As St. Pete Times media critic worthy of the honor. If you've been following Reel Projections for the past few weeks, you know that every few days, another critics' organization has issued its best-of picks for 2008.
Not me. Instead, I thought I'd give a tip of the cap to those critics who toiled in darkened theaters and saved me my hard-earned money by warning me off a slew of films I had been at least somewhat interested in seeing.
When I want to gauge the overall critical reaction to a new film, the first place I head is Rotten Tomatoes, which provides a useful consensus, expressed as a number (anything below 60 is considered bad).
Here then, are the Top 8 of 2008 I initially wanted to see before the critics cut them down to size, along with some of the pithiest, nastiest comments by reviewers:
This article appears in Dec 24-30, 2008.