Bina007's most spine-tinglingly awesome moments of 2008 - or why I still enter every movie theatre in joyful hope!

To quote last year's post: "It may be hard to believe when you read an excoriating review, but every time I sit down to watch a movie I do so in joyful hope. I can't explain how much I love cinema. Ever since I was a little girl there seemed to be something magical about a beam of light that transformed a negative into a living and breathing story. So in a rare annual moment of warmth and optimism, here follow those flashes of brilliance that reminded me - amidst the sequels, threequels and hopeless failures - just how wonderful cinema can be. Note that this list is significantly different from my Best Films of 2008 list (found in a drop-down box in the side-bar). Even piss-poor flicks can have moments of inspiration - which is a faintly hopeful thought."

1. When Rambo Strangles The Guy So Hard He Breaks Through His Skin and Blood And Veins and Shit Start Spurting Out. The long-awaited RAMBO flick was clearly piss-poor but among all that irony-free absurdity there was one moment so transcendentally ridiculous it gave me one of the biggest belly-laughs of the year!

2. The Sound-track and Cinematography as Daniel Plainview Rushes to the Oil Platform to Save His Son. A breathtaking moment of pure cinema in THERE WILL BE BLOOD - stunning cinematography, unbearable tension, intense orchestral score. This was cinema at its most visceral and inescapable and audacious. I'm still sore that the soundtrack was disqualified from the Oscars on a technicality. 

3. Michael Pitt Scares the Bejesus Out of the Middle Classes in the Final Frame of FUNNY GAMES. A movie so brilliant Michael Haneke had the arrogance to make it twice, this time with the angelic looking Pitt holding the audience's eyes in the final frame. Are we being warned that we're next or indicted for sado-masochistic voyeurism? Genius.

4. Hrithik Roshan's Dance Routine to Main Aisa Kyun Hoon Establishes Him As the Best Song and Dance Man in Cinema since Gene Kelly. Hrithik Roshan is a hoofer. He knows dance and not in the over-choreographed Michael Jackson c.Thriller style that most Bollywood movies adopt. Pure talent. Pure entertainment. The best traditions of Hindi cinema.

5. When Dawn Slices Off Tobey's Cock With Her Vagina Dentata. Seriously funny. (Probably not if you're a bloke, admittedly). And by far the best reason to watch the teen horror cum political satire, TEETH. 

6. When The Joker Slams The Droog's Face Into the Pencil. Great horror is not what you're shown but what you imagine. A lightening bolt of pure fright energises an over-long and over-worked Batman sequel.

7. When The Joker Rides Through Gotham Triumphant, His Head Out The Window Of a Moving Car. One of the most spine-chilling images of 2008. Shame Nolan didn't have the balls to end THE DARK KNIGHT on that image, creating a second part finale as powerful as EMPIRE.

8. When The Thief Chases The Cop In JAR CITY. I can't escape why this scene is funny. It doesn't sound funny when I try. Just please try and seek out this superb Icelandic comic thriller. Please.

9. Hellboy and Abe Listening to Barry Manilow's "Can't Cry Without You" closely tied with Johan Krauss kicking Hellboy's ass in the Locker Room. Pure Comedy Gold.

10. JAAACK!!!! The not unattractive and yet infinitely goofy Jean Dujardin as pre-Bond spoof Agent OSS-117. At times, this actor's facility for physical comedy almost touches Sellars in the Clousseau movies. Perhaps the most unexpected belly-laugh of the year - given that Professor007 and I were in an art cinema famed for showing turgid self-righteous foreign language flicks. 

SILK - lavish but strangely uninvolving

SILK is writer-director Francois Girard's adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's best-selling novel. Set in 1860s France and Japan in the 1860s, it focuses on a young couple Herve and Helene Joncour (Michael Pitt and Keira Knightley). Herve is hired by Baldabiou (the wonderful Alfred Molina) to travel to an isolated village in Japan to buy silk-worm eggs. The mission is a success but Herve's marriage is lost. He becomes obsessed with a Japanese woman, and even when he returns to France, is transfixed by her love letters to him, begging him to return.. Nothing much actually happens but everyone looks miserable.

Michael Pitt does his typical moody, longing schtick and Keira Knightley follows suit with a series of emotionally pregnant glances that prefigure her (far better) performance in THE DUCHESS. The denouement tries to inject some drama but, given the simpering that preceeded it, it struck me as quite out of character.

On the plus side, SILK does look beautiful.

SILK played Toronto 2007 and was released in the US, Canada, Italy, the UK, Hong Long, Singapore and Greece that year. It opened earlier this year in Taiwan, Japan, Israel, Thailand, Mexico, Kuwait, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, Australia, the Netherlands and Argentina. It opens this week in Belgium and is also available on DVD.

FUNNY GAMES U.S. - who gets the last laugh?

FUNNY GAMES U.S. is Michael Haneke's shot-for-shot remake of his 1997 post-modern horror flick in which two polite teenage boys torture an affluent family for no reason other than to entertain themselves. The genius of the original film and this English-language remake is to create an atmosphere of stomach-churning tension without actually showing us any gory violence. Our imaginations fill in the blank between the scared reaction shots and the blood-spattered TV set. As a slow-burn thriller of almost unbearable tension, FUNNY GAMES is hard to beat. After all, what is more frightening than an evil that we cannot reason with? It's for this reason that I find the HOSTEL movies laughably unthreatening. If someone wants to sell me to a torturer, I'll simply offer more money. No, what's really terrifying is a situation in which I have simply no language in which to communicate with my kidnapper - no purchase on his conscience or on his wallet. The final shot of a torturer holding our eyes unashamed is brilliantly frightening.

On one level, we can simply watch FUNNY GAMES U.S. as a brilliantly executed thriller. But Haneke wants us to question our enjoyment of the experience. He does this by having one of the torturers break the fourth wall and directly question the audience. Not only is he torturing the couple, he is trying to make us feel bad for enjoying our voyueurism.

I have to say that I find this trite post-modernism rather simplistic and condascending. I feel no shame in enjoying a movie like FUNNY GAMES qua horror movie. I find it cathartic. I do not enjoy it as a voyueur but as an intelligent, affluent, comfortable woman who can empathise with the situation of the family in the film and who is working out her fear of social change through the experience. So who gets the last laugh? The director who tries to under-cut our enjoyment of his masterpiece with his hectoring, or the audience, who can choose to dismiss such foolishness and get a brilliant thriller anyway?

FUNNY GAMES U.S. played London 2007 and Sundance 2008. It was released in Canada, the USA and Greece earlier this year. It is currently on release in Finland and the UK and opens later this month in Israel, Singapore, Belgium, Norway, Frnace and Sweden. It opens in May in Portugal, Russia, the Netherlands and Germany. It opens in Romania in June and in Spain in July.

THE DREAMERS - less Tango more self-indulgence

In a week when Bertolucci's greatest film, LAST TANGO IN PARIS, is released again in the UK, let's take a look at his 2003 release, THE DREAMERS. Both films deal with self-realisation through transgressive sexual relationships and put cinephilia cetre stage. But, separated by thirty years, Berolucci treats the subjects rather differently.

TANGO is a 100% Bertolucci product mediated by Brando. The sexual obsession with a random younger woman stems from his own fantasies, as does the need to put a film-maker centre stage. The brutality and the refusal to opt for easy choices (up until the final scene) are pure anti-Hollywood, as is the visual experimentation.

THE DREAMERS is a different beast, not least because Bertolucci is mediating the memoirs of Gilbert Adair. He tells the story of a young American (Michael Pitt) who arrives in Paris on the eve of the 1968 riots. He is taken up by an eccentric brother and sister (Louis Garrel and Eva "Casino Royale" Green). Soon they are abandoned in their parents decadent apartment and enter into an incestuous menage a trois while Paris burns outside their window. At first, the American is entranced by their chic and cine-literacy. When he asks the sister how old she is, she responds, a la Jean Seberg, "I entered this world on the Champs-Elysees, 1959. La trottoir du Champs Elysees. And do you know what my very first words were? New York Herald Tribune! New York Herald Tribune!" The American is flattered and seduced by the siblings declaration that "We accept you, one of us! One of us!" As their relationship deepends he realises that he may not be as accepting of their transgressive behaviour as they are. To be one of them is to be, to some extent, a freak. Their relationship is, then, ultimately doomed.

THE DREAMERS is as courageous in portraying sexual relationships as TANGO but lacks the emotional depth. Furthermore, unshackled from the intensity and brutality of emotional discoveries made in TANGO, Bertolucci is free to indulge his love of the French New Wave. THE DREAMERS is a web of references to and re-enactments of seminal scenes from cinema history. To that end, it's a joyful puzzle for cinema fans, but I suspect something of a bore for casual viewers. It's not just cinema history that's under the 'scope, but the very means by which we take in moving images. In a key scene, the American takes the Sister to the cinema. She instinctively goes to the first row, where the cinephiles sit. But the American wants her to sit in the back row, like on a real date, where the point of being there is to kiss rather than watch the art.

"Why do we sit so close? Maybe it was because we wanted to receive the images first. When they were still new, still fresh. Before they cleared the hurdles of the rows behind us. Before they'd been relayed back from row to row, spectator to spectator; until worn out, secondhand, the size of a postage stamp, it returned to the projectionist's cabin. Maybe, too, the screen was really a screen. It screened us... from the world."

Overall then, THE DREAMERS is a cinephile's delight. The lush photography and production design; the cinema references and the decent performances from the leads make it a worthwhile experience. But it does not have the profound impact of TANGO.

THE DREAMERS was originally released in 2003 and is available on DVD.

THE HEART IS DECEITFUL AMONG ALL THINGS - Bothered?

THE HEART IS DECEITFUL AMONG ALL THINGS is a movie based on the autobiographical novel by the pseudonymous cult journalist J.T. LeRoy. I have never read the original so it is hard to know whether it is LeRoy, or screenwriter/lead actress/director Asia Argento's fault that this flick is so dull. Strange to say, but in a movie containing child abuse, drug abuse, wh*res and religious fanatics, all 90 minutes are a complete drag. Don't be suckered in by the roster of high-octane cameos: avoid at all costs.

THE HEART IS DECEITFUL AMONG ALL THINGS premiered at Cannes in 2004. It is now available on Region 2 DVD and will receive a limited cinematic release in the US on the 10th May 2006.

LAST DAYS - pretentious wank or genius? I tend to the latter

LAST DAYS is Gus Van Sant's beautiful interpretation of the last days of Kurt Cobain. Instead of aiming for a literal fictionalised account of Cobain's life, Gus Van Sant tries to explore the pressures that Cobain might have felt under at the time. The movie has attracted a lot of criticism which basically runs along the lines that the movie disappears up its own arse. After all, there is no clear narrative arc to cling on to. There is very little dialogue. There are long scenes where nothing seems to happen. Michael Pitt plays the Cobain character behind a mop of blonde hair and sunglasses, and we can barely hear what he is saying. More specifically, people have argued that it depicts Cobain "incorrectly".

I can sympathise with these criticisms up to a point. If you want a more obvious biopic then this movie is not for you. But I reckon that the way to approach this movie is as a poem rather than a novel. Gus Van Sant brilliantly evokes a wistful, tragic mood. There may be a lack of obvious narrative but we do have a sense of increasing foreboding as we approach the inevitable conclusion. As with GERRY and ELEPHANT there is something tragic in the wastefulness of young men moving towards a seemingly inevitable death. And if he goes about it in an odd fashion, I genuinely feel that van Sant's method gets us closer to how isolating it must feel to be a great musician who feels increasingly hemmed in by all manner of people who are after things from you. And perhaps, it's better just to watch this film as a meditation on loneliness than as a comment on Cobain. Either way, I found it genuinely moving to see a young man - any young man let alone one of such talent - inch toward death not with a nang but a whimper. Thank god we have people like Gus van Sant willing to take a chance on such demanding material.
LAST DAYS premiered at Cannes 2005 and has been on release in the US. It is currently on limited release in the UK and hits Austria in February 2006.