Is 2008 ending early? I didn’t get the memo, but I do know that Roger Ebert traditionally waits until after Christmas to unveil his top ten list because I’m always up at the Von Doviak ancestral manse in Maine when it appears online. This year, however, Ebert has jumped out early – and not only that, he’s doubled the content. “In these hard times, you deserve two ‘best films’ lists for the price of one,” Ebert writes. “It is therefore with joy that I list the 20 best films of 2008, in alphabetical order. I am violating the age-old custom that film critics announce the year's 10 best films, but after years of such lists, I've had it. A best films list should be a celebration of wonderful films, not a chopping process.”

You’ve gotta admire his enthusiasm after so many years in the game, especially if, like me, you have about three movies on your list and are scrambling to catch up with any possible contenders you may have missed. In fact, since Ebert presents an entirely separate list of documentaries, as well as a “special jury prize,” he actually has 26 movies on his list. Since he declines to rank them, I can’t tell you which is his favorite, but the most surprising selection has to be The Fall. “Tarsem's film is a mad folly, an extravagant visual orgy, a free fall from reality into uncharted realms.” I didn’t catch this one myself, but our own Phil Nugent dissents.

That special jury prize went to My Winnipeg. “Guy Maddin's latest dispatch from inside his imagination is a "history" of his home town, which becomes a mixture of the very slightly plausible, the convincing but unlikely, the fantastical, the fevered, the absurd, the preposterous, and the nostalgic. Oddly enough, when it's over, you have a deeper and, in a crazy way, more "real" portrait of Winnipeg than a conventional doc might have provided--and certainly a far more entertaining one.” Among the documentaries singles out for praise is Encounters at the End of the World, which director Werner Herzog dedicated to Ebert. Logrolling in our time!

Here’s the full list.

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