You get better at anything with practice. That goes for whatever creative endeavor you choose: making pottery, writing poetry, blowing glass, whatever. Less discussed, or notable, is the fact that applies to passive hobbies of consumption as well. The other day a coworker asked what I meant when I said Hamnet was well-directed. I explained the usual role and duties of a director. “How do you even know to look for that stuff?” she asked. “I don’t have an answer,” I said. “I just watch a lot of movies.
As I look at my 2018 list as well as the upcoming ones, I see fewer choices that I need to conjure explanations for. By this point, the picks I need to defend I feel capable of defending. I like this list. I don’t entirely agree with it, but I like it, top to bottom. For some reason I have a strong positive memory of making it, too. This was the first year I started the list-building process not knowing what would emerge at #1.
We have to start at the top this time. That #1 is a deliberate choice, and it was a choice I was aware of making at the time. BlacKkKlansman was (and somehow once again is) a timely movie. It captures the indignant anger at a culture that eagerly says “White supremacy was bad, back when it was happening” while willfully ignoring its continued existence and proliferation. The way it expressed exactly what I was feeling persuaded me to overlook its flaws, including its divisive ending. I found the ending powerful, but thinking about it turns me off from wanting to see the movie again. Can I say an ending is good in the same sentence that I say it’s directly the reason I haven’t rewatched? I can’t tell if that’s a positive or a negative.
It’s certainly a stark contrast from the popcorn movies that make up half of the rest of the list. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Mission: Impossible, and Annihilation are all exemplars in their genres: a superhero movie loaded with so much style and innovation that it embarrasses every Marvel movie since; the best entry in one of cinema’s best action franchises, and with Mad Max: Fury Road one of the best action movies of the 21st century so far; and a meticulously creepy sci-fi horror movie so loaded with depth that, coming the same year as Hereditary, it proliferated the use of the phrase “elevated horror” among genre enthusiasts. (It’s a ridiculous term, but I can’t deny it exists.)
Next we have the late-year dramatic fare. I feel fortunate to have seen First Man in IMAX. That movie deserved so much better, but a combination of getting pushed out of theaters by A Star Is Born and the stupidest manufactured controversy imaginable tanked its box office and award chances. You can still watch and appreciate it though. Roma and First Reformed were also instances of me letting myself get caught up in hype. I don’t particularly love those movies, and I’m confident enough now to say I just don’t vibe with Paul Schrader in general. But they are good movies that I can’t say don’t deserve to be here.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a curiosity in the Coen Brothers’ filmography. Buried in the deepest mires of Netflix and allegedly salvaged from an anthology miniseries, it often gets forgotten and I sympathize with those who dismiss it as “just another Coen Brothers movie,” something the Coen Brothers do not do often. But just another Coens movie is automatically a high priority title for me. The stories in there I like I really like and the ones I like less I don’t mind watching to get to the good ones. Finally, Minding the Gap is a sweetly small-scale documentary about three skateboarders navigating their transition to adulthood in the midwestern United States. I really should revisit it. I do own the Criterion Collection release.
Which just leaves us with the great bear himself. Paddington 2 has taken on this mythical status since its release. It’s a perfect movie, pure bliss transferred onto celluloid, with the power to cure hate and solve prejudice. Lofty expectations for a movie about a bear wearing a hat. Still… it’s probably the closest we’ve come. I think Paddington 2 is an absolutely wonderful comfort movie. I also think there’s only so much a comfort movie can do but comfort. But comfort is valuable, and Paddington deserves his laurels.
So I like this list. Let’s tear it down anyway and make a new one:1
- First Man
- Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse
- Mission: Impossible – Fallout
- Paddington 2
- Widows
- Annihilation
- Shoplifters
- BlacKkKlansman
- Burning
- If Beale Street Could Talk
With additional honorable mentions to Black Panther, Can You Ever Forgive Me, Eighth Grade, Free Solo, Game Night, Isle of Dogs, The Old Man and the Gun, A Star Is Born, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again, and of course Teen Titans Go! To the Movies.
Even though that’s more sequels than I usually like to see in the top 5, I wouldn’t dare remove any of them. Interesting year. Next week we move on to 2019, where I expect to play the role of knight valiantly defending my #1 pick.
- Last week I included The Death of Stalin on the 2017 re-do list. I since realized it, like Paddington 2, didn’t release stateside until 2018 and so should have been saved for this week’s list, which it definitely would have made. Ah well, too late now. ↩︎
