her squash her spirits to a point where she makes a decision that results in devastating consequences, a decision to which we somehow nod in agreement. This is a level of a performance that should be seen and felt. DiCaprio, however, is too talented, too compelling for the role a maladroit husband, a boring slipshod of a business worker who cannot take a risk. And both are in a film that tries to say something about marriage, life and the ripples of our decisions – but after American Beauty, and also The Hours and Little Children, the message arrives wrapped in a cliché. Except for that psychologically disturbed character who rants at the couple, he actually might have been the one revealing the truth in this film.


VERDICT:

Sharpened to a magnitude of a performance by Winslet, Revolutionary Road is an adequate picture, albeit an all-too familiar one. This suburban lane needs a lot more than Sam Mendes to revitalise it.



RATING: B-

Cast: Dave Patel, Freida Pinto

Director: Danny Boyle

Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy

Running time: 2 hrs

Genre: Drama



CRITIQUE:

You know when you watch a certain film, you emerge out in such a light-hearted mood as though your feet had suddenly grown wings – this is the after-effect of Slumdog Millionaire, and watching it is a joyous experience. Let us admit; Danny Boyle has given us great films before, 28 Days Later, Millions, Sunshine and the druggy caper Trainspotting. Arguably, Trainspotting is widely considered his best, but it gathered cult status rather than classic. But never has he spread his artistic wings much wider than in Slumdog Millionaire, penetrating his camera through the slums of India in such vivid, vibrant details that make his framework giddily alive. The chase through the slums, streets and sewers during a childhood flashback of Jamal are relentlessly shot, captured in such sheer vitality. It is extraordinary. This is one of the best showcasing of editing skills in 2008.


The tale of a 20-year old participant of the Indian Who Wants to be a Millionaire gameshow is not entirely a novel, but it is a material taken with an imaginative vision, parlaying a simple tale about one’s fight for the immortal themes of life, truth and love. We soon realise that Jamal is not after the money, but to win back the girl he loves. The secret here is that Boyle does not intellectualise the story, but instead tells it as though unravelling a past with thrills and heartbreaks. The underdog formula captivating a whole nation’s attention is shown here, but when we learn about Jamal’s experiences of the answers, it is very moving. That we learn to distinguish knowledge from wisdom as we traverse through life’s experiences. The childhood vignettes, from the riotous start to the railway escapades and to Taj Mahal tourist guide antics, it manages to be humorous and subsequently painful and passionate.



VERDICT:

Boyle at his career-best. Slumdog Millionaire may be the film you’ve been dying to watch all year, an exuberant, rapturous paean to the power of cinema – that beneath its gameshow shell is actually a magnificent homage to childhood, adversity, life and love.



RATING: A+