Top 10 films of 2008, contributed by Brendan Rose

One pretentious film buff's Top 10 of 2008:

1) Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone) - Certainly the most honest mafia movie ever - rugged, raw and unsentimental.

2) 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Cristian Mingiu) - This film never relents with its brutally precise visual language.

3) Edge of Heaven (Fatih Akin) - An expertly sculpted drama making Hollywood's interconnecting story films look fatuous and unworthy (i.e. Crash!!).

4) Waltz With Bashir (Ari Folman) - Half wistful dream, half probing confessional, capped off by a perfect, urgent denouement.

5) Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt) - A touch of Bresson pervades this elegant cinematic whisper.

6) Reprise (Joachim Trier) - I Vitelloni-esque; somehow lacks pretension.

7) The Secret of the Grain (Abdel Kechiche) - Cassavettes-like wide scenes pinpointing the details in this family drama of modern, multicultural France.

8) Che (Steven Soderbergh) - This film has gotten a lot of negative press, but it's more complex and less a piece of simple fawning Che hagiography than most suspect.

9) Milk (Gus Van Sant) - A sweeping biopic, across-the-board strong performances, moral rigor.

10) The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky) - Tomei and Rourke dominate, despite a few key flaws (the hasty make-up sequence between daughter and father).


Runners Up:

- Still Life (Jia Zhangke) - The politics of the dispossessed, harbored through the moving image.

- Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant) - so ethereal and beautiful; if only it carried more weight.

- Wall-E (Andrew Stanton) - its transcendent opening 30 or so minutes will be remembered.

- Summer Palace (Ye Lou) - the film drifts, like its characters, but contains some extraordinary sequences.

- Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan) - Ledger's performance will stand tall through the ages; a sloppy third act prevents a higher rank.

- Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme) - Only a Jonathan Demme could make a film with this scenario and these conceits and still make it somehow work!