Year End List of Everything

Oh, 2008. If only you could go on forever. You brought back the blockbuster. You produced a few good documentaries. You made movies that made me cry. You illustrated the audience's ability to distinguish good animated movies from Space Chimps.

I spent a good amount of this year in your multiplexes 2008, over-priced, stale popcorn littering the aisles, floors sticky from Mountain Dew, pre-movie slideshow advertisements crooked and useless. In your honor, I made this a movie blog. In my poverty, I hardly saw anything when school started. I've tried to correct that, 2008, light of my life, and here is what I've discovered; the shit, the treasure, the money I've spent. Here's everything I saw, even the stuff that I haven't yet reviewed due to being a lazy bastard, all 41 of them.

41. The Love Guru
I don't know what's worse: How absolutely dreadful everything about this movie was, or Mike Meyers finding the audacity to laugh at his own jokes and wink at the few people who saw this steaming pile as though a smile and a wink would ease the pain. This movie ruined sitar and the Steve Miller Band for me, and came damn close to ruining hockey. Worst of all? Jessica Alba wears a pantsuit, the whole time. Thankfully, I forgot about the awful Bollywood dancing at the end in time for Slumdog Millionare.

Read the full review.

40. Zombie Strippers
Not as tasteless as Love Guru, because you know what you're getting going into the damn thing. Still, the movie is insanely low brow, possibly the most low brow zombie movie ever, but masquarades as an intelligent, existential play featuring pornstars and Freddy Kruger. There's an audience for this kind of movie somewhere though: My review has gotten 147 hits from search terms as diverse as "'Zombie Strippers!' guacamole" and "face dance."

Read the full review

39. The Spirit
Doesn't hit rock bottom on this list because of the off chance that somebody who saw this movie may pick up a collection of Spirit comics to see just how much Denny Crane's story doesn't suck. Then again, it came out in a year where the intellegent super hero movie ruled the roost, so maybe it deserves to be the worst. In any case, there's no excuse for the exec who greenlighted this. Movies this bad shouldn't end up half-made.

Read the full review.

38. Star Wars: The Clone Wars
I feel sorry for this generation. Two middling Star Wars movies and two truly awful ones. This is definately the worst of the bunch though. Possibly worse than the dreaded Star Wars Christmas Special, because that at least taught you how to make Wookie cookies. A dull, liefeless cash-in that leaves me wondering when we'll be seeing the sequel to Howard the Duck.

Read the full review.

37. One Missed Call
Please stop remaking forign horror films. If they're really that good, just release them to arthouses and let the nerds find them. Awesomely enough, this movie was called "Don't Pick Up the Cell Phone!" in Australia...a command that would lead to a missed call, which, well, leads to your freakin' death.

36. The Happening
All you need to know is this: Mark Whalberg's character actually asserts that the key to surviving an airborne virus...is outrunning the wind. M. Night getting an R rating means that we finally see a man commit suicide via standing in front of a poorly rendered lion.

Read the Full Review

35. The Day the Earth Stood Still
There's boring, there's preachy, and then there's the movie that endeavors to be both. While it isn't as absurd as The Happening, it gets no points for taking great source material and reducing it to a 10 minute plug for McCafe lattes and Windows computers. It goes without saying that the original was better, but remakes rarely come across this frivolous and unnecessary. Even Jon Hamm's perfect hair doesn't distract from the film's shortcomings.

34. Death Race
Boring, frivolous, and somewhat offensive. Machine Gun Joe, the big, bad, rival driver/secondary bad guy, is described as gay because he doesn't have a chick as his navigator. I use the word "chick" because really, that's all any of the women who aren't the prison warden function as - tits and ass. I can't say that I expected much better from the guy who directed the Resident Evil franchise, but at least those are funny while being awful.

33. Twilight
There's a scene in the movie where the two protagonists are lying on a bed, facing each other, having a full blown conversation (lips moving and everything), but nobody in the audience can hear what they're talking about. The dialog is rendered mute by a score that comes straight from a very special Lifetime movie. I suffered through about 80 pages of Stephanie Meyer's "vampire" tome, trying to get the phenomena, but it never came. This movie did little to explain it, either. The theater was moderately packed, and all of the girls were giggling and quoting their favorite lines back and forth, but I couldn't tell if it was earnest or malicious. If "And so the lion fell in love with the lamb" is what qualifies as great prose these days, I no longer want to be an author.

32. 27 Dresses
Someday, they'll stop making romantic comedies that have to do with perfect men and getting married. I thought that that day had come with The Devil Wears Prada, a movie I'm not ashamed to like, but considering that this movie was from the minds of the writers of Devil, I was wrong. Katherine Heigl does well enough, but even good actresses can't save movies like this. I'm already cringing in anticipation of Anne Hathaway's turn in Bride Wars.

31. Baby Mama
Tina Fey's miracle year unfortunately includes this movie, which, like so many movies featuring SNL alums, feels like an overlong sketch. Steve Martin's role as Fey's boss at a health food emporium is genuinely funny, but the rest of the movie fails its genuinely good cast. I fault the writing, which was not Fey's responsibility. After a book deal, Sarah Palin, and 30 Rock, her stock has risen considerably - expect more from her next starring role.

30. Teeth
As far as plot devices and gross-out horror goes, Teeth is just fine. There are few things as cringeworthy as the multiple castration-by-vagina scenes, and I'm not exactly sure what that says about my manhood. Beyond the solid concept, the movie suffers by failing to commit to any one of the three genres it chases after. Is it a horror movie? A thriller? A campy teen sex comedy? Hell, is it a superhero origin story? It premiered at Sundance as a drama, as all non-documentary movies at Sundance do, but there isn't much of that to be found. I wouldn't mind a sequel. There, I'd know where the movie was going.

29. Get Smart
Solid cast, poor execution, boring film. I don't know at what point the people making the movie decided to disregard the TV show and make a movie full of explosions and elaborate stunt sequences, leaving the characters somewhere in the background. Get Smart was a character piece, and yes, while the characters in this movie have their moments, they are lost in the flood. The plot twist spent an hour and a half staring the audience in the face. That's kind of a problem.

28. You Don't Mess With the Zohan
You will believe that hummus has as many practical household applications as a can of WD-40. The Zohan is a nice, Jewish super-solider who only wants to cut hair and shtup. This is fine, even somewhat funny. Then the joke is repeated. And repeated. And repeated. And repeated. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. John Turturro, as Zohan's nemesis The Phantom, works overtime, as does Adam Sandler in the titular role. The plot, which is thrown together just as the movie is getting ready to end, does not. I laughed. You may not. Or you may laugh at the parts I didn't laugh at. Who knows? The movie is willing to do anything for a laugh though, and sometimes, it gets them.

27. Rambo
The last fifteen minutes of this movie feature John Rambo standing at a machine gun, singlehandedly defeating an army of evil, Burmese tyrants. That Rambo exploits current, tragic world events is a little questionable, but it's also not unfamiliar ground for the franchise: The third movie was dedicated to the citizens of Afghanistan, who were largely ineffectual when it came to helping Rambo defeat communism. Here, a team of mercenaries is largely ineffectual, unless their job was to get in Rambo's way as he tries to save an annoying crew of Christian mercenaries who appeal to Rambo's morality. "What about the world?" one of them moans. "Fuck the world," Rambo replies. Straight badass.

26. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
A lot of people didn't like this movie. A lot of people went to see it anyhow. I realize that, on a list with numbers, this is a fairly high number to assign to a movie that underachieved so spectacularly considering its individual parts, but I only saw 40 movies this year, and this was one of them. Truth be told, it wasn't that bad. Sure, it had Mutt, Son of Indy, and yeah, it had CGI animals and strange Tarzan tributes and took 20 years to come to fruition, but all the nitpicking in the world couldn't stop this from being a fun movie. Heck, even Harrison Ford and Karen Allen appear to be enjoying it. A fun popcorn movie, which is more than what can be said for the last five similar movies Lucas or Spielberg were responsible for. What's wrong with fun?

Read the full review here.

25. Speed Racer
Years from now, there will be a cult following for this movie, and I'm fairly certain I'll be proud to have been one of the first to have "gotten it." The Wachowski Brothers' latest film is a tarted-up Hot Wheels commercial with spinning heads, dazzling special effects, and pitch-perfect casting. I understand that it isn't a "good" movie, just like I understand that it isn't for everybody. If I upgrade to an HDTV anytime in the near future though, this will be the first blu-ray I pick up, and I expect to be blown away.

Read the full review here.

24. The Incredible Hulk
The Incredible Hulk was, as a kid, one of my favorite comic book characters because I had a desire to beat up a bunch of people, had the ability to do so, yet never did because of insane, Catholic guilt at the mere thought of brandishing a fist. Bruce Banner is the same way: He has the ability to cause great damage, but goes well out of his way to avoid it. I liked Ang Lee's Hulk, a flawed attempt to humanize an already extremely human character, but I liked this more, to a point. Ed Norton's Bruce Banner is great, and Tim Roth is fine as a super soldier, but when he transforms into the Abomination and has a massive CGI slugfest with the Hulk, I stop caring. This is different from Iron Man, which also features a huge CGI slugfest at the end, because there are presumably people within the suits, and they can be harmed. The characters in The Incredible Hulk that have any dramatic weight to them are either replaced by polygons or hovering safely overhead in a helicopter. Otherwise, a good entry in a much-improved genre.

Read the full review here.

23. Yes Man
I spent a considerable amount of time during this movie trying to decide if I liked it or if I hated it for being Liar Liar minus the part where Jim Carrey genuinely doesn't want to do what the title of the movie stipulates he must. I settled somewhere betwixt, I guess, because I found myself laughing at some rather ridiculous things (the 300 themed party) and wanting to marry Zooey Deschanel, or at the very least, ride off into the sunset with her on a Vespa.

22. Wanted
Kind of like I, Robot in that it borrows the name of a superior entertainment and slaps it onto a movie that has nothing to do with its "source material," Wanted features unnecessary sermons from its milquetoast cube dweller cum assassin main character but has enough attitude for several movies. Implausibilities like the loom of fate don't exactly matter when Morgan Freeman is using the deadliest of the Seven Deadly Words, and it's about time that one of those high octane, stupid improbable action movies came out that didn't immediately offend every one of my sensibilities. Again, what's wrong with fun?

21. Be Kind, Rewind
Before Robert Downey Jr. went on a run through the jungle in blackface, Jack Black popped out of a storefront in the real thing, trying to nab a role as a local jazz legend in an extremely low-budget movie. That's a relatively small part of Be Kind, Rewind, a movie that simultaneously continues director Michel Gondry's reputation as the master of extremely low-budget special effects and acts as a celebration of the movies that everybody loves. Black and Mos Def's Ghostbusters was spoiled via trailers but still very funny, and watching Black strut around as a cardboard Robocop equipped with a hair dryer is an almost touching tribute to the hero of Old Detroit. I'm still waiting for Gondry to explain his vendetta against new technology though.

20. The X-Files: I Want to Believe
The easy way out when reviewing this movie seemed to be to describe it as a weak, overlong episode of the TV show, or, more commonly, too much like a multi-part episode of the show and not enough like a movie. I disagree entirely. For one, I'd hope that a movie that continues a TV show, well, feels as much like the TV show as possible. The new X-Files movie may not have focused on aliens or the show's mythology, but it was a smart thriller that didn't rely on gunplay (there were less gunshots in this movie than in a standard episode of NCIS) and quick camera cuts. Xibit is not welcome as an agent with one facial expression, but Billy Crudup's redemption seeking priest more than makes up for Xibit's shortcomings.

19. W.
Considering Oliver Stone's previous history of presidential biopics, I think I was expecting something much more brutal than what was eventually presented. I was expecting Fahrenheit 9/11 with actors. I would have loved Fahrenheit 9/11 with actors. This was not the hatchet job I wanted, and, truth be told, it wasn't even a hatchet job. Stone seemed strangely restrained throughout the movie, letting his terrific cast (Josh Brolin and Toby Jones both deserve Oscar nominations but will not receive them) wander aimlessly - which may be the point. Stone chooses not to shine a harsh light on the corruption of the Bush administration, instead he merely hints at it and focuses on a family drama that may or may not exist between W. and H.W. It's plausible, especially now that the elder Bush is pimping Jeb as a potential candidate, but some will feel as though Stone is letting Bush off the hook as he leaves office.

18. Religulous
I was probably a little over excited in my review, but Bill Maher's Religulous is as funny as it is biased, and boy is it biased. Maher essentially preforms a hatchet job on some of the shadier aspects of Christianity; the guy selling overpriced religious trinkets, the preacher with his expensive clothes, the crucifixion reenactment at a biblical theme park; before going to the Middle East, where he's convinced that the hatred between Jews and Muslims is the linchpin for the end of days. He spends so much time on Christianity that the sections on the middle east seem superfluous and tacked on. He ambushes his audience in the last 15 minutes of an otherwise very entertaining movie, telling us to "grow up or die." He doesn't spend enough time with the priests who acknowledge the shortcomings of their faith. Yeah, it's flawed, but man is it entertaining.

Read the full review here.

17. Tropic Thunder
Ben Stiller's comedy is, I guess, about his character's quest to be taken seriously in Hollywood. He is Tugg Speedman, star of the Scorcher series of action films, panda lover, and he is utterly determined to show up multi-award winning Aussie Krik Lazarus at his own game. Unfortunately for Tugg, the movie's best scenes take place not in the jungle where he finds himself unwittingly fighting for his life, but in Los Angeles, where Tom Cruise dances in a fat suit and coerces Speedman's agent to leave his client for dead in return for a G5 airplane. In the jungle, Robert Downey Jr. and Brandon T. Jackson (who didn't even get a poster) steal the show. Downey, as you know, is playing a character who is playing a black man. Jackson plays a self-promoting rap superstar/philanthropist who is looking to cross over into film. Their interactions are what make the movie.

Read the full review here.

16. Hellboy II: The Golden Army
More people should have seen this movie. Now that it's on DVD, I suspect they will. Hellboy II manages to be better than the original movie, despite losing the voice of David Hyde Pierce, because the special effects have somehow managed to get better without getting in the way of the story. While Hellboy's final fight was against a somewhat lame CGI monster, this time around, he's fighting a sword-wielding elf who wants to gain control of the Golden Army, essentially a horde of unstoppable robots. Unencumbered by Hellboy's past, the movie further develops Abe Sapien and Liz Sherman, manages to be funny, and has more of the amazing creatures and machines that director Guillermo del Toro has become known for. If anything else, rent this movie to see exactly what CGI is capable of. Most of the movie is stunningly beautiful.

15. Frost/Nixon
Frost/Nixon will likely be nominated for many awards. In truth, it only deserves one. Frank Langella is magnificent as Richard M. Nixon; tormented, twisted, and lacking what us humans would consider emotions. His verbal boxing match with Michael Sheen's David Frost is entertaining, very entertaining, but there was more to the Frost/Nixon interviews than the Frost/Nixon interviews. Director Ron Howard is unfortunately content to park the camera in front of Sheen and Langella, which makes for a good movie, but there was potential for so much more. If the pseudo-documentary stuff had been cut in favor of the background details, this would have been one of the year's best.

14. Forgetting Sarah Marshall
In short, a very funny movie about getting over a crushing break-up. At length, one of the funniest movies to come from the Apatow stable, featuring full frontal male nudity, a dead on impression of CSI: Miami, a very good cast, and a Dracula musical acted out via Muppets. The movie relies on all of the Apatow regulars, minus Seth Rogen, and throws in Kirsten Bell, Mila Kunis, and Russel Brand, who may be the best part of the movie. The subplot involving a newlywed's sexual inexperience is priceless, as is the Dracula musical. The movie, unlike many "uncut and unrated" DVDs, is actually improved by the stuff they cut out for time/ratings purposes.

13. Vicky Christina Barcelona
This movie broke my Woody Allen virginity, and I'm glad I saw this first instead of, say, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. The story of two friends who go on vacation in Barcelona and meet an incredibly attractive, talented, romantic man (Javier Bardem, no longer sporting the world's worst haircut), Vicky Christina Barcelona is a very sweet, somewhat complicated movie set in one of the world's most beautiful cities. The plot is complicated by marriage, an unstable ex-lover, a love triangle, and infidelity. It's all very well done, and the dialog is perfect. I'm a nerd for dialog, which is why its way, way down here near the top of the list.

12. Pineapple Express
An excellently done stoner action movie. "Excellently done" is underselling the movie quite a bit, actually. Seth Rogen is, of course, perfect for this sort of movie, and James Franco deserves to be elevated past wimpy supporting character in the Spiderman franchise. As far as bromance movies go, this one is damn good. Drugs, funny people saying funny things in funny situations, and explosions. I'm pretty juvenile as far as my tastes go. Funny + Explosions = Happy.

11. Role Models
I was expecting nothing from this movie, but it wound up being the best Judd Apatow movie that wasn't produced by Judd Apatow. There's plenty of Apatow vets in this film, including the erstwhile McLovin, but beyond being "Apatow vets," the actors and actresses in this movie are just great comedic talent. I hope Paul Rudd gets to headline more movies in the future, and I hope that Role Models is a sign that Hollywood is going to make better comedies, with or without Mr. Apatow and his friends.

10. Doubt
If Doubt doesn't wind up getting nominated for Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actress, I'll be very surprised. This is an acting clinic, featuring two of our best talents and one who is on the rise. Amy Adams is empathetic as the innocent Sister James, standing in the middle of a battle between Fr. Brendan Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) and Sr. Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) over the nature of Fr. Flynn's relationship with one of James' students. Streep and Hoffman are incredible, especially in the last 20 minutes of the movie. I'd like the know how Hoffman does so many films and remains consistently great in all of them.

09. Burn After Reading
Not to spoil anything, but Burn After Reading has the scene of the year. It involves George Clooney and a hammer. Most critics missed the boat on this movie, lamenting the Coen's decision to do a screwball comedy right after the universally praised No Country For Old Men. They also didn't get doing The Big Lebowski right after Fargo and missed the boat ten years ago. The Coens do screwball better than anybody, and milk everything from their great cast - Brad Pitt's insane, never ending arm motion, Tilda Swinton's natural bitchiness, George Clooney's sex appeal, etc. None of it makes much sense, even to the characters in the movie, but since when does that matter?

Read the full review here.

08. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
If Forrest Gump had been written by anybody else, Eric Roth would be facing one hell of a legal battle. Luckily, that's not the case, so he's plugged an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story and Hurricane Katrina into his earlier Oscar-winning effort, the merits of which are still debated to this day, and puts it into the able hands of David Fincher, who steps away from nail-biting thrillers to direct an extremely long movie with an extremely languid pace. The movie is imbued with endless charm and strong performances, and endless fascination with its subject matter and a storyteller's instincts. It is perhaps too sugary sweet, perhaps too full of convenient plot devices, but is nevertheless a joy to watch unfold. However, I suspect that I'd feel differently about this movie if I'd gotten a chance to see Synecdoche, New York. Perhaps I am making an unfair substitution.

07. Iron Man
Wizard Magazine, the popular comic book magazine, declared Iron Man to be the best comic book movie of all time. They may be right. Yeah, I know, this is the year of The Dark Knight, but that movie eschews its comic book roots while Iron Man embraces, celebrates, and improves upon them. See, Iron Man isn't a terribly interesting character, even though he's a guy who flies around in a robotic suit that's armed to the teeth. His villains are awful, and he's kind of an asshole. This movie takes the impossible task of making Tony Stark likable and accomplishes it without breaking a sweat. This is likely as good as a Marvel Comics movie will get - unlike The Dark Knight, the movies of the Marvel Universe are content to be as fun and colorful as their silver age comic counterparts. This is fun and colorful with an edge, but as Marvel maneuvers towards an Avengers movie, something will have to give.

06. Gran Torino
Clint Eastwood, a 78 year old man, is perhaps the biggest badass in recent film history as Walt Kowalski, a Korean War veteran who worked in a Ford factory for 50 years and stayed in Detroit as it rotted around him. He may also be one of Hollywood's best directors. He takes an extremely flawed script and a wholly inexperienced cast and turns in one of the best movies of the year, a send-off to the tough guy image he created and a parable about old age, family, and race relations. Eastwood deserves to win Best Actor come Oscar time - there aren't many actors who can create so much from so little. I'm also hoping that he's nominated for Best Original Song, but that's for entirely selfish, sinister purposes.

05. Slumdog Millionare
Danny Boyle apparently is incapable of error at this stage of his career. He's bested zombie movies, released a good sci-fi movie, a great children's movie, and now, with Slumdog Millionare, he's got a quirky, Oscar nomination worthy drama. The words "life" and "affirming" were thrown around way, way too much about this movie, but it is very good, perhaps even great, with a cast of unknowns, spectacular locations, and an enthralling plotline. When the million dollar question was being asked, I noticed that my knuckles were gripped supertight on the armrests. And I usually root against game show participants.

04. Revolutionary Road
This movie is the potential terminus of all of those classic movie romances that are fueled by impossibly romantic situations and actions. Perfect then that Revolutionary Road features Kate and Leo, the couple that adorned countless Tiger Beat posters in the aftermath of Titanic, because what did Jack and Rose have in common? What did they see in each other? Did the sinking of the Titanic save the two of them from something worse? The two are Frank and Alice Wheeler. To the outside world, they are the perfect couple. Within the confines of their house, they are anything but. This movie is a sobering, crushing view of the "ideal" nuclear family. Those who say that the nuclear family died in the 1960's are wrong - it never existed in the first place.

03. Milk
Distribution being such as it is, I doubt many people will see Milk, even if it picks up tremendous Oscar buzz, as it will. Sean Penn puts on an acting clinic as Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to major office, matched only by Josh Brolin, playing Dan Brown, Milk's eventual assassin. Biopics, even the critically acclaimed ones, often fall into a trap where the protagonist's life is given sheen and a feel-good, life-affirming arc. I've talked to plenty of people who thought that Johnny and June Carter Cash's story was "cute" and "romantic." The same likely will not apply to Harvey Milk, whose story is tragic in the truest sense of the word. This is a movie worth seeing, even without the results of the recent election in mind.

02. The Dark Knight
There is nothing that can be said about The Dark Knight that hasn't been said over and over again since its release in June. Movie distribution being such as it is, Christopher Nolan's epic did not unseat Titanic, but it prooved that the epic blockbuster could be made. All credit, of course, goes to the cast, which is one of the strongest of any movie, period. If not for Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman would be recieving buzz for Best Supporting Actor, and, if not him, Aaron Eckhart. I paid good money to see this movie 11 times. Many people did the same. That a movie that entertaining and that enthralling gets made is a miracle.

Read the full review here.

01. Wall-E
I saw Wall-E six times, and got choked up all but once. Considering that this is an animated movie about a trash compacting robot who takes a fantastic voyage, I should feel like a loser, but I don't. For 45 minutes, the movie is the hypothetical good romantic comedy. For the rest, it is a parable, a bedtime story about humans who find their use in a world they've created to run itself without their intervention. There is no question of the film's beauty, and there should be no question of Wall-E's future as one of the greatest animated films of all time. Oscar nominations being what they are, Wall-E will be battling Kung-Fu Panda for Best Animated Feature and may actually lose. In reality, it deserves so much more.

Read the full review here.

If you made it all the way to the bottom, how did I do? Should I do full reviews for the stuff I don't have full reviews for, or should I leave it at that?