Movie of the year nominations

The fourth category in the ‘Best Of’ awards is for movie of the year.

This year the usual assortment of big blockbuster sequels arrived but generally received underwhelming responses. Pirates Of The Caribbean and Spiderman 3 both disappointed with convoluted or lackluster story lines and by trying to fit in too many superfluous characters. In contrast other sequels like The Bourne Ultimatum and Die Hard 4 kept audiences enthralled with over the top action scenes and car chases.

This year we were also lucky enough to receive a number of movies with original or wacky story-lines including Sunshine, Stranger Than Fiction, Zodiac, No Land For Old Men and the mind-fucking Inland Empire. Other movies that stood out from the crowd included Hot Fuzz, Eastern Promises and Superbad which all managed to successfully pay homage to previous cult favorites such as Bad Boys, Die Hard, Godfather or American Pie.

While most people chose to download or watch movies at home, there were still a few offerings that benefited from the big screen such as the surprise hit The Transformers. Who would have thought that something based around a 23 yr old cartoon and toy range would have been so popular? The snappy dialog and enthusiastic cast moved things along at a energetic pace while the 40 minute climactic robot battle offered one of the most exciting movie endings of the year. The Zack Synder movie 300 also dilivered plenty of bloodthirsty action but the nonexistant storyline and poor script dissapointed those who were expecting a true sword and sandels epic. While the same could be said for the movie Beowulf it really shone on the IMAX screen in 3D. The breathtaking action scenes, brilliant stop motion SFX and effective 3D effects perfectly showcased what movies are capable of and what we can hopefully expect in the future.

On another note the screen writers guild of America got in a pay dispute with their movie distributors this year. Since script writers don’t receive royalties for their content displayed on the internet they ended up going on strike until the problem is resolved. While this will mainly affect TV shows it will also impact the release of new movie scripts. It will therefore be interesting to see whether this development will affect any movies being released in the next year.

1. 28 Weeks Later: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
2. 300: Zack Synder
3. Beowulf 3D: Robert Zemeckis
4 The Bourne Ultimatum: Paul Greengrass
5. Die Hard 4.0: Len Wiseman
6. Eastern Promises: David Chronenberg
7. Harry Potter :David Yates
8. Hot Fuzz: Edgar Wright
9. The Illusionist: Neil Burger
10. Inland Empire: David Lynch
11.The King Of Kong: Seth Gordon
12. No Land For Old Men: Joel & Ethan Coen
13. Pirates Of The Caribbean: Gore Verbinski
14. The Simpsons: David Silverman
15. Spiderman 3: Sam Raimi
16. Stranger Than Fiction: Mark Forster
17. Sunshine: Danny Boyle
18. Superbad: Greb Mottola
19. Transformers: Michael Bay
20. Zodiac: David Fincher