Cast: Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, Justin Long

Director: Kevin Smith

Screenplay: Kevin Smith

Running time: 1 hr 41 mins

Genre: Comedy/Romance



CRITIQUE:


With the influx of crude comedies with warm, mushy centres, i.e. the inbred repertoire of Judd Apatow in The 40-Year Old Virgin, Knocked Up and Superbad – that solidified his name as the new king of slacker movies – one-time ruler of this oft-fanaticised domain is Kevin Smith, who had perhaps realised his throne had been robbed, and planned to make When Harry Met Sally in smutty steroids. The title itself is what fanboys wet-dreams are made of, one that surely catalyse a commotion at the board of censors (its first poster had been banned from public, and enforced the makers to design a rather minimalistic but hilarious pencil-drawn cartoons instead). But for all its making, for a film that scream of smuttiness and sexual perversity, it downsizes to just being averagely playful without the amount of skin exposure you’d expect in a common porno movie. It’s not also When Harry Met Sally, missing the intelligence, resulting scatterbrained. Seth Rogen, with his loser charisma, and Elizabeth Banks, with a goofy gameness, are best of friends who live together and are so skint they couldn’t afford to pay their water and electric bills that their last desperate option is to make a home-video porn. The dirty moviemaking rarely takes off, which the supposed comedy should come from, except for a crass scene where actors pretend wooden acting, Banks squealing “Give me your milk!” The trash dialogue potentially ignites, but the potential explosion goes off mutedly. It’s when the film tries to be serious, best friends who happen to be in love together, that it simmers in a muddle of icky goo.


VERDICT:

Stilted fun, if not foul-mouthed jabbering, Kevin Smith should have just made Zack and Miri a film on its own and Make a Porno another. He’ll probably recognise which one could reclaim his comedy mojo.



RATING: C

Cast: Bette Davis, Henry Fonda

Director: William Wyler

Screenplay: Clements Ripley

Running time: 1 hr 45 mins

Genre: Drama/Romance



CRITIQUE:


It’s easy to mistake Jezebel from Gone with the Wind, because after all, both are filmic cousins, sharing almost identical narrative strands and convoluted history behind the making. Parallels exist therein, both set in the Southern Americana around the age of Civil War, both featuring impulsive heroines and reluctant, will-or-won’t-they romances, but whereupon Gone with the Wind is a lavish Technicolor vista, Jezebel is shot in black-and-white. Of course, the former descends into one of the most enduring classics of all-time, the latter is essentially a character-driven film, perhaps explaining its lesser mass appeal. Nevertheless, it is an incredible film primarily because of Bette Davis’s presence, unarguably the finest actress in the Hollywood Studio era. Worth noting especially is that it was released a year before GWTW, after a relentless studio battle, with Davis contemptuously stamping down her starpower, a diva of all sorts, who was originally slated to star as Scarlett O’Hara with Errol Flynn as Rhett Butler, but Davis refused Flynn’s leading man capabilities and demanded Warner Bros. to tailor her own piece. The result is Davis’s well-deserved second Oscar triumph. This superlative, incendiary performances is what classic Hollywood performances are made of, that recent stars could only dream of pulling off – her Jezebel is a heady, vain, selfish, magnificently free-spirited creature that defies any masculine domination, deciding to go horse-back riding on her engagement party just because she likes to, wearing a red dress to a ceremonial society ball (where a strict code requires all women to wear white) just because her fiancée didn’t turn up in her dress-fitting. Davis draws this character in an officious whisk, and spins her character arcs as swift as a heartbeat yet never denying her depth: that scene alone when she meets again her ex- fiancée with a new wife, her batting of her eyelids, her penetrating look as she stares from her man to his wife is an incredibly wordless yet measured performance. This story about love, loss and redemption feels fresh in the late 1930s, so when Jezebel pleads to perform her final act of self-redemption, she loses selfishness and greed and learns self-sacrificing love. What could have been an aww-moment, William Wyler, before unleashing galloping horses and Biblical epic of Ben-Hur, consolidates the final scenes in a resonant, powerful closure.


VERDICT:

Not exactly as exquisite, grandiose, sweeping piece like its cinematic sister Gone with the Wind, but it’s Bette Davis and her incredible megawatt performance that makes Jezebel an astounding one-actor’s show.



RATING: A-

#10. HAPPY-GO-LUCKY - Dir Mike Leigh, UK

A simple tale of a London schoolteacher (possibly nutcase) trying to make everyone around her happy. The poignant core of this film is Poppy's philosophical reason of her behaviour; there's no dark past behind her, but her character makes us question ourselves what happiness really means. This is an offbeat, uplifting comedy from a filmmaker whose movies are about depressing human situations. Once you peer through its everyday-event plotting, you’ll see a genuine socio-realist commentary and a blast of energy in the central character that would challenge a gallon of Lucozade. We wish we could face life's tribulations with a smile, Poppy-style. A British gem with a bravura, heartwarming performance by Sally Hawkins.

#9. WALTZ WITH BASHIR - Dir Ari Folman, Israel

Perhaps no other medium but graphic animation would pay tremendous respect to such the complex, psychologically haunting material of Waltz with Bashir. Just behind Wall-E for being the best animated pic of the year, and also the first ever animated-documentary in celluloid, this tackles adult moral issues of war, trauma, memory and humanity. 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. Critically lauded, and all rightfully deserved.

#8. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON - Dir David Fincher, USA

Some people brand it 'the new Forrest Gump'. Some call it that odd old-fart's film. And for some, it's that unfair cinematic surgery of Brad Pitt growing backwards. But call it what suits your fancy, this films looks as gorgeous as its two leads, beautifully captured with visual effects that breaks new ground, see the perfectly engineered de-aging of its central character. The conceit of this dark fairy tale is about a man born as a pensioner and grows reverse to a tot. It is a profound reflection on the passing of life, and Button works like a mesmerising dream. The 'what-if' theory deconstruction, the clockwork reverse war scene, the episodes in a Russian hotel - the film is handsomely built with a tender storytelling. And the tragedy at its core is that time is love's greatest arch-enemy. Philosophically befuddling but deeply allegorical. Fincher may have done his best film since Fight Club and Se7en, with a compellingly reserved and passive Brad Pitt as Button.

#7. CHANGELING - Dir Clint Eastwood, USA

Eastwood's child-abduction period drama Changeling strikes a nerve to a mother's greatest fear: losing a child. This compound, multi-faceted tale might just stand along the likes of LA Confidential and Chinatown for being a compelling critique on the City of Angel's corrupted past. Here Eastwood tailors a classical Hollywood storytelling, the picture evolving from a high-strung investigative crime film to a chilling weird-child thriller, to a loony-bin flick, to a gripping noir and to a court drama - then finally a weepfest where a distraught Angelina Jolie sobs her way to Oscar nomination, screaming "Where is my son?" for about 50 times. But Jolie is a tour-de-force, she is the nucleus, the beating pulse of this tale and draws a convincing, compassionate portrait of grieving mother forced to fight for social justice. Eastwood, at 76, is just getting better and better. Changeling is fiercely unforgettable.

#6. LET THE RIGHT ONE IN - Dir Thomas Alfredson, Sweden

Whilst Twilight secures its place in the hearts of the high-strung tweens and into the pockets of Hollywood cash-cows, Let the Right One In may have entered the tight list as one of the very best vampire films ever made. Seriously. Now you decide which position is better. The invisible magic trick pulled off here is gloomy realism, that despite of its fantastic and familiar premise (boy-next-door falls in love with new girl in town, who happens to be a bloodsucker of the night), it capably eschews nosferatu-film cliches and brings us a council-estate vampire romance that is actually more than what it pretends to be. This is a wisely created film that injects a much-needed intelligent storytelling to a genre that’s losing its own blood. The visuals are superb (the falling of snow in a dead night is ominously poetic) and the tale works as an eerie fable, chilling and darkly elegiac. It's up there with Pan's Labyrinth as a sinister hymn to lost adolescence, and the pangs of young, impossible love that is studied with tenderness and without on-your-face sentimentality. It has also one the most heartwarming, albeit bloody, ending you'll see whole year.

#5. THE WRESTLER - Dir Darren Aronofsky, USA

You've got to hand it to Aronofsky for crafting The Wrestler as that rare intimate, compassionate picture. He sheds pretentiousness and goes gritty and cinema verite on us, making his camera as a raw medium, a witness to the unfolding portrait of this wretched human being. For a sport that rarely requires sympathy, The Wrestler injects such a burgeoning humanity that one would be heartless not to pay respect to this fetishistic, exploitation of violence. But its sole entertainer, Mickey Rourke redeems himself as an actor, and this is his redemption film. It is a calibre of a performance, both to sheer physicality (the bruises, the hormone drugs, the buffed-up bod) and deep emotionality. His physical are nothing compared to the bruises inside him. A violent, bloody sport film overshadowed by more painful pangs of loneliness and self-destruction. It is almost inhuman not to award Rourke an acting prize.

#4. WALL-E - Dir Andrew Stanton, USA

This is Finding Nemo surpassed. The most ambitious animated film of all time plainly because it is not really just for kids. Pixar's Golden Age is at it pinnacle here, from Toy Story to Nemo to Ratatouille, they're serving up contemporary masterpieces, and Wall-E is nothing short but Kubrickian in status. For its sheer boldness and audacity, its first hour runs without a dialogue, working almost like a throwback to the silent era, opening in a bleak sci-fi dystopian vision with a Hello, Dolly track - it's a plunger into a terra firma where only five-year-olds with 150 intelligence quotient would get. But the most wonderful creation is the Woody-Allen-esque interplay between the loner lad of Wall-E and the sophisticated gal of Eve. Traditional romanticism ensues, and the picture blossoms in many things at once: a visual art feast, an engrossing sci-fi, an ambitious animation, an ecological forewarning, and above all – a moving, charming, timeless love story of two robots with a touch of humanity. This is cinematic bliss.

#3. THE DARK KNIGHT - Dir Christopher Nolan, USA

One of the most staggering cinematic forces of the year. Here is a contemporary film that draws the elements of a superior motion picture: the moral questions of humanity, the internal struggle of psyche, the consequence of choice, the challenge of chance, and the vital blurring of lines between what is really good and evil. The Dark Knight enters a threshold in which superhero movies have rarely ventured before - for in these dark waters lie the beast of realism, the ominous surface where neither heroes nor villains exist, but only tragic human figures. Perhaps one of the most quotable films in history, this is undoubtedly the finest superhero movie entirely because it is not a superhero movie: it is a staggering crime epic and an exceptional film noir with a complex, haunting tale of morality and human tragedies with Shakespearean resonance. Heath Ledger's The Joker is an colossal force of nature. Hail The Godfather of comic-book adaptations. It also boasts one of the most superb cinematography of the year.

#2. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE - Dir Danny Boyle, UK

The ultimate reason why Slumdog Millionaire is such a triumphantly effective film is that it never rigorously intellectualise its central message. At its best, it delivers its blissful core by ramming home a ubiquitous tale of an underdog fighting for what he believes in, and that is rare in this greedy, lusty world. The result is a celebration to life, love and adversity and packs it all in a tightly-wrapped power of poignancy. It is Dickensian in proportions, Jamal is the Oliver Twist in the streets of Mumbai, and his childhood affection for Latika is his Great Expectations, and these are all sewn in pitch-perfect practicality. Boyle relentlessly showcases an extraordinary cinematography, roving his camera in such a vibrant, vivid rush around the poverty-stricken India, the chase through the slums, railways and sewers make for a moving childhood backdrop to life's greatest answers to questions, and that is experience. 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.

#1. HUNGER - Dir Steve McQueen, UK

A controversial choice for 2008's finest film - but Hunger, judging from its one-word title, is big, bold and blustery. It is also a film of almost wordless beauty. It is a kind of filmmaking that would leave audience dumbfounded, cinephiles pulse racing, poets breathless and visual artists ignited. In short, this is too-independent, too-arty, too-psychologically and too-philosophically befuddling for Oscar taste. This is a cinematic achievement in its own right; unflinchingly brutal and disarmingly human – a rare event for the British contemporary cinema that is visually stylised yet at the same time hauntingly real. At this crossroad, where British cinema is swarmed with socialist dramas, here lies a passage of transformation that a contemporary piece such as this can be elevated as a work of art. It proves that the silence has the power that words cannot express fully, exemplified in its wordless scenes with guttural visual poetics: the excrement-smeared prison walls, the urine-washed cell corridors, and the shocking corpse-like bodies of its inmates. Then it burst forth a dramatic flood of words at the middle-half of the film, a notable aspect in which it manages to say a lot about serious issues of politics, religion, humanity, life and death by showing very little. Stunningly exemplified in a static camera shot, 24-minute talk-a-thon, showing a dialogue interplay between the hunger-striker Bobby Sands and the priest. Hunger is the year’s most harrowing, most startling, most visually astounding experience. It's also a minimalist work of art, consolidated by McQueen’s passionate direction and Fassbender’s stalwart, ferocious performance.

Catch you all again soon, next year. Rocknrolla, 2009.

The Moviejerk (c) J.S.Datinguinoo

Cast: Jack Lemmon, Tony Curtis, Marilyn Monroe

Director: Billy Wilder

Screenplay: Billy Wilder

Running time: 2 hrs 7 mins

Genre: Comedy



CRITIQUE:


This 1959 broad farce of cross-dressing, men slipping into women’s upholsteries and heels, shrieks rather liltingly a material that could have been the Wayan brothers’ source document for their grotesquely dreadful White Chicks – so how could Some Like It Hot get away with it and end up as American Film Institute’s Best Comedy of All-Time? The secret is that this picture is calibrated into pitch-perfect panache, flirting with naughtiness but never treads into gross grounds, and winding its comedy into high-level hilarity. Way ahead of its time, this story of two red-blooded Jazz musicians compelled to dress up as women and join an all-girls band after witnessing a Chicago murder, it mixes a heady cocktail of noir, crime film ingredients of guns and gangsters, then sizzles with sparkling wittiness when Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon get into their drag-queen gears. The result is startlingly funny, as they stumble from one situation to another; the sequence in the train is incredibly well-timed, the gags in the hotel are classic setpieces of sophisticated yet at the same time riotous humour. The identities shift from one shade to another, as Curtis pretends to be ‘Shell Oil Jr.’, the wistful, rich nerd who makes Marilyn Monroe’s eyes shimmer and heart glowing with swept romance. Of course, these two lads in their kohls and matte-make up are no match for the 50’s sex goddess Marilyn Monroe, who is exquisitely well-cast as the adorable loony, aptly named Sugar Kowalczyck, having a soft spot for saxophone players, but the lads make it their show. The clicking of heels, the sharpening of their voices, and the swagger in their hips are legendary. The expressions on Jack Lemmon’s face and his banters are forms of classic acting skills.


VERDICT:

It takes a lofty concept to surpass the hilarious, comedic genius of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot. This is just purely, tummy-cramping comedy extraordinaire.



RATING: A+

Cast: Toshiro Mifune

Director: Akira Kurosawa

Screenplay: Shonibo Hashimoto

Running time: 1 hr 50 mins

Genre: Action/Drama/War



CRITIQUE:


From the classical tragedies of the Greek, to the rise and fall of empires, it has taught us that the greatest frailty of man is the lust for power. Shakespeare’s Macbeth tells us the same. There is another lasting belief of tragedy, adapting a Shakespearean play to screen may be an act of cinematic hubris. Rarely does his eloquent verses, no matter how magnificent they are, works well in the silverscreen. But none the naysayer, Akira Kurosawa translates Macbeth into screen with masterful techniques, making Throne of Blood possibly the most superbly-crafted Shakespearean cinematic adaptation. Just three years breaking new grounds with the epic-actioner Seven Samurai, Kurosawa pushes his art further, crafting a rhythmically consistent, well-paced, mood piece of filmmaking and transforms the complexity of Shakespeare’s language into a filmic expression, minimalist in a way, hence effectively polishing a fluid narrative. Perhaps the ultimate sleight-of-hand is that Kurosawa revises the English category and uproots it into the rich Japanese culture of swords and samurais and codes and honour. Even the dialogues feel intense and cinematic.


For all its glorious theatricality, it serves a material that studies the greedy nature of man for power and position, where Washizu (brilliantly played by Seven Samurai’s Toshiro Mifune) is bewildered between fate and choice after being predicted to become the master of Cobweb Castle by an oracle in the forest. Betrayal ensues and friendships are broken, this doomed supremacy-hungry protagonist is coaxed by a cold, manipulative wife to seize opportunity, which leads to a tragic comeuppance in a deliriously, dazzlingly staged finale, the march of the Cobweb Forest and the death of Washizu by ruthless arrowmen in the tower. That is to say, the spirit of Shakespeare remains, but it’s Kurosawa painting his canvas with dark contrasts, striking images of such elevated art – the mist swirling in the mountains, the rain-lashed forest hunt, the apparition of the oracle, and Lady Asaji’s ominous emergence from the dark shadow – are all visually inspired and poetic. If one notices, the battle scenes are briefly shot, parade of men, cavalcade of horses, an army in a field, and keeps coming back to Washizu and his personal hell, that is, to highlight the central character in his journey to tragedy.


VERDICT:

Kurosawa reclaims his place as a master of epic proportions and visual artistry in Throne of Blood, a spectacular, rock-solid cinematic work that is up there as possibly the finest Shakespearean screen reimagining.



RATING: A+

Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Jean Sorel

Director: Louis Buñuel

Screenplay: Louis Buñuel

Running time: 1 hr 40 mins

Genre: French Film/Drama



CRITIQUE:


For a film that circles around impassioned eroticism, it’s strange, if not astonishing, to find Belle De Jour sexually tactful. That point, nevertheless, is not a flaw of the film but rather a subtle audience manipulation. Luis Buñuel, the renowned Spanish surrealist auteur, whose filmic oeuvre consist of sexual liaisons, fantasies, surrealist escapes, and out-of-this-world foibles, holds back the exploitative nature of this tale by not showing everything, but flirts around innuendos. This story of an attractive but bored housewife Severine, who’s sexually aloof and never sleeps with his casually handsome surgeon husband, is an egregiously sordid affair as she spends her freewheeling days in masochistic daydreams (the opener exhibits one of her fantasies, being tied and whipped by coach drivers in the presence of her husband after a languid afternoon coach ride) and becomes a daytime prostitute in an elegantly set-up bourgeoisie whorehouse. There are almost rabble-rousingly erotic scenes of Severine being roughly manhandled, a professor who prefers to be dominated, and a day-job of being the central object of a necrophile, which is the character of Duke aroused by the sight of corpses. Whilst objectively black, Buñuel doesn’t make these scenes crass exploitations but sidesteps sexual explicitness and makes importance of audience imagination. This element is central to Belle De Jour, where reality and fantasy collide with each other, shifting from Severine’s real sex-capades to her fantasies, from her carnal desires to the telling of her heart. Thanks then to Catherine Deneuve’s incredible performance, giving Severine a slice of sophistication and class. This French cinematic icon, impeccably dressed by Yves Saint Laurent, is not only gorgeously beatific, but also remarkably delivers a detached, icy wife whose inner desires baffles even her own psychology. The way she remains unmoving after being slapped into bed, her reluctance outside the Manais building, and her cool, effortless self-control as she walks into a room for sex are testaments to the versatility of this actress.


VERDICT:

Belle De Jour skirts around a potentially pornographic topic of masochistic sex, but remains tact, ingenious film of propositions. It is effective because it shows yet never tells – the secret of Buñuel’s mesmerising study into self-discovery that plays with our subconscious.



RATING: A-

Cast: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt

Director: Robert Wiene

Screenplay: Hans Janowitz

Running time: 1 hr 31 mins

Genre: Horror/Suspense



CRITIQUE:


German expressionist films are like cinematic Marmite – it’s either up to your taste, or dreadfully loathes it. But whether you like the 1919 art-oddity that is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or not, there’s no denying its ripples in the horror genre just as what Fritz Lang’s Metropolis did to contemporary sci-fi. From the cinema of Tim Burton to Terry Gilliam, from Nosferatu to Frankenstein and even Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, this Gothic masterclass innovation has an influential status in world cinema with its peculiarly psychedelic sets, dark, contrasty picture, and the air of dread. This highly creepy tale of a fairground showman-cum-psychiatry-doctor, the titular Dr. Caligari, who hypnotise Cesare, a somnambulist by day, murderer by night, feels like a nightmarish landscape of faraway stories you here around a campfire, but all is not what it seems. The unusually painted sets, distorted lines, warped shapes, sharp angles, create an illusion of a jagged hyper-reality rarely seen in cinema, even in the weirdest films you’ve ever seen. Wiene established an off-kilter, canted world, and tints his black-and-white picture with sepia-amber for interior and fairground scenes, rosy pink for dramatic echoes, and bluish for night-time events. The results are unforgettable images, both distracting and disturbing, with the actors’ ghostly, heavy make-up offset by the set’s lingeringly ominous mood. A silent film, one has to put up reading narrative templates and as an early film, it is flawed as it can be, but that’s ignoring the fact that is such a superb kickstart of a sinister genre, where nothing is what it seems – the psychotic horror-dramas of our time, with that killer twist at the end.


VERDICT:

Along with Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and M, Wiene’s shadowy masterpiece is a disconcerting affair with the dark, and truly an apotheosis of the German Expressionist cinematic movement.



RATING: A

Cast: Robert Donat, Madeleine Carroll

Director: Alfred Hitchcock

Screenplay: Charles Bennett

Running time: 1 hr 26 mins

Genre: Action/Adventure/Thriller



CRITIQUE:


Consider this: without Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps – thrillers like Minority Report, Enemy of the State, or perhaps the Bourne movies could have been lesser realised. One of his first British films made in the 1930s, it is still an exhilaratingly executed piece of thriller that was way ahead of its time. This plot of mistaken identity has been replicated countless of times in staple Hollywood man-on-the-run thrillers, whilst blending suspense, espionage elements, and comedy, as Robert Donat’s charismatic main man crosses the country from London to the Scottish Highlands to solve the mystery of the titular ‘steps’ after being framed for murder. Hitchcock shows his trademark elements here, deft camerawork, and reveals his fetish for blonde women, clearly having fun showing off that sexually suggestive scene of Pamela and Hannay in handcuffs, whilst she takes off her stockings. This pair also had one of the best couple banters in cinematic history, bickering with each other in wonderfully comic lines.


VERDICT:

Hitchcock in his early best, this is entertaining, rollicking fun. Seminal, The 39 Steps builds a solid foundation for the thrillers of the modern age.


RATING: A

#10. AUSTRALIA - Dir Baz Lhurmann, Australia

There will always be the most misunderstood film of the year. Australia hits the panel. Groans due to its butt-numbing longueur, criticised due to its thematic unevenness, this part-Western, part-romance, part-war-film, part-aborigine walkabout  - is indeed a capricious beast of a movie, but Australia boasts a breed of filmmaking that one has to be a mad fool making it nowadays. Such the ambitious folly of Lhurmann to capture a ravishingly beautiful panorama with such astonishing scope and radiant performances. This is Lhurmann’s homage to the dying breed of Westerns and the Golden Age epic filmmaking. Flawed, overwrought, but there's no denying its picture quality. The problem is not the movie, but the mainstream audience, who are mostly cynical at this day and age (or perhaps the short attention span). It may not be a classic - but it's a damn good joyride.

#9. HAPPY-GO-LUCKY - Dir Mike Leigh, UK

A simple tale of a London schoolteacher (possibly nutcase) trying to make everyone around her happy. The poignant core of this film is Poppy's philosophical reason of her behaviour; there's no dark past behind her, but her character makes us question ourselves what happiness really means. This is an offbeat, uplifting comedy from a filmmaker whose movies are about depressing human situations. Once you peer through its everyday-event plotting, you’ll see a genuine socio-realist commentary and a blast of energy in the central character that would challenge a gallon of Lucozade. We wish we could face life's tribulations with a smile, Poppy-style. A British gem with a bravura, heartwarming performance by Sally Hawkins.

#8. WALTZ WITH BASHIR - Dir Ari Folman, Israel

Perhaps no other medium but graphic animation would pay tremendous respect to such the complex, psychologically haunting material of Waltz with Bashir. Just behind Wall-E for being the best animated pic of the year, and also the first ever animated-documentary in celluloid, this tackles adult moral issues of war, trauma, memory and humanity. 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. Critically lauded, and all rightfully deserved.

#7. THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON - Dir David Fincher, USA

Some people brand it 'the new Forrest Gump'. Some call it that odd old-fart's film. And for some, it's that unfair cinematic surgery of Brad Pitt growing backwards. But call it what suits your fancy, this films looks as gorgeous as its two leads, beautifully captured with visual effects that breaks new ground, see the perfectly engineered de-aging of its central character. The conceit of this dark fairy tale is about a man born as a pensioner and grows reverse to a tot. It is a profound reflection on the passing of life, and Button works like a mesmerising dream. The 'what-if' theory deconstruction, the clockwork reverse war scene, the episodes in a Russian hotel - the film is handsomely built with a tender storytelling. And the tragedy at its core is that time is love's greatest arch-enemy. Philosophically befuddling but deeply allegorical. Fincher may have done his best film since Fight Club and Se7en, with a compellingly reserved and passive Brad Pitt as Button.

#6. CHANGELING - Dir Clint Eastwood, USA

Eastwood's child-abduction period drama Changeling strikes a nerve to a mother's greatest fear: losing a child. This compound, multi-faceted tale might just stand along the likes of LA Confidential and Chinatown for being a compelling critique on the City of Angel's corrupted past. Here Eastwood tailors a classical Hollywood storytelling, the picture evolving from a high-strung investigative crime film to a chilling weird-child thriller, to a mental hospital flick, to a gripping noir and to a court drama - then finally a weepfest where a distraught Angelina Jolie sobs her way to Oscar nomination, screaming "Where is my son?" for about 50 times. But Jolie is a tour-de-force, she is the nucleus, the beating pulse of this tale and draws a convincing, compassionate portrait of grieving mother forced to fight for social justice. Eastwood, at 76, is just getting better and better. Changeling is fiercely unforgettable.

#5. THE WRESTLER - Dir Darren Aronofsky, USA

You've got to hand it to Aronofsky for crafting The Wrestler as that rare intimate, compassionate picture. He sheds pretentiousness and goes gritty and cinema verite on us, making his camera as a raw medium, a witness to the unfolding portrait of this wretched human being. For a sport that rarely requires sympathy, The Wrestler injects such a burgeoning humanity that one would be heartless not to pay respect to this fetishistic, exploitation of violence. But its sole entertainer, Mickey Rourke redeems himself as an actor, and this is his redemption film. It is a calibre of a performance, both to sheer physicality (the bruises, the hormone drugs, the buffed-up bod) and deep emotionality. His physical are nothing compared to the bruises inside him. A violent, bloody sport film overshadowed by more painful pangs of loneliness and self-destruction. It is inhuman not to award Rourke an acting prize.

#4. WALL-E - Dir Andrew Stanton, USA

This is Finding Nemo surpassed. The most ambitious animated film of all time plainly because it is not really just for kids. Pixar's Golden Age is at it pinnacle here, from Toy Story to Nemo to Ratatouille, they're serving up contemporary masterpieces, and Wall-E is nothing short but Kubrickian in status. For its sheer boldness and audacity, its first hour runs without a dialogue, working almost like a throwback to the silent era, opening in a bleak sci-fi dystopian vision with a Hello, Dolly track - it's a plunger into a terra firma where only five-year-olds with 150 intelligence quotient would get. But the most wonderful creation is the Woody-Allen-esque interplay between the loner lad of Wall-E and the sophisticated gal of Eve. Traditional romanticism ensues, and the picture blossoms in many things at once: a visual art feast, an engrossing sci-fi, an ambitious animation, an ecological forewarning, and above all – a moving, charming, timeless love story of two robots with a touch of humanity. This is cinematic bliss.

#3. THE DARK KNIGHT  - Dir Christopher Nolan, USA

One of the most staggering cinematic forces of the year. Here is a contemporary film that draws the elements of a superior motion picture: the moral questions of humanity,  the internal struggle of psyche, the consequence of choice, the challenge of chance, and the vital blurring of lines between what is really good and evil. The Dark Knight enters a threshold in which superhero movies have rarely ventured before - for in these dark waters lie the beast of realism, the ominous surface where neither heroes nor villains exist, but only tragic human figures. Perhaps one of the most quotable films in history, this is undoubtedly the finest superhero movie entirely because it is not a superhero movie: it is a staggering crime epic and an exceptional film noir with a complex, haunting tale of morality and human tragedies with Shakespearean resonance. Heath Ledger's The Joker is an colossal force of nature. Hail The Godfather of comic-book adaptations. It also boasts one of the most superb cinematography of the year.

#2. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE  - Dir Danny Boyle, UK

The ultimate reason why Slumdog Millionaire is such a triumphantly effective film is that it never rigorously intellectualise its central message. At its best, it delivers its blissful core by ramming home a ubiquitous tale of an underdog fighting for what he believes in, and that is rare in this greedy, lusty world. The result is a celebration to life, love and adversity and packs it all in a tightly-wrapped power of poignancy. It is Dickensian in proportions, Jamal is the Oliver Twist in the streets of Mumbai, and his childhood affection for Latika is his Great Expectations, and these are all sewn in pitch-perfect practicality. Boyle relentlessly showcases an extraordinary cinematography, roving his camera in such a vibrant, vivid rush around the poverty-stricken India, the chase through the slums, railways and sewers make for a moving childhood backdrop to life's greatest answers to questions, and that is experience. 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.

#1. HUNGER  - Dir Steve McQueen, UK

A controversial choice for 2008's finest film - but Hunger, judging from its one-word title, is big, bold and blustery. It is also a film of almost wordless beauty. It is a kind of filmmaking that would leave audience dumbfounded, cinephiles pulse racing, poets breathless and visual artists ignited. In short, this is too-independent, too-arty, too-psychologically and too-philosophically befuddling for Oscar taste. This is a cinematic achievement in its own right; unflinchingly brutal and disarmingly human – a rare event for the British contemporary cinema that is visually stylised yet at the same time hauntingly real. At this crossroad, where British cinema is swarmed with socialist dramas, here lies a passage of transformation that a contemporary piece such as this can be elevated as a work of art. It proves that the silence has the power that words cannot express fully, exemplified in its wordless scenes with guttural visual poetics: the excrement-smeared prison walls, the urine-washed cell corridors, and the shocking corpse-like bodies of its inmates. Then it burst forth a dramatic flood of words at the middle-half of the film, a notable aspect in which it manages to say a lot about serious issues of politics, religion, humanity, life and death by showing very little. Stunningly exemplified in a static camera shot, 24-minute talk-a-thon, showing a dialogue interplay between the hunger-striker Bobby Sands and the priest. Hunger is the year’s most harrowing, most startling, most visually astounding experience. It's also a minimalist work of art, consolidated by McQueen’s passionate direction and Fassbender’s stalwart, ferocious performance.

Catch you all again soon, next year. Rocknrolla, 2009.

The Moviejerk (c) J.S.Datinguinoo