Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron Man

For me the movies of 2008 can be summed up in one word: disappointment. It seemed like I was forever waiting for something to come out (i.e. Rambo, 88 Minutes, and Righteous Kill) only to be grossly disappointed once it finally did. My best trip to the movies centered around Iron Man, the most satisfying superhero movie to come along since Spider-man. (That upside-down kiss was something, but Iron Man could totally take Spider-man down.) The most memorable video I watched all year was Felon a compelling and engrossing film about prison life that features one of the best performances Val Kilmer has ever given. Apart from that, nothing really stuck in 2008. Perhaps I'll feel differently in twenty years.

As for my look back to 1988, I was surprised to see how much fluff came out that year as well. Though many of the movies were enjoyable at the time, it's interesting how few of them stand up to repeat viewing. The Accused, A Cry in the Dark, and Gorillas in the Mist surely made a mark, but who settles in to rewatch those films for fun? Even Rain Man isn't that easy to go back to. Beaches made us cry our eyes out, but isn't once enough? And while Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger may have made us laugh as Twins, who's pulling that out of the video vault these days? The same can be said for Coming to America and Cocktail - cute the first time, but not exactly classic. The following list consists of films that were memorable, iconic, and/or stand up to repeated viewing. It is not scientific.

1. Beetlejuice: An early glimpse at Tim Burton's genius, and one of the best performances of Alec Baldwin career.



2. Die Hard: 'Member that time in Die Hard when Bruce Willis had to walk over broken glass in his bare feet? Chris Farley sure did.



3. She's Having a Baby: One of the great John Hughes classics. Nothing beats Paul Gleason's suggestion to name the baby Blind Boy Grunt.



4. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels: Michael Caine and Steve Martin put their heads together to relieve wealthy women of their money in a comedy that is as clever as it is slapstick



5. Lady in White: A strangely moving ghost story that gets me every time. The special effects might be a bit dated, but little Lucas Haas still tugs on my heart strings.



6. The Accidental Tourist: Anne Tyler's bittersweet novel brought brilliantly to life, always walking the line between quirky comedy and personal tragedy.



7. Tequila Sunrise: An overly complicated but steamy romance between Mel Gibson and Michelle Pfeiffer at their most beautiful.



8. Masquerade: One of the hottest thrillers you'll ever see. Rob Lowe, Meg Tilly, and Kim Cattrall are all at the peak of their powers.



9. Rattle and Hum: Twenty years before U2 went 3-D, they explored the American heartland in this classic concert film. Once dubbed self-indulgent, the film captures the band in that odd moment between youthful sincerity and global domination.



10. The Land Before Time: I'm not kidding, this is easily the sweetest, most touching children's film I've ever seen. Don Bluth is my hero.

Tom Hanks looked cute playing that huge keyboard in Big River Phoenix had a big year with the release of A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon, Little Nikita, and the excellent Running on Empty. Emilio Estevez and the Young Guns made all the teenagers drool. Chevy Chase went to the Funny Farm. Melanie Griffith outsmarted Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl. Rambo III may have disappointed audiences, but has grown more relevant over time, and still beats the pants of the latest installment. All in all, there's not that much to write home about. Here's hoping for a better list next year...Both for 2009 and 1989.

Best of 2008

Let the Right One In

• Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma in) - Though other vampire movies got a lot more attention and more box office (*cough* Twilight *cough*), this somber, melancholy, and strangely sweet Swedish film made a love story between a 12-year-old boy and the neighbor vampire girl (who has "been 12 for a long time") one of the best of the year.
• Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame - In the shadow of the scarred cliff where the Buddhas of Bamyan once stood (before being blown to bits by the Taliban), a little girl just wants to go to school. A combination of Lord of the Flies and a dogged adventure film, this film blew me away with its simple beauty and troubling message.
• Encounters at the End of the World - Werner Herzog brings his unique and goofy world view to his documentary of the unique and quirky people who work in Antarctica—and the continent that holds a spell over them. Funny, beautiful, and haunting.
• WALL-E - Any movie that causes me to spend a Saturday night chanting to myself, "Waallll-eeee... woah-ALLL-EEee... eeeEEEE-vaaHHHH!" to my great amusement gets my vote. Simply adorable.
• Man on Wire - A most invigorating and entertaining documentary about a French acrobat that illegally tightrope-walked between the World Trade Center buildings in 1974, this uplifting film lets you forget the fate of the famous Twin Towers and just enjoy the crazy stunt.
• Pineapple Express - This stoner comedy made me laugh more than any mainstream flick this year, and was a great escape for the hottest day of the summer. James Franco redeems his many terrible movie choices in one fell swoop.
• Planet B-Boy - An exhilarating doc about the world breakdancing championship in Germany, the film spotlights dance routines from international b-boys (highlighting South Korea, France, Japan, and US crews) that I guarantee will knock your socks off.
• Boy A - An awkward 20-something man is released back into the world after mysterious seclusion and rehabilitation. This quiet drama unfolds slowly and is refreshingly different than mainstream fare.
• The Fall - Lee Pace plays a 1920s movie stuntman recuperating in a hospital, and he passes the time telling fantastic tales to a little girl who is recovering from her own fall. Glorious fantasy sequences fill the spaces between the friendship between a broken man and a trusting girl.
• Milk - Garbo Talks! And Sean Penn Smiles! Penn is fabulous in this biopic about the inspirational politician, and the film is shockingly timely, mirroring the fight against California's Proposition 8 repeal of gay marriage rights.

Acclaimed films that I missed that may have made the cut (or not):

The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire, Revolutionary Road, The Wrestler, Frost/Nixon, Synecdoche, New York

Guilty pleasures:

Madagascar 2, Snow Buddies

Guilty, no pleasure:

High School Musical 3: Senior Year - The joy seems to be fading, especially when my friends and I are the oldest people in the theater... by two decades!

Great performances:

• Melissa Leo as a bedraggled single mom in Frozen River who joins another woman in trafficking illegal immigrants across the frozen US/Canadian border.
• Eddie Marsan as an extremely edgy driving instructor who gets so furious at his pupil Sally Hawkins that he is literally frothing with fury in Happy-Go-Lucky.
• Viola Davis as a defensive mother with surprising view in Doubt (she steals a scene from Meryl Streep, no less!).
• James Franco reminds us why we liked him in Freaks and Geeks, suddenly stealing Pineapple Express (as a sweet stoner) and Milk (as Harvey Milk's longtime lover Scott) with fabulous performances.
• Kristen Wiig as a self-involved surgeon (who kinda screws up) in Ghost Town.
• ...And, yes, Robert Downey, Jr., who had a great year as the quippy Iron Man, and as the method actor who hilariously (and inappropriately) dons blackface in Tropic Thunder.

Overrated:

Tom Cruise's creepy, overly-long "cameo" in Tropic Thunder, Meryl Streep's scenery-chewing in Doubt.

So dreadfully bad, it was kind of watchable:

The Happening... what happened?

So dreadfully bad, I'm just going to pretend it doesn't exist:

X-Files: I Want to Believe

Most shocking scenes, where the audience audibly gasped:

A pregnant Charlize Theron getting clubbed by a policemen during the riot in Battle in Seattle, and of course, Heath Ledger's The Joker "making a pencil disappear" in The Dark Knight.

MVPs (aka My new cinematic crushes):

Vera Farmiga (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Nothing But the Truth, Never Forever), Lee Pace (Pushing Daisies (TV), The Fall)

Most haunting, soul-shattering moment:

In the Hurricane Katrina documentary Trouble the Water, we hear frantic 911 calls from people trapped in their homes by rising water, who are bluntly told by dispatchers, "No one is coming." In the meantime, New Orleans resident Kimberley Roberts keeps filming the water rising around her house...

Weirdest conversation after a movie screening:

Well, "conversation" may be a strong word as my friend and I were followed by a curious fellow after the screening of Cloverfield, who crowed for about 8 blocks about conspiracy theories, Japanese conglomerates, and (most importantly), "sea nectar".

Breast performance:

Man-breasts upstage the ladies the second year in a row, as Sexiest Man Alive 2008(tm) Hugh Jackman shows off his impressive man-chest while taking an outback shower in Australia.

Most howlingly funny scene in an under-rated movie:

Ricky Gervais confronts his surgeon Kristen Wiig in Ghost Town about the fact that he may have died "a little" while under anesthesia. From the "interrupting" conversation that moves into a coat closet, this scene made me scream with laughter. Comic brilliance by two real pros.

Most fun to be had at the movies in 2008:

Hoorah for the year of chick flicks! No, of course that is too dismissive, but with the combined grosses of Sex and the City: The Movie (a cosmopolitan WOMEN'S Night Out), Mamma Mia! (appealing to ABBA-rific fans and over-50s), and Twilight (with throngs of teenage girls and their friends), 2008 showed the studio bosses that people other than 14-year-old boys want to go to the movies. Take that, superheroes!

Also, getting to go to the Seattle International Film Festival's Opening Night extravaganza, featuring Battle in Seattle and a bevy of stars proved to be a lot of fun... especially on George W. Bush's stimulus check!

Best of 2008

88 Minutes

1. 88 Minutes. I've seen a lot of bad thrillers, and I've loved a lot of bad thrillers... but I have never loved a bad thriller as much as I love 88 Minutes. It's hilarious from start to finish, from the moment Al Pacino's raggedy wig is introduced, to the moment Leelee Sobieski tries acting like a "bad girl." From Al Pacino's reanimated corpse going clubbing with college girls, to Amy Brenneman screaming, "MILKMAID!" I could go on for 88 minutes about how much I love this movie, but you should really rent it for yourself. 88 times.

2. Jumper. Hayden Christensen plays a complete asshole with the ability to teleport anywhere in the world... but he's still an asshole. Consider an early scene in the film, where Christensen's character watches news coverage of a disaster where tons of people are trapped and only someone who could teleport could help them. He doesn't help them, he never learns to help people, and I spent the whole movie waiting for someone to help those trapped people. Instead, Christensen prances around going clubbing around the world and choking out his lines from that wooden, wooden face.

3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars. This one made history as the first movie in my ENTIRE LIFE that I have walked out on.

4. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale. Can anyone believe Uwe Boll is still allowed to make movies anymore? AND that he gets semi-famous performers like Ray Liotta, Jason Statham, Ron Perlman, Matthew Lillard, Burt Reynolds, Claire Forlani, John Rhys-Davies, and LEELEE SOBIESKI to be in them? With such a bizarre cast, In the Name of the King plays like an embarrassing dress-up edition of The Surreal Life. But Matthew Lillard is the best of all, overacting with such zeal that Burt Reynolds looks visibly weirded out. And you know they only got one take, so they had to use it.

5. Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys. Tyler Perry continues to prove his shocking (shocking!) lack of talent in this soapy, offensive bore. In this edition of "Tyler Perry's Same Shit, Different Release Date," several things happen:

• Tyler Perry wears a wig so bad it could battle any one of Nicolas Cage's wigs from the last three years
• Kathy Bates sucks, and believe me it takes a special kind of film to make Kathy Bates suck
• One character is championed for punching out his wife because she took his money, because punching your wife in the face is okay if she took your money
• Characters are good and evil for no reason and never change or learn anything
• Cole Hauser has apparently been kept alive with Botox alone

6. 10,000 BC. Wow, this was terrible.

7. Bangkok Dangerous. If you thought Nicolas Cage's wigs couldn't get any worse after Ghost Rider and Next, think again. And if you had any hope that 2008 would be the year that Nicolas Cage became a legitimate movie star again, think again. Instead, Cage continues living his midlife crisis on the big screen in the form of hysterically cheesy action movies and taking off his shirt to show off that toned exoskeleton. Viva La Cage! Keep 'em coming, Nic.

8. Untraceable. About six years too late to scare anyone, the latest movie about a killer website stars Diane Lane as an FBI agent investigating a site where people log on to watch someone die, and the more people log on, the faster they die. So, you know, this is totally a statement about the dangers of voyeurism in the Internet Age. Or it would be, if this wasn't the stupidest idea for a movie since 88 Minutes.

9. Never Back Down. This teen Fight Club made me want to back down out of the theater. Poor Djimon Hounsou, man.

10. Speed Racer. Here's what someone should have told the Wachowskis during every day of production on this visually vile dud: "NO. NO. NOOOOOO."

Best of 2008