Well before the 2009 Academy Award nominations were announced this morning, Oscar-watchers were abuzz over the potential excitement in this year's major categories. Would Slumdog Millionaire's seemingly unstoppable march toward a Best Picture win be derailed by a surge of popular support for The Dark Knight or even - gulp! - WALL•E? Would the season's continued award-splitting between Milk's Sean Penn (recipient of 15 pre-Oscar citations thus far) and The Wrestler's Mickey Rourke (14 and counting) allow Clint Eastwood to sneak in a career-achievement win for Gran Torino? Would Kate Winslet receive her long-overdue trophy for Best Actress in Revolutionary Road, or for Best Supporting Actress in The Reader ... or could the performer, as she did at the Golden Globes, actually walk away with both awards?

The excitement was fun while it lasted, huh?

With the Golden Globes behind us and the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) telecast not taking place until January 25, there's nothing for movie-award hounds to do now but wait for the announcement of this year's Oscar nominations on Thursday, January 22.

Oh, wait, there is one thing we can do: We can make seemingly knowledgeable predictions that, in all likelihood, will eventually bite us in the ass!

It's commonly understood that not all great movies are necessarily great-time movies, and I think we can all agree that not all great-time movies are necessarily "great." (Formally brilliant and historically essential though they are, I'm not sure I could summon the energy to sit through Intolerance or Triumph of the Will again, and while I love Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle to death, you'll never read 2,000 words on it in Cahiers du cinéma.)

At first, I thought it might be fun to compose 200-ish words each on my 10 least-favorite 2008 movies, to go along with my 10 favorites for the year. And then I realized that would just be mean-spirited and silly. And I still opted against it.

So instead, I'll content myself with random comments on the top 10 (well ... 20 ... ) Hollywood entertainments that made the job of being a movie critic just a little tougher than it should ever have to be.

So you've got my 10 favorite movies and 20 least-favorite movies for 2008 ... but what about the 139 that landed somewhere in between?

Glad you asked!