The AP’s Top Tens

From David Germain and Christy Lemire

The top 10 films of 2008, according to AP Movie Writer David Germain:

(full text after the cut)

Lemire:
1. The Wrestler
2. Frost/Nixon
3. Man on Wire
4. Waltz with Bashir
5. Wall-E
6. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
7. Frozen River
8. Milk
9. Paranoid Park
10. Iron Man

Germain
1. Happy-Go-Lucky
2. Wall-E
3. Encounter at the End of the World
4. Slumdog Millionaire
5. Frozen River
6. The Visitor
7. The Wrestler
8. Frost/Nixon
9. The Dark Knight
10. Wendy and Lucy

1. “Happy-Go-Lucky” ‚Äî As good as Mike Leigh’s films are, perhaps his greatest service to cinema is discovering wonderful performers, then workshopping stories tailored to their strengths. The result is the year’s finest performance, with Sally Hawkins a lively, merry, inspiring sweetheart, a teacher whose unshakable optimism survives all the negative vibes, from trifling to grave, that the world hurls at her. For fans of great film actors, this is the start of a beautiful friendship.

2. “WALL-E” ‚Äî If we all had this plucky little robot’s work ethic, we wouldn’t be in a recession. The animation masters at Pixar have delivered a true innovation, a robot love story tucked in a cautionary environmental tale wrapped in a sci-fi saga, with romantic leads who communicate adorably in mechanical beeps and squeals. The title character of Andrew Stanton’s adventure is beyond endearing as he toils alone to clean up filthy old Earth after everybody else has left.

3. “Encounters at the End of the World” ‚Äî Werner Herzog went to Antarctica declaring he was NOT making another movie about penguins. His documentary presents a series of hypnotic vignettes about the researchers, wanderers and societal malcontents working at the South Pole. And representative of this motley lot, Herzog finds a penguin too fascinating to ignore ‚Äî a loner striding purposefully away from his flock, into the mountains, toward certain death.

4. “Slumdog Millionaire” ‚Äî Danny Boyle masterfully applies his “Trainspotting” dichotomy ‚Äî the humorous and horrific sharing equal screen time, occasionally at the same moment ‚Äî with this story of a Mumbai orphan who perseveres like a Dickens hero amid police torture, fraternal betrayal and child mutilation. The film has a wickedly joyous heartbeat as fate carries a lowly “slumdog” to fame, fortune and a reunion with the lost love he’s been seeking all his life.

5. “Frozen River” ‚Äî Writer-director Courtney Hunt’s meticulous debut feature casts viewers into a winter wasteland so bleak you shiver from the cold, and a cross-cultural tale so authentic you’ll shiver again as the chill thaws between its two seemingly intractable leads. Melissa Leo and Misty Upham are quietly transcendent as a white mom and a Mohawk Indian who embark on a smuggling partnership out of necessity, then find self-sacrificing friendship out of the decency they discover in each other.

6. “The Visitor” ‚Äî This year’s sad-sack prize goes to Richard Jenkins, a character actor getting a rare chance to gleam in a lead role as a widowed academic with a life whose empty moments just seem to repeat themselves. Writer-director Tom McCarthy flings this dead man walking into a touching, reinvigorating relationship with an immigrant illegally living in his Manhattan flat, lending our hero a reason to fight not only for his new friend’s life, but also his own.

7. “The Wrestler” ‚Äî Mickey Rourke’s art imitates his life in Darren Aronofsky’s inventive take on the usually hackneyed sports-comeback flick. After squandering his early promise, Rourke returns with a role tailor-made for him ‚Äî yet one he had to fight for because of the bad-boy behavior that made him a Hollywood has-been. Even early on, when critics compared him to Brando, Rourke has never been better.

8. “Frost/Nixon” ‚Äî Frank Langella may not have Richard Nixon’s jowls, but he’s got the chops and then some to create a riveting portrait. Reprising roles they created in the stage play, Langella and Michael Sheen as David Frost engage in a fascinating battle of wills and wit amid the historic TV interviews from 1977. Without a trace of caricature, Langella is tragically grand in a drama that marks the best work ever from director Ron Howard.

9. “The Dark Knight” ‚Äî Christopher Nolan isn’t kidding when he says he held nothing back from his Batman sequel, which raised the superhero genre from comic-book pages into the realm of highbrow literature. The scope is as grand as “The Godfather,” the themes aspire to Shakespeare. Heath Ledger may steal the show with his maniacal Joker, but Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and cast mates form an ensemble as good as any on the big-screen this year.

10. “Wendy and Lucy” ‚Äî Michelle Williams is an utter heartbreaker in co-writer and director Kelly Reichardt’s deceptively simple story of a down-and-out woman heading with her dog toward hopes of a better life in Alaska. Stranded in a small Northwest town where her pet goes missing, she finds mostly hardhearted indifference from the strangers she encounters ‚Äî but also a glimmer or two of kindness to sustain the faltering faith that one day, things will get better.

___

AP Movie Critic Christy Lemire:

1. “The Wrestler” ‚Äî It couldn’t have had a more cliched premise: A washed-up athlete struggles against the odds for one last chance at greatness. But Darren Aronofsky reinvents this well-worn genre, and in the process, allows Mickey Rourke to reinvent himself with disarming charisma and unexpected vulnerability. He gives the performance of his long and infamous career in a stripped-down film that’s brutally honest yet funny, touching and even sweet.

2. “Frost/Nixon” ‚Äî The best movie Ron Howard’s ever made is also, on its surface, the simplest. By focusing on the 1977 television showdown between British TV personality David Frost and former President Nixon, Howard creates steadily percolating tension, and he draws powerfully fleshed-out performances from Michael Sheen and Frank Langella.

3. “Man on Wire” ‚Äî James Marsh’s documentary about Philippe Petit, the diminutive French daredevil who walked a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers in 1974, plays more like an intricately timed heist flick. You know from the start that Petit makes it ‚Äî he’s alive and all too happy to talk about himself ‚Äî but you’ll still hold your breath as he and his partners in crime relive the feat.

4. “Waltz With Bashir” ‚Äî Israeli writer-director Ari Folman breaks all the rules with his animated documentary, which is exhilarating in its creativity. You’ve never seen anything like it: Folman reconstructs the hazy memories of his time as a young soldier at war in 1980s Lebanon by visiting friends and then animating their talks. The result looks like a graphic novel brought brilliantly to life.

5. “WALL-E” ‚Äî Speaking of animation, Pixar maintains its impeccable track records with this irresistible, visually marvelous tale of the last robot on Earth. Although the little guy and his lady love, Eve, exchange maybe three words total, director Andrew Stanton is resourceful enough to find infinite ways for them to express themselves.

6. “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” ‚Äî A grand, old fashioned epic that takes mind-boggling advantage of the most modern filmmaking technology. Director David Fincher, always a virtuoso stylist, has outdone himself here. You’ll be in awe of the wildly ambitious yet intricately detailed way he tells the story of a man who ages in reverse. Brad Pitt melds his leading-man and character-actor abilities in an inspiring heartbreaking performance.

7. “Frozen River” ‚Äî The story of two desperate women who smuggle immigrants across the Canadian border is so quiet and precise and self-assured, you’d never know it’s writer-director Courtney Hunt’s feature debut. Here, she’s come up with that rare thing: a film that feels completely original.

8. “Milk” ‚Äî Gus Van Sant boldly returns to mainstream filmmaking with a story that, on its surface, could have been shamelessly mawkish. Instead, he presents the last eight years in the life of Harvey Milk, the slain San Francisco politician and gay rights activist, with a mix of vivid details and nuanced heart. He’s also drawn from Sean Penn one of his most glorious performances ever.

9. “Paranoid Park” ‚Äî More from Van Sant, this time the latest in a series of dreamy, languid meditations on life, death and the quiet angst of disconnected youth. The story of a skateboarder who’s involved in the accidental killing of a security guard comes at you as a mesmerizing pastiche of images, with fluid, hypnotic cinematography from Christopher Doyle. It’ll sneak up on you and stick with you.

10. “Iron Man” ‚Äî A rare blockbuster with both brains and emotion, this truly is the summer’s best superhero movie (sorry, Batman). Robert Downey Jr.’s intelligence, quick wit and striking presence bring real heft to what could have been a mindless popcorn picture. In making the biggest film of his life, director Jon Favreau deftly juggles all the complicated, expensive toys.