indieWIRE ‘08 Critics Poll - Full Results

In a field of 100 picks, Hou Hsiao-hsien took home Best Director and Best Feature for The Flight of the Red Balloon in indieWIRE’s 2008 poll of 105 North American critics. Red Balloon was followed by A Christmas Tale, WALL-E, Wendy and Lucy, Happy-Go-Lucky, Paranoid Park, Still Life, Silent Light, Synecdoche, New York, and Waltz with Bashir in the Top 10.  Other winners include Mickey Rourke (Best Performance for The Wrestler), Heath Ledger (Best Supporting), Charlie Kaufman (Best Screenplay - Synecdoche, New York), and Lance Hammer (Best First Feature - Ballast). James Marsh’s Man on Wire was awarded Best Documentary.

Note the clear lack of consensus in relation to the mainstream Academy Awards contenders, compared with 2007 - where Oscar favorites There Will Be Blood (#1) and No Country for Old Men (#3) were held in equal light by the indieWIRE contributors. With the exception of WALL-E at #3, ‘08 Oscar hopefuls like Milk (at #15), Slumdog Millionaire (#28), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (#34) simply aren’t earning the same anticipated praise across the board.

Previously:  Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy - tops in the similarly constructed Film Comment ‘08 poll