Top 5 movies of the year

Going along with top lists for 2008, here are my choices for top movies of the year. It can be summed up as the year of superheroes and comedies as two of each category crack my top 5 list. Granted, I don’t watch very many movies so my pool of choices isn’t too deep so it made this list fairly easy to come up with. Not watching many movies also means that the few I do watch are that much more important which is why you won’t find any small artsy-fartsy movies here. (Warning: Spoilers ahead! I’ve tried to keep my summaries as spoiler-free as possible but there were times I couldn’t help myself.)

4) Forgetting Sarah Marshall – This is just a funny movie period. How can you go wrong with any movie that has gratuitous male nudity? Especially funny the first time around when I saw it in theaters; the jokes hit that much deeper when I watched it at home alone the second time around. My reaction to unknowingly pouring myself a bowl of Lucky Charms while I started the movie a couple weeks after going through a breakup of my own was life imitating art. Well-written, likable characters really drive this comedy. Going through what I went through this year, this movie really hits home.

4) Role Models – I couldn’t decide which comedy I liked more this year so I decided to call this a tie with the previous movie. Although Forgetting Sarah Marshall hits closer to home, I didn’t have as many laugh out loud moments as I did with any other movie this year. If you haven’t seen this one yet, check it out. Paul Rudd is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors as he continues to turn in great performance after great performance.

3) Iron Man – This movie rivals Spiderman 2 as my number two greatest superhero movie of all time. Robert Downey Jr. does a really great job capturing all the nuances and quirks of Tony Stark. A great start to what is sure to be a solid franchise leading up to the Avengers movie. The ending battle proved to be a little disappointing to me but everything building up to it was MARVELously done (see what I did there?). I really wanted to see what 2 suits could do in a battle at full power. They will no doubt fix that in the sequel as well as possibly delve into Tony’s demons, most notably his alcohol problem which was hinted at in this movie. Iron Man ushered in the year of quality comic movies and is one of the year's best films.

2) Wall-E – This movie makes everything else on this list seem like a complex drama with a tangled storyline because it is so simple. The first half of the movie goes by with pretty much no dialogue and takes a very fun turn in the second half that delivers a powerful message. The story is fairly simple, characters aren’t complex, there really isn’t much to this movie on the surface but the way everything unfolds makes you really get attached to the characters. Pixar really hit this one out of the ballpark.

1) The Dark Knight – Was there ever a question as to what my number one film would be? There’s little I can say about this film that hasn’t already been said. Incredible story, deep characters backed up by fantastic acting, and it’s Batman for Christ’s sake! People have rightfully raved about Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker, which should earn him an Oscar nomination at the very least, but the character that stood out most to me was Harvey Dent. This is just my personal opinion but his story is such a tragic telling of how even the best of us can fall. The story works on so many levels and is not just a simple superhero story. There are actually some deep philosophical points it brings up. It elevated the superhero genre to an art form and is definitely in my top 5 movies all time. Greatest movie watching experience in my life was seeing this film in Las Vegas at an IMAX theater. The screen was 5 stories high and the sound was so loud yet so crisp, I doubt that experience can ever be surpassed.

Honorable Mention: Quantum of Solace, Step Brothers

Biggest Disappointment: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull