The Decade List: Albums/Singles (2008)

The lesson I've learned about myself in going back and reassessing the best music of last year is that a year is about the length of time it takes for me to catch up. I posted a half-assed list in December of last year, naming Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree, still a great album, the best. While Seventh Tree certainly improved upon the duo's previous dance floor oriented albums, it was not the best of the year. With an additional eleven months to play catch up, I finally got around to picking up Deerhunter's two albums and gave both Fleet Foxes and Hercules and Love Affair the chance to grow on me (while Lykke Li began to grate).

This doesn't make the eventual 2009 Music list, of which I already have quite a few favorites, look too promising... but we'll see. While some might argue 2008 was Beyoncé's year (and, yeah, it kind of was despite releasing the horrible "If I Were a Boy" as the first single off I Am... Sasha Fierce, though I always give kudos to the proper use of the conditional verb tense). While "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" cemented her occasionally wobbly position in the ranks of pop greats (the following singles, even the ludicrous "Diva," are all quite good), 2008 in retrospect made me appreciate Bradford Cox, lead singer of Deerhunter and the man behind Atlas Sound, providing three of the year's best albums.

It's quite possible that the include of Foals' Antidotes on the best albums of the year list is where skepticism comes in. Like nearly every band that consists of young straight-ish dudes with expensive haircuts, I'm never able to separate myself from enjoying the music to really look at it objectively and critically. Maybe it's the Daydream Nation guitar work on "Big Big Love (Fig. 2)" or the sadness that's matched in Yannis Philippakis' vocals. I've always been a sucker for melancholy dance punk. If you remove "dance" from the equation, Vivian Girls' self-titled works in the same way. An honorable mention to Lindstrøm's Where You Go I Go Too, which missed the cut only out of my forgetfulness in including one of the top 5. The 20 albums (I placed the two Deerhunter ones together) are listed in vague preferential order.

Deerhunter - Microcastle / Weird Era Cont.
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
No Age - Nouns
Hercules and Love Affair - Hercules and Love Affair
Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles
Atlas Sound - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel
Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree
Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls
M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Beach House - Devotion
Grace Jones - Hurricane
Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Gang Gang Dance - Saint Dymphna
Portishead - Third
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
Tindersticks - The Hungry Saw
Brian Eno & David Byrne - Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
Foals - Antidotes
Department of Eagles - In Ear Park
Fuck Buttons - Street Horrrsing

Assorted James for the Year 2008

I really tried to find a different song to place at the top of the singles list, but I couldn't. I also tried not to include MGMT on the list period, but despite the fact that I never find the desire to listen to them any more (or really after last summer), "Electric Feel" was a blinding flash in that pan, so it stayed. My iffy attitude toward Lady Gaga, respectable on several levels and lame on just as many, didn't prevent her from showing up in the additional 100 tracks, but I typically consider a night on the town where I'm not forced to hear her a successful one.

As for the great videos of the year (I'm debating coming up with a Decade List for music videos, but I may be even more out of the loop on that subject than simply music... plus Pitchfork's Music Video Decade list covered a lot of the greats), check out Sigur Rós' Ryan McGinley-inspired "Gobbledigook," that particular Beyoncé song that pays tribute to Bob Fosse, Alison Goldfrapp as Goldie Locks in "A&E," the two Flight of the Conchords videos which are naturally taken from their TV show, Eagles of Death Metal's "Wannabe in LA," No Age's "Eraser," all of the Hercules and Love Affair ones, Grace Jones' "Corporate Cannibal" (really, eat your heart out, Lady Gaga), Air France's "Collapsing at Your Doorstep" and Crystal Castles' "Crimewave" if only for the odd use of clips from Bruce La Bruce's Otto; or Up with Dead People. The Top 35 are in order of preference, the remaining 100 are not.

The Top 35

Beyoncé - "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" [I Am... Sasha Fierce]
Deerhunter - "Agoraphobia" [Microcastle]
M83 - "Kim & Jessie" [Saturdays = Youth]
Crystal Castles - "Crimewave" [Crystal Castles]
Atlas Sound - "Recent Bedroom" [Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel]
Fleet Foxes - "Blue Ridge Mountains" [Fleet Foxes]
Fuck Buttons - "Sweet Love for Planet Earth" [Street Horrrsing]
Portishead - "Hunter" [Third]
Grace Jones - "Well Well Well" [Hurricane]
Antony & the Johnsons - "Another World" [Another World EP]
Deerhunter - "Saved by Old Times" [Microcastle]
Vivian Girls - "Never See Me Again" [Vivian Girls]
Foals - "Big Big Love (Fig. 2)" [Antidotes]
Hercules and Love Affair - "Time Will" [Hercules and Love Affair]
No Age - "Teen Creeps" [Nouns]
Sébastien Tellier - "Pomme" [Sexuality]
M83 - "You, Appearing" [Saturdays = Youth]
Aeroplane featuring Kathy Diamond - "Whispers" [Whispers single]
The Magnetic Fields - "The Nun's Litany" [Distortion]
Lykke Li - "Little Bit" [Youth Novels]
Sigur Rós - "Ára bátur" [Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust]
Goldfrapp - "A&E" [Seventh Tree]
Gang Gang Dance - "House Jam" [Saint Dymphna]
Beach House - "Wedding Bell" [Devotion]
TV on the Radio - "Halfway Home" [Dear Science]
Ladyhawke - "Back of the Van" [Ladyhawke]
Brian Eno & David Byrne - "Strange Overtones" [Everything That Happens Will Happen Today]
Jenny Lewis - "Pretty Bird" [Acid Tongue]
MGMT - "Electric Feel" [Oracular Spectacular]
Cat Power - "Ramblin' (Wo)man" [Jukebox]
Santigold (formerly Santogold) - "L.E.S. Artistes" [Santogold]
Cut Copy - "Nobody Lost, Nobody Found" [In Ghost Colours]
The Black Angels - "You on the Run" [Directions to See a Ghost]
Tindersticks - "Come Feel the Sun" [The Hungry Saw]
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - "Seafaring Song" [Sunday at Devil Dirt]

The Other 100

Gang Gang Dance - "Vacuum" [Saint Dymphna]
The Black Ghosts - "Some Way Through This" [The Black Ghosts]
Santigold (formerly Santogold) - "Creator" [Santogold]
Foals - "Red Socks Pugie" [Antidotes]
Deerhunter - "Operation" [Weird Era Cont.]
Flight of the Conchords - "Business Time" [Flight of the Conchords]
Hercules and Love Affair - "Athene" [Hercules and Love Affair]
The Bug featuring Warrior Queen - "Poison Dart" [London Zoo]
Goldfrapp - "Eat Yourself" [Seventh Tree]
Cut Copy - "Lights & Music" [In Ghost Colours]

Kaki King - "Life Being What It Is" [Dreaming of Revenge]
Air France - "Collapsing at Your Doorstep" [No Way Down]
Fleet Foxes - "White Winter Hymnal" [Fleet Foxes]
Janet Jackson - "Feedback" [Discipline]
TV on the Radio - "Golden Age" [Dear Science]
Jamie Lidell - "All I Wanna Do" [Jim]
Adriana Calcanhotto - "Seu Pensamento" [Maré]
The Magnetic Fields - "Please Stop Dancing" [Distortion] (sorry for the vid)
Crystal Castles - "Vanished" [Crystal Castles]
Lykke Li - "I'm Good, I'm Gone" [Youth Novels]

Beyoncé - "Halo" [I Am... Sasha Fierce]
Invisible Conga People - "Cable Dazed" [Cable Dazed / Weird Pains EP]
Department of Eagles - "Phantom Other" [In Ear Park]
Eagles of Death Metal - "Wannabe in LA" [Heart On]
Hercules and Love Affair - "Blind" [Hercules and Love Affair]
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!" [Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!]
Lil Wayne - "A Milli" [The Carter III]
Sébastien Tellier - "Look" [Sexuality]
Hot Chip - "Ready for the Floor" [Made in the Dark]
Atlas Sound - "River Card" [Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel]

No Age - "Eraser" [Nouns]
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan - "Come On Over (Turn Me On)" [Sunday at Devil Dirt]
Grace Jones - "I'm Crying (Mother's Tears)" [Hurricane]
Crystal Castles - "Magic Spells" [Crystal Castles]
Spiritualized - "Soul on Fire" [Songs in A&E]
Poni Hoax featuring Olga Kouklaki - "The Soundtrack of Your Fears" [Images of Sigrid]
Neil Halstead - "Oh! Mighty Engine" [Oh! Mighty Engine]
Vivian Girls - "Tell the World" [Vivian Girls]
Flight of the Conchords - "The Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room)" [Flight of the Conchords]
Erykah Badu - "Me" [New Amerykah Part One (4th World War)]

Antony & the Johnsons - "Shake That Devil" [Another World EP]
Estelle featuring Kanye West - "American Boy" [Shine]
Fleet Foxes - "He Doesn't Know Why" [Fleet Foxes]
Amadou & Mariam - "Sabali" [Welcome to Mali]
Kanye West - "Love Lockdown" [808s & Heartbreak]
Atlas Sound - "Quarantined" [Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel]
Solange - "Sandcastle Disco" [Sol-Angel and the Hadley St. Dreams]
Passion Pit - "I've Got Your Number" [Chunk of Change EP]
Shearwater - "The Snow Leopard" [Rook]
The Black Ghosts - "It's Your Touch" [The Black Ghosts]

Hot Chip - "One Pure Thought" [Made in the Dark]
Brendan Canning - "Churches Under the Stairs" [Something for All of Us...]
French Kicks - "Said So What" [Swimming]
Hercules and Love Affair - "You Belong" [Hercules and Love Affair]
Foals - "Balloons" [Antidotes]
Mariah Carey - "Touch My Body" [E=MC²]
Cut Copy - "Hearts on Fire" [In Ghost Colours]
Sigur Rós - "Íllgresi" [Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust]
Lykke Li - "Melodies & Desires" [Youth Novels]
Animal Collective - "Street Flash" [Water Curses EP]

of Montreal - "Gallery Piece" [Skeletal Lamping]
Lady Gaga - "Poker Face" [The Fame]
R.E.M. - "Supernatural Superserious" [Accelerate]
Friendly Fires featuring Au Revoir Simone - "Paris (Aeroplane Remix)" [Paris EP] (again, sorry for the video)
Portishead - "The Rip" [Third]
Adem - "Bedside Table" [Takes] (This Bedhead cover is the only one I care for on Adem's cover album)
The Dodos - "Fools" [Visiter]
Poni Hoax - "Antibodies" [Images of Sigrid]
Cat Power - "Metal Heart" (Jukebox Version) [Jukebox]
Terry Lynn - "System" [Kingstonlogic 2.0] (Beware of the video; it's really unsettling... but the song is awesome)

Fleet Foxes - "Your Protector" [Fleet Foxes]
Beach House - "Gila" [Devotion]
The Verve - "Love Is Noise" [Forth]
Ladyhawke - "Paris Is Burning" [Ladyhawke]
Ray LaMontagne - "Meg White" [Gossip in the Grain]
DeVotchKa - "The Clockwise Witness" [A Mad & Faithful Telling]
Cold War Kids - "Mexican Dogs" [Loyalty to Loyalty]
The B-52's - "Pump" [Funplex]
Robin Thicke - "Magic" [Something Else]
The Virgins - "Rich Girls" [The Virgins]

The Walkmen - "In the New Year" [You & Me]
Jenny Lewis - "Acid Tongue" [Acid Tongue]
Chairlift - "Planet Health" [Does It Inspire You]
Women - "Black Rice" [Women]
MGMT - "Weekend Wars" [Oracular Spectacular]
Crystal Castles - "Alice Practice" [Crystal Castles]
Beyoncé - "Ego" [I Am... Sasha Fierce]
Beck - "Gamma Ray" [Modern Guilt]
Does It Offend You, Yeah? - "Being Bad Feels Really Good" [You Have No Idea What You're Getting Yourself Into]
French Kicks - "Carried Away" [Swimming]

Vivian Girls - "I Believe in Nothing" [Vivian Girls]
The Pussycat Dolls - "When I Grow Up" [Doll Domination]
The Radio Dept. - "Closing Scene" [Freddie and the Trojan Horse EP]
Poni Hoax - "Wanda's Loving Boy" [Des jeunes gens mödernes Compilation]
Emmanuelle Seigner featuring Brett Anderson - "Les mots simples" [Les mots simples Single]
Sigur Rós - "Gobbledigook" [Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust]
Vampire Weekend - "A-Punk" [Vampire Weekend]
Cat Power - "New York" [Jukebox]
Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - "Stop" [Cardinology]
Antipop vs. Asia Argento - "Vampy" [Antipop vs Asia Argento, Archigram & Friends] (It's actually kinda terrible/kinda wonderful)

And a very special mention to one of the worst songs of 2008, Madonna's "4 Minutes" featuring Justin Timberlake, produced by Timbaland. The song, which has Madonna uttering the offensively stupid lyric "Sometimes I think what I need is a you intervention" and Justin repeating "Madonna" as if he were on an episode of Wayne's World, and the video, which features Madge and JT (slowly) running and (poorly) dancing away from The Nothing from The Neverending Story, are both dreadful... but it's that trainwreck I can't look away or cover my ears from. Agh.

IFC Films on DVD, Round 2 + Akerman + Petzold - Michael Jackson

Though you might have other things on your mind, I thought I'd post another DVD update. Through their new deal with MPI, IFC Films announced their second round of DVD releases after that Blockbuster/Genius drought. Unfortunately, all of their titles so far have been part of their Festival Direct package and not their theatrical releases (The Last Mistress, The Duchess of Langeais, A Christmas Tale, Hunger, Gomorrah, My Winnipeg, etc). On 15 September, look for Spiros Stathoulopoulos' single-take thriller PVC-1 and Baltasar Kormákur's White Night Wedding [Brúðguminn], which stars the Icelandic director's frequent actor Hilmir Snær Guðnason. On 29 September, Madonna's wretched directorial debut Filth and Wisdom and the Spanish thriller Fermat's Room [La habitación de Fermat] will be released.

Icarus Films has set a release date for Chantal Akerman's acclaimed, little seen From the East [D'Est] for 6 October, as well as David Barison and Daniel Ross' documentary The Ister for 3 November. Kino will release a double-feature of sci-fi/horror films from director Graham Reznick, I Can See You and The Viewer, on 28 September.

Cinema Guild will follow Project X's July release of Christian Petzold's The State I Am In [Die Innere Sicherheit] with his latest Jerichow on 27 August. And finally, it appears as if the elusive Phantasm II will make its way onto DVD on 15 September (though I can't back this up) from Universal. I know you've been waiting.

2008 List #5: The Worst Films of 2008

Missed Opportunities seems to be the ongoing trend of my list of the year's worst films. Almost all of the films below displayed a healthy dose of ambition, all of which quickly doused it with silliness, easy answers and a general inability to reach those heights. Many of the filmmakers ended up embarrassing themselves at even postulating greater ambition than they possessed, and yeah, some of the films were already dead on arrival. I suppose, to an extent, someone could regard these picks as mere disappointments and not the worst 2008 had to offer. After all, I didn't see The Love Guru, Bangkok Dangerous, The Spirit, 88 Minutes, Righteous Kill, Saw V, Fireproof (shiver), Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Disaster Movie, The Eye, Beer for My Horses (shiver, again), whatever movie Dane Cook came out with, Jumper or The Women. However, there are too many good films out there to endure those travesties. I'm happier with listing films that I either expected to be good or films I knew would suck but couldn't resist my own curiosity. The list of "Disappointments" is next on the agenda. (Dis)honorable mentions to the Worst of 2008: Hamlet 2, The Other Boleyn Girl, Diary of the Dead, Eight Miles High, Frontière(s), The Grand, Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, Kiss the Bride, Teeth, Then She Found Me and Shutter.

1. The Happening - dir. M. Night Shyamalan - USA/India - 20th Century Fox

The threat of making a film as atrocious as The Happening has long hovered over M. Night Shyamalan's post-Sixth Sense films; it's been a much stronger prophecy than the fear of nature retaliating against our global ignorance. The Happening is Shyamalan's perfect marriage of high concept and low execution with Mark Wahlberg, at his career worst, as our reluctant "hero," successfully outrunning "the wind" with dopey wife Zooey Deschanel (who must have read the script assuming she was playing a 12-year-old autistic girl). For once, Shyamalan dropped the religious parable that plagued his previous endeavors, but somehow out-shitty-ed Lady in the Water. Bless your heart if you got a couple of barrel laughs out of this debacle; I cannot consider myself one of the lucky folk here.

2. Another Gay Sequel: Gays Gone Wild! - dir. Todd Stephens - USA - TLA Releasing

So this is why Proposition 8 passed? Show this to the narrow-minded, and their fears would be confirmed. Under the sheepish guise of "satire," Stephens again reduces the gays to shallow, narcissistic, racist, misogynistic nymphomaniacs. Whereas the original was criminally low-brow and anti-queer, the sequel incorporates a newfound venom, in the form of misanthropic bitchiness, that is sprayed even further than the buckets of lube and fake cum. Take it as a gay-on-gay hate crime or the most telling, unconscious indictment of gay culture, but either way, you come up the loser. [Additional Reading: Forgive Them, Father, For They Are Gay]

3. What We Do Is Secret - dir. Rodger Grossman - USA - PeaceArch

What We Do Is Secret is about as punk rock as Avril Lavigne and, combined with Shane West's limp performance, makes its subject Darby Crash look just about as worthless. It'd be easier to swallow the suggestion that Crash's legacy was unfairly overlooked when Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon the day after Crash's suicide if the film itself had provided a reason why he would have even deserved one. Seeing an assembly-line biopic like this makes Gus Van Sant's work on Milk all the more refreshing. Then again, Harvey Milk makes for a better-suited subject that the lead singer of The Germs. [Additional Reading: The Biopic and the Assembly Line]

4. I've Loved You So Long [Il y a longtemps que je t'aime] - dir. Philippe Claudel - France/Germany - Sony Pictures Classics

With so many of the year's finest films coming from France, the disappointment of I've Loved You So Long stings even harder. It's really just the French equivalent of the abysmal Seven Pounds, no matter how good Kristin Scott Thomas may be. Instead of resting the film on her fine shoulders, which would have been a more effective decision, Claudel resorts to cheap emotional manipulation and both literary and cinematic fumbles. Keeping the secret behind Scott Thomas' killing of her young son until the end, I've Loved You So Long falls face-first into the pits of weepy melodrama, which may have been forgivable if Claudel had paid out on the promises of something richer than this. Other than Scott Thomas and Elsa Zylberstein who plays her sister, every aspect of the film takes the easy road on each of its potential challenges, teasing and baiting its audience to the point of infuriation.

5. Funny Games - dir. Michael Haneke - France/Austria/Germany/UK/Italy/USA - Warner Independent

I didn't really need to see Michael Haneke's English-language remake of his own Funny Games to form an opinion about it. Its existence could have only been justified by proper marketing and distribution, and as that wasn't the case, Funny Games (U.S.) just became an unfortunate act of masturbation and creative stalemate. Making no changes to the original outside of the language (not even to update its Beavis & Butthead references to 2008 or to compensate for the fact Brady Corbet is a lot thinner than the actor who played the "fatty" in the original), the only person certain of Haneke's status of a great filmmaker was himself, and as the saying goes, imitation is the highest form of flattery. [Additional Reading: Um, ha ha]

6. Revolutionary Road - dir. Sam Mendes - USA/UK - Paramount Vantage/Warner Bros.

Shying away from the topic of abortion has been one of contemporary cinema's weakest points, but it can become potentially dangerous when the subject is only raised in films set in the past (even the abortion film of the past few years 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is set in 1987 at the end of the communist rule in Romania). This persists the scary thought that abortion, like electroshock therapy, is a thing of the past. This is not Revolutionary Road's fault of course, as it's rooted in dated source material. However, there's plenty more to condemn the Oscar-baiter for, especially in regards to its depiction of the past. In most cases I can think of, directors lose the essence of their chosen period in time through the (often subconscious) application of the spirit and beliefs of the time they're filming in. Revolutionary Road shares two of the same obvious views of early-to-mid-twentieth century mentality as Clint Eastwood's Changeling. Both films suggest that the time periods on display should be remembered for their poorly developed and outdated views of mental issues (electroshock therapy!) and women, emitting a snobbish air of knowing better now. Eastwood's obsession with Ms. Jolie and her lips allows her to escape the notion that women can't support a family, but Kate Winslet, under the direction of her own husband, isn't given such relief. Like most of her previous roles from Iris Murdoch to the Titanic lady, Winslet plays a woman ahead of her time. Predictably, she becomes victim to her surroundings, lost in mundane suburban life, and when a pregnancy stands in the way of realizing her dreams of Paris with husband Leonardo DiCaprio (and children, I guess, but they're pretty insignificant throughout the film), Mendes loses sight of who Winslet truly is. Beginning the film as an ambitious dreamer, she soon gets lost under Mendes' direction, who doesn't seem convinced that she's actually sane. Enter Michael Shannon. Like J.K. Simmons in Burn After Reading, Shannon feels like a last-minute addition to the otherwise lousy film, voicing the disinterest of the audience. Of course, neither Shannon nor Simmons are merely planted; the Coens are too smart for that and Revolutionary Road is based on a novel. However, Shannon, as Kathy Bates' "mentally unstable" son, is the only thing that brings the soggy Revolutionary Road to life, and when he's offscreen, the film returns to being recycled garbage and continues to display the terrible idea that Winslet is a crazywoman.

7. Filth and Wisdom - dir. Madonna - UK - IFC Films

It's as bad as you'd imagine a film directed by Madonna could be. Despite still getting away with success despite no discernible talent, Madonna has spent her entire career pushing buttons, and even if doing so with Filth and Wisdom were the film equivalent of her American Life album, that would have been more memorable than this. Filth and Wisdom isn't just safe, it's downright dull. Not surprisingly, the bulk of the film runs like a music video, set to lead actor Eugene Hutz's insufferable band Gogol Bordello (though Madonna throws a song or two of hers, in addition to one from Britney Spears, in the mix), but you have to assume that Madge didn't take any notes from the directors who crafted her most striking videos (from Chris Cunningham to Mark Romanek). I know this has probably been said by anyone who had the misfortune of watching this, but neither filthy nor wise, Filth and Wisdom could have used shot of both.

8. Cloverfield - dir. Matt Reeves - USA - Paramount

If there's anything to take from Cloverfield (and I don't think there's much), it's that most of us can rest assured that when the apocalypse hits, the douche bags of the world will be the first to perish. Seeing a set of idiots clobbered by a monster and its spider-looking offspring couldn't have been a more joyless affair thanks to Cloverfield's cornucopia of missed opportunities. Resisting saying anything about the digital age that shapes the film itself, Cloverfield asks more of its audience than it does of itself. Those who think the root of the film's problems (or successes) stems from its Breaking the Waves camera technique have neglected to address the film's deepest fault: asking us to give a shit about what's going on.

9. Mamma Mia! - dir. Phyllida Lloyd - USA/UK/Germany - Universal Pictures

I've had a long history with ABBA, one I'm trying not to destroy with my feelings toward Mamma Mia!. As a joke, my cousin Jen asked for ABBA Gold for her birthday one year, gravely underestimating the infectious pop brilliance of the Swedish quartet and passing her love onto me; to this day, she's still embarrassed that she got on her high school history teacher's good side in knowing the sight of Napoleon's final battle thanks to ABBA. Around my first year of being an undergraduate, ABBA came back into my life. At the time, I was predictably self-serious and brushed my admiration off as irony. When false irony transformed itself to genuine admiration, I knew I could never go back. In theory, Mamma Mia! the musical should have been perfection, but even the friends of mine who felt the same about ABBA as I did remarked that the stage production was pretty lousy. So what better way to improve upon the musical's imperfections than to make it into a big Hollywood production (starring Meryl Streep no less)? I've never been so wrong. Hiring a cast who, other than Christine Baranski, should never be heard singing outside of a Tuesday night karaoke pub was the film's first mistake, but it's most crippling one comes from Phyllida Lloyd. A trained theatre director, Lloyd displays no visual flair, making the film's beautiful Greek landscape look as flat as Pierce Brosnan's voice sounds. They must have run out of money at some point during pre-production, because it looks as though they hired some sap who recorded himself doing a rendition of "Single Ladies" on YouTube as their choreographer. There are moments where I tried not to scream, "put a prop in that bitch's hand!" particularly when Streep looked as unremarkable as she sounded singing "The Winner Takes It All" to Brosnan, her hands awkwardly grasping for something that obviously wasn't there. Using songs like fucking in a porno, Mamma Mia! really is more From Justin to Kelly than it would like to think. It uses every opportunity, no matter how ridiculous, to throw as many ABBA songs into the production as possible. An orgy of ABBA music would have been fine in my book, but after seeing Julie Walters crawl on a roof chasing Stellan Skarsgård while singing "Take a Chance on Me," the shame of liking pop music once again shivered down my spine.

10. The Unknown Woman [La sconosciuta] - dir. Giuseppe Tornatore - Italy/France - Outsider Pictures

A sleazy, Eurotrash Hitchcockian thriller like The Unknown Woman would have been a helluva movie if Brian De Palma, Paul Verhoeven or Dario Argento would have made it thirty years ago. As it stands, at the helm of cheap sentimentalist Giuseppe Tornatore, it's an oversaturated melodrama that does nothing more than continue the director's romanticized rape fantasy he begun with Malèna. If you believe Tornatore actually sympathizes with his tragic beauties Xenia Rappoport or Monica Bellucci, ask yourself why he seems more at ease when they're being violated than when they're supposed to be redeemed. If anything is going to make you reconsider liking that dreadful Cinema Paradiso, I can think of nothing better than The Unknown Woman.

11. Seven Pounds - dir. Gabriele Muccino - USA - Sony Pictures

Honestly, Seven Pounds only missed the Bottom 10 because audiences (or at least critics) have seen through its ridiculousness more than they have with I've Loved You So Long. Both films do their best at making Kristin Scott Thomas and Will Smith look like assholes, only to expose their true (good) nature in a last-minute revelation. I've Loved You So Long lets Scott Thomas off the hook, but Seven Pounds does worse; it depicts Smith as a fucking saint. I hesitate in calling the climax of Seven Pounds a "twist," as every detail of it is so dreadfully obvious you almost doubt the film could be so stupid. This trick is responsible for me enduring my first Will Smith film since Men in Black in its entirety, and I'm the worse for it. I'm sorry, Rosario Dawson.

12. Nights and Weekends - dir. Joe Swanberg, Greta Gerwig - USA - IFC Films

Joe Swanberg's films are to post-college twentysomethings what Another Gay Sequel is to gay men. The films' annoyances begin to exist outside of themselves in ways neither filmmaker intended, crafting a critical, wholly negative depiction of the set of people it (sort of) sympathizes with. His obsession with sex and inclination to film himself and frequent "actress" (and co-director here) Gerwig in the nude are the least of Swanberg's problems. Instead, he reduces the inevitable soul-searching of the post-college twentysomething to the irritating whining of bratty children. With Nights and Weekends, redundancy becomes Swanberg's only gift as he gets even further away from saying anything of value about his generation. [Additional Reading: You Move Me / Like Music]

13. Gutterballs - dir. Ryan Nicholson - Canada - TLA Releasing

Giving a camera to a guy who obviously found Irréversible funny was probably a bad move. In a "throw-back" to cheesy, sleazy slasher films of the past, writer/director Nicholson gathers together a group of worthless teenagers for a competitive, after-hours bowling match which ends in grotesque bloodshed. To his credit, Nicholson assembled a talented bunch of make-up artists and special effect artists, but impressive, low-budget gore don't impress me much and doesn't excuse the fact that Nicholson has no idea what he's doing. When it's clear that the bowling match is playing second fiddle to the sex and death, Nicholson struggles for ways to make anything plausible even for someone willing to allow an air of disbelief. The killer gets his own listing on the players' scoreboards, with skulls to mark his "strikes," which confuses and infuriates both teams, who (apparently) aren't bowling next to one another. However, considering the bowling alley is closed and bowling isn't exactly a quiet sport, the characters refuse to believe that it's simply a glitch in the system. Nicholson is particularly ill at ease in getting the victims away from the game itself (even though there's very little bowling going on anyway), unable to elicit a certain tongue-in-cheek-ness over inability. It's too easy to criticize the film for its moral bankruptcy (there's a fifteen-minute rape scene that begins with a nod to The Accused and ends with a bowling pin shoved in a girl's vagina), but when nastiness takes precedent over skill, you're going to find something as unclever and lazy as Gutterballs.

14. The Wackness - dir. Jonathan Levine - USA - Sony Pictures Classics

There isn't a whole lot to say about The Wackness, a familiar and tired addition to the coming-of-age genre. It's overly precious and painfully insincere. For every breakout-of-Sundance hit like Little Miss Sunshine or Juno, you have four Wacknesses or Hamlet 2s. Diablo Cody, where are you? [Additional Reading: Kill the Teenagers for Their Insecurities]

15. City of Men [Cidade dos Homens] - dir. Paolo Morelli - Brazil - Miramax

You're going to have to ask someone else what City of Men has to do with Fernando Meirelles' dazzling City of God. It's my understanding that Men begins where the television show, of the same name and spun-off from God, left off, but I'm still unsure whether any of the characters in Men were even a part of God. Narrow in perspective and dull in its visual landscape, City of Men is, at heart, a pedestrian crime flick which only saw the light of day because of its infinitely more impressive predecessor.

16. Donkey Punch - dir. Oliver Blackburn - UK - Magnet Releasing

Though I don't care for Cabin Fever or any of the Hostel films, Eli Roth certainly knew what he was doing in lining despicable characters up to the firing squad for the sake of the audience's enjoyment. Donkey Punch follows Cloverfield and Gutterballs in this year's poor tradition, which only confirms Roth as a better filmmaker than I may have given him credit for. A duo of slovenly British lasses, with their dullard good girl best friend, meet a quartet of tools on holiday, only for one of them to see her demise in the form of the title's sexual tactic. Think of it as I Know What You Morons Did Last Summer on the Yacht. If the film weren't despicable on its own, the fact that the filmmakers bought the rights to a good soundtrack, which includes The Knife and Peter Bjorn and John, makes Donkey Punch even worse.

17. Garden Party - dir. Jason Freeland - USA - Roadside Attractions

Poor Vinessa Shaw will never catch a break. She's always positioned herself at the brink of success and has failed every single time. Garden Party is just another lousy career move for the actress. The film falls under the sadly common umbrella of prudish films about the sex industry; as is typical of this type of film, the only flesh you'll encounter is from an extra. In examining the cycles of porn in contemporary Los Angeles, Freeland comes up short in finding anything useful or fresh to say about the industry.

18. Drillbit Taylor - dir. Steven Brill - USA - Paramount

Judd Apatow's hit-maker status was the only reason Drillbit Taylor, which was co-written by Seth Rogen, surfaced. Basically, it's just Superbad for the younger set with a laughless Owen Wilson playing bodyguard to two doofus high school freshmen. Try not to root for the bullies.

19. Humboldt County - dir. Darren Grodsky, Danny Jacobs - USA - Magnolia

Assembling an impressive cast (which includes Frances Conroy, Fairuza Balk, Brad Dourif, Peter Bogdanovich and Chris Messina) is half the battle; getting them to overcome the tired, Screenwriting 101 script is another. With a shaky central performance from Jeremy Strong, Grodsky and Jacobs keep their audience at least two steps ahead of Strong's expected self-discovery after being abandoned by a one-night-stand (Balk) and left with her bohemian family.

20. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - dir. Steven Spielberg - USA - Paramount

The episode of South Park where Spielberg and George Lucas rape Indiana Jones like Jodie Foster in The Accused (hey, two references in one post!) and Ned Beatty in Deliverance says more than I possibly could.

IFC, Where Are You?

With such a great year for IFC, I must ask, "Where are your DVDs?" Since 2006, around the time they released Lars von Trier's Manderlay on DVD, IFC has released their discs through Genius Products, now the home of the Weinstein Company. With the Weinsteins' exlusive deal with Blockbuster, it's allowed for Blockbuster to carry first-run IFC titles before they're available for purchase or rental elsewhere. However, in looking at Genius' DVD line-up for 2009, there are two full months without an IFC release.

Have they changed distributors? Image is released Jessica Yu's Ping Pong Playa, which IFC released theatrically and On Demand, but that film appears to be the only one they've announced so far. This therefore leaves a number of titles in limbo, including Catherine Breillat's The Last Mistress, Jacques Rivette's The Duchess of Langeais, Claude Chabrol's A Girl Cut in Two and Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg, to name a few (and I'm not even referring to the fact that IFC has done nothing with either Abel Ferrara film they acquired, Mary or Go Go Tales). I haven't been able to find anything announcing a change of distributors or anything of that sort, but I hope this problem gets sorted out soon, as IFC was typically releasing two films per month, and with such a strong 2008 line-up (not counting Nights and Weekends or Filth and Wisdom), it'd be really upsetting to leave these titles hanging.

Previous 10: 29 October - After the Flood

It's pretty sad news when you only admire one of the past ten 2008 releases, but at least Rachel Getting Married was a keeper. I can't decide, if given the option, whether I'd ask someone to rewrite all the "I'm old" bits of dialogue in the new Indiana Jones movie or to think up a better explanation for that Crystal Skull. Though I quite disliked I've Loved You So Long, I won't be disappointed seeing Kristin Scott Thomas win a number of awards this winter. I might, however, be disappointed to hear a bunch of Charlie Kaufman worshipers call me an idiot for disliking Synecdoche, New York so much... but it's probably worth noting that, for a variety of reasons, it's the first film I've walked out of in a theatre since I saw that horrendous melodrama Second Skin (Segunda piel) with Javier Bardem six years ago (I don't count Hou Hsiao-hsien's Milennium Mambo, which I also ditched before the credits, as it occured during a horrendous date). And, though I'm sure I'm not the first to point this out, Filth and Wisdom has none of the above.

La Crème

Rachel Getting Married - dir. Jonathan Demme - USA - Sony Pictures Classics - with Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Mather Zickel, Bill Irwin, Debra Winger, Tunde Adebimpe, Anna Deavere Smith, Anisa George

Les Autres

I Dreamt Under the Water [J'ai rêvé sous l'eau] - dir. Hormoz - France - TLA Releasing - with Hubert Benhamdine, Caroline Ducey, Christine Boisson, Hicham Nazzal, Franck Victor, Hélène Michel

In the Arms of My Enemy [Voleurs de chevaux] - dir. Micha Wald - France/Belgium/Canada - Picture This! - with Grégoire Colin, Adrien Jolivet, François-René Dupont, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet

Pleasure Factory - dir. Ekachai Uekrongtham - Thailand/Netherlands/Hong Kong - Strand Releasing - with Isabella Chen, Ananda Everingham, Zihan Loo, Kuei-Mei Yang, Jeszlene Zhou

The Bad!

Boystown [Chuecatown] - dir. Juan Flahn - Spain - TLA Releasing - with Pepón Nieto, Pablo Puyol, Carlos Fuentes, Concha Velasco, Rosa Maria Sardà, Eduard Soto

Eight Miles High [Das Wilde Leben] - dir. Achim Bornhak - Germany - Dokument Films - with Natalia Avelon, David Scheller, Matthias Schweighöfer, Friederike Kempter, Alexander Scheer, Victor Norén

Filth and Wisdom - dir. Madonna - UK - IFC Films - with Eugene Hutz, Holly Weston, Vicky McClure, Richard E. Grant, Inder Manocha

I've Loved You So Long [Il y a longtemps que je t'aime] - dir. Philippe Claudel - France/Germany - Sony Pictures Classics - with Kristin Scott Thomas, Elsa Zylberstein, Serge Hazanavicius, Laurent Grévill, Frédéric Pierrot, Claire Johnston

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - dir. Steven Spielberg - USA - 20th Century Fox - with Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LaBeouf, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent

Synecdoche, New York - dir. Charlie Kaufman - Sony Pictures Classics - with Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Hope Davis, Dianne Wiest, Emily Watson, Daniel London