Just Watch.

The Best Movies of 2008, Somewhat

I've been shamefully remiss about keeping up with new relaxes this year; I can't have seen more than 35 in all. So I don't see the point in a top 10 list, besides if you're anything like me you're gonna shiv the next person who tries to ram one of those down your throws. The neuroscientist who finds out what cortex gets activated or what substances are released by the creation and reading of lists will really be onto something.

So a lot to think about, resolutions-wise for all of us.

Just quickly, the movies I saw this year that I really loved: Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress, Hiroshi Yazaki's Strawberry Shortcakes, Natasha Arthy's Fighter, Tomas Alfredson's Let the Right One In, Johnnie To's Sparrow, Vera Storosha's Traveling With Pets, and Claude Miller's Un Secret.

The fact that none of them are American, let alone, in English, makes me feel like kind of a twerp, but there you have it. On the other the hand, the fact that 3 were directed by women makes me really happy. As part of a general resolution to pay more attention to housekeeping, I'll touch upon the ones I haven't written about yet.

But the best movie of 2008 was undoubtedly Arnaud Desplechin's A
Christmas Tale. Between this and 2004's Kings & Queen its clear that Desplechin's doing some of the most exciting, ambitious and thought-provoking work in the movies today.

A Christmas Tale just got its seasonally appropriate US release in New York you can catch it at the IFC center. If your own resolutions fall in the line of scraping some of that treacly holiday spirit of your sin and you're looking for something that feels more genuinely lie goodwill to men then it's definitely for you.

Further Notes on The Fallen Idol

Mama J annd I have been working our way through the Janus box set, and we saw this again tonight. I'm struck and overwhelmed by how dense and full of layers of meaning it is.

But what really strikes me, and perhaps this is a vice of virtue of just having finished Focault, is how much the heterosexual drama us superimposed (or vice versa) onto the family one.

How often, in the world of visual and scriptual language, is the relationship if Phil and Baines framed within the cinematic context of the heterosexual romance? I'm thinking specifically of the many shots of Phil staring beatifically down at Bsones from the top of the stairs. What foes the juxtaposition mean? I'm contemplating it.

Harold Pinter at the Movies

I first encountered Pinter in a playwriting class at nerd camp when I was about 16; we read The Dumb Waiter.

I can't say I completely got his brilliance right away; his dialogue crackles off the page, but to see it played out is another kind of revelation. But what impressed and fascinated me immediately was the aura of dark mystery he so adroitly conjured up -- nefarious hints of deep and nasty secrets teeming beneath the surface. Our wonderful teacher helped me appreciate the power of the unknown in Pinter, the space he leaves for ambiguity and speculation.

Thinking about his death yesterday, I realized that those things I first admired in Pinter's work made an indelible impression on my tastes in art in general and film in particular. I don't know that they have all that much in common, apart from reputations for being difficult and depressing, but I keep linking his name to Antonioni's. No other artists I can think of wielded uncertainty and suggestion to such pointed, unsettling effect.

Of course, Pinter himself had a prolific and interesting career in film. I'll particularly remember his richly shaded, deeply troubling portrayal of Sir Thomas Bertram in Patricia Rozema's adaptation of Mansfield Park. As a screenwriter, his incredibly fine script for The French Lieutenant's Woman elegantly explores the notoriously slippery terrain of our perceptions of love, time, and memory. It's his constant role as the adept, unflinching navigator if the depths of humanity that molds Pinter's legacy for me.