(My) Top 10 Movies of 2008

Most of these movies are gone from theaters, but you have Netflix, right? Load up your queue!

10. Rachel's Getting Married
Anne Hathaway was excellent in her role as a complete trainwreck. A cringe-inducing trainwreck that makes you wonder if you should feel pity for the character or just plain hate her. As with almost everything else in life, it's probably somewhere in between, a little bit of both, I guess. There were so many memorable scenes/moments in this film. How many movies can you name off the top of your head with a dishwasher loading skills showdown? There's a wedding band that plays for just about the entire weekend, non-stop, and the wedding itself is like something out of a dream. It's a full-blown, multiracial, multicultural celebration of life and love, with incredible music, dancing, and good vibes that create an avalanche of positive energy that should not be missed.


9. Encounters At The End Of The World
If you ever read or saw "Into The Wild," you'll remember Christopher McCandless. His desire for what he considered to be a "real" or "true" existence took him to the wilderness of Alaska and ultimately cost him his life. Some people say that with a little bit of local knowledge, he would've been just fine and completely able to walk out of his predicament, but his fate and what could've been done to prevent it isn't what I want to write about here. I brought him up because many of the adventure seeking travelers interviewed in this Werner Herzog doc reminded me of him. Where can you go that's more extreme, more off the beaten path than Antarctica? Werner also visits with scientists and researchers, all with mesmerizing personalities and incredible stories about what brought them to the "End of the World."


8. Atonement
I remember liking this movie a lot when I saw it way back in January, but for some reason I haven't watched it again. It was sitting right there on my DVR for weeks and I wasn't the least bit interested in watching it. Hmmm.... Maybe, for that very reason, it shouldn't be on this list, but first impressions should count for something, right? I just remember liking the fact that they gave you the happy ending without actually giving you the happy ending. They played both sides, and it worked for me. Even though I don't feel like watching it ever again.


7. Son Of Rambow
This was a cutesy, feel-good movie that I almost didn't see. I'm glad I did, because it gave me a movie to recommend to my mom. Yeah, she loved it, "just like Juno." So maybe that will tell you something.


6. The Wackness
One of Ben Kingsley's 38 movies this past year. This is pretty basic, coming-of-age type stuff, but it's done very well. Most high school movies are shot in the 'burbs (The Breakfast Club, Dazed & Confused, all of the other John Hughes movies, Fast Times, etc.), so maybe this one being shot in New York gave it a different feel, but at the same time it stuck to many of the things that work in movies like these. Being eaten alive by a person you have a hopeless crush on, parents bumming you out, smoking pot with/selling pot to your shrink... They even managed to get "All The Young Dudes" in there, which is still good, I think.


5. There Will Be Blood
I was wondering what list to put this on, '07 or '08. It was included in a bunch of critics' lists from last year, and it won Oscars honoring movies from '07, but how the fuck are you supposed to include a movie on your Best of '07 list if it came out on December 26th?! And that was just New York and LA! Chicago was Early '08, for crying out loud! I'm going through that now with "Milk" and "The Wrestler." Screw it, they'll be on the '09 list and TWBB goes on the '08 list. The trailer for this movie really hinted at something horrific, something bloody, since, well, you know, "Blood" is in the title and everything, but... There isn't much, really, except for a satisfying final scene.


4. Man On Wire
Philippe Petit is the man who walked on a high wire between the World Trade Center towers in 1974 and this is a documentary about the entire process. The film focuses on what made Philippe decide on the WTC, his background in the art of high wire (including some of his previous work), and the seemingly thousands of things that had to come together for him to achieve his dream. And yes, this really was his dream. He enthusiastically tells you all about it in this film, and by the time the footage of the WTC walk comes around, you're rooting for him like the underdog in a thousand Hollywood feelgood movies.


3. The Dark Knight
You saw it. I don't need to write anything.


2. Let The Right One In
A Swedish, teenage vampire flick, but from what I understand, nothing like that one that came out this year in the States with that one teen heartthrob guy that plays baseball in the movie and who according to Yahoo!, just cut his hair. I never saw it and I'm too lazy to look up the name of it, but you know what I'm talking about, right? OK, this is nothing like that. "Let The Right One In" follows a young boy around that's being bullied at school and who has a new neighbor. The neighbor is a girl near his age, who can hang around outside, at night, in Sweden, with nothing but a t-shirt on and not feel cold. Yes, she also drinks blood, and there are a few excellent scenes that show how she gets it, but the best parts of the movie focus on their friendship. She initially decides against befriending the boy, but curiosity gets the best of both of them, they grow closer, she persuades him to stand up for himself (and helps out a bit herself, too), gives him some newfound confidence with the opposite sex, and makes it seem that being best friends/BF-GF with a vampire is do-able.


1. Slumdog Millionaire
I knew nothing about the movie when I saw it, just a trailer that showed a girl being forcefully taken away from a crowded Indian train station while her boyfriend(?) looks on, helpless, from a distance. I'd like to leave it at that, and just say how sad it is that this movie is showing on just a couple of screens in and around Chicago. It's complete bullshit that a movie like this, that should be up for Best Picture this year, is next to impossible to find, while crap like Kevin James as a mall cop will get a massive release. I know that the indie/foreign films will always be harder to find, and that's one of the reasons that seeing them can be so rewarding, but Slumdog is a slam dunk! How can someone that decides on what movies are shown where, see this movie and not think that it would rake in massive amounts of cash if people were just given the opportunity to see it? WTF? I've seen gritty, hard to watch indie/foreign flicks this year that are not for everyone ("Ballast," "4 Months 3 Weeks and 2 Days," to name a few), but Slumdog is nothing like that. I'm hoping that this movie is nominated for a few Oscars, so maybe then it'll get a bigger release, but if things stay the way they are with this movie... What a crime.