So these are the movies I’ve seen since January 2008, and I find I don’t have much of anything to say about them. There were highlights, of course — There Will Be Blood, The Dark Knight, The Visitor, Milk — and lowlights — Cloverfield, Jumper, Flightplan, Wanted. But most were just movies I saw, some good and some not so good. I could probably find something to say about any one of them, if you’re curious, but none move me to write about them in any depth like I did last year. Maybe that’s because I saw fewer new movies in ’08 — 14 in theaters, as opposed to last year’s 27 — or maybe it wasn’t as great a year for film.
I don’t know that that’s the case, though, because there’s plenty that was released this year that I hope I’ll get to see next year.
This was the year of Way Better Than Average Blockbuster (Wall-E, Dark Knight, Iron Man). The movies are good, the visuals are excellent, but they’re not super-inspiring, y’know? I like them a lot, but find myself more excited by Hollywood coulda-runs like Speed Racer, Role Models, and Kung Fu Panda. All of those movies aren’t great art, they aren’t even as good as the first three movies I mentioned, but something about them is a little more ramshackle and fun, despite being huge standard studio pictures.
I’d say Slumdog Millionaire and Let The Right One In are amazing, too, but that would seem defensive.