Now and again, I ponder as to what this incessant listing is for. Is it a means to place order onto a chaotic world? Do I list to help relieve my sieve-like memory of the pressure of remembering shit? And what does it mean to have a "Best Of 2018!" list when there are a few films from this year that I haven't seen yet, films that will undoubtedly plop onto this list? Do I help reinforce the ideas that people have about me with my choices? So many questions. Here are some answers as to my favorite (and not-so-favorite) movies that I saw this year.
I'd Buy That For A Dollar (the faves of the favorites)
Mandy
Annihilation
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Paddington 2
First Reformed
Upgrade
For those who know me even a little bit, you'll know why at least half these titles are the tip of the top, so I shouldn't have to keep banging on as to why these movies are just as awesome as can be. But while I'm here, let me say that the newest MI installment is possibly the best of the franchise, while also being one of the top five "holy shit, Tom Cruise is fucking obsessed" cinematic experiences of my life, in IMAX, no less.
80 Cents On The Dollar (pretty damn good stuff)
The Tale
Eighth Grade
Lean On Pete
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
You Were Never Really Here
Blindspotting
Support The Girls
Hereditary
The Old Man and The Gun
Widows
Sorry To Bother You
Summer of 84
Black Panther
Again, all winners here, but let me rep for two in particular: The Tale (which rides a predictably great performance from Laura Dern into the genuinely disturbing thematic territory of the stories we tell ourselves to obfuscate some ugly fucking truths, truths that only HBO could distribute after the movie exploded at the Sundance Film Festival) and Summer of 84 (a Canadian gloss on superficial '80s American film tropes, until a ballsy pivot at the end which recast the entire film into a reflection on the last days of American perceived exceptionalism running smack-dab into a frightening and unknown future of terror and dread). All the above movies were solid, but these two in particular should not have flown so far under the radar. I mean, have you heard of either before now?
Two Bits (entertaining and compelling, if not essential)
Wildlife
First Man
A Simple Favor
Avengers: Infinity War
Ant Man and The Wasp
They Shall Not Grow Old
Jane Fonda in Five Acts
Golden Exits
A Quiet Place
A Star Is Born
Game Night
Three Identical Strangers
The Death of Stalin
Isle of Dogs
Blackkklansman
Tully
Ready Player One
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Deadpool 2
Juliet, Naked
Thoroughbreds
Good shit from top to bottom, although for personal and technological achievement, They Shall Not Grow Old should be on the 80 Cents list. And is it just me, or did Ant Man and The Wasp > Avengers: Infinity War? It's just me, right?
The Buffalo Nickel (lower in value, but still peculiar enough to remember)
Venom
Under The Silver Lake
Let me start this reclamation project by saying that neither Venom or Under The Silver Lake can be objectively called "good" movies. And yet, here I am, talking about both in more detail than I gave Paddington 2 (which, in a just world, should get Hugh Grant an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor).
Venom achieves the impossible, in that a movie featuring one of Spider-Man's best known villain-turned-antihero foils fails to incorporate Spider-Man in the slightest, in that a movie where the title character FUCKING EATS PEOPLE gets a PG-13 rating. Venom is a movie featuring Tom Hardy acting in a completely different movie than the rest of the cast, a movie so reliant on CG that the viewer is immediately disconnected from basic cinematic tropes like suspension of disbelief and narrative consistency. So of course it made hundreds of millions of dollars. Of course a sequel is forthcoming. But will Tom Hardy play Eddie Brock like one of the Krays, or like his character in Inception, or like a mixture of both? Only time and the box office will tell.
Under The Silver Lake is the latest offering from David Robert Mitchell, who directed the delightful one-two punch of The Myth Of The American Sleepover and It Follows. However, his new film is a meandering picaresque a la 1973's The Long Goodbye, but without Altman's narrative grounding and cinematic elasticity. It wants to be a lot of things -- a splash of Hitchcock (literally spelled out for the viewer at one point), a dash of Paul Thomas Anderson, a pinch of Tarsem Singh -- but the 2+ hours of deleterious pondering just doesn't cohere into anything of weight. It's similar to Richard Kelly following the elliptical and focused Donnie Darko with the swing-for-the-fences scope of Southland Tales. Let's hope an analog of The Box isn't next for David Robert Mitchell, whom I still believe to be a filmmaker of talent and vision.
At any rate, if anyone is interested in my specific thoughts on the others, please feel free to engage. But I just want to recall how I spent a slice of my 2018, so a list it is.
I'd Buy That For A Dollar (the faves of the favorites)
Mandy
Annihilation
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Paddington 2
First Reformed
Upgrade
For those who know me even a little bit, you'll know why at least half these titles are the tip of the top, so I shouldn't have to keep banging on as to why these movies are just as awesome as can be. But while I'm here, let me say that the newest MI installment is possibly the best of the franchise, while also being one of the top five "holy shit, Tom Cruise is fucking obsessed" cinematic experiences of my life, in IMAX, no less.
80 Cents On The Dollar (pretty damn good stuff)
The Tale
Eighth Grade
Lean On Pete
Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
You Were Never Really Here
Blindspotting
Support The Girls
Hereditary
The Old Man and The Gun
Widows
Sorry To Bother You
Summer of 84
Black Panther
Again, all winners here, but let me rep for two in particular: The Tale (which rides a predictably great performance from Laura Dern into the genuinely disturbing thematic territory of the stories we tell ourselves to obfuscate some ugly fucking truths, truths that only HBO could distribute after the movie exploded at the Sundance Film Festival) and Summer of 84 (a Canadian gloss on superficial '80s American film tropes, until a ballsy pivot at the end which recast the entire film into a reflection on the last days of American perceived exceptionalism running smack-dab into a frightening and unknown future of terror and dread). All the above movies were solid, but these two in particular should not have flown so far under the radar. I mean, have you heard of either before now?
Two Bits (entertaining and compelling, if not essential)
Wildlife
First Man
A Simple Favor
Avengers: Infinity War
Ant Man and The Wasp
They Shall Not Grow Old
Jane Fonda in Five Acts
Golden Exits
A Quiet Place
A Star Is Born
Game Night
Three Identical Strangers
The Death of Stalin
Isle of Dogs
Blackkklansman
Tully
Ready Player One
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Deadpool 2
Juliet, Naked
Thoroughbreds
Good shit from top to bottom, although for personal and technological achievement, They Shall Not Grow Old should be on the 80 Cents list. And is it just me, or did Ant Man and The Wasp > Avengers: Infinity War? It's just me, right?
The Buffalo Nickel (lower in value, but still peculiar enough to remember)
Venom
Under The Silver Lake
Let me start this reclamation project by saying that neither Venom or Under The Silver Lake can be objectively called "good" movies. And yet, here I am, talking about both in more detail than I gave Paddington 2 (which, in a just world, should get Hugh Grant an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor).
Venom achieves the impossible, in that a movie featuring one of Spider-Man's best known villain-turned-antihero foils fails to incorporate Spider-Man in the slightest, in that a movie where the title character FUCKING EATS PEOPLE gets a PG-13 rating. Venom is a movie featuring Tom Hardy acting in a completely different movie than the rest of the cast, a movie so reliant on CG that the viewer is immediately disconnected from basic cinematic tropes like suspension of disbelief and narrative consistency. So of course it made hundreds of millions of dollars. Of course a sequel is forthcoming. But will Tom Hardy play Eddie Brock like one of the Krays, or like his character in Inception, or like a mixture of both? Only time and the box office will tell.
Under The Silver Lake is the latest offering from David Robert Mitchell, who directed the delightful one-two punch of The Myth Of The American Sleepover and It Follows. However, his new film is a meandering picaresque a la 1973's The Long Goodbye, but without Altman's narrative grounding and cinematic elasticity. It wants to be a lot of things -- a splash of Hitchcock (literally spelled out for the viewer at one point), a dash of Paul Thomas Anderson, a pinch of Tarsem Singh -- but the 2+ hours of deleterious pondering just doesn't cohere into anything of weight. It's similar to Richard Kelly following the elliptical and focused Donnie Darko with the swing-for-the-fences scope of Southland Tales. Let's hope an analog of The Box isn't next for David Robert Mitchell, whom I still believe to be a filmmaker of talent and vision.
At any rate, if anyone is interested in my specific thoughts on the others, please feel free to engage. But I just want to recall how I spent a slice of my 2018, so a list it is.
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