We could have ended the voting for this category in July. You know it and we know it. Yes, The Dark Knight was your choice for Best Movie of 2008, and we could have pretty easily seen it coming. In 2005, you chose Batman Begins as your favorite movie, and it won that category by a whopping 21% of the vote. This time around, The Dark Knight has an even bigger margin of victory as it blows away the competition by a full 31%. Very few ballots submitted did not include The Dark Knight somewhere.

Overall, in our Calvins, we agreed on the best of the best for the most part, with the only debate involving the placement of the films. The Calvin winner for Best Picture, WALL-E, finished second in your voting, while our third and fourth favorite films had the order flipped from your third and fourth favorite, as you guys liked Iron Man a bit more than Slumdog Millionaire. The biggest difference of opinion comes with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. You all considered it to be a top five film. We, on the other hand, had only one staff member nominate it in the Best Picture category. Our top five was rounded out by Frost/Nixon instead.

Overall, our top 15 meshed with your top 15 pretty solidly. Basically, you liked Gran Torino, Doubt and Cloverfield a lot more than we did. We chose The Visitor, Man on Wire and Revolutionary Road in their place.

2009 Calvin Awards: Best Picture
Return to Reader Awards main page

---