2018, from First to worst

I watched a shit ton of 2018 movies in 2018, and in the beginning part of 2019. What else is new.

Actually, there is one new thing, something I feel quite proud of: I fell just short of setting a record.

Let me explain.

The 149 movies I'm ranking this year are my second highest total of all time, just two short of the personal record I set in 2016. You might think I'd be disappointed not having seen three more movies and broken the record. When you're in range of a record, you go for it, don't you?

And I could have. I've watched only 21 new-to-me movies in January, which is just less than one a day. Easily could have crammed in three more, especially when I devoted five of my January viewing slots to rewatches, two of which were from another year, the remaining three getting watched again just for the purpose of fine-tuning my list.

But the fact of the matter is, when I got in range of the hallowed 151, I pulled back. Something about beating that record frightened me. I'm not sure it's something for a 45-year-old man to be proud of that he mashed in more ranking-eligible films in his viewing year than ever before. By not setting the record at least I can tell myself I have a life.

But who am I kidding? Movies are my life in a way I'm not suddenly ashamed of. I love my family and other hobbies like sports, painting and reading, but I don't suddenly wish I devoted a large percentage of my free time to some other all-consuming passion. Besides, Roger Ebert's empathy machine has been and remains a great way for better understanding the world around us and the people with whom we share it.

Still, 149 does feel slightly better than 151. Healthier.

Before I give you my dramatic reverse countdown of my top ten, my bottom five, and the complete list, I usually like to tell you about the movies that won't be making the list. Below are the five movies I most regret not having an available outlet to see before my ranking deadline. The list is smaller this year and I only truly care about #2 and #1. Whether that's an indication of Australia releasing more movies at the same time they're released in the U.S., or a front-loaded release schedule of good films in 2018, I don't know.

5. Welcome to Marwen - Because I just can't quit Robert Zemeckis (and I loved the documentary it's based on)
4. The Sisters Brothers - Because Jacques Audiard interests me (and it's got a funny title)
3. Destroyer - Because Nicole Kidman (and she looks wackadoodle in it)
2. Burning - Because I hear it's incredible (and regret missing my chance to see it at MIFF)

1. If Beale Street Could Talk - Because Barry Jenkins' follow-up to Moonlight must be seen (though not until after February 14th)

Are you ready for it? ARE YOU READY FOR IT?

10. The Rider - Not a single documentary made my top 25 this year, and that was in a year of high quality among non-fiction films. Chloe Zhao's story of a rodeo rider who's been knocked out of the game by a head injury is about as close as you can get to a documentary among fiction films, though. It not only stars a real-life rodeo rider who was knocked out of the game by a head injury (Brady Jandreau), but also the man's real father, real mentally challenged sister, and real-life friend with far worse brain damage than he has. While the ways these actors obviously connect with the material are fascinating, it doesn't mean a whole lot unless they're delivering artistically (as anyone who's seen Clint Eastwood's The 15:17 to Paris will know). Zhao, Jandreau and company do that with great understatement and emotional resonance, painting a portrait of people who love a calling so much that they continue to risk their lives doing it. They just can't imagine any other way, but that's not expressed through histrionics or lengthy speeches. They simply, quietly, pursue the life they know and love, or struggle desperately to come to grips with not being able to. This meditative love letter to the South Dakota badlands grabbed me in its rhythm and burrowed deep, enough to breach my top ten for the year.

9. Mom and Dad - Through a quirk of my iTunes rental of Mom and Dad, my initial viewing did not set the 48-hour expiration clock running, giving me the chance to watch Brian Taylor's film a second time later in its 30-day rental window. I'm glad for that because I could have easily pooh-poohed loving this movie once and pushed it down to about #23 for the year. Instead, I realized that a delicious horror comedy about an apocalyptic event that causes parents to want to murder their own children might actually belong in my top ten. Ditching his Crank co-director Mark Neveldine, Taylor has delivered something audacious and juicy, but also something surprisingly perceptive about the death of identity that accompanies becoming a parent. Sure, gonzo Nic Cage is probably the headline here, but a much more nuanced Selma Blair grounds us in a reality we may all recognize: that there's something true about parents' latent desire to just have their kids out of the picture. Now don't go calling the cops on me, I love my own kids ... but I wasn't repelled by images of other parents hunting theirs down with unquenchable violent rage, especially since Taylor smartly errs on the side of leaving most of it up to our imagination. Taylor also wonderfully turns the tables on Cage in a third act development I won't spoil, the movie's funniest section. This is B-movie trash with a brain, and it's fun as hell. 

8. Crazy Rich Asians - When a movie pulls all its emotional strings in just the right way, your reaction becomes involuntary. Is Crazy Rich Asians one of the ten best movies of 2018? Possibly not. Did it make me cry on three non-consecutive occasions in its final 15 minutes? Yes, yes it did. On both viewings, in fact. And that counts for something in an age where most movies go in one ear and out the other, leaving no kind of emotional imprint whatsoever. There’s an argument that Crazy Rich Asians is just a well-constructed romantic comedy and that without the all-Asian cast, it wouldn’t amount to much more than any other good representative of the genre. Others can make that argument, but I won’t. At its core this is a universal story about the struggle to overcome the gulf between social classes and the loyalty to good people with checkered resumes, even if you have to break the rules of “polite society” in demonstrating that loyalty. Okay, maybe I’m also describing every costume drama I’ve ever seen, but Crazy Rich Asians combines that classical element with the eye candy of a modern fairy tale to give us something transcendent. Something magical. Even as I try to describe it I find myself flailing to rationalize its impact on me; it just works, and the charm of Constance Wu and new favorite Awkafina is a big part of it. I do also think that all-Asian cast is worth celebrating in 2018, and I hope my affection for this makes up for the fact that I couldn’t get all the way there with similarly representation-positive Black Panther.

7. Eighth Grade - In all the richly deserved accolades for Eighth Grade, there’s been a lot of credit given to writer-director Bo Burnham for being able to climb inside the head of an early teenage girl and present a true document of her thoughts and life. Not as much credit has been given to the actress playing that teenager, Elsie Fisher, whose instincts toward naturalism are that of a master, a veteran, not a girl who is only 15 in real life. There’s this one moment I always think of, when she’s sitting in the back seat of a car, slowly realizing that a boy about four years older is trying to get her to take her shirt off. It’s a game of Truth or Dare, and Fisher’s Kayla is looking down, weighing which answer is the lesser of two evils. The way she starts to give one answer and changes to the other halfway through the word is something you just can’t teach; it’s born of natural acting instinct. Burnham and Fisher get all the details right in this week-long journey of a girl fighting her own insecurities and shyness. It’s a high school movie devoid of outsized villains and clichés, as the inevitable popular girl is more indifferent to her than vindictive. The true-to-life gawkiness, even of the popular kids, is fully encapsulated. And as a dad myself, I was obviously moved by the tightrope Josh Hamilton tries to walk as he seeks an impossible middle ground between parent and friend. In his own ways, he’s as dorky, as gawky, and as vulnerable as his daughter and her classmates.

6. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse - When I first learned of the existence of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, I thought it was some second-rate release from a studio with a lesser share of the character rights, like Batman: The Killing Joke. No offense to that movie, which I haven't seen and is possibly quite good, but it didn't seem to have a full compliment of modern resources behind it, and felt like it was clinging to the coattails of the more established Batman properties out there. Well, Marvel can go send Tom Holland's Spider-Man home after this movie. Sony may have just been trying to make some money off of the parts of Spider-Man it didn't sell off to the MCU, but the result was what I called in my review "what it looks like when a comic book and a kaleidoscope have sex." It's one of the most visually accomplished and visually distinct animated movies I've ever seen, complete with numerous touches that mimic the tactility of the comic book page. But all its sound and fury, and multiple universes worth of content, is in service of something funny, wonderful and human. Just think what a good year it might have been for Phil Lord if he'd also gotten to execute his vision for Solo. I instantly fell in love with Miles Morales, and I'm glad that members of minority communities can now, maybe, really see themselves in even the upper echelon of iconic superheroes.

5. Climax - In the past decade I have become a true devotee of French director Gaspar Noe, having watched two of his films (Irreversible and Enter the Void) two different times, and maintaining a limited appreciation for a third (Love). However, this marks the first time I’ve actually been able to rank one of his films in my year-end list, and it shot all the way up to #5. After Love wasn’t all I’d hoped for, I didn’t know if Climax would mark a rebound for Noe, or see him go further astray from the horrific imagery and queasy button pushing of those two films I love. Score one for classic Noe. Climax is cleaved evenly between two movies, both of which make astounding use of Noe’s camera, which has always ducked and weaved and floated and wandered like no other camera in modern film. The first shows a bunch of incredibly talented modern dancers contorting and spinning their bodies in joyous ways. The second is … well, the inverse of all that, but in ways it wouldn’t be sporting to reveal as this movie is not yet out in the U.S. Suffice it to say that this goes to places as confronting and as uncomfortable as Irreversible and Enter the Void, with a delirious array of audacious long takes and camera movements that don’t seem physically possible. You leave this Boschian nightmare exhausted and exhilarated.

4. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - When I started watching The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, I was a bit annoyed. I thought “Two hours and 13 minutes of Tim Blake Nelson talking like a hifalutin hayseed and killing people while grinning sadistically?” Then he gets shot through the head, a lovely surprise, as I thought it meant the Coen brothers were doing something new and unique with structure. Somehow I had avoided learning that this was a collection of six short films. After a first viewing, Buster Scruggs landed in my 10-20. After a second, it’s all the way up to #4, and I watched the second time in a prolonged state of bliss, totally immune to any urge to sleep even though I started at 10 p.m. after a 40-minute run. The on-again, off-again Coens – whose work I also revisited this year in a bi-monthly viewing series – are most assuredly on again after the disappointment that was Hail, Caesar! It’s an extended argument against their own misanthropy, as laid out in that first story, and though it uses the tools of misanthropy on occasion, it’s ultimately a solemn consideration of the great equalizer known as Death. However, it’s also got one of their most sweetly optimistic stories (“All Gold Canyon”) and one of their most romantic (“The Gal Who Got Rattled”). In total, it’s a snapshot of some of our finest filmmakers playing with a number of related themes, and it proceeds in a sublimely perfect sequence toward the infinite void. It may be my favorite feature-length collection of short films, ever.

3. Everybody Knows - Nobody knows yet about Everybody Knows, as it basically hasn't been released yet. That's the risk when you see something at a film festival in August, gambling that it'll be on everyone's lips come top ten season ... and it doesn't get released in either of my countries of reference (the U.S. and Australia) until the following year. But for a scant few days, until it was topped by my current #1, this was my favorite film of the year, giving Asghar Farhadi the most realistic shot yet for one director to top my year-end rankings twice. Farhadi couldn't duplicate the feat he achieved with 2011's  A Separation, but he accomplished many others, including directing as comfortably in Spanish as he did in French or Persian (with terrific lead performances by Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem), and adding yet another to his great repertoire of films in which character relationships are tested by inciting incidents and the miscommunications that stem from them. I've heard Farhadi described as today's Bergman, and though that's a huge compliment, I don't see him doing the same things Bergman did. I see a supremely gifted storyteller who delivers compelling human drama without any formalist fixations or unnecessary technique. Would that all storytellers could possess his economy and perceptiveness.

2. BlacKkKlansman - Spike is back. The sum total of all the chills, the laughs, the tears, and the moments of pure cinematic invigoration I felt while watching BlacKkKlansman came down to that one three-word thought: "Spike is back." Lee's 21st century output is no kind of barren wasteland -- 2002's 25th Hour is also a favorite -- but nothing he's delivered in 20 years has been as consistently realized as his adaptation of the true story of two Colorado police officers who infiltrated the Ku Klux Klan, one of whom was the Klan's ideal target. John David Washington inherited all of Denzel's charisma, but this performance is no simple feat, just as nothing Lee gives us is lacking in some kind of core contradictory element. How is a movie this angry this funny? How is a movie this skeptical of dangerous white institutions also this loving in its portrayal of a police department? How does a movie so keenly aware of the hate in people's hearts also embrace film's overriding function as entertainment, as the type of escapism to warm those hearts? And just when you think Lee has been "had, took, hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, and run amok" -- to quote another famous Lee hero -- he dollies his characters back into reality, and then transitions to an end scene of real footage that will leave you shaking. Spike Lee hasn't forgotten how to do what he does best, and he's rarely done it better than here.

1. First Reformed - Who could have guessed the director of the tawdry Lindsey Lohan vehicle The Canyons, more notable for the actress showing her breasts than the director showing any talent, would helm my #1 movie of the year? Had I seen The Canyons in its release year of 2013, it might have been my worst of the year, but just five year short years later, Paul Schrader has delivered my best. There's precedent for this, of course, but it's buried deep in his history. I was with this movie the whole way, then at the very end I thought "Huh?" Followed by the shortest assessment period in the history of provocative ending assessments, lasting about 90 seconds, at which point I decided I loved the ending as well. First Reformed grapples with more interesting issues than I can fit into a capsule of this size, but what I love about it is how it considers the difficulty, yet the absolute necessity, of maintaining hope in the face of overwhelming despair. It's an outlook that must be embraced by both people of faith and people of environmental activism, as they are confronted on a daily basis with the near certainty that their best intentions will be futile. Yet if they don't try, who will? Made me think of my dad, both a member of a church facilities committee and an environmental crusader, who requires this kind of irrational, beautiful hope to keep doing what he does. This magical mystery tour came to take me away, and it's the best movie of the year.

Now, five movies that cannot possibly be described that way. Ladies and gentlemen, my worst of 2018:

5. Venom - I'm not sure if Venom was really this bad or if I'm just incorporating the howling critical reaction into my ranking, but either way, this is a piece of crap. I have no history with this character so there were no expectations to be met or frustrated. I just sat and watched something ridiculous, unsatisfying and shoddy unfold before me, and Tom Hardy's best attempts to draw out the absurdity of the material couldn't make it any more palatable.

4. Gringo - The only of my bottom five with some genuine pedigree of support -- it has a passable 46 on Metacritic -- Gringo may have offended me more than any other film I saw this year. It doesn't quite descend into outright racism, though the portrayal of David Oyelowo's character is weirdly close to that, but it expends a considerable amount of character development on total shitheads, just one of the film's many massive failures on the execution level. A complete tonal misfire.

3. The Happytime Murders - What more needs be said about an idea that looked so bad it had be good, yet was just as bad as it looked? Well, I'll go with three sentences more. There's no longer anything surprising about seeing vulgarities emanate from puppets, but that wouldn't have been such a sin if any of those vulgarities contained a modicum of cleverness. Instead, this is a creative dung heap of a movie. What a shame that talented puppeteers are reduced to plying their trade in garbage like this.

2. Mute - Duncan Jones came THIS CLOSE to being the first director to direct both a #1 film for me (Moon, 2009) and a worst film. For no reason whatsoever, Mute is set in the "Moon universe," containing exactly one scene that references that movie. I'd have much preferred zero scenes, and to free Moon from the taint of this bizarre near-future sci fi film about prostitutes and pedophiles and black market surgeons and god knows what else. It's shit.

1. Game Over, Man! Aliens is suing for defamation of character. A surprise pleasure in the Netflix rom-com When We First Met, Adam Devine was quick to curdle that good will in his Netflix follow-up, a brain-dead stoner variation on Die Hard. It's so puerile, dick jokey, gay panicky, moronic and in all other ways unpleasant that I hated it as much as I did even though I was watching it in the beautiful environs of Bali, on my ten-year anniversary vacation with my wife (and without our kids).

Here's all of 'em!

1) First Reformed
2) BlacKkKlansman
3) Everybody Knows
4) The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
5) Climax
6) Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
7) Eighth Grade
8) Crazy Rich Asians
9) Mom and Dad
10) The Rider
11) Shoplifters
12) Hearts Beat Loud
13) Avengers: Infinity War
14) Outside In
15) Isle of Dogs
16) Sweet Country
17) Vice
18) The Death of Stalin
19) Private Life
20) Mandy
21) Deadpool 2
22) Ant-Man and the Wasp
23) Foxtrot
24) Tully
25) Incredibles 2
26) Love, Simon
27) Disobedience
28) Chris the Swiss
29) Whitney
30) Mid90s
31) The Endless
32) Annihilation
33) First Man
34) Kin
35) Roma
36) Blindspotting
37) Shirkers
38) RBG
39) Hereditary
40) Minding the Gap
41) Three Identical Strangers
42) Sorry to Bother You
43) Won’t You Be My Neighbor?
44) Custody
45) People’s Republic of Desire
46) When We First Met
47) The Favourite
48) Leave No Trace
49) The Mercy
50) Bad Times at the El Royale
51) Tag
52) To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before
53) Paddington 2
54) Black Panther
55) Widows
56) A Quiet Place
57) You Were Never Really Here
58) A Star is Born
59) A Futile and Stupid Gesture
60) The Night Eats the World
61) Can You Ever Forgive Me?
62) Euthanizer
63) Revenge
64) Mission: Impossible – Fallout
65) Unsane
66) Cold War
67) Zama
68) Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot
69) Green Book
70) Bird Box
71) Upgrade
72) Profile
73) The Gospel According to Andre
74) Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
75) Ocean’s Eight
76) Summer of ’84
77) Swinging Safari
78) American Animals
79) Beirut
80) Mary Poppins Returns
81) The Children Act
82) Bohemian Rhapsody
83) Ready Player One
84) Game Night
85) The Seagull
86) The Old Man and the Gun
87) On Chesil Beach
88) Juliet, Naked
89) The Insult
90) Two is a Family
91) Creed II
92) Madeline’s Madeline
93) Super Troopers 2
94) Support the Girls
95) Death Wish
96) Marrowbone
97) Sicario: Day of the Soldado
98) Adrift
99) Suspiria
100) Skyscraper
101) Thoroughbreds
102) Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
103) The Strangers: Prey at Night
104) Chappaquiddick
105) Solo: A Star Wars Story
106) Winchester
107) Galveston
108) Holmes & Watson
109) Mary Magdalene
110) The Land of Steady Habits
111) Hold the Dark
112) Pacific Rim: Uprising
113) Damsel
114) Mary Queen of Scots
115) Thunder Road
116) Ralph Breaks the Internet
117) Outlaw King
118) The Commuter
119) Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts
120) Peter Rabbit
121) Kings
122) Ibiza
123) Tomb Raider
124) A Simple Favor
125) I Kill Giants
126) Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
127) The Grinch
128) The 15:17 to Paris
129) Mortal Engines
130) The Nutcracker and the Four Realms
131) Cargo
132) A Wrinkle in Time
133) Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
134) I Feel Pretty
135) Life of the Party
136) Early Man
137) The Miseducation of Cameron Post
138) Wildlife
139) The Bookshop
140) The House With a Clock in its Walls
141) The House That Jack Built
142) Gotti
143) The Open House
144) The Cloverfield Paradox
145) Venom
146) Gringo
147) The Happytime Murders
148) Mute
149) Game Over, Man!

And ending with ... five titles I thought I needed to isolate for further explanation:

35. Roma - Was planning to watch it again to see if I thought it was more than just a very beautifully made and technically accomplished movie, but never did. I've missed the boat on Roma ... for now.

54. Black Panther - I really tried, but a second viewing just couldn't move the needle on this. Culturally but not creatively groundbreaking.

84. Game Night - Probably should be higher ... I was very tired and don't remember most of it.

94. Support the Girls - Movie I just didn't get that I was most disappointed that I just didn't get.

138. Wildlife - Movie whose wild critical acclaim baffled me the most.

Thanks for reading, but don't let the conversation end in your head! Love for you to leave a comment below, and tell me all the ways I messed this up.