Best and Worst movies of my year

The year end is a time for lists, so I've decided to do my own year-end lists, even though they're coming a little late due to our trip and getting sick.  Up first is movies, based on what we watched during the last calendar year.  It doesn't matter when it came out, so it can be old or new to make my list.  That way when I'm really old and looking back on this blog, maybe I'll re-watch them and see how my perception of them has changed.  One of the good things about getting older is that a movie can seem completely different 5 or 10 years down the road, based on how you have changed.  

First I'll include Jav's best list, just so we'll remember one day.  If he wants to review them further, he can start his own blog.

5.  Ironman

4.  Almost Famous

3.  Into the Wild

2.  The Dark Knight

1.  No Country for Old Men

Now let's move to my Worst of the Year:  (or at least the most painful to watch)  

3.  No Reservations.  Just not a very good movie.  Nobody in it acted very well except for Abigail Breslin, and they didn't give her much to work with.  The only interesting thing about it was to see how grueling the life of a chef can be.  

2.  August Rush.  This time, a bunch of overacting (especially by veteran actor Robin Williams - ugh), a terrible script and the ruining of what could have been a neat idea for a movie.  But in this one even the kid overacted.   A bunch of sentimental hooey. 

3.  Before the Devil Knows You're Dead.  This one actually had great acting (with two of the best actors out there - Philip Seymour Hoffman and Albert Finney), and I guess was a good story about a heist-gone-completely-wrong.  But it was so sad that we almost didn't make it through.  SPOILER ALERT if you haven't seen this and want to, then don't keep reading.  The plot starts innocently enough.  Two brothers work out a plan to rob a jewelry store.   One brother has gone through a bitter divorce and thinks he needs money to keep his daughter happy, and the other one has a BAD drug addiction, thinks he needs money to keep his wife happy AND has been embezzling funds from the company he works for.  The problem is that the jewelry store they plan to rob is owned by their parents.  The "strong" brother orders the "weaker" brother to plan the whole thing, and he botches it.  There were supposed to be no guns and no one getting hurt, but their mother ends up getting shot and later dies in the hospital.  AND it goes downhill even from there.  I thought we were going to need therapy after we finally dragged ourselves up off the couch when it was over.  Maybe it's not fair to put this on a worse movies list, but it's my list.

And now moving onto happier topics - the Best winners:

5.  Almost Famous.  Here's a fine example of viewing a movie 5 years later and liking it so much better than the first time I watched it.  Funny, poignant, great music and acting.  And one of the funnies scenes ever during the almost plane crash.

4.  Once.  All the hype about how wonderful this movie is made me not want to watch it, a strange trait I have developed over the years.  But it is exactly that - wonderful.  The story, the way it's filmed, and especially the music.  That Glen Hansard has talent dripping off his fingertips.  Marketa Irglova is great too, the movie wouldn't have been as special without her, but it was him who left me wanting to hear more.  And so refreshing to have the ending be not what I was expecting.  

3.  Michael Clayton.  Tom Wilkinson just about steals the movie, but everybody in it is terrific.  I love cerebral films where you have to pay such close attention it almost makes your head hurt.  There were several spots we had to rewind to make sure we caught everything.  It's also one of those films that doesn't make sense at the beginning at all, but as it's going on, it starts to make more and more sense and you realize what a gem you are watching.  People had warned me that it was slow, but I found it extremely suspenseful, even though you sort of know what's going to happen.  And I like the message.  Big giant evil corporations can be exposed for what they are if the right hero sniffs them out.  

2.  Into the Wild.  There's so many working parts to this movie that make it good.  The story is true, which I always find intriguing.  The acting is superb, with standout performances by Hal Holbrook and Catherine Keener.  The music soundtrack by Eddie Vedder profoundly adds to the movie.  But it's the ideal that Chris McCandless was trying to live by that feels very close to my heart, so I could really empathize with his character.  Humanity has gone full circle.  We started as cave people living off the land, then slowly moved into the Industrial Age, reaping all the supposed benefits, and now we are slowly moving back to simpler times.  But we are so pampered and conditioned from the modern-day conveniences we've enjoyed for so long, it's much, much harder than it may first appear to throw away all of our material possessions and go back to our roots.  That idea, and the music, are what made this my almost favorite move of last year.  I guess Sean Penn deserves much of the credit for transforming Jon Krakauer's book to the screen in a way that touched me.  I love it when movies surprise me, and this one did.  I figured Jav would really like it, and I was just along for the ride.  But I find myself (now months later-we watched it in June) still thinking about this movie and what a powerful effect it has had on me.  

1.  Witness for the Prosecution.  When I started compiling my list about a month ago I had Into the Wild as my numero uno.  But I after I watched this in December (for the second time) I knew I had a new winner.  I think it's been around 10 years since my first viewing and I remembered really liking it back then.  But this time it had me riveted to the screen like no other movie I watched last year. In this 1957 Billy Wilder-directed gem Charles Laughton plays an aged and unhealthy barrister on the verge of retirement, when he decides to defend one last case.  Tyrone Power has been accused of murder, and to make things worse, his wife (played by Marlene Dietrich), has decided to testify against him.  This is truly one of the best courtroom dramas ever, with lots of twists and turns in the plot and a huge twisted ending that I had forgotten from my first viewing.  The wonderfully engaging Elsa Lanchester is thrown in for comic relief (and was the actual wife of Laughton), but it is Laughton who steals this show and makes it so enjoyable.  How can you go wrong when you take an Agatha Christie play and adapt it into a movie?  

So there's the first of my 2008 year-end lists.