sleepyFor what it's worth, though, here are the films that got me out of the house and into a cinema seat in 2008:
- Starting Out in the Evening
- Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
- The X-Files: I Want to Believe
- Tell No One
- The Dark Knight
- Traitor
- Bottle Shock
- W
- I've Loved You So Long
- Stranded: I've Come From a Plane That Crashed On the Mountains
- Let the Right One In
- The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
- Seven Pounds
- Last Chance Harvey
The two best films on the list were the French thriller Tell No One and the Spanish-language documentary Stranded; just behind them is the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In. And as good as Heath Ledger's performance was in The Dark Knight, I don't think anything topped Kristin Scott Thomas's work in (another French film) I've Loved You So Long.
As for the others, Bottle Shock was cute, W had some spot-on casting (especially Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney), Prince Caspian was disappointing (and Peter and Caspian were boring, which suggests I'd be rolling my eyes at Merlin and Arthur in the new show that's the talk of a certain segment of my flist), and Seven Pounds was ... strange, and I think a very odd film to be given a Christmas release date. (If it had just opened now for Oscar consideration, it would have played one week in L.A. and New York, and then opened wide later.) Maybe Seven Pounds left some people feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, but I'm with the guy who, when asked if he found the film more heartwarming or more depressing, said "depressing" without a moment's hesitation.
