WEIRDLAND: "Time" - Top Movies and Performances

Tuesday, December 09, 2008

"Time" - Top Movies and Performances

Top 10 Movie Performances:

1. Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight

Reviewers evoked Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter — the same mock-ingratiating tone, same sadistic ingenuity — but this Joker is the bigger, gaudier showman, with a sick kid's need to watch the damage he's caused. His ornate facial scars (possibly self-inflicted) suggest a traumatic past, but unlike Lecter the Joker has no backstory; he can't be read as the sum of what his parents, or a girl, or the Iraq War, did to him. He comes out of nowhere, creates chaos, disappears. Ledger thus had the freedom to invent his own nightmare.

5. Ben Burtt as WALL-E in WALL-E

The lonely robo-boy of Andrew Stanton's fabulous fantasy doesn't say much ("WALL-E," "Eva," "Ta-DA!"), but there's a future-world of humor and emotion in each syllable. Those intonations, and nearly every other sound in the movie — the machines, the weapons, the whole aural environment — are the amazing achievement of Ben Burtt [...]
Source: www.time.com

Top 10 Movies:9. Speed Racer

Not every avant-garde FX masterpiece receives instant audience validation. This tale of a family of racers — Racer is the family name — exists simultaneously in the 1950s and today, in a live-action world and its own complementary alternate cyber-universe. Operating a pitch of delirious precision, the movie is a rich, cartoonish dream: non-stop Op art, and a triumph of virtual virtuosity.


8. Iron Man A tin man who realizes that, if he is to become human, he must build himself a heart — and then a big red metallic airborne suit for buzzing unsuspecting planes and vanquishing his enemies. What a kick it is to see the thing fly. Same with the movie, for, like Tony, Iron Man is the perfect expression of Hollywood's engineering ingenuity.5. Milk

This exceptional docudrama — written by Darren Lance Black, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Sean Penn — covers the last eight years of Milk's life, which ended when he was shot by fellow supervisor Dan White (Josh Brolin). Penn, who’s in nearly every scene, manages the neat trick of merging his star personality with the public figure well known from the 1984 documentary The Life and Times of Harvey Milk.
Source: www.time.com

2 comments :

BirdGirl said...

I am so jazzed about this. I mean Milk was no surprise but Speed Racer is finally getting the respect it deserves. I was so fed up with the haters. That movie was visually stunning. Not to mention the most fun I think I have ever had at the movies. Maybe the "critics" are finally starting to realize that they were really unfair and just flat out wrong about it. I sometimes wonder if the wrote their reviews before even seeing it?

Elena said...

Yes, I was a bit wary after reading so many cold reviews about Speed Racer, but I ignored them because I am fan of Wachowski (The Matrix, Bound, V for Vendetta), and the casting was so familiar: Goodman, Sarandon, Ricci, and of course Emile characterized as Speed was spot on.
My brother also loved this film because he's a fan of car racing Spanish Formula One.
Speed Racer is pure entertainment, with a family story and visually is hallucinating!