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2008 Kaedrin Movie Awards: Most Visually Stunning & Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film
The nominations for the 2008 Kaedrin Movie Awards were announced last week. This week, I'll be announcing two winners every day, culminating in a post with my top 10 movies of the year and possibly some other wrap-up posts.

Most Visually Stunning: The Fall

A gorgeous feast for the eyes!* And perhaps that's all it is, but if nothing else, it's a gorgeous feast for the eyes. Ok, so it's a little more than that, but like director Tarsem Singh's other film, the similarly gorgeous feast for the eyes The Cell, The Fall is missing a coherent plot. He manages to frame the story in such a way that it doesn't matter that much and it's an enjoyable movie, though it's not a great plot. But its a gorgeous feast for the eyes. Other nominated films were certainly fine. It's hard to beat Guillermo del Toro's creature design in Hellboy II: The Golden Army. WALL-E is gorgeous. Let the Right One In has a stark beauty that contrasts well with the story. But none of the other nominees quite approached that gorgeous feast for the eyes level that The Fall did...


Best Sci-Fi or Horror Film: Timecrimes

In a category dominated by horror films, the lone SF film wins! Unless you consider some of the others SF. Timecrimes is a great film though. This intricate Spanish time-travel thriller was my favorite film of the 2008 Philadelphia Film Festival and it will be in the top 5 of the year for me. All of the other nominees are great too. Cloverfield was probably my least favorite, and even that one tried to do something genuinely interesting in a tired creature feature sub-genre. Teeth is notable for the sheer audacity of its premise. The Ruins, Let the Right One In, Inside - it's been a good year for horror. As I mentioned in the nominations, I cheated by nominating The Man from Earth, which is technically a 2007 movie. It's a really simple premise and the movie basically consists of a bunch of college professors talking about something in a cabin for an hour and a half. Yet it had some neat ideas that were expored in an interesting way. I don't think it would win any awards, but SF fans should definitely check it out at some point (for Netflix users, it's on their Watch Online feature, which is where I saw it).

Coming tomorrow: Best Sequel and Biggest Disappointment

* The "gorgeous feast for the eyes" phrase comes from Matty Robinson in his review on Filmspotting. Brilliant.

This post is part of the Kaedrin Weblog. It's been categorized under 2008 Movie Awards and was originally published in January 2009.

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