The end hath come. And as such, in honour of this annual event, we will be running a bunch of lists. Every few days, a new list. Everyone likes [writing] lists.
Today:
THE 10 MOST ANTICIPATED FILMS OF 2008.
10) Youth Without Youth – If you aren’t taken by yet another WWII setting, or if you aren’t excited by the disatrous early reviews, then read this, and don’t act like you aren’t interested in Coppola’s first serious film since…well, if you don’t wanna count The Rainmaker, or Jack (both being entirely impersonal gun-for-hire middlings), it’s 1992’s Dracula. Sixteen years. Don’t front.
9) We Own The Night – I make no apologies for constantly championing James Gray’s vision. A family coming apart, a man with a gun, a night and a choice to make… The Yards was my favourite film of 2000, a beautiful note-perfect noir, and was as much an unbelievably cinematic paean to one of film’s bygone eras as it was the film Gray will likely always make; this newest endeavor a riff on the same themes of family and conflict that his 1994 debut Little Odessa was, and his Gwyneth-starring love/conflict drama Two Lovers, due later this year, will also be. Also, beating this in the best-title-of-the-year award will be very very hard indeed.
8) The Dark Knight – After Nolan’s Batman Begins dazzlingly re-invented the franchise and actually made everyone as scared of Scarecrow as they were happy about it, I’m surprised that I’m surprised that I…we…all of us would be so frightened of Heath Ledger. But…it’s just really fucking frighteningly creepy. And!: David S. Goyer returns!
7) Sweeney Todd – Burton is back! After a decade of mixed blessings – from the amazing Sleepy Hollow and transcendental Big Fish to the alarming Charlie And The Chocolate Factory and not-even-a-Burton-film Planet Of The Apes remake – it’s very relieving to hear all the advance word. The reviews have been almost foaming-at-the-mouth hysterical, it’s being hailed as genius Depp’s best performance ever, AND it’s a musical.
6) Synecdoche, New York - What will Kaufman’s first directorial effort look like? Will it be weird that both Jonze and Gondry have non-Kaufman films coming out this year? Why does it have a one-person animation department? And: maybe most compelling of all: it’s his most convoluted premise yet. THINK ABOUT THAT. MARINATE.
5) Where The Wild Things Are - Spike Jonze making the most haunting kids book ever into a film is reason enough to have this listed here. Hell, Jonze alone is good enough for me…but co-written with Dave fucking Eggers? The best writer working in sentences today? That’s reason enough to list it here even though its post-production schedule is likely gonna bump it to 2009 (where, if so, I’ll list it again here next year).
4) Cloverfield – maybe the purest high-concept film of the last couple years, and from the reigning high-concept king. If the astonishing trailers are anything to go by, it’s gonna look like nothing else ever has. Not sure if it means anything to anyone else here that director Matt Reeves co-wrote The Yards (tho, personally, it does make him easy to like), but this is just as exciting.
3) Funny Games- Haneke’s remake of his own incredibly upsetting “American” masterpiece (made, this time, in America, with American actors), and allegedly a ”shot-for-shot” Psycho-type affair. Will it be different? Will it be pointless? Will it be amazing? Revolutionary? Revelatory? Redundant? Will the answers to any of these possibly stop us from going?
2) There Will Be Blood- as with most of the directors whose films made this list, P.T. Anderson is a “promise” guy; an artist whose rep alone is the stuff of both ardent fanbases and film-school-tuition-fee-paying fantasy. The early word is as gushing as it has always been for Anderson, and Daniel Day-Lewis in his “most intense performance ever”? We are, indeed, all going to see this.
1) Be Kind Rewind- maybe the most amazing and esoteric premise in star-actor filmic history, this absolute fantasy of a project is either going to be the most underrated film of the decade or the most shallowly over-appreciated. Wait! - it’s gonna be both! No! – it’s gonna be amazing!
To come: 2007’s best/worst films, best performances, favourite moments…
