The Best Films of 2008: Honorable Mentions

Today I'll be kicking off my year-end roundup of the best films of 2008. Having seen over 100 films released last year, I feel like I got a pretty good idea of the good, the bad and the downright ugly (For the latter, see my "Worst Movies of 2008" post below) that I can sum up the year's best. However, due to the fact that there were so many good films this year, I can't just do a standard top 10 list. As it turns out, I can't even manage a top 20, because there were more films beyond my favorite 20 that I felt compelled to write about. Therefore, over the next three days I'm planning on rolling out the best films of the year, starting today, with the honorable mentions to my top 20.

(Note: Of the major films of the year, I've seen all except for one: "Revolutionary Road," which I'm sure is very good, but didn't have time to get out and see due to its lack of a release in Chicago before this weekend.)

The following films are listed in alphabetical order:

Changeling - Clint Eastwood's "other movie" released this year got ignored due to accusations of melodrama, which is a shame, because being jaded only serves to diminish the raw power and emotional impact of this Angelina Jolie drama. Jolie, more a tabloid foil than an actress at this point, finally reminds us all why she won an Oscar for "Girl, Interrupted" ten years ago. As Christine Collins, the mother of an abducted child who became the victim of a massive LAPD coverup, she conveys every bit of the horrified anguish of a mother who simply wants her son back and is forced to endure absolute hell to get him. I've rarely been filled with so much anger, in the best possible way, as I was while watching this film.

Choke - Clark Gregg's adaptation of the unadaptable Chuck Palahniuk novel is probably as dead-on as it was ever going to be, and this is due to Sam Rockwell's caustically funny performance as Victor Mancini, the sex addict and con man who falls for an off-kilter doctor and figures out he may just be a descendant of the divine. Rockwell manages to pull off the high-wire act of the character, playing him as petulant and exploitative while also making him just charming enough that we cheer for Victor, no matter what horrifying things we do. Kelly MacDonald, as the doctor, plays the antithesis of her weeping widow in "No Country For Old Men," and manages to come off as both adorable and crazy without overacting for a second. The marketing for this film did it very little justice, because it's really not as funny as it was made out to be. It's kind of touching, though, in its own deeply strange way.

Don't Look Down (No Mires Para Abajo) - I caught this film at the Chicago Film Festival in October, mostly because the premise in the guidebook made me laugh and intrigued me simultaneously. It mentioned something about a woman seducing a young man and teaching him how sex could work as a cure for his sleepwalking, but it ended up being something more. The movie is very much about two people having sex, but because it is a foreign film, the sex is not sensational or brutal, but instead legitimately intimate. I'm not quite sure what it was about this film that made it stay in my mind at the end of this year, but I think it has something to do with the fact that a film featuring prominent and frequent graphic sex had more to say about the nature of young love than most anything else I saw this year.

In Search Of A Midnight Kiss - I'm a sucker for talky indie romances, and this one might be the best since "Before Sunrise," which pioneered the genre. The story of an awkward young man who wants nothing more than to cloister away on New Year's Eve in Los Angeles until he can forget that the past year ever happened, "Midnight Kiss" becomes a love story for the internet age when a Craigslist posting for companionship leads to a strange, sweet night-long odyessy through the city with a deeply strange young woman with her own crosses to bear. The film's black and white photography allows their strolls through urban sprawl to take on a romantic quality that I doubt they possess in real life. The ending is one of the most honest I've ever seen in a romantic comedy, and possibly one of the most magical, in its own way.

Milk - It took me two viewings to really appreciate Gus Van Sant's film about Harvey Milk, the slain San Francisco city supervisor who became one of the first and most iconic faces of the gay rights movement. At first, it came off like a typical Oscar bait biopic, which is a claim that wholly cheapens the resonance of Sean Penn's work as Milk, which he lends both the proper humanity and lust for power to elevate the character above the status of a caricature. The film itself is also deeply refreshing in one regard; gay love is depicted for what is the first time I've observed in the film as it is, without melodrama or heartbreak. In the scenes between Penn and James Franco, playing Milk's longtime lover, there is real tenderness and affection, with even a bit of playfulness, which is wonderful. The film itself uses a haunting mixture of re-enactments and actual footage to drive the point home, but the most deeply moving sequence of the film comes when Milk and his advisors celebrate the failing of a proposition to ban gays from working in schools, because it's uncanny to think that essentially the same struggle is still going on today. Sad, isn't it?

Pineapple Express - It's hard to call this movie a stoner comedy, considering that it exists as virtually every genre at one point or another during the film. Romantic comedy? Just look at the sweet, stumbling loyalty between dedicated burnout Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) and his dealer Saul Silver (James Franco), that eventually elevates itself to the highest form of hetero man-love. Action movie? Hell yes. The last half hour of this movie is, of anything, way more violent than any comedy needs to be. Drama? At times, it's oddly serious and even attains a level of pathos that it really has no business having. The real stroke of genius, however, (excluding Franco's deliciously whacked performance) is the film's last scene, which answers the question of what all action movie characters do after the shootout/car chase/violent climax is over. The answer is pretty damned funny, as it turns out.

Rachel Getting Married - Jonathan Demme's film about a rehab-fresh young woman attending her sister's wedding left me feeling like I need to revisit it in five to ten years, once I've been immersed in the mid-twenties wedding boom and lived through it, so that I could better appreciate it. As it stands now, it's still the best performance Anne Hathaway has ever given. As Kym, she's unrepentantly manipulative, fighting wildly for attention at the same time she simply wants to be left alone. It's incredibly affecting and memorable without falling into award-grabbing territory. There is a twenty-minute scene, featuring a multitude of wedding rehearsal dinner speeches, that critics have either loved or considered overindulgent, that I think falls somewhere in between. It's likely incredibly realistic, because it overstays its welcome, but all is forgiven the moment Kym takes the mic and refers to herself as Shiva, the god of death and destruction before sarcastically thanking both families for putting up with her substance abuse.

Sex Drive - For a low-budget teen sex comedy, this was shockingly hilarious. In fact, it might be the funniest movie out of the genre since "American Pie," at least as far as sex comedies with gratuitous sight gags go. The more memorable part of the film, though, is the final half hour, in which it takes the inevitable turn into sweetness, but does so with a surprisingly deft touch. The film is the story of three friends, two guys and a girl, heading from Chicago to Tennessee to facilitate one guy's loss of his virginity, but along the way, the girl in the picture becomes involved, and where the film goes from there is surprisingly romantic.

Speed Racer/The Spirit - Why did I lump these two films together? I think there are enough similarities in place that comparisons have to be made. Both were major box office duds, both were practically made for a cult audience and both were absolutely slaughtered for critics as the result of foregone prejudices against them. The most important thing? They were both fantastic with respect to what they were trying to do. With "Speed Racer," the Wachowski brothers directly re-created the cult 1960s cartoon, in live action and in acid trip-level Technicolor. In the case of "The Spirit," Frank Miller used the "Sin City" visual style to create a gloriously campy ode to all things action movie-badass. With both films, I think the real audience will be found on DVD and at midnight showings years from now.

The Wackness - It's not often that a seemingly unremarkable movie becomes one of the year's most indelible, but so it goes with "The Wackness." Josh Peck plays a naive young pot dealer who befriends his therapist (Ben Kingsley) and falls in love with his therapist's stepdaughter, who's not all she seems to be. The writing starts off awkward, but soon hits its stride. The exchange between Peck and Kingsley at the end, after Kingsley takes a full bottle of prescription tranquilizers, is one of the most tender scenes of the year. It's a shame that a perfect movie for teenagers couldn't find a wide release.