1. Flight of the Red Balloon
2. The Wrestler
3. Slumdog Millionaire
4. Milk
5. Wendy and Lucy
6. Man on Wire
7. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
8. Revolutionary Road
9. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
10. The Visitor
Still to see that may affect my list: Rachel Getting Married, Synecdoche, New York, Let The Right One In, Edge of Heaven, Waltz With Bashir, In The City of Sylvia, Gomorra, I’ve Loved You So Long, A Christmas Tale, My Winnipeg
Double post. =\
Rob, your list is pretty damn good. The only film I question in your top 10 is Cloverfield. May I ask why you liked it so much?
Anyways, here’s my top 10:
1. Synecdoche, New York
2. The Dark Knight
3. In Bruges
4. Entre Les Murs (The Class)
5. Paranoid Park
6. The Wrestler
7. Wall-E
8. Milk
9. Rachel Getting Married
10. Revolutionary Road
Honourable mentions:
Burn After Reading, Chop Shop, Encounters at the End of the World, The Fall, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Frost/Nixon, My Winnipeg, Religulous, Slumdog Millionaire, Snow Angels,
In only a vague order of preference (except for Synecdoche, which has no competition)
1. Syncedoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
2. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky)
3. Che (Steven Soderbergh)
4. Milk (Gus Van Sant)
5. Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)
6. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)
7. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin)
8. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
9. Man on Wire (James Marsh)
10. Chop Shop (Rahmin Bahrani)
Honorable Mentions: Ballast (Lance Hammer), Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman), My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)
Still need to see: Silent Light, The Secret of the Grain, Gomorra, The Edge of Heaven
Not actually the worst movie of the year, but close: Slumdog Millionaire
Worst movie of the year: Hancock
Rob, what did you dislike about The Grand so much? I thought it was hilarious, and as good- if not better- than some of the Christopher Guest mockumentaries (at least A Mighty Wind)
I live in the midwest-still too many movies that haven’t played here yet. Revolutionary Road & the Wrestler just opened friday to linited runs. Let The Right One In, Gomorrah, Wendy & Lucy, Che, Chop Shop, The Class have all not opened here. Makes it hard to create a accurate list. My top ten-not in order are.
The Visitor
Man On A Wire
Milk
Dark Knight
Burn After Reading
RocknRolla
Gran Torino
In Bruges
4 Months,3 Weeks and 2 Days
Religulous
Worst-Happy Go Lucky, Paranoid Park and Rambo.
Two-Legged Horse
Three Monkeys
Birdsong
Delta
Of Time and The City
Three Wise Men
Liverpool
Serbis
Salamandra
Cold Lunch
“Burn After Reading” was merely amusing; a shaggy-dog tale carried out to its mildly nutty end. The Coens were not working at the top of their game and they gave the actors very little to really work with — although they got the most out of it they could. It’s a very slight, tossed-together, little thing, and definitely not a movie I can imagine sitting through a second time. I’m baffled as to why anyone thought it was top tier.
I’m not going to do a top ten but simply give you my favorite movie of the year and the runners up.
Winner:
- Pineapple Express
Honorable mentions:
- Man On Wire
- In Bruges
- Gran Torino
- The Dark Knight
- Rachel Getting Married
- The Wrestler
- Let the Right One In
- Milk
- Forgetting Sarah Marshall
- Iron Man
- Religulous
- JCVD
- The Dutchess of Langeais
- The Dutchess
- Kung Fu Panda
- Chocolate
- Yip Man
- Snow Angels
- The Visitor
- 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
- Wall-E
- Burn After Reading
- Frost/Nixon
- Waltz with Bashir
somewhat crappy movies I enjoyed:
- Doomsday
- The Machine Girl
really crappy movies I enjoyed:
- In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale
- Death Race
- Rambo
best restorations:
- Witchfinder General
- The Godfather
My top ten is particularly fanboy. I couldn’t help but be suckered into the whole IMAX experience.
1. The Dark Knight (Cristopher Nolan)
2. Cloverfield (Matt Reeves)
3. Cherry Blossoms: Hanami (Doris Dörrie)
4. Juno (Jason Reitman)
5. You, The Living (Roy Andersson)
6. RocknRolla (Guy Ritchie)
7. The Counterfeiters (Stefan Ruzowitzky)
8. Heavy Metal in Baghdad (Suroosh Alvi & Eddy Moretti)
9. Wanted (Timur Bekmambetov) *Stupid movie, really, but I thought it was fun and love Bekmambetov.
10. The Go-Getter (Martin Hynes)
These are films released in Australia in 2008. I saw The Wrestler in November but it doesn’t come out until next week here, otherwise it would have been my number one film.
All released in Canada during 2008:
1. My Winnipeg
2. Let the Right One In
3. Encounters at the Edge of the World
4. Diary of the Dead
5. Shotgun Stories
6. Borderline
7. Synecdoche New York
8. Rec
9. Mongol
10. Iron Man
Curious Case
Slumdog
Wrestler
My Blueberry Nights
Speed Racer
Hellboy 2
Red Cliff
Ashes Of Time Redux
Burn After Reading
Dark Knight
Didn’t see so this list could change:
Milk
Body of Lies
Revolutionary Road
Let The Right One In
Doubt
Synecdoche NY
Australia
Racheal Getting Married
Waltz With Bashir
Wendy and Lucy
Worst Piece Of Shit I Saw All Year:
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (I know it’s blasphemous but I think all these Apatow movies are truly fucking terrible)
Adam – Honestly, the teaser grabbed my interest last year as it did with most people, and the film just delivered on everything I could have wanted from it. It was probably one of the most purely enjoyable films I saw this year. I remember reading the reviews after I saw it and nobody seemed to care for it as much as I had, and I don’t really know how to account for that, I just had such a blast with it. I thought it was paced wonderfully and there were parts that genuinely scared the shit out of me. I loved it.
Joseph – That’s what I thought it looked like from the trailer, too. I was so excited to see this movie but the end result just fell further than flat for me. Truthfully speaking, it probably wasn’t the WORST movie I saw all year (The Happening probably was), but I was just so disappointed by the depressing lack of humor, the inconsistency of form (entire sequences—most involving Michael McKean, if I recall—seem to just completely forget that the film is a mockumentary), and just the absence of any heart from the film. It seemed to me like a very clear wannabe Chris Guest movie, like somebody had watched Best in Show over and over and tried to remake that movie without knowing what it was that actually made it work: character, heart, and well-observed comedy. I honestly don’t think I laughed once during the whole movie. Such an unfortunate disappointment for me.
1. Vicky Cristina Barcelona – Woody Allen
2. Doubt – John Patrick Shanley (for the performances, the direction detracted from an otherwise great film)
3. Let the Right One In – Tomas Alfredson (mainly for the performance of Lina Leandersson, everything else was mediocre at best and was riddled with too many flaws)
4. The Fall – Tarsem Singh
5. The Tracey Fragments – Bruce McDonald
6. Puffball – Nicolas Roeg
7. Lost in Beijing – Yu Li
8. Happy-Go-Lucky – Mike Leigh
9. In Bruges – Martin McDonagh
10. Teeth – Mitchell Lichtenstein
Still haven’t seen In the City of Sylvia, Tokyo Sonata, Still Life, Woman on the Beach, Flight of the Red Balloon, Paranoid Park, The Headless Woman, or Waltz with Bashir, and I probably won’t see most of those for a while so this is the best I can do.
1. Profit motive and the whispering wind
2. Burn After Reading
3. The Flight of the Red Balloon
4. Wall-E
5. A Christmas Tale
6. In Bruges
7. Ballast
8. Boarding Gate
9. Vicky Cristina Barcelona
10. The Happening
Just missing the cut: The Wrestler, The Dark Knight, Gran Torino, Appaloosa, Rambo, Paranoid Park, Rachel Getting Married, and Milk.
Why I thought Burn After Reading was “top tier”:
I think it is among the Coens best work: it feels a little more open than their earlier movies, though: the performances aren’t as tightly controlled, the compositions are a little looser, the Rube Goldbergisms of the plot aren’t quite as emphasized.
I think Fargo is a movie (partly) about the impossibility of communicating with each other. I think Burn After Reading follows in that vein: a blackly comic allegory about the failure of the American intelligence system. Communication here is a problem only in as much as no one ever really knows what anyone else is really thinking, which means that everyone is operating with a severe lack of information. The Preston Sturges influence comes through in that the absence of understanding doesn’t stop anyone from making their moves, when just standing still would solve all their problems. Of course, standing still is not the American Way.
There are only two films that succeeded in both moving and impressing me enough for me care about them. That is not to say that I think little of all other pictures, to the contrary. However, these two are just the two most important to me from this year.
Synecdoche, New York moved me more than it impressed me as it is, for me, one of the most personal, absorbing, and affecting emotional aesthetic experiences I’ve ever had from the cinema. Kaufman well-integrates the special effects to create his bleak, warped, comic vision. The single greatest film I’ve seen this year.
The Dark Knight was a film that took the more than just the mechanics of crime from Michael Mann and fused those elements to the American iconic. It was in fact the criminal elements that held my attention the most (although Heath Ledger’s Joker came close), and the increase thereof that elevates the picture into something more real than the partially-comic-book-aphorism-laden Batman Begins.
@ Joshua W:
I have to ask, you didn’t find it strange that you came out of Mongol thinking, ‘That Genghis Khan wasn’t so bad, bless.’
I enjoyed the film, don’t get me wrong – I just thought it was a bit strange!
01.) 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
02.) Wall-E
03.) Synecdoche, New York
04.) Let the Right One In
05.) Still Life
06.) Chop Shop
07.) A Christmas Tale
08.) Funky Forest: The First Contact
09.) Encounters at the End of the World
10.) JCVD
Honorable Mentions: Baghead, Paranoid Park, Wendy and Lucy
Films I didn’t watch that might make the list: Waltz with Bashir, The Class, Ballast
Silent Light
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
Hunger
The Fall
Synecdoche, New York
Man on Wire
Rachel Getting Married
Paranoid Park
The Wrestler
Mister Lonely
Milk
The Witnesses
Before I Forget
Synecdoche New York
Meadowlark
Paranoid Park
Savage Grace
Changeling
Les Chansons d’amour
Momma’s Man
.
1) Synecdoche, New York
2) A Christmas Tale
3) The Dark Knight
4) The Class
5) The Wrestler
6) Rachel Getting Married
7) In Bruges
8) Happy Go Lucky
9) Wall E
10) Man on Wire
1. Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso)
2. 35 Rhums (Claire Denis)
3. RR (James Benning)
4. Le Genou Artemide (Jean-Marie Straub)
5. Ashes of Time Redux (Wong Kar-Wai)
6. 24 City (Jia Zhang-ke)
7. Une Conte de Noel (Arnaud Desplechin)
8. Still Walking (Hirokazu Koreeda)
9. Birdsong (Albert Serra)
10. My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin)
Favorites: Rachel Getting Married, The Wrestler, Wendy and Lucy, Milk, In Bruges, Chop Shop, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Happy Go Lucky, Man on Wire, Paranoid Park
Honorable mentions: Vicky Christina Barcelona, Bigger, Stronger, Faster
Still haven’t seen and could influence list: My Winnipeg, Che, Synecdoche. NY, JCVD, Silent Light, Waltz with Bashir, Let the Right One in and Momma’s Man
Annoyingly un-funny: Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Disappointing: Religulous
Overrated: Revolutionary Road
Totally awful: The Other Boleyn Girl and The Wackness
Worst Performance: Scarlett Johansson (Vicky Christina Barcelona)
Favorite Performance: Rosemarie Dewitt (Rachel Getting Married)
Alright so it was more like a 2008 round-up but all the odds and sods are the most fun anyway.
I have just couple more films to see that have a real shot at cracking my top ten for the year, but at this point:
1. A Christmas Tale
2. Wendy and Lucy
3. Waltz with Bashir
4. Happy-Go-Lucky
5. The Flight of the Red Balloon
6. Revolutionary Road
7. Let the Right One In
8. Reprise
9. Synecdoche, NY
10. Silent Light
Honorable Mentions: Wall-E, Frost/Nixon, The Wrestler, Slumdog Millionaire, Edge of Heaven, Trouble the Water
1) In Bruges
2) The Dark Night
3) Burn After Reading
4) Tropic Thunder
5) The Wrestler
That’ s all that I now
1. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
2. Revolutionary Road
3. Doubt
4. Snow Angels
5. Happy-Go-Lucky
6. Slumdog Millionaire
7. The Dark Knight
8. Rachel Getting Married
9. Tropic Thunder
10. Milk
I still haven’t seen any of the foreign films that are supposed to be amazing. It is really a bummer but they just aren’t playing near me. I also haven’t seen The Wrestler or Frost/ Nixon which will change this weekend.
Um, didn’t 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days come out last year? I’ve been seeing it on a lot of top tens (inicluding critics) but I thought it came out last year.
In posted on this a couple of months ago but have since seen more end of the year films.
Not in any order.
Let the Right One In
The Wrestler
Dark Knight
Slumdog Millionare
Gomorrah
In Bruges
RocknRolla
The Visitor
Man On A Wire
Milk
1. Waltz with Bashir
2.The Dark Night
3. Synecdoche, NY
4.Slumdog
5.In Bruges
6. Gomorrah
7.Doubt
8.The wrestler
9.JCVD
10.Parinoid Park
Rob Frenay
I went back a few pages and didn’t see this thread so I’m assuming it doesn’t exist.
I’ll kick us off:
1. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
2. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (Kurt Kuenne)
3. The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
4. Wall-E (Andrew Stanton)
5. Milk (Gus Van Sant)
6. The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky)
7. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (Nicholas Stoller)
8. Snow Angels (David Gordon Green)
9. Cloverfield (Matt Reeves)
10. Burn After Reading (Joel & Ethan Coen)
Alternates: Iron Man, Paranoid Park, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, In Bruges, A Christmas Tale, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire, The Fall, Tropic Thunder, Pineapple Express
Movies I Have Yet to See That Could Knock A Few Off My List: 4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Visitor, Man on Wire, Rachel Getting Married, Mongol, The Reader, Che, Wendy and Lucy, Let the Right One In, Waltz with Bashir
Worst Movie of the Year: The Grand (Zak Penn)
Have at thee!