20 Best Films From 2008

It's "The Passion of the Christ" institutionalized and with balls-out ambition not seen since Kubrick.

Not quite a nature film. More of a meditation on humans' endless fascination with exploration and the pursuit of adventure.

I know more and care more about this immigrant French family than any family on film that I can remember.

If Terrence Malick directed an anime, it would look very much like "5 Centimeters Per Second", a tone-poem of disarming sentiment and lush imagery. The film's meditations on young love, the pursuit of love and the barriers that impede it recall Hsiao-hsien Hou's "Three Times", also a collection of three short stories. Watch it with a kleenex handy.

The best film about young romance you never heard of, Mukhsin achieves a bitter and raw poignancy that is rare in film.

If this most popular comic opera was originally intended to be a romantic comedy, it is now according to director Claus Guth's invigorating and surprisingly unpredictable interpretation a crime drama in the mold of Scarface.

Kurosawa takes a page from that other Kurosawa and creates a biting domestic dramedy with a healthy dose of social commentary.

On one level, Oliver Assayas' latest feature works as a dramatic behind-the-scenes outtake of an episode of Antique Roadshow. On another, it's a light drama of stunning simplicity about nostalgia of places and things, the certainties of life and death, and treasuring each stage (right down to the hour) of growing old.

Youthful, sexy, and raw with a subversive political edge. Summer Palace is smarter than your average coming-of-age drama or eroto-thriller.

Director Jia Zhangke's long take-filming rewards the patient film-viewer, as every square inch of the screen brims with intelligence and insight.

Like a good teacher, the film engages.

Forget Michael Moore. This documentary cuts straight to the heart and speaks convincingly on the side of people whose government completely failed them.

Errol Morris' probing camera digs deep into the infamous photographs from Abu Ghraib and uncovers more questions than straightforward, ready-to-slam-the-goverment answers, like that other investigative doc on the same subject (Taxi to the Dark Side). As if daring his audience to cast the first stone, Morris places the camera directly in front of each guilty party's face while asking them to pinpoint the breakdown of their moral conscience. Was it the towering peer pressure from a government and its military hounds? Or was it just plain rotten group think from a bunch of dumb individuals? I got the impression it was a little bit of both.