Film Poll 2008: WALL-E World

The little robot that could tops another chart

A A A Comments (2) By J. Hoberman Wednesday, Dec 31 2008

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Best Documentary

WALL-E

Ballast

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Man On Wire (16 points/mentions): A nonfiction film with the heart of a Hollywood caper, James Marsh’s wildly entertaining docudrama revisited French provocateur Philippe Petit’s 1974 tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and turned it into an eccentric valentine to imagination, risk-taking, and creative self-expression.

Worst Film

The Love Guru (5 points/mentions): In the same year that Slumdog Millionaire became a word-of-mouth smash, onetime box-office champ Mike Myers went slumming in brownface as the eponymous cupid of this little-seen (but much-loathed) “comedy.”

Best Undistributed Films

1. The Headless Woman (15 points/mentions): After Che, the love-it-or-hate-it attraction of last year’s Cannes Film Festival was director Lucrecia Martel’s intentionally disorienting immersion into the unstable universe of a bourgeois Argentine woman reeling from a bump on the noggin. As usual, away from the Cannes hothouse, the film’s supporters quickly outnumbered its detractors.

2. Tony Manero (11 points/mentions): You can tell by the way he uses his walk that the monomaniacal protagonist of director Pablo Larraín’s unnerving sophomore feature really, really wants to win a John Travolta lookalike contest on a TV variety show in the waning years of Pinochet’s Chile.

3.Four Nights With Anna (10 points/mentions): Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski’s return to feature filmmaking — and to form — after a self-imposed 15-year hiatus is a typically idiosyncratic, darkly funny tale of obsession in which a lonely morgue worker can only express his love for a beautiful nurse through subtle acts of home invasion (and home improvement).

The Ground Rules: We asked each critic to cite 10 films, three male lead performances, three female lead performances, three male supporting performances, three female supporting performances, 10 films without distributors, and one choice each for documentary, first feature, and worst. Ranked ballots were weighted as follows: For film: 1 (10 points), 2 (9), 3 (8), 4 (7), 5 (6), 6 (5), 7 (4), 8 (3), 9 (2), 10 (1). For performance: 1 (3), 2 (2), 3 (1). Unranked films were awarded 5.5 points each, unranked performances 2 points. Ties were verboten. Outside of the undistributed category, we asked voters to focus on films that opened for U.S. theatrical engagements in 2008.

Participants:L.A. Weekly/Village Voice Media contributors: Robert Abele, David Ehrenstein, F.X. Feeney, Scott Foundas, Lance Goldenberg, Ed Gonzalez, Tim Grierson, Aaron Hillis, J. Hoberman, Brian Miller, Kristi Mitsuda, Adam Nayman, Michelle Orange, Elena Oumano, Nick Pinkerton, Nicolas Rapold, Jim Ridley, Vadim Rizov, Sam Sweet, Ella Taylor, James C. Taylor, Luke Y. Thompson, Martin Tsai, Chuck Wilson