Pop Culture Reviews

Pop Culture Reviews’ top 50 movies 2008

I got this idea from one of my favourite magazines to read – Empire magazine and thought it would be a fun idea to go through their list of top 50 movies for 2008 and check off all the ones I had seen. The end result was 35 out of 50 movies for 2008. So out of the 15 movies left off my ‘list’, I decided to check out all the movies I had missed that were recommended by Empire. The result so far has been enlightening. It just goes to show that you should never judge a movie by its title or movie poster alone.

The original list of movies as suggested by Empire issue 95:

American Gangster, Australia, Baby Mama, The Bank Job, Be Kind Rewind, Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead, The Black Balloon, Charlie Wilson’s War, Cloverfield, The Counterfeiters, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Frost/Nixon, Gone Baby Gone, Hancock, Happy-Go-Lucky, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Horton Hears A Who, Hunger, In Bruges, Indian Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, Iron Man, Juno, The King Of Kong, The Kite Runner, Kung Fu Panda, Lars And The Real Girl, Lust Caution, Mamma Mia!, The Mist, Not Quite Hollywood, The Orphanage, Persepolis, Pineapple Express, Quantum Of Solace, The Savages, Sex And The City, Slumdog Millionaire, Son Of Rambow, The Square, Stop-Loss, Sweeney Todd, Taxi To The Dark Side, There Will Be Blood, Tropic Thunder, Twilight, The Wackness, Wall-E, Waltz With Bashir

The movies I hadn’t seen:

Australia, Baby Mama, The Black Balloon, The Counterfeiters, Frost/Nixon, Happy-Go-Lucky, Horton Hears A Who, Hunger, Kung Fu Panda, Mamma Mia, Not Quite Hollywood, Persepolis, Son of Ranbow, The Square, Tropic Thunder, Waltz With Bashir

I decided to swallow my pride and review all the movies I didn’t want to see in the list above which of course, meant hiring the movie out and watching it and/or seeing it at the movies (bearing in mind that some of the movies in Empire’s list have only just made it to NZ theatres).

My current list looks like this:

Australia, Baby Mama, The Black Balloon, The Counterfeiters, Frost/Nixon, Happy-Go-Lucky, Horton Hears A Who, Hunger, Kung Fu Panda, Mamma Mia, Not Quite Hollywood, Persepolis, Son of Ranbow, The Square, Tropic Thunder, Waltz With Bashir

I’ll be writing about each of the movies I saw from the list that I originally missed as mini-reviews and I will probably be admitting to having missed out on some great movies for 2008 – or admitting nothing and feeling smug about the fact they were left off my list