It’s that time of the year! Time for me to share what films from the previous calendar year really stuck with me & inspired a lot of thought, creativity & I just had a great time with! But first, I just wanted to share that I personally found 2018 to be a pretty great year. I’ve got a great job. A new home. I had a much sunnier general disposition in 2018 I have had in the past few years. Mind you, the world outside my control has been hot garbage, but my day to day life overall was pretty great & I think I made some truly remarkable moves to overall better my self-stability and happiness.
As a film buff I feel I made solid choices on what to see in theaters and what to avoid. There were only a few films I ended up seeing in theaters in the last 12 months that I outright didn’t like and only one that I’ve actively come to dislike. In fact, I had such a good success rate of seeing only movies I ultimately enjoyed that cutting it down to 15 was a real struggle. This list could have easily been the TOP 25 FILMS OF 2018, but I chose to keep it at 15. I’m thinking of making this list a regular annual thing and with this being only the second year, if I break now in a few years it will be THE TOP EVERYTHING I SAW IN 2025 and who wants to read that? Right?
Now before we get to the list of my favorite films of 2018 I’d like to mention a few things that if I had caught in a theater would have absolutely been included in the list:
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Honorable Mention #1 – THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND.
Despite protecting Kevin Spacey until it became detrimental to their public image, invading our DM’s to see what people wanted made, and data wrangling our viewing habits in such insidious ways that we won’t know for years to come, sometimes NETFLIX is good. Giving Peter Bogdanovich and his peers the funding to bring Orson Welles’ never-completed passion project, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND, to life is one of their best moves! It’s the kind of film preservation work that in an ideal world museums would be able to finance. The final film – though it can arguably be called final since Welles for obvious reasons wasn’t involved in the Final edit sessions – is a bit choppy and totally all over the place at times, but it still is an absolute treasure that needs to be watched and admired. Shot by Welles over several years in the early 70s in-between gigs he did for hire, it’s wild to see how ahead of its time this rambunctious work of art ends up being. One can’t help but wonder how different the film landscape would be if Welles movie had been released in the late 70s and not lost to time as it has been for the last four decades? It’s a kaleidoscopic vision shot on multiple film stocks – predating the aesthetic Oliver Stone used on films like JFK and NATURAL BORN KILLERS in the 90s by about two decades – and introduces some subject matter in an ingenious way that films still have trouble dealing with – the movie basically states John Huston’s Hypermasculine filmmaker is keeping his bisexual tendencies a secret but he still can’t help himself from falling in love with every male lead he casts in his films – and does this all while still being an entertaining and super-meta ride. It doesn’t hurt that Welles’ grainy shot on film movie is perhaps the best looking release of 2018. I’ve only watched it once, but I plan to revisit it again in the near future. The film is available right now on Netflix and be sure to follow up your viewing with a watch of Morgan Neville’s companion documentary THEY’LL LOVE ME WHEN I’M DEAD that’s about Welles trials and tribulations and ultimately his failure to get the film made. It’s a must watch for anyone who cares about what films can be.
Honorable Mention #2 – PASS OVER.
I might be showing my lack of class here, but recordings of stage plays are boring. They lack the magic of being there in the theater where you can experience the power of the actors and stage design first hand, and they contain little of the emotional nuance or visual wonder that a movie proper can deliver. Filmed plays to me have always felt like high-end family movies. Maybe they mean something to the people in the show or fans with a close affinity to the text of the play, but they aren’t inviting to someone who isn’t already a part of that scene. But, leave it to master filmmaker Spike Lee to show me the error of my ways. Antoinette Nwandu’s play, produced by the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, is already strong enough on it’s own, but Lee usese his filmmaking prowess to meld theater and film together in a fantastic union. The story of Kitch (Julian Parker) & Moses (Jon Michael Hill) is evenly split between the theatricality of the stage and the real world it’s commenting on. Shooting both the stage and the audience, Lee finds acute angles and informed cinematic perspectives to perfectly accentuate the on-stage action. There’s some genuinely moving filmmaking going on here that when matched with the honest reality of the play itself really leaves an impression. The “movie” is available for streaming on Amazon Video and only runs a quick 74 minutes, so I wholeheartedly recommend giving it a shot!
Honorable Mention #3 – DEVILMAN Crybaby.
My first – and hopefully only – cheat on this entire list. Maasaki Yuasa’s DEVILMAN CRYBABY is not a movie in any proper sense. It’s a 10 episode limited series anime that Netflix financed for its streaming service, but it is such a complete directorial vision that I just needed to give it some love! I have zero familiarity towards the original source material and frankly, I don’t think I will ever will, because Yuasa’s take on the Devilman manga is so completley realized that I don’t even want another interpretation. Yuasa’s style is very unique in modern animation because he intentionally deviates from character models and places emotionality above all else. So this means a character can drastically fluctuate in appearance from scene to scene. Maybe in one scene the hero needs to appear in control so he’s 10 feet tall and rippling with muscles, while in another sequence he needs to be in pain and then his body and limbs are literally deformed and crooked. I love the way Yuasa and his team animate and I applaud Netflix for giving them carte blanche to do whatever they wanted! So of course, that means in the first episode a man at an massive orgy gets his head bitten off by what I can only describe as a sentient demonic tit! It’s sickening! It’s beautiful! It’s awesome! It’s my kind of show! Plus, it has one of the best opening title credit sequences I can think of! It’s available on Netflix right now!
And now for the thing all of you – anyone? – has been waiting for:
THE TOP 15 FILMS OF 2018!!
15. ROMA. (Alfonso Cuarón.)
How do you follow up GRAVITY? That was a fast-paced, almost entirely computer-generated, expensive, and flawlessly executed 3D blockbuster that thrilled audiences the world over. What do you do next? If you’re Alfonso Cuarón, you use the success of that film to finance something entirely different! Cuarón takes his love for impeccably choreographed long takes, captivating effects work & a strong understanding of emotional gravitas to tell an intimate character study! ROMA is a fresco about a Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a Mixtec maid working for an upper-middle class family in the Colonia Roma neighborhood of Mexico City in the early 1970s. To anyone who would pass her on the street, Cleo is probably invisible and certainly doens’t have the most uninteresting life of anyone on the planet. But, Cuarón uses her small existence to craft a story about how every life on Earth is a grand epic loaded with unforgettable images with grand moments of heroism & horror that can exist side by side with the the most mundane humdrum acts of day to day life. Everything in ROMA stems from Cuarón’s personal attachment to his childhood in Mexico City & he recreates it with his superb technical expertise. The man even acted as his own cinematographer! But, as glorious as the B&W images are, they’d be nothing but pretty pictures without Aparicio’s strong dramatic work as the films narrative focus, Cleo. Thankfully, both filmmaker & actress are working in perfect tandem together & because of this each shot feels vital to Cleo’s emotional journey whether it be a vista of 10,000 people rioting in the streets or just an intimate moment between friends washing the dishes. I’ve only watched ROMA once, thankfully thought it was in a theater, but there’s so much going on in this dense picture I know Cuarón’s movie is going to be one that will be a whole new experience next time I revisit it. And I plan on revisiting this one again & again!
14. SHOPLIFTERS. (Hirokazu Kore-eta.)
I’m not familiar with Hirokazu Kore-eta’s body of work & I need to correct that unfamiliarity ASAP! SHOPLIFTERS is a movie that casually invites you into a mundane world, lets you get acclimated & feel like you’re with friends, before it absolutely devastates you in an unforgettable third act. Kore-eda’s film is concerned with the question of “what makes a family?” & it goes about examining that concept through a group of emotionally adrift weirdos, who for various reasons have been ostracized from their own biological families & have come together to forge an entirely unconventional new one. One day, the “father” of this makeshift family unit & his “son” cross paths with Yuri, an underfed little girl, & they invite her to join them for a “family meal” of cheap, salty fast food. From there, what follows for the next hour & a half is a leisurely paced slice-of-life story where the viewer, like Yuri, is tenderly invited into learning (almost) every secret, want, & hidden pain this “family” hides from the world. We get to familiarize ourselves with who exactly these odd, but loveable, weirdos really are & it’s a quiet, honest & uplifting journey. But, when life outside their “family” intrudes on their world in the last half hour, the true power of the picture comes forth as Kore-eda reveals what the darkest secrets and most lasting pains were that that turned these people into who they are now. SHOPLIFTERS isn’t a flashy picture, but it is genuinely impactful & has left me with some of the most lasting movie memories from 2018. I certainly can’t remember ever crying from just the word “Dad” before and I definitely can’t think of a recent closeup as jaw-droppingly perfect as the one the “mother” (Sakura Ando) has near the end of the movie. I loved SHOPLIFTERS & if you ever watch it I hope you will too.
13. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK. (Barry Jenkins.)
Maybe my expectations were too high? Maybe after the flawless experience of MOONLIGHT I expected another equally perfect film from Barry Jenkins. I don’t think his follow-up, IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK, is as perfect a film as his first… yet. I think the initial viewing is still too fresh for me. When I post this I’ll have only have seen the film a few days ago, so I don’t think the whole elegance & power of what Jenkins is going for in his adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel has hit me yet. In the theater, this is an intricately made work of art with some of the best cinematography in ages – the production design in this film is on another level! – some truly astonishing performances from the entire cast & an ending that still is sadly relevant to the world of today. I think there’s so much going on that I won’t really know my full thoughts about BEALE STREET until I’ve seen it a second time. Still, that first watch is something special! I won’t say too much more it until I collect my thoughts about it more. I love BEALE STREET, but I think this is a movie that when I revisit a few weeks or months down the road is going to absolutely floor me in ways I can’t even imagine right now. Barry Jenkins is easily one of the most exciting new filmmakers working today and wherever his artistic interests take him, I’ll be sure to follow!
12. BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE. (Drew Goddard.)
Movie people have REALLY slept on this one! Drew Goddard’s follow-up film to CABIN IN THE WOODS is one of the most purely audacious, wild, inventive, sick, original, wonderfully-put-together and just plain FUN movies in a long time! The plot description says the movies about “Seven strangers, each with a secret to bury, meet at Lake Tahoe’s El Royale, a rundown hotel with a dark past.” & in a way that’s a correct synopsis. But, from that meagre concept, writer/director Goddard has fashioned a GRAND HOTEL like tale that confidently hopscotches from genre to genre every few minutes & is constantly forcing the audience to alter their character allegiances before it all climaxes in a tension-filled setpiece that is truly something else! The whole movie has a strong aesthetic sense that while clearly paying homage to various masters of the past (I see A LOT of Brian De Palma in the first act) is still very much Goddard’s own unique vision. Add in a cast that is giving it their all & you’ve got the makings of a great movie. It’d so easy to just talk about the entire cast & enthusiastically praise everyone but I won’t cause you should experience the movie for yourself. Still, I have to mention how great Jeff Bridges is in it – the man continues to showcase new skills & charimsa as an actor – but more especially I want to mention Cynthia Erivo who fucking steals every scene she’s in! She’s absolute dynamite throughout the whole piece and delivers my what is perhaps my favorite line reading of the entire year when she tells an arrogant know-it-all to just “shut up”. You’ll know the moment when you see it! BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE is available on home video OR you can just come over to my place cause I’ll gladly watch it again!
11. SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE. (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsay, Rodney Rothman.)
I shouldn’t like this. Lately, I’ve been finding superhero movies are getting worse & yet are getting oddly overrated at the same time. Studios have gone through the growing pains with the genre enough that they don’t make massive mistakes anymore, and they know how to make the newer superhero films all get the job done as throw-away entertainment & still hype you up for the next sequel. But, more often than not, I’ve been bothered by their aggressive conservatism and the incessant pushing of the viewpoint they have that certain people are destined to be great while everyone else is just lucky these heroes are around. Superhero movies have taken over pop culture but mostly I think they’ve been doing things a disservice. Especially Marvel and its “things in our universe TOTALLY have consequences but lol no they don’t because nothing matters & everything can be undone the second we gotta print more money” mindset. SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE doesn’t share that mindset! It cares about consequences & it cares about real people! It cares about true inclusivity & it cares to point out that true heroism doesn’t come from being in an important family or having great personal wealth or is a gift from some boring race of Aliens – that Alien race BTW is going to be connected to the next eight upcoming movies so y’all better see them all or you won’t know fuck-all what’s going on when these characters return – but that more often than not, true heroism is simply how someone responds to random consequences out of their control. SPIDER-VERSE embraces that idea in a way the original Sam Raimi films did & through the wonderfully relatable Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), the filmmakers came up with a way to tell a superhero movie that is intimate, but still large enough to deal with multiple universes & play with all existing Spider-man comicbook lore in a way that is fun & doesn’t require a Bachelor’s Degree in Marvel History! Miles evolution into Spider-Man is both very familiar, but still is a journey all his own in part due to the strong genuine relationships he has with his Father, his uncle & with the many weird Spider-People that come barging into his universe. SPIDER-VERSE does all this AND also is the best looking animated film of the year AND makes all other superhero movies look bland in comparison! Why do we even bother making live action superhero movies with washed out colors & actors faces badly composited into CG action setpieces – the next MCU Spider-Man sequel looks so fucking boooooring after this one, sorry not sorry – when you can embrace the richness & power of animation like this film does? Give me more animated superhero films like SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE & less grossly-paid actors bored on a greenscreen, please!
10. THE FAVOURITE. (Yorgos Lanthimos.)
Yorgos Lanthimos is a sick puppy…. but so am I and I adore this movie! I could gladly talk about how it has three of the best lead characters given life by three of the best performances of this or any year! I could happily talk about how damn good this movie looks! I could talk for ages about how the narrative plays with the audiences & forces them to constantly switch their personal allegiances between Rachel Weisz & Emma Stone as they fight for the attention of Olivia Colman! I could ramble on about how insane genius Lanthimos has taken the dullest & most staid of genres – stories of European royalty decked out in fancy clothes eating fancy pastries in fancy castles while playing mindgames about what is proper by high society does nothing for me– and turned it into a genuinely thrilling ride! But, I won’t waste anyones time because you should just see this sick little gout-filled treasure of a film on your own and hopeffuly love it like I do. Instead, I just want to give a shout out to the writing for introduced me to the word “cunstruck” which is just so perfectly catty, mean, & glides so perfectly off the tongue that it’s just…. priceless!
9. SUSPIRIA 2018. (Luca Guadagnino.)
Witches be crazy!!! (Sorry). I like certain aspects of Dario Argento’s original SUSPIRIA, but I would never say I love it. Luca Guadagnino’s loosest of remakes on the other hand, is a movie I absolutely ADORE! I have no qualm placing this beside the great horror remakes of John Carpenter’s THE THING, David Cronenberg’s THE FLY and Gore Verbinski’s THE RING. Mind you, Guadagnino’s SUSPIRIA 2018 is undeniably the most indulgent and one could even argue, most pretentious movie of 2018! And if one did they certainly wouldn’t be in the wrong. Everything in Guadagnino’s film, from the leisurely paced 152 minute runtime to Tilda Swinton performing multiple roles – including one as an old man– to Thom Yorke’s musical score going full Radiohead, to the look of the movie which somehow feels very contemporary & yet also like a lost film shot in the mid 70s, to the third act twist, to the thematic denouement at the end, is absolutely indulgent on levels rarely seen in movies anymore! Most people will probably get to the end of SUSPIRIA 2018 and genuinely hate it, and to be honest that is a perfeclty understandable position. Thankfully, I’m the kinda sick movie pervert who was totally into Guadagnino’s Berlin set treatise about how societies downplay the atrocities they’ve committed, like the Holocaust, so they can present itself as being civilized – yes, really – that is at the same time the most unabasahbly feminist picture of 2018 even though it deals with psycho witches who love a little ultra-murder. It also has some killer horror sequences that just work like gangbusters for horror fans. If you really love film – like more than a friend – than I wholeheartedly recommend you give Guadagnino’s absolutely bonkers not-really-a-remake of SUSPIRIA a watch! If you hate it I won’t judge, but I’ll still ask that we have a long and nerdy talk about what you thought and felt while watching it!
8. CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? (Marielle Heller.)
To be perfectly honest, I was dragged to this movie and expected little going in. The trailers didn’t inspire much faith and Melissa McCarthy movies of late have been… not for me to put it lightly. But, as I watched the film I quickly realized it was about a fragile but sharp-tongued bitch who just wanted to get paid to write about what she was interested in and stay home in her apartment with her pet! I connected with McCarthy’s interpretation of Lee Israel very quickly and I was so glad my first impressions of Marielle Heller’s wonderfest of a film were so very very wrong! The true story of Israel’s letter fraud adventures is very much a small stakes affair, but the personalities in the tale are too large and commanding to be ignored. McCarthy proves she’s a phenomally gifted actress who too often is wasted in bad movies while her scene partner, Richard E. Grant, gives the performance of his career – yes, surpassing WITHNAIL & I – as Jack Hock, her eccentric friend and eventual partner in crime. Over the course of 100 flawless minutes we get a full picture of who Lee Israel is and while it isn’t always the most flattering one, it’s fully realized and oh so relateable. I loved every second of it and the final scene between Israel & Hock holds more emotional honesty in three minutes than most films do in their entire running time. Like a great book found in a dark corner of an old rundown book store, CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME? may look used, tattered and have a faded & not-too-appealing cover, but the story contained within is just too unforgettable to miss out on!
7. MANDY. (Panos Cosmatos.)
Mandy’s (Andrea Riseborough) favorite planet is Jupiter and so in my eyes that makes her the ideal woman. Mandy though has been through some real shit and carries the scars both inside and out to prove it. But no matter what, it’s always obvious that she’s a really good person trying to be the best version of herself. For Red (Nicolas Cage), Mandy is his savior and the light of his life and for Mandy the feeling is mutual. These two flawed people have struggled in their separate pasts alone, but together have found a sense of solace and love in each other. They’ve achieved nirvana. Then one dreadful day that bliss is shattered when an arrogant Narcissist (Linus Roache) spots Mandy on the road and he wants to take her for his own simply because he got a hardon. With his cult followers in lieu, the Narcissist breaks into the lovers home and tries to lure Mandy into becoming another doll in his harem. His offer does not end well. Mistakenly left for dead, Red then goes on an epic tale through space, time and his own sanity to get his revenge. The plot of MANDY is honestly quite simple and is the type of story that’s been told time and time again. Right now there are probably a dozen films in development with a similar core story and I would hazard to guess half of them star Nicolas Cage. BUT, this story is rarely told this well and with this much personality! MANDY’s execution is pure filmmaking magic! MANDY also reiterates that Nicolas Cage is one of the most talented & exciting actors alive today and not simply the meme-machine he’s become infamous for. My favorite moment in the entire film is a scene where Cage has to let out his pain in a tiny, ugly wallpaper-lined bathroom. The scene intentionally starts out so big, so UTTERLY Nic Cage, that you can’t help but laugh as Cage, in a pair or pathetic whitey tightys, screams and fucking downs the world’s largest bottle of vodka …. and yet as the camera slowly pushes in on Cage the theatricality of his performance begins to feel real and genuine. What starts out as a fun and meme ready moment quickly turns uncomfortably honest and you experience Red’s loss all over again like a punch to the chest. It’s a moment of tragic and yet utterly beautiful filmic empathy. This moment is then IMMEDIATELY followed up with Nicolas Cage getting weapons from badass Bill Duke and then welding himself the most killer axe of all time. Then he REALLY STARTS TO FUCK SOME SHIT UP! So yeah, this movie is goddamn wonderful & the most metal film of all time! Long live the Cheddar Goblin!
6. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU. (Boots Riley.)
A movie with this much giant horse cock should NOT be the movie that best sums up the United States of America in the year 2018, but that’s exactly what SORRY TO BOTHER YOU is. Amongst all the telemarketing jokes, killer musical tracks, wacky earrings, dumb game shows, horse cocks and silly gags about “Using your White Voice”, writer/director Boots Riley uses satire to tell a truthful story about what truly lies at the heart of America as an idea. What Riley paints is not pretty picture and there’s no doubt that if corporations had access to the tech that business tycoon Steve Lift (Armie Hammer) wants to implement to increase his companies productivity and dramatically raise profits, it would have been done decades ago. We’re a nation that was founded on slavery and for generations the dreams of profit-minded businessmen is to somehow get back to that oh-so-cheap company owned labor force. And Boots is on to something. Hell, our country is so sickened by the mental disease of business that in 2016 it voted an illiterate and bigoted, daughter-lusting human jizz stain to be President in part because morons loved the idea that “he’d run the country like a business”. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU understands that lust for wealth is one of the core sicknesses of America and while Riley makes sure the audiences gets to laugh at the insanity of it all, the film strikes a real cord when compared against the garbage taking place in the real world. I entirely believe SORRY TO BOTHER YOU is gonna stand the test of time & sit alongside Sidney Lumet & Paddy Chayefsky’s NETWORK as one of the quintessential American satires. So if you haven’t, put on your best “Have a Soda and Smile, Bitch” wig and sit down to experience or re-experience SORRY TO BOTHER YOU. Just don’t do it in a WorryFree center and don’t mind all the horse cocks.
5. WIDOWS. (Steve McQueen.)
Steve McQueen cannot be put in a box. He’s a filmmaker of uncontainable imagination and he has the gift of always knowing the right way to approach a scene in regards to story, character and theme. WIDOWS has all the components to make a good heist picture, but McQueen doesn’t make good movies. McQueen makes GREAT MOVIES. With unquestionably the best cast of the year led by all-star Viola Davis- seriously, the Avengers ain’t got shit on how stacked this cast is – and all of them doing excellent work in even the smallest of bit parts, McQueen takes the simple setup of WIDOWS and turns it into a movie about something greater. The plot of WIDOWS can be summed up as “A gang of world class thieves die on a job and their wives have to pull off a job to pay their husbands debts”, and in a lesser filmmakers hands that’s all it would have been and that would’ve been okay. Instead, McQueen uses the skeleton of a heist flick as an in to tell a fully realized story about race, sex, grief, politics, interracial marriage, police brutality, the marginalization of women of color and more all in about two fast hours. I don’t know how he did it, but McQueen is just that kind of master filmmaker. Some people have argued he loses the narrative in WIDOWS and if all you want is a detailing blow-by-blow of how a robbery is committed this certainly isn’t the film for you. But, if you want to see unique cinematic approaches to the injustices in the world we live in, and watch a fully realized movie master at the top of his game then WIDOWS is the real deal!
4. THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS. (Joel & Ethan Coen.)
Have any filmmakers in history even been more consistentlty great than the Coen Brothers? Don’t answer that cause I won’t accept a substitute (‘cept Miyazaki). When I first heard the Coens next film was going to be a Netflix Original made out of six short stories I figured “Okay, the Coens are using Netflix’s thirst for more movies to knock out a few half-formed sketches that they’ve never found an excuse to make.” I gotta say, I feel like one of the many idiots in their glorious body of work because I was 100% wrong! The Coens never half-ass anything and instead have made six phenomenal short tales that feel like authentic lost yarns from the old West. They’re archaic in some ways – don’t look for positive portrayals of Native Americans TBH – but the authenticity of the stories are a large part of the films charm. You can imagine sitting around a campfire in the 1850s listening to some old Prospector telling one of these stories as you eat your refried beans. The six stories are all unique in style, tone and execution so there’s no wrong answer for which entry is someone’s personal favorite. The popular winner by far is certainly the Looney Tunes-esque title short, THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS, an absolute blast of nihilistic joy with snappy dialogue, violent slapstick and Tim Blake Nelson just having a hell of a good time. But, if I’m ever asked (please ask), my personal favorite of the bunch is the Zoe Kazan centered romantic-tragedy THE GAL WHO GOT RATTLED. It’s the longest short by a large margin and is the one entry in the anthology that could easily be turned into a full length feature, but at 50 minutes Kazan’s tale wonderfully swept me away with joy up until it broke my heart at the close. I must be a romantic because watching the camaderie between Miss Longabaugh (Kazan) and Billy Knapp (Bill Heck) evolve into a romance made me all fluttery in a way I haven’t felt in a long time! Honestly the short is my favorite thing from the Coens since NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. The other shorts are all excellent, no doubt, but none equals the all consuming outcrop of joy and sadness I felt watching THE GAL WHO GOT RATTLED! It and all the other shorts are available right now on Netflix so go watch them! And if you have already watched BUSTER SCRUGGS then fucking hell you watch it again!
3. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT. (Christopher McQuarrie.)
The best ongoing franchise somehow continues to OUT-GREAT itself with every new sequel! The M:I series started out on a high note with Brian De Palma’s 1996 original, but once Brad Bird reinvigorated the series with GHOST PROTOCOL every entry has somehow been able to surpass the last! FALLOUT is the sixth movie in the series, but it’s also the first direct sequel to continue the story from the previous entry and that change works wonders for long time fans like myself! Even with a 140 minute running time the narrative is tightly constructed without an ounce of fat and McQuarrie perfectly takes the audience from setpiece to setpiece! AND WHAT WONDERFUL SETPIECES THEY ARE! As blockbuster movies move further & further away from real-location shooting and practical stunt work to relying more on digital environments – I have nothing nice to say about Avengers: Infinity War & its poorly composited pre-viz’d to death CG action scenes – it’s a celebration that madman Tom Cruise is out there throwing himself out of planes and helicopters in front of a camera just for the pure spectacle of it! To make it all the better, Cruise is doing some genuine career best character work in FALLOUT and so the film works not just as a blockbuster but as an emotionally engaging narrative as well! Add in the stellar cinematography, fantabulous real locations – that Paris motorcycle chase is beyond amazing! – and the excellent supporting work led by Rebecca Ferguson’s oh-so-good work as Ilsa Faust and you have the makings of an all-timer! Yes, some of the films MI: FALLOUT ranks above on this list are undeniably richer thematically and have more inventive character work, but how many of them have a scene where Tom Cruise & Superman get the shit kicked out of them in a bathroom by an evil badass spy? I rest my case. M:I-FALLOUT is the best action film since MAD MAX: FURY ROAD!!!
2. BLACKkKLANSMAN. (Spike Lee.)
The last five minutes of Spike Lee’s BLACKkKLANSMAN make up the most terrifyingly important montage of the year, and even if the preceding two hours had been absolute garbage, this film would have made my top 15 on the strength of that closing montage alone. Thankfully, Spike Lee is a master filmmaker who has spent the past thirty+ years perfecting his craft and he knows how to make a damn fine movie! With the aid of co-writer Kevin Willmott, Lee takes the real-life story of undercover cop Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) and turns it into a fun satirical take on how dumb bigots and their myopic views are…. until they become dangerous. One of the smartest moves Lee and his team make in BLACKkKLANSMAN is in how they portray the KKK. For the first half of the movie, the KKK members Ron and his partner (Adam Driver) come across are mainly mouth-breathing losers, they’re social failures who are so pathetic and brain-dead they’re only go-to defense as to why their lives suck so much is to blaming people with different skin colors. But, as the film progresses those same Klansmen start arming themselves and become terrorists who are capable of committing real damage and should not to be taken lightly. To me – and the film makes this necessarily obvious in the closing montage – this film draws a direct link between the actions of the KKK to our current Bigot in the White House. He, like the KKK in the film, is a character who a lot of people thought was merely a funny joke to be laughed at, until that one day when we watched this fucking cartoon of a person become the President and watched as the most irresponsible man alive was handed the powers of the most responsible job in the world. Lee is too smart & pure of a filmmaker to make a pedantic film that says racism was a “problem of a different time” and I think this will go down as one of his more memorable and important pictures. Also of note, I love how Lee, always the professor of film that he is, uses his movie as a dissertation on racism in popular film history itself. The movie starts with a clip from GONE WITH THE WIND (Scarlett O’Hara’s way of life goes with the wind cause she’s a slave owner!), has a character give a full sermon on the evils of Tarzan the Colonizer, confronts the hypocrisy of how “heroes” in Blacksploitation films from the 70s were primarily pimps, and then Lee reiterates that THE BIRTH OF A NATION, the “first blockbuster”, is an historically proven key influencer in the resurgence of the KKK in the US after the Civil War. BLACKkKLANSMAN is a phenomenal film that works both as entertainment and as thoughtpiece. I may be bias because Spike Lee is one of my personal favorite filmmakers, but I really think this is gonna rank among his best works!
1. FIRST REFORMED. (Paul Schrader.) Tie.
Yes. I cheated and have two films at my number one spot of the year. They’re both such awe-inspiring and affecting works that I ultimately could not decide between the two…. so I cheated. Will God Forgive Me? Paul Schrader has long been a great filmmaker who has gotten more respect & admiration for the films he’s written for Martin Scorsese than for the films he himself has directed. I mean, when your resume includes screenplays for timeless masterpieces like TAXI DRIVER, RAGING BULL & THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST that makes a lot sense. But, Scharder has always been an excellent, if chaoticly rambunctious, filmmaker who always had a strong grasp on his own filmmaking prowess. Because Schrader is a filmmaker whose spent his career in mid-budget adult fare, his recent work has suffered as studios move their money to “safer projects” – make more international blockbusters & only focus on mid-budget movies if they can be uplifting, award winning crowd pleasers – and that’s forced Schrader to take on some questionable projects of late – the Kickstarter experiment of THE CANYONS is a thousand times more interesting than the actual movie they ended up making – but he’s never stopped interesting. With FIRST REFORMED, Schrader embraced the “transcendental cinema” he talked about in his earlier writing but never tried his hand at making. In doing so he has crafted the greatest film of his directorial career! It’s arguably the timeliest film of 2018 – Climate Change is real & if nothing is done soon we’re going to be seriously fucked! – and his film does this all while being the most classically shot film of the year. Schrader & his cinematographer desaturate the picture, refrain from flashy camera moves, allow long periods of silence and even shoot in the square 1.37:1 aspect ratio. Schrader’s writing is chilling in its power and naturally takes the viewers to some dark places and contains the most tense final act of ANY movie released last year. For the entire duration of the film, Schrader’s skill behind the camera is matched by Ethan Hawke performance as Reverend Ernst Toller and while Hawke has always been great this is the performance of his career! I honestly think it’s one of the best performances of all time. If you ask me, remove the big blockbusters that are going to have sequels for the next forever from the equation, and I think FIRST REFORMED is going to be the film people will revisit and talk about the most when it comes to 2018.
1. ANNIHILATION. (Alex Garland.) Tie.
MY PERSONAL MOST IMPORTANT FILM OF 2018. It may not be the film I enjoy the most, but it’s the film that most affected me on an emotional and intellectual level. This one really cut deep. To most people, Alex Garland’s second film can function simply as an enjoyable bit of sci-fi. But, its true power comes forth if you’re willing to look a little deeper. I have cheered while watching ANNIHILATION. I’ve screamed while watching ANNIHILATION. I’ve cried while watching ANNIHILATION. And I’ve reconsidered my life and just who the hell I am while watching ANNIHILATION. The film reminds me most of Hideaki Anno’s NEON GENESIS EVANGELION and like that masterpiece, Garland’s ANNIHILATION uses the brilliant versatility of science fiction to directly confront the pain, catharsis, suffering and loneliness of depression. How depression can be so alluring even as it completely destroys who you are. I personally am very familiar with those self-destructive thoughts and fight the darkest feelings of self-hatred almost every day. I love ANNIHILATION because of how pure it is. If you’re lucky, you’ll watch the film and enjoy it for the cool monsters & Natalie Portman’s excellent performance, and then you’ll wonder what the hell I was talking about. But, if you’re like me and find some days to be a glorious dream and the next to be devoid of any joy, you’ll watch ANNIHILATION and know exactly what I see in this gem.
I wrote A LOT more about ANNIHILATION earlier in 2018. If you haven’t read my little essay on the film I would love it if you did! I’m quite proud of it to be honest (humble brag)
And that’s that. If you read this far those are My Top 15 Films of 2018. I feel it really was a phenomenal year for cinema as long as you knew where to look – avoid Disney – and there’s still so much from 2018 I haven’t seen yet! I need to see BLINDSPOTTING & BURNING & THE RIDER & COLD WAR & more! Even now that I’ve finished this list and look back I’m amazed to see the year was so stacked with quality that even some movies I really REALLY loved like Adam McKay’s VICE, Steven Soderbergh’s UNSANE, whatever VOX LUX was & a few more just missed out the cut for the list. I’m looking forward to what movies 2019 has and most likely I’ll be back in 12(ish) months with a whole new batch of films with fond memories attached.
Who knows, with any luck I may even make a film or two of my own in 2019….