Subtle movies that explore "big issues". That's where the weight of my favorite films of 2008 seem to be thrown. From obvious topics like the Three Gorges Dam to lesser known ones like Argentinean Patrimony, these films seem to teeter in no man's land of fact and fiction. But unlike My Winnipeg, where fact and fiction stand in contrast to each other, or hard sap, like March of the Penguins, these films refashion reality from fictional stories and fictional stories through truth telling so that the greater narrative is eventually seamless, on the verge of crux.

7-8. A moralizing typical film takes the propagandist stance about "issues" and incites a self congratulatory response over our hypocritical bourgeoisie responsibility to solve them. However, neither Encounters at the End of the World or Still Life are satisfied with totalitarian definitions or answers, simplistic views of apocalypse. And both Herzog and Zhangke absolutely refuse to settle into straight pedagogy about the Global Warming Crisis or Destitute Modernization. Rather than dramatizing the Antarctic or Chinese "problem", the directors complicate the ultimate scenario to draw out a universality of underlying hopes and fears. Herzog reintroduces his audience to limits of the human relationship with nature, while Zhangke illustrates a melancholy richness left behind in the wake of undeniable beurocratic desolation, to teeter at the very edge of an awareness, half in and half out of "real life" and yet more "true" than any documentary or dramatization. Through, deft handling, the images meet at some ordinary yet fantastical shore where black and white differences are erased, perhaps instilling perhaps a more fundamental desire to make a difference.

6. On a similar note, The Sun Also Rises, by Jiang Wen, is a fictional, seriously fantastical film about China's uncomfortable relationship with its own cultural and social transformation. Told as an interwoven epic in multiple parts through the lens of three cinematographers, the film reminds me very strongly of Hemingway's book by the same name, where the characters are expatriates in a strange land, lost in haze of debauched hallucination, absurd events occurring from almost nowhere to incur violent reactions. However, in the case of 太阳照常升起, the Chinese are strangers in their own land, and thus the series of surreal displacements become an act of conflicted remembrance for old worlds that barely exist or maybe never did. Jiang Wen plays those interruptions of the Chinese myth as a sense of uncertainty that can never be truly allayed. It is probably telling that images from this film continue to float up from my subconsciousness to haunt me from time to time: a pair of twinkling embroidered shoes, floating on a patch of grass on a glittering river, the wide eyed barely contained hysteria of Joan Chen confronting/seducing/disgusting Anthony Wong Chau Sang in a dank backwater hospital bed, the vaguely Wuxia ghostliness of a gnarled tree twisting through a fog that hides many secrets.

5. Apparently, many critics found The Headless Woman bafflingly cryptic. The unusual style of editing: images with extremities chopped off, shadowy figures out of focus fore and aft, mysteriously off camera chatter, creates disorientation about characters and plot. Who are they? What are the relationships? I found the film dreamy and repressively terrifying because of these omissions. But the purposeful sense of confusion is director Lucrecia Martela's technique of structuring the oblique narrative (Vero, the central character, may have killed a boy with her car) through pure imagery. The direction plays out as visible representation of Vero's inner shock and her willingness to elide any error. Each carefully composed frame is imbedded with importance that builds almost invisibly to the film's topical resolution. In fact, Vero's visual story of trauma and guilt is evenutally reclaimed by a subtext of privilege and class, latent patriarchy and gender. Don't let the heady cinematography and meandering staging deceive you, the film has a story and a reason.

4. Wendy and Lucy is a hard-luck story and an obvious tearjerker about a girl stranded in podunk, Oregon whilst on her big escape to Alaskan salvation. When a series of small happenings play out badly, Wendy loses her best friend Lucy - a cheerful golden yellow mutt - and has to find her again. Clinging to normality with spent perseverance, Michelle Williams, as Wendy, embodies the quiet eloquence of a person's desperate isolation and the indifference of people around her as they live their lives towards dead ends. I admit, I cried harder than any other movie I've ever watched probably, but Director, Kelly Reichardt, earns those tears because the film isn't just a cute weeper, but really a frame by frame account of a person's dissipating self worth. An indie age tragedy. Steinbeck for our recessionary times.

3. On the lighter side, but by no means less important in a year of competently illustrious and agreeably well received comic book Blockbusters (Hulk, Hellboy), the winner is... Iron Man. No contest. "Why not Batman?!" you ask, despite more solid performances, tight storytelling, cinematic beauty and great action coming together in one better-than-those-other better-than-real-dreck superhero movies. Well, despite some glitches, Iron Man has all of the above Plus...

Robert Downey Jr's unconventional yet very convincing take on Anthony Edward "Tony" Stark, a nuanced, what some would say, an even three dimensional character. Granted, you have to like RDJ's riffing and broad physical tics, but I do, so Downey's Stark is believable as a charismatically self involved, emotionally crippled genius that tries too hard, but is a real treat to watch. Honestly, he's a little pathetic. But a "vulnerable super-hero" movie which lets the superhero be Vulnerable? Ding!

Plus = Gwyneth Paltrow's understated, charmingly credible treatment of what is traditionally a passively blank female lead. Her Pepper Pots, neither femme fatale or damsel in distress, brainiac or butch, has a world outside her man. Some forgotten critic (sorry) said Downey and Paltrow in Iron Man heat made probably the best romantic comedy since Annie Hall and I would have to agree. Ding! Ding!

And even though I like the inside of a well organized gun locker as much as the next gal, Iron Man slightly sidesteps the convention of "here's the microscopic super duper ray gun, heatseeking latchhook gizmo, and the new boat/helicopter/bike/mobile". Ding!

Obviously, all these perks of the film are part and parcel of Iron Man's inherent character - he makes his own toys, he doesn't get the girl, he's really an alcoholic - but I think Jon Favreau did a bang-up job turning those quirks into a new look for superhero films.

2. Finally... well, my explanation for this film is a little complicated and goes back to a rousing yet not-very-well-thought-out response to Stephanie Zacharek's review of Pixar's Cars in which she scoffed at anthropomorphized vehicles and tired of Car's "red state-blue state divisions". Now... first off, I would have to argue that anyone who thinks a foodie rat who mind controls a human puppet through some major hair pulling in order to make exacting french bistro cuisine is actually any more HUMAN than a city mouse Porsche with serious Fahrvergnugen, is a little less than exacting, or doesn't know how to operate a clutch, or at the very least, has popped a belt in an uncanny valley somewhere North of La Cienega. Thinking that a machine is cold, hard, emotionless is already to anthropomorphize them. An anti-anthropomorphosization, if you will. I admit that Cars was stretched a little thin, but having done a few Republican cowboy jaunts, I'd have to say that vibe was right on the mark (maybe too many marks but generally on. On that note, I have to yield to Manohla Dargis' discomfiture over racial stereotypes in children's animation films. Did anyone else notice that the short stubby, love making penguins in Happy Feet were Mexican?) And yet, as critics - self proclaimed to stand outside the realm of identity making - who soapbox about automobile sprawl from high castles while extolling 'Where's the Prius?', I'm not sure they have a right to criticize "country values" with their very liberal notion of route 66's colorblindness. Cities and suburbia have The Incredibles. Rodents, after all, have that damnable Ratatouille. Why can't Nascar/Low Rider/Cadillac Records fans have Cars? But I digress.

I believe in the circle of life and that animals have feelings. I grew up with Data as a role-model and Transformers for entertainment. So I might be what realists call an anthropomorphic nut-job. In any case, because of my mental setbacks Wall-E takes the silver medal on this lineup. Wall-E isn't really an issue movie despite minor stabs at the hegemony of the iPod aesthetic, fast-food nation, consumer culture, and the media. Bird balances the Buster Keaton-esque humor, the Space Odyssey references, and the Johnny 5 rip-off, with the "thinky" stuff admirably well. But underneath it all, Wall-E is a pure gem of anthropomorphic wit. The kind that Pixar is famous for. Relatively free of dialogue, the charming love story is one completely made up of tiny zips and zings, physical gaffs and still life moments. There's no way you can't feel for this ragtag collection of little robots, but if you don't, well... you just might be human after all.

1. Despite my reservation about the neatly tied psychodrama of the rushed ending, Kaiba is probably, nay, is definitely the most original anime series in recent memory. With the melancholy soul of Cowboy Bebop and a bubbly anime style that looks too easy, almost crude. Kaiba is hard to describe because most of the joy is a wonky world of objects moving in unnatural ways and behaving surprisingly, even to our already sci-fi, anime laden minds. But this isn't a mecha flick, or just another philosophical inquiry - a la Ergo Proxy. Each episode of Kaiba has a plot, albeit moody and mysterious, but one with definite resolutions. The series never feels the need to completely demystify things for the audience (making the larger story arc an adventure), but leaves plenty of hints on the central motifs of death and memory while opening lots of queries on love and identity. Explaining that Kaiba is both an amnesiac man who has a hole in his chest as well as a memory eating plant that devours entire planets isn't really going to cut it. Telling you that the director, Masaaki Yuasa, produced and wrote the script for Cat Soup may help a little. But I think you really just have to watch the series yourself.