More Top 10 - #4 & #3

#4 - WALL*E
directed by Andrew Stanton

The second time I saw WALL*E, I actually had the excuse of going to the film with a child, taking my college friend, her husband, and their three-year-old son to see it. But note: I said, second time. I couldn't wait that long before going to check out the latest offering from Pixar. Cars aside (which I didn't hate), I had not been disappointed by a Pixar feature.

With this brilliant robot romance, they may have crafted their finest film yet. While still attention-grabbing for children, the brilliant references and the use of silence make it one of the most adult-friendly animated features this side of my #3 film (see below).

The opening shot alone tells more story than any film that's starred Freddie Prinze, Jr. Our robot hero is working his way through an abandoned city, on his way back to his ramshackle makeshift home. It's clear that the city has been left behind by a human race that has consumed its way toward its own destruction. The images in the background look eerily familiar to the ever-conglomerating, easy-to-throw-away world we are creating daily. Of course, that's the whole point of the movie, but how many movies manage to make their point during the opening credits? Better yet, how many of them maintain interest after making their point?

The fact that Stanton and crew can give personality to dead-eyed mechanical and electronic creatures without overly relying on cutesy-cutesy gestures is the other thing that makes this a gen to behold. And the trip through the stars is worth the price of admission (or Blu-Ray) alone. Does it lose a little steam in the 2nd act? Yeah. It does. But when a movie offers as much as WALL*E does, it's easy to overlook a few awkward moments. And then you get the closing credits - again, taken alone, better than a lot of movies offered this year.

Pixar is known for constantly ramping up what computer animation can do, but what has made their films great is the fact that they pay as much attention to story as they do visuals. WALL*E is a prime example of how great they are at both.













#3 - Waltz with Bashir
directed by Ari Folman

Winner of the Golden Globe and the Critics' Choice Awards for Best Foreign Language film, Israel's Waltz with Bashir is a stunner of a movie.

It begins with a phone call director Ari Folman received from a friend. The friend describes a dream in which he's being chased by 26 dogs. Exactly 26. As the dream is described, it is stunningly animated, raising the adrenaline and establishing the films themes immediately. Waltz with Bashir is an analysis of memory (individual and cultural) and how the trauma of war (again, individual and national) shapes it.

The dream was inspired by events that occurred during the 1982 war with Lebanon. Folman served in that war as well. But after hearing his friend's dream, he realizes that he has absolutely no memory of that time period. None.

This sparks a search. He talks to his fellow soldiers from that time. To family. To psychologists. He's attempting to piece his own memories back together and discover the roots of his year-long black out.

As he does, the memories of his comrades are illustrated in sumptuous flash animation. Each scene was actually filmed in live action, but instead of rotoscoping (the technique used by Richard Linklater in Waking Life), the images are hand and computer illustrated based on the live footage. The results are haunting and beautiful to behold. They create a unique distance between the viewer and the events being depicted. While some have found this to be a little too intellectual, I find it to be wholly appropriate. We have to be distant from it because Folman was.

What he was distancing himself from was the massacres of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Christian allies of Israel at Sabra and Shatila. As we approach those events with Folman, the horrors of war become darker and more urgent. The film's conclusion is a stunner.

Were the Academy's silly restrictions on documentary release dates not so...well, silly, Waltz with Bashir would have been nominated for Best Documentary. If they get things right, it will be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and for Best Animated Film. For my tastes, it deserves all three nominations and could, perhaps should, win both. Were the world of the Academy more right, it would have had the chance at one of the most fascinating tri-fectas in film history. As it stands, it will be remembered in film history as being a truly remarkable work of cinema.