Before I get to my top ten films of 2008, I have to acknowledge what was probably the year’s biggest disappointment for me. You see, I love Kelly Reichardt. She is one of my filmmakers. You know how it is. You see a film by a novice filmmaker that few other people have a chance to see. You claim ownership. I saw River of Grass back in 1994 along with probably a few hundred other people during the film’s run. It was beautifully shot, suffused with a dry dark wit, and filled with good actors who had the type of ordinary, plain faces I’d rarely seen in American films. They were wholly believable as these desperately bored, broke characters. River of Grass was a criminal-lovers-on-the-lam story where there was no crime, no love, and the couple never got out of town. The feminist and class-related critique that the film brought up was directed not only at society at large, but at a cinematic convention that glamorizes the rebellious outlaw while reinforcing the status quo.

River of Grass failed to materialize on home video for nearly a decade and Reichardt didn’t release another feature for the next twelve years. The film became this kind of lost gem in my mind, the type of movie cinephiles tend to get obnoxiously over-effusive about because the films are so unjustly difficult to see. For all intents and purposes, River of Grass was mine. Reichardt was mine.

And then, at long last, Old Joy came along. Similarly gorgeous and lugubriously paced, Old Joy is more somber than River of Grass, witty only in flashes, but made with a sharp intelligence and a profound understanding of the dynamics of friendship. Beyond that, the film is more overtly political than her debut. Its politics is still subtext, but there’s the buzz of Air America reminding self-satisfied liberal Mark (Daniel London) of how righteous he is, while Kurt (Will Oldham) is in the unfortunate position of actually having to live by principles that remain more abstract to his friend. But the film only works because these are fully-fleshed characters, and we believe in them and care about them.

The film became a festival favorite, got a theatrical run, and was critically acclaimed. All despite being pensive, subtle, unique, and generally excellent. While I’m not the sort of film geek who resents it when my special favorites become more widely appreciated, I am geek enough to take a special pride in having been a fan long before there was any bandwagon to ride on.

All this by way of explaining how disappointed I am that Reichardt’s 2008 effort, Wendy and Lucy, is not on my top ten list for the year.

By all rights, it should be. It has everything I love in a film. Here’s a convenient checklist: It looks great; It’s slow; It depicts believable characters doing seemingly tedious stuff that people actually do; It’s well-acted; On some level, it’s about how fucked up the world is.

So how is it different from several films that made my list, like Secret of the Grain, Frownland, or Take Out? Those films work better for me, because to whatever extent they’re about globalization, class, work, race, mental illness, etc. they are first and foremost about people. That’s not to say that Wendy (Michelle Williams) is somehow not human, but she’s reticent, withdrawing, and defined by what she is not. She’s not a free spirit living off the grid. She’s not a shiftless hustler, getting by any way she can. She’s a bit of a cipher, and coming from a filmmaker of Reichardt’s intelligence, I have to think that’s by design. Reichardt’s point seems to be that Wendy could be anyone. It’s a valid political point, but it doesn’t make for strong drama. Keeping your main character slightly out of focus to make her some kind of “everywoman” is not an effective way to make a statement, or a great film.

I did worry that part of my problem with the film was just the letdown from high expectations, but after three viewings, I have to say that “God is in the details,” and Wendy and Lucy is fuzzy at its center.

So here is where I found God in 2008:

1 – Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
A relentlessly cheerful London schoolteacher argues with her driving instructor, parties with her mates, and meets a guy.  I’ve always been a fan of Leigh’s work, and this may be my favorite of his films. It’s not as though the film, or its protagonist, Poppy (Sally Hawkins) is blindly cheerful. Some awful things happen, of course. It’s just a matter of how Poppy chooses to deal with them that makes her unique among Leigh’s protagonists. She also can’t stop being funny, and I love her for it. There. I said it. Having worked retail, I understood how much the bookstore clerk at the beginning of the film must have hated her. It didn’t take long for me to realize how wrong that guy was, though. The cast is superb, as I expect from a Mike Leigh film. Hawkins holds it together with a performance of depth and grace. I’m one of those film snobs who falsely claims not to care about the Oscars and such, but it did piss me off that after being lauded by a bunch of critics’ groups and nominated at the Golden Globes, Hawkins didn’t rate an Oscar nomination. Then again, The Curious Life of Benjamin Button, David Fincher’s lame Forrest Gump remake, got 48 nominations, so what do they know?

2-The Secret of the Grain (Abdellatif Kechiche)
An aging Tunisian dock worker who’s spent his life working the French port of Sète decides to open a restaurant with the help of family and friends.  Kechiche displays an understanding that heartache and brutality do not necessarily flow gently into our lives. The Secret of the Grain throws us into the world of Slimane (the wonderfully weathered and stoic Habib Boufares) and his extended family, with all of its longstanding grievances and unspoken resentments. It’s tremendously meticulous in its observation of these peoples’ lives. Every word and gesture evokes a world of meaning. Kechiche successfully weaves his larger political points into a vibrant family drama. He’s a generous filmmaker, and the film has a lot of joy in it, but he’s also not afraid to linger on the trials and unpleasantness of these lives.

3-Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman)
In this animated film, an Israeli filmmaker interviews his friends in an effort to remember and understand his role in the 1982 massacre of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.  Critic Mike D’Angelo has compared the ending of Waltz with Bashir, which uses documentary footage to gut-wrenching effect, to that of Brian DePalma’s Redacted, an unevenly acted “reconstruction” of a horrific incident that occurred during the Iraq War, which also ends with documentary footage. I think there’s a more clear-cut case against Redacted from an ethical standpoint, because the photos he tacks onto the end merely serve to manipulate the audience. Folman’s film, on the other hand, while it is animated, and is thus not a documentary in the strictest sense, is more analogous to memoir. It is about the filmmaker’s journey to some type of understanding, and his final moment of clarity is represented by the switch to news footage. The animation is a distancing device, which highlights the subjectivity of what’s depicted (including dreams and fantasies), but that doesn’t make it fictional. It’s not as though the footage is tacked on. It’s more like the entire film has been building to that moment where Folman makes that powerful shift.

4-Frownland (Ronald Bronstein)
A depressive weirdo stumbles through subsistence living in New York City.  Finally, a film about a character I can relate to! In a year filled with unpleasant and uncomfortably sociopathic characters and emotionally painful moments, this grainy, gritty feature debut takes the cake. The film is unremittingly ugly—equal parts grueling, hilarious, and heartbreaking. It captures an aspect of New York City desperate living that I’ve never seen depicted with this type of brutally uncompromised honesty. You wonder how people like Keith (an amazing performance by Dore Mann) survive here, but they do, and Bronstein provides a disturbing glimpse into that life. And the standardized-test-tutor exam scene was probably the funniest thing I saw in a film all year. These are definitely people I live amongst.

5-Cadillac Records (Darnell Martin)
Leonard Chess starts a record company, makes his fortune off of great Black artists, who revolutionize the blues and invent rock and roll.  The only movie in my top ten that my mom has seen (at press time). The first review I read of this was in the Village Voice, wherein the critic complained the film was formulaic, episodic, and historically inaccurate. As if those were bad things! This is another instance where I was a fan of the filmmaker based on her first feature (1994’s I Like it Like That). So while Beyonce playing Etta James wasn’t much of a hook for me personally, Martin directing the redoubtable Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters was intriguing. But then there were those so-so reviews. So while I hoped Cadillac Records would be one of those oh-so-rare instances when the critical establishment got it wrong, I wasn’t expecting it to be this good. And the biggest surprise wasn’t Wright or even Columbus Short and Mos Def delivering vibrant performances as Little Walter and Chuck Berry, respectively. It was Beyonce as Etta James. During her dramatic near-self-destruction scene with Adrian Brody, I realized my mouth was literally hanging open. There she was, blowing some miscast Oscar-winner off the screen. As far as the historical fudging goes, and there is quite a bit, I say who gives a crap. The film rips into the heart of deeper and more profound truths about popular music and race than what year the Beach Boys actually recorded “Surfin’ USA.”

6-Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
Struggling theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) wins a grant and decides to stage a full-scale replica of his life in a big warehouse.   I generally enjoy Charlie Kaufman’s work as a screenwriter, and thanks to a fruitful collaboration with the impish Michel Gondry, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind transcended his usual reflexive quirkiness with a visionary reflexive quirkiness. This film is not that, but it is reflexive and quirky. It is completely self-indulgent and solipsistic and water is wet, but it is also singular and personal and resonant. It makes you think about the creative process, the overly examined life, and entropy. And if you just kind of let it wash over you, there’s a lot here to enjoy. It’s funny, maddening, and features a veritable Murderer’s Row of talented actresses: Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Dianne Wiest, Robin Weigert. I mean, Jesus, seriously, what recent film can boast a cast like this!? The world is full of “independent” films that are quirky for their own sake, but this isn’t one of them. This is deeply felt.

7-Surfwise (Doug Pray)
A documentary about Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz and his famous surfing family.  I’m not that interested in surfing, but this is a great surfing documentary in that it’s not about surfing. It’s about a successful Jewish doctor who left his job to take his wife and nine children on the road, surfing and offering free medical care to people who needed it, and just generally rejecting traditional American values in favor of something freer and more meaningful. Of course, the story of the Paskowitz family also has its dark side. Doug Pray (Hype, Scratch) knows how to put together a documentary, and Surfwise is slick and entertaining, but it’s also a fascinatingly complex profile that raises compelling questions about the values of our society.

8-Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)
Kym (Anne Hathaway) returns home for her sister Rachel’s (Rosemarie DeWitt) wedding, and causes trouble.  Of course, because I was a Demme fan back when he was doing great little ensemble comedy-dramas (that’s what we called them back then) like Melvin and Howard and Citizens Band, to me this film doesn’t seem like a departure so much as a return to form. His use of handheld camera isn’t a misguided attempt at hipness but an appropriate form for the film’s intimate, fraught, freewheeling, and keenly observed content. I don’t get the criticism of the film’s multiculti milieu. Couldn’t people like this exist, who cultivate relationships with others from a wide variety of backgrounds, and don’t feel compelled to remark on their differences when they all get together? I know there are weddings like this somewhere. I am hoping to be invited to one someday.

9-Take Out (Sean Baker and Shih-Ching Tsou)
Ming Ding (Charles Jang) works a double shift as the delivery guy at an Upper West Side Chinese restaurant.  My appreciation for this film has everything to do with its unassailable quality and nothing to do with the fact its distributor is the first ever to quote me in their ads. There it was in the print ad, even in The New York Times — “American independent filmmaking at its most vital – Josh Raskle, All Movie Guide.” So they didn’t spell my name in the traditional, correct way. You can’t have everything. I saw this well-executed low budget feature back in 2004 at a local film festival and had given up on it making it into theaters. But four years later, there it was, literally calling my name. It’s another naturalistic look at an unheralded aspect of sparkly glamorous New York City’s inner life, filled with humor, sadness, desperation, and the fascinating ordinary stuff of everyday work. The filmmakers wedge in a bit too much plot at the end, as though they don’t trust the audience to appreciate the simple drama of Ming Ding’s daily struggle, but by then the film has revealed enough truth about these lives to earn our good will. Plus they used my blurb.

10-Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)
An odd boy befriends an odd girl who is not really a girl at all.  Apparently, the book this was adapted from is the Swedish equivalent of the Twilight series, which probably means that, as I suspected all along, Swedes are just better than us. Let the Right One In is a thoughtful, moody horror film that approaches pre-adolescent existence with an uncanny sensitivity and emotional honesty. So, what will have to be changed for the upcoming American remake.  Some of the creepier psychosexual elements will have to be excised. I can’t imagine that batshit crazy feline attack scene makes the final cut. They will probably throw in something to make the climactic vengeance scene seem more morally justified. In short, just toss out much of what makes the film strange and complex and wonderful, and distinctly for grownups, and American multiplex audiences should be able to handle it easily.

Etc.
Gomorrah and Hunger were both very good, but I’m not sure a weeklong run in Los Angeles qualifies them for my 2008 top ten. WALL-E was amazing, especially the first half, but I’m assuming you already know that. Stuck was a nasty but trenchant little thriller with a startling true story for a hook, and strong performances by Stephen Rea (no surprise) and Mena Suvari (pretty surprising) keeping things from getting cartoonish. Mad Detective was a great example of the wildly prolific Hong Kong director Johnnie To in eccentric mode. There was plenty more to like about 2008, but these were the highlights for me.