Coming Soon: Best Films of 2008

The standard end-of-year list will arrive sometime later in the month. I was able to compose last year's list right on the new year because so many of the great films of last year arrived before the awards season crunch: if I recall correctly, both Zodiac and Eastern Promises were even Spring releases. And, despite the fact that I missed out on some truly great films when I composed the first draft of the list (we'll see some of those notables in a blog entry in the next week or so), I already had to whittle that list down considerably to get it to ten.

This year, on the other hand, has not been quite so giving cinematically. Only two films so far that have really swept me off my feet, with only a few others that are even pretty great. A lot of this has to do with the fact that 2007 was one of the great cinematic years of my lifetime (1999 was the best, and there'll be plenty more on that as well!), and 2008 could hardly hope to match it. A lot of it also has to do with the aforementioned scheduling of releases: I simply haven't been able to see a lot of the "2008" films that I think will actually be good since they haven't arrived in my small mid-West town yet. Hopefully, this state of affairs will change in January, and, if not, well, I'll charge ahead anyway!