Category: year end

First, the numbers:
Total: 67 (fewer than 07, one more than 06)
Festival: 22
Revival: at least 12
Foreign or documentary or shorts not at the festival: 9
Free: 12
What’s left, being the total regular releases that I paid for like a normal person: 12. See, that’s not many at all.

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Best film: Man on Wire & My Winnipeg, both of which were genre busting in the best of ways. For one thing, they’re both technically documentaries. For another, they’re both awesome.

Best film not coming to a theater near you: Sita Sings the Blues. This, folks, is a perfect example of why current copyright law BLOWS. Seriously. Also, Che, unless you’re in a city that got the roadshow edition. Screw the two part release.

More categories than you can shake a stick at after the jump. Continue reading “[Film: best of 2008]”

By title in chronological order

In my Letterboxed profile for now. It’ll get moved to a page here when I have time to fix all the links.

By the numbers:

Total: 90, if you like round numbers & include sing-along Buffy.
Free: 22
Revival: 18
Festivals: 26 (4 of which were free)
Collections of shorts: 3
Actual first-run features I went to and paid for like a normal person: 26. THAT IS NOT THAT MANY, PEOPLE. It’s one every two weeks.

By the totally made-up and random categories:

Best features: No Country For Old Men, Zodiac, Once.

Runners-up: Atonement, Lust, Caution, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.

Also touching: Juno, Hula Girls.

Feature I respect, but could never see again: Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead

Best documentaries: Red Without Blue, Blood on the Flat Track: The Rise of the Rat City Rollergirls, Manufactured Landscapes

Best feature by a new director: Away From Her, Dir. Sarah Polley

Best gay films: No Regret, The Bubble (Which isn’t saying a lot. Really, I’d like to just say Happy Together. It’s definitely the best one I saw. Bless revival!)

Most surprisingly gay films: Spider-Man 3, Superbad

Movie worth seeing solely for Chris Cooper: Breach

Proof that commercial films can still be awesome: The Bourne Ultimatum, Michael Clayton

Biggest inducer of directorial expectation whip-lash: The Boss of It All, Dir. Lars von Trier

Best supporting cast: Into the Wild

Best use of genre: Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, The Host, Sunshine

Film that left genre behind: I’m Not There

Best song: “Falling Slowly”, Once

Best cinematography: Roger Deakins, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Dariusz Wolski (and, let’s be honest, Tim Burton), Sweeney Todd

Best special effects: Zodiac, for seamless background work *seriously*, The Golden Compass, for Pantalaimon.

Still unseen, for which I am sorry: For the Bible Tells Me So (because it only played for a week), The Savages, Persepolis, & There Will Be Blood (because they are only just coming out), Grace is Gone (because fuck if I know *when* it’s coming out), Control & This is England (because I suck).

Best feature: Capote.

Runners-up: Everything is Illuminated, Transamerica, Walk the Line.

Best documentary: Murderball.

Other good stuff: Batman Begins, Brokeback Mountain, Goodnight and Good Luck, A History of Violence, Mirrormask, The New World, Serenity, The Squid and the Whale, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

The best movies no one else saw: Cinderella Man, In Her Shoes, Jarhead, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Best ride: Kamikaze Girls.

Movie I was most surprised that I enjoyed: Madagascar.

Most woefully overlooked by the Academy: Nine Lives, for Robin Wright Penn.

Top . .nine films in alphabetical order: Before Sunset, Donnie Darko: The Director’s Cut, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Five Obstructions, Hero, The Incredibles, Saved!, Sideways, Touching the Void.

Honorable mention: Coffee & Cigarettes, Dogville, Garden State, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, A Home at the End of the World, Last Life in the Universe, Napoleon Dynamite, Shaun of the Dead, Spanglish, Twist, & Infernal Affairs.