2018 was as strong a movie year as ever. Despite the Academy
Awards’ efforts to diminish the year by not nominating deserving films (see
below), and championing films that didn’t deserve to be championed, films of immediacy, mystery, and lunacy lingered
amongst the beautiful and the comical. While streaming services and people’s
interests in never leaving their homes continued to grow in popularity, if one
looked they could find greatness in all corners of the movie going world.
Here’s some of the favourites (with honourable mentions) that I was able to discover
this year:
10. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
The national treasures the Coen Brothers return to favourite lists of the
year yet again, this time with their six episode ode to the Wild West. At first
blush, it’s easy to say that it’s unusual for them to get away from the bread
and butter of a single story narrative (although their short in Paris, je t’aime was memorably awesome),
but if you take a step back, the collection of shorts cover familiar territory
for them. Merging deadpan black humour, boisterous musical numbers, interesting
characters, and their unique trademark snappy dialogue, it all comes together
into a multi faceted meditation on death that is as difficult to shake off as a
burr under your saddle.
9. Support The Girls
Writer/Director Andrew Bujalski’s tale of a day in the life
of service workers at the world’s tackiest Hooters-like themed restaurant
burrows into the margins to produce something that paints an accurate picture
of the difficulty of getting by in contemporary America, but never wallows. His
triumvirate of Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, and Shayna McHayle have never
been better as the manager and her 2 coworker/friends whom want to be the best
versions of themselves- but aren’t always allowed. As full of sobering realities,
as it is laughs (check out the Stephen Curry tattoo!), spontaneity, and hope.
8. Leave No Trace
Almost as a response to the difficulties of the characters in Support The Girls, Leave No Trace is a quietly powerful micro focus on 2 characters living
off of (but never too far from) the grid. Director Debra Granik’s follow up to 2010’s
incredible Winter’s Bone, is a patiently
gentle whisper of a story about a war veteran Father (played by the reliable
Ben Foster) whom is suffering from PTSD, and his teenage daughter (a great
Thomasin McKenzie). Torn between looking after her father who needs to live in
the wild in order to live with his demons, and exploring parts of society that
she’s never experienced before, they have to come to an understanding that is a
pleasure to arrive at. Based off of a true story, it’s a testament to the
strength of gentleness and staying true to yourself.
7. Roma
The most beautiful movie of the year, Alfonso’s Cuaron’s masterful
tribute to the housekeeper who raised him is an elegiac memorial to the past
that despite taking place in 1970’s Mexico feels as vibrant as if it was taking
place today. As critic Lindsay Zoladz points out,
director/producer/writer/cinematographer/editor Alfonso
Cuaron proves himself as a unique phenomenon- the multi talented artist already
established at the apex of his powers, drawing from his autobiographical for
inspiration that less established artists typically tend to use. Teeming in every
inch of the screen with inspiration and drudgery, political chaos and
domesticity, and the personal amidst the political, Roma’s debut on Netflix was proof that arthouse films of soulful
quality is something you can get from home as much as the multiplex.
6. The Rider
In a year teeming with overrated biopics, the most authentic movie of the year
was writer/director Chloé Zhaoz’s true story about South Dakota cowboy Brady
Jandreau’s struggles with giving up his rodeo lifestyle due to injury. With
Brady, his family, and community members playing themselves in the Pine Ridge
Reservation, there is a genuine sense of place that allows us to feel the
beauty of its mid west setting, while being stung by the question of whether
you can still chase your dreams. Far from being a buzz kill, The Rider’s delicate quiet and gentle
characters let you draw your own conclusions as we are left to admire yet
another spectacular sunset.
5. Game Night
The most entertaining movie of the year, directors John
Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, and writer Mark Perez, create a film that
is almost as heavy on tension and thrills as it is laughs. Aping equal parts
David Fincher and Judd Apatow, a group of competitive friends’ game night is taken
to the next level of role playing authenticity, but quickly goes awry when
things get too real in the form of kidnapping, witness protection murders, and
gangsters. The supporting cast is excellent (watch for a scene stealing Jesse
Pleamons as the lonely cop who lives next door and will do anything to get
invited to the group’s gatherings), and set the stage for a reliably funny turn
by Jason Bateman and a revelatory quirky performance by the delightful Rachel
McAdams. Possibly the most rewatchable movie of the year, it’s a delight that
sucks you in like a jet engine.
4. The Death of Stalin
Game Night’s mangled and black souled
adopted orphan sibling, is director Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin. Based off of events in 1953 Russia, when despot
Joseph Stalin had a stroke, was briefly fine, and finally died- and the insane
lengths his political underlings stooped to in order to take his place. Similar
to Iannucci’s work on television’s Veep,
and the film, In the Loop, he brings
his trademark black hearted satirical lens and focuses it on the bewildering
state of affairs for citizens living in a schizophrenic nightmare communist
state, where kill lists were arbitrarily switched at the last minute, and the officials’
complete lack of concern for the citizenry and sanctity of government as they
squabbled for power. Laugh too hard at the political slap stick theatre, and
you’ll miss the directions the rope moves in the cabinet’s ceaseless tug of
war. Refreshingly devoid of even trying to have Soviet accents (or subtitles),
the stellar cast all speak in their native tongues, which is all the better for
highlighting the callous indifference of its incompetent and ambitious leaders.
Absolutely an acquired taste, it’s the funniest movie of the year.
3. Hereditary
Director Ari Astor’s debut horror film, focusing on the lives of a nuclear family
that has some spectacular communication issues, was the year’s most visceral
movie. After the family’s Grandmother matriarch passes, the mother of the
family (a robbed of an Academy Award Best Actress nomination Toni Collette)
struggles to come to grips with the family’s history and the role that she will
play in trying to protect her family. Almost completely devoid of clichéd jump
scares, Hereditary’s strength is its sadistic
patience, as we slowly penetrate a family’s dysfunction, a la Ordinary People, before finally dropping
us deep inside The Exorcist, to finally
sledgehammer us into submission. Featuring one of the year’s more intense
climaxes, some families just have demons they can’t escape.
2. Annihilation
Writer/Director Alex Garland brings forth likely the most misunderstood and
ambitious movie of the year, with his science fiction horror-drama. After
scientist Natalie Portman’s soldier husband goes missing inside a growing alien
bubble referred to as “The Shimmer”, Portman and a team of female scientists go
in to explore and try to understand what is happening within the alien
phenomenon. What they discover is a presence that evolves everything that it touches,
creating phalanxes of questions- while explaining little. Intense, unique, strange,
harrowing, inspirational, dark, and thoughtful, Annihilation offers something new with every viewing, but to
understand why it’s one of the trippiest and funkiest science fiction films
since 2001- you should give it at
least one.
1. First Reformed
Writer/Director Paul Schrader’s ferocious take on the
universal question of how to live spiritually in an effective way during the 21st
century is as powerful as it is effective. The writer of such prestige misery
bombs such as Taxi Driver and Affliction pulls no punches in
portraying Ethan Hawke’s frustrated and wounded priest as a man who has no idea
how to celebrate god when it feels like he cannot be found. Ethan Hawke gives a
career best performance as a man of the cloth struggling to make way in a
modern world that steals our young in exchange for fruitless wars and kowtows
to corporations while the environment burns. While it may not be original (Robert
Bresson’s Diary Of A Country Priest
and Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light
have covered this subject matter before), it is memorably updated for our age.
While hard hitting and asking existential questions that perhaps cannot be
answered, it is far from being a slog, and at times it can even feel
transcendental. Searing and unforgettable, there is clearly still work to do in
religion’s role in making people’s lives more bearable. Sounds like film
itself.
Honourable Mentions:
11. Burning
12. Unsane
13. A Star Is Born
14. Avengers: Infinity War
15. The Favourite
16. Spiderman: Into the Multiverse
17. Can You Forgive Me?
18. You Were Never Really Here
19. BlacKKKlansman
20. Upgrade
Sorry to Bother You, Private Life, A Simple Favour, If Beale Street Could Talk, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Tully, Ibiza, Mom and Dad, Black Panther, Compliance (BCSFF), Cliché (BCSFF)
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