Y'all, 2018 was an...underwhelming year for movies. Unlike 2017, where my top three of the year (Get Out, Ladybird, and Call Me by Your Name) were movies that I have and will watch over and over and made me feel all the feelings, most of the movies this year struck me as good, but not great. Ironically, I have a top 12 this year, whereas most years I have a top 10 or 11. I think that's because, as far as I'm concerned, numbers 2-12 feel pretty equally good (while my #1 of the year is truly unique and stands apart).
That's not to say that the movies on my list are "meh"--they're quite good and for very different reasons. But compared to 2012-2017, there are just fewer films that really blew me away (2011 was also a crappy year for movies, in my opinion). There are also a few movies that I haven't seen yet that may or may not have made the list if I had seen them in time. Specifically: Eighth Grade, Cold War, First Reformed, and Roma.
But without further ado, here are my personal favorites of 2018:
12. Isle of Dogs
I had to include Wes Anderson's beautiful (if perhaps culturally problematic) stop-motion film because not only is it lovely to look at, it gives the ol' heartstrings a great, big tug. With an excellent voice cast, led by Bryan Cranston (who was born to voice a mangy mutt with a heart of gold), Isle of Dogs takes a simple plot--a boy looks for his missing dog--and elevates it into hipster art in the way only Wes Anderson can.
11. A Star is Born
Speaking of heartstrings, holy shit! When I first saw the preview for the fourth (!) adaptation of the classic tale of a washed-up, alcoholic musician who mentors (and marries) a younger ingenue, I assumed the film would be hot garbage. But I, like anyone else with a heart, got sucked in during Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper's goosebump-inflicting performance of "Shallow", which was (rightly, in my opinion) named the "Best Scene of the Year" by the A/V Club. And, ok, I guess I like Bradley Cooper now? I tried to resist him for years, but he's really good in this movie! Look, A Star is Born isn't breaking any molds, but it made my cold, dead heart feel something and for that, it gets a place on this list.
10. Tully
Tully takes a common, but deeply misunderstood phenomenon--post-partum depression--a spins a fairy tale of sorts out of it. Charlize Theron, teaming up with director Jason Reitman for the second time, plays Marlo--a mother of three who is not just stressed, but burned out to the point of apathy. He rich brother pays a night nanny, Tully (Mackenzie Davis, an absolute delight), to help Marlo and the two bond is surprising ways. Tully's message that "it takes a village to raise a child" shouldn't be controversial, but in a culture where women are supposed to be able to "have it all" (with a shameful lack of paid time off from work and--if the woman has a male partner--an unequal division of labor at home) it still seems taboo to suggest that when it comes to parenting, sometimes the exhaustion outweighs the joy.
9. Black Panther
With a talented director, a glorious cast, a Kendrick Lamar-heavy soundtrack, and the best villain of the year, Black Panther was destined to be great. And as the first Mavel movie to have a nearly entirely black cast, it couldn't afford to fail. And fail it did not. It currently sits as the 9th highest grossing movie of all time, and the highest grossing film by a black director of all time. Clearly, audiences wanted this movie and director Ryan Coogler did not disappoint. It helps that the central conflict of the film is one where you can understand both sides. Killmonger is not a two-dimensional bad guy--he's a bad guy who has a really fucking good point.
8. Won't You Be My Neighbor?
The only movie to make me actually cry this year, Won't You Be My Neighbor? proved that Fred Rogers was too good for this world. Rogers' approach to reaching children on their level and not condescending to them or acting authoritarian over them was both radical in its day, and still radical to this day. His emphasis that not only is it *ok* to feel feelings, but that it's good to feel feelings is a message that makes sense intellectually, but that so many children and adults struggle with because our culture has so many ways of squelching our humanity and encouraging us to buck up (and buy shit--capitalism is invested in no ever feeling whole). While Rogers would be the first to denounce being treated as a saint, he definitely came close in his important and eventful life.
7. Searching
Hey, remember that movie where John Cho's daughter goes missing and he has to navigate websites like Tumblr and Venmo to discover her whereabouts? Probably not, since the film slipped in and out of theaters in late summer, but I'm here to remind you that it was a damn good movie! In fact, it might be the most purely entertaining movie I saw this year. Filmed entirely through POV screens (and using FaceTime and Skype heavily), Searching could have been gimmicky and dumb, but it succeeded for two reasons: 1) Cho's lived in performance as a single dad desperate to find his missing daughter and 2) the power and mystery of THE INTERNET. As someone who loves to google stalk, this movie got me, and I was right there on the edge of my seat with Cho the whole time.
6. The Favourite
In 2016, director Yorgos Lanthimos directed my favorite film that year (The Lobster). In 2017, he directed my least favorite film that year (The Killing of a Sacred Deer). This year, he directs a solidly good film that puts scheming, witty, wicked, and ambitious women front and center (relegating the foppish men to the sidelines) in this story about Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) and two women (Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone) fighting over her favor. The Favourite is dirty and edgy--not what you'd expect from a period film. It's similar to Whit Stillman's Love and Friendship, only sexier and meaner. A delight for people who love costume dramas...or DRAAAMA of any type.
5. If Beale Street Could Talk
In 2016, Barry Jenkins directed Moonlight, the film that famously ousted La La Land for Best Picture. That glorious paean to growing up black and gay in America turned out not to be a one-and-done for Jenkins. His follow up, based on the novel by James Baldwin, is just as lovely and just as gentle in the face of equally harsh--if not harsher--realities of the black experience in the United States. Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephen James) are *just* starting out in adulthood--they're in love and looking for a place to live--when Fonny is falsely accused of rape and jailed indefinitely. And then Tish finds out they're going to have a baby. Jenkins takes a devastating situation and infuses it with integrity, love, and beauty--not to fetishize suffering but to take back the narrative. Complete with the most beautiful cinematography and musical score of the year, If Beale Street Could Talk is a film worth celebrating.
4. Hereditary
Take all the feels you felt while watching Won't You Be My Neighbor? and go in the complete opposite direction and that's what you feel during Hereditary, which is the best horror movie of 2018. Emotions like pure, unadulterated terror; a gut-feeling of wrongness; devastation; shock...you might ask why the hell I would recommend such a film, and all I can say is that it's cathartic as fuck. Toni Collette plays Annie Graham, who is trying to hold her family together after a series of devastating events. The film is about how grief and resentment can murder relationships and how parents, as much as they try to avoid it, can pass down nasty legacies to their children. Hereditary has some issues, especially in the back half, but if you love horror you owe it to yourself to experience this rollercoaster of a nightmare.
3. Border
Despite 2018 being a so-so year for movies (in my humble opinion), there were a lot of films that made me say "wow, I've never seen anything like that before!" and Border is one of those films. A Swedish film, directed by Ali Abbasi, Border almost flew under my radar until I kept seeing reviews of it pop up on body positivity websites. The film follows Tina (Eva Melander), a Swedish border security agent with a keen sense of smell and a face only a mother could love. Tina believes she has a rare birth disorder that gives her a heavy brow, "ugly" features, and makes it unable for her to have children. But then she meets a man who has the same "disorder" as her...and her life and perception of herself radically change. That's all I'll say--other than, seek this unique film out!
2. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
This criminally underseen film which features Melissa McCarthy in an excellent dramatic role as Lee Israel, a writer who forged letters to make some extra money, really snuck up on me. It's a film I would describe as "autumnal", which its laid-back feel and cinematographic palette of browns and grays. I love autumnal films--Good Will Hunting, Dead Poets Society, Wonder Boys. They're movies that feel cozy, lived in, and give you all the *feels* even if they aren't showy about it. Directed by Marielle Heller and co-starring the hilarious Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me? takes a couple deeply unlikeable characters and makes you empathize with them.
1. Sorry to Bother You
No other movie on this list surprised me as much as Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You. The film, set in a slightly alternative universe version of Oakland, CA, is funny, shocking, political, and outrageous. With extremely good performances by Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Armie Hammer, Danny Glover, and Steven Yeun as well as voice acting by David Cross and Patton Oswalt, STBY satirizes the struggles of black people to get ahead in a white-dominated society and how capitalism is essentially evil and eats up everything and everyone in its sight. But STBY manages to do this critiquing with a deft hand and balls-out audacity at the same time. It avoids being heavy-handed while also punching you in the gut (and tickling your funny bone along the way). I don't think I've seen a movie about racism that's this funny. It takes inspiration from films such as Spike Lee's Bamboozled and Jordan Peele's Get Out but remains uniquely its own thing. If there is one film to capture the feeling of nightmarish dystopia and ironic humor that *is* 2018, it's Sorry to Bother You.
murder murder murder the white patriarchy
***
Honorable Mentions:
The Hate U Give, Thoroughbreds, Mandy, Suspiria, Disobedience, A Quiet Place, Beautiful Boy, BlacKkKlansman
***
Coulda Been Better:
Annihilation
Did director Danny Boyle bother reading Jeff VanderMeer's "Southern Reach" trilogy? Because over half the plot seems to be missing from his adaptation. This is definitely a situation where the book is waaaaayyy better than the movie.
Crazy Rich Asians
I wanted to like John M. Chu's film more than I actually did. But rom-com tropes and bad-boyfriend behavior made me roll my eyes one too many times.
***
Worst of the Year (that I saw, anyway):
Apostle (last movie reviewed in this entry)
Don't bother with this Netflix film about a man (Downton Abbey's Dan Stevens) who travels to a remote island to rescue his sister from a cult. Sounds really interesting, but a total mess and a snooze.
That's all folks! See you in 2019!
