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Sight and Sound’s Top Films of 2008

British film magazine Sight and Sound have published their top 10 films of 2008.

They asked 50 critics for their five favourites of the past year and the titles that appeared the most were then selected as their Top 10 of 2008.

Here is the final list (with some ties):

1. Hunger (Steve McQueen, UK)
2. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
3. WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, USA)
4. Gomorrah (Matteo Garrone, Italy)ย 
=5. A Christmas Tale (Arnaud Desplechin, France)ย 
=5. The Class (Laurent Cantet, France)
7. Of Time and the City (Terence Davies, UK)
8. Happy-Go-Lucky (Mike Leigh, UK)
=9. The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina/France/Italy/Spain)
=9. Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, Sweden).

The January edition of the magazine will have the full choices of each critic and you can also check out their best DVDs of 2008.

Lists like these are always difficult for UK critics as a lot of the best films open in the US during the last months of the year (for award consideration) and only get released in the UK during in January or February.

This means that a lot of US end-of-year lists are out of sync with their UK counterparts. My policy last year was to just list the films I had seen that year and ignore the UK release date.

After all, in years to come, if you look up There Will Be Bloodย in the IMDb or any self respecting film guide you will see ‘2007’ next to the title and not 2008.

However, I’m slightly puzzled by Sight and Sound’s policy. I thought they had gone with year of UK release policy but The Class (incidentally an outstanding film) is also in there.

It doesn’t get released here until February and won’t even qualify for this year’s BAFTAs as it is coming out in February. Does it get in because it had a public screening at the London Film Festival a few weeks back?

Anyway, whatever the policy, there are some real highlights above and if you haven’t seen Hunger yet then it is a film you really should catch in a cinema.

> Sight and Sound site and their 2002 polls
> My favourite films of 2007
> Metacritic end of year lists for 2007