Top 10 Movies of 2008

It’s funny how things come full circle sometimes. 2007 was a year proclaimed by many critics to be a landmark period in cinema, and I can’t really disagree. The art-house films released were indisputably great, but as a connoisseur of summer blockbusters, I can’t deny a little feeling of disappointment last year. Well 2008 took things in the complete opposite direction with a ho-hum awards season and a fantastic lineup of summer spectacle including 2 films I already consider all-time classics that I expect to be watching regularly with my kids and grandkids.

10 The Wackness
This Sundance sensation, turned little-seen gem proved to be a fairly standard coming-of-age indie flick, but it won me over by dripping with two things I can’t get enough of: early 90’s hip hop and New York City. I also thought they did a great job selling the love story, which is something many many movies attempt and fail miserably at. Add to that a great performance by Sir Ben Kingsley as an aging pothead, and you get a movie that easily squeezes into my top 10 for the year.

9 Mongol
The first of a planned trilogy of films chronicling the rise and fall of Genghis Kahn, Mongol is a great example of how to properly do a historical epic. I wish I’d gotten to see this film on the big screen, because my 20 inch Polaroid did not do the kick-ass battle scenes justice, but I will be getting this on blu-ray soon enough. Now let’s just hope they get around to making the other two parts of this story.

8 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
At this point, I think it’s pretty well settled that David Fincher is one of the great filmmakers of this generation. Benjamin Button is certainly a departure for him, but his style lends itself just as well to a sentimental love story as it does for the dark and cynical movies he’s made. The story does bear a heavy resemblance to Forrest Gump, which admittedly dropped it a few slots for me, but I know which one of those is going to be getting more re-plays in my house.

7 JCVD
Oddly enough, I went to see this one as a bit of a novelty, when the Angelika promised a post-screening Q&A with Van Damme himself, but alas, the Muscles from Brussels did not show. To my pleasant surprise however, the movie turned out to be great. The film, which stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as washed up direct-to-video action hero, Jean-Claude Van Damme is funny, suspenseful, and surprisingly touching (i.e. everything you don’t expect out of a Van Damme movie). While I don’t expect this to resurrect any careers, it’s nice to see that great movies can sometimes come from unexpected places.

6-5 Iron Man & The Incredible Hulk (tie)
I know that Iron Man is the one that gets all the acclaim, but I thought Incredible Hulk did just as good a job bringing the Marvel Universe to the big screen. Both pictures give you exactly what you want from a movie starring their respective heroes and both were perfectly cast. I absolutely can’t wait to see what Marvel Studios does next and how they continue to build on this universe they’ve created.

4 Milk
Gus Van Sant’s biopic for the first gay man elected to a major public office in America is certainly conventional, but it does conventional very very well. The issues brought up by the film are both timely and (for some reason) divisive, but the central message of standing up for what you believe in and not crumbling to “the way things are” is one that Hollywood will never tire of making, and I’ll never tire of watching.

3 Let the Right One In
I find myself going back and forth on the genre of horror a lot. The overwhelming majority of the time I find myself somewhere between disinterested and completely bored by horror movies, but when I find one I like, I really tend to flip for it. Such was the case with this Swedish vampire flick. I love it when a director really nails the atmosphere in a horror movie, and Let the Right One In oozes atmosphere like a freshly gnawed open neck. Then there’s that finale that simultaneously made me want to recoil and jump up and cheer.

2 Wall E
I have to admit, in most years this would be my #1. The level of craft on display here is so far beyond just about anything I’ve seen in an animated picture (or any picture for that matter), and there are scenes and moments in the film that are absolutely breathtaking to behold. The movie is without a doubt the best love story and the best sci-fi film I’ve seen in years, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I found myself favorably comparing the film to classics like Star Wars and 2001 more than once as I watched it that first time. Am I gushing a little? Well brace yourself….

1 The Dark Knight
Ok, so this was pretty much the least suspenseful list I’ve ever written. If you’ve known me at least an hour, you know that I am hopelessly in love with comics, and The Dark Knight served as the genre’s magnum opus. I could go on and on about Heath Ledger’s singular performance, the choreography and staging of the highway chase, the note-perfect ending, and a million other things, but what really floors me about the film is the way that super-hero movies represented one thing before it was released, and now they represent something else. I have little doubt that the film does not have an Oscar prayer, but I am equally confident that years from now The Dark Knight will be remembered as THE movie that 2008 produced and one of the essential films of the decade.