Film Review of the Year Part 7 of 8

The best films of 2008, the best performances, best direction, best scripts and generally best everything.



Writing honours are hard to give out, mainly because writers are really given the credit they deserve. Most great performances are partly due to great writing and it must be easier to direct a great scene than a poorly written one. Joel and Ethan Coen deserve credit for their sparse, tense masterpiece No Country For Old Men, Christopher Nolan and David Goyer also should not be overlooked for the crime film of the year The Dark Knight, but the best screenplay must surely belong to Ronald Harwood for The Diving Bell and The Butterfly. A difficult book to turn into a film, but Harwood captures to essense and beauty of the script perfectly.

In a difficult year for female leads, Angelina Jolie pleaded for an Oscar in Changeling, Sally Hawkins impressed in Happy Go Lucky, Wei Tang was amazing in Lust Caution, Keira Knightley gave a career best turn in The Duchess, Naomi Watts was tormented in Funny Games and Belen Rueda stunned in The Orphanage. But the stand out performance which even now comes straight to mind was Anamaria Marinca in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. A stunning performance which carried the audience through the ordeal on screen.

As for acting, 2008 will be remembered for its villians over its heroes. Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men, Daniel Day Lewis for There Will Be Blood and Heath Ledger for The Joker in The Dark Knight. There were notable other performances in the year. Josh Brolin was magnificent as George W Bush, Tommy Lee Jones demonstrated his greatness in No Country For Old Men and In The Valley of Elah. Ryan Gosling was endearingly excellent in Lars and the Real Girl. Brian Cox gave the british crime film a much needed kick up the arse in The Escapist but my performance of the year belongs to Habib Boufares who brought a poignant beauty to CousCous.

Cinematography is really a two horse race between There Will Be Blood and No Country For Old Men, shot in the same location, both films evoke to fatalistic tone of the films. But despite Roger Deakins genius, Robert Elswit beautifully shot epic deserves full appreciation. His wide vistas and stark lighting become a beautiful avenue into the mindset of Daniel Plainview.

Best director is a difficult award to give out. mainly because i do not believe you can just acknowledge great work, but instead must compare the quality of the direction to previous works. So whereas Ang Lee's Lust Caution is excellent, his work has been better. So too for Michael Hanake who decided America needed educating on cinematic violence with his remake of his own earlier Funny Games. Terence Davies' Of Time and the City was superb, and Ben Affleck might have found his calling after Gone Baby Gone. Roy Andersson's You, The Living was superb as was Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood. Christpoher Nolan brought us the finest comic film of all time in The Dark Knight and Andrew Stanton's WALL-E may yet be Pixar's finest achievement, but no film this year beat the Oscar winning No Country For Old Men for perfection in direction, or at the very least as close to perfection as possible. It's hard to imagine The Coen brothers outdoing some of their earlier work, but No Country must surely go down as the finest film to date.