The Year in Film: The Best and Worst of 2008

2007 was a hard year to top, as good a year for movies as any I've lived through. We had great new films from first-class filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino (Death Proof), the Coen brothers (No Country for Old Men), and Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood), among others, not to mention fresh blood like Diablo Cody and her screenplay for the indie fave Juno.

So if 2008 didn't surpass it, no surprises there. But what was surprising was that 2008 didn't even stand a fighting chance. American politics were at their most exciting in years, but the movie business suffered. Months came and went with little to celebrate, and break-out successes were few and far between. The Writers Guild of America strike started in November 2007, continuing into February of '08, and who knows how many productions that bungled (we'll be feeling those repercussions in 2009 as well). But let us be thankful for the movies we did get, because even if you had to look for 'em, the good ones were out there.

The Best Movies of 2008

If the industry was left reeling with a year-long strike hangover, with visions of new media residuals dancing in executives' heads, it's only fitting that the best movie I saw this year didn't exactly fit any traditional models. The entirely independent Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog was released onto the Internet in three parts (or "acts") over one week in July, before becoming a bestseller on Amazon and iTunes. In a year when superhero movies and comedies prospered, Dr. Horrible was both. Plus a musical. If you're scratching your head as to why a 42-minute Web production is on a list about movies, you have fair reason.

Time put it on its list of best TV shows (in addition to calling it the fifteenth best invention of the year), Entertainment Weekly listed it as both one of the best Internet videos and TV-on-DVD releases, and the American Film Institute was pretty vague on the matter when it called Dr. Horrible one of "eight moments of significance" in 2008. However, everyone involved with its making calls it a movie, the DVD jacket calls it a "Joss Whedon Film," and most importantly, I liked it better than any other movie since Joss Whedon's last movie.

Article Author: Arlo J. Wiley

Arlo J. Wiley is an aspiring filmmaker who has a deep love of movies, music, television, and most other artforms. He co-hosts the Gobbledygeek podcast and maintains its blog, which you can find at http://gobbledygeekbtr.wordpress.com.

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