Lorna’s Silence, the Dardennes’ latest film (and winner of the best screenplay prize at Cannes in 2008), is yet another masterpiece—if not their best work then at least their most emotionally complex. It’s a film that left me incapacitated and breathless in my seat as the credits rolled.

Funny People is a funny movie. But it’s also serious. It mixes genre in a way that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, and this will frustrate many viewers. It’s also a Judd Apatow film, which means there are about fifty too many penis jokes, lots of bromance comedy shenanigans, and touches of emotional depth and “growing up” insights. As part of the Apatow canon, it fits nicely in with The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, rounding out the trilogy (if you want to call it a trilogy) with an appropriate graduation to existential self-awareness.

(500) Days of Summer is a love story for my generation. Though it proudly declares at the outset that “this is not a love story,” the film is wholly about love. Or rather, it’s about our discombobulated, postmodern idea of love mixed with the rapturous ephemera of passion and romance. It’s about how difficult love is for a generation of youngsters who haven’t seen love first hand (their parents are usually divorced) and yet have been fed a steady stream of love abstractions as filtered through soap operas and The Sound of Music and Jesus and Mary Chain songs. This is a movie about “movie-style” love and “movie-style” life. It’s about the difficulties that arise when our ideas of love and life come entirely through artist renderings and Hollywood fakery.

The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break), is far and away the best film about our current war in Iraq. And it’s easily also one of the best films of the year. If you’re looking for nonstop action, white-knuckled suspense, and emotionally draining human drama this summer, I doubt you will find any film more satisfying than this.

There is a lot that could be said about Public Enemies—a lot, for example, about the HD digital photography which is perhaps the most polarizing aspect of the film for many audiences. For a really insightful take on the visual style of the film, I recommend Manohla Dargis’ review for The New York Times (a review I happen to totally agree with).

I like Dave Eggers, and I really liked A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But there were times in reading that book when I was like, “okay, I get it: your family is screwed up, life if a torrent of never-ending hassles and wonders and beauties and tragedies. Point established. Welcome to the world."

In the next couple of weeks, I will be posting my "Best Films of the First Half" list, just as I did last year. High on the list will no doubt be Munyurangabo, a fictional film about post-genocide Rwanda that I saw at the City of Angels Film Festival earlier this year and which totally blew me away (watch the trailer here). I met the film's director, Lee Isaac Chung, after the screening and later had an in-depth interview with him for Christianity Today. You can read that interview here.

Dear Zachary is a documentary by an average guy—Kurt Kuenne—who set out to make an homage film about his best friend who was tragically murdered. It’s not an average film. It’s a masterpiece that had me in tears pretty much start-to-finish. I haven’t been as punched-in-the-gut wrecked by a movie since the last 20 minutes of United 93. Dear Zachary came out in 2008 and would have made my top ten list for sure. It’s now out on DVD and available on Netflix. WATCH IT NOW. But beware: it is relentlessly affecting.

The phrase “goodbye Solo” is never uttered out loud in Goodbye Solo, but in the film’s key scene it is the central sentiment. And it is conveyed in an old man’s eyes. It’s not really there, but it’s implied. And the same could be said for Goodbye Solo at large: it’s a film of remarkable restraint and subtle suggestion, where so many “points” aren’t hammered home as much as they are delicately positioned for us to coax them into place. It’s a rare film in the way that it knocks you down without ever having to so much as blow in your direction.

Joaquin Phoenix is a great actor. He was amazing in films likes Gladiator, To Die For, Quills, The Village, Signs, and Walk the Line, among many others. He’s been nominated for two Academy Awards. He’s an actor of mysterious, artsy repute, born of cultish hippie Vegans in Puerto Rico and brother of the late River Phoenix. But Joaquin’s best acting performance so far is happening right now, in 2009, and you can see it in theaters.

I’m talking about his work in the new film, Two Lovers.

When U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently visited with President Barack Obama at the White House, the two dignitaries customarily exchanged gifts. Brown gave Obama a pen holder made from wood from the anti-slave ship HMS Gannet. Neat. Obama gave Brown a custom box set of 25 DVDs that best represent American cinema. Nice idea. But lest you think Obama picked the films out himself, you should know that he had the American Film Institute pick the films for him. And unsurprisingly, the 25 they came up with conspicuously mirrored the AFI’s top 25 films from their 2007 “best American films” list. Borrrring.

Los Angeles is without a doubt the most visually documented city in the world. But it is also one of the least known or truly understood. What is this place we call L.A.? Besides all the Hollywood stuff, what is its history and culture? How do we make sense of it amidst all the glittered sidewalks, scientologists, palm trees, car chases, sunset strips and skid rows?

The following is a list of five films that came out in 2008 that the Oscars largely overlooked, but which collectively put a very evocative, human face on the struggles of the day. These films portray average people doing their best to survive. They are people without jobs, with kids to feed, facing hardship after hardship. In this way, they are films that represent the larger human struggle—to make a living and support oneself and one’s family by whatever means necessary. It’s an uphill battle; the foes are many. But the human will to survive is a strong one. These films present snapshots of what are likely very common stories in this ever-weakening economy—sometimes very bleak and sometimes curiously hopeful, but always compelling because we can so relate. They are beautiful films that I highly recommend.

One of the films nominated in the upcoming Academy Awards’ best foreign film category, The Class is also the first great film I’ve seen in 2009. It’s a film that compelled me from start to finish and left me feeling more curious and inquisitive about the world. Not every film does this for me.

I thought The Reader was pretty good, and Kate Winslet was certainly terrific in it, but a best picture nominee??? I could think of at least ten movies from last year that are more deserving (see any listed here). Alas, the fact that it is at least partially about the Holocaust lends The Reader the sort of gravitas that Academy voters love. But there are much better Holocaust-themed films out there than The Reader, and just in case you hadn’t seen any of them, here are five of the best:

Not that I make much of a difference, but I figure it’s time to throw my digital weight behind a film that I really would like to see get nominated for best picture on Thursday when the Oscar nominations are announced. I saw this for the second time last week, and it impressed me even more than the first time. Clint Eastwood’s film is small, unique, and deceptively simple. And it’s about America.

Here are my top ten favorite movies of 2008, with an additional 15 honorable mentions that could easily have made the best ten as well. This list has gone through many variations in recent weeks, as I’ve seen a few films more than once or some for the first time. But I’m quite satisfied with the final ten I’ve narrowed it down to. These are the films that thrilled me the most in 2008.

And so as I watched David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I couldn’t help but reflect: what is life, indeed what is time, if not a series of entrances and exits and movements and moments? It all happens so quickly, and yet it is so vast.