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: Continue reading “The Best Movies of 2018”
Marvel movies have been disposable. They’ve been designed to be the same. And even the best ones have only shown glimmers of the personality behind the camera. All that changes with “Black Panther.” In fact, so much has changed with this film. It signals not just a new step forward for Marvel, but a shift in the modern blockbuster’s ability to be political and current, and it’s an absolute leap forward in what we should demand from black cinema.