2009 Calvins: Sean Collier's Ballots

March 2, 2009

The strength of the year 2008 in film was diversity, particularly at the top of the heap. Most of the time, the best handful of films and performances in a given year are all born of the year-end Academy bait swarm, with endless variations on tense personal dramas and period romances and indie comedies with heart and sadness all trying to be an inch better than one another. This year, the top of the class was varied, original, and for some strange reason just a bit more joyous than usual; despite the box office downturn, 2008 was a breath of fresh air in the cinema.

The best film of the year was an unlikely underdog, nearly released straight to DVD, in the midst of an initially unheralded run at $100 Million in US Box Office and a Best Picture award. Slumdog Millionaire worked on several levels; it created tension and intrigue despite a fairy tale story, it was a strong romance despite the romantic leads almost never seeing one another, and it somehow managed to combine Bollywood and Hollywood in a manner that was simultaneously a tribute to both and a forwarding of conventions. Worthy of praise are the deep and skilled cast, most notably Dev Patel and Freida Pinto; the expert direction by Danny Boyle; the fantastic, infectious music by A.R. Rahman; and the perfect editing and cinematography by Chris Dickens and Anthony Dod Mantel, respectively.

Not as joyous was the incredible achievement by Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight. The second film in the bleak relaunch of the Batman franchise will forever be the mark that comic book films aspire to, but never quite reach. In addition to being certainly one of the best films of the year, it gave us the finest performance in a year of great acting. I know it hurts to put it so bluntly, but in Heath Ledger's performance, we have seen what acting looks like when it's fatal. Not only will it be difficult for anyone to give such an immersive performance, it'll be dangerous.

Frank Langella's impossible performance in Frost/Nixon and Sean Penn's inspirational portrayal in Milk are certainly worthy of praise; both were expert efforts by two of the finest actors we have, and both films were fantastic as well (my vote for Best Cast went to Frost/Nixon, and Milk was all over my Calvins ballots.) However, Mickey Rourke's unbelievable performance in The Wrestler was the best leading role of the year by a longshot. My dad put this one best, I think, when he said that Rourke would've deserved all the accolades if his character had never said a word. It's important to note that The Wrestler is little more than a character study, and a languid one at that; Randy is just so damn interesting that you'd keep watching if nothing happened. This wasn't just the best performance of the year, it's easily in the top two or three of the decade.

While I didn't have WALL-E as high on my best picture ballot as much of the staff, I still consider it one of the best achievements of the year. If you had told me last year that the best pure romance for miles in any direction would be a silent animated film about robots, I would've laughed; but that is simply what WALL-E is. Pixar didn't just set out to make a fine film this year, they intended to rediscover and rekindle some of the lost, precious magic of cinema, and did a fantastic job of it. Nothing in the film is more deserving of acclaim than the fantastic script, doing more without words than 99% of screenwriters can do with them.

I feel I have to mention two little-seen foreign films that made it near the top of my list this year. Tell No One, a French suspense masterpiece by Guillaume Canet, starts with a random murder and grows more and more sinister from there; by turns a pulse-pounding thriller and a tearjerking romance, it was one of the best experiences I had in the theater this year. On a much different note, the bleak Swedish horror film Let The Right One In showed up repeatedly in my Calvins voting. With a rhythm unheard of in American horror, Let The Right One In is captivating and disturbing, leaving the audience fairly sickened at who and what they're rooting for, just as this dark, dark film enchants us. Of particular note is the bizarre and engaging performance by young Lina Leandersson.

See more individual ballots and complete results at the 2009 Calvin Awards page

New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column