The Decade List: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008)

Vicky Cristina Barcelona – dir. Woody Allen

No film last year glued a glimmering smile on my face as strongly and thoroughly as Woody Allen's effervescent Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Perhaps I was witnessing one of my favorite directors come back to life after a decade-long stint of mediocre films, many of which featuring his most incompetent muse to date, Scarlett Johansson, a sad replacement for Diane Keaton and Mia Farrow. Or perhaps it was such a relief to feel those temptations to say that he'd "lost it" dissipate within the film's earliest moments. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether low expectations and dwindling confidence were to thank for what was easily my best "cinema experience" of ‘08.

In ways no other director can compete, Allen pulled me through the ringer with alternating moments of hilarity and stomach-dropping poignancy. As Vicky, the 'Woody Allen character' of Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Rebecca Hall nailed neurotic dissatisfaction, culminating in the heart-sinking moment where her entire façade shatters near the end of the film as she tells Javier Bardem, quite simply, "I'm scared." As Cristina, the self-proclaimed free-spirit amid a love-triangle with Bardem and the smoldering Penélope Cruz, Johansson is as tolerable as she's ever been, with Allen exposing the two things most directors miss in the actress: a brimming sexuality that's deeper than physical voluptuousness and the seeping fear that she isn't up to snuff. I (still) have no reservations in claiming Vicky Cristina Barcelona to be among the highest tier of Allen films, within the ranks of Stardust Memories, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, Annie Hall and Deconstructing Harry.

With: Javier Bardem, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson, Penélope Cruz, Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, Kevin Dunn, Pablo Schreiber, Carrie Preston, Zak Orth, Christopher Evan Welch
Screenplay: Woody Allen
Cinematography: Javier Aguirresarobe
Country of Origin: Spain/USA
US Distributor: The Weinstein Company

Premiere: 17 May 2008 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 15 August 2008

Awards: Best Supporting Actress – Penélope Cruz (Academy Awards); Best Supporting Actress – Penélope Cruz (BAFTA Awards); Best Picture, Musical/Comedy (Golden Globes); Best Supporting Actress – Penélope Cruz, Best Screenplay (Independent Spirit Awards); Best Supporting Actress – Penélope Cruz (Goya Awards, Spain); Best Foreign-Language Film (Cinema Brazil Awards); Best Ensemble Cast – Scarlett Johansson, Rebecca Hall, Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz (Gotham Awards)

The Decade List: Otto; or Up with Dead People (2008)

Otto; or Up with Dead People – dir. Bruce LaBruce

Partially a remake of his own brilliant Super 8½, Bruce LaBruce’s Otto; or Up with Dead People is a shockingly affecting effort from Canada’s most engaging queer provocateur. In place of Super 8½’s Bruce (played by the director), a stubborn, egotistical porn artiste and occasional “butt double,” and Googie (Stacy Friedrich), the lesbian underground filmmaker who’s exploiting him for her documentary, we have Otto (Jey Crisfar), a gay, hoodie-donning, once-vegan boy who believes he’s a zombie, and Medea Yarn (Katharina Klewinghaus), who could best be described as a science experiment morphing Gudrun from The Raspberry Reich, Maya Deren and a Saturday Night Live spoof of Anne Rice into a single person. LaBruce steps away from himself with Otto, focusing instead on Medea’s dueling film projects: one a political zombie gay porn epic Up with Dead People, the other an invasive, self-serving exposé of Otto.

I often underestimate the way in which LaBruce, like Gregg Araki, punctures a searing truth and sadness through a well-practiced brand of sympathetic and condemning disposition. Medea, assisted in her agenda by her brother Adolf (Guido Sommer) and girlfriend Hella Bent (Susanne Sachße), is a curious figure, something of an art terrorist who uses manipulation and greed to push her generally noble, leftist cause(s). “Americans produce enough garbage… to buy 82,000 football fields six feet deep,” she lectures to Otto. “Although I can’t think of a better use for football fields,” she adds.

There’s something different though about the character of Otto. To Medea, his zombie act is the perfect metaphor for consumerism and political ambivalence, but for Otto, his somnambulist, undead state isn’t an act. LaBruce never interferes with either character’s belief about whether or not he’s an actual zombie, which pushes forth a different idea of what has brought about this state. Otto thus becomes a metaphor for the crippling ennui, disillusion and dehabilitation of contemporary youth. Otto; or Up with Dead People is an effective balance between these varying metaphors and cultural criticism, more shocking in its piercing depth than in its over-the-top provocations.

With: Jey Crisfar, Katharina Klewinghaus, Marcel Schlütt, Susanne Sachße, Guido Sommer, Christophe Chemin, Gio Black Peter, Stefan Kuschner, Mo, Kembra Pfahler
Screenplay: Bruce LaBruce
Cinematography: James Carman
Music: Mikael Karlsson
Country of Origin: Germany/Canada
US Distributor: Strand Releasing

Premiere: 19 January 2008 (Sundance Film Festival)

The Decade List: Rachel Getting Married (2008)

Rachel Getting Married – dir. Jonathan Demme

[There's going to be quite a few reposts and/or brief write-ups coming soon on The Decade List, as I'm pressed for time. This is what I had to say about it on my best of 2008 list, and my feelings haven't changed, after watching it again.]

Rachel Getting Married falls into the same category I place David Fincher's Zodiac. It's acceptable to dislike them (as a handful of people do), as long as you don't do so for the wrong reasons. If someone drops the phrase, "well, nothing happens," you can cross them off your list of people whose opinions are worthy of respect. The fact that "nothing happens" in both Zodiac and Rachel Getting Married is where their brilliance lies. Both take familiar subjects (a hunt for a serial killer; a dysfunctional family reunion or wedding movie) and display a sublime fascination in the mundane. In easily his finest fiction film to date, Jonathan Demme conducts Jenny Lumet's screenplay like a beautifully enchanting piece of music. It's frequently mystifying, but always grounded. Rachel Getting Married doesn't sacrifice its bedazzlement or its rawness, allowing the hypnotic dancing sequences to feel perfectly in place with its astute depiction of the unbearable guilt between family members.

With: Anne Hathaway, Rosemarie DeWitt, Bill Irwin, Mather Zickel, Debra Winger, Anna Deavere Smith, Tunde Adebimpe, Anisa George
Screenplay: Jenny Lumet
Cinematography: Declan Quinn
Music: Donald Harrison Jr., Zafer Tawil
Country of Origin: USA
US Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

Premiere: 3 September 2008 (Venice Film Festival)
US Premiere: 3 October 2008

The Decade List: Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

Happy-Go-Lucky – dir. Mike Leigh

It’s not often we’re graced with a cinematic performance as incandescent as Sally Hawkins’ turn as chipper elementary school teacher Poppy in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky. In a sense, Poppy is like the slightly better adjusted younger sister of The Office’s David Brent; her primary goal in life is (presumably) to put a smile on a person’s face, even if it’s dishing out bawdy quips at a moment’s notice. The grave difference between Poppy and David Brent is that Poppy’s jovial disposition isn’t a mask for, really, anything, especially not for Brent’s secret self-loathing and transparent insecurity (certainly the reason she comes off as charming as opposed to depressing). In terms of the film though, a character like Poppy is a challenging figure for a director to wrap a film around. On paper, she could border on cartoonish and one-dimensional, but Leigh, even if I’m not always a fan of his work, is an extremely clever filmmaker… and Hawkins a brilliant actress.

Leigh and Hawkins’ synthesis shapes Happy-Go-Lucky into a jewel of many facets. Happy-Go-Lucky isn’t really as its title suggests, nor is the title used for cheap irony. The film becomes genuinely bittersweet as it transpires, revealing crucial layers of initially benign circumstances in Poppy’s life. When making masks of birds out of paper bags with her students shifts to suspicions that one of her kids is being abused and the comical personality clash with her driving instructor (an incredible Eddie Marsan) leads to grievous confrontations, Poppy must address a number of harsh truths that simple optimism can’t mend. In Happy-Go-Lucky, we find the rare film where its protagonist sees the joys in life with authenticity, never defeated by life’s inevitable strife, and on top of that, what a pleasant relief to see a film about an over-30 single woman who likes to party, that doesn’t debase her by transforming her into a man-hating, baby-craving sociopath! With Hawkins’ extraordinary performance and Leigh’s adeptness at storytelling, Happy-Go-Lucky flourishes in its simple luxury.

With: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman, Sylvestra Le Touzel, Samuel Roukin, Caroline Martin, Oliver Maltman, Andrea Riseborough, Sinéad Matthews, Kate O’Flynn, Sarah Niles
Screenplay: Mike Leigh
Cinematography: Dick Pope
Music: Gary Yershon
Country of Origin: UK
US Distributor: Miramax Films

Premiere: 12 February 2008 (Berlin International Film Festival)
US Premiere: 30 August 2008 (Telluride Film Festival)

Awards: Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical – Sally Hawkins (Golden Globes); Silver Bear for Best Actress – Sally Hawkins (Berlin); Best Supporting Actor – Eddie Marsan, Best Supporting Actress – Alexis Zegerman (British Independent Film Awards)

The Decade List: Tony Manero (2008)

Tony Manero – d. Pablo Larraín

[I wrote about this earlier this summer, so here's a slightly edited version of that.]

Like Taxi Driver’s Travis Bickle and Man Bites Dog’s “Ben,” Pablo Larraín's Tony Manero offers a new addition to the league of cinema's most fascinatingly maladaptive sociopaths with Raúl Peralta (Alfredo Castro). Set in Chile during Pinochet's oppressive reign over the country during the late 1970s, Larraín takes an unflinching look at his nation's history through Raúl, who'd prefer others to call him Tony Manero, better known as John Travolta's character in Saturday Night Fever. While bearing some resemblance to Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely, the two films part ways quickly as Raúl's celebrity projection turns rapidly grim when we discover that he also brutally murders innocent people without a glimpse of reservation.

More than Taxi Driver, to which it shares a political leaning, Tony Manero recalls some of Michael Haneke's notable works. Like a hybrid of Funny Games' Paul (Arno Frisch) and The Piano Teacher's Erika (Isabelle Huppert), Raúl incorporates Erika's appalling acts of sadism with Paul's absence of remorse. He's not inhuman as much as he's beyond it, a product of the devastating reality of his world and Hollywood's endless dream-pushing.

I resist calling Tony Manero a satire or even a dark comedy as, like The Piano Teacher, its moments of rabid cruelty only spark laughter as a relief from the unshakeable dread the film creates and the repugnance that it instills (though I’m fine if you want to make a correlation between Saturday Night Fever and the downfall of Chilean society). In one of the film's most memorably ghastly scenes, the local theatre's change of attraction from Saturday Night Fever to another Travolta vehicle Grease propels Raúl to crush the elderly projectionist's skull inside the projection booth.

While the underlying idea in Tony Manero rings familiar on a couple of levels, those associations never infiltrate the hypnosis Larraín and Castro, who co-wrote the screenplay, place the audience under. Whether it's mortification or a seedy desire to where the film could possibly be headed, there's something thoroughly transfixing about Tony Manero, which sustains its foreboding uneasiness to its final, astonishing sequence.

With: Alfredo Castro, Paolo Lattus, Héctor Morales, Amparo Noguera, Elsa Poblete
Screenplay: Alfredo Castro, Mateo Iribarren, Pablo Larraín
Cinematography: Sergio Armstrong
Country of Origin: Chile/Brazil
US Distributor: Lorber Films

Premiere: 17 May 2008 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 29 September 2008 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: Best Film, Best Actor – Alfredo Castro, FIPRESCI Prize (Torino Film Festival)

The Decade List: La mujer sin cabeza (2008)

La mujer sin cabeza [The Headless Woman] – dir. Lucrecia Martel

Of all of the decade’s notable directorial debuts, no other director found their footing as succinctly and skillfully as Lucrecia Martel, who managed to craft one of the striking masterpieces latter part of the ‘00s with her third film, The Headless Woman [La mujer sin cabeza]. Building upon the worlds of both La ciénaga and La niña santa, Martel molds The Headless Woman around a central mystery. Did bottle-blonde, affluent dentist Véro (María Onetto, brilliant in an extremely challenging role) run over and kill someone on an empty road? In a moment of panic, she drives away from the accident where something, whether a dog or a person, was fatally hit. It depends on who you ask what the answer to the cryptic puzzle is, but most will agree, nothing about The Headless Woman can be deduced in simple terms.

Martel’s films thrive on the peripheral; she spends no time introducing characters, all of whom seem to know or have blood relations to the those upon which she focuses and seem to flutter in and out during the course of her films. It’s a refreshing, if frequently disorienting, technique, and one she puts to masterful use in The Headless Woman. Following the accident, Véro suffers a strange bout of amnesia as she disassociates herself from the crash. After a visit to the hospital, she hides away in a hotel, not unlike La niña santa, which is owned by either one of her family members or close friends (forgive me for not remembering a lot of the factual details, even though I did just watch the film again this past Sunday).

It becomes apparent that what Véro is suffering isn’t just fleeting panic but something more psychologically severe during the scene where she walks into her place of work and sits herself down in the waiting room, clearly unaware of her own profession or why she’s even there. Martel gives us very few details about Véro before the crash, which happens within the first fifteen minutes of the film, placing the audience on the same level as the protagonist, blind to almost everything that’s come before the accident and just as startled at everything that follows. Véro’s actions following the crash seem mechanical; she knows which hotel to go to and which house is hers, but she lacks recognition of the people around her and the circumstances of her own life. At the hotel, she runs into Juan Manuel (Daniel Genoud), a face she recognizes, and has sex with him. It’s later revealed that Juan Manuel is the husband of Josefina (Claudia Cantero), who’s either Véro’s sister or her cousin (no review or person I talked to seemed to be really sure about which). Though the question as to whether the two were partaking in an ongoing affair or if it happened just the one night is never directly answered, Martel tells us all we need to know when Véro, then convinced she did in fact kill someone that day, and Juan Manuel face one another again at her house.

The emphasis on the peripheral in The Headless Woman is where Martel’s strength as a filmmaker reveals itself even more dynamically than in her previous efforts (after La niña santa, The Headless Woman is the second of her films that Pedro and Augustín Almodóvar co-produced). When used in the realm of characterization, the film shows a peculiar, surprising sense of humor. From Véro’s crazy tía Lala (María Vaner) who sees ghosts and Josefina’s hepatitis-ridden daughter Candita (the wonderful Inés Efron of XXY) who discloses her crush on Véro by groping her and stating at one point, “love letters are to be answered or returned,” the actual world of The Headless Woman is a bizarre one, even outside of Véro’s mental distress. The combined efforts of cinematographer Bárbara Álvarez (who also shot Rodrigo Moreno’s wonderful El custodio) and the entire sound department rival Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men in technical flawlessness and innovation.

(While I hate to keep harping on this particular subject, especially as I’ve argued against it many times before, it’s worth noting that I don’t think I could truly appreciate the film’s technical prowess until seeing it projected on the big screen, where it swallowed me whole. It probably also helped that I was seeing it for the second time, after watching it at home months prior. But without being encompassed by the film in a theatre, committing one’s self to it without the leisure of home viewing, The Headless Woman loses some of its power. Note also how several critics have admitted to not really "getting" what Martel was up to and changing their tune after seeing it a second time.)

Truly though, it’s the way Martel addresses the film’s central mystery that makes The Headless Woman such an uncompromising and incandescent film. The details surrounding the disappearance of a child (more than likely one of the boys we see running around the canal in the opening scene), a block in the canal after the big rainstorm that arrives just after the accident and Candita’s offhand mention of a murder are all revealed almost extrinsically. For those familiar with Martel’s work though, nothing can truly be described as extrinsic in her films. In a certain light, the elements described above nearly create a secondary narrative, but as Martel situates the film entirely in Véro’s perspective, they cannot be seen as mere red herrings. I think if you pay attention to not only the details but the way in which the men in Véro’s life—her husband Marcos (César Bordón), her brother Marcelo (Guillermo Arengo) and Juan Manuel—interact with her, there is an answer to what happened on the road that day. Add that to Josefina’s proclamation that all the women of their family eventually succumb to madness, recognize the division of class in the film and The Headless Woman becomes less opaque than it originally appears.

While certainly a difficult film to market, the fact that it took The Headless Woman over a year to make it to the United States after premiering at Cannes in 2008 can best be attributed to reported cat-calls and boos it received at the premiere. The film doesn’t have the beneficial shock factor of something like Antichrist, which was picked up for US distribution immediately, and it wasn’t until I saw the film top IndieWire’s poll of the best undistributed films of 2008 did I realize the jeers it received at Cannes were as unjustified as they tend to be at that particular festival. Think of them then as a nod to the reception Michelangelo Antonioni’s now classic L’avventura, which also surrounds a mystery without an expected resolution, received in 1960. For the perceptive viewer (or one that’s given the film more than one sitting), The Headless Woman is utterly brilliant filmmaking, the sort that will hopefully fuck with and perplex audiences for decades to come.

With: María Onetto, Claudia Cantero, César Bordón, Inés Efron, Daniel Genoud, Guillermo Arengo, María Vaner, Alicia Muxo, Pía Uribelarrea
Screenplay: Lucrecia Martel
Cinematography: Bárbara Álvarez
Country of Origin: Argentina/France/Italy/Spain
US Distributor: Strand Releasing

Premiere: 21 May 2008 (Cannes Film Festival)
US Premiere: 6 October 2008 (New York Film Festival)

Awards: FIPRESCI Prize (Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival)

The Decade List: Julia (2008)

Julia – dir. Erick Zonca

[Edited from a previous “defense” of Julia, which was written before a number of US critics got on board with the film]

Over the past ten years, a number of films have showcased the many talents of Tilda Swinton, whose uncanny screen presence can’t really be likened to anyone else working today. Other than maybe Asia Argento, I can think of no other actor who garnered what one might call a “cult following,” a status infrequently reserved for thespians. Granted, the gay community has often championed actors (or, more accurately, actresses) that most straight people just don’t “get” (examples of which include Bernadette Peters, Gina Gershon, Maria Montez in hindsight), and during the 1990s, it was the gays who made up the cult of Tilda, thanks to her involvement with Derek Jarman and her notable turns in queer flicks like Orlando, Female Perversions and Love Is the Devil. While the cult has certainly expanded, its core members have remained persistent.

The cult of Tilda began multiplying somewhere around The Deep End, a relentlessly mediocre film only to be remembered as the film that introduced the mainstream arthouse crowd to Swinton’s “strange powers.” From there, Swinton showed up in a number of minor roles in a range of lousy Hollywood productions (Vanilla Sky, The Chronicles of Narnia, Constantine) and notable, acclaimed features by independent cinema darlings (Adaptation., Broken Flowers), none of which provided her with enough screen time to truly radiate. The three films that placed her at the center (Teknolust, Young Adam, Stephanie Daley) were only remarkable as a result of the directors’ realization of an unyielding truth: the more Tilda, the better. That Swinton would win an Oscar for a supporting role in Michael Clayton says nothing of that truth, for director Tony Gilroy gave Swinton the best platform of the “Aughts” to shine in an auxiliary form (at least until Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control). Though fans started accumulating through the years without sacrificing its founding members, that Oscar win would become the benchmark for the cult of Tilda, the moment where both Hollywood and the movie-going public finally caught up.

Lynn Hershman-Leeson may have had the right idea giving us not one, but four Tildas in Teknolust, but I’m sticking with Erick Zonca’s Julia as the zenith of Swinton’s twenty-first century output. After a nine-year hiatus following Le petit voleur, Zonca returned to the world of filmmaking with his first English-language picture, a loose remake of John Cassavetes’ Gloria with Swinton in the Gena Rowlands role. On the surface, Julia and The Deep End have quite a few commonalities. Both films rest their ample plot contrivances on Swinton’s shoulders as she barrels through ethically gray domains. On a critical level however, Zonca succeeds where Scott McGehee and David Siegel fail. Julia exudes an intensity that The Deep End severely lacks, and that intensity never falters during the film’s two-and-a-half hours, even if Zonca takes it into the realms of the highly implausible. Though to be fair, Julia isn’t any more illogical than its Hollywood equivalents, but I suppose the film’s built-in “prestige” makes critics remark on this more than something like Flightplan.

What really makes Julia undoubtedly superior to The Deep End is the focus Zonca gives his film. The camera (operated by Yorick Le Saux, a frequent collaborator of Olivier Assayas and François Ozon) hardly ever leaves Swinton’s Julia; in fact, there isn’t a single scene in the film that ever pushes her aside. It may be hard to remember that Swinton’s role of a modest suburban mother in The Deep End was a radical role choice for her at the time, but it’s pretty hard to think of a more vibrant character Swinton has produced for the screen than Julia Harris, an alcoholic, opportunistic floozy who gets in over her head with an ill-fated kidnapping scheme. It’s a loud performance, but it’s wholly without vanity, from lying on a stranger’s bed in a drunken haze with her tit hanging out to recklessly tossing about the ten-year-old boy (Aidan Gould) she kidnaps.

Like the film itself, believability is not paramount when appreciating Swinton’s performance. Taking Sally Potter’s Orlando as the easiest indicator of such, there’s never a moment where you buy Swinton, despite her androgynous features, as the masculine half of a French boy who turns into a woman midway through the film. It’s what she brings out in her performance that’s so uncanny. She exudes a rare classiness in each of her delicate performances, no matter how rough around the edges she may look, something that seems both long-forgotten and new. Even at Julia’s most belligerent, Swinton never drops her put-on American accent, and yet it’s still an accent that doesn’t sound terribly authentic. And again, it doesn’t really matter. It’s Swinton’s glances and delivery and the way she moves herself through the film that is so stellar. Whereas an actress like Naomi Watts, who seems to seek out roles that allow her to showcase her impressive crying/snotting abilities, Swinton is consistently surprising, never allowing the grittiness and possible familiarity to run stale.

The word “fearless” is one I’ve read several times to describe Swinton, and it’s certainly appropriate. In Julia, Swinton finds the core of this woman, as dark and unlikable as it may be, and vehemently brings her to life on the screen. A virile presence like Swinton’s makes it difficult to believe that she doesn’t really consider her an “actor,” but it’d be more difficult to imagine a trained “actor” to produce the sort of raw power Swinton does with nearly every single performance.

With: Tilda Swinton, Aidan Gould, Saul Rubinek, Bruno Bichir, Kate del Castillo, Jude Ciccolella, Horacio Garcia Rojas, Kevin Kilner, Eugene Byrd, John Bellucci
Screenplay: Erick Zonca, Aude Py
Cinematography: Yorick Le Saux
Music: Pollard Berrier, Darius Keeler
Country of Origin: France/USA/Mexico/Belgium
US Distributor: Magnolia

Premiere: 9 February 2008 (Berlin International Film Festival)
US Premiere: 4 October 2008 (Woodstock Film Festival)

The Decade List: Awards (2008)

I've likely spoken at some length on the majority of these awards, seeing as how most of them were given out this year... which means this will be the last installment of the Awards section of The Decade List, as I hope to will finish this all up by the end of the year. The "national film prizes" sounded really great in theory, but it's actually been more of a hassle than anything else. I'm not absolutely sure that the awards I've associated with the particular country are considered to be their top prize or not. And, like the European Film Awards, every country seems to have different cut-off periods for eligibility. Regardless, 2008 was the year where that damn crowd pleaser Slumdog Millionaire took home all the big prizes... and I'm still not sure why. For the Oscars, who always use peculiar logic, it may have been in their minds to follow up one of Oscar's bleakest Best Picture winners, No Country for Old Men, with one to get the crowds' cheering (although Slumdog is the only film I know of that can be both a crowd-pleaser and contain a scene where a child's eye gets scooped out with a spoon... there are probably other rousers that have featured their hero falling into a pool of excrement).

But, hey, at least it ended with a dance number! I wonder if I would hate Paul Haggis' Crash as much as I do if Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Brendan Fraser, Matt Dillon, Thandie Newton and company broke out into a choreographed dance routine, or at least locked arms and swayed to "Lean on Me." Three of the other films that made repeat appearances, Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah, Steve McQueen's Hunger and Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona, made their first stop at Cannes, while James Marsh's Man on Wire, which seemed to monopolize the Documentary categories, debuted at Sundance. Enjoy the final round of the Decade List's Award round-up, as I doubt I'll go back and revamp the previous years; I have too much to catch up on.

Film Festival Awards

Cannes, held 14-25 May 2008

Palme d’Or: Entre les murs (The Class) [d. Laurent Cantet]
Grand Prix: Gomorra (Gomorrah) [d. Matteo Garrone]
Prix du jury: Il divo [d. Paolo Sorrentino]
Best Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan – Üç maymun (Three Monkeys)
Best Actor: Benicio del Toro – Che
Best Actress: Sandra Corveloni – Linha de Passe
Best Screenplay: Jean Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne – Le silence de Lorna (Lorna’s Silence)

Caméra d’Or: Hunger [d. Steve McQueen]
- Special Mention: Everybody Dies But Me [d. Valeriya Gai Germanika]
Un Certain Regard Award: Tulpan [d. Sergei Dvortsevoy]
- Special Jury Prize: Tôkyô sonata [d. Kiyoshi Kuroawa]
Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique: Snijeg (Snow) [d. Aida Begić]
FIPRESCI Prize
- Competition: Delta [d. Kornél Mundruczó]


Venice, held 27 August-6 September 2008

Golden Lion: The Wrestler [d. Darren Aronofsky]
Silver Lion
- for Best Director: Aleksei German MI. – Paper Soldier
Grand Special Jury Prize: Teza [d. Haile Gerima]
Volpi Cup
- Best Actor: Silvio Orlando – Il papa di Giovanna (Giovanna’s Father)
- Best Actress: Dominique Blanc – L’autre (The Other One)
Marcello Mastroianni Award (for Best Young Actor): Jennifer Lawrence – The Burning Plain
Golden Osella
- for Best Screenplay: Haile Gerima – Teza
- for Best Cinematography: Alisher Khamidkhodjaev, Maksim Drozdov – Paper Soldier
FIPRESCI Prize
- Competition: Gabbla (Inland) [d. Tariq Teguia]
- Horizons and International Critics’ Week: Goodbye Solo [d. Ramin Bahrani]
Critics’ Week Award: L’apprenti (The Apprentice) [d. Samuel Collardey]
Queer Lion: Un altro pianeta (One Day in a Life) [d. Stefano Tummolini]


Toronto, held 4-13 September 2008

People’s Choice Award: Slumdog Millionaire [d. Danny Boyle]
Discovery Award: Hunger [d. Steve McQueen]
Best Canadian Feature: Lost Song [d. Rodrigue Jean]
- Special Jury Citation: Adoration [d. Ang Lee]
Best Canadian First Feature: Le jour avant le lendemain (Before Tomorrow) [d. Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Madeline Ivalu]
- Special Jury Citation: Borderline [d. Lyne Charlebois]
FIPRESCI Award
- Special Presentations: Disgrace [d. Steve Jacobs]
- Discovery: Lymelife [d. Derick Martini]


Berlin, held 7-17 February 2008

Golden Bear: Tropa de Elite (Elite Squad) [d. José Padilha]
Silver Bear
- for Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson – There Will Be Blood
- for Best Actor: Mohammad Amir Naji – The Song of Sparrows
- for Best Actress: Sally Hawkins – Happy-Go-Lucky
- for Best Screenplay: Wang Xiaoshuai – In Love We Trust
- Jury Grand Prix: Standard Operating Procedure [d. Errol Morris]
- Outstanding Artistic Achievement: Jonny Greenwood, composer – There Will Be Blood
Panorama Audience Award: Lemon Tree [d. Eran Riklis]
Teddy
- Feature: The Amazing Truth About Queen Raquela [d. Olaf de Fleur Jóhannesson]
- Documentary: Football Under Cover [d. David Assmann, Ayat Najafi]
- Jury Award: Be Like Others [d. Tanaz Eshaghian]
- Audience Award: Football Under Cover
- Special Teddy: Kevin Collins, Simon Fisher-Turner, Isaac Julien, James Mackay, Tilda Swinton (To those who as a ‘family,’ as combatants and allies of British filmmaker Derek Jarman have looked after his heritage); Hans Stempel, Martin Ripkens (for their activities and achievements as film critics, film scouts and filmmakers)
FIPRESCI Prize
- Competition: Lake Tahoe [d. Fernando Eimbcke]
- Forum of New Cinema: Shahida [d. Natalie Assouline]
- Panorama: Mermaid [d. Anna Melikyan]


Sundance, held 17-27 January 2008

Dramatic Competition
- Grand Jury Prize: Frozen River [d. Courtney Hunt]
- Director: Lance Hammer – Ballast
- Special Jury Prize: (tie) Chusy Haney-Jardine – Anywhere, USA; Sam Rockwell, Anjelica Huston, Kelly Macdonald, Brad William Henke, ensemble cast – Choke
- Cinematography: Lol Crawley – Ballast
- Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: Alex Rivera, David Riker – Sleep Dealer
- Audience Award: The Wackness [d. Jonathan Levine]

Documentary Competition
- Grand Jury Prize: Trouble the Water [d. Tia Lessin, Carl Deal]
- Director: Nanette Burstein – American Teen
- Special Jury Prize: The Greatest Silence: Rape in the Congo [d. Lisa F. Jackson]
- Cinematography: Phillip Hunt, Steven Sebring – Patti Smith: Dream of Life
- Documentary Film Editing Award: Joe Bini – Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired
- Audience Award: Fields of Fuel [d. Joshua Tickell]

World Cinema, Dramatic Competition
- Grand Jury Prize: Ping-pongkingen (King of Ping Pong) [d. Jens Jonsson]
- Director: Ana Melikyan – Mermaid
- Special Jury Prize: Párpados azules (Blue Eyelids) [d. Ernesto Contreras]
- Cinematography: Askild Edvardsen – Ping-pongkingen
- Screenwriting Award: Samuel Benchetrit – J’ai toujours rêvé d’être un gangster (I Always Wanted to Be a Gangster)
- Audience Award: Captain Abu Raed [d. Amin Matalqa]

World Cinema, Documentary Competition
- Grand Jury Prize: Man on Wire [d. James Marsh]
- Director: Nino Kirtadze – Durakovo: Le village des fous (Durakovo: Village of Fools)
- Cinematography: Mahmoud al Massad – Recycle
- Documentary Film Editing Award: Irena Dol – The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins
- Audience Award: Man on Wire

Other Festivals of Note

Locarno International Film Festival, held 6-16 August 2008
- Golden Leopard: Parque vía [d. Enrique Rivero]

San Sebastián International Film Festival, held 18-27 September 2008
- Golden Seashell: Pandora’nin kutusu (Pandra’s Box) [d. Yeşim Ustaoğlu]

Tokyo International Film Festival, held 18-26 October 2008
- Tokyo Grand Prix: Tulpan [d. Sergei Dvortsevoy]

Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, held 4-12 July 2008
- Crystal Globe: Frygtelig lykkelig (Terribly Happy) [d. Henrik Ruben Genz]

Montréal World Film Festival, held 21 August-1 September 2008
- Grand Prix des Amériques: Departures [d. Yôjirô Takita]

SXSW Film Festival, held 7-15 March 2008
- Best Film: Wellness [d. Jake Mahaffy]
- Best Documentary: They Killed Sister Dorothy [d. Daniel Junge]

Industry Awards

Academy Awards, held 22 February 2009

Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire [d. Danny Boyle]
Best Director: Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
Best Actor: Sean Penn – Milk
Best Actress: Kate Winslet – The Reader
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
Best Supporting Actress: Penélope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best Original Screenplay: Dustin Lance Black – Milk
Best Adapted Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy – Slumdog Millionaire
Best Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle – Slumdog Millionaire
Best Foreign Film: Departures [d. Yôjirô Takita], Japan
Best Documentary: Man on Wire [d. James Marsh]
Best Animated Feature: WALL·E [d. Andrew Stanton]


BAFTAS, held 8 February 2009

Best Film: Slumdog Millionaire [d. Danny Boyle]
Best Actor: Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
Best Actress: Kate Winslet – The Reader
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
Best Supporting Actress: Penélope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best Original Screenplay: Martin McDonagh – In Bruges
Best Adapted Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy – Slumdog Millionaire
Best Cinematography: Anthony Dod Mantle – Slumdog Millionaire
Best Film Not in the English Language: Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (I’ve Loved You So Long) [d. Philippe Claudel], France
Best Animated Feature: WALL·E [d. Andrew Stanton]

Outstanding British Film: Man on Wire [d. James Marsh]
David Lean Award for Direction: Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
Carl Foreman Award for the Most Promising Newcomer: Steve McQueen, writer/director – Hunger
Rising Star Award: Noel Clarke


European Film Awards, held 6 December 2008

Best Film: Gomorra (Gomorrah) [d. Matteo Garrone]
Best Director: Matteo Garrone - Gomorra
Best Actor: Toni Servillo – Il divo; Gomorra
Best Actress: Kristin Scott Thomas – Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (I’ve Loved You So Long)
Best Cinematography: Marco Onorato – Gomorra
Best Screenplay: Maurizio Braucci, Ugo Chiti, Gianni Di Gregorio, Matteo Garrone, Massimo Gaudioso, Roberto Saviano – Gomorra
Prix d’excellence: Magdalena Biedrzycka, costume designer – Katyń
Best Documentary: René [d. Helena Trestikova]
Discovery: Hunger [d. Steve McQueen]
FIPRESCI Prize: La graine et le mulet (The Secret of the Grain) [d. Abdel Kechiche]
Audience Award (Film): Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix [d. David Yates]


Independent Spirit Awards, held 21 February 2009

Best Feature: The Wrestler [d. Darren Aronofsky]
Best First Feature: Synecdoche, New York [d. Charlie Kaufman]
Best Director: Thomas McCarthy – The Visitor
Best Male Lead: Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
Best Female Lead: Melissa Leo – Frozen River
Best Supporting Male: James Franco – Milk
Best Supporting Female: Penélope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best Screenplay: Woody Allen – Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best First Screenplay: Dustin Lance Black – Milk
Best Cinematography: Maryse Alberti – The Wrestler
Best Documentary: Man on Wire [d. James Marsh]
Best Foreign Film: Entre les murs (The Class) [d. Laurent Cantet]

John Cassavetes Award (for features made for under $500,000): In Search of a Midnight Kiss [d. Alex Holdridge]
Truer Than Fiction Award: The Order of Myths [d. Margaret Brown]
Someone to Watch Award: Lynne Shelton – My Effortless Brilliance
Producers Award: Heather Rae – Frozen River; Ibid


Golden Globes, held 11 January 2009

Drama
- Picture: Slumdog Millionaire [d. Danny Boyle]
- Actor: Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler
- Actress: Kate Winslet – Revolutionary Road
Musical or Comedy
- Picture: Vicky Cristina Barcelona [d. Woody Allen]
- Actor: Colin Farrell – In Bruges
- Actress: Sally Hawkins – Happy-Go-Lucky
Director: Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
Supporting Actress: Kate Winslet – The Reader
Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy – Slumdog Millionaire
Foreign Film: Waltz with Bashir [d. Ari Folman], Israel
Animated Film: WALL·E [d. Andrew Stanton]


César Awards, held 27 February 2009

Best Film (Meilleur film): Séraphine [d. Martin Provost]
Best Director (Meilleur réalisateur): Jean-François Richet – Mesrine
Best Actor (Meilleur acteur): Vincent Cassel – Mesrine
Best Actress (Meilleure actrice): Yolande Moreau – Séraphine
Best Supporting Actor (Meilleur acteur dans un second rôle): Jean-Paul Roussillon – Un conte de Noël (A Christmas Tale)
Best Supporting Actress (Meilleure actrice dans un second rôle): Elsa Zylberstein – Il y a longtemps que je t’aime (I’ve Loved You So Long)
Most Promising Actor (Meilleur espoir masculin): Marc-André Grondin – Le premier jour du reste de ta vie (The First Day of the Rest of Your Life)
Most Promising Actress (Meilleur espoir féminin): Déborah François – Le premier jour du reste de ta vie
Best Original Screenplay (Meilleur scénario original): Marc Abdelnour, Martin Provost – Séraphine
Best Adapted Screenplay (Meilleur scénario adaptation): François Bégaudeau, Robin Campillo, Laurent Cantet – Entre les murs (The Class)
Best Cinematography (Meilleure photographie): Laurent Brunet – Séraphine
Best Foreign Film (Meilleur film étranger): Waltz with Bashir [d. Ari Folman], Israel
Best Documentary (Meilleur film documentaire): Les plages d’Agnès (The Beaches of Agnès) – d. Agnès Varda
Best First Film (Meilleur premier film): Il y a longtemps que je t’aime [d. Philippe Claudel]


Directors Guild of America, given 31 January 2009

Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures: Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary: Ari Folman – Waltz with Bashir


Screen Actors Guild of America, held 25 January 2009

Outstanding Male Actor in a Leading Role: Sean Penn – Milk
Outstanding Female Actor in a Leading Role: Meryl Streep – Doubt
Outstanding Male Actor in a Supporting Role: Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight
Outstanding Female Actor in a Supporting Role: Kate Winslet – The Reader
Outstanding Performance by the Case of a Theatrical Motion Picture: Slumdog Millionaire, awarded to Rubina Ali, Tanay Chheda, Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala, Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar, Madhur Mittal, Dev Patel, Freida Pinto


Razzies, given 21 February 2009

Worst Film: The Love Guru [d. Marco Schnabel]
Worst Director: Uwe Boll – Tunnel Rats; In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale; Postal
Worst Actor: Mike Myers – The Love Guru
Worst Actress: Paris Hilton – The Hottie & the Nottie
Worst Supporting Actor: Pierce Brosnan – Mamma Mia!
Worst Supporting Actress: Paris Hilton – Repo! The Genetic Opera
Worst Screenplay: Mike Myers, Graham Gordy – The Love Guru
Worst Remake/Sequel: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull [d. Steven Spielberg]

National Industry Awards

Argentina, Clarín Awards
- Film: Aniceto [d. Leonardo Favio]
Australia, Australian Film Awards
- Film: The Black Balloon [d. Tristram Miall]
Austria, Diagnole Grand Prize
- Film: Revanche [d. Götz Spielmann]
Brazil, Cinema Brazil Awards
- Film: Estômago [d. Marcos Jorge]
- Foreign Film: Vicky Cristina Barcelona [d. Woody Allen], Spain/USA
Canada, Genie Awards
- Film: Passchendaele [d. Paul Gross]

Canada (Québec), Jutra Awards
- Film: Borderline [d. Lyne Charlebois]
China, Golden Rooster
- Film: (tie) Assembly [d. Feng Xiaogang]; Forever Enthralled [d. Chen Kaige]
Czech Republic, Czech Lions
- Film: Karamazovi (The Karamazovs) [d. Petr Zelenka]
- Foreign-Language Film: Katyń [d. Andrzej Wajda], Poland
Denmark, Robert Awards
- Film: Frygtelig lykkelig (Terribly Happy) [d. Henrik Ruben Genz]
- Best American Film: No Country for Old Men [d. Joel Coen, Ethan Coen]
- Best Non-American Film: Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick (Everlasting Moments) [d. Jan Troell], Sweden
Finland, Jussi Awards
- Film: Niko – Lentäjän poika (Niko and the Way to the Stars) [d. Michael Henger, Kari Juusonen]

Germany, Lolas
- Film: Auf der anderen Seite (The Edge of Heaven) [d. Fatih Akin]
Greece, Greek Competition Awards via the Thessaloniki Film Festival
- Film: Exile Island [d. Elias Giannakakis, Evi Karabatsou]
Hong Kong, Hong Kong Film Awards
- Film: Ip Man [d. Wilson Yip]
Hungary, Hungarian Film Week Grand Prize
- Film: Delta [d. Kornél Mundruczó]
Iceland, Edda Awards
- Film: Brúðguminn (White Night Wedding) [d. Baltasar Kormákur]

Iran, Crystal Simorgh
- Film: As Simple As That [d. Seyyed Reza Mir-Karimi]
Ireland, Irish Film & Television Awards
- Film: Hunger [d. Steve McQueen]
- Best International Film: In Bruges [d. Martin McDonagh], UK
Israel, Ophir Awards
- Film: Waltz with Bashir [d. Ari Folman]
Italy, David di Donatello Awards
- Film: Gomorra (Gomorrah) [d. Matteo Garrone]
- Best Foreign Film: Gran Torino [d. Clint Eastwood], USA
- Best European Film: Slumdog Millionaire [d. Danny Boyle], UK
Japan, Japanese Academy Awards
- Film: Departures [d. Yôjirô Takita]
- Foreign Language Film: The Dark Knight [d. Christopher Nolan], USA
Mexico, Ariel Awards
- Film: Lake Tahoe [d. Fernando Eimbcke]
- Best Latin-American Film: Leonera (Lion’s Den) [d. Pablo Trapero], Argentina

Netherlands, Golden Calf
- Film: Alles is liefde (Love Is All) [d. Joram Lürsen]
Norway, Amanda Awards
- Film: Mannen som elsket Yngve (The Man Who Loved Yngve) [d. Stian Kristiansen]
- Best Foreign Feature Film: There Will Be Blood [d. Paul Thomas Anderson], USA
Philippines, FAMAS
- Film: Baler [d. Mark Meily]
Portugal, Coimbra Caminhos
- Film: Deus Não Quis (It Wasn’t God’s Will) [d. António Ferreira]
Romania, Gopo Awards
- Film: Restul e tăcere (The Rest Is Silence) [d. Nae Caranfil]
- Best European Film: Obsluhoval jsem anglického krále (I Served the King of England) [d. Jiří Menzel], Czech Republic
Russia, Nika Awards
- Film: Hipsters [d. Valeriy Todorovskiy]

South Korea, Grand Bell Awards
- Film: The Chaser [d. Na Hong-jin]
Spain, Goya Awards
- Film: Camino [d. Javier Fesser]
- Spanish-Language Foreign Film: La buena vida (The Good Life) [d. Andrés Wood], Chile
- European Film: 4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) [d. Cristian Mungiu]
Sweden, Guldbagge Awards
- Film: Maria Larssons eviga ögonblick (Everlasting Moments) [d. Jan Troell]
- Foreign Film: Lust, Caution [d. Ang Lee], Taiwan
Switzerland, Swiss Film Awards
- Film: Home [d. Ursula Meier]
Taiwan, Golden Horse
- Film: Warlords [d. Peter Chan, Yip Wai Man]
Turkey, Golden Orange
- Film: Pazar - Bir ticaret masali (The Market: A Tale of Trade) [d. Ben Hopkins]