By two.one.five Staff  |  Send to Friend

We laughed, we cried, at other times we heaved, both emotionally and physically. And sometimes, we even left the theaters utterly transfixed. Herewith, our picks of the best (and worst) of the 2008 cinematic panoply.

The Top Ten Films of 2008

10. In a Dream
Dir. Jeremiah Zagar
Son Jeremiah's searing document of his father captures many painfully intense intimate moments, including Isaiah telling his wife of his adultery. Indeed, nothing is perhaps more heart-wrenching than watching Julia walking through the corridors of her house after kicking Isaiah out: Each room is so thoroughly covered with his art, you wonder how she didn't want to tear it all to pieces and start over in an empty condo.   -Piers Marchant
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9. Snow Angels
Dir. David Gordon Green
Midway through this devastating film, with all the plot elements still juggling in the air, you get the sense that Green could almost go anywhere with his set up, so tight and well-grounded are his characters. The cast help bring these miserable, lived-in characters shimmering to life, difficult to watch at times as they struggle against each other, helpless to defend themselves against their own true nature.   -Piers Marchant
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8. WALL-E
Dir. Andrew Stanton
Al Gore propaganda and child-brainwashing aside, the film is still a surprisingly touching love story with more than enough laughs, while also (by-and-large) displaying what Pixar does best: detail. Unfortunately, some of these details will serve to make a lot of parents feel pretty uncomfortable about themselves.   -Jes Sipling
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7. Man on Wire
Dir. James Marsh
The first question that people asked the 24-year-old French wire walker Philippe Petit following his forty-five minute tightrope walk between the Twin Towers in the early '70s was, naturally, "why?" The Frenchman calmly answered there was no reason. And that, it turns out, is plenty enough.   -James Viola
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6. What Just Happened
Dir. Barry Levinson
As a film producer, "just the mayonnaise on a bad sandwich," Ben's life almost entirely consists of placating everyone else's ego, largely at the expense of his own. In turn, he has to be a shrink, a drug dispenser, a coddler co-dependent, enervator and showman, and he gets to do the vast majority of his work in the car on the ever-jammed 405, speaking into his earpiece and telling lie after lie to whomever is still around to listen to him on the other end.   -Piers Marchant
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5. Taxi to the Dark Side
Dir. Alex Gibney
Damien Corsetti, an interrogator brought to Abu Ghraib, speaks in a clear, conscienceless voice, explaining "You put people in a crazy situation; and crazy things will happen." Corsetti is a fair stand-in for many of the ill-educated military personnel forced into interrogation duty with little or no actual training, dealing with a set of vague regulations designed to give maximum wiggle-room to achieve their results.   -Piers Marchant
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4. Slumdog Millionaire
Dir. Danny Boyle
Honestly, this film isn’t fooling anyone. There are no tricks or gags: it’s a straightforward, upward-mobility love story. However, left in the capable hands of director Danny Boyle, who turned heads with the surreal Trainspotting and won hearts with Millions, its cinematic qualities make this simple story pop.   -Jes Sipling
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3. The Fall
Dir. Tarsem
As much as Tarsem's previous film, The Cell, got panned, no one could impugn his stunning visual acuity: Here, with a far-superior script, he successfully welds his incredible visual sense with a charge of emotional power. He reigns in his more flighty instincts, leaving a film that is both gorgeous and inexplicably moving. Similar to the brilliant Pan's Labyrinth, the film plays off of the intersection of childish imagination and real-world heartbreak.   -Piers Marchant
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2. Milk
Dir. Gus Van Sant
It's both an edgy elegiac for a not-so-far-removed time and an emotionally accessible account of the beginning of a movement, never more necessary in the age of the Prop 8 bill. The key is Van Sant and Penn never losing sight of the deep humanity of the man they are representing. Milk was, after all, a powerful figure precisely because he was so charmingly self-effacing. He put people -- gay or straight, believers or firm dissenters -- at ease.   -Piers Marchant
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1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
Dir. Cristian Mungiu
A Dogme-style naturalistic masterpiece, as intricately woven and delicately put together as an ancient tapestry. The lives of the characters are fully invested, imbued with ambiguity and shimmering with verisimilitude. They won't soon leave you. By the time the screen cuts to black at the end of this harrowing night, you get the sense that the characters will continue on in their haphazard fashion without us: Only the camera gets shut off.   -Piers Marchant
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And the Bottom Five:

5. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Dir. Steven Spielberg
Pity poor Dr. Jones. It's one thing, after all, to be shot at by a passel of Russian KGB agents through a maze of government storage boxes, or sent careening down a series of increasingly violent waterfalls in the Amazon; and quite another to have your creators have so little faith in your character that they give you an albatross of a son to lug around in the process.   -Piers Marchant
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4. Stuck
Dir. Stuart Gordon
True, plausibility is clearly pretty low on the short list of necessities in writer/director Stuart Gordon's semi-satiric gore fest, but since so much of the film is set in the mendacity of the real world, and since the film itself, is indeed based on a notorious case of moral neglect, to have these gaping holes in logic and credibility only reduces an admittedly low-budget affair into true schlock.   -Piers Marchant
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3. Mister Lonely
Dir. Harmony Korine
Admittedly, I’m fond of Mr. Korine. I’ve had many Harmony classmates back in film school, the type that are always putting the final cross-hatches on a naked woman with a unicorn horn and visible intestines on their notebooks or filming their friends pissing on a perfect four-leaf clover. Don’t get me wrong, I love those guys. But, rarely do I wish to see the drivel that leaks from their art journals into their creative “projects.”   -Abigail Bruley
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2. The X-Files: I Want to Believe
Dir. Chris Carter
Fans of the show -- legion at one point in time -- might thrill to seeing their heroes resurrected for another go round (and marvel at Duchovny's fake beard grown in FBI exile), but everybody else can probably find something better to do. In the day and age of the Patriot Act, Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, the idea that there's something out there our government may or may not be hiding from us is perhaps a bit too fanciful to take very seriously.   -Piers Marchant
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1. Righteous Kill
Dir. Jon Avnet
To begin with, DeNiro and Pacino are pretty much in cruise control here -- two long-time partner cops on the trail of a serial killer. While it's true both have been known to overindulge their thespianism when working with spineless directors, they both seem subdued here, and, frankly, flat. They aren't helped much by Russell Gewirtz's script, which lurches from scene to scene, telegraphing its punches like an aging fighter on the take.   -Piers Marchant
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