THE VERY BEST FILMS of 2008

WHAT A year it's been at the movies!
Heath Ledger's tragic death in January made his brilliant posthumous performance as The Joker in The Dark Knight deeply moving.
To compare the two versions of the film, I saw it first at Millennium Point's IMAX screen and then at Cineworld Broad Street.
Christopher Nolan's groundbreaking decision to shoot six key sequences with IMAX cameras certainly paid off on the Midlands' biggest screen.
With the blockbuster seeming to have an extra 20 per cent of added value in IMAX format, Bat fans began travelling from as far afield as Cardiff, Devon and London to see it for themselves.
The interesting point here is that cinema is currently going through its greatest industrial revolution for decades.
Digital techniques during production and digital projectors will combine to create more special event movie experiences like this as exhibitors fight to stay one step ahead of the home movie experience.
Next year alone, for example, will see at least nine 3D movies hitting our screens.
Despite the current global financial crisis - which will probably concentrate minds and speed up digital distribution - Christian Bale's second outing as Batman has helped the UK industry to remain level on points with 2007.
By Halloween, year-on-year attendances were up 0.1 per cent to 138 million admissions - and that was not including the full impact of the record-breaking opening of new 007 thriller Quantum of Solace.
Now the year's No 2 hit, its current £50m gross has outperformed The Dark Knight (£48.6 million) at the UK box office where rising prices saw the box office increase by nearly nine per cent to £821 million in the year to October 31.
But the mother of all films in 2008 was unquestionably Mamma Mia!
I used my Mega Movies blog on July 1 (read it again at http://blogs.birminghammail.net/megamovies/2008/07/index.html?page=2) to devote a whole column as to how it could rival Titanic's £69,025,646 UK gross.
'We're all in need of cheering up... and this is the best film medicine in years', I predicted.
Ten days later, my review in the Birmingham Mail began: 'Right film, right time, right place - how can we resist you? That's Mamma Mia!, a gloriously-enjoyable film musical that's set to cheer up an entire nation'.
Sure enough, it became such a big hit it is now the UK's all time box office champ, finally surpassing Titanic's 11-year-old record with the help of the sing-along version.
What it probably won't do, though, is to set the Oscars on fire like Titanic did.
I've seen Mamma Mia! three times to date and it remains what it is on first viewing - a fun piece of candy floss.
My film of the year is much more serious. And French.
The Diving Bell and The Butterfly was the extraordinary story of Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who had a stroke and learned to communicate one letter at a time.
Mathieu Amalric took the title role, before playing the villain Dominic Greene in Quantum of Solace.
Complete with brilliant cinematography by Janusz Kaminski (Schindler's List) and a script by Ronald Harwood (The Pianist), The Diving Bell... was a captivating, life-enhancing experience.
It shows how even when you are you darkest hour, you can still feel more alive than ever before.
Every adolescent intent on going through the usual junk food / booze-soaked excesses should be encouraged to see it.
Likewise, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas is another extraordinary film for teenagers to appreciate just how lucky they are today.
The climax of the adaptation of John Boyne's novel is handled superbly by director Mark Herman (Little Voice / Brassed Off) and I was shaking just as much at the end of my second viewing as I was after the first.
Just when you think you've seen everything and that horror films will never be scary again, along comes a film like The Orphanage.
Directed by little known Juan Antonio Bayona working with co-producer Guillermo del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth), the Spanish thriller had the little-used hairs on the back of my neck on red alert for sustained spells. Bravo.
The Duchess was a rare beast - a lively, energetic period movie.
It also had extraordinary resonances to the Diana era and ought to have been a bigger hit for Kiera Knightley.
Cruelly overlooked in cinemas, but a deeply incisive study of the links and divisions that can both bind and destroy families everywhere, Before The Devil Knows You're Dead was revered director Sidney Lumet's (Dog Day Afternoon / Network / Serpico) 49th movie.
Although he turned 84 in June, his powers have clearly not diminished in the FIFTY years since his Oscar nomination in 1958 for directing 12 Angry Men. This was as good as any film he has made.
In The Valley of Elah was directed by Paul Haggis, the first man to write two successive Academy Award-winning best pictures - Million Dollar Baby and Crash.
Unlike the directors of The Kingdom, Lions for Lambs and Rendition, Haggis succeeded in getting to the heart of the legacy of warfare and helped Tommy Lee Jones to an Oscar nomination.
The delayed release of Gone Baby Gone was a shock, because after all of his wooden performances on screen of late, director Ben Affleck delivered a cracking thriller based on a novel by Mystic River's Dennis Lehane.
No Country For Old Men won the best picture Oscar and, if you'd followed all of my Academy Awards winning tips this year Ladbrokes would have given you odds of nearly 40-1.
But I still don't like the end of the gorgeously-stylish Coen Bros film enough to lift it higher than ninth.
In tenth place, another overlooked film - Happy-Go-Lucky.
Written and directed by Mike Leigh, this part driving school comedy was a real hoot, with a winning performance from star Sally Hawkins.
The next film to emerge with such energy will be from Leigh's fellow Mancunian, Danny Boyle, whose irresistible Slumdog Millionaire opens in January.
Finally, in a year when we were given 'spoofs' as bad as Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans, Superhero Movie it would be remiss not to mourn the passing of Anthony Minghella (March 18, aged 54) and Sydney Pollack (May 26, aged 73), joint producers of Kate Winslet's new film, The Reader.
To lose one of these guys would have been sad enough.
But for both to go within ten weeks of each other was terrible news when you consider a) what gems they could still have made and b) what dross others might now give us in their place.
+ As a means of helping you with your DVD selections this year, I've created a selection of top ten lists from 2008 to cater for all tastes.

FILMS OF THE YEAR
1. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
2. The Orphanage
3. The Dark Knight
4. The Duchess
5. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
6. Before The Devil Knows You're Dead
7. In the Valley of Elah
8. Gone Baby Gone
9. No Country For Old Men
10. Happy-Go-Lucky
Bubbling under (in alphabetical order): Changeling, Charlie Wilson's War, Juno, Mamma Mia!, Man On Wire, Persepolis, [REC], Son of Rambow, Sweeney Todd, There Will Be Blood, U2 3D, Wall-E, Waltz With Bashir.

MEN
1. The Dark Knight
2. Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
3. Quantum of Solace
4. Son of Rambow
5. Body of Lies
6. Taken
7. In Bruges
8. Street Kings
9. In the Valley of Elah
10. No Country For Old Men
Bubbling under:
Appaloosa, The Baader Meinhof Complex, The Bank Job, Gomorrah, Gone Baby Gone, Hancock, Iron Man, The Mist, Righteous Kill, Son of Rambow, What Just Happened.

WOMEN
1. Mamma Mia!
2. Happy-Go-Lucky
3. Sex And The City
4. The Duchess
5. Easy Virtue
6. I've Loved You So Long
7. Priceless
8. Juno
9. Penelope
10. 27 Dresses
Bubbling under: Changeling, Closing the Ring, Easy Virtue, Fool's Gold, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Lars and the Real Girl, Nights in Rodanthe, The Other Boleyn Girl, PS I Love You, The Secret Life of Bees, Sweeney Todd, Then She Found Me, The Visitor, The Women.

TURKEYS
1. Disaster Movie
1. Meet the Spartans
1. Superhero Movie
1. Lady Godiva
5. The Happening
6. Adulthood
7. Incendiary
8. WAZ
9. Be Kind Rewind
10. Cassandra's Dream
Bubbling under: Accidental Husband, AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem; The Cottage, Four Christmases, The Hottie and the Nottie, Margot at the Wedding, Redacted, Smart People, What Happens in Vegas.

FOREIGN
1. The Diving Bell and The Butterfly
2. The Orphanage
3. [REC]
4. Waltz With Bashir
5. Persepolis
6. Gomorrah
7. Priceless
8. The Baader Meinhof Complex
9. The Italian
10. Jar City
Bubbling under: Caramel; Four Minutes; Four Months, Three Weeks, Two Days; Heavy Metal in Baghdad; Lust, Caution; Mongol, The Wave.

FAMILIES
1. The Spiderwick Chronicles
2. Journey to the Centre of the Earth 3D
3. Wall-E
4. Penelope
5. Kung Fu Panda (IMAX)
6. Madagascar Escape 2 Africa (IMAX)
7. High School Musical 3
8. Dr Seuss' Horton Hears A Who!
9. The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep
10. Inkheart

Bubbling under: Arctic Tale, Azur and Asmar, The Fox and the Child, Fly Me to the Moon 3D, Nim's Island, Space Chimps, The Tale of Despereaux, The Ugly Duckling and Me.

BLOCKBUSTERS
1. The Dark Knight (IMAX)
2. Quantum of Solace
3. The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
4. Iron Man
5. Hellboy 2
6. Sex and the City
7. Australia
8. The Incredible Hulk
9. National Treasure 2
10. Eagle Eye (IMAX)
Bubbling under: Speed Racer, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Mummy 3, The Day the Earth Stood Still.

PICK 'N' MIX
1. Charlie Wilson's War
2. Changeling
3. Lars and the Real Girl
4. Man On Wire
5. Easy Virtue
6. W.
7. What Just Happened
8. Black Water
9. Sweet Land
10. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Bubbling under: The Bank Job, Dan in Real Life, Fool's Gold, In Bruges, In Search of a Midnight Kiss, The Savages, Street Kings,
Tropic Thunder, Twilight.

COMEDIES
1. Mamma Mia!
2. Happy-Go-Lucky
3. Taken
4. Rambo
5. Transporter 3
6. Easy Virtue
7. What Just Happened
8. Priceless
9. W.
10. 27 Dresses
Bubbling under:
Baby Mama, Ghost Town, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa; Pineapple Express, The Rocker, Step Brothers, Swing Vote, The Wackness.