Big Honking Movie List 2008

Woo for annual traditions. As always, this is the list of every new movie I saw that was technically released in 2008. The list is then sorted by order of preference and divided into 5 categories: Hate, Dislike, Eh, Good, and Great. Theoretically this helps me sort out my feelings as we enter into serious awards time, but as usual it's mostly just an arbitrary mish-mash of conflicting emotions. (Which is better Stop-Loss, or Baby Mama? Of course there is a right answer!)

And also, wow, my movie consumption is way, way down this year. Mostly due to the removal of the Blockbuster membership, but really that's no excuse. My pop culture knowledge is at an all time low.

Anyways, on with the listing!

Movies that I Actively Hated
32. Prom Night
31. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

Movies that I Just Disliked
30. Appaloosa (Man, I just do not like Renee Zellweger's squinty face anymore, apparently)
29. Mad Money (Oh, Queen Latifah. How the cast of Chicago has fallen.)
28. Hancock
27. Leatherheads (see: notes for #29 and #30. Confidential to John K - Don't take it personal, I still love you. But seriously, make better movies.)

Movies that I am Basically Ambivalent Towards
26. Charlie Bartlett (wins the award for movie I was certain had come out at least two years ago)
25. Ghost Town
24. Wanted (huge downgrade from my initial impression, but now all I focus on is the Loom of Fate. I can't even remember what James McAvoy looked like minus a shirt. So sad.)
23. Semi-Pro

Movies that were "Good," on a Very Loose Scale that Tightens as We Move Up
22. 27 Dresses (*sigh* the things I do for James Marsden)
21. The Spiderwick Chronicles
20. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
19. The Incredible Hulk (gets a huge bump down on the list because I forgot that it even came out this year, but was still very good)
18. Definitely, Maybe
17. Get Smart
16. Baby Mama
15. Stop Loss (gets a huge bump for being the movie I remember the most that I didn't really like this year)
14. Pineapple Express
13. Hamlet 2 (time has also been very kind to this movie. All I remember is Rock Me Sexy Jesus at this point)
12. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
11. Twilight (DON'T JUDGE ME)
10. Brideshead Revisited (gets the award for most moved around on the list, because I can't decide how much I liked it)

Movies That Were Excellent
9. Frost/Nixon
8. Iron Man
7. Tropic Thunder
6. The Dark Knight
5. Doubt
4. Cloverfield
3. Rachel Getting Married
2. WALL-E
1. Milk

Some specific notes on the top of the list:

• Gigantic downgrade to Frost/Nixon, as when I started this list I had it around #3, but realized that I didn't enjoy it anywhere near as much as I thought on first consideration.
• 6, 7, & 8 are all basically subtitled 'Summer fare that was far better than summer fare has any right to be.' No lie, I spent 15 minutes rearranging their three positions in sequence. I cannot pick between them. In the end, I put DK first because of Heath Ledger's acting, Tropic Thunder second because of Robert Downey Jr's acting, and Iron Man third because of Robert Downey Jr's acting. (Wait...)
• I feel like Doubt is in the right place now, because I place acting above direction in terms of importance. I could very easily see it dropping down below Frost/Nixon though, once the dust settles in my mind.
• Cloverfield is the wild card - probably the movie I enjoyed the most this year, even though empirically it's pretty bad. In other words, it's this years She's The Man.
• The top three are a toss-up. Rachel is probably the best acted movie of the year, and the most affecting, but it has serious pacing issues and rambles off topic too easily. Wall-E is the most enjoyable of the three, but has moralizing issues that keep it down. Milk is an amalgam of the strengths and weaknesses of the other two, but I think in the end it is the most complete and important of them all.

Some general notes to close things up:

• By far the fewest movies in a year since I graduated college.
  
• Very few movies I hated this year (I'm stretching with Madagascar, which truth be told was not as horrible as I expected)
• There was just a glut of middling-ly good comedies this year, weren't there? And I didn't even see a bunch of them that I meant to (Zach & Miri, Nick & Nora, etc.)
• Things that I still plan on seeing before the end of the year: Slumdog Millionaire, Repo! The Genetic Opera, and The Reader/Revolutionary Road (so I can get my Kate Winslet fix)