I hurt myself watching so many 2008 movies over Christmas break, and I am cooking up a best of 2008 list with which you may populate your Netflix queue.  Get your bibs ready beacause you are going to be puking all over yourself with the awesomeness of these movies.  I have to take a shower now bye

Here is the debut of my long-running series, VIDEO GAME XPERT, in which I hand out video game knowledge like it is candy.

TODAY’S EPISODE:  Home v. NXE

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)

On November 5th, 2001, Dr. Andrew Bagby was shot and killed by his ex-girlfriend, Shirley Turner.  Four months later, Bagby’s parents learned that Shirley was pregnant with his son.  Part grief counseling, part call for activism, Dear Zachary is a deeply personal documentary about a family that had everything taken away from them, and was forced to fight back.

Kurt Kuenne was a filmmaker and childhood friend of Andrew’s.  When they were young, Andrew played the bad guy in many of Kuenne’s movies.  Upon hearing of his death, Kuenne set out to make what he considered to be a final collaboration with Andrew: a documentary about his life.  When they learned about Zachary, Andrew and Shirley’s son, the documentary became an heirloom; an inheritance of identity for Zachary to discover when he became old enough.

While out on bail in Canada, Shirley committed further crimes, and so the heirloom became a statement of an activist family, determined to fix a legal system that had let them down.  This movie moved me in a profound emotional way.  I actually wish that it had never been made, or rather that things had been different and that I would never have heard of Andrew Bagby, a doctor in Pennsylvania who was no good as a surgeon and found his calling as a family practicioner.  What a boring story, unfit for a documentary.  I wish that the Bagbys had lived boring lives.

This post has read like a combination of a press release and rip off of every other review of this movie.  The reason is that you just have to see it.  Sometimes you see a movie, and you don’t want to discuss the merits of the cinematography or the director’s arc as a storyteller.  Sometimes you just want to tell everyone you know that dammit, they have to watch this fucking movie and no I’m not going to tell you any more about it than you absolutely need to know.  Just watch it, you fucking mook, and don’t ever question me again.

Although the last time I heard something like that was six years ago and it ended with me watching Donne Darko and having my mind bloooooown by the story of an awkward boy and the book that you have to read separately to understand anything.  Look at me, I’m dissing Donnie Darko in 2008.  Maybe next post I’ll go a few rounds with Napoleon Dynamite.

I have to tell you, though.  Just watch this.  I’ll echo something else that everyone else on the internet is saying, too:  do yourself a favor and don’t read up on this movie.  Don’t even google it if you have the Googlepedia Firefox extension installed.  Just go watch it.  It’s not the work of a filmmaking genius (sometimes it seems like a rookie effort, sometimes it seems like MSNBC monkied around it with it to make it fit in more with the basic cable standard of documentary quality), but I’m not aware of a better documentary this year.  Its power comes from its sincerity.  I’ve even included the youtube trailer against my better judgment.  I’ll have a post with more actual content later.

Your best shot at seeing this if you can’t make it out to one of the theaters playing it right now is the catch the rebroadcast on MSNBC on Sunday, December 14th at 4PM EST.

It is now possible to comment on a post if you are someone besides Hsu or Kishi or someone else who registered an account before I broke account registration beyond repair.  It’s kind of scary because I kind of don’t want to know if anybody wanted to comment but was just prohibited by technological quibbles.

Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Slumdog Millionaire is about a guy who is being interrogated by police on suspicion of cheating on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.  The Indian host constantly says the name of the show, and by the second half of the movie I was not able to supress my giggles at the way he pronounced “Who Wants to be a Millonare!”  The contestant is a tea servant named Jamal.  He was raised in the slums, and no one believes that he would know the answers to all of the questions.  Over the course of the long night between his two appearances on the show, Jamal explains to the police the amazing series of circumstances and coincidences behind his ability to supply Final Answer after Final Answer.

Of course, the answer is that Jamal has lived his life, and learned these things.  Coming out of the movie theater, I found myself looking at knowledge as more than merely the things that I know, but rather my ability to convert my experiences into memories and categorize them in my mind.  The process of taking events from your life and changing them into knowledge has, as far as I know, never previously been the subject of a comedic drama romance set in India, but Danny Boyle made it look easy.  Boyle is the only director I can think of (with my limited knowledge) who has never made a movie that was anything like any other movie that he has made.  That’s why we didn’t know if he was a genius in his early career.  He was too all-over-the-place.  Standing back, we can see that from Shallow Grave to Slumdog that there’s something special going on here.

Here are some excerpts from my favorite IMDb review of this film, by JABKool:

To summarize the deep and perfectly delivered message of this movie; you don’t have to be a genius to know the answers in life, sometimes life is just written(whether you call it fate or destiny).

Whether you call it fate, OR destiny, sometimes life is just written.  I just wanted to type that out, in addition to copy/pasting it.  I just wanted to feel what it was like to type those letters in that order.  And, damn it, it felt good.  Maybe this guy is onto something.  What else does he have to say?

This movie I’m sure will find its place amongst the great love movie’s like “The Princess Bride”, “Casablanca”, and “Titanic”. Some people I know have problems over the fact that this movie takes place in India, but if you just for one moment let go of that and watch this movie you will instantly find out just how amazing this movie is.

Damn it, if I could only get a grip on my crippling racism for just one second, I’d be able to enjoy movies like Slumdog Millionaire more often.

Even though I am writing this review now in November, I hope that you will read this review when the film comes out officially in January and go out and see it. BECAUSE WHETHER YOU GO INTO THAT THEATER ALONE; WITHOUT A GIRLFRIEND OR NOT, YOU WILL WALK OUT OF THAT THEATER INSPIRED, ENCOURAGED, HOPEFUL, BUT MOST OF ALL IN LOVE WITH THIS FILM.

OKAY THANK YOU FOR THE DATING ADVICE.  ALSO, I’M NOT SAYING THAT THIS HAS HAPPENED TO ME, BUT WHAT SHOULD ONE IN THEORY DO IF THEY START GROWING HAIR IN…STRANGE PLACES?  I MEAN LIKE WIENER WEIRD.

For my closing statement I need to mention that recently this film got an undeserving “R” rating, but this is one movie you should not be ashamed to have your parents take you to see.

And I mean, like, the only one.  Sometimes, I just start feeling shame in the middle of the day for no reason.  I know that that’s what God wants but sometimes I wish it would go away.  Does that mean I’m going to hell?

Actually, this kid that I’m cruelly making fun of despite being probably twice his age raises a very good point.

Why did the MPAA give this movie an R rating?  If it were a book, it would be taught in fucking schools.  Like The Giver or something.  Now, a thirteen year old isn’t even allowed to see it, for fear of being corrupted in some way by some violence, disturbing images and language.  I would blame Fox Searchlight, but it looks like it didn’t do amazingly better in other countries either.  IMDb says that Australia, the UK, and Ireland gave it a rating suitable for 15 year olds.  In the U.S., it’s rated for 17 year olds.  Oh well, they can just go watch Twilight again I guess.