With most good critics prematurely releasing their 2019 Best of the Year lists (before the year has even come to a close and they clearly havenโt seen all the films they wished to yet), now seems like a grand time for my 2018 Best of Yesteryear list. Iโve had a whole year to catch up on all the films that I thought maybe worthy of finding a spot here within my top 10 โ and some of them, seen only in this year, have made an appearance.
With days worth of 2018 films now passed through my eyes and ears, I can safely say itโs been a pretty good year for cinema โ not great, but good enough, but not as great as 2017 and not even as great as 2019 (whose films Iโve seen much fewer of). Going by release dates in any country (though not counting festival releases), hereโs my top ten of the year, plus some runner-ups that Iโm bummed out didnโt quite make the cut, as well as the worst of the year (that may or may not contain some controversial picks).
10. Never Look Away
An incredible entry in the WWII genre, even though the majority of this film takes place after the war, but deals with its aftermath and how the characters operate under scrutiny, secrecy, and in a newly divided Germany. Kurt is a young man who wishes to break away from the socialist realism paintings heโs so good at and work within post-modernism, which could provide a way to comment on his own unusual and heart-breaking experience in the war. The filmโs original German title translates to โWork Without Authorโ, which is a flimsy reference to the filmโs ending, whereas Never Look Away (spoken during an integral moment early on in the film by Kurtโs sister) evokes this powerful film with a better understanding of taking in our troubled histories and rendering them through art โ just like Kurt does and just like this very film does.
9. Sicario: Day of the Soldado
There arenโt a lot of folks claiming that this sequel was superior to the 2015 Denis Villeneuve original, but Iโd be in that small minority because of what Day of the Soldado gets so right that Sicario struggled to achieve โ have as much of a Mexican perspective as an American one. Day of the Soldado switches between its two storylines: Gillick represents the Mexican side, as he attempts to bring the young daughter of a slain kingpin across the border, while CIA officer Graver tries to hunt him down. This dual perspective was mishandled in the predecessor, with so much time given to these two characters (both previously on the same USA team), but with minor character, Silvio has delegated the Central American perspective, whose character arc was unsatisfyingly minimal. As good as the original was, containing tenser action set-pieces and better cinematography than this new one, Day of the Soldado is grittier, ballsier, and has a more expansive scope that covers this story of the border, particularly as itโs gotten more complicated in the years since the original.
Similar to 2018 Best of Yesteryear list – THE MIXED REACTION TO SICARIO 2: DAY OF THE SOLDADO [2018]
8. Unsane
The immense intensity and paranoia that makes up this thriller may entirely be coming from Claire Foy, who likely hasnโt given a better performance in a film. Her hard-working and tightly wound Sawyer may seem like the most grounded person, until sheโs mistakenly committed into a psychiatric ward, where the doctors try to keep her there indefinitely (for insurance profits). Making matters a whole lot worse is that her stalker, whoโs been responsible for her recent stresses, appears to be an orderly at this institution. The question throughout the film: is this really her stalker or is she hallucinating him? Almost this entire film and its realism, its ambiguity, and its level-headedness rests on Foy, who plays a thoroughly intelligent character whoโs always trying her greatest to emerge from her harrowing situations, but is also a person with emotional flaws that leads to her impulses superseding her logical actions. Seeing such a well-rounded character, with both motivated ambitions and reluctant compromises, make this film all the more satisfying and relatable to watch โ certain other films could take a cue from Unsane on how to write lead women characters.
Also, Related to 2018 Best of Yesteryear list – 10 Films The HOF-Men Recommend: 10th Edition
7. The Other Side of the Wind
Perhaps a film like this is more deserving of appearing on a โBest of 1976โ list because everything about the finally released The Other Side of the Wind screams that year, not 2018. It is decidedly a film made throughout the early and mid โ70s and it reflects these times through its carefree, careless, drunken, party-like sensibility. It takes place in just about the one location, a home party in the LA Hills, with no direct plot other than the party-goers trying to find a suitable screen to watch a rough cut of a film theyโre making. This film-within-the-film acts like a parody of the New Hollywood (with its counterculture air-headedness), but The Other Side of the Wind has strangely become the last film of this movement, its delayed release finally finding a home in the most suitable of places. A scattery film like this works better on a streaming service, where viewers can dip in and out of piecemeal sequences, rather than being shown as a whole piece in a cinema. However it is shown, weโre thankful to have such a radical (as well as highly enjoyable) film finally make its appearance.
Similar to 2018 Best of Yesteryear list – THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND [2018] REVIEW- EVERYTHING IN ITS RIGHT PLACE
6. BlacKkKlansman
The sort of โtrue stories you wonโt believe actually happenedโ kind of films run the risk of being more about the concept than execution. But for this truly unbelievable true story given the film treatment, Spike Lee puts in everything to make this story as captivating and amusing as it can be, all the while commenting on the (corruptive) power of the audio-visual medium that is film. BlacKkKlansman has become Leeโs most commercially successful film ever, and likely his biggest critical success since Do the Right Thing, because it feels like this director is really honing his strengths and ignoring his weaknesses through a film like this. He successfully merges the themes with the story whilst mostly not being overbearing or didactic, and he always upholds the correct sense of when to be funny and when to be dramatic and mixing the two effectively.
Similar to 2018 Best of Yesteryear list – A SPIKE LEE JOINT: BLACKKKLANSMAN [2018]
5. Roma
With a scope as big as his last film five years ago, the outer-space extravaganza Gravity, Alfonso Cuarรณn brought himself back down to the ground and replaced the outer-space vast emptiness with culturally rich imagery. He fills the anamorphic lens with all sorts of vibrant Mexican landscapes, whether on bustling city roads or spacious rural areas, where the central family and their housekeeper move their way through. Like Ozu and contemporary filmmakers influenced by him, Roma is atmospheric in its depiction of family life and unhurried in its story, but unlike its contemporaries, it is decidedly not minimalistic in mise en scene, it is flat-out filling itself out in just about every impressive (and often very long) shot. This utterly remarkable design that fills each frame houses the viewpoint of the housekeeperโs life, though starting off leisurely, becomes exponentially emotional and brings the viewer all the way into her life.
Also, Read – Roma (2018): Experiencing Spirituality Through Cinema
4. Burning
To call this a slow-burn would be the cheekiest description to give it, but itโs also the most appropriate. Evolving through genres from romance to drama to thriller and arguably horror, Burning takes a short story and stretches it to a two and a half-hour psychological examination of a love triangle gone wrong. Director Lee Chang-dong seems to shoot everything fairly plainly and without an abundance of style, yet over time, he generates an intense feeling of unease through the horrid ambiguities of so many plot details, conjuring the worst-case scenarios in the minds of the audience. Leading up to a stunning denouement that contextualizes all that came before, unraveling the layers of the hero-victim dichotomy, Burning is intense like it doesnโt even know it.
Related to 2018 Best of Yesteryear list – Burning [2018]: โNYFFโ Review โ About Rage, Love & Class Conflict
3. High Life
Arthouse sci-fi films are back in fashion (perhaps thanks to believable outer-space CGI becoming increasingly affordable), and arthouse darling Claire Denis has crafted one for the ages. Like all her films, this is concerned less with a progressing plot and more with the psychology of how the characters interact within their unusual and tight-knit environment. They are all prison inmates who have been located to a part of outer-space, far away from home, to live together and conduct scientific experiments while searching for a black hole. With a prologue that reveals that only Monte is left on board, with his new-born daughter, the film then retraces the bizarre events that lead to this single dad in outer space, but it ends up showing the intense love and hate these people give to each other under such suffocating circumstances. A cosmic meditation on the infinite scope of love, High Life is quite like Interstellar, except it doesnโt suck.
Also, Read – High Life [2019] Review: Sci-fi high
2. First Reformed
For those that like their water chilled and their coffee black, First Reformed is not just bleak, but utterly relevant, taking on modern subjects like terrorism, climate change, and the increasing secularism in the Western world. Journeying through this contemporary despair is Father Toller, played by Ethan Hawke in a career-high for the actor, who channeled his darkest depths for such pain and the frustrating role thatโs unlike anything previously achieved in his filmography. Itโs unusual, but so satisfying to see a great filmmaker, after years or even decades of varying mediocrity, suddenly emerge with what may be their best film, a grand statement theyโd be meaning to make for so long and finally came to the right time to make it. Writer-director Paul Schrader does channel his three main influences (Carl Dreyer, Yasujirล Ozu, Robert Bresson), though heโs mostly channeling himself (mostly his Taxi Driver side), diving into the unknown murkiness of the โ10s culture that in many ways seems as frightening and helpless as the โ70s.
Related to 2018 Best of Yesteryear list – First Reformed Review [2018]: Spiritual Collapse under Crisis of Faith
1. The House That Jack Built
Iโm always excited to see a new film about a serial killer, a particular topic that can be both fun and insightful to explore โ and if one of which happens to be directed by Lars von Trier, Iโm even more intrigued. Not to say that this match made in hell would definitely be successful, but von Trier did indeed utilize the best of his psychological insight and tonal mastery on this very singular work of art about the act of killing. Lars von Trier is fond of throwing in whatever he feels like and seeing what fits, with digressions in the story to pianist Glenn Gould, the ethics of art, Subterranean Homesick Blues parodies, and even blatant references to his other films (admittedly a cringey low point for this film). But you take the good with the von Trier, this slither of un-self-aware narcissism goes up against a grandiose rendering of the fascinating and endlessly multifaceted realm of murder and evil. Lars von Trier certainly has a reputation as a cheeky enfant terrible who can be patience-testing, but with that also comes a strong appreciation and understanding of the power and playfulness of the art that is film: with his latest, he has constructed a comedy, a thriller, a horror, and then a parabolic journey into the heart of darkness, that cinema has never seen in this way before.
Also, Read – THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT [2018]: ASTONISHING EXAMINATION OF EVIL
Honourable Mentions: At Eternityโs Gate, Mandy, They Shall Not Grow Old, American Animals, Chappaquiddick, The Old Man & the Gun, Bad Times at the El Royale, Three Identical Strangers, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Cold War
Dishonorable Mentions (Worst of the Year): Best F(r)iends: Part One, Private Life, Venom, Vice, Kodachrome
