Frozen River and Wendy and Lucy could both be seen as movies for the New Depression, with characters who teeter on the edge of poverty and despair. Both are directed by women and both are anchored by wonderful actresses: Melissa Leo as a struggling mother who becomes a smuggler of immigrants in Frozen River, and Michelle Williams as a drifter whose cross-country odyssey comes to a grinding and heartbreaking halt in Wendy and Lucy. Both movies are deeply touching. Frozen River has a more conventional melodramatic narrative, and more humor. Wendy and Lucy bears the very original stamp of director Kelly Reichardt, who made the festival hit Old Joy. Like that earlier movie, the new one is a miniature, a pitch-perfect short story.
Gran Torino may seem like an appendage on such a distinguished list. But this new minimalist melodrama from Clint Eastwood deserves recognition for his wonderful lead performance and his steady and skillful direction. The script and the supporting cast are uneven, but this is Clint’s best since Unforgiven.
My list of best documentaries includes movies released in theaters in 2008, so Taxi to the Dark Side, which won the 2007 Oscar, tops my list: it played at festivals during 2007 but only reached theaters in early 2008 for a very brief, limited run. (As with the foreign film Oscars, the year a film is eligible can get confusing, and can be different from the year the movie actually gets released in the US.) Despite the fact that President Obama has pledged to reverse many of the detention policies that are detailed in the film, it remains a powerful document and reminder of the disturbing occurrences at Guantanamo and in American prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Don’t let squeamishness keep you from seeing this extraordinary film, the best nonfiction feature of either 2007 or 2008.
The Oscar documentary category seems to have noticeably improved, after having ignored fine films in some previous years. The nominators are apparently expanding their universe and including more movies that really are among the best around. Two of this year’s documentary Oscar nominees also made my list: Man on Wire, the amazing story of the Frenchman who walked a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in the early 1970s; and Trouble the Water, a fine and deeply personal account of the aftermath of Katrina. And finally, Moving Midway (out on DVD in mid-February) is a lovely, funny, and also admirably personal account of how plantation life in the Old South permeates parts of our culture – while running headlong into 21st-century attitudes when the director’s relatives decide to move a plantation house away from encroaching suburban sprawl.
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