pdenton on 18/12/2008 at 08:59

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I put 4, because if I'm doing like a top ten, and the season isn't over yet, I can't do a complete list. I've seen more movies than anyone else I know. I said "you people need to see more movies", because, frankly, if you put Wanted in like your top 10 of year, I think you need to see more movies.

Now, if you just enjoyed the film a lot, then hey, different strokes, but if you honestly think its one of the top 10 of the year, yes, I think its a fact, you need to see more films.

WingedKagouti on 18/12/2008 at 10:00

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Or it may be someone who detests "artsy fartsy"/"thinking" stuff and only watches movies for the action and to oogle the (wo)men. For someone like that, Wanted may well be in the top 10 2008 movies, regardless of how many movies were seen.

Muzman on 18/12/2008 at 16:38

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I mostly just watched TV this year. It's pretty time consuming stuff. Most of the movies I watched were from last year or earlier.
I did see these though (They're only vaguely in order).

Standard Operating Procedure; Errol Morris's doco on the Abu Grahib scandal confirms nicely what most of us suspected, I think; That the pictures were the tip of the iceberg and those who actually got caught were largely scapegoats to assuage military embarassment at their dirty linen being shown in public (on the heads of prisoners). Also nicely illustrates that even in world where cameras and photoshop are almost ubiquitous, pictures still have remarkable power, even though they rarely tell the story they seem to.
Goes well with Generation Kill

Hellboy 2; the Golden Army, this is my fave from this year. All the rather large charms of the first are set loose creating a ton of stuff I just want to watch over and over. I don't think Del Toro is a great plotter or dialogue writer, but a few clangers here and there can't really overshadow the ton of good things that usually going on (Selma Blair usually has to do the sweeping up in the dialogue, unfortunately. And if you look at the deleted scenes most of her cool stuff got cut for time).
Imagery that sticks as much as things from Pan's Labrynth, a liberal dose of slapstick and great character interplay and really dizzying action (in a good way). Pick just about any escapist blockbuster from the last five years or so, films costing and earning three times as much. This is better.

Iron Man. I liked this a lot better than The Dark Knight. I think that one is "better", but this is a lot more watchable. It's all down to decent actors yasee. Where most superheroes are often basically Batman or Superman with extra bits, as far as behaviour and motivation goes; I like how they made Tony Stark kinda the opposite of Batman- self indulgent, brash and not at all camera shy. Plus, it got a bit of stick for having relatively simple action sequences and effects work compared to others of this stripe (though not something I hear levelled at X-Men 3 all that much outside of nerd circles), but I haven't seen a flight sequence give toe tingling vertigo quite like that in a long time. It also spawned this (http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=THDz2KUMZt0&feature=channel_page) tearfully hilarious review

The Dark Knight. It's pretty good, mostly for the way it doesn't stop. It resists the temptation to build up to a Joker- Batman confrontation having the Joker endlessly set the tempo and the rules of the game. Which is terrific. And of course the Joker is fun to watch, trouble is he's really the only thing that's fun to watch. Batman Needs Lozenge is rubbish, drives me right up the wall. Still, most everything Batman is all about Batman, eventually. He hides in Bruce Wayne from time to time and a few "Phew, that was close" moments and that's it. Nolan's Batman is a big black block of personality free rubber that hits things. This is occasionally awkward, but an interesting idea that makes it distinctive from the whole Batman ourve/canon/whatever. Even the Dent story is pretty cool when I think about it; his character being the kind of righteous justice guy struck me as something I haven't seen a lot of the way they did it. The temptation to make him mr nice guy right from the start and have him swing to a polar opposite later on must have been fairly great. But no, they really did make Two Face just a slightly different, more expedient aspect of who he was already. A 'little push' indeed (although the push was aguably quite large, he didn't have far to go).
All this stuff is quite good, when I think about it. Trouble is when I watch it I just mark time between Joker appearances.

I also saw The Happening this year. I wouldn't have except I'm scarfing up disaster fiction like crazy. What a complete piece of crap. I watched most of it stunned by how completely rubbish it was. The rest of the time I was insulted by the idiotic nonsense spouted by supposed science teachers (went to the same school as (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FauxlosophicNarration) Mohinder Suresh). MKS has turned flat acting and bad dialogue into an art form; a dadaist slap in the face kind of art form. But that might be giving it too much credit. There are people who'll tell you that it's all some great satire about something or other in order to maintain Shymalan's genius status. It's certainly some sort of joke.

henke on 19/12/2008 at 06:24

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Ok, I'll make it my New Years resolution to cut down on going outside and try to devote more time to watching movies instead.

APMeehan on 19/12/2008 at 11:42

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The upside of the release of any bad film is that it will inevitably spawn a (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=cCAVfuzeqPo&e) hilarious (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ufsqqXpiPNo) Mark (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=hpP1iIQOfQM) Kermode (http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Q5FESHol0) review.