The 10 Best Films Of 2008

3. “I’ve Loved You So Long”
Just thinking of this movie makes us want to quietly weep in a corner. A soulful, extremely moving portrait of the seemingly limitless and incontestable bonds of sibling love, the ugliness of unpleasant familial secrets and the hope of personal rebirth, writer Philippe Claudel‘s directorial debut is anchored by an arresting performance of Kristin Scott Thomas. She plays a drained-of-life woman just released from prison after 15 years for the murder of her six-year-old son. After the family has denounced her, the only one waiting for her is her loving younger sister, played with tenderness and empathy by Elsa Zylberstein. ‘I’ve Loved You So Long’ is one of the decade’s most emotionally wrenching films made about family.

2. “Reprise”
A vibrantly alive and magnetic ode to youth and a passionate chronicle of friendship and the manic energy of a restless mind, “Reprise” struck a chord and never left. Some called this dynamically visualized tale of two competitive best friends (Anders Danielsen Lie and Espen Klouman-Høiner) with literary aspirations and their chronicles of love, loss and mental illness “Charlie Kaufman-esque,” but that’s banal and reductive. The directorial debut by Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier traverses in concepts of fluid time, but the electrical human energy, Bergman-esque contemplation and kinetic zeal is distinctly its own.

1. “Che”
Steven Soderbergh‘s two part epic is not going to win any points for politics, as it jumps around Che Guevara’s life liberally and tiptoes around his more serious discretionary acts. But it doesn’t lionize the man either. Soderbergh takes his coolly proficient scalpel to instead illustrate the anatomy of a revolutionary, a field leader and a man capable of great change, who was intrigued with the verbal exchanges in the middle of sieges, the physical steps taken between two points and the hairsbreadth difference between being the leader of your people and being a victim of unmanaged hubris. Soderbergh benefits from a go-for-broke performance by Benicio del Toro as the political game-changer, and he presents an intense and typically focused characterization that helps create a full picture of a man we might not want to befriend or vilify, but one we desperately want to know.

Honorable Mentions:
It pains us how many great films we had to leave off this list. Number one in that category is perhaps French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche‘s sprawling, roving cinema verite family restaurant drama “Secret Of the Grain.” Other strong films that unfortunately could not make the cut but we still wish to pay recognition to include Guy Maddin‘s drunken, wintry and hilarious docu-fantasia “My Winnipeg“; Kelly Reichardt‘s micro-minimalist poverty tale “Wendy & Lucy” which suffers from zero plot, but boasts a devastating performance by Michelle Williams; Hou Hsiao-hsien‘s meandering but touching “Flight of the Red Balloon“; still going at 79 years of age, French New Wave stalwart Claude Chabrol‘s deliciously sardonic “A Girl Cut In Two,” featuring excellent performances by Ludivine Sagnier and François Berléand; Danny Boyle‘s kinetic and celebratory fairy-tale “Slumdog Millionaire“; Gus Van Sant‘s skate-park teen drama “Paranoid Park” featuring lovely lensing by the great Christopher Doyle; the German-made Jewish Holocaust prisoners story “The Counterfeiters” and Claude Miller‘s absorbing WWII family drama “A Secret,” including an excellent performance by Cécile De France who Clint Eastwood recently tapped for his near-death experiences film, “Hereafter.” Also quite amazing is Steve McQueen‘s IRA hunger-strike drama “Hunger” featuring an amazing performance by Michael Fassbender.

We also appreciate Martin McDonagh‘s feature-length directorial debut, the hit-man comedy, “In Bruges” (someone please figure out how to adapt his amazing play “The Pillowman,” we elect someone like Bong Joon-Ho or Park Chan-Wook); the Swedish vampire film “Let The Right One In“; “Waltz With Bashir,” Harmony Korine‘s most successful feature film, the dreamy and melancholy “Mister Lonely“; the under appreciated (at least in the U.S.), Palme d’Or winner “The Class,” by director Laurent Cantet; Tom McCarthy‘s simple but effective sophomore picture “The Visitor“; David Gordon Green‘s Altman-eseque and surprisingly funny drama “Snow Angels“; David Mamet‘s mixed-martial arts drama “Redbelt“; Charlie Kaufman‘s swirl-headed and dour dream “Synecdoche, New York“; and enjoyable entertainment like “Wall-E” and “The Dark Knight.”

—  Rodrigo Perez, Drew Taylor, Katie Walsh & Gabe Toro