The Best and Worst of 2008

With movie awards season just around the corner, I thought I'd name a few of my own contenders - the winners, and the losers.

Best Action Movie: Rambo. Lots of guy stuff, but a good enough story to keep girls watching and interested. Beware of gore, though. Most of this flick isn't pretty.

Best Movie I Bet You've Never Seen Award: Felon, with Stephen Dorff and Val Kilmer. Pick it up. Other good candidates in this category are Defiance, Reservation Road, Battle in Seattle, and Religulous.

Biggest Disappointment: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Too much hype, not enough substance. They lost me when Jones escaped nuclear disintegration by hiding in a refrigerator. I'm guessing fans of the original movies weren't huge fans of this one, for good reason. Honorable mention in this category goes to the Sex and the City Movie. The powerful, independent, sassy television characters were replaced with whiny, insufferable spinsters with too much money and not nearly enough to talk about anymore. Men, you will hate this movie. Don't say you haven't been warned.

The Triple Threat Award: Pride & Glory. Acceptable plot, fantastic acting by Edward Norton and Jon Voight, and Colin Farrell in a police uniform. Enough said.

Best Chick Flick: No contest, this award goes to P.S. I Love You. This movie wasn't just sad, it was the heaving sobs-, angina-, unprecedented heartbreak-causing kind of sad that hasn't been produced since Rose peeled Jack's fingers off the raft in Titanic. If after watching this movie you don't want to drag Gerard Butler by the hair to a Vegas wedding chapel, there must be something wrong with you. Guys, you'll probably hate this one, too, but you'll have to get over it.

Best Comedy: Zack & Miri Make a Porno. It's stylishly crass and obscene, and the "entrpreneurial aspects" remind me of a plan that could easily have been hatched in Cape Breton. It was by far the funniest movie I've seen all year. Role Models, with a typical Stiffler and a hilarious Paul Rudd, is a deserving runner-up.

Worst Comedy: This is a tie between Semi-Pro and Step Brothers, as you might have expected from me. I'm giving these movies two big thumbs down for two main reasons; first of all, I think Will Ferrell is a complete imbecile and should not be allowed out of his house unchaperoned (I know he's a millionaire and that most people think he's hilarious, but I don't get it. At all.). The biggest reason for my bad review of these two flicks is because I've seen them both before. I think they were called Blades of Glory and Talladega Nights. Honorable mentions in this category are You Don't Mess With the Zohan and The Love Guru. All proof, in my opinion, that there is a fine line between humor and simple-mindedness.

Most Obvious Rip-Off: Made of Honor. After years of being friends, character A decides to profess their love for character B. Character B makes character A their head attendant, only in a reversed gender role. Character A plots to break up the wedding while being forced to be happy for character B and help with the wedding arrangements. Hilarity ensues. Dramatic proclamation of love towards the end of the movie, and they all lived happily ever after. See: My Best Friend's Wedding.

Worth All the Fuss: The Dark Knight. Heath Ledger really was as amazing as people say and deserves all the posthumous praise he has received. I'm not even a fan of comic book-based movies, but I really enjoyed this film.

"What the....?" Movie of the Year: The Life Before Her Eyes. You might have to watch it twice to fully grasp the gravity of the plot and answer your questions from the first time around. I thought it was fantastic, and not the typical thoughtless, contrived drivel I'm used to.

The "I Can't Believe I Liked That" Award: Mad Money. It's not exactly a thinking man's work of cinematic genius, but it's not a bad little flick when you have a few hours to kill. Runners-up are Bedtime Stories and Twilight.

Scariest Movie of the Year (quite possibly a candidate for Scariest Movie in History): The Strangers. I literally shook in my bed the entire night, and refused to go to the bathroom for fear of being brutally murdered by psychotic intruders.

Two Hours of Your Life You'll Never Get Back: Mirrors with Keifer Sutherland. Honorable mentions (though there are hundreds, I'll only name a few) are Fool's Gold, The Eye, and One Missed Call.

These are just a fraction of the hundreds of movies I've watched in the past year. I really need to revamp my social life.