The magical mystery tour of 2018

The Beatles released their album Magical Mystery Tour exactly 50 years before Paul Schrader released his film First Reformed. The studious among you will know that the hit Beatle album came out in 1967, but so was my #1 film of 2018 finished in 2017, making its film festival debut last year and even ending up on my radar as a result of appearing on Keith Uhlich's top ten of 2017 (which I listen to on the podcast The Cinephiliacs).

I doubt Schrader meant his shout-out to the Beatles as any kind of celebration of that 50th anniversary, but he could have meant it as a good summation of 2018. (Mild spoilers about First Reformed to follow, but I hope you've seen it by now.) In the film, the "magical mystery tour" is a nickname given for an activity engaged in by Mary (Amanda Seyfried) and her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), in which he lies on his back and she lies on his stomach, face to face. It's not sexual, but the physical proximity transports them into a kind of mental odyssey that they experience as an escape from their depressing reality. Later in the film, Mary gets Pastor Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke) to try it with her in Michael's absence, and the film slips the bounds of realism for a glorious two minutes of screen time.

Unfortunately, the beauty and ecstasy that initially greet Toller in his out-of-body journey are replaced by scenes of pollution and environmental collapse. Toller can only distract himself from reality for so long.

In times that remain forever fraught under the Trump presidency, audiences need our distractions from the real world as well. Movies were our magical mystery tour in 2018, allowing us to abandon our cares for a certain amount of time. Those cares crept back in, of course, but with the best of the best, we staved them off as long as possible. Of course, some of the best also specifically engaged our worst and deepest fears, in order to help spur us into action to make the change we wanted to see in the world. At its core, a magical mystery tour is a bumpy ride, and thus was 2018.

Three who had a good year

Nicolas Cage - I'm sure Nicolas Cage made just as many terrible straight-to-video films this year as he ever does -- the man likes to work and/or needs money -- but for the first time in quite a while, I'm not inclined to punish him for it. In fact, I don't even want to look them up to see if they exist. His 2018 mainstream films were solid gold, representing three of my top 25 films of the year. (I'd hoped Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (#126), in which he voices Superman and which I saw late in the year, might constitute a fourth, but I actually thought it was kind of lame.) I had already reserved a spot for Cage on this list on the basis of Mom and Dad (#9) and Mandy (#20), but then he appeared in a movie I liked better than either of those. His voice, anyway. Cage's turn as Spider-Noir in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (#6) was the cherry on top of a year in which we saw the actor embrace the version of himself that turned him into a cult icon: Crazy Cage. First was Mom and Dad, in which Cage sings the "Hokey Pokey" while destroying a pool table with a sledgehammer, among other inspired lunacy. That's some outsized stuff, but the movie actually does a surprisingly good job capturing some real insight about the way parenthood changes you. Then you've just got the batshit crazy Mandy, in which Cage actually starts out quite reserved before turning into a bloody-faced avenging angel. The retribution he delivers to those psychopathic cult members is grisly and wonderful, but nothing can match up to a post-traumatic scene where he chugs a bottle of whiskey in his underwear. History has shown that Cage is unlikely to keep up this string of good choices, as there is certainly another Left Behind just around the corner. But I'll luxuriate in the moment while it lasts.

Toni Collette - Collette continued to add to her resume as one of our most naturalistic actors in 2018. That's a funny comment to make in a year in which she had to react to more unnatural circumstances than you can shake a stick at. In my review for Hereditary (#39), I wrote that Collette "cries ugly" with the best of them. Her response to repeated trauma in that film is a blood-curdling portrait of grief, as she submits a symphony of anguished screaming and crying that lays bare the inadequacy of most actor's responses to similar circumstances. But that's just one of many modes Collette offers us in that film; the righteous indignation of her fiery response to her insubordinate son is also etched in our collective mind. Then there's everything in between, her vocal pauses, her tics, her twitches, the computation of new information on her face. However, my actual favorite Collette film in 2018 was Hearts Beat Loud (#12), which reminds us that her range extends to normal characters not dealing with supernatural disturbances. The role of Leslie, landlord and love interest to Nick Offerman's Frank Fisher, is not the type that would normally stick in your memory. But the range of her reactions in one particular scene, where Frank has come to her door after too many drinks, is another example of how her approach changes within the scene as the scene's dynamics shift. It's hard to describe what Collette is constantly doing right without feeling like you are just describing good acting technique in general, but she delivers a superlative version of that technique every time out. She's going to win an Oscar one of these years and it will be long overdue. It's a crime she wasn't nominated this year.

Awkwafina - Awkwafina had a good year not so much because I loved both of her films – I was only mildly positive on one of them – but because she so resoundingly overcame my initial impression of her. And that initial impression was based exclusively on her stage name. At the start of 2018, I didn’t know the woman born as Nora Lum from a hole in the ground. Then I saw her name as one of those cascading down the poster for Ocean’s 8. Her moniker made me grumpy. I’m not such an old fogey that I begrudge musicians (Lum is also a rapper) their stage names, but I don’t love it when those names confusingly call out to an existing property, like A$AP Rocky, or indeed, a woman who names herself after bottled spring water. Whether she was Awkwafina or Aquafina or Mr. Dobalina Mr. Bob Dobalina, I was wary. Her role in Ocean’s 8 (#75) didn’t necessarily cure me of all my preconceptions, as she’s a bit underutilized by that film, and confirmed some of my worries about her persona when she was on screen. (I swear I am getting to positive things here.) She did ultimately win me over, which left me actually excited when I saw her materialize in Crazy Rich Asians (#8). That movie may have been a love affair between Constance Wu and Henry Golding, but it was also a love affair between me and Awkwafina. In a smartly written role that puts her comedic gifts to perfect use, Awkwafina showed me the full powers of a comedienne who didn’t even get to be funny in Ocean’s 8. Not only does she radiate charm, quick wit and an enviable ability to call out bullshit, but she’s kind of the heart and soul of this movie, the one who helps Wu's Rachel bridge that gap between east and west and provide her a much-needed measure of comfort. She retains her goofiness at all times as well. If Nora Lum really is bottled water, I can’t wait for my next drink.

Honorable mentions: Josh Brolin (Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2), Kathryn Hahn (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Private Life), Andrea Riseborough (The Death of Stalin, Mandy)

Three who had a bad year

Michelle Williams - It seems that every year there’s an actress I generally adore on this list. Three years ago it was Emma Stone, two years ago Kate Winslet, last year Scarlett Johansson. Well, the great Michelle Williams gets her turn this year with a year that was decidedly not great. It was a Williams start to the year as I saw two of her 2017 performances, All the Money in the World and The Greatest Showman, in the month of January in the approach to last year’s ranking deadline. The first movie was really good, and she really good in it; the second was a preview of things to come in both regards. Her performance in the very disappointing Amy Schumer vehicle, I Feel Pretty (#134), was lowlighted by the bizarre choice to play her character with a highly affected Betty Boop/Marilyn Monroe accent, only squeakier. It was the boldest thing about a character that had a truly confused role in the story. She’s set up as kind of a villain, a fashion scion who turns up her nose at the new down-market collection, but by the end the movie embraces her character, without really explaining the transition in her narrative function. By far Williams’ worse offense in 2018 was choosing now as the first time to dip her toe in the superhero side of the industry. Venom (#145) was a hot mess of a movie, and not in a good way. Williams must have been good enough in her scenes, because I felt sorry for her every time she came on screen. Unfortunately, since it was a huge hit, she’s probably married to this turd of a franchise now. The way Williams made the news at the start of the year makes it all the more of a shame that she went on to appear in a couple turkeys. It came to light that she made only $1,000 for the reshoots of All the Money in the World while her co-star, Mark Wahlberg, got upwards of $1.5 million. At least the PR she got from how she handled that unjust disparity was good.

Eli Roth - After I watched both a non-2018 Eli Roth movie I didn’t like (The Green Inferno) and a 2018 Eli Roth movie I didn’t like (The House with a Clock in its Walls) this year, I figured Roth making this list would be a cinch once I got around to seeing Death Wish. (Not that the non-2018 film is really relevant for this discussion, but it did bring me into the appropriate head space to consider him.) Then I actually sort of liked Death Wish (#95), a problematic truth I am still grappling with. However, the optics of Death Wish – whether I liked it or not – were enough to decide, yes, Eli Roth was a guy who had a bad year. A movie in which a white vigilante kills (some) minorities, which functions as a (possibly unintentional) celebration of gun ownership, is just not a useful tone or message in 2018. Roth actually seems to go out of his way to make the villains mostly scuzzy white guys, but you can’t just sweep under the rug the scene in which Bruce Willis’ character straight up assassinates a black gangster, however reprehensible that character may be. Roth also failed on the other end of the spectrum with The House With a Clock in its Walls (#140), which is practically Disney. That’s not the right usage of Roth’s sensibilities, either, even if it’s supposed to be kind of a horror movie for kids. It’s really weird, but not in a good way – I can’t get that bizarrely protracted scene of Jack Black’s head on a baby’s body out of my mind. The Green Inferno is probably more the type of movie Roth should be making, but that wasn’t any good either. I’m in favor of directors feeling their way through their careers and trying to challenge themselves, rather than just going with what has worked for you in the past. Too bad the feeling being done by Roth feels like that of a blind man.

Joel McHale - McHale has never been a lead in a movie of any particular note, and that didn't change in 2018, making it seem a bit like picking on him to include him here. But the fact of the matter is, he did appear in two of my worst three movies of the year, making him a shoo-in for this dishonor. (To be fair to McHale, he also appeared in A Futile and Stupid Gesture (#59), which I liked, playing Chevy Chase, an actor with whom he has significant familiarity from their Community days. But since I didn't even remember he was in that film until I checked IMDB, I'm excluding it as a feather in his 2018 cap.) Undoubtedly as a favor to the creative team, McHale appeared as himself in my bottom-ranked film of the year, Game Over, Man! (#149), in which he was required to engage in a fight to the death against a fellow hostage in this shitty stoner version of Die Hard. Credit for playing himself as an asshole, but only a small amount of credit. His protest for the benefit of social media is that he won't kill a woman, setting up the punchline that she actually kills him by sinking her stiletto high heel into his temple. Yawn. Then I saw him pop up again in my third worst film, The Happytime Murders (#147), in which he plays an arrogant FBI agent. I don't remember if he does anything particularly obnoxious in this film, but the whole film is obnoxious, meaning his decision to appear in it at all is damnable enough. (The Razzies considered his work bad enough to send a nomination his way, anyway.) The scene I remember is an extended take of a puppet blowing an endless plume of cigarette smoke into this face as he sits there, impassive. That feels like a metaphor for his year. Maybe if he stopped playing arrogant assholes he'd start getting better roles.

Dishonorable mentions: Chloe Grace Moretz (Suspiria, The Miseducation of Cameron Post), Jennifer Ehle (I Kill Giants, The Miseducation of Cameron Post), Alexander Skarsgard (Hold the Dark, Mute)

The year superhero movies did crazy things

Possible spoilers to follow for 2018 superhero movies, most notably Avengers: Infinity War and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

I heard someone say that 2018 featured a record number of superhero movies. So anyone who had hoped this trend was going away soon, sorry, you’re out of luck.

However, I do have some good news: superhero movies are holding themselves to a higher standard.

Or at the very least, doing some things that are, shall we say, unexpected.

Twenty eighteen was the year that one of the five most iconic superheroes of all time – I consider the other four to be Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the Hulk – was killed. Twice, actually. Not twice in the same movie. Killed in two different movies.

That’s right, in the famous ending of Avengers: Infinity War, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man melted away into so much space dust. It took a (wrenching) 30 seconds to transpire, but by the end, there weren’t even any cobwebs remaining. Now, we all know that Spidey will be back – the teaser trailers for his next standalone feature have already dropped – but credit Marvel for, in the moment, allowing us to experience the gravitas of this chipper young do-gooder, just in the initial bloom of his powers, shuffling off this mortal coil.

But there were no takesies-backsies in the second movie in which Spider-Man was killed. In Into the Spider-Verse, the Peter Parker from our universe is crushed in a single death blow from Kingpin, and he doesn’t come back from it. Of course, another Peter Parker from another universe does show up, mitigating some of that loss, plus there’s all the other spider heroes who step up in his place. But it’s a different actor (Jake Johnson) doing the voice, meaning “our” Spider-Man (Chris Pine) is well and truly deceased.

In our podcast about Infinity War I talked about how the time had come when a high stakes property like Game of Thrones was finally rubbing off on superhero movies, bringing permanent ends to (at least this version) of certain characters’ storylines. Many of those disappeared superheroes will come back, but some will not, and it’s long overdue. I suppose we got a start on this in the previous year with Logan, but 2018 gave it a shove further in a direction that seems like it will, paradoxically, help the long-term sustainability of superhero movies. By cutting some storylines short, you are actually lengthening our investment on the whole because now we’re actually worried about the characters. At one time, no really big punch was enough to end, or even bruise, most superheroes. This past year, that kind of punch could be fatal.

I don’t want to get too sidetracked on this type of “crazy thing” superhero movies did. Perhaps the most culturally significant “crazy thing” was the release of a nearly all-black superhero movie, Black Panther. Not only was this not a niche product, but it ended up becoming one of the biggest box office hits of all time. It’s easy to say in retrospect that the appetite was there, but Marvel couldn’t have known it until they actually released the movie. One point three billion dollars later, they look really smart to have assembled this particular cast and this particular director, and chosen this particular time to unleash this panther on the world. Yesterday, it became the first superhero movie ever to earn a best picture nomination. Crazy indeed. 

Two of the year’s more successful superhero movies were about serious antiheroes, though only one of them was good. Let’s start with the bad one. In a third 2018 appearance of a Spider-Man adjacent property, Venom stormed the box offices in autumn, even though every single critic hated it. I’m sure more of them wanted to like it, because the idea of an evil demon-looking guy with a mouthful of fangs that would make any shark jealous seems like just the kind of counterintuitive decision that might relieve the drudgery of reviewing yet another superhero movie. Unfortunately, the execution was inept, leaving only audiences in on this lovefest. Then you’ve got Deadpool 2, which somehow eclipsed the first in terms of sheer joyous anarchy. And if you want to talk about killing off superheroes, just witness the hilarious skydiving arrival of the X-Force in Deadpool 2.

We can’t walk away from 2018 without celebrating two final “crazy” superhero feats. Aquaman accomplished the “crazy” distinction of being an actually successful movie to emerge from the DC Cinematic Universe, though I won’t be able to comment on its other artistic successes until I see it this weekend (see here for an explanation of my lateness). Then perhaps the most fun superhero movie of the year, though many of them qualified in this regard, was a sequel no one seemed to want to one of the MCU’s lesser original films. Ant-Man and the Wasp far surpassed the original in terms of pure cinematic thrills, and had a great tie-in to Infinity War in the end.

And yes, I’ve just worsened the problem of the forever renewing superhero cycle by devoting another thousand words to what these movies are doing right.

Hey, if I’m going to see another eight of them in 2019, better at least go in with a sense of optimism. 

Welcome to the two-timers club, Ethan

A small shout-out to Ethan Hawke, who has now appeared in two of my #1 films. Hawke's first trip to the top came in 2000, when he starred as the title character in Michael Almereyda's Hamlet, and he's done it again with First Reformed.

He joins an illustrious club of two-timers that includes Paul Dano (There Will be Blood, Ruby Sparks), Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men, Birdman), Kate Winslet (Titanic, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) and ... well, you can read the rest of the names here. There are not yet any three-timers that I know of.

Mr. Hawke may not realize it, but this award also comes with a set of steak knives.

2018 by the numbers

Breakdown of movies by star ratings: 5 stars (2), 4.5 stars (16), 4 stars (30), 3.5 stars (32), 3 stars (17), 2.5 stars (23), 2 stars (19), 1.5 stars (4), 1 star (5), half star (1). Three-point-five has the most movies, as it always does, but the ones on either side of it are not the next most on both sides, as 2.5 stars came up more often than three. There was also a real dearth of movies I really hated. In fact, if we are going with three stars and above as movies I liked, I liked a whopping 97 of the 149 movies I saw. (I say "whopping" but last year it was 99/145, so pretty similar.)
Total new movies watched in the calendar year: 257
Total rewatches: 63
2018 movies seen for the first time in the theater: 78
2018 movies seen for the first time on video/streaming/a plane/that kind of thing: 71
2018 movies seen twice: 7 (Mom and Dad, Annihilation, First Reformed, Hearts Beat Loud, Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs)

Ten best that weren't released in 2018

More than a hundred of the films I saw in 2018 were not released in 2018, and here were the best of those, listed alphabetically:

About Elly (2009, Asghar Farhadi) – Was Asghar Farhadi ever not great? I’m still looking for a first example.

Europa Europa (1990, Agnieszka Holland) - The World War II coming-of-age story I never knew I wanted. 

Faces Places (2017, Agnes Varda) - A really lovely culmination (so far, she's not dead yet) of the career of a filmmaker whom I didn't discover until this year. 

Mikey and Nicky (1976, Elaine May) – The best John Cassavetes film John Cassavetes didn’t make … and in fact, better than every Cassavetes film not named The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. Also, stars Cassavetes. 

Orpheus (1950, Jean Cocteau) - I was introduced to a new voice in magical realism this year, and it was a very old voice, Jean Cocteau. Orpheus was mesmerizing. 

Othello (1951, Orson Welles) - Welles' down and dirty version of Othello took years to complete and went through a variety of financial and creative hardships. It was worth it. 

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (2013, Ben Stiller) - How could it have taken five years to see a movie so obviously in my wheelhouse? Indeed, it did not disappoint. 

A Tale of Two Sisters (2003, Kim Jee-woon) - I saw this early in the year and the details have faded. The feeling of unnerving creepiness has not. 

Turtles Can Fly (2004, Bahman Ghobadi) - I dug up this Iranian director in a desperate search for auteurs in Audient Auteurs. He delivered me this gem of a coming-of-age war story.

Vampyr (1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer) - The only non-2018 film I gave five stars this year. Dreyer continues to floor me with a silent film of unparalleled vision and execution. 

Loose ends

Going by other names

Adrift could have been called ... You Were Never Really Here
Early Man could have been called ... First Man
The Nun could have been called ... The Land of Steady Habits
Death Wish could have been called ... The Old Man and the Gun
Pacific Rim: Uprising could have been called ... I Kill Giants
Suspiria could have been called ... The Endless

Nice to meet you ...

John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman)
Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians)
Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade)
Brady Jandreau (The Rider)
Kiersey Clemons (Hearts Beat Loud)

Welcome back ...

Selma Blair (Mom and Dad)
Josh Hamilton (Eighth Grade)
Spike Lee (BlacKkKlansman)
Paul Schrader (First Reformed)
Andrew Dice Clay (A Star is Born)

A letter:

To All the Boys I've Loved Before,

Sorry to Bother You. Can You Ever Forgive Me? Ben is Back. Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot.

When We First Met, You Were Never Really Here.

Won't You Be My Neighbor?

Love, Simon

Lightning round

To cap things off, a final flurry of superlatives:

Highest ranked best picture nominee: BlacKkKlansman (#2)
Lowest ranked best picture nominee: Bohemian Rhapsody (#82)
Best picture nominees I haven't seen yet: None!
Actor who should have gotten an Oscar nomination but didn't: Ethan Hawke, First Reformed
Actor who shouldn't have gotten an Oscar nomination but did: Viggo Mortensen, Green Book
Actress who should have gotten an Oscar nomination but didn't: Charlize Theron, Tully
Actress who shouldn't have gotten an Oscar nomination but did: Marina de Tavira, Roma - I guess? (no good choice here)
Best Netflix movie: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (#4)
Worst Netflix movie: Game Over, Man! (#149)
Movie I should have loved but didn't: Roma (#35)
Movie I shouldn't have loved but did: Mom and Dad (#9)
Director who lost me: Duncan Jones (Mute)
Director I finally got: Armando Iannucci (The Death of Stalin)
Movie that got better the more I thought about it: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (#4)
Movie that got worse the more I thought about it: Ready Player One (#83)
Best sequel: Avengers: Infinity War (#13)
Worst sequel: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (#133)
Worst movie that's called a sequel but really isn't: The Cloverfield Paradox (#144)
Best movie where people play themselves: The Rider (#10)
Worst movie where people play themselves: The 15:17 to Paris (#128)
Best movie named after a Massachusetts town: Chappaquiddick (#104)
Worst movie named after a Massachusetts town: Winchester (#106)
Best criminals: Shoplifters
Worst criminals: Gotti
Scariest bear: Annihilation
Least scary bear: Paddington 2

That's about enough of that. One more 2018 post tomorrow and then I start learning Chinese and how to ride a unicycle.