2008 is over. 2009 has begun. But before we can move on, we must look back. Time for the 2008 FOYBLES~! It's that magical time when I dish out my own personal movie awards, good and bad, to the motion pictures of 2008. These categories will lead into this month's Foyeurism, a thrashing of my choice for the single worst movie of 2008. You know me; I always save the worst for last. As always, the opinions expressed here are strictly my own and you are free to disagree. But as a reminder, I am the guy that gave The Gingerdead Man a four star review. I clearly know more about cinema than you.

And when you finish with these awards you can surf on over to Dread Central and listen to the newest, long overdue edition of the Foycast (LINK HERE) - the first in six months! - devoted to my list of the 10 worst direct-to-DVD horror movies of 2008. I'm definitely prepared to kick-off 2009 by keeping your eyes and ears busy. So let's waste no more time with ramblin' preambles and get right into...

THE 2008 FOYBLES

BEST MOVIE OF 2008: You might recall that last year I didn't pick anything for best movie because I said I didn't see anything that truly impressed me. I even included a category of movies that critics insisted were great that I had no interest in seeing. I'm not making that mistake again, especially since in February I watched Zodiac (a film on that list of movies I had no interest in) and declared it the best movie of 2007. I'm stating all this because I'm hesitant to declare a best movie of 2008 just yet because there are still some major movies I've yet to see, such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Wrestler, Doubt, Revolutionary Road, Rachel Getting Married. However, I somehow don't think any of those films will dethrone the two films I've seen that currently are neck-and-neck for my top pick of 2008. Those two films: The Dark Knight and Gran Torino.

I'm not your typically Batman fanboy and never have been but The Dark Knight sure made me feel like one. Not a perfect movie by any means and I don't care. The sum of its parts greatly outweigh its missteps. Great performances across the board led by Heath Ledger's masterful take on The Joker, a role guaranteed to go down as one of the all-time great movie villains. I saw it twice at the theater and I've watched it a few more times on DVD.

Gran Torino has received something of a snobby reaction from many critics who clearly resent Clint Eastwood's tremendous success the past few years for not quite being artistic enough for their tastes. Screw'em! Gran Torino is definitely a crowd pleaser even though it's not an entirely happy movie. Eastwood owns the movie playing a character that's something of a cross between Dirty Harry and Archie Bunker. His contemptuous relationship with his own family and initially racist attitude towards his Asian neighbors (and every other minority and ethnicity) provides enormous laughs even as it gets to the heart of a man with a heavy burden on his shoulders. The scene where he takes the young Asian lad to the barber shop to "man him up" was the funniest thing I've seen all year. This is vintage Eastwood playing a skewered take on his typical Eastwood character and one of the most enjoyable films I've seen all year. Just a great, great movie that deserves more respect than it has gotten from the more high-minded critics out there.

OTHER 2008 FAVORITES: Slumdog Millionaire, Iron Man, Let The Right One In, Death Note, Tropic Thunder, Cloverfield, Milk, Rambo, Man on Wire, The Bank Job, and Bigger, Stronger, Faster

DECENT MOVIES BUT NOTHING SPECIAL: The Express, The Strangers, Teeth, Mongol, Traitor, Lakeview Terrace, Appaloosa, The Duchess, Bolt, Redbelt, The Incredible Hulk

MOVIE MOST CRITICS LOVE THAT LEFT ME COLD: Frost/Nixon. Great performances by the two leads but until the last 35-minutes I found it to be rather dull and unengaging.

MOVIE MOST OF THE ONLINE FANBOY CRITICS LOVE THAT I GREATLY DISLIKED: Speed Racer. At 90-minutes I still wouldn't have cared much for it but at least it wouldn't have been such an intolerably long pastel holocaust.

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING: Valkyre, Frost/Nixon, W., Body of Lies, Hancock

MOVIE YOU'D PROBABLY BE MOST SUPRISED TO KNOW I HAVEN'T SEEN: Wall-E

MOVIES I SHOULD HAVE HATED BUT DIDN'T: The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Twilight, Punisher: War Zone

MOVIES I SHOULD HAVE LOVED BUT DIDN'T: Doomsday, The Transporter 3, Death Race

MOVIE I WOULD HAVE HATED HAD IT NOT BEEN IN 3-D: Journey to the Center of the Earth

MOVIE I WOULDN'T EVEN SEE IN 3-D: Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour

MOVIE I CAN'T BELIEVE WASN'T ACTUALLY MADE IN THE 1970S: The Haunting of Molly Hartley

MOVIE I CAN'T BELIEVE WASN'T ACTUALLY MAKE BY SOMEONE WITH AN IQ OF 70: Disaster Movie

MOVIE I CAN'T BELIEVE I ACTUALLY SAW IN A THEATER: Over Her Dead Body

MOVIE I CAN'T BELIEVE ACTUALLY PLAYED IN A THEATER: The 13th Alley

MOVIE I MAY HAVE BEEN THE ONLY PERSON TO SEE IN A THEATER: Proud American

MOVIE THAT PROBABLY WOULD HAVE BEEN A LOT COOLER IF IT HAD BEEN MADE 15 YEARS AGO: The Forbidden Kingdom

MOVIE THAT PROBABLY WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER IF IT WERE MADE 15 YEARS FROM NOW: W.

MOST OVERRATED MOVIE OF THE YEAR: Hellboy II: The Golden Army. I enjoyed the movie but I do not understand the amount of praise it's had heaped onto it by many in the fanboy community. No denying the production values and some of the set pieces, but I found the story to be sorely lacking.

MOST HYPOCRITICAL MOVIE OF THE YEAR: Untraceable. Nothing like ranting against the voyeuristic aspects of viral videos while reveling in that very same sensationalism. This year's The Condemned.

MOST HYPOCRITICAL DOCUMENTARY OF THE YEAR: Religulous. Bill Maher shot himself in his own foot with that climactic fire & brimstone speech about why all religion needs to be destroyed before it can destroy mankind that sounded exactly like the very kind of apocalyptic religious zealotry he'd just spent 90-minutes railing against.

INDIANA JONES & THE SENSE OF PROFOUND DISAPPOINTMENT: Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

BAD MOVIES I PREDICT WILL BECOME FUTURE CULT FAVORITES: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Mirrors, The 13th Alley, Punisher: War Zone, The Happening

MOST ANGER INDUCING MOVIE OF THE YEAR: The Day the Earth Stood Still

DUMBEST MOVIE OF THE YEAR THAT THOUGHT IT WAS SMART: Eagle Eye

MOST UNHIP MOVIE OF THE YEAR THAT THOUGHT IT WAS COOL: Wanted AKA 'Fight Club for Dummies'

WTF!?! WAS THAT?: Jumper. The tagline was "Nothing is Impossible" but should have been "Nothing is Explainable"

MOVIE TRENDS I'M SICK OF: chick flicks about weddings, talking animal CGI movies, spoof films that just make references to other movies, pointless horror remakes

SINGLE GREATEST ACTING PERFORMANCE OF 2008: The late Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight

RUNNERS-UP: Sean Penn in Milk, Frank Langella in Frost/Nixon, Robert Downey Jr. in both Iron Man and Tropic Thunder, Lina Leandersson in Let the Right One In, Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight, Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino

WORST ACTING OF 2008: Thandie Newton as Condoleeza Rice in W., over half the cast of Proud American, Rodney Carrington in Beer for My Horses, Liv Tyler in The Incredible Hulk, Jayden Smith in The Day the Earth Stood Still, Rachel Bilson in Jumper, most of the cast of The 13th Alley, Nicole Parker as the Amy Adams' Enchanted princess in Disaster Movie, Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel in The Happening, Samuel L. Jackson in The Spirit, The love interest from The Transporter 3, Michael Madsen in House, and the 1-2-3 punch in the face of Tag Hilgenbrink, Angus Sutherland, and Corey Feldman in Lost Boys: The Tribe

WORST PERFORMANCE BY AN ENTIRE CAST: If you were a cast member of Disaster Movie then you have nothing to be proud of today.

MISCASTING CHOICE OF THE YEAR: Mila Kunis as a machine gun-toting Russian asskicker in Max Payne

GOOD PERFORMANCES IN NOT-SO-GOOD MOVIES: Billy Bob Thornton in Eagle Eye, Matthew Fox and John Goodman in Speed Racer, Gillian Anderson in X-Files: I Want to Believe, Josh Brolin in W., Ray Stevenson and Dominic West in Punisher: War Zone, Ian McShane in Death Race, the satanic chipmonks in Disaster Movie, Djimon Hounsou in Never Back Down

HEY, DON'T YOU KNOW THERE ARE STARVING ACTORS IN AFRICA WITH NO SCENERY OF THEIR OWN TO CHEW ON: Matthew Lillard in In The Name of the the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

ACTRESS I'D LOVE TO SEE MORE OF AS LONG AS IT'S NOT IN THE FORM OF ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE: Amber Heard

ACTRESS I'D LIKE TO SEE LESS OF: Jennifer Aniston. And while you're at it, could you stop bitching about Brad & Angelina too?

MAYBE HE CAN ACT AFTER ALL: Jean-Claude Van Damme in JCVD

WELCOME BACK: Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler

PLEASE GO AWAY: Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer, the makers of Meet The Spartans and Disaster Movie

DUDE, IT'S OVER: George Lucas. You've gone from Luke Skywalker to Darth Vader. Search your heart. You know it to be true.

ACTOR MOST IN NEED OF SOMEONE LOSING THEIR GRIP ON A NINTENDO WII CONTROLLER AND HAVING IT WIND UP IMPALED INTO HIS SKULL (AKA THE ROB SCHNEIDER MEMORIAL AWARD): Nicolas Cage

BEST VILLAIN: Heath Ledger as The Joker in The Dark Knight (Duh!)

BEST NON-VILLAINOUS VILLAIN: Tom Cruise as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder

MOST VILLAINOUS VILLAIN: The Communist, sport-killing, drug-peddling, genocidal, pedophile general from Rambo. To quote Bart Simpson, "That's one evil dude."

WORST VILLAIN OF THE YEAR: Whatever his name was from The Transporter 3

WORST VILLAINS OF THE YEAR: The three escaped criminals seeking revenge against Hancock

WORST HENCHMEN OF THE YEAR: The identical morons from The Spirit

BEST MOVIE ABOUT REUNITED LOVERS: Slumdog Millionaire

WORST MOVIE ABOUT REUNITED LOVERS: Jumper

WORST LOVE STORY OF THE YEAR: Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman's non-sexual love for a young aboriginal half-breed boy in Australia

LEAST PLAUSIBLE COUPLING: Paul Rudd and Eva Longoria in Over Her Dead Body

LEAST PLAUSIBLE LOVE TRIANGLE: Two handsome, highly successful men are fighting over Maggie Gyllenhaal in The Dark Knight

LEAST CREDIBLE SERIAL KILLER: Leelee Sobieski's psychotic, bisexual, junior attorney in love with a mass murderer in 88 Minutes

WORST PERFORMANCE BY AN INANIMATE OBJECT MASQUERADING AS A LIVING ORGANISM: Costas Mandylor in Saw V

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR FEIGNING A CONCUSSION PLAYING A CHARACTER NOT SUFFERING FROM A CONCUSSION: Mark Wahlberg in The Happening

BEST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR WHO APPEARED TO BE SUFFERING FROM A BOWEL OBSTRUCTION NOT ACTUALLY PLAYING A CHARACTER SUFFERING FROM A BOWEL OBSTRUCTION: Mark Wahlberg in Max Payne

ACTRESS WHO MOST NEEDED KIRK LAZARUS' SPEECH ABOUT NOT GOING FULL RETARD: Rachel Bilson's doe-eyed retard love interest in Jumper

MOST ANNOYING LOVER INTEREST: The red-headed, Russian, freckle-faced, boozing, pill popping, constantly whining, party gal from The Transporter 3

MORE LIKE SULLEN RAGER: Emile Hirch's overly serious, angst ridden take on Speed Racer

MOVIE CHARACTER WHOSE NAME YOU CANNOT BELIEVE WAS NOT A POKEMON CHARACTER: Vin Diesel's "Toorop" in Babylon A.D.

MOST AWESOMELY NAMED ACTOR: Cam Gigandet of Never Back Down and Twilight because his last name features the name of my favorite Godzilla foe

WORST ANIMATED CHARACTER OF THE YEAR: Ziro the Gay Hutt that talks like Truman Capote from Star Wars: The Clone Wars

BEST ROBOT: Dr. Johann Krauss from Hellboy II: The Golden Army (Sorry, Wall-E)

SUPERHERO MOST IN NEED OF A THROAT LOZENGE: Christian Bale's Batman voice in The Dark Knight

MOST DIVERSE NAZIS: The cavalcade of non-German accents heard in Valkyrie

THE ALWAY A BRIDESMAID, NEVER A BRIDE AWARD: Judy Greer in 27 Dresses. She's a fine actress and quite attractive but because she's not considered more conventionally beautiful she's always relegated to playing second fiddle to lesser actresses in these wedding porn romantic comedies.

BEST ACTION SEQUENCES OF 2008: Iron Man goes to Afghanistan, the opening bank heist and the convoy chase in The Dark Knight, the opening movie-within-a-movie action sequence from Bolt, the killing spree climax of Rambo, getting caught in the crossfire between the monster and the military in Cloverfield, the final fight along the side of a building in Chocolate

WORST ACTION SEQUENCES OF 2008: the very disappointing long-awaited fight between Jackie Chan and Jet Li in The Forbidden Kingdom, the ending car chase from Babylon A.D., all of the car fu from Speed Racer (Sorry, it didn't impress or excite me), the Kung Fu Panda spoof fight from Disaster Movie, the climax of Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the Will Smith/Charlize Theron street battle in Hancock

BEST MOVIE KILLS OF 2008: The pencil trick in The Dark Knight, the rooftop rocket launchering in Punisher: War Zone, the arrow in the neck/land mine combo and turning the jeep driver to hamburger meat in Rambo, flaming Krug catapult in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale, Amy Smart's mirror image face-ripping in Mirrors, the guy getting sideswiped in Death Race, the swimming pool sequence from Let the Right One In

MOST CONTRIVED MEANS BY WHICH TO COMMIT SUICIDE: Will Smith's ice water bathtub death-by-poison box jellyfish

MOST IMPRACTICAL MEANS OF ANNIHILATING MANKIND: The giant cloud of all-consuming nanobots in The Day the Earth Stood Still. At the rate it was going that would've take a few weeks or months to wipe humanity off the face of the earth

MOST INEXPLICABLE MOVIE MOMENTS OF 2008: nuking the fridge and Shia swinging from vines with the monkeys in Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Jessica Alba declaring war on light bulbs in The Eye, glittering vampires in Twilight, the full contact baptism from The Haunting of Molly Hartley, too numerous to list in The Day the Earth Stood Still, the gentile couple explaining the meaning of a menorrah to the Jewish couple in Proud American, the final 10 minutes of Mirrors, Joan Allen uttering "Fuck with me and we'll see who shits on the sidewalk!" in Death Race, the cellular phone exorcism in One Missed Call, blinking morse code with your eyes while having your flesh burnt off in a vat of battery acid in Untraceable, the hot dog conversation in The Happening, the firetruck nearly hitting Al Pacino in 88 Minutes, the entire running time of Eagle Eye

WORST SECOND HALF OF ANY MOVIE THIS YEAR: Hancock

WORST TWIST ENDING: All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

WORST ALL-AROUND ENDING OF THE YEAR: Babylon A.D. If you saw that film or read my Foyeurism about it then you know why

LAMEST RUNNING GAG: Arguing about whether angels have wings in Over Her Dead Body

OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN THE FIELD OF DELIVERING AWKWARD DIALOGUE AWKWARDLY: Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in Twilight

WORLD RECORD HOLDER FOR MOST WHITE PEOPLE WITH DREADLOCKS IN A NON-REGGAE THEMED MOTION PICTURE: 10,000 B.C.

NOTHING LIKE GIVING AWAY THE MOVIE'S FINAL SHOT IN EVERY SINGLE TRAILER AND TV SPOT: Quarantine

DIDN'T I SEE THIS MOVIE ONCE BEFORE WHEN IT WAS CALLED WARRIORS OF VIRTUE?: The Forbidden Kingdom

SHOULD'VE JUST CAST MATT DAMON AND CALLED IT 'THE BOND SUPREMACY': Quantum of Solace

SOMEONE DIDN'T GET THE MEMO THAT THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS AN INSPIRATIONAL, LIFE AFFIRMING MOTION PICTURE ABOUT SUICIDE: Seven Pounds. Any real movie would have treated Will Smith's character as a deeply disturbed individual, not the Fresh Saint of Bel-Aire.

MOVIE YOU'D BE MOST LIKELY TO HALLUCINATE IF YOU SUFFER FROM A BRAIN TUMOR AND WATCH A LOT OF ANIME: Speed Racer

FITTING IT'S ALL ABOUT PEOPLE RUNNING AWAY FROM THE WIND BECAUSE THIS MOVIE BLOWS: The Happening

AND THAT'S TIME OF YOUR LIFE YOU'LL NEVER GET BACK: 88 Minutes

GREATEST MANTRA THAT ALSO DOUBLES AS A FILM'S TITLE: Never Back Down

THE ONLY WAY TO NEVER BACK DOWN IS TO NEVER BACK DOWN: Never Back Down

BEST CLIMACTIC MUSICAL NUMBER: The end credits Bollywood number from Slumdog Millionaire

WORST CLIMACTIC MUSICAL NUMBER: The "I'm sleeping with Matt Damon" number at the end of Disaster Movie

WORST OPENING SONG: Jack White & Alicia Keys' "Another Way to Die" from Quantum of Solace

BEST CLOSING CREDITS SCORE: Michael Giacchino's "Roar!" from Cloverfield

BEST DUET: Hellboy and Abe Sapien singing Barry Manilow in Hellboy II: The Golden Army

WORST DUET: Katherine Heigl and James Marsden singing "Benny and the Jets" in 27 Dresses

MOVIE SOUNDTRACK THAT WILL PROBABLY BE PLAYING ON A LOOP IN HELL ASSUMING SEAN HANNITY TRULY IS SATAN HIMSELF AND PAT BOONE IS HIS INFERNAL DJ: every single original song heard in Proud American

BEST ANIMATED SEQUENCE IN A NON-ANIMATED MOVIE: The Golden Army backstory from Hellboy II: The Golden Army

BEST UNOFFICIAL REMAKE OF THE MOVIE MIRACLE MILE: Cloverfield

WORST UNOFFICIAL REMAKE OF HALLOWEEN: Prom Night

BEST MOVIE EVER MADE BASED AROUND A NON-RIGGED GAME SHOW: Slumdog Millionaire

BEST MOVIE EVER MADE ABOUT WINDSHIELD WIPERS: Flash of Genius

BEST MOVIE EVER NAMED AFTER A DAIRY PRODUCT NOT ACTUALLY ABOUT A DAIRY PRODUCT: Milk

BEST HEIST MOVIE NOT ACTUALLY ABOUT A HEIST: Man on Wire

BEST MOVIE BASED ON A VIDEO GAME TITLED DUNGEON SIEGE THAT DID NOT INVOLVE EITHER A DUNGEON OR A SIEGE: In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

BEST MOVIE FEATURING A KILLER CROCODILE THAT DIDN'T GET RELEASED TO THEATERS: Rogue

WORST MOVIE FEATURING KILLER OSTRICHES THAT DID: 10,000 B.C.

BEST IMPRESSION OF A PSYCHOPATHIC FORREST GUMP: Jonathon Schaech as the Prom Night killer

BEST IMPRESSION OF A PERPETUALLY STARTLED LEMUR: Zooey Deschanel in The Happening

BEST IMPRESSION OF JOJO THE DOGFACED BOY: Taylor Lautner as Jacob in Twilight

MOST UNCANNY RESEMBLANCE: Tilda Swinton and the monster from Cloverfield

SILLIEST FACIAL HAIR: William Hurt's mustache in The Incredible Hulk

SILLIEST HEAD OF HAIR (NIC CAGE EXCLUDED FROM THIS CATEGORY): Al Pacino's overly coifed top in 88 Minutes

BEST FACIAL HAIR: Jeff Bridges in Iron Man

BEST TUMOR: that Troll Market demon's talking growth in Hellboy II: The Golden Army

IF YOU COMBINED HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN, UNFROZEN CAVEMAN LAWYER, AND POWDER INTO ONE PERSON AND GAVE HIM MORRISEY'S PERSONALITY: Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen in Twilight

LOOKOUT ROSARIO DAWSON, HERE COMES YOUR INDIAN REPLACEMENT: Slumdog Millionaire's Freida Pinto

BEST USE OF INEXPLICABLE SUPERNATURAL POWERS: The Holy Spirit's Michael Madsen-blasting death ray from House

WORST USE OF INEXPLICABLE SUPERNATURAL POWERS: The half-breed aboriginal boy with the power to control herds of cattle in Australia

MOST EPIC SHOVELING: The burying of Jason Statham's kid in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

MOST GRATUITOUS SHOWER SCENE: Hugh Jackman's slo-mo dumping of a bucket of soapy water on himself in Australia

MOST GRATUITOUS LESBIANS: The Cirque du Soleil man-hating tree elves led by Kristanna Loken in In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

MOST GRATUITOUS PRODUCT PLACEMENT: McDonalds in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Surprised when Keanu finally changed his mind about wiping out mankind he didn't tell humanity the reason why was because "You deserve a break today."

MOST POINTLESS SUBPLOT INVOLVING A SICK BOY WITH A TUMOR: Agent Scully's young patient in X-Files: I Want to Believe

MOST POINTLESS SUBPLOT INVOLVING A SICK GIRL WITH A TUMOR: Molly's sinus cavity tumor in The Haunting of Molly Hartley

MOST AMAZING RECOVERY FROM A SERIOUS INJURY: The girl who got a rebarb through her shoulder yet didn't bleed out or need any first-aid treament in Cloverfield

ONCE WHITE PEOPLE CAME TO AFRICA, SLAVES WERE FREED AND EVERYONE WAS HAPPY: Or so 10,000 B.C. taught me

WORLD'S LONGEST SHOTGUN BLAST: Mark Wahlberg's super slo-mo backwards shotgun blast in Max Payne; three seconds of action that took over a minute to play out.

MOST IMPRESSIVE MEANS OF BRUSHING ONE'S TEETH: Al Pacino's 88 Minutes one-night-stand who brushed her teeth while nude and standing with one leg pulled above her head

POLICE STATION MOST IN NEED OF PAYING ITS LIGHT BILL: The police station in Saw V that was darker than a vampire's tomb

IF I NEVER SEE ANOTHER HEAD FLOAT ACROSS THE SCREEN IT WILL BE TOO SOON: Speed Racer

SORRIEST LOOKING MASKED SLASHER: The killer from The 13th Alley that looked like it was wearing a medieval helmet crafted from a big gas can

THIS IS HOW HORROR IS DONE: Let The Right One In

AND THIS IS NOT: Shutter

BEST UWE BOLL MOVIE OF 2008: In The Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale

WORST UWE BOLL MOVIE OF 2008: Seed

UWE BOLL MOVIE OF 2008 I STILL HAVEN'T SEEN: Postal

UWE BOLL MOVIE OF 2009 I'VE ALREADY SEEN AND IT'S NOT TOO BAD: Tunnel Rats

BEST SCI-FI CHANNEL ORIGINAL MOVIE OF THE YEAR: Loch Ness Terror

WORST SCI-FI CHANNEL ORIGINAL MOVIE OF THE YEAR: Ghouls

WORST ASYLUM MOCKBUSTER OF THE YEAR: Monster

SECOND WORST ASYLUM MOCKBUSTER: Allan Quatermain & the Temple of Skulls

BEST ASYLUM MOCKBUSTER OF THE YEAR: not applicable

DEFINITELY A NOTTIE: The Hottie & the Nottie

PAINFUL: Max Payne

SAWFUL: Saw V

MORE PROPHECIES THAN A NOSTRADAMUS BIOPIC: 10,000 B.C.

WORST REMAKE OF AN ASIAN HORROR MOVIE: (Three-Way Tie) Shutter, The Eye, One Missed Call

MOVIES THAT COULD CURE INSOMNIA: X-Files: I Want to Believe, House, Max Payne, Shutter, The Eye, April Fool's Day, 10,000 B.C.

ALL THE ENTERTAINMENT VALUE OF WATCHING 'TWO GIRLS, ONE CUP' WHILE GETTING TEA BAGGED BY CARROT TOP: Disaster Movie

WORST MOVIE OF 2008 (SECOND RUNNER UP): Max Payne

WORST MOVIE OF 2008 (FIRST RUNNER UP): The X-Files: I Want to Believe

AND THE ABSOLUTE WORST MOVIE OF 2008 IS...

Drumroll please...

On Christmas Day 2008, after completing his annual worldwide toy run, Santa Claus headed back up to the North Pole and filled his sack once more, not with toys this time, but with epic fail, and then headed back off to deliver it to 2,509 movie theaters in the United States alone.

That's not coal in your stocking - that's THE SPIRIT at a theater near you. Merry F'n Christmas!

Frank Miller should be counting his blessings that he wasn't the recipient of any Ebenezer Scrooge action this past Christmas Eve because I assure you if he were to have been visited by the ghosts of three comic book writers past, present, and future, the past ghost would have been The Spirit's creator Will Eisner and he probably would have beaten Miller to death with Tiny Tim's cane long before either of the other ghosts got their crack at him. Considering the present ghost would probably be Alan Moore, he'd probably still show up long enough to stand over Miller's broken corpse just to get the chance to call him a mysoginistic Neanderthal one last time.

Almost kind of a shame because Frank Miller is such a legend in the field of comic books and here he is in his biggest moment ever writing and directing a big screen adaptation of Will Eisner's classic comic THE SPIRIT and it will most assuredly go down as Miller's biggest failure ever in front of the biggest audience possible. Well, maybe not that big an audience judging by the box office numbers. Still, days before the film's tanking news broke that Frank Miller had been tapped to write and direct a big screen BUCK ROGERS movie. Either nobody at the studio actually bothered to watch THE SPIRIT ahead of time or this is the most egregious example of failing upward I've ever heard of. THE SPIRIT is not a movie where your failure should send the filmmaker to the proverbial director's jail. This is the kind of epic failure that ought to send them straight to the director's gallows.

And while we're banning him from the director's chair we might as well padlock any typewriters, word processors, and laptops in his vicinity too. Miller seemed to have no grasp on his source material, his own material, or any basic concept of cinema in general. It's obvious he wanted to make something that was a little edgy, a little sexy, using the darkly painted film noir look of SIN CITY while still loading it with the snappy banter of a 1940's comedy and the wacky slapstick of the 1960's Batman TV series variety. The one thing Miller didn't seem to want to make was a faithful adaptation of Will Eisner's comic. Watching this fiasco I question if he even had any desire to try and make a good movie. He certainly seemed to think he was making a "cool" movie. Cool in his mind, at least. Even one of THE SPIRIT's producers said Miller seemed more interested in drawing than actually giving direction to the actors.

Both the tone and the plotting aren't just schizophrenic, they're insane in the way a mental patient decorates the walls of his padded cell with his own feces. He obviously wanted to make a comic book movie that had an "anything goes" vibe to it. The only thing that real did go was the entertainment value. One moment you're watching a straight-faced noir-ish superhero flick and the next people are hitting each other with toilets and the hero's pants are falling off of him as he uses his belt to swing to a ledge. A police detective in the film repeatedly sarcastically asks the Spirit if he's on drugs. I got a question for Frank Miller. Are you on drugs? A sober mind does not create a film this insufferable. I'm not just being my usual hyperbolic self; THE SPIRIT truly is this atrocious.

The bastard lovechild of SIN CITY and BATMAN & ROBIN, that's what this is. THE SPIRIT is abysmal in that LEONARD PART 6/GHOST DAD "What the hell were they thinking?" sort of way. Not even fun bad or future bad movie cult favorite bad - just a godforsaken ordeal that fails on every level of filmmaking. This is the sort of movie back in the Schlocktoberfest days I'd have billed as an "Excruciator" and announced beforehand: "Ladies & gentlemen, this next movie is going to cause you physical and mental anguish. It's going to be painful to watch and leave you squirming in your seat. This one's gonna hurt!" Massively unpleasant, not unpleasant in the way a torture porn movie tries to make things unpleasant - though I could argue this movie is some form of torture, this is a movie that's unpleasant to watch and even more unpleasant to listen to.

"Yeah, I hear ya. After this stinker I'll be lucky to land a gig in a cat food commercial too."

The Spirit was once a Central City cop named Denny Colt killed in the line of duty. The flashback sequence of Denny Colt's murder where he gets gunned down, Miller chose to show all the blood as white instead of red. His corpse is covered with these white splatter marks that left me wondering if I'd just watched him get gunned down or if he'd been rendered unconscious by a series of Peter North money shots.

Denny Colt crawled out of his grave with no idea why he was alive. After a long walk to think about such thing as not being dead, he decides to adopt the persona of a police-assisting crimefighter known as The Spirit. Dressed in a dark blue suit with a matching hat, a red tie, and a domino mask, the suddenly superhuman superhero runs about rooftops waxing pseudo-philosophical about how much he loves Central City, talking about her as if she were his mistress and he her spirit. His frequent voiceovers talk of such nonsense and damned if there's any point to them since Miller's script barely touches upon The Spirit's ties to his city. He could just as easily be running across rooftops rambling on about how much he saved switching to Geico and it would have about as much meaning behind it.

Another reason that would make about as much sense - because despite the look of Central City being that of the 1930's and 1940's, despite a good many people dressing and talking in a style of the crime noir films of that era, they also have cellular phones, handheld video players, and all other manner of 21st century electronic devices. This melding of old and new only adds to the misguided garishness of the film. There is a cool shot here and there but the majority of THE SPIRIT looks like a dingier drabber version of the world from SKY CAPTAIN & THE WORLD OF TOMORROW. Personally, I even found much of the look of the film to be ugly, even downright hideous at times.

Another example of Miller mucking things up: breaking the fourth wall for no reason other than to do so. The movie already boasts entirely too much voiceover narration of him telling us his inner thoughts so why have him also in the middle of a scene abruptly turn to the camera and begin addressing the viewing audience like he's Ferris Bueller. Even more off-putting because he only does it two or three times - it's not even a consistent narrative device; just another example of Miller throwing his feces against the wall to see if it'll stick.

The sad thing is Gabriel Macht probably would have made for a pretty good incarnation of The Spirit if he'd actually been appearing in a genuine adaptation of THE SPIRIT and not this Frank Miller wankfest.

The Spirit is obsessed with bringing down his arch nemesis, an underworld crimelord/mad scientist/mascara enthusiast called The Octopus. He's called The Octopus because he has eight of everything, at least that's the best explanation we ever get. He was a faceless entity in Eisner's comic. We see plenty of his face in the movie and it's inconsistently adorned with mutton chops and mascara depending on whatever mood Frank Miller was in at the time he shot the scene.

Someone actually thought this look was a good idea.

I've come to think of Samuel L. Jackson as something along the lines of our modern day Vincent Price in that Price was also a fine actor with a very recognizable screen presence who producers loved to cast specifically for the coolness factor he brought to their film. For Vincent Price it was typically horror films. For Jackson, it's his trash-talking swagger preferable to comic book and action flicks. Jackson's also become a lot like Sean Connery in that, like Connery, he doesn't actually play characters anymore; he's just Samuel L. Jackson and, fortunately for audiences, he's really good at playing Samuel L. Jackson.

But not this time.

THE SPIRIT is the movie where Samuel L. Jackson officially became uncool. He jumped the shark - or should I say, he jumped the octopus? Given some of Frank Miller's dubious directorial decisions I'm a little surprised there wasn't a scene somewhere in there where Jackson physically jumped over a shark. I believe the official shark jumping scene did come in the form of, for no particular reason, a frequent complaint when it comes to much of this debacle, Samuel L. Jackson appears in a Nazi uniform giving this bombastic speech about immortality to the Spirit, who is tied to a dentist's chair - why not? All the while Scarlett Johansson, also in a Nazi uniform stands in front of a giant photo of Hitler's face. No reason for the Nazi regale other than the assumption that Frank Miller is a nutjob who thinks swastikas are edgy. This reminded me of the infamous "Pancakes!" scene from CABIN FEVER in that it made zero sense, was woefully unfunny, and yet there are people out there who will insist it was a stroke of anarchic comedic genius. There are also people out there who will tell you Paris Hilton is their role model in life. These people are not to be encouraged.

I never understood the point of The Octopus' strange hatred for eggs that he constantly talked about in his dialogue- just more heinous Frank Miller dialogue. The words has coming out of the mouths of these actors. "You were deader than Star Trek." What does that even mean? And no, Mr. Miller, toilets are not always funny. This script is worse than the 2008 Detroit Lions.

At that very moment Samuel L. Jackson fully realized how big a bomb THE SPIRIT was going to be

Scarlett Johansson dresses up like a late Sixties bohemian art student to play the Octopus' authoritarian gal Friday, a femme fatale adorned with the name Silken Floss, a name that sounds more suitable for a ROMPER ROOM character devoted to teaching children about dental hygiene. She's just kind of there to play disinterested straight woman to Jackson's antics.

One thing I'm convinced of about Scarlett Johansson, when her boobs begin to sag and her looks begin to fade, this girl is going to have a harder fall than Jennifer Love Hewitt. I've also come to notice that she seems to chain smoke in damn near every movie she appears in of late. I'm beginning to wonder if the producers just pay her in cigarettes.

The Octopus' henchmen take the form of a genetically engineered goon squad composed of grinning idiot identical clones of the Three Stooges' Curly, each wear matching black outfits with names embroidered on their shirts like Pathos, Ethos, and Fatsos. They're clearly meant to be like the thematic goons that used assist the main villain on the old 1960s Batman TV series. I have nothing else to say about them other than to describe their antics as nails-on-the-chalkboard irritating from their very first scene.

Go crack open a thesaurus, look up alternate words for "annoying" and "unfunny"; those are the words that should have been adorning their matching shirts.

The Octopus is after a vase containing the blood of Hercules that will turn him into a living god. Given he can already take multiple gunshots to the head and live I'm not entirely sure what more god-like powers he needs.

Trouble arises when the crate is stolen by Sand Seraph, a thieving black widow who loves shiny expensive objects like diamonds and hates cops and just happens to have been Denny Colt's teenage sweetheart. She believes it to have been a crate containing the mythical Golden Fleece. The Golden Fleece it'll turn out makes for a great shield in case of massive explosions.

I don't get the Eva Mendes thing. I've never really found her all that attractive and never thought much of her as an actress either. I thought the young actress playing the teenage version of Sand Seraph in flashbacks did a far better job than the Sam Spade-style femme fatale by way of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider that Eva Mendes is saddled with.

The Spirit comes to learn that his origin and Wolverine-like super healing powers are somehow tied to the Octopus' powers and is determined to take down his foe once and for all, learn the truth, and make out with as many women as possible.

Ah, the women aspect. The Spirit himself is not particularly likeable in part because he is just a womanizing cad. He's got this poor woman, a doctor, the daughter of that detective, she was in love with Denny before he died and is now in love with The Spirit, somehow unable to recognize this is the same man behind a flimsy Kato mask that barely covers his face. It must act like Clark Kent's glasses. She's head over heels for the Spirit even though he flaunts his wandering eye right in front of her. She seems to accept this because she's got low self esteem or something.

"I don't give a crap if this is your bachelorette party or not. Tell Zorro here to put his pants back on!"

Somewhere around the time Jackson and Johansson were skulking about in samurai attire for reasons that only made sense to Frank Miller that large Pepsi kicked in and sent me scurrying to the bathroom. I honestly found myself contemplating not going back into the theater. Mind you, this wasn't that far into the film - possibly a half hour, maybe slightly longer. By that point I'd already been so put off by what I'd seen and heard that I was ready to bid a hasty retreat.

The one good thing about a movie like THE SPIRIT is that it comes out right at the very end of the year and afterwards you get to look back and think about all the other truly terrible films you saw in the past 12 months and it's hard not to think, "Maybe THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL wasn't so bad after all. Yeah, MAX PAYNE was terrible but it still wasn't this terrible. Sure, X-FILES: I WANT TO BELIEVE bored me to tears but at least it had something resembling an actual motion picture going for it."

I think the best way to summarize be feelings after having suffered through 108-minutes of THE SPIRIT would be to paraphrase the most famous quote from another film starring Samuel L. Jackson. Yes, this movie deserved to die and I hope it rots in hell!

AND YOUR AUDIENCE BOOS

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE JOHN GRISHAM'S A TIME TO KILL