The Best Movies of 2018

The films released in 2018 are all firmly in the Trump era. If the best movies of last year were the ones that were either shockingly relevant to the times (“Get Out”) or were enough pure adrenaline escapism (“Baby Driver”) to provide a distraction from the barrage of noise and conflict going on in the real world, then the most effective movies of this year were the ones that managed to do both. They’re timely and don’t ignore the world around them but also were wildly entertaining and richly cinematic.

Films as diverse as Spike Lee’s hyper-political genre film “BlacKkKlansman,” the tear jerking documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?,” Marvel’s racially-charged superhero epic “Black Panther” and the delightful fable “Paddington 2” were able to be in the same conversation as movies that say as much about life in 2018 as they are fun to watch. Though maybe that’s the key for any year and not just years in which every push notification and tweet brings an absurd amount of anxiety. The best movies are ones that have something to say, that make you think and that you want to watch again.

These were the 10 (okay, 11) movies that did all of the above this year:

10. “Woman at War”

“No misery, no violence, no death, not even a gun, and no sex.” Yet the Icelandic director Benedikt Erlingsson’s “Woman at War” is one of the more inventively tense and creative action films I’ve seen. The story of a lone, eco-terrorist who is forced to choose between her cause and an opportunity to become a mom, “Woman at War” brilliantly melds cat-and-mouse suspense with environmental parallels, human drama and offbeat humor. Erlingsson’s hands-on, guerilla filmmaking within Iceland’s vast, empty fields and mountains creates some indelible action shots. And all along the way he utilizes a delightfully irreverent three-piece band visible in the background as they provide the film’s score. At one point the film’s hero even spots the band and knows that something isn’t right. If only Tom Cruise had a musical accompaniment as he was saving the world.

9. “A Star is Born”

In music criticism, the term “poptivisim” refers to the idea that pop music is as worthy of appreciation and serious critique as rock music. “A Star is Born” is the film embodiment of that idea, an honest update on a tried-and-true formula that has no qualms about how deeply romantic, emotional and grand it’s trying to be. The sensuality of Jackson Maine delicately tracing the outline of Aly’s nose, the soul-baring intimacy as Aly sings in a grocery store parking lot, the tragic, look Sam Elliott gives as he turns to back his car out of Jackson’s driveway, and of course “Shallow:” this movie has no shame about tugging on heart strings, and by god does it work gangbusters every single time. Kudos to Bradley Cooper for making a movie that is at once old fashioned and very modern. Bravo to Lady Gaga, who shows that her greatest transformation yet is being authentic.

8. (TIE) “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” & “Minding the Gap”

Both the documentaries “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” and “Minding the Gap” are miracles of editing and dramatic construction.

To begin with, it should not be assumed that conveying the charm and influence of Fred Rogers is as effortless as Morgan Neville makes it appear. “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” made me hug myself, yes, but the film walks a delicate tight rope in conveying that the man behind Mister Rogers Neighborhood truly was as decent and magical as he appears. An early scene shows Mister Rogers with a room full of enraptured children and equally adoring parents. It’s almost all you need to know about the effect he has on kids and adults alike in his goodness and warmth. But Neville spends the remainder of the film revealing Mister Rogers as a man who still possessed anger, doubt and self-awareness of anyone. But he’s the best of us because he truly did lack the dark, cynical side that most everyone else develops once they leave childhood. And Neville should be commended for so beautifully inviting us into Mister Rogers’s neighborhood.

As for “Minding the Gap,” here is a film that brilliantly reveals its purpose over time and finds such tension and heart-wrenching emotion in what at first seem like several disparate stories. Bing Liu’s documentary begins as an authentically blissful portrait of skating kids in the ‘90s and how they’ll hope to grow up. He knows this world himself and is a good enough boarder to capture it with speed, grace and elegance. But as they age and grow apart, “Minding the Gap” gradually transforms into a frank, probing documentary about financial hardships and domestic abuse at the hands of toxic males in Rockford, Illinois. Liu even makes us question the characters, or his friends, who we thought we knew and puts us square in the midst of a harrowing moment of his own family therapy. How he ties it all back into a metaphor about skateboarding is Liu’s best trick of all.

7. “Black Panther”

In Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther,” the native Africans of Wakanda live in a hidden paradise rife with enormous wealth, technology and culture. Their power has always been there, you just didn’t know it. Black cinema and art has experienced a Renaissance in the last several years. They didn’t need a coming out party, but when you have a movie as big, entertaining and rich as culture, it’s more than welcome. Coogler pulls Marvel out of mediocrity and political gray areas by staging a timely superhero movie that speaks to the Trump era about isolationism and the economic divide in a way that’s so rooted in the real world. It’s all that, and it’s black as hell. The costumes are damn fine, the music is fire, and Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger is the best MCU villain yet. Yes, even better than that big purple dude.

6. “The Tale”

“You don’t know what’s about to happen…What if you’re wrong?” This moment in “The Tale” comes when an adult Jennifer Fox (Laura Dern) is speaking in narration to her younger, 13-year-old self. And the first time I saw “The Tale,” I was in the dark too. But what makes it doubly profound is that Jennifer Fox is also the director of this film. HBO’s “The Tale” plays like a hybrid documentary, with Fox using actors to examine her memory and even interrogate figures from her past that now just live in her mind. In the process she weaves an elegant and curiously hypnotic story about her childhood that gradually evolves into something much more unsettling. The actors themselves even change and distort as Fox flashes back and her memory comes into fuller view. And by the time it has dawned on her, Fox deftly and sensitively navigates the unexpected gray area in this story of abuse, reconciliation and acceptance.

5. “Mission: Impossible – Fallout”

Each moment of the sixth – and best – “Mission: Impossible” movie is designed to further accelerate, build upon and continue pushing to the razor’s edge the tension and excitement of any given action scene. It’s a master class in manufacturing adrenaline. We see it in the unflinching halo jump, an unbroken take that has us out the back of a plane even before Tom Cruise is. It’s in the swift motion of the camera during the skin of your teeth Paris car chase, with shots that demonstrate as much of a death wish as Cruise has. And it’s even in the exposition, culminating in a twisty, underground exchange of double crossing and gotcha dialogue. It’s true that no one is making movies as kinetic and as tangibly real as Christopher McQuarrie does here. But the beauty of “Fallout” is that it still may be the most fun yet, and the values, morality and goodness Cruise embodies in Ethan Hunt provides a spark that no other action franchise can claim.

4. “Roma”

Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” is one of the realest movies there is. And yet it’s also sumptuous and fantastical, with Cuaron transforming his hometown Mexico City into the setting of a Fellini movie. The dog perpetually leaping into the air and trying to get out of the house, the circus of animated balloon salesmen outside a movie theater or the rooftops full of glistening wet bed sheets and laundry make every interior and every cityscape of “Roma” feel lived in and familiar. Built less out of a plot and instead anecdotes and immense moments, this is a film about familiarity and fondness for family and home. And Cuaron utilizes his obsessive attention to detail and ambitious, sweeping long takes to make these intimate, deeply personal memories feel universal.

3. “BlacKkKlansman”

“Why don’t you wake up?” Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” is a period piece based on a true story, but you’d be dumb to think that line is about anything other than right now. Lee has managed to make a rousing, funny, thoughtful genre film that doesn’t hide that everything you’re seeing is not some fictionalized fantasy. It’s all real, and it’s all happening in 2018. He toys with the racist KKK members as cartoonish parodies, but he also frames them as people to show how their hate has been normalized. And as enjoyable a film as “BlacKkKlansman” is, he makes it impossible to separate the film’s entertainment value from its politics. In that way, Lee’s film doesn’t just capture the pulse of 2018, it understands what it’s like to live in 2018’s frequently bizarre, absurd, inspiring and horrifying America moment to moment.

2. “First Reformed”

“The blackness? That’s not new,” Ethan Hawke’s Reverend Toller says in Paul Schrader’s masterful “First Reformed.” He’s counseling a morbid, miserable, would-be father who has grown hopeless at the thought of how climate change will make the world unlivable for his child. The environmental changes are new, but not the feeling of insignificance and despair. Schrader’s film isn’t specifically new either. It feeds off the spirituality of Bresson and Bergman, and the descent of this nihilistic, loner activist in Reverend Toller is like an updated version of Travis Bickle in Schrader’s “Taxi Driver.” What is sensational about “First Reformed” is how the polluted purple horizon or the corporate influence on religion speaks to our own constant doubt and despair. Every line of Schrader’s dialogue as delivered by Hawke is deeply profound; his performance alone should give us hope.

1. “Cold War”

Zula is a young, beautiful, Slavic woman who has spent the better part of her young adult life touring the country as part of Poland’s national choir. She’s watched as they went from performing traditional folk songs for poor, underrepresented regions in her country to singing propaganda songs about “wonderful Stalin.” After years of this torture, she’s finally brought herself to escape and make a life in Paris with her former music teacher and now lover. Even here, she’s still singing folk songs, but in the film’s best and most beautifully seductive scene, she takes ownership of her life by transforming that song into a sultry lounge ballad. In that moment, this is what love feels like.

Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War” is ravishing, a lush, spellbinding, black and white life story wrapped up in under 90 minutes. It starts as a cultural, musical slice of life, then a coming-of-age story, then again becomes a political parable, and even briefly veers into an espionage thriller. And by the end it’s a personal drama about sacrifice, remorse, homesickness and so much more, all told with an undercurrent of the most emotional love story of the year. But Pawlikowski’s style too is worldly and diverse. Some scenes resemble something out of Godard’s “Breathless,” while his stark, black and white cinematography could have a home alternately among films by Antonioni, Bergman or even Kubrick. He has a knack for clever framing that captures the many layers of a scene but also the boldness in musical numbers and love scenes to maximize a moment’s passion and emotion. It’s rare that a movie should have this much economy in its storytelling and still contain multitudes.

And the rest…

11. “Shoplifters”
12. “The Rider”
13. “If Beale Street Could Talk”
14. “First Man”
15. “Tully”
16. “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”
17. “The Favourite”
18. “Ralph Breaks the Internet”
19. “Isle of Dogs”
20. “Thoroughbreds”
21. “Support the Girls”
22. “Free Solo”
23. “Capernaum”
24. “The Death of Stalin”
25. “Paddington 2”
26.  “American Animals”
27.  “You Were Never Really Here”
28. “Fahrenheit 11/9”
29. “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
30. “Game Night”

Best Actress

1. Regina Hall – “Support the Girls”
2. Laura Dern – “The Tale”
3. Lady Gaga – “A Star is Born”
4. Melissa McCarthy – “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
5. Yalitza Aparicio – “Roma”

Best Actor

1. Ethan Hawke – “First Reformed”
2. Bradley Cooper – “A Star is Born”
3. Ryan Gosling – “First Man”
4. Stephan James – “If Beale Street Could Talk”
5. John David Washington – “BlacKkKlansman”

Best Supporting Actress

1. Emma Stone – “The Favourite”
2. Rachel Weisz – “The Favourite”
3. Haley Lu Richardson – “Support the Girls”
4. Regina King – “If Beale Street Could Talk”
5. Rachel McAdams – “Game Night”

Best Supporting Actor

1. Sam Elliott – “A Star is Born”
2. Adam Driver – “BlacKkKlansman”
3. Richard E. Grant – “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”
4. Michael B. Jordan – “Black Panther”
5. Brian Tyree Henry – “If Beale Street Could Talk”

Best Score: “If Beale Street Could Talk,” Nicholas Britell (Runner Up: “Black Panther,” Ludwig Goransson)

Best Cinematography: “Roma,” Alfonso Cuaron (Runner Up: “Cold War,” Lukasz Zal; “If Beale Street Could Talk,” James Laxton)

Best Editing: “Minding the Gap” (Runner Up: “Mission: Impossible – Fallout”)

Best Dog: Olivia, “Widows” and “Game Night”

Best Cat: Towne, “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”

Best Horse: Apollo, “The Rider”

Movies I Haven’t Seen Yet: “Burning,” “Zama,” “Happy as Lazzaro,” “Private Life,” “Madeline’s Madeline,” “Lean on Pete,” “The Other Side of the Wind,” “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” “Shirkers,” “Vice,” “Mandy,” “Suspiria,” “Wildlife,” “Let the Sunshine In,” “Western”