Still Opening Presents

After a Kate Winslet double-feature—I thought The Reader had much more integrity and credible artistry, but it's Revolutionary Road that I'm thinking about more—I only have one more gift to unwrap from 2008 before I can finalize my Top Ten List for the year and get cracking in some other categories. I'll still be missing some titles that haven't hit Chicago yet (The Secret of the Grain) or that departed too quickly (Momma's Man), plus a few more peripherals from Tuya's Marriage to Pineapple Express, but one has to draw the line somewhere.

In Bruges shows up on both of my favorite Top Ten lists that I've read so far, from Guy and Nathaniel. I love the detail and personality of the choices and the write-ups, and they sway me to try to reconsider the films on which we disagree. And I feel even worse now for falling asleep a half-hour into Heartbeat Detector. I had moved the day before, and I shouldn't have been sitting before a slowly-building French drama. I'll track it down eventually.

Another film that Nathaniel and Guy both endorse on their Top Ten lists is Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, which got a fabulous boost from the august National Society of Film Critics. I love the Hanna Schygulla prize for The Edge of Heaven; I loved that performance, which is currently short-listed for my own Best Supporting Actress list, and I loved it especially because a) I had no idea while watching the movie that this was Hanna Schygulla, b) I had no idea it was a performance that anyone else was clocking, and c) I actually thought at some point in the film, "This amazing actress has a sort of Hanna Schygulla quality." It's a lovely bit of acting in a fabulous movie, but I wonder if the performance will work as well if you head into the movie expecting a standard "critics prize" sort of performance. If you see it, let me know. Hopefully, I'll have more to say about supporting actresses later today for Stinky's Blogathon.