I've been bitching relentlessly about the films of 2008. To ease off the doom boom, I'd like to pay tribute to actors who manage to be good or better than good in epically lousy movies. For example, there's Diane Lane in Untraceable, Ray Winstone in Fool's Gold, and Zoe Saldana in Vantage Point. Feel free to nominate your own candidates for Best Actor in a Bad Movie, but I'm going with:

Jamie Bell in Jumper

Who can blame Bell for trying to choke costar Hayden Christensen (see photo)? He was probably trying to get a recognizable human reaction out of him. The British Bell, 22, made his name eight years ago as the dancing mining-town kid in Billy Elliot. Now he breathes whatever life there is in Doug Liman's overamped sci-fi chase flick. As the rogue jumper who tires to save Christensen's character from teleporting around the world without watching who's following him, Bell laced his role with humor and heart, two qualities otherwise absent in this inexplicable box-office hit.