Friday, 4 January 2019

Top 20 Best Films Of 2018


2018 was a fucking great year for movies. Not only that, it felt like there was some unified intent in the collective unconscious to finally get shit right, revising and correcting whole swathes of cinematic history in its wake. I could have made this a Top 40 list, and it still would’ve involve making some painful cuts because the best the year had to offer was just that damn good. Time for one last trip in reminiscence as I look at my picks for the top 20 best films of 2018.

Special Mention: Twisted Pair
Dude bless you, Neil Breen, you utterly insane bastard. Undisputed winner of 2018’s Best Worst Film, this is the kind of production that is a god-send for those like me who jump at the chance for a good riffing session. A film comprised of so much bafflement, so many jarring plot turns (for what little plot exists to begin with), and easily the worst editing I have ever seen, that it is an absolute laugh riot. This is the most fun I had watching a movie at the cinemas all goddamn year, and I can already tell that this is going to be my new go-to example of cinema that is enjoyably shitty. The Room has officially been dethroned by a film with a title and an editing style that are reminiscent of testicular torsion.


A refreshing take on romantic comedies and one of its worst clichés, this New Zealand effort is a remarkable work of subtle metafiction. The main plot, concerning an agency that helps struggling couples to break up by setting increasingly ludicrous scenarios, feels like we’re watching a writer’s room when they reach the sadly-inevitable Third-Act Break-Up. Through that lens, the observations made by Madeleine Sami and Jackie van Beek go full-force in examining the need for that event, the kind of people it caters to, the kind of people willing to make it happen, and what all of that says about those directly involved with it. It’s a gleeful takedown of a cinematic trope that I am only growing more and more tired of the more times I see it, and I am eternally thankful to Madeleine and Jackie for making this happen.


In the world of genre cinema, a sector of the film world that has historically been snubbed by the supposed ‘high-brow’ awards crowd, this feature will go down as a landmark achievement. Nevermind that it’s an amazingly well-told story about romance, prejudice and all things pop. Nevermind that it showed Guillermo Del Toro in prime form, managing to merge the two seemingly-disparate halves of his artistic sensibilities (the critical darling and the bombastic crowd-pleaser) so seamlessly that it actively made me reconsider pretty much everything he’s ever created. This film actually got mainstream notice, looking at the artistic side of pop art in a way that makes it a cultural touchstone, a showing of the art form that almost begs to be considered with intense thought. It’s one thing to be a great genre film; it’s quite another to be so good that it could help other genre films get noticed as well.


Speaking of putting pop culture on a pedestal, we have this film, a quite extraordinary attempt to highlight and celebrate the culture as just that: A culture, one just as reliant on its proponents as any other. While this film’s mere existence in its current state would’ve been impossible without the clout of someone like Steven Spielberg at the helm, what makes this remarkable is what Spielberg and writers Ernest Cline and Zak Penn ultimately did with this opportunity. Rather than just making this an excuse for endless cameo fodder, having little more reason to be noticed than the accompanying Wikipedia page listing all of them, they went beyond just fanwankery and turned those appearances into a showing of solidarity along geek lines, a glorious curation of over half a century worth of pop culture history. All done with the intent to congratulate others more so than themselves, while keeping an eye on how heavily corporate everything is and could very well become more so.


Quite a few franchise pictures in 2018 played the long game in correcting some of their respective series’ biggest blotches. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom bridged a 25-year gap of weak follow-ups with a genuine winner, and Creed II turned the Rocky series’ single dumbest entry into a foundation for some truly intense character drama. But as much as I love both of those features, neither of them can hold a candle to this one. Taking 40 years’ worth of cinematic and critical work regarding one of the greatest slashers of all time, this film not only makes for a damn good horror flick in its own right but a truly worthy follow-up to the 1978 original.

More so than any other filmmakers aside from John Carpenter himself, David Gordon Green, Jeff Fradley and Danny McBride show an uncanny understanding of what makes Michael Myers so damn terrifying, and the fact that the answer is so astoundingly simple only makes this film feel like it needed to happen. It’s a masterfully-presented look at absolute evil that actively questions how many people both in and out of the film’s universe are unwilling to accept that ‘absolute evil’ even exists.


The gulf between Zack Snyder and non-Zack Snyder DC films is amazingly wide. As much as I will continue to give the DCEU shit when it doesn’t measure up (MoS still sucks and Justice League is a disappointment of cosmic proportions), when they get it right, they can make some of the best superhero capers in recent years. Wonder Woman is one example of this, and thankfully, the live-action solo debut of Aquaman is another. An incredibly fun action-adventure flick, bolstered by great performances and awe-inspiring scale in its fight scenes, this actually manages to transcend just good old-fashioned fun and goes into the realms of legitimately impressive. While the makeup of the Aquaman mythos here does have elements of MCU-lite to it (the whole Arthurian angle has quite a bit in common with the approach to Thor in his solo movies), it still works very nicely in giving the king of the seas a sense of grandeur and legacy that the character has been needing of for decades in the mainstream consciousness.


Easily one of the most visually-striking films of the entire year, this so easily could’ve been left off the list out of the sheer fact that the film’s stakes are relatively small. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a remarkably warm but ultimately familiar piece of rom-com cinema. However, one of the great things about 2018 is that part of that intent to correct long-standing slights in the world of cinema also extends to non-white demographics at the box office. And in the hands of director Jon M. Chu, showing an uncharacteristic level of utterly gorgeous aesthetics, this is a showing of Asian-American cultural and historical heritage that is really damn cool to see on the big screen. Even though I am rather obviously part of the suburban white boy crowd, I have all the respect for those who want to share the stories of other cultures. Variety is what keeps the world interesting, and man, few things captured my interest quite like this utter gem of a film.


Apparently, all the M:I franchise needed was for a director to stick around for more than one feature; whodathunkit? While the marvellous work at tying the entire spotty history of the trials of Ethan Hunt together, this film ends up making the list because it is fucking brilliant just as an action flick. Even with how good this year has been for horror, Fallout made for one of the tensest movie-going experiences of the last several years, creating a masterclass in how to use tension in an action movie to nerve-rattling effect. Not only that, it marks a surprising evolution in Tom Cruise’s recent trajectory as an action star, managing to portray Ethan for the first time as something more than just an extension of his own ego. It’s well-acted, the action is fantastic, and the finale makes for one of the greatest showings of real-time cinematic storytelling I have ever seen full stop.


Another notch in 2018’s cultural aesthetics belt, Ryan Coogler’s debut in the world of blockbuster superhero cinema is an extraordinary work of art inside and out. Every aspect of its creation, from the characters to the settings to the very real racial divides at its core, are drawn from a wealth of historical context from both African and African-American cultures, creating less of a film and more of a singularity; a cornerstone that stands as a learned examination and long-overdue appraisal of those cultures and their place in Western modernity.

It feels like all the time America could have been spending giving a voice to a heritage this plentiful was paid back with interest, creating a truly fascinating work that engages both as a cultural milestone and as another astonishing addition to the MCU canon. I can’t effectively gauge how well this will age with its intended audience… but as someone who will always champion media representation and who loves seeing characters I can personally identify with, I can only hope that this sets precedent for others to have their turn as well.


While Australians at home were turning the country into a laughingstock, Aussies working abroad in Hollywood were doing some very good things. Like director Julius Avery, who teamed up with a wealth of film talent both in front of and behind the camera, all backed by producer J. J. Abrams, to make one of the most exciting World War II yarns in recent years.

It’s a blood-seeped smoothie of war drama, bonkers sci-fi and insanely gory body horror that feels like an old-school comic book brought roaring to life. It has all the nationalism-tinged pride of a Golden Age comic, where superheroes punching Hitler in the face was the order of the day, with the graphic spectacle of the Dark Age, where problems were solved with enough bullets to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool. It’s so over-the-top, yet so fitting for the time we live in, that it’s hard not to appreciate this for the grit-encrusted jewel that it is. I mean, since white nationalism and other such neo-Nazi fuckery has been on the rise in recent years… I want to see more films like this in the future.


Here’s a bit of real world re-examination, taking one of the most memetic news stories of the 90’s and making it a point to question why seemingly everyone knows about it. Through a combination of mockumentary, fourth-wall-shattering and an enviable balance of dark humour and even darker drama, this made for a call to empathy that I cannot possibly be more in favour of than I already am. 

Even though I have likely shown my share of it on this blog, I am growing to hate modern cynicism; the mindset that takes remarkably tragic stories like that of Tonya Harding at face value, and then proceed to turn them into a punching bag for the following two decades. This ranks up there with films like Falling Down for me in regards to making me seriously reconsider how much instant judgment is made regarding news media. Any other year, I would look at a film like this that actually points a finger at its own audience and says ‘what the fuck is wrong with you?’ and just disregard it entirely. But man, rarely is a film so within its right to make that accusation, making for a very powerful and surreal cinema experience.


To the surprise of likely no-one, of course this film made it onto the list. An enthusiastic crowd favourite, successful both with critics and at the box office, and easily the one film I was personally asked about the most over the course of 2018. I could go into excruciating detail about all the things this film does right, from Bradley Cooper’s stellar entry as a director to Lady Gaga making up for a staggering number of mishaps on record and on film. 

But for me, this film makes the cut because of a single production virtue: The sound mixing. The sound of this film is absolutely pristine, channelling all of the chest-thumping loudness of an actual concert and translating it with insane precision to the movie-going experience. I’ve seen filmed concerts that couldn’t even get that right. As someone who really doesn’t do well with large crowds, and hasn’t gone to a live concert in quite a while as a result, I have unending adoration for a film like this that can take that sensory experience and turn it into something I can enjoy from the comfort of a space I can consider sacred: The cinema.


Fun superhero flicks weren’t exactly in short supply in 2018, but this one stands out more than most because it is so genuinely unique. Its combination of comic book visuals, antiquated 3D inspiration and outright psychedelic textures makes for a very strange, very powerful, very unlike-any-other-superhero-film-of-the-last-few-decades joy ride of a film.

And what’s more, that reality-bending approach to visual storytelling serves as a fantastic springboard for an introduction to the other-dimensional side of sequential art, giving audiences an eyeful of just how much creativity and variety they had been missing out on when it comes to Spider-Man. When both film studios and Marvel at large seem content to just retell the exact same version of Peter Parker’s story over and over again, this film serves as a bladed answer to that trend and shows that there is more than enough room for something different. And for a character as widely-beloved as Spider-Man, enforcing the universality of his appeal like this is a great step forward.


Paying some lip service to the ravenous hip-hop head that hides underneath the film critic in me, I am so fucking happy that this film is a thing. A look at the aggressive world of battle rapping, where rap is less music and more weapon of choice, this is a blistering critique of not only the trends and tropes of the industry but the unhealthy mentalities that it and far too much of the rest of the world harbors. As hip-hop, it scratches my itch for insanely intricate lyricism, giving me a nice reprieve from whatever in the hell has happened to the genre in recent years, and the little touches regarding its cast and their respective histories made for a very fun nostalgia rush of my days being waist-deep in videos from King Of The Dot and Don’t Flop. But as a film, it turns wordplay into slick visuals and battle rap into an expose of the current state of the ‘free speech’ debate. As a lover of both worlds, I am ecstatic with the result, making for one of the best rap movies in a very long time.


The layers of surreal on this thing are frankly staggering. It’s primarily a look at the webcam model side of the porn industry, but it’s such an effective look at the reality of pretty much anyone trying to get noticed in the Internet age that even I found something disturbingly familiar about this whole thing. The bubbling narcissism, the strain in maintaining an online presence alongside an offline one, the all-too-real fear of losing one’s self for the name of one’s image; welcome to the world of being an online content creator. 

That on its own would’ve been more than enough to qualify this film for this list, as a primer for the darker side of being an Internet creative, but where this film made me fall head-over-heels is with its approach to horror. Combining the dream logic insanity of a David Lynch film with the morbid confessions of a Black Mirror episode, this made for one of the most cerebrally intense films I saw all year. The fact that this came to my attention while I was in the middle of figuring things out in regards to my own online identity only made that connection even stronger.


Nic Cage is back, bitches! And what’s more, he came back with a film that was the perfect fit for his brand of meme-worthy lunacy. While films like Climax simulated the effects of a drug trip to great effect, this film goes on several steps further to create a mesmerising voyage of a film. Mashing together black metal imagery, 80’s era action bravado and enough drugs to drown the population of an island cult, I can safely say that I’ve never seen a movie quite like this. It’s a mind-bending journey in and out of the subconscious, using an unnerving understand of true cult mentality and merging it with writer/director Panos Cosmatos’ penchant for taking the Boomer generation to task for how far it fell in ideology and eventual result. It’s exciting, it’s trippy as fuck, it gave me some of the widest grins of the entire year’s crop, and at a time when cult mentality is more prevalent than it’s been in quite some time, it’s something we needed in cinemas.


I think I over-corrected myself when looking at the first Deadpool. Maybe I was a little too overjoyed to finally see a real depiction of one of my favourite comic book characters that I didn’t end up paying heed to how… muddled it ultimately was. And indeed, upon rewatching it, I felt a very unwelcome but nonetheless true feeling that it wasn’t as good as I had hoped it would be. Enter this sequel, where no such apprehensions exist in me. While I freely admit that the CGI work is still rather weak, that is the only real gripe that makes a return from the original.

Instead, through the lens of David Leitch, fast becoming one of the best action directors working today, this made for a gut-bustingly funny, thrilling and even moving story about the Merc With A Mouth. They managed to open on a supposedly-facetious claim that this is a family film, and over the preceding two hours, actually sell that idea with some truly heartstring-plucking moments. It’s not just entertaining, and everything I wanted out of the first movie; it even managed to give me a left-hook and give me shit I didn’t even realise I wanted.


The high point of Australia’s contributions of the movie world in 2018, this is a film that I wish was out when I was growing up. Ever since coming out as bisexual, I’ve always had this fear in the back of my head that doing that was only leading me towards the kind of people who would want to change that. Hell, I once got questioned as to whether I was “really” bisexual by a gay guy, an exchange that has left its boot print on my mind ever since. So you can imagine how eye-wateringly grateful I am to Joel Edgerton for making a film like this, one which highlights the embarrassingly real practice of conversion therapy but also serves as a much-appreciated hug to those in the community that have to put up with it.

But more so than anything else in the film proper, my reason for this film’s high placement is down to this: A statement made by Edgerton himself regarding his involvement. “I can’t think of a better reason to get behind the camera again.” This story, about a sickening practice that not nearly enough people are outraged by, about someone who survived it with his identity intact, about a symbol of the world’s lingering unacceptance of people like me, with that quote attached to it? I don’t think I’ve ever been so quickly choked up with tears before, and I cannot be more thankful to Joel for making it happen.


When Alex Garland’s Ex Machina came out, I honestly wondered why I didn’t like it even more than I already did. I mean, it’s a sci-fi story that represents all the approaches to the genre that I absolutely love; how in the hell could it get better than that? Well, this film quite summarily answers that one, seeing Garland go beyond mere scriptsploitation into all-out visual storytelling. This is an exceptionally fulfilling flick, wielding Garland’s knack for endearingly warm writing and an incredibly grim understanding of the human animal to create simply fantastic sci-fi of the heady variety.

Self-destructive thought patterns and the apparently-universal tendency towards behaviour that is detrimental to the self are among my morbid fascinations when it comes to psychology, and this film serves as a great example of that, all while the human side of the equation consistently in focus. After Ex Machina, I wanted to see what Alex Garland would do next. After this, I’m almost scared to see what’s coming up. Because we’re only at #3 on this list, and we’re already getting into “films that could easily make their way onto my all-time favourites list” territory.


Another instance of a filmmaker behind an outright great film somehow finding the hutzpah to do even better. Maybe it’s because I spent some time in 2018 becoming more familiar with areas of the occult, hence the mention of chaos magic in the review, but I can’t help but look back on this film and consider it a work of genuine magic. 

A whirling vortex of the historical, the psychological, the mystical and the positively batshit, this made for a horror remake that managed to outclass even the likes of Halloween. It’s not that it simply manages to do better than what came before, which is already a feat considering the legacy of the original; it stands proudly all on its own as a phenomenal work of mysto-psycho-horror. It’s thrilling, it’s enticing, it gave Dakota Johnson a sorely-needed chance to shine in the lead, but for me, it’s just fucking amazing art.


Some filmmakers struggle to make even one good film in a given year. Documentarian Morgan Neville gave us not one but two absolute stunners in the space of a single year. And yeah, while They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead made for a very surreal chapter in my career as a film critic, I can’t lie: This film deserves the top spot against all others.

And the reason why isn’t even for anything all that complex, as the film is a relatively simple and straight-forward depiction of the life and works of its subject, pop culture saint Fred Rogers. But looking back on all the films I saw in 2018, no film affected me as strongly as this one did. Within minutes, watching Mister Rogers stand up for the right to give children worthwhile edutainment, I found myself in a fit of uncontrollable sobbing. A fit that continued on and off for the entirety of the film’s run time. I definitely shed tears for other films, but never before did I feel hopelessly at the film’s mercy like that.

That kind of emotional reaction, where it feels like something deep within my heart is being let loose, is the reason why I watch movies in the first place. I cannot even begin to share the gratitude I have for that experience, pouring out my soul and my eyes in service to a man that I have grown to genuinely admire. Being able to measure up to the legend that Rogers has become in the Internet age is one thing, as he definitely comes across like someone who deserves to be thought of in those terms. But for me, a film like this that makes an appeal for humanity at its best, using a flesh-and-blood human as its three-dimensional blueprint for change for the better? I literally could not have asked for better if I tried.

This film, more than any other on this list, is the one that I will carry with me into the new year. It made me want to be a better person, and over the next twelve months, I can only hope that I get closer to that ideal.

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