Rabbit Room

10. The Signal (dir. David Bruckner, Dan Bush, & Jacob Gentry)
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0780607/
Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/signal
Trailer: Youtube

The Signal is a callback to anthology films of horror’s golden past, as well as a clever update. The three main segments were each written and directed by different filmmakers, who picked up where the last one left off so the other two had no idea what was going on in the others’ segments. The second segment proved to be violently divisive among audiences and critics, but I for one was pleasantly surprised by it. A fun, unique take on a 28 Days Later-esque apocalypse… anything else would be telling.

9. Inside (dir. Alexandre Bustillo & Julien Maury)
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0856288/
Metacritic: none
Trailer: Youtube

I’m sort of breaking my own rule here, or at least stretching it. Inside was picked up for distribution by the Weinstein brothers, who quickly sent it directly to DVD. However, it did receive a wide release in the US in 2008, it just happened to be on DVD. Which is a damned shame– this is a great film to see in a theater full of freaked-out people. A beautiful, relentless monster that will put you through the wringer and then some. It’s pretty sick that this is the first film from these directors, it’s absolutely stunning.

8. Speed Racer (dir. The Wachowski Brothers)
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0811080/
Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/speedracer
Trailer: Youtube

Critics and audiences stayed away in droves, but this one seems to be a case where 90% of the potential audience just didn’t get it. The Wachowski Brothers made a complete 180-degree turn away from the dark, pretentious sci-fi of their Matrix trilogy and spent $200 million making a goofy cartoon whose eye candy quotient was only slightly edged out by Tarsem’s The Fall. This should have been huge and steered sci-fi away from more dank space hallways and misery planets; instead, its failure ensures at least another couple years of mopey, self-serious sci-fi films. Dammit!

7. Dance of the Dead (dir. Gregg Bishop)
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0926063/
Metacritic: none
Trailer: Youtube

Another one that went straight to DVD, and another damned shame. I saw Dance of the Dead at the Horrorhound Weekend in Indianapolis, and it was like a rock concert. This is a movie tailor-made to be shown to theaters full of horror fans. It’s basically an update of Night of the Creeps, only without that film’s weird 1950s parallel storyline and with Andrew WK on the soundtrack. Best enjoyed with several people and booze, this is one of the most fun movies of the year.

6. Role Models (dir. David Wain)
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0430922/
Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/rolemodels
Trailer: Youtube

I had no idea this movie was in the works until about a month before it came out, and although I love Paul Rudd I admit I was a little worried. I had absolutely no reason to be, though: Role Models is unquestionably the funniest movie I saw this year. Wain seemingly used a sieve to pan out all the weirdest parts of his other projects and left the hilariously inventive, unrepentantly juvenile part completely intact. Also, KISS. I didn’t laugh anywhere near as hard at anything else this year except Zack and Miri and Tropic Thunder.

5. Iron Man (dir. Jon Favreau)
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0371746/
Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/ironman
Trailer: Youtube

Hands-down, inarguably the best comic book adaptation of all time. Period. It simply nails everything– Robert Downey, Jr. was born to play Tony Stark. It’s insanely fun, the effects are astonishingly convincing, and it’s one of those films that you wish would go on for another couple of hours when it’s over. Plus, it has the ultimate fanboy stinger at the end of the credits. This is why people started making movies out of comic books in the first place.

4. Let the Right One In (dir. Tomas Alfredson)
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1139797/
Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/lettherightonein
Trailer: Youtube

Haunting, beautiful, sad and bittersweet. I made a joke about how Frostbitten (Sweden’s first vampire movie) was more Wes Craven than Ingmar Bergman, and then this movie happened and put that to bed. It’s basically everything you would imagine a Swedish coming-of-age vampire film would be, if you can imagine such a thing. The best vampire film in ages and ages, and if it doesn’t get a nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, someone at AMPAS must have a bitter hatred for anything even vaguely related to the horror genre.

3. Synecdoche, New York (dir. Charlie Kaufman)
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0383028/
Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/synecdocheny
Trailer: Youtube

Charlie Kaufman’s been quiet for some time now, and it turns out this is why. He was busy making the most depressing film since Love Liza, a bizarre, awkward masterpiece about everything in life that really keeps you up at night: fear of failure, fear of rejection, regret, sickness, death, life, success, etc. etc. ad nauseum. The film’s few moments of humor are so dark they suck in any light that surrounds them; the fact that Phillip Seymour Hoffman can hold this entire thing together is nothing short of a miracle. If Kaufman never makes a film again, it’s probably safe to say he’s made his ultimate statement with this one.

2. WALL-E (dir. Andrew Stanton)
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/
Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/walle
Trailer: Youtube

A blatant anti-corporate hard sci-fi film disguised as a family movie? Sure. However, whether you’re disgusted by its messages (implied or imagined), you can’t argue that WALL-E and Eve are the cutest damned robots in film history. Or that their relationship is one of the most heartwarming in recent memory. WALL-E is Pixar’s crowning achievement, a stunning leap forward from filmmakers who have almost always consistently pushed their technology and storytelling to new heights with each project. This is why CG animation exists.

1. My Winnipeg (dir. Guy Maddin)
IMDB: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1093842/
Metacritic: http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/mywinnipeg
Trailer: Youtube

Guy Maddin has described his last couple of films as “autobiographical,” which is somewhat confusing since one (Cowards Bend the Knee) is about how his mother was the ghost of a hairdresser and his dad was an installation at a hockey museum and the other (Brand Upon the Brain!) explains how he lived in a lighthouse orphanage where his mother kept watch on all the kids while his dad worked on experiments in the basement, even after he died. My Winnipeg is his latest autobiographical film, but this time it feels a lot closer to the truth. While Maddin freely mixes truths and fictions about the history of Winnipeg and his own life, everything about the film feels real and immediate– who doesn’t remember weird stories of their hometowns? This is easily Maddin’s most accessible film yet, often hilarious but also sometimes painfully nostalgic, with a devastating conclusion that had me in tears all three times I went to see it.