The 100 Project: The Top 25 Movies of 2008

    In my post for 2007, I told you that it was the beginning of a time of transition. 2008 was the year much of that change actually took place. This is the year I finally left Blockbuster. That means somewhere in the middle of the year I no longer got those free rentals. Blockbuster was my part-time job. The company I worked for full-time during the day was bought by and merged with a competitor. I had gone fairly far to that point, and well, I kept a job, it just felt like a step back. By the end of that year, I no longer had that job and things were "flipped, turned upside down" to paraphrase the great Will Smith. I had to move my family, and thanks to my father-in-law, barely avoided homelessness. Through it all, I still had movies. Trips to the theater were way down, understandably, but hey, I still had a Blockbuster card, and rigged up cable. Shhh, don't tell anyone that last part. Just kidding, you can tell. I don't do that anymore. Anyhoo, let's talk about my faves.

My Top 25 Movies of 2008

• According to my Letterboxd account, I've watched 141 movies released during 2008.
• I saw 4 movies in theaters, my lowest total since 1988. Of the 4, 2 are in my top 3. The other two are terrible.
• I've seen all 5 Best Picture nominees. For the first time, they all make my top 25, though only 1 cracks my top 10.
• Another first: 2 documentaries make my top 10 while 2 more are honorable mentions.
• 2 completely non-English films make my top 10, while 2 more are American productions, but largely in a different language. 3 more non-English films make my top 25.
• Robert Downey Jr. and Kate Winslet each have 2 films in my top 25.
• 3 martial arts flicks make my top 25. Oddly, 1 of my honorable mentions is led by a martial arts star, but is not a martial arts flick.

25. Revolutionary Road

24. Tropic Thunder

23. The Reader

22. Gran Torino

21. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

20. Frost/Nixon

19. Chocolate

18. Rachel Getting Married

17. Bronson

16. Tony Manero

15. Martyrs

14. Milk

13. Kung Fu Panda

12. The Hurt Locker

11. WALL-E

10. Ip Man

It poses as a biopic, but is far more fiction than fact. That said, Donnie Yen is fantastic at portraying Ip Man the person. We really got a feel for his sense of honor and obligation. We also get a feel for what it was like in China during their war with Japan. Regardless of any of that, this movie wouldn't be here if it didn't have some great martial arts action. Donnie Yen more than stepped up in this area.

9. Slumdog Millionaire

By the time I saw this movie, it had been so hyped I just knew there was no way I was going to like it.  By the time I finished it, I realized there was no way I wasn't going to like it. Sure, it's a cheesy love story framed by some dude playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It's also funny, engaging, and charming as hell.

8. Waltz with Bashir

I haven't seen many animated documentaries. Has anybody? If this movie is any indication of their potential. I want to see more of them. In lieu of a bunch of talking heads and grainy footage, we get superb animations of what the subject recalls of his time as a soldier during the 1982 Lebanon War. Some of it is horrific, some ventures into fantasy territory, and all of it is haunting.

7. In Bruges

I had no idea what to expect when I popped this one in. What I got was darkly humorous with memorable characters, and a fantastic finale. Colin Farrell does some of his very best work. Brendan Gleeson and Ralph Fiennes. Jordan Prentice might outshine them all. The storytelling pulls you in and the reveal is gut-wrenching.

6. Sugar

I ate, drank, and slept baseball throughout my childhood. In fact, baseball is the reason I like math. Naturally, I've always had a soft spot for baseball movies. I love <i>Bull Durham, Major League,</i> and most of the usual suspects. However, it's this little bitty movie about a Dominican born pitching prospect, that most people have never heard of, that's my all-time favorite baseball flick. While the others might be grounded in reality, this one is as you can get to it without it being a documentary.

5. Man on Wire

Speaking of documentaries, here we are. This one tells the story of Philippe Petit, a tightrope walker who was so inspired by the building of the World Trade Center back in 1976 that he decided to go to New York and try to rig up a rope between the two towers, and walk between them thousands of feet in the air with no net. Of course, this was highly illegal, and the buildings weren't even open to the public, yet. It has the flavor of a heist movie and the man at its center is one of the most endearing people on the planet, even if you think he's plum crazy. Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Petit in 2015's <i>The Walk</i>. It's a good movie, but aside from the special fx employed during the climactic moments, this is better.

4. The Wrestler

Every now and again Mickey Rourke pops up to remind us that he is a supremely talented actor. He also seems to be a mess of a human being. That's a huge plus for this film in which he plays the titular wrestler, also a mess. We meet him at the end of his rope, barely hanging on, grasping at strands of hope that may not be there. Rourke shows us this man at his most vulnerable, self-destructive, and frankly, pitiful. 

3. Iron Man

One of my few trips to the theater was to see this. I'm a superhero guy. What can I say? I'd always thought of Iron Man as Marvel's version of Batman, a billionaire with lots of toys and desperately in need of therapy. As the years have gone on, Batman has grown increasingly dark, and in some cases, morose. Robert Downey Jr.'s portrayal of Iron Man was, comparatively, a ray of sunshine, albeit a very arrogant ray. He was beyond perfect here, and the movie around him worked in concert with his virtuoso effort and gave us the foundation for the Marvel Cinematic Universe. 

2. Let the Right One In

I didn't set off on this road of movie buffdom thinking I would be completely enthralled with a Swedish vampire flick about a pair of twelve year olds. Well, one of them is twelve. This movie takes the iconic monster down a new avenue and fares far better than sparkly emo kids in Washington. Here, we actually like our main characters and our empathy for them grows as the film progresses. When it ends, we hope they're okay as frightening as that may be.

1. The Dark Knight

You cannot imagine the struggles I had getting my family of five, plus one of my son's friends out the door to arrive at the theater an hour before start time. I wouldn't normally do this, but the hype was crazy leading up to this one, and this was before the days of purchasing tickets and picking your seats online. We were first in line. We settled in and I got what was what I consider the best comic book movie ever made. The fact that I have it as my number one movie of this year may cause some to question my judgment, and that's okay. Like I said, I'm a superhero guy.

Honorable Mentions (alphabetical): Be Kind Rewind, Burn After Reading, Changeling, Che, Cloverfield, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Incredible Hulk, JCVD, More Than a Game, Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation, Rambo, RocknRolla, Step Brothers, Tyson