Meet the movies that didn’t live up to all the hype in 2008.

8. The Visitor
I’m not eager to pick on this well-meaning movie too much, because I do think it’s a decent effort to address a complicated subject (illegal immigration) and also benefits from a terrific cast.  So what’s wrong with The Visitor?  Mainly the fact that, at the end of the day, it’s yet another film about how an uptight white dude learns to be a better person by spending time with a dark-skinned foreigner with a zest for life.  Think how much stronger the film would have been if the immigrant had been the main character instead of window dressing.

7. Gran Torino
Every filmmaker with more than 20 films to his or her name is going to have some stinkers in the bunch.  And while Clint Eastwood’s 29th film as a director is far from his worst, it’s still pretty mediocre–a grab bag of outdated clichés about racism, religion and what it means to be a man in this modern world.  If you thought Australia was ridiculous, just wait until you see the final scene of Gran Torino.

6. American Teen
Nanette Burstein’s Sundance-approved documentary would like you to believe it’s an honest, realistic depiction of the trials and tribulations teenagers face in high school these days, but personally I found it about as convincing as an episode of The Hills.  That’s because American Teen uses many of the same questionable editing choices, as well as those obviously staged “intimate introspective moments,” which make that show so difficult to take seriously.

5. The Foot Fist Way
Along with Semi-Pro and that awful Night at the Roxbury movie, this low-budget flikc about a redneck martial arts instructor (played by current It Scene Stealer Danny McBride, who got major attention for his roles in Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder) shows that Will Ferrell doesn’t always have the best taste in comedy.  Not that Will starred in this one–no, he just plucked it from indie movie obscurity and helped give it a theatrical release…which the general public wisely ignored.

4. Revolutionary Road
A pair of terrific lead performances from Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio aside, I’m sorry to say that Revolutionary Road doesn’t really have much to say about the tensions that lay beneath the placed surface of ’60s-era America that Matthew Weiner hasn’t already touched on his stellar TV series Mad Men.  And where Mad Men expresses those themes and ideas in subtle, nuanced ways, Revolutionary Road spells everything out in all caps.  While that directness is refreshing at times, it does make the film about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the head.

3. Snow Angels
Maybe I’m just not a David Gordon Green guy.  I’ve tried to like this critically beloved director, but each of his films–from his first, George Washington, to his latest, Pineapple Express–has always left me cold.  The same goes for this small-town drama, which was released in March after playing Sundance the year before.  Like all of Green’s work, the film is well-cast and directed with a keen eye towards the little details, but there’s a fundamental lack of drama at its core.  The story seems to be unfolding in slow motion, and every moment that connects is followed by at least two or three that threaten to put viewers to sleep.

2. The Reader
I love Kate Winslet, really I do, but I’ve got issues with both of her big Oscar hopefuls for 2008.  The problem with The Reader is that it treats the Holocaust as fodder for an oh-so-tony art-house film, where the true horrors of that tragedy are never really grappled with in any kind of detail.  Instead, the emotional crux of the story turns on one man’s anger over the fact that the woman that introduced him to sex as a teenager was actually an ex-Nazi.  It almost sounds like the premise for a comedy…except the movie actually expects you to take it seriously.

1. Slumdog Millionaire
Critics have gone absolutely crazy for Danny Boyle’s spirited tale of a slum kid who makes good on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? My own critics group, the New York Film Critics Online, named it the Best Film of 2008 and gave it a bunch of additional prizes besides.  Suffice to say, the movie was not on my own ballot.  I’ve yet to read a review of the film that really convinces me it is something more than a lively, but incredibly silly and contrived rags-to-riches story with the year’s most awkward framing device.  If this is really the year’s best film, as many have claimed, than 2008 has been a pretty weak year for movies.