This is the year where the movie world changed. Why? Superheroes! The superhero genre grew up in 2008, so much so that the Oscars changed its best picture category because it clearly left out the best movie of the year. 2008 is one of those years too where time matters, because 3 comedies you could argue will be remembered more than the best picture winner that year (don’t worry the winner is in my top 10).
Darren Aronofsky usually brings the weird. Here he plays it straight, letting Mickey Rourke pseduo lament his past career and what a washed up performer he’s become. It’s a complex, lovely, heartbreaking study of a man in his last ring.
Documentaries don’t get much better than this one. Philippe Petit is forever a performer, when being interviewed for the doc, as a celebrity, and as a man who conned his way into climbing between the World Trade Center Towers.
On conceit alone this movie is intriguing: how someone knows the answers to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire: a perilous life’s journey. Danny Boyle makes the movie kinetic and exciting, easing us into the world of the poor in India while capturing the joy and terror of it at the same time.
Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. You can just stop there basically. But when under the direction of the great Adam McKay, these two find ways to enter the lexicon with everything they say. Remember, it’s the F***in Catalina Wine Mixer!
This is during the peak of the Apatow Era. Jason Segel wrote this gem of a film that has its share of Step Brother type lexicon entries (Dracula musical). However, it also boasts two of the best female characters of the year played by Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell.
As funny as the two films preceding it, but also with the pyrotechnics of a war movie and the scathing comedy of a satire. Cameos in this movie are legendary, and this culminates the year of Robert Downey Jr. who is one of a very few who could have pulled off the dude playing a dude disguised as another dude….in blackface.
Martin McDonagh’s first widely seen feature established that the dude was gonna be the master of the angry ironic dark comedy. Colin Farrell is excellent playing a hitman with PTSD who hates all non Irish places and things, like Bruges. This movie is wacky. Sorry. F***ing wacky.
The man Robert Downey Jr. was born to play. With Jon Favreau leading the way, Downey’s Tony Stark origin story is crazy entertaining, smart, and funny. Also, this movie, you know, spawned the Marvel Cinematic Universe which dominated the 2010s because of how great this first film was.
Pixar’s non Toy Story crowning achievement. The first hour of this movie is pure magic, as a robot goes about his life on a post apocalyptic planet. A little romance here, a little critique there, and this movie will have you smiling ear to ear for 1 hour and 43 minutes.
Superhero movies will probably never be better than this one. Christopher Nolan turns the superhero Batman into a Shakespearean tragedy, while also having spectacular action sequences and a twisty complex adult story. In addition, Heath Ledger gives us one of the best performances in movie history as the iconic Joker.
