Ranking the 25 Films I've Seen This Year

The Signal was the 25th film I've seen in 2008 (going by theatrical release date in the States, not festival or domestic release).

1. The Dark Knight

2. Vicky Cristina Barcelona

3. Frozen River

4. Flight of the Red Balloon

5. Chop Shop

6. In Bruges

7. Pineapple Express

8. 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days

9. Snow Angels

10. [Rec]

11. Forgetting Sarah Marshall

12. My Brother Is an Only Child

13. Iron Man

14. Cloverfield

15. Paranoid Park

16. The Wackness

17. The Bank Job

18. The Signal

19. Funny Games

20. Baby Mama

21. Redbelt

22. Tropic Thunder

23. Married Life

24. The Strangers

25. The Ruins

The Signal [David Bruckner; Jacob Gentry; Dan Bush, 2008]

• The Signal is a rather muddled film, but with ultimately more good ideas than flaws
• broken into three "transmissions," the first and second are nearly exceptional in their own ways while the third breaks off into self-importance and leaves a bad taste in one's mouth by the end
• first transmission does a fair job of explaining the story without beating it through viewers heads, and is shot in a truly scary manner, dimly lit hallways and faces almost always too shadowed to make clear
• second act is a sudden but understandable shift to black comedy, and good comedy at that. everyone is crazy by now, some because of the signal and others because of the people with the signal. they're not that much different
• third bit isn't worth going too far into, it's loaded with dialogue and empty of importance. it's the final stage of delirium but that doesn't mean we want to see incoherent blabber for the last fifteen minutes

6/enough talent to be considered a success

Cloverfield [Matt Reeves, 2008]

• essentially taking the faux-doc subgenre that The Blair Witch Project pioneered and making its subject a monster comparable to Godzilla or the more recent The Host, dir. Matt Reeves and pen Drew Goddard think up and bring to life a hell of a concept
• the monster is effectively scary and realistic. the film's best and worst attributes largely relate to its medium, though. on one hand, pic's dedication to viewers watching a REAL videotape of the destruction is admirable in its switching between monster footage and interaction between the two leads who love each other shot a month before. however, flaws are revealed here as well. during the film, there are several occasions where scenes have obviously been edited together. it uses a good number of Rope tricks to appear continuous but there are still many unexplained stops and starts. and i wasn't looking for them through, hoping to report on it
• is engaging in its entirety, with a running time that is smart enough not to overstay its welcome
• unfortunately, the most sympathetic character in the film is....well, no one. for all the time and professionalism put into the special effects, a rewrite of the actual characters and dialogue could have made the picture absolutely epic. there's an arguably daring choice to make the camera holder a socially awkward character...but he's just annoying and rarely funny. the central love story pulls no emotional strings for me as I was only given about a two minute intro to get to know them and judging by everything afterwards, they aren't very interesting. in essence, i enjoyed the ride, just not who I was sitting next to throughout

6.5/creative, contrived monster movie

Redbelt [David Mamet, 2008]

• from beginning to end, Mamet's latest is implausible, stacking up plot contrivances that are ridiculous not because of implausibility but because of stupidity.
• film is largely a character study, and i understand that, but Chiwitel Ejiofor is the ONLY character among a large cast that gets any kind of development. Ejiofor's wife, played (rather badly) by Alice Braga, is shown only as a whiny bitch. Tim Allen is an action star (stretch!) and mainly just a McGuffin. We're supposed to care about Ejiofor and Emily Mortimer's relationship but we don't because we don't have a clue who she is
• between the stupid opening involving Mortimer and a suicide, the picture is pretty engaging, as Ejiofor is given room to work. everything afterwards is muddled, and the ending is laughably bad...I'm not going to bother going into it
• pic is however more entertaining than it is good, as Ejiofor is fun to watch in anything and the fight scenes are often very cool. easily the worst Mamet pic (script or direction) i've seen to date, though

4/implausible and dumb