Don Hanway's Movie List, 2008.

 TOP 20 LIST of 2008 Movie Releases (on-line version): compiled 1/10/09  
  by Don Hanway (104 releases seen to date); based on personal impact: intellectual/ emotional/sensual/spiritual)

1. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (Romania) – true friend helps her irresponsible
room-mate through crisis
2. Frozen River – two desperate women ally for family survival
3. The Visitor – burned-out academic re-energized by knowing illegal immigrants
4. *Slumdog Millionaire – striver from Mumbai streets cashes in his experience
5. Doubt – suspicious nun battles priest over a student’s welfare
6. *The Reader – tragic ex-lovers in post-Nazi Germany learn the cost of secrets
7. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – two friends aging in opposite directions
re-connect at key stages of life
8. The Fall – expressive child is rapt audience for depressed stuntman’s vivid stories
9. The Edge of Heaven – interwoven stories of tragedy and redemption moving
back and forth between German and Turkey
10. Let the Right One In (Sweden) – outsider friendship triumphs in the only
vampire movie you need to see
11. Rachel Getting Married – grieving family struggles thru wild wedding weekend
12. Paranoid Park (by Gus Van Sant) – young skateboarder in jeopardy after
witnessing tragic accident
13. The Band’s Visit (Israel) – Egyptian musicians in wrong place spend awkward
day with reluctant Israeli hosts
  14. Milk – Sean Penn nails Harvey’s infectious passion in Gus Van Sant’s other 
  2008 movie
  15. Mongol – epic of Genghis Khan’s early life and career in Mongolia
  16. I Served the King of England (Czech) – wide-eyed young man learns ways of 
  world in sly romp through Nazi occupation
  17. Jellyfish (Israel) – three women in various troubles, and the people who help them
  18. Caramel (Lebanon) – beauty salon operators & friends in elegant, sexy, funny
  and touching film
  19. Happy-Go-Lucky – resolutely upbeat teacher shows her mettle when it counts
  20. Rocknrolla – Guy Ritchie’s latest, a stylish British gangster movie

HONORABLE MENTION: Young@Heart, WALL-E, *Gran Torino, Roman de Gare
  (France), Appaloosa, *In Bruges, Encounters at the End of the World, Elegy, How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer

*Movies marked with an asterisk include graphic violence or sex
NOTES:
1) Worthy 2007 films seen too late for last year’s list: The Savages, I’m Not There,
*There Will Be Blood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Taxi to the Dark Side,
Starting Out in the Evening
2) 2008 Films Not Seen Yet: The Wrestler, Synecdoche N.Y., Frost/Nixon,
  Revolutionary Road