Man, who would have thought? Hou Hsiao-hsien‘s “Flight Of The Red Balloon” top IndieWire’s Poll of 100 North American critics as the Best Film Of 2008. We’re not sure what other widespread poll asks 100 critics for its picks, but that’s a pretty substantial number and nothing to scoff at. Arnaud Desplechin‘s “A Christmas Tale,” came in second. And populist fare like “Wall-E” ranked well above something supposedly more indie-friendly than “The Wrestler.”
We’ll be totally honest. We never saw ‘Red Balloon. One friend of ours, a trusted critic, saw it and said it was once of the worst films he saw all year and we weren’t that hot on the idea of a remake/”inspired by” reimagination of such a beloved film and we let it pass us by. We guess we’ll have to rectify that asap. It has a solid, not mind-blowing 79% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
“Man On Wire” was named the Best Documentary and we certainly can’t argue with that one.
Lance Hammer‘s “Ballast” was honored with the Best First Feature award, and Charlie Kaufman‘s screenplay for “Synecdoche, New York” scored the prize for Best Original Screenplay (our issues with the film aside, we really have no issue there either, as the screenplay was great). Mickey Rourke‘s role in “The Wrestler” was singled out as the Best Performance, while Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight” took the award for Best Supporting Performance.
As note by IndieWire, Mike Leigh‘s “Happy-Go-Lucky” ranked high in many categories including #5 on the Best Films list. The complete results are here, including the full ballots of every person that voted (if you want to know certain critics taste or picks) and their comments.
Here’s the Top 10 list.
1 The Flight of the Red Balloon
2 A Christmas Tale
3 WALL-E
4 Wendy and Lucy
5 Happy-Go-Lucky
6 Paranoid Park
7 Still Life
8 Silent Light*
9 Synecdoche, New York
10 Waltz with Bashir
Technically ’09 isn’t it? Since its NY film release doesn’t start til January, tsk, tsk (we’re just jealous cause we missed our screening, but it’s kinda true).