10 Best Movie Going Moments of 2008

Not the best films of the year. In some cases, not even in the top 100. But these are my most memorable film watching moments of 2008.

1. Mamma Mia. This Merryl Streep musical blockbuster (the highest grossing film of all time in the UK) is a guilty pleasure. Watching it with a huge crowd at Moonlight Cinema on Boxing Day, however, put any form of shame to shame. Imagine Sydney's Centennial Park filled with people lying in the grass, enjoying a picnic and a glass of Pinot under the stars (and the giant, hovering fruit bats). Now imagine it's the singalong version and everyone is the crowd in warbling along to Abba, cheering and clapping wildly at the end of each musical number. And ponder 300 people rushing to the bottom of the screen when the finale starts, engaging in drunken, euphoric dancing and impromptu Abba choreographies. This so-bad-it's-good camp-fest has true Rocky Horror potential (I came up with a few heckles myself while watching Streep's The Winner Takes It A-a-a-ll).

2. Young People Fucking. This hilarious Canadian sex comedy is fun in itself, but hold the screening in a pole studio, frame it by pole dancing and burlesque acts, add an open bar and some spirited DJ's, and it becomes, well, one of the best movie going moment of 2008.

3. Passenger Side. While in Toronto last September I was invited to attend a private screening of Matt Bissonnette's follow up to Who Loves The Sun, straight off Final Cut. I haven't felt happier in a cinema this year than sitting with a few colleagues, filmmakers and friends watching a very rough cut of a very good indie in Toronto's iconic Royal Cinema (Bruce McDonald was editing his new film upstairs!).

Night. Lawrence Johnston's film - a documentary exploration on our relationship with night - is something you want to see at night, sitting by a bay under the stars. Which is what we did. Bjork was performing live on the Opera House steps and her voice carried over the water towards the end, which was nice. We are so lucky to live in this city.

5. Stop-Loss. Watching Stop-Loss in the grand State Theatre at the Sydney Film Festival was a powerful, if a little nerve-wracking experience. I knew that afterwards I'd be doing my first interview ever, with the charismatic and talented Kimberly Peirce (War and Peirce). I liked the film a lot more than I thought I would, perhaps because then more than ever I had my film critic cap on, and the pre-interview adrenalin which kept my body and my brain alert throughout. The interview itself was an amazing experience, not least because it made me aware of both the intricacies of the process and the potential for insight of the outcome.

6. My Winnipeg. I'd seen (and began a long, steamy affair with) My Winnipeg at the Toronto film festival last year. But it was seeing it again at the State Theatre during the Sydney Film Festival, with Guy Maddin (who I'd have a nervous drink with later) doing the live narration himself, which made we want to have this film's babies.

7. Wanted. I actually saw this film on my birthday with some good friends. We decided to pretend momentarily to be 15 again taking a trip to the multiplex to see a blockbuster. We even sneaked in minitures of absolut, shouted at the screen and whistled when Angelina smacked her lips (and later, went to laser skirmish). We thought Wanted might be one of those "so bad it's good" action thrillers. We were wrong. Three words: Loom of Fate.

8. Global Metal. I saw this doco in the basement of a metal-pushing record store with over 100 metalheads well on the road to drunk: the sound system turned to 11 couldn't drown out the hisses, cheers and general mayhem in the audience. The film, about the appropriation of metal culture by fans outside Europe and the US, drew raves from the pierced, black-clad, hard-to-impress audience. Watching the representatives of a particular sub-culture go crazy watching a film about them was a real highlight for me this year.

9. Wild Combination: a Portrait of Arthur Russell. Despite the fascinating environment in which its subject came to prominence, this documentary didn't really do it for me. What did, however, was the nude hula performance by Trash Vaudeville (yes, those are iPod tassles), which followed the screening at the Metro at the Sydney Film Festival. I think every film should be paired up with a burlesque act from now on.

10. Australia. I saw Baz Luhrmann's oft-panned camp epic on opening night in Sydney, with a large group of friends and friends of friends. Most of us weren't born in Australia, which perhaps explain how much good we thought of the film: most of my aussie buddies cringed and fumed in paranoid outrage at the the cultural stereotyping (did they mind it in Amelie?). It's become terribly bad form to say anything positive about Australia. The evident glee with which Australian critics have been spitting in this film's face - including before they'd had a chance to see it and often after whining loudly about the country's so-called incapacity to produce commercial films - is mildly disconcerting to say the least. Though most of our group work in the film industry, we went as tourists rather than cynics, and yes, we all agreed the film was severely flawed, but at the end of the day, I think we had a really good time. 

If you're not morally opposed to year-end lists check back tomorrow for my best of 2008.

10 Best Movie Going Moments of 2008