This was a mediocre year for movies, and that’s being generous. Compared to the bumper crop of outstanding films released in 2007, the last 12 months have been a dreary slog. Good luck coming up with titles that anyone will remember, let alone want to revisit, even a few months hence. Here are five I venture will stand the test of time.
1. Guy Maddin’s My Winnipeg is a one-of-a-kind documentary of the imagination, a wry and poetic and tart melding of childhood memories, selective urban history and savage regret. Pure pleasure, start to finish.
2. In the City of Sylvia received a single screening at the S.F. International Film Festival, but its one-week N.Y. run earlier this month might just encourage the Roxie or Red Vic to book it. Catalan filmmaker José Luis Guerin follows a young man on holiday in Strasbourg who imagines he’s caught an elusive glimpse of a long-ago lover. A dreamy mood piece populated with a daunting number of beautiful women, Sylvia is an artful comment on moviemaking and movie watching.
3. It was a breakout year for Israeli cinema, with Beaufort, The Band’s Visit, My Father, My Lord and Waltz With Bashir (opening Jan. 9, 2009) all deserving raves. Check out the overlooked Jellyfish, a delicate fable of three alienated women separately trying to fit the pieces of their lives together in Tel Aviv.
4. Steven Soderbergh’s two-part Che opening Jan. 9, 2009 and comprised of The Argentine and Guerilla, is arguably the most ambitious and best-made movie of the year. It doesn’t create the emotional connection that we associate with “great” films, hence the cool reviews, but it is a work of extraordinary rigor and intelligence.