2008 Year in Review, Part III

MY YEAR IN FILM 2008

page 3

christopher funderburg

BEST DVD's

Best Short:
Fly by Night (dir. Jeff Scher)
Runner-up:
Presto (dir. Doug Sweetland)

It's a real shame Vera Farmiga is my favorite actress:

The Boy in Striped Pajamas, Quid Pro Quo, Nothing but the Truth. Seriously? I'm actually supposed to see these movies? Give me a break oh, what the fuck – David Thewlis is in The Boy in Striped Pajamas, too? Motherfucker!

I DEFY YOU TO REMEMBER THESE MOVIES

These films starred famous people and got real theatrical releases in hundreds of theaters and the chances are you have no idea what they are. I had the honor of seeing each of them on opening weekend in a nearly empty theater:
Deception.
Awake.
The Life Before Her Eyes.

Worst Title:
Nights in Rodanthe.

Worst Title that is actually unintelligible because it doesn’t even make any sense as a pun:
Made of Honor.

BEST ODD-BALL CONCEPT THAT ACTUALLY
KINDA WORKS AS A FILM

Executive Koala

Runner-up:

Michael Haneke's shot-for-shot remake of his own Funny Games.

An unexpected and awesome surprise: The Reëmergence of Fassbinder's Women:
Hanna Schygulla in The Edge of Heaven
Ingrid Caven in 35 Rhums
Barbara Sukowa in Romance & Cigarettes (finally released last year)
Margit Cartensen in It is Fine. Everything is Fine! (ah, Crispin Glover)

Best Movie directed by Madonna: Filth and Wisdom

Best Movie directed by Guy Ritchie: RocknRolla

Obnoxious ex-husband and wife tandem with the most over-inflated reputations that have the least business directing any movie, under any circumstance: Spike Jonze and Sophia Coppola. (this isn’t really related to 2008, it’s just more of a general assessment)

Would everybody just stop trying to convince me that Ricky Gervais is anything other than a middling hack: Ghost Town

For the museum of AmerIndie style: The Wackness

The "Wish they had gotten the Adrien Brody in The Thin Red Line treatment" Award for the actor who did the most to ruin their movie: Evan Rachel Wood in The Wrestler

Monica Potter Award for "A Bland, Charmless Actress whom Hollywood insists on forcing on a Demonstrably Indifferent Public:" Elizabeth Banks in Fred Claus, Meet Dave, Definitely Maybe, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Role Models, W.

The "Jeremy Irons in Dungeons in Dragons" Award for giving it your all, even though you probably shouldn't have:

Anna Farris in The House Bunny. She could probably take home this honor for every film she does. Which is really more irritating than cute at this point.

The "It's a Knock-Off" Award for the best eponymous theme-song: Eastwood's jaw-dropping rendition of "Gran Torino."

Films not nearly as bad as their reputations: Babylon A.D., The Spirit and, more than any other, Indiana Jones in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

JUST A GOOD TIME AT THE MOVIES

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Iron Man, Step Brothers, Role Models, The Incredible Hulk, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Tropic Thunder, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Sure they have their problems, but still just a good time at the movies:

Gran Torino, The Foot Fist Way, Hancock

BEST REPERTORY FILM SERIES

The French Crime Wave at Film Forum, which afforded audiences the opportunity to see on the big screen all-time masterpieces like Touchez Pas Au Grisbi, Pepe Le Moko, Diabolique, Band of Outsiders, Pick-Pocket and Rififi as well as less heralded, but no less amazing movies like Le Ceremonie, Classe Tous Risques and Casque D'Or. The whole thing was topped off with rarities and oddities like La Verite, Goupi Mains Rouge, and Les Tontons Flingueurs. An absolute beast of a series (37 films over 5 weeks) packed with inspired double-features. For those 5 weeks, there was no evening worth skipping.

Most Entertaining Screening I went to all year:

A late-night screening of Ms. 45 at Anthology Film Archives, after which director Abel Ferrara randomly showed up and hosted a foul-mouthed, meandering, hugely entertaining Q&A. (I'm going to go out on a limb here and speculate that he might've been on drugs). Choice stories involved his utter contempt for Werner Herzog, the heroic intake of heroin that fueled Zoe Lund's writing of The Bad Lieutenant, his admission that he had bet on an NFL preseason game that night because Brett Favre was playing in it, and how Nicholas Cage is a fucking joke ("that kid's a loser"). I wasn’t much of a Ferrara fan before that night (sure, I liked some of his movies), but now I'm a goddamned acolyte.

THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL vs.
THE DARK KNIGHT

It's official: I've completely lost touch with sensibilities of regular audiences. My first indication was that, not only did I love Spiderman 3, I thought the jazz-dance scene was great.* Now I'm possibly the only person in the world who found sitting through The Dark Knight to be an unpleasant chore, but enjoyed The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull without compunction. Not only that, but I genuinely can't understand why people hate, HATE an Indiana Jones movie which is clearly and definitively better than an affectionately-regarded previous installment in the series (Temple of Doom) while praising The Dark Knight to the skies. The normally reasonable John Cribbs bafflingly refuses to even see Crystal Skull. This, after sitting through all three of the Star Wars prequels!

Everything of which you can accuse of being bad or ridiculous in Crystal Skull, you can find equal or worse examples of in The Dark Knights. Nuking the fridge? How about Batman and the ugliest Gyllenhaal falling forty stories, landing on the roof of a car and not so much as even wincing? Oh, I forgot, he opened his jacket parachute for about twenty feet. Clearly, that makes perfect sense in terms of physics.** That fall not ridiculous of a physical impossibility enough for you? Then consider the magic seeing-eye phone that Batman uses to track the movement of everything and everyone in all of Gotham. Or how about the Joker's plan which is convoluted to the point of nonsense and requires a combination of perfect coincidences and outright impossibilities? Thought the attack monkeys were too goofy? How about Tiny fucking Lister delivering a howler of line, throwing the detonator out the window of the ferry and then thoughtfully congregating with his boys? You don’t like Shia? But you're okay with Christian Bale's impossibly silly deep-throated line-delivery and Eric Robert's Zoot-suited gangster?

I obviously understand that very different tones of the two films are what audiences are responding to; but for me, The Dark Knight's grim self-seriousness is exactly what makes it hard to swallow. Both films are fundamentally ludicrous diversions with making money and entertaining audiences at the bottom of their soul. That The Dark Knight demands I take it seriously makes it a chore – I spent half the running time thinking, "How did the Joker hide so many explosives in the hospital without being noticed. For that matter, covering up his face with a tiny surgical mask only makes him look more garish and conspicuous – am I supposed to believe that it is helping him to hide in plain sight?" Since the movie is so insistently about drawing parallels to the War on Terror, how could I not imagine Osama Bin Laden dressed up in a nurse's uniform and a tiny mask creeping around a major Metropolitan hospital setting up literally tons of explosives to be later triggered remotely at a leisurely (and narratively convenient) pace?

The Crystal Skull on the other hand aims primarily for fun – if you don't find it fun, fine. I believe you. Really, I do. But I don't believe you actually would like any of the other Indiana Jones movies if they were released today. Skull features nothing as egregious as Kate Capshaw accidentally using a bat as a towel, Short-round doing super Kung-Fu on the massive Thugee guards or three people using an inflatable life-raft as parachute. Do you not have the dignity to admit that the life-raft bit is easily as retarded as nuking the fridge? Don't like the CGI? Shut the fuck up – The Dark Knight is practically powered by a computer! Don't deny that Aaron Eackhart's burned-visage looks every bit as cheesy and computer-generated as the prairie dogs.

And Crystal Skull, as they say, plays. It moves at brisk pace, the staging of the action scenes is expert. It uses an old-school approach to the visual language of film that’s genuinely invigorating. Everything reads the way it should. It works. Can the same be said of The Dark Knight? The action set-pieces aren't really the problem for director Nolan that they were in Batman Begins, but would a fan recommend the film on the strength of those scenes alone? I doubt it. Fundamentally, those action scenes are still using the tactic of incoherency (or less charitably, "sloppiness") to create the impression of excitement, rather than having the images and editing work together to be actually, you know, exciting.

Execution aside, the phony grittiness and thematic self-importance of The Dark Knight are what made me dislike it – but does that mean it's what audiences are really responding to? A puerile simulacra of real-world violence? A loaded deck of idiotic moral dilemmas? It seems almost impossible to me that a snake and a sand-pit could inspire so much hostility, while a facile but supposedly risky artistic gesture like killing off a main character could inspire elation and praise. Could everyone really be seriously mean what they say about the "adult" pleasures of a work so obviously childish and silly? Why do people gloss over the idea of a guy fighting crime while dressed in an elaborate bat-themed suit, but freak out about a side character doing a Marlon Brando impression? It just no longer makes sense to me. There is a profound narrative illogic present in The Dark Knight that doesn't bother anyone (upon even the slightest reflection, The Joker's plans simply make no sense), but minor quibbles about slapstick comedy fuel foaming diatribes about raped childhoods. Since when are pretension and self-seriousness virtues? Since when do bloated running times, murky photography, lavishly detailed gore and philosophical straw-men equal maturity and intelligence in an artwork? Even more puzzlingly, since when do those things equal fun?

I won't begrudge anyone for liking The Dark Knight – that's truly not my point, that one film is good and one is bad. I don't want to tear down a movie people love in order to try and build up one I like – that's a stupid, losing strategy, anyway. I'm just genuinely unable to understand why between two such obviously similar artworks – similar in terms of basic intention, overall improbability, need for suspension of disbelief, quality of execution - one artwork is beloved and one is reviled. But, I would posit this – and I really mean it: if you can't have fun at The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, there is something wrong with you. And I guess that means there's something really wrong with me.

* This is a bit of a digression, but it makes perfect sense that "bad" Peter Parker would do stuff like demand cookies and jazz-dance – he's still Peter Parker deep down in his soul and Peter Parker is a goofy kid from Queens. He's not suddenly going to become a rapist or something. The jazz-dancing is a perfect expression of his essential character – it keeps in a reasonable frame of reference for what Parker could even conceive of as "bad." Disinhibited or not, Parker is still a socially awkward goofball.

** Also, what happens to the Joker at that point in time? He's presumably back up in the party, surrounded by a hundred people,armed with only a knife, all of his minions knocked out by Batman. Nobody has a "let's roll" moment there? He just traipses out to the Joker copter up on the roof? Or heads down through the basement into Gotham’s extensive sewer system? Nobody tackles him? Nobody says, "Hey, Batman – he went thataway!" Anyhoo, that's not even one of the top fifteen most egregious moments of nonsense in that very serious, realistic and gritty film.

MY FAVORITE FILM-WRITING

Seagalogy – the Outlaw Vern. The most compulsively readable text on schlock cinema since James Gunn and Lloyd Kaufman's classic All I Need to Know about Filmmaking I Learned from The Toxic Avenger. Internet film critic, ex-con, and all-around lovable dude the Outlaw Vern's improbably engrossing film-by-film analysis of the oeuvre of one Mr. Steven Seagal pulls off the remarkable feat of making you feel like you're deeply interested in something which you're probably not. It's every bit as funny as you might expect given the subject matter and Vern's unpretentious wit, but it goes beyond cheap jokes about ponytails and beaded jackets (those things naturally abound, however) to make a case for Seagal as a bona fide auteur with recurring themes and obsessions popping up incessantly throughout his work. What's more, the themes are pretty gosh-darn compelling: environmentalism, corruption and skullduggery in the C.I.A. and other secretive government agencies, mystic spirituality, the clash of Eastern & Western philosophy, bad-ass ass-whomping. Vern has an incredible eye for strange details and an imitable deftness with hilarious colloquialisms, making the 300-plus book an easy read that you'll continue to pick up and thumb through even after you've already read it twice.

Everything is Cinema – Richard Brody. The central enigma with Godard remains: what, in his enormously varied and frequently irritating filmography, to take seriously and what to dismiss? The giant, often impenetrable, almost exclusively pretentious mass of criticism surrounding his work affords an amount of insight in a frustrating inverse proportion to the sheer bulk of it that exists. So, it makes sense that Godard would be the subject of one of the few biographies worth reading for critical insight into an artist's work. Normally, if an artist is worth reading about, they've probably created something that speaks for itself – what insight is there really to gain in reading about say, Fellini's personal life? You only risk confusing biography with intention and the annals of art analysis are clogged with worthless essays speculating about the subtextual importance of Hemingway's impotence or Kafka's father while altogether missing the point of "Hills Like White Elephants" or "The Judgement."

But few artists have generated a body of work anywhere near as perplexing as Godard's – Richard Brody's comprehensive book goes a long way towards explaining the baffling transformations, inconsistencies and incoherencies in the Swiss crank's output. In almost every chapter, natural assumptions about the nature of Godard's character and intent are proven wrong; not just in the intersection of his personal and work life, but also from his erratic, vaguely-defined, ever-changing politics. Reading the book, I felt amazed at just how wrong the critical consensus seemed to be – how could one of the most studied filmmakers be seemingly so misunderstood? For instance, did you have any inkling of his Right-Wing, Pro-Vichy youth? Or Anna Karina's infidelities, miscarriages and suicide attempts? How about the amusingly combative interview where he admitted that while his next film would be about Mao and Chinese Communism, he hadn't read any of the source material and had absolutely no firsthand knowledge of the politics or culture of China (don't worry, La Chinoise came out several months later)? Reading Everything Is Cinema won't suddenly transform the bulk of Godard's work into anything other than the fascinating mess that it is, but it captures how that mess happened in a way that makes you more confident about how to approach the central problem of Godard-watching.

Standard Operating Procedure – Philip Gourevitch & Errol Morris. A correction to the failings of the eponymous film, the supplementary book reads like the film Morris actually wanted to make. Here, Gourevitch (who wrote the similarly essential Rwanda book We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families) & Morris are able to dig down deep in the details and sort through the facts of just what the hell happened at Abu Ghraib in a way that film would simply never be able to. By amassing an unbelievable amount of fascinating minutiae, the book gives its reader not just a comprehensive picture of the operations of the facility and its military procedures, but of the struggles and personalities of the soldiers involved. From there, Errol Morris the Ironic Philosopher is on full display: he takes the facts and begins to weave them into complex questions with troubling answers in a way that recalls his best cinematic detective work, The Thin Blue Line. His intelligence is razor-sharp; he's staggering when he notices unexpected connections and from there draws riveting questions. There's simply too much going on here for one film to contain and, free from the constraints celluloid, Morris and Gourvevitch have created a work that's both the best commentary on and investigation of the pivotal moment in the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq.

MY FAVORITE SCENES, PERFORMANCES &
MOMENTS FROM 2008

"Lock your doors. Lock your doors. There were two of them, Poppy." Happy-Go-Lucky.

Anne Cosigny's performance as the infuriating Elizabeth, the oldest living child of A Christmas Tale's Vuillard family.

The family takes a bath/goes for a swim in one of the most gentle & beautiful moments of simple familial connection ever captured on film. Silent Light.

The mad penguin makes a break for the distant mountains. Encounter at the End of the World.

Do you really need me to tell you about the first half-hour of Wall-E?

They miss the concert, but still get to dance. 35 Rhums.

You can't beat The Wrestler at his own game: Rourke schools a neighborhood kid at Nintendo.

There's always dignity in giving it your best shot: The Wrestler takes to the deli counter like he takes to the ring.

Tai Lung takes on an army of Rhino soldiers during his escape in what is both a mind-bending scene of martial arts mayhem and an amazingly gorgeous bit of animation. Kung-Fu Panda. There is no fee for this scene’s awesomeness or attractiveness.

James Tupper's dead-on take on Joseph Cotton, especially the moment when he steps out of the shadows. The whole lot of cinephile in-jokes, for that matter, scattered throughout Me and Orson Welles.

Poppy's whimsical, yet empathetic statement to her driving instructor "It must be hard being you" mirrors Johnny's caustic, yet empathetic question to the Scottish lunatic "What's it like being you?" – one of the many strange reflections of Mike Leigh's brilliant Naked in its inverse equal Happy-Go-Lucky. The films fit together like daylight and darkness.

Chiwetel Ejiofor's disciplined, forceful performance as the archetypal Mamet mark in Red Belt.

Scuba-diving beneath the ice delivers on all the ethereal weirdness implied by a Herzog film with the title of Encounters at the End of World.

Are you kidding me? Get off of Eastwood's fucking lawn! Gran Torino. (for the record, he will shoot you in the face, go upstairs and sleep like a baby).

Never has a film made me hungrier. Those fritters looked fucking delicious! Still Walking.

The unemployed business man with his phone set to ring every hour, so he can pretend to get business calls. Tokyo Sonata.

The fight in the meat market in Chocolate gets you to sit up in your seat

and the showdown in the dojo gets you to buy into JeeJa Yanin's gimmick as a 90-pound, teenage, female Tony Jaa.

"Just a couple of black apples." One of the many ways in which John C. Reilly botches his chance at getting The Promotion.

Mathieu Amalric takes drunken faceplant off the curb. A Christmas Tale.

Catherine Denueve's icy matron has the class to casually admit that she never loved her son, Mathieu Amalric. He takes it in stride. A Christmas Tale.

Mathieu Amalric gleefully goads his wife's husband into beating the shit out of him. And it only proves his point! A Christmas Tale.

The final scene between Amalric and his girlfriend will break your heart. A Christmas Tale.

The amazing, other-worldly sound-design the first time we go to Paranoid Park.

Eddie Marsden's expression just as he gets caught standing out on the street outside of Poppy's apartment. And then he bolts! Happy-Go-Lucky.

"Fuck it." The group raises their fists and gets back -to-back. There's gonna be a brawl at Chuck the Truck’s hotel party! The Foot Fist Way.

"Have you boys had sex before?" Jody Hill all but steals The Foot Fist Way as Mike McAlister.

SWS's heart-melting smile and thumbs-up in response to misinterpreting John C. Reilly's aggressive hand-gesture as a thumbs-up. The Promotion.

They do the whole damn song when they perform "Por Ti Volare" at the Catalina Wine Mixer. Step Brothers.

Ryuhei’s excruciating job interview in Tokyo Sonata. They sure called his bluff on the karaoke skills

Their sweaty, passionate, dirty, unbelievably intense first kiss takes Lotte and Ayten to The Edge of Heaven.

Josh Brolin plays drunk better than it has ever been done in the scene at Harvey Milk’s birthday party.

Orson Welles takes over the recording session for "The Shadow," throws down the genius and makes it look easy. Too bad he's a complete bastard. Me and Orson Welles.

The square root of three. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanomo Bay.

Asia Argento crying and screaming as she fucks her lover in the desert beside her dead child's still-burning funereal pyre. The Last Mistress.

The story of Abraham & Isaac connects two lost souls searching for something they will never find in The Edge of Heaven.

Eve zooms around the junk planet with a manic efficiency, pulling out circuit-boards, screwing in lenses, repairing dents, retreading tires, soldering fractures, and finally blowing a hole in the roof to let the sun shine down on Wall-E’s lifeless solar panel. And the next thirty seconds comes so close to breaking your heart, you can barely stand it.

After his daughter’s wedding, there's finally a reason to drink the 35 Rhums.

BEST SCENE OF THE YEAR:

Eddie Marsden's driving instructor finally explodes and two of the best performances you will ever see collide in an incomparable climax that is both unexpected and inevitable. Happy-Go-Lucky.

- christopher funderburg, January 2009

2008 Releases

These are all the new releases/significant re-releases that I saw this year, to the best of my memory. I’ve put a denotation next to each to indicate if I generally liked it (+), had mixed feelings about it (~), disliked it (-), or truly loathed it (--).

forgettable action/drama:
- 88 Minutes (Pacino screaming)
~ Street Kings
- Deception (Hugh Jackman. Ewan MacGregor)
- Turn the River (Famke Jansen pool player)
~ Felon (Val Kilmer, Stephen Dorff)
- Take (Minnie Driver, struggling mother vs. gambling addict)
- Swing Vote
~ Nights in Rodanthe
~ Flash of Genius (windshield wipers)
- Body of Lies (Dicaprio, Crowe, Ridley Scott)
- Pride and Glory (Norton, Farrell)
- 21 (Harvard gamblers)
- The Grand (Werner Herzog, David Cross & Ray Romano gambling)

kids:
+ Kung-Fu Panda
+ Wall-E
- Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2
+ Tale of Despereaux

mainstream comedy:
~ Drillbit Taylor
- Leatherheads
- Over her Dead Body
- Baby Mama (Tina Fey. Amy Poehler)
- What Happens in Vegas
- Strange Wilderness
+ Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanomo Bay
-- The Love Guru (although, I actually kind of love this movie)
-- Get Smart
+ Step Brothers
- Mamma Mia!
- Pineapple Express
+ Tropic Thunder
+ The House Bunny
- Burn After Reading
- Ghost Town
- How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
- An American Carol
+ Role Models

Horror/cult:
- The Ruins
- Awake (Hayden Christensen awake/asleep on the stab, heart surgery)
~ Doomsday
- Frontiers (backwoods Nazis)
~ Poultrygeist
- Mother of Tears
- Midnight Meat Train
~ Red (Brian Cox revenge picture)
-- What we do is Secret (Germs biopic)
~ Sukiyaki Django Western
- Quarantine
+ Let the Right One In
~ JCVD
- Repo! The Genetic Opera
~ House of Sleeping Beauties (art smut)
+ Executive Koala
+ The Alphabet killer (dir. Rob Schulz. Dushku. Martin Donovan)
+ The Spirit

blockbuster:
+ Iron Man
+ Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
+ The Incredible Hulk
+ Hancock
+ Hellboy II: The Golden Army
-- Journey to the Center of the Earth
- The Dark Knight
~ X-Files: I Want to Believe
- The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
+ Death Race 2000
~ Babylon A.D.
- Quantum of Solace

political:
- Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
- Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?
- Stoploss
~ Battle for Haditha (Nick Broomfield)
~ War, Inc.
- Heavy Metal in Baghdad
- Swing Vote
- The Forgotten Woman (doc about Indian widows, Deepa Mehta’s brother)
- Trouble the Water
- The Lucky Ones
~ Boogieman: The Lee Atwater Story
~ Theater of War (Brecht Streep)
+ Waltz with Bashir
- W.

The Year of Asia:
~ Boarding Gate
- The Mother of Tears
+ Go-go Tales
+ The Last Mistress

faux art:
- Smart People (Dennis Quaid. Ellen Page)
- The Life Before Her Eyes (Uma Thurman. Vadim Perelman)
- The Visitor (Station Agent director)
-- Baghead
-- The Wackness
- Diminished Capacity (Alda, Broderick, vomit)
- August (Harnett, Austin Chick, stock trading)
- The Stone Angel (Burstyn old folks home)
- Transsiberian Express (Woody Harrelson, Emily Mortimer)
- Brideshead Revisited
~ Frozen River
~ Year of the Fish
- Towelhead
- Mister Foe
- Bottle Shook (Alan Rickman, wine)
~ The Duchess
- Ballast
- Filth and Wisdom (Madonna!)
- The Guitar (my beloved Saffron Burrows in an artsy The Bucket List)
- The Boy in Striped Pajamas (Farmiga & Thewlis – whyya gotta doo dis to meee!)
- Hunger (art star directs hunger strike movie)
- Doubt
- Wendy and Lucy
- The Reader (Winslet! Ralph Fiennes!)
-- Seven Pounds
- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
- Frost/Nixon

Documentaries:
- Lou Reed’s Berlin
-- American Teen
- Gonzo
-- Man on Wire
- Bigger Faster Stronger
~ Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
- Surfwise
+ Richard Serra: Thinking on your Feet
~ Patti Smith: Dream of Life
~ Louise Bourgeoisie
- Stranded: I’ve Come from a Plane that Crashed in the Mountains
- Harvard Beats 29-29
- We Are Wizards

Re-release:
- The Exiles
+ Vivre Sa Vie
+ Shoot the Piano Player
+ Lola Montes
+ Alexander Nevsky
+ Rosemary’s Baby
~ Celine and Julie Go Boating
- La Chinoise
+ The Wild Child
+ Lola Montes
~ The Human Condition
+ Amarcord

tedious foreign:
- The Unknown Woman (Cinema Paradiso guy)
- Beauty in Trouble
- Mad Detective
- Tell No One
- Ashes of Times Redux
-- I've Loved You So Long
-- One Day You'll Understand (Amos Gitai, Jeanne Moreau)

Toronto Film Festival:
- Tony Manero
+ Not Quite Hollywood
+ The Wrestler
+ Tokyo Sonata
- Nuit de Chien
+ A Christmas Tale
-- I've Loved You So Long
- Adoration
-- Uncertainty
~ Martyrs
+ Still Walking
- Wendy and Lucy
+ 35 Rhums
- Parc
- Gomorrah
+ Disgrace
- Hunger
+ Chocolate
~ Zift
+ Me and Orson Welles

foreign/art:
- Roman de Gare (Fanny Ardent)
- Reprise (Joachim Trier)
+ The Counterfeiters
- Snow Angels
- Savage Grace (Tom Kalin/Julianne Moore)
- The Fall (Tarsem)
- Mongol
+ My Winnipeg
+ Encounters at the End of the World
+ The Edge of Heaven
- Expired (Samantha Morton)
~ Flight of the Red Balloon
~ Elegy
- Vicky Christina Barcelona
-- Momma's Man
+ I Served the King of England
- Choke
~ Silent Light
~ The Man from London (Bela Tarr)
- Blindness (Meirelles)
- Rachel Getting Married
~ Stages (Isabelle Huppert)
~ Adam Resurrected

notable:
+ Redbelt (David Mamet)
+ The Foot Fist Way
~ Be Kind Rewind
+ Chocolate
+ Not Quite Hollywood
+ The Wrestler
- My Blueberry Nights
~ Flight of the Red Balloon
+ Funny Games
+ Forgetting Sarah Marshall
- Standard Operating Procedure
+ The Bank Job
+ The Promotion
~ Miracle at St. Anna
~ Silent Light
+ Happy-Go-Lucky
- Changeling
- Synecdoche, New York
~ Milk
+ Gran Torino
~ The Secret of the Grain

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