Top ten box-office films of 2018: 1. Avengers: Infinity War 2. Black Panther 3. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom 4. Incredibles 2 5. Aquaman 6. Bohemian Rhapsody 7. Venom 8. Mission: Impossible - Fallout 9. Deadpool 2 10. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grinelwald What are your top three films for 2018? We will keep a running tally and eventually have some sort of bracket. For me it would be: 1. Burning 2. Roma 3. Ash is Purest White What are some of the forgotten gems from the year? What is overrated? What did you discover at a young age and what did you discover later? YEARS IN FILM • forum.chorus.fm
Transit was a close fourth, and High Life was exciting. This is the year that we can identify Under the Silver Lake fans.
1. Eighth Grade 2. Hereditary 3. Avengers: Infinity War 4. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 5. The House That Jack Built 6. Climax 7. The Favourite 8. The Nightingale 9. Shoplifters 10. Cold War Also love If Beale Street Could Talk, Roma, High Life, Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms, Isle of Dogs, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, The Incredibles 2, Suspiria, Cam, The Tale, Burning, Searching, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, Her Smell, Capernaum, Minding the Gap, Under the Silver Lake, Deadpool 2, A Quiet Place, Mandy, Sorry to Bother You, BlacKkKlansman, Game Night, Annihilation, Thunder Road, Madeline’s Madeline, Private Life, Shirkers, First Man, Support the Girls, Blindspotting, Creed II, The Night Comes for Us, Free Solo, and Black Panther. This year is pretty crazy in terms of the sheer amount of stuff I loved.
1. An Elephant Sitting Still 2. Burning 3. First Man This might be my strongest top 3 so far. An Elephant Sitting Still is a monolithic work, 4 hours and exceedingly bleak but I found the ending to be incredibly powerful and actually much more uplifting than people give it credit for. Incredibly sad we will never get to see what Hu Bo would have done next, RIP. Burning is a complete masterclass in visuals, mood, storytelling and class commentary. I actually think First Man is Ryan Gosling's best acting performance: it's understated but the idea of a man committing himself to achieving the metaphysical to avoid dealing with his grief is pretty much exactly my shit and he completely nails it. I love how subdued the stuff is on earth juxtaposed to the rickety, claustrophobic, chaotic space scenes. Chazelle's best work by a mile imo. Biggest honorable mention to Dragged Across Concrete, which may be kinda morally onerous but is one of the few movies not directed by David Lynch that actually earns the "Lynchian" description.
1. Thunder Road 2. At Eternity's Gate 3. Burning There's a lot of haven't seen from this year and I was going to finally finish Roma but instead I watched Thunder Road again. It's such a hilarious depiction of someone trying awfully hard to deal with grief and doing it terribly. If you haven't seen it, this is the short film it is based on and remade as the opening scene At Eternity's Gate affected me in quite a powerful way as in 2018-2019 I was spending lengthy periods of time visiting my younger brother who was in and out of psychiatric care.
1. Won’t You Be My Neighbor? 2. A Star Is Born 3. Avengers: Infinity War It’s hard to not give props for The Snap feeling like an earned mega-culmination of everything that came before it. Even if it’s probably nowhere near the best films of this year, it’s the biggest event I can think of in film.
Hereditary Annihilation If Beale Street Could Talk HM: Roma, Burning, Shoplifters, Mandy, The Favourite, Spider-Man: Into The Spiderverse, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, A Star Is Born, Game Night, Eighth Grade, Dragged Across Concrete, Minding The Gap, The Old Man & The Gun, Birds of Passage, Upgrade
1. Burning 2. Annihilation 3. Eighth Grade Honorable mentions: Hereditary The Favourite Roma Mandy Her Smell Sorry to Bother You If Beale Street Could Talk The Ballad of Buster Scruggs Free Solo Minding the Gap Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse Mission Impossible: Fallout Although I wouldn't put it in the top 3 purely as a movie, Free Solo is still the most bonkers thing I've ever seen.
I always thought Annihilation is what Stalker would be like if it were written by 20yr olds. The visuals were dope, and the sound design slaps
Burning, Beale Street, Roma, Spider-Verse, Widows, The Favourite, BlacKkKlansman, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, also good
I need to see An Elephant Sitting Still, but the four hour runtime is too pretty daunting for me at the moment.
1. Sorry to Bother You 2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 3. Eighth Grade HM to Leave No Trace, Support the Girls, Mamma Mia 2: Here We Go Again, Under the Silver Lake, and Wild Rose.
1. Long Day's Journey Into Night 2. Ash is Purest White 3. Still Human Long Day's Journey Into Night is absolutely magical. We open with 80 minutes of non-linear story-telling about a doomed romance. It then has a title card drop 80 minutes in, followed by a one hour unbroken 3D dream sequence. This final bit is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen, and absolutely worth checking out. Ash is Purest White is Jia Zhangke's story, set in three different eras and decades about two people, and about the changes in Chinese society in that time. Zhangke captures times and people perfectly, and with the film functioning as an extended metaphor for China as a whole, it still manages to be emotional and impactful on an individual level. Still Human is a bit of a sappy story about a disabled man, and his Fillipino domestic helper in Hong Kong, that could easily be derirative cliched nonsense, which it avoids with two really powerful performances from Anthony Wong and Crisel Consunji. You've seen films like this before, but this one really worked for me. Honourable Mentions; Burning is Lee Chang-dong's adaption of a Murakami short story, and turning it into a 150 minute film, with a brilliant performance from Steve Yeun. The scene where she dances in the dusk is absolutely remarkable. Elsewhere in South Korea, there's a great and suprsingly tragic Hong Sang Soo film, Hotel by the River, with the Hotel doubling as an allegory. House of Hummingbird is another good Korean film about a few weeks in the life of a 14 year old girl. From the UK, there's Peter Stricklands sinister and hilarious In Fabric, about a cursed dress, passing from owner to owner. There's Mike Leigh's epic Peterloo, about the Peterloo massacre in 1819. I think I prefer Leigh contemporary and smaller in scope, but there's lots to like here too. Shadow is a beautifully shot Wuxia from Zhang Yimou, that turns vicious and bloodthirsty by the end. Shoplifters is a really charming and slightly tragic Kore-Eda film, with a fantastic performance from Sakura Ando. Dead Pigs is an enjoyable and comic film also about China's modernisation (but not at all like Ash is Purest White), and while it was a shame to see Cathy Yan follow it up with a Marvel film, I hope she makes something more interesting next. From America, Leave no Trace is an excellent film about a man suffering from PTSD and his daughter, living off the grid in the woods. Hereditary is a pretty terrifying horror, that's for sure going to influence a bunch of bad films. Game Night was a surprsingly funny generic American comedy. If Beale Street Could Talk was a really wonderful poingnant film, with an excellent performance from Regina King. Sorry To Bother You was a funny, explicitly political and bizarre film from Boots Riley. From Iceland, there's the whimsical Woman at War about eco-terrorism, with a live brass band following a woman wherever she goes too. Border is an oddball Swedish fantasy film about a woman who is part troll. Contains one of the weirder sex scenes I think I've ever seen.
1. Annihilation 2. Sorry to Bother You 3. Hereditary Spiderverse, Buster Scruggs, MI: Fallout, Blackkklansman, Infinity War, Black Panthers, and Wildlife are all also really good.
If Beale Street Could Talk Climax Annihilation Agape from Nicholas Brittell is an all timer when it comes to movie scores/soundtracks.