Cinemuck, 2008

At least accord­ing to me. But, I don’t know, every­where I click, peo­ple are past­ing their best-of lists on-line. Feel all remiss if I don’t play along just a lit­tle. How­ever, real­iz­ing that, now that I actu­ally live close to a the­atre, and to all kinds of oppor­tu­ni­ties in Den­ver, I’ve been some­how going to the movies less. Or, less com­pul­sively. Not at all a state­ment on qual­ity or any­thing. Maybe more that I’ve just feel­ing very guilty about how many unwatched DVDs I have, I sup­pose. Been play­ing catch-up lately, I mean. Like, just/finally see­ing THE SEVEN SAMURAI. Finally about to (maybe) hit FITZCARRALDO. Not that I’ve been a slacker so much as I’ve been an over-achiever in select gen­res. And of course I proudly and per­sis­tently con­tinue that. Horror-comedy’s for­ever where it’s at for me. Or just hor­ror in gen­eral. Maybe specif­i­cally any­thing slash­ery. Which is to say I wish I could slip ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE up here, but alas, it’s already old, even though I only got to see it a few months ago. Same with [REC], and THE ORPHANAGE.

Any­way, bam:

The Dark Knight. This year’s City of God? Big state­ment, yeah, but an amaz­ing movie, too. And here I thought Spider-Man 2 and Iron Man and Hulk 2 were as good as comic book movies could get. Though, yeah, hope­fully The Watch­men’ll bump that bar even a lit­tle bit higher.

Clover­field. I couldn’t have pos­si­bly liked this more, I don’t think. Even if it had some­how had Bruce Camp­bell in it, or if Lee Majors had found occa­sion to, say, jump a short­bed Chevy truck over some­thing unlikely. It had gigan­toid crea­tures (well, sin­gu­lar), sure, but so did The Mist (also: loved it), but it had heart, too. An actual love story that mattered.

Mid­night Meat Train. Like I wasn’t scared enough of sub­ways. Now [ spoiler … ] there’s guys with styl­ized chrome ham­mers wait­ing to feed me to these elder god types. This movie worked so well, did such a good job track­ing the protagonist’s descent.

Lake­view Ter­race. I’m still not over this movie. Really, of every­thing I saw this year, it’s the one stick­ing with me the most — the one I’m most eager to get on DVD, watch over and over and over again. Because I’m pretty sure it’s doing some­thing so impor­tant for/to the slasher genre. Just as Fatal Attrac­tion once upon a time ported the slasher con­ven­tions over to non-monsterland, so does Lake­view Ter­race. It’s a way to col­lapse the genre, sim­ply by mak­ing it sud­denly ‘legit­i­mate,’ not supernatural-dependent. And col­lapses like that are so impor­tant. It’s from those ashes the new-stuff’s born. We never could have had Scream with­out the slasher blow­ing up once before, I mean. Excited.

Tropic Thun­der. Downey of course Heath Ledgers the show. Which is me try­ing to say ‘steal.’ But I’m say­ing noth­ing new there. Any­way, this was just pure and ridicu­lous fun. Espe­cially the Tom Cruise dance. Who knew.

Bolt. Man, [ spoiler … ] when the cat comes back, when she decides what’s impor­tant, I don’t know. Was glad it was dark in that theatre.

For­get­ting Sarah Mar­shall. And I guess this is a roman­tic com­edy, yeah? But then so was Moon­struck, and For­get Paris, and all those other ones that are actu­ally good and not stu­pid. Or, this was stu­pid, but in all the good ways. And Veron­ica Mars is super­cool in it, as is/was Jackie (whom, until I was dis­suaded, I was sure was also that daugh­ter in Bro­ken Flow­ers. But evi­dently I’m stupid)

Don­key Punch. Such a sim­ple premise, and then exe­cuted so well. It’s like — like when you get Wes Craven direct­ing in a tight hall, some chase sequence. Nobody does that kind of stuff bet­ter than him, I don’t think. And, Don­key Punch, it’s that hall, and it just keeps longer, and deeper, and darker. Loved it.

High School Musi­cal 3. This is so there’s no dan­ger of any­body else’s list lin­ing up with mine, right? Hope­fully not to under­mine the rest of my choices, any­way. But, this worked, for me. It aimed for a cer­tain audi­ence, and it shot them right through the heart. That’s suc­cess, to me. And I’m that audi­ence, too.

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How­ever, there’s a lot of no-shows on my list, yeah? Tech­ni­cally, really, ‘no-sees.’ I just didn’t catch these. Haven’t yet, any­way. Some by acci­dent, some with purpose:

Let the Right One In. This was in town for approx­i­mately sev­en­teen min­utes. Not even sure how they man­aged to get it screened in that time. Any­way, bought the book yes­ter­day, as a present to some­one, and was so, so sad to be drop­ping it in the mail. Want it for myself, I mean (did the same with Gaiman’s The Grave­yard Book as well, and would have done wit with Lansdale’s Leather Maiden, but the store was out of them).

Slum­dog Mil­lion­aire. This just opened here, so I don’t feel so bad about not hav­ing seen it. Still a lit­tle while. From the trailer, though, I can already tell that it’s my favorite movie ever. It’s a gift I have.

Death Race. This trailer, I just wanted to watch it over and over. Yet I didn’t make it to the the­atre. Maybe I was mov­ing, unpack­ing, I don’t know. No excuse, really, but soon to be corrected.

Jar City. Only found this on some­body else’s best-of list. Looks like exactly what I go to the movies for, though.

Red. No excuse here. I mean, this is Ketchum. Oh, yeah, one excuse: it never played here. Or, I didn’t know it did if it did.

The Div­ing Bell and the But­ter­fly. I’ve not seen this one on pur­pose. Fairly cer­tain it’ll destroy me, make me para­noid, all that. It happens.

In Bruges. From the trail­ers, I had zero-minus-twelve desire to see this. But a lot of peo­ple I really trust about movies are hyp­ing this one. And they haven’t led me wrong before … (how­ever, I have been mis­led — Cache, say, or I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, nei­ther of which I tol­er­ated well at all [ now I’m start­ing to lose some credit, right? ] ).

Hell­boy II. I never read the Hell­boy stuff. Caught the first movie, thought it was cool until the over-the-top end, but this sec­ond one, from del Toro, it looks like a com­pletely dif­fer­ent beast. One I shouldn’t have missed on the big screen.

Rock­n­rolla. I love styl­ized, implau­si­ble stuff. Wanted, say. Nobel Son. And who knows, maybe this was a return to form for Ritchie. Just not in the the­atre long enough for me to sched­ule it.

The Bank Job. I fig­ured this was just another Inside Man/The Ital­ian Job/etc — and I liked those enough, but didn’t nec­es­sar­ily want to see them retrans­lated yet again. But, word is this is a step above. I’ll be look­ing for it.

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Talk­ing stuff I haven’t seen, too, I mean, there’s P2, from for­ever ago. And it looks kind of per­fect. But then too, I mean: There Will Be Blood. Haven’t got past the first few min­utes yet. And I’ve had the DVD for­ever now, just on acclaim. But I’m just hav­ing the most dif­fi­cult time get­ting inter­ested enough to keep from push­ing the stop but­ton, switch­ing over to some Futu­rama I know by heart. My loss, I’m sure. I mean, that’s kind of the same rea­son I’ve never yet read Midnight’s Chil­dren, though I’ve read a lot of other Rushdie: it doesn’t hook me fast enough. City of Glass either. Too, I didn’t hit the Funny Games remake, but that was just because I caught the orig­i­nal on boot­leg VHS for­ever and a day ago, and liked it enough, but couldn’t imag­ine what would be that dif­fer­ent or bet­ter in the theatre.

Too, just in case I have any credit left with any­body: No Coun­try For Old Men. It’s a year old already, and has no place on this list either, but, like with The Departed, like with Capote, it just didn’t work for me. Won­der­ful per­for­mances and direct­ing, all that, but — talk­ing Old Men here — I just never much went for the novel. And then the movie was too faith­ful to it. How­ever, The Road, yeah. Look­ing for­ward to being not quite as dev­as­tated by the adap­ta­tion I was by the novel, any­way. But who am I kidding.

Posted: 12|17|08 at 6:56 pm. Filed under: Main.

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