Thankyou to everyone who entered the competition for tickets to the BFI’s Kubrick season!
I’ve got to say it was an absolute pleasure to read every single entry and I thought I’d post excerpts from the best below, since they highlight some pretty interesting films and even if you didn’t enter, you might get an idea for your next dvd rental. They’re in no particular order, except that the winning entry is at the top. Also, some of you asked not to be named, so they’re all anonymous.
Gommora“The best film I saw in 2008, and by best I mean the one that made the biggest impression on me, is Gommora. Not only because it’s a very well made film about the south Italian Mafia with great actors but because of the director’s bravery, both in making the film (he’s now under constant police protection) and in resisting the temptation to add any silver lining at all. It’s a depressing film that hits you like a ton of bricks but that’s because the reality it portrays doesn’t have any redeeming features for the people that inhabit it.”
“For being the only film I have ever seen which manages to take the subtleties and complexities of many strands of analytic ethical philosophy, apply them to an ethical dilemma, reduce none of them to caricatures, resist force-feeding the viewer an answer, and do it all on top of an intelligent, well-paced thriller who’s end nobody could predict. A film which showed that sometimes there is no single right answer.”
“It shows how spy paranoia and factional hatred are exactly the same as a
fevered, physical love affair.”
“Best film I saw last year was Atonement – I spent most of the film very irritated by its picture postcard qualities and felt it was very unreal – only to discover in the last scene (I hadn’t read the book) that the way they were shot and scripted made perfect sense.”
“I reckon the best film I saw in 08 was Atonement, because it picked up the audience and put it right in the middle of war – not just the evacuation fron Dunkirk right at the human level of the horror, but the life-long battle with the guilt caused by childhood dishonesty and its frightening consequences.”
“This was released in 2002, but I only got around to watching it on
FilmFour, which produced it, last year. It’s a beautiful “what if” story about Napoleon’s supposed escape from St Helena. Ian Holm’s central performance is touching as he is transformed – through his friendship with a Parisienne fruit seller – from haughty Emperor into ordinary citizen.”
Waltz With Bashir
“I think by far the finest film I saw last year was Waltz with Bashir, an animated documentary with touched me to the core. Never has an animated work – and very few films for that matter – dissected such a terrible subject in such an accessible way.”
“The best film I saw in 2008 was Waltz With Bashir, because: it gripped me from start to finish; to moved me to tears; it dazzled my brains out with its gorgeous design and colour; it had such clarity of vision and purpose; it looked like nothing I’ve seen before. It was inspirational.”
“The best film I’ve seen this past year would have to be Waltz with Bashir. It dealt with a dangerously caustic subject matter with soul-searing honesty, and did so in a mindblowingly unconventional way. It teft me utterly emotionally and spiritually disrupted.”
