Over the holidays I watched some of the films that Elke and I missed 2008, mostly because we don't really enjoy the theater anymore. Fortunately there's iTunes and NetFlix, so it's easy to catch up. This was enjoyable a most blockbusters are on one or the other way, but for someone like me, who's intrigued mostly by a good story, it was also a kind of letdown:
- WALL-E, who some critics see as the best movie made in 2008. I saw it on the tiny screen of an airplane and maybe that was why I was almost bored. I have the feeling that animated films still blind many people by their ever increasing technical perfection and by their ability to present fantasy worlds in consistent perfection. Story-wise it was pretty inconsistent, though, featuring, for example, a plant who grows in a dark vault as well as in open space.
- The first one on a big TV was Iron Man, which received pretty good reviews. I find a story around a super-rich super-genius playboy rather annoying, because while this is maybe a good role model for little boys, for me the character gets either unbelievable or I feel like an absolute looser. Credits to director Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr., though, because it was pretty entertaining with its straight forward story about greed and betrayal. Thanks also, for keeping the inevitable CGI action sequences, such as the robot battle in the end (I know it's actually men in suits) to the minimum.
- Somehow it looks to me that everybody wanted to like The Dark Knight so badly that it was elevated to the vicinity of the best movies ever made. And the way Christopher Nolan designed Gotham City as a mashup of real cities and managed to give depth to characters originally designed to entertain little boys was impressive. The story, however was a mess: the Joker first wants to kill Batman, then he doesn't. Then he wants Bruce Wayne to reveal himself, but changed his mind soon after. And all the Joker's wickedness was only possible because of elaborate logistics, conveniently off screen. He must have had access to huge funds and an army of helpers, who kept devoted to their tasks, even though they were routinely killed off by their boss. And even Heath Ledger's notable performance could only partially offset that the character of the Joker looked to me, well, very much like an unbelievable clown.
- Next, The Women. Well, the critics said it all. But since I generally find women more interesting a movie with only female characters should have something for me? No, because I really dislike dogma. Especially if it's not motivated by the story: for almost two hours there are just coincidentally no men where the action takes place. The worst, however, is the way the cheating husband is inflated to a larger-than-life persona by never actually showing him (a trick very popular in thrillers to make the villain more mysterious). Which makes this a supposedly feminist movie where a cast of 136 women dances more or less around a guy. This may have worked 1939, but certainly not 2009.
- Finally, 21. Not much to say about it, except that it was bad, boring and utterly predictable. I like Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe is one of my favorite movies) and Kate Bosworth (and so is Blue Crush), but that didn't help a lot.
There some more 2008 movies on the list, but unfortunately we have to wait until they get released on iTunes or DVD.
