Annal:2008 Academy Award® for Best Motion Picture

From AwardAnnals

Results of the Academy Award® in the year 2008. For a ranked list of films, try the honor roll.

<–2007
Academy Award®
–end–

The story begins when Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) finds a pickup truck surrounded by a sentry of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law—in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell (Tommy Lee Jones)—can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers—in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives (Javier Bardem)—the film simultaneously strips down the American crime drama and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines.

Atonement

Joe Wright

In England in 1935, on the hottest day of the year, in the looming shadow of World War II, Briony Tallis and her family live a life of wealth and privilege in their enormous Victorian Gothic Mansion. As the family gathers for the weekend the combination of the oppressive heat and long suppressed emotions coming to the surface create an ominous sense of threat and danger.

Briony, a fledgling writer, is a girl with a vivid imagination. Through a series of catastrophic misunderstandings she accuses Robbie Turner, the housekeeper’s son and lover of her sister Cecilia, of a crime he did not commit.

This accusation destroys Robbie and Cecilia’s new found love and dramatically alters the course of all their lives.

Juno

Jason Reitman

2008 Golden Globe-Musical/Comedy nominee
2008 MTV-Movie nominee
2008 Oscar-Picture nominee
Score: 18.58

While most girls at Dancing Elk High School are updating their MySpace page or shopping at the mall, Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) decides to have her first sexual experience with the charmingly unassuming Bleeker (Michael Cera). Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, she and best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) find Juno’s unborn baby the perfect set of parents: Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), an affluent suburban couple who are longing to adopt their first child.

Juno’s dad and stepmother (J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney) band together to help Juno ensure the prospective adoptive parents are not a couple of “wing nuts” and provide emotional support as Juno fights the prejudices of underage pregnancy.

As Juno moves closer and closer to her due date, her physical changes mirror her personal growth while the veneer of Mark and Vanessa’s idyllic life starts to show signs of cracking. With a fearless intellect far removed from the usual teen angst, Juno conquers her problems head-on, displaying a youthful exuberance both smart and unexpected.

Michael Clayton

Tony Gilroy

Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is an in-house "fixer" at one of the largest corporate law firms in New York. At the behest of the firm's co-founder Marty Bach (Sydney Pollack), Clayton takes care of Kenner, Bach & Ledeen's dirtiest work. Though burned out and discontented in his job, Clayton is inextricably tied to the firm.

At the agrochemical company U/North, the career of in-house chief counsel Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) rests on the settlement of the suit that Kenner, Bach & Ledeen is leading to a seemingly successful conclusion. When the firm's top litigator, the brilliant Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson), has an apparent breakdown and tries to sabotage the entire case, Marty Bach sends Michael Clayton to tackle this unprecedented disaster and, in doing so, Clayton comes face to face with the reality of who he has become.

There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson

A sprawling epic of family, faith, power and oil, There Will Be Blood is set on the incendiary frontier of California’s turn-of-the-century petroleum boom. The story chronicles the life and times of one Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), who transforms himself from a down-and-out silver miner raising a son on his own into a self-made oil tycoon.

When Plainview gets a mysterious tip-off that there’s a little town out West where an ocean of oil is oozing out of the ground, he heads with his son, H.W. (Dillon Freasier), to take their chances in dust-worn Little Boston. In this hardscrabble town, where the main excitement centers around the holy roller church of charismatic preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), Plainview and H.W. make their lucky strike. But even as the well raises all of their fortunes, nothing will remain the same as conflicts escalate and every human value—love, hope, community, belief, ambition and even the bond between father and son—is imperiled by corruption, deception and the flow of oil.