Sound and Vision: My year in lists: movie edition

Ever since the Ten Commandments, people have loved lists. At every end of the year you'll see them appear - whether it's movies or music - critics, bloggers and other people on the web putting up their top tens of the year. Or top 5 if you're Rob Gordon. Or top 25s, or whatever...

I love lists aswell, and because the year is almost finished, it's about time I put up mine. I'll start with my favourite movies of the year. Please note: it's just a list of movies I've seen in the cinema this year, some of these were released in 2008in American cinemas and some of them haven't been released yet in Dutch cinemas. It's just that I've seen most of them in Dutch cinemas and a few in English cinemas, so it's a bit mixed when it comes to official years of release.

Keep in mind that I haven't had the chance to see the following movies:
Das WeiBe Band, Doubt, Revolutionairy Road, Synecdoche New York, Bright Star, Let The Right One In, Antichrist, Whatever Works, Moon, Gran Tarino, The Limits Of Control, Ponyo At The Cliff At The Sea

01. Milk
Sean Penn well deserved his Oscar for his portrayal of the late Harvey Milk, the gay rights activist turned politician. Set in the 60s, we witness a story of hope and a fight for equality for the homosexual citizens of San Francisco and the rest of the United States. While Harvey becomes a Messiah figure for the gay community and gains more and more success in his battle against inequality, and fights for a place in the City Hall, his private life is ruined by his ignorance towards his lover(s) due to his focus on politics and the cause he’s fighting for. Also, in the still conservative country and politics that is the USA in the sixties, not everyone appreciates this flamboyant man shaking hands with the mayor....
Milk is one of those movies where everything seems perfect: the acting, the story, the script, and just the way it looks. Amazing achievements by Gus van Sant, Dustin Lance Black and ofcourse Sean Penn.
Also very good supporting roles with James Franco as the housewife, Dan Brolin as the arch nemesis, Emile Hirsch as the young Cleve Jones and Diego Luna as the unstable lover.

02. A Serious Man
The latest Coen Brothers films is incredibly different from everything they’ve ever done. You’d expect a typical Coens crime-gone-wrong comedy, but no crime is involved whatsoever; no murder, no kidnapping, no idiotic criminals. Nonetheless, A Serious Man is an amazing movie, questioning the motives of religion, faith, misfortune, mortality, guilt and family, and tributing, while at the same time non-insultingly mocking, Judaism.
Set in the late 60s, it tells the story of Jewish professor Larry Gopnik, ‘trying to be a serious man’ but instead finding his life falling apart: his wife suddenly wants a divorce so she can marry his best friend, he has problems at work, with a student trying to bribe him, and with possibly not getting a promotion, his son is high on weed during his bar mitzvah and his daughter is saving up money for a nosejob. While constantly claiming ‘But I didn’t do anything’, Larry tries to find out why he is being punished, by speaking to several rabbis. However, none of them seem to be able to provide him with helpful answers.
‘A Serious Man’ is still typical Coens, with the funny caricatures and dark humor, but not what you’d expect from them, it’s a whole new opened door for them and I can’t wait to see what they’re going to do next.

03. An Education
The uncomforting coming of age of 16 year old Jenny (great acting by Carey Mulligan), an intellectual rebel from the 60s, looking for a way out of her ‘boring’ teenage school life. After she gets swept off her feet by the charming, much older David (Peter Sarsgaard), she finds herself at a crossroads in her life: is she going to choose for Oxford University to study and be bored, or will she decide to go to David’s ‘University of Life’, and have fun? How grown up she may think she is, her naivety makes her bound to end up being hurt. Nonetheless, this is what makes her stronger, as these things always do.

04. Up
Up is one of those films that is build on the ‘Le Petit Prince’ motive: it’s actually for the kids, but adults can enjoy and learn from it too. Pixar has been doing very well with these kind of movies, and Up is the next chapter in their book of touching, animated stories. The story Up tells us, is the one of an old man, dreaming of going on a great adventure to Paradise Falls ever since he was a child. He and his wife never had the chance to go, and after she dies, the old man becomes a bitter and moody. One day he decides to go on the adventure after all, and he flies away with his house stuck to a gazillion balloons. Add a fat scoutsboy, some talking dogs , a rare bird and an evil villain, and you’ll get an abstract, extremely funny story that makes you feel warm inside.

05. Precious
Some people seem to find all the bad things there are in the world coming their way. 'Precious' tells the shocking and heartbreaking story of an obese, illiterate 16-year old black girl trying to cope with the physical, mental and sexual abuse she faces in her household, and the fact that she’s pregnant for the second time... by her father. A light at the end of this dark tunnel seems to be the chance to learn how to read and write in an ‘alternative’ school. Great supporting roles by Lenny Kravitz as a male nurse and Mariah Carey (she looks like chimpanzee without make-up) as a social worker.

06. Gomorra
Compared to the brutal reality of Gomorra, the Godfather seems a romantic fairytale. Set in Napoli, Italy we see several stories of its inhabitants, who – no matter how young or old, or from which social class – are all involved in the war that is corruption. Based on the book by Roberto Saviano, who has been under police protection ever since the release of his book.