My top 10 is here, but I wanted to say a little about all the other new stuff I saw this year. For the most part, within each category, they're listed in order of increasing admiration.
SUPERHEROES DONE RIGHT
I’ve been more and more ready for the fad of superhero movies to fade, but I
can’t deny there were plenty of great ones this year.
Mary Poppins Returns - Darn right she’s a superhero. One of my favorite things about her is that, unlike a lot of heroes, she doesn’t want credit for the things she does to help people. Nothing can take the place of the original, but this is a lovely homage and a worthy follow-up. Ben Whishaw’s song DESTROYED me.
Deadpool 2 - Loved this, loved all the new heroes (especially the badass Domino), and it has the very best group cameo EVER. Also the best-worst use of time travel.
Avengers: Infinity War - I would not have believed six years ago that Marvel movies would go this dark, but here we are. Of course, I’m sure it will all be undone in the next movie, but it’s amazing how willing the filmmakers were to break the audience’s hearts. I hope you knew what you were doing, Strange.
Black Panther - One of the best movies of the year, period. Not only a great superhero movie, but a great movie with excellent worldbuilding and action. And a villain who has a point. I love the message of this movie, which much of America desperately needs to learn.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse - (Pictured above.) As good a movie as Black Panther is, I think Into the Spider-verse is even better as a superhero movie. It almost makes me want to get into comic books. Almost. Brilliant voice cast, wonderful animation (in several different styles) and most importantly a great story.
THE HORROR! THE HORROR!
There was SO MUCH good horror this year!
The Nun - The only one of these I’m lukewarm on. I don’t know if it’s that a horror movie monster tends to be scarier without a backstory or what, but I found the eponymous nun far scarier in The Conjuring 2. This is still pretty entertaining, though, and I love the touch of casting Taissa Farmiga.
Halloween (2018) - Not great, but still quite good. I love that they threw out all the other sequels and just showed us what might have really become of a final girl like Laurie if she lived in the real world and not a horror franchise. I love the smackdown of “both sides”-ism, and I adore that this is ultimately the story about three generations of women fighting to survive against a man intent on destroying them.
Anna and the Apocalypse - The holiday setting seems pretty incidental, but it does provide some great visuals (Anna whacking at zombies with a giant plastic candy cane is awesomely ludicrous). Making this a musical was a stroke of brilliance, though. I think that’s the only genre zombies hadn’t yet cracked.
Upgrade - This was really great and tapped into the fear of technology taking over all aspects of our lives. If you thought it was hella creepy when Alexa devices starting laughing to themselves, imagine a piece of software moving your limbs for you. This concept was scary even before the third act twist. Major kudos to Logan Marshall-Green who has to give two performances at once for parts of this movie — one with his arms and legs, and completely different one with his face. Loved this.
Annihilation - This was lovely and atmospheric and scary as heck, and it’s a shame so few people saw it. That bear or wolf or WHATEVER it was will haunt my dreams until the end of time. I also loved that this was about a team of scientists that were all women. Take that, The Thing! (Just kidding, The Thing, I love you but you *are* a sausage fest.)
A Quiet Place - I will never forget sitting for about ten minutes during this movie, holding a chip next to my mouth, unable to eat it because I was afraid to crunch. What an astounding use of silence in a movie. Everyone in the movie’s small cast is terrific, but especially Emily Blunt and Millicent Simmonds.
Hereditary - Another movie that’s effectively horrifying even before everything gets REALLY crazy in the last twenty minutes or so. Toni Collette does some of her best work here, and Alex Wolff (who I became a fan of with last year’s My Friend Dahmer) is incredible. Not what modern audiences might think of as horror, but they’re wrong.
Summer of ’84 - I really, really dug this. I don’t know if this is ripping off the “four young boys, a girl, and some scares” scenario of Stranger Things and It, or if it just came along at the same time, but I like this even more. It’s also a bit Rear Window, down to undermining the protagonist’s suspicions only to robustly confirm them later. The ending to this movie Messed. Me. Up. It’s been a while since a movie genuinely made me afraid to go to sleep.
Suspiria (2018) - (Pictured above.) I would not have thought it was possible to remake one of the greatest, scariest movies of all time and make it work so tremendously well. There’s *just enough* homage to the original, but it never makes nostalgia for Argento’s film do any of the work for it. Amazing.
ANIMATION
The *best* animated film I saw this year is in another category, but there was plenty of beautiful
animation on display in these other offerings. I just wish some of the movies themselves had been a bit better.
Isle of Dogs - There’s so much I love about this movie. It’s really brilliant animation and a great love song to humankind’s best friend. But … why is this white American director telling a Japanese story? Why are almost none of the voice actors Japanese? Why does this story even need to take place in Japan?
Incredibles 2 - I’m in the minority on this, I know, but I never felt a desperate need for a sequel to the original Incredibles. I wasn’t wild about the original film’s position on exceptionalism to begin with, but it was a good plot and felt timely. This movie is entertaining, but it feels at least a decade too late. I wish the whole movie had been about Edna and Jack-Jack.
Ralph Breaks the Internet - (Pictured above.) Not *quite* as tight as the first movie, and I think a lot of the internet in-jokes are unnecessary, but this movie gets a lot right, especially when it goes in on toxic relationships. The princess stuff is great as well, especially when Vanellope finally gets her “I want” song.
ADAPTATIONS
Ready Player One - There’s nothing wrong with this, exactly, and the concept is pretty irresistible. But this is another movie that feels too late for the cultural moment it’s in. White Male Hero saves the world with his fluency in obscure pop culture knowledge. I’m way more interested in the other characters.
A Wrinkle in Time - This was perfectly lovely and I don’t understand why it wasn’t more appreciated. Okay, it’s not perfect, but few novel adaptations are.
Leave No Trace - (Pictured above.) Incredible. I don’t even know what else to say. Beautifully filmed and beautifully acted. Like the director’s previous film, Winter’s Bone, a fascinating look at life on the margins of society.
FRANCHISE FILMS
Superhero movies were on point in 2018, but other franchises were hit-and-miss.
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald - I love being in Rowling’s wizarding world, but I swear these need to be books, not movies. I’m reminded of William Goldman explaining why he wrote a Butch & Sundance movie instead of a book — because he didn’t want to do all the research, and if he wrote a script someone else would have to do that. That feels like what’s happening with these movies, only J.K. Rowling *invented* this world and these characters, so she’s the only one with the information to begin with. I’m sure there are answers forthcoming, but it’s taking longer than it should to get to them with little else to hold onto. I could say so much more about this, but ack, there’s too much else to cover.
Solo: A Star Wars Story - I liked this more than most, it seems, even the belabored “origin story” moments. Alden Ehrenreich was a much better Han than I was expecting and Donald Glover as Lando … GUH. Also, gotta love that surprise cameo.
Mission: Impossible - Fallout - (Pictured above.) How do these movies keep getting better? Remember the first one? I love that they brought Michelle Monaghan back and actually dealt with what this movie universe means for her character. And my goodness, Tom Cruise is just super human at this point. THAT HELICOPTER STUNT OMG.
COMPLICATED LADIES
There are many more of these in my top 10 and in other categories, but I’m so happy to see
roles for women getting so much more nuanced and rounded.
Madeline’s Madeline - I was surprised to see this on so many top ten lists because I did not care for this at all. I mainly went to see it for the glory of Miranda July, and there are some good moments, but it was really frustrating to watch and I felt like I was on quirk overload.
Tully - This was really good, and I’m sad that most people seem to have forgotten about it already. Another exhibit in my “no thanks to kids” file.
Vox Lux - I was COMPLETELY unprepared for the first 15 minutes or so of this movie. I thought I was seeing a movie about a pop star and suddenly a brutally realistic school shooting is happening in front of my eyeballs! I kind of loved the theme in this movie about how nobody cares about anything anymore. I think that’s truer than we realize. Natalie Portman is pretty great here — in a lot of ways, a more serious version of her SNL rap persona.
The Wife - (Pictured above.) Glenn Close’s best work in years and hardly anyone saw it. Also her best argument for an Oscar win since 1988 and, just like that year, she’s probably going to lose to another singer-turned-actress. She plays the wife of an author who wins the Nobel and her absolute refusal to be seen as subjugating herself to her husband’s career is a thrill to watch. As is the moment when she finally shows us what she’s been holding in all this time.
A DISH BEST SERVED COLD
Both of these revenge flicks are stupendous, and had I done a “Second Ten” this year both of these would be in it.
Revenge - What I Spit On Your Grave should have been. Doesn’t force us to watch the actual rape and puts our attention and sympathies squarely and undivergingly on the victim. It’s also frankly a miracle that, for the second half of the film our heroine is dressed so skimpily (she’s wearing more dirt and fake blood than apparel) and yet it never feels as if she’s being exploited by the camera.
Mandy - (Pictured above.) My one complaint is that it needs more Mandy. One of Nicolas Cage’s best performances, and I wish people would stop categorizing it as a “crazy Nic Cage” performance. Nothing he does in this film (including the bathroom freakout) feels false or overdone to me. He lost the person he loved the most and had to watch her being brutally murdered. That will lead to some screaming.
RELIGIOUS ANGST
An interesting pair of flicks about fairly specific religious communities and the expectations attendant upon each.
Disobedience - If you saw the trailer for this, you probably know the gist, but I love the way this movie keeps its cards close to its chest and barely explains anything until the pent-up passion between Ronit and Esti explodes.
First Reformed - (Pictured above.) Paul Schrader’s best work in quite a while and a career-best performance from Ethan Hawke. This is Schrader’s meditation on Bresson’s Diary of a Country Priest, but it could easily be seen as “Taxi Driver with a priest.”
LOVE STORIES AMID TRAGIC CIRCUMSTANCES
If I’d seen either/both of these movies earlier in the year, or even earlier in the month, they might have
been in the top ten. They’re both brilliant, but as a rule I don’t trust my feelings on movies until I’ve had at least
a few days to meditate on them.
Cold War - A music director and a young singer fall in love during the cold war and spend the next decade leaving each other and coming back to each other. This looks exactly like a lost European film from the 1950s.
If Beale Street Could Talk - (Pictured above.) As a white person, I don’t feel qualified to say much about this, except that it is beautiful and heartbreaking. One of several movies this year that make the case for the absolute necessity of more diverse voices in filmmaking and storytelling in general. Perspective is essential to this film. That perfume scene, my God.
DOCUMENTARIES
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead - I liked this glimpse into the making of Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind, but I kind of wished they’d included what happened between the end of principal photography and when they were finally able to release it.
RBG - Why do we even need that On the Basis of Sex movie when there’s this?
Won’t You Be My Neighbor? - I liked this a lot and was glad it wasn’t just a cry fest. It also felt pretty even-handed for a doc about someone who seems so universally loved.
Minding the Gap - (Pictured above.) Wow. This was extraordinary. The skateboarding scenes alone are beautiful and ballet-like, but what really makes this movie sing are the intimate, frequently heartbreaking interviews.
UNCOMFORTABLE CONVERSATIONS STARTER KITS
As I said with BlacKkKlansman yesterday, this was a good year for movies you can't talk about at Thanksgiving.
Bodied - I was not as wild about this as others, mostly because I found the protagonist an insufferable prick who becomes even more insufferable by the end. I appreciate the distinction the movie makes between personal insults and insults based on demographics, and the climactic rap battle is fantastic. I just didn’t care for where this ended up. Maybe that’s the point, I don’t know.
Sorry to Bother You - Boots Riley treats this as the only film he may ever get to make, which results mostly in an incredibly ballsy debut (though perhaps in need of a little trim). And if you think the premise and tone are insane, JUST WAIT until the third act lunacy.
Blindspotting - (Pictured above.) This is a flat-out brilliant movie, made from a script by Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal who both star in the movie. It’s a vivid portrait of racism, gentrification and police brutality in a setting you don’t see too much in films. This also features another Hamilton alum, Jasmine Cephas Jones.
ROM COMS
As great as this year was for horror, it was almost as good for rom-coms.
Set It Up - Of these five, this is my least favorite, but I still LOVED this. It’s a twist on the office romance, but with a bit of Cyrano de Bergerac thrown in. Giving me more handsome Glen Powell to look at is worth the price of admission, but this movie also gave me the term “over-dick-around,” which is so real and relatable it’s downright rude.
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before - This was thoroughly charming and a great homage to the teen movies of the 80s. A John Hughes movie without the uncomfortable “I can’t believe that was ever considered acceptable” moments. Also, the love interest in this is SUPER cute.
Love, Simon - There have probably been movies like this before, but certainly not in the mainstream. While this movie normalizes gay romances, it doesn’t ignore how they are different from straight romances and how “coming out” complicates all of these dynamics. Jennifer Garner gets one of the best monologues of the year.
Crazy Rich Asians - Given that this was the first Asian-led movie in like 25 years, it had a lot to live up to — much more than any one movie should ever be expected to, in my opinion. I loved every second of this movie. It was a beautiful, almost Busby Berkeley-esque throwback to the opulent eye candy of Old Hollywood, in a drastically underused setting. Here’s hoping there are many more to come.
Juliet, Naked - (Pictured above.) This is my favorite kind of romance because it’s pretty light on, well, romanticizing. Rose Byrne plays a woman who strikes up an unlikely friendship and eventual romance with a musician (played by Ethan Hawke) who her former boyfriend (Chris O’Dowd) has been obsessed with for years. This was so refreshingly unsentimental, I couldn’t help loving it.
BASED ON A TRUE STORY
Operation Finale - A fine but not terribly remarkable historical drama about Israeli intelligence officers’ 1960 capture of former SS officer Adolf Eichmann, who had been one of the major figures and organizers of the Holocaust. There are some good dramatic scenes, especially between Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley, and some well-done tense moments. But this is pretty by-the-numbers.
Vice - There’s a lot to love here, but it feels even more chaotic than The Big Short (which I still liked and was in my “second ten” of 2015). A lot of praise going to Bale, but his performance feels much more like an impression and some incredible makeup. Amy Adams and Steve Carell are the MVPs for my money, Adams in particular.
First Man - Lovely, and the moon landing is spectacular (especially in IMAX). I liked this this was as much about Armstrong’s grief as his achievement (and how the two kind of go hand in hand). I have quibbles about the limited female roles (and I’m not part of the Cult of Claire Foy), but the movie overall is great, and I like seeing that Damien Chazelle can do something so wildly different.
Can You Ever Forgive Me? - Fantastic, and a great portrait of 1990s New York (which is the first New York I ever saw in person). Melissa McCarthy is wonderful, in the kind of prickly role she’s never really gotten to play before. Richard E. Grant is also excellent as her partner in crime. I also have to give a shout-out to Jane Curtin who is especially great in a small role.
The Death of Stalin - (Pictured above.) This just barely didn’t make my top 10. Outstanding and screamingly funny, and hoo boy, scarily relevant to current times (the phrase “false narrative” sent a chill straight up my spine). Everyone is fantastic here (this is part of Andrea Riseborough’s 2018 trifecta, with Mandy and Nancy), and I love that the whole cast just use their natural accents.
THRILLERS
Bad Times at the El Royale - Enjoyable and incredibly stylish. Wonderful ensemble cast, especially Cynthia Erivo. Chris Hemsworth is sex on a stick, but we already knew that.
Searching - (Pictured above.) This is amazing and far better than I expected from the set-up. All of the action takes place on computer screens, phones and surveillance cameras, which doesn’t sound like it would work but it’s really excellent. Everything centers on a great performance by John Cho as a father looking for his missing daughter.
ANTHOLOGIES
Ghost Stories - Loved this, and it reminded me a lot of one of the old Amicus horror movies, like Tales from the Crypt or Asylum. Got to see this at IFC with an intro Q&A from Martiin Freeman.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - (Pictured above.) Not all of the sketches are of equal excellence, but I don’t think that matters all that much. The clear champ is the Tom Waits tale, but I also enjoyed the one with Liam Neeson and Harry Potter’s Harry Melling, as well as the one with Tim Blake Nelson. The Coens have such an incredible gift for language, especially in their westerns and Americana films. It’s a form of music, and this movie is another stellar example.
FOREIGN BEAUTIES
Let the Corpses Tan - This modern giallo got a little wackadoo (as gialli are won’t to do), but I ultimately liked it. Incredible use of timestamps.
Burning - Great slow burn Korean thriller, with a wonderful maybe-villain performance from Steven Yuen.
Shoplifters - (Pictured above.) Beautiful, intimate and ultimately heartbreaking. Palm d’Or winner at Cannes. Questions traditional definitions of family. Great performances all-around, but Sakura Ando as the mother is the standout for me.
#SQUADGOALS
It was also a good year for lady teams.
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again - Look, this was never going to be a critical hit, but I enjoyed it to an indecent degree. Until “My Love, My Life” started and I nearly drowned in snotty, devastated tears. Coming up with a reason for Cher to sing “Fernando” is just … (*chef’s kiss*).
Thoroughbreds - Okay, maybe this one isn’t “goals,” exactly, but the relationship between the two girls in this film is fascinating. Great performances from Anna Taylor-Joy and especially Ready Player One’s Olivia Cooke.
Skate Kitchen - Great coming of age movie about a girl who loves skateboarding finding other girls who love skateboarding. A good story about friendship and the mistakes we make that screw it up. Also taught me what “credit card”ing is, and OUCH.
Dumplin’ - I loved this so much! Joins a handful of actually good movies about the south. There’s a romance here, and one I like a lot, but it’s secondary to the female relationships. Loved Willowdean but Millie was my favorite.
Widows - I hate that people seem to judge this by the “12 Years a Slave” standard as if this is lesser McQueen because it’s different. This is a really great heist thriller with an incredible cast . It’s not quite as strong when gets into “issues,” but it’s still great.
Ocean’s 8 - (Pictured above.) This setup and how it ties to the original trilogy should not work, but it’s done with just the right touch. I love that Ruben is the crossover character and not Rusty or Linus. And these are some seriously awesome ladies. On a superficial note, Cate Blanchett’s wardrobe in this movie is BOSS.
THE LATECOMER
The Other Side of the Wind - Orson Welles spoofs European arthouse cinema and does a pretty good impression of it. He made this off and on in the 1970s and it wasted away, unfinished and in distribution hell, until a few years ago. I’m not sure where this stands against Citizen Kane and Touch of Evil and Chimes at Midnight, but it’s nice to see another Welles film.
