Top 10 Films of 2008

This is a dynamic list, so it’ll be updated each time I see a film which had its world premiere in 2008 that is better than at least one of the films already on the list.

  1. Synecdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman)
  2. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel)
  3. Afterschool (Antonio Campos)
  4. Melancholia (Lav Diaz)
  5. Summer Hours (Olivier Assayas)
  6. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin)
  7. Vicky Cristina Barcelona (Woody Allen)
  8. Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt)
  9. Julia (Erick Zonca)
  10. Revanche (Götz Spielmann)



Other 2008 films I’ve seen (In approximate order of preference)

  • Our Beloved Month of August (Miguel Gomes) – 7.5
  • Rachel Getting Married (Jonathan Demme)
  • Burn After Reading (Joel & Ethan Coen)
  • Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh)
  • Home (Ursula Meier)
  • Liverpool (Lisandro Alonso)
  • Two Lovers (James Gray) – 7.0
  • Old Partner (Chung-Ryoul Lee)
  • Milk (Gus Van Sant)
  • The Class (Laurent Cantet)
  • Rembrandt’s J’Accuse…! (Peter Greenaway)
  • Lorna’s Silence (Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)
  • Boogie (Radu Muntean) – 6.8
  • Rumba (Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon, & Bruno Romy)
  • The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky)
  • Adhen (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche)
  • Martyrs (Pascal Laugier)
  • Transmission (Harun Farocki) – 6.7
  • Hunger (Steve McQueen)
  • Modern Life (Raymond Depardon)
  • 24 City (Jia Zhangke)
  • Frontier of Dawn (Phillipe Garrel)
  • Birdsong (Albert Serra)
  • Mommy is at the Hairdresser’s (Léa Pool)
  • Of Time and the City (Terence Davies)
  • Soi Cowboy (Thomas Clay)
  • Doubt (John Patrick Shanley)
  • 35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis)
  • Jerichow (Christian Petzold)
  • Involuntary (Ruben Östlund) – 6.1
  • Coal Money (Wang Bing) – 6.0
  • Milk (Semih Kaplanoglu)
  • Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson)
  • A Lake (Philippe Grandrieux) – 5.8
  • Tulpan (Sergey Dvortsevoy)
  • The Hurt Locker (Kathryn Bigelow) – 5.8
  • Iron Man (Jon Favreau) – 5.5
  • Sita Sings the Blues (Nina Paley)
  • Everlasting Moments (Jan Troell) – 5.3
  • Momma’s Man (Azazel Jacobs)
  • Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller)
  • Jumper (Doug Liman) – 5.3
  • Mid-August Lunch (Gianni Di Gregorio)
  • Tokyo! (Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, & Bong Joon-ho) – 5.2
  • Surveillance (Jennifer Lynch)
  • The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan)
  • Goodbye Solo (Ramin Bahrani)
  • Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa)
  • Serbis (Brillante Mendoza)
  • WALL•E (Andrew Stanton)
  • This Night (Werner Schroeter)
  • The Christians (Stephen Cone) – 4.6
  • Adoration (Atom Egoyan)
  • Three Monkeys (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
  • Helen (Joe Lawlor & Christine Molloy)
  • The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher)
  • Four Nights With Anna (Jerzy Skolimowski)
  • Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg)
  • On War (Bertrand Bonello) – 4.1
  • Treeless Mountain (So Yong Kim)
  • Snow (Aida Begic)
  • Changeling (Clint Eastwood)
  • Antoine (Laura Bari)
  • Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle)
  • Eldorado (Bouli Lanners) – 3.7
  • Waiting for Sancho (Mark Peranson) – 3.6
  • Il Divo (Paolo Sorrentino)
  • Sleep Furiously (Gideon Koppel)
  • My Magic (Eric Khoo)
  • Mamma Mia! (Phyllida Lloyd)
  • Australia (Baz Luhrmann) – 2.6
  • Palermo Shooting (Wim Wenders)
  • Adam Resurrected (Paul Schrader)
  • The Reader (Stephen Daldry)
  • Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes)
  • The Good, the Bad, the Weird (Kim Jee-woon)

2 thoughts on “Top 10 Films of 2008”

  1. I don’t hate it. It is a very annoying, disappointing movie should have better. I only really hate the first 6 on that list.

Comments are closed.