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Top Ten New-to-Me Films for 2008

I know it’s late for these lists, but I made it a while ago and just remembered that I didn’t write about. Each year there are many films that I view and one of my ongoing projects is to catch up on older films that I haven’t seen or films that have received critical acclaim. They get added to the list and then when they show up it’s usually a pleasant surprise. If I like a director or actor I’ll try to find more of their work, which is how a lot of the films that are on my list got there. The most interesting films I discovered in 2008 (in reverse historical order) are: Day Night Day Night, Monkey Warfare, La Moustache, Little Fish, Bright Future, Esther Kahn, All About My Mother, La Haine, I Can’t Sleep, and Pierrot Le Fou. Four of the films are English language, four are French language, one is Japanese and one is Spanish. Most have a degree of ambiguity and all of them are well-shot. The cinematic world is so much easier to explore now that there are so many films on DVD.

Day Night Day Night

Julia Loktev directs a haunting, sometimes frustrating, but utterly compelling story of a female suicide bomber in Day Night Day Night. In presenting the female protagonist only as “She” (played by Luisa Williams) with all of the motivations and politics removed, the film is built around the mundane preparations for the explosion of the bomb. Shot in a handheld, almost cinema verite style by Benoit Debie (who also shot the oddly enigmatic Innocence) using what looks like existing light and real locations. It’s quiet and intimate and I couldn’t stop watching.

Monkey Warfare

Reginald Harkema (editor of Hard Core Logo) picks up the torch that Jean-Luc Godard lit with political cinema and he manages to create a film about revolutionary cinema in a modern context in Monkey Warfare. Don McKellar and Tracy Wright play ex-revolutionaries who now spend their days collecting things from garage sales to sell online. Things change when a young, radical played by Nadia Litz wants to know more about their radical past and involve them in her own subversive activities. The tone is set through a great soundtrack with the film shot on digital video and embracing the constraints of a low budget. There is an energy that runs through the film that makes it a lot more than the story of aging hippies. Consciously using many of the shots and styles of Godard, while adding an additional layer of humour and drama, it’s fun and thoughtful filmmaking.

La Moustache

Initially I was interested in La Moustache because it starred Emmanuelle Devos and also had Mathieu Almaric in the cast. I didn’t know what to expect and it was a very pleasant surprise. Everything starts off simply enough with the character played by Vincent Lindon asking his wife (Devos) what she’d think if he shaved his moustache off. He shaves and she (along with everyone else) doesn’t notice the change. It sets of a strange series of events that increase in scale as the film goes on and he begins to question everything around him and the assumptions that he’s made about his life. It’s amazingly structured and precisely shot in a way that surprised me as I watched the story unfold.

Little Fish

While the highlight of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button for me was Cate Blanchett (who always is great), in Rowan Woods’ 2005 Australian film, Little Fish, we get to see a film set in her home country with her in the central role of a character study of loss and addiction. Hugo Weaving is amazing as Blanchett’s stepfather and fellow addict who she tries to help quit while dealing with the return of her ex-boyfriend (played by Dustin Nguyen as well as her mother and brother. It’s great to see actors who are from Australia (but better known using different accents) acting in a film set there with more authentic voices. Shot in an intimate and personal style, we see people struggling to survive in the suburbs of Sydney presented in a fresh and interesting way.

Bright Future

I discovered Japan’s Kioshi Kurosawa from his atmospheric and creepy horror film Pulse which led me to find his other films which all have oddly unsettling stories. Bright Future starts off quietly with two bored young men who work in a factory. Trapped in jobs that feel like a dead-end, one of them is only happy in his dreams, while the other raises a poisonous jellyfish. Things shift dramatically for them, but the film itself takes a leisurely approach as the focus shifts between characters and details, all the while with glimpses of the roles that everyone play with each other. Ultimately the film is about differences between generations with the ideals of the older generation difficult for the younger generation to understand. It’s a strange and subtle film that I kept me off-balance most of the time while carefully showing moments with the characters.

Esther Kahn

After seeing Arnaud Desplechin‘s Kings and Queen, I wanted to see the other films that he had made and I was quite interested to see the French director’s English language film, Esther Kahn. The film is about a Jewish woman (played by Summer Phoenix) in London in the 19th century who wants to be an actress against the wishes of her family. We watch her struggle to learn the craft, tutored by an actor played by Ian Holm. Stunningly shot by regular Desplechin collaborator Eric Gautier (who also shot Into the Wild, Clean and The Motorcycle Diaries), it paints a dark portrait constructed out of beautiful (and sometimes painful) vignettes. While the overall film is about acting and finding yourself, it’s really about how families relate to one another and how we treat other people as we try to understand who we are.

All About My Mother

Pedro Almodovar’s films are always colourful, bold, melodramatic and beautifully shot. I finally caught up with All About My Mother, which is filled with melodrama and precisely designed shots. With an almost impossibly complex story filled with parallels and echoes, the mother of the title (Cecila Roth) is at the heart of the film as she struggles to rebuild her life after losing her son. Along the way she meets a series of characters (including Penelope Cruz as a nun) who all have their own stories that relate to the mother. Describing the plot any further would not do the film justice as Almodovar has a gift for making the most implausible things work in a film in a way that manages to be both humorous on one level, but also quite moving on another. Almodovar expresses his love for women (and those who want to be want to be women) in a way that embraces life and laughter and tears with joy.

La Haine

Mathieu Kassovitz created a stylish and harrowing look at contemporary France and the diverse people who live in low-income housing there in La Haine (Hate). Shot in a high-energy black and white style with a trio of great performances by Vincent Cassel, Hubert Kounde and Said Taghmaoui as three friends whose lives and relationships change as one of them gains possession of a gun in a time of rising tension and riots. Each of the characters are carefully drawn as we get to know them and see how unemployment, boredom and racism combine together to creating inevitable confrontations. It presented a world I knew very little about in a way that gives a broader context to people and the choices that they face.

I Can’t Sleep

Claire Denis builds her films around characters in ways that are both precise and casual. I Can’t Sleep is a poetic film that presents much of the plot indirectly through actions. When we first see someone we’re not sure why and it’s only after watching them and then connecting them with other characters that the bigger picture starts to become apparent. While the plot may provide the framework, it is the delicate moment that Denis chooses to focus on. She deliberately uses non-synchronized sound so some scenes play out without dialogue as Paris is in the midst of a killing spree of elderly women. We have to make the connections as we see people going about their lives in t

Pierrot Le Fou

My quest to see all of Jean-Luc Godard‘s films continues with his 1965 classic, Pierrot Le Fou, which teams up Anna Karina with Jean-Paul Belmondo in another colourful film after Godard’s A Woman is a Woman. It’s a road movie made up of a series of scenes that are all stunningly shot by Raoul Coutard. The plot is arbitrary as are the characters as they change from scene to scene. Filled with the usual range of Godardian references to other films and literature, it’s fun just to watch Karina and Belmondo in their scenes as the camera follows them.

February 7, 2009 2008, all about my mother, bright future, day night day night, esther kahn, film, i can't sleep, la haine, la moustache, list, little fish, monkey warfare, pierrotlefou