My Top 25 Movies of 2018
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It is time – belated once more – to pull the dustcover off my Tumblr account and post my Top 25 movies of the year. This time for 2018.
Years 2008 through to present are available in the archive. Frequent visitors know that I’ll throw out a few special mentions to all the films that I wish I could’ve included but couldn’t make them fit yet believe they deserve a shout out regardless and then I get stuck in to what I think are the 25 best films of the year. Because if this was about what YOU think then we’d be over on YOUR Tumblr account right now, huh? ;)
As always, films listed are based on their UK release date whether that’s in the cinema or on DVD, VOD etc. And no, despite several attempts, I never got to see Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse so if you’re here to see that lauded at number one, I better dash your expectations now.
Without further ado…
Non-Fiction/Documentary wise; Alex Gibney proved once again with No Stone Unturned that he and his investigative team are some of the best working today. Andre the Giant was a really lovely and touching tribute to what was an icon of a man. Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette was transformative – you can argue about whether it’s a ‘stand up performance’ or a ‘one-person show’ or whatever but the truth is its funny and moving and challenging and wholly unique. And finally there was King Cohen which was a brilliant, entertaining retrospective on Larry Cohen’s career as the ‘king of the concept’ and the forefather of B-movie cinema as we know it today.
In terms of thrillers, I am a huge fan of Jeremy Saulnier and I really liked the book of Hold The Dark; the film itself doesn’t quite equal it and some of the narrative choices in the adaption weaken it but regardless, Saulnier’s movie has one of the best shoot-outs of the year as its centre-piece. Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead’s The Endless is an incredibly impressive sci-fi drama with an excellent sense of foreboding. However, I stand by my belief that a viewing of it is fairly useless/most definitely less effective without the duo’s 2012 film Resolution before it. Ingrid Goes West is an excellent play on the 90s style psycho-within thriller, updated for the Instagram age. I’ve long had a poor opinion of Audrey Plaza and the film is well above her capabilities but not even that can hamper an otherwise great cast doing great work with a great script. Coralie Fargeat’s Revenge was a savage, unrelenting and insanely graphic revenge thriller/drama with a stellar turn by Matilda Lutz that takes the standard imperilled woman/cat-and-mouse movie and re-spins it in a way you certainly won’t have seen before.
When it comes to horror in 2018, this was another strong year; Matthew Holness’ Possum was a deeply disturbing psychological horror film that showed Holness had a confidence that bellied his inexperience. Daniel Goldhaber’s Cam was a grossly enthralling watch that kept you on your toes by never taking the film down many of the routes you would expect a film of this ilk to. Gareth Evans’ much anticipated Apostle was admittedly overlong and shambolic in places but it was never not beautiful to look at and when it kicked its gears correctly into place it delivered some very effective scares. The much derided Christmas slasher Better Watch Out was generally hated or ignored by most but I had a great deal of fun with it. Mom & Dad was a tremendous bit of B-movie horror that sold its high concept hard with two deliciously OTT performances by Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair. Steven Soderbergh’s much-touted iPhone horror-thriller Unsane more than delivered. The long delayed sequel The Strangers: Prey At Night was a brilliant thrill-ride with a couple of genuinely horrifying and deeply effective set-pieces. The Night Eats The World was the I Am Legend movie we truly deserve, replacing vampires with zombies and doing great things on a threadbare budget. Finally there was Summer of 84 which didn’t achieve necessarily everything it tried to do but deserves respect just for the bravery of its dour third act.
From the pool of big studio blockbusters, I liked Sicario 2 a great deal and I’m well invested to stick with this (now inexplicable) franchise through all its sequels and intended spin-offs. The plot itself couldn’t have been more poorly timed in the Trump age and left a bad taste in the mouth watching a lot of it. Deadpool 2 loved itself more than I ever could but that doesn’t distract from the fact it was very, very funny. I thought The Commuter was a legitimate surprise as both conspiracy actioners AND Liam Neeson B-movies go. So much so that its big, explosive, CGI laden extravagant finale is a betrayal of all that was great about the film that preceded it. Both Black Panther and Ant-Man and the Wasp were as dependably great fun as you would expect from Marvel now. The former more so than the latter which seemed to have less of an engaging plot and more just a confidence that you would show up and watch this cast muck around with each other regardless. Solo was probably more of a surprise than The Commuter as blockbusters go, especially considering the mess that was the film’s production. It looks flat-out gorgeous, has some truly excellent set-pieces (that train heist!) but flounders across the finish line. I’m an unashamed fan of what Denzel Washington is doing with these Equalizer movies and, as with the first film, The Equalizer 2 would be nothing of any worth with anyone else in the lead. But Denzel absolutely sells the shit out of this and the films are appealing solely because of him. Hotel Artemis was another movie that would have offered nothing much if not for that cast coming together to really put the graft in selling a crazy B-movie concept that spins off of work John Wick and its sequel was laying down years earlier. Finally there was the Dave Bautista ‘straight to Sky Cinema’ actioner, Final Score, which in the year of Dwayne Johnson’s execrable Skyscraper, is the (no, I can’t believe I’m going to say it either) vastly superior Die Hard knock-off starring an American wrestler.
Of 2018’s dramas, I really liked Happy New Year, Colin Burstead but then I have a predisposed love of Ben Wheatley efforts. The film doesn’t quite return a pay-off for your investment but the cast more than make it worthy of your time. Molly’s Game was as excellent as you would expect when Jessica Chastain surrounds herself with that cast working off an Aaron Sorkin script that he chooses to make his directorial debut with. The aforementioned Denzel Washington does really understated, effective work in the too-easily dismissed Roman J. Israel. Esq which was the year’s ‘solid, mature, standalone, potboiler’ that studios don’t have a general interest in anymore. There’s a lot of people that were quick to dismiss The Post as ‘lesser Spielberg’ too but I really enjoyed it and loved spending time with that phenomenal cast having a crack at that particular subject matter. Stronger was, overall, a middling movie on a really moving subject matter that just happened to have another stellar Jake Gyllenhaal performance in it that should have seen him take all the awards but sadly didn’t. Paul Greengrass’ 22 July was incredibly effective, unsettling and harrowing in all the ways he intended it to be and should be but the subplots it introduces outside of the attack and the courtroom are way too heavy handed. I really, really enjoyed Paddy Considine’s sophomore effort Journeyman and thought it was one of the rare movies that actually needed to be less lean and have more time to explore the heady amount of drama it packed into its short running time. Hostiles was possibly the most underseen movie deserved of more attention with wall-to-wall great performances amidst really beautiful cinematography. Finally, both I Tonya and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri were fantastic films with fantastic performances – all very much as good as you’ve heard but both of which (pardon the pub in the case of I Tonya) didn’t quite stick the landing.
It was a banner year for World Cinema, greatly helped by the fact that Netflix made a strong commitment to importing long delayed Korean and Chinese cinema titles on mass this year. Amongst the sea of foreign cinema landing on streaming platforms across the UK, there were some exceptional standouts (five of the Top 25 slots alone are taken up with foreign titles!); John Woo’s much-touted return, Man Hunt, was an ‘interesting’ misfire that started out as a ‘wronged man’ thriller and descended into complete piffle about super soldiers and experiments on the homeless (yes, it’s even crazier than that description!). Wolf Warrior 2 was as much a heady expansion into ridiculousness as Rambo 2 (Stallone’s franchise is very much the blueprint for these films) was to First Blood. This is an insane action movie that demands to be seen – if not for the moustache twirling turn by Frank Grillo or the ‘punch-up’ between two tanks then definitely for the relentless car chases and shoot-outs that come every ten minutes! Shim Sung-Bo’s 2014 psychological thriller Sea Fog (aka Haemoo), based on the true story of 25 Korean-Chinese illegal immigrants who suffocated to death in the storage tank of the fishing vessel Taechangho (their bodies were dumped by the ship’s crew into the sea southwest of Yeosu on October 7, 2001), finally arrived legitimately here in the UK this year and it was more than worth the wait. Cambodia’s answer to The Raid was Jailbreak, the title of which is also the film’s plot in its entirety, and if bone-snapping, relentless, draining 100 minutes close-quarter fighting is your thing then this is well worth a watch. It works in fact in a nice double-bill with Erik Matti’s Philippine action thriller, BuyBust, which takes the ‘team of cops out of their depth’ thing and applies it to a non-stop shoot-out in a Manila slum. Finally there was Steel Rain, a conspiracy thriller / action movie about a former agent from North Korean intelligence and a senior member of the South Korean security services who have to team up to prevent the breakout of a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula. It’s a little flabby overall but still a great ride.
Not a huge amount of comedies blew me away this year (except ONE, obviously!), but the ones that did were all out of nowhere surprises; Blockers was an out-and-out delight with a starmaking turn from Geraldine Viswanathan. Gringo was seen by barely anyone but was a star-laden romp with a surprisingly deft comedic turn from David Oyelowo and another absolutely blinding scene-stealing performance from Sharlto Copley. More people need to seek this little gem out. There are multiple arguments as to whether Death of Stalin is or isn’t a 2018 release – I loved it enormously but I’m informed that it counts as a 2017 film I missed rather than a release from 2018! Finally there was Super Troopers 2 which didn’t get a cinema run or even a DVD release (!) here and instead went straight to VOD. It’s not as great as the first, obviously, but it’s still a delight with a large amount of laugh-out-loud moments.
And last but by no means least there was animation. And if you’d told me that there would be a sequel to The Incredibles in 2018 but it wouldn’t break my Top 25 of the year I’d say you were insane yet here we are. I loved The Incredibles 2 a great deal and it is never not incredibly (pun intended) gorgeous to look at but, as with Bird’s previous film Tomorrowland, his unsubtle messaging about the perils of this, that and the other as he sees it becomes seriously overbearing and in some points distracting. Also, frankly, his churlish reaction to people online who complained about the level of swearing and violence in the film soured me even further. Lee Unkrich’s Coco was a resplendent and moving joy that had my jaw-dropped and my eyes misty in large parts. And finally there was Early Man which was another Aardman gem with a huge amount of laughs but with two seriously awful and distracting performances from Maisie Williams and Tom Hiddleston.
And now, as always, without further ado…. The Top 25!
This is a terrific, relentless, true life crime drama about an illegal immigrant from China who sneaks into British-colonized Hong Kong in 1963 and transforms himself into a ruthless and emerging drug lord – and the corrupt cop who tries to take him down. It completely gets how to utilise the GOODFELLAS and DEPARTED vibe for its own benefit instead of just shamelessly ripping on it poorly like most crime epics these days. Donnie Yen and Andy Lau are dependably excellent, the story is gripping and the action is first rate.
Anyone who knows me knows that this was one of the films I was most nervous for in 2018. I just didn’t see how they could make a sequel to a film as grounded and real as the first Creed felt by tying it to the silliest (borderline 80 minute pop music video) in the Rocky franchise. And yet, for me, it worked and it worked surprisingly well – turning out to be one of the most bombastic, feelgood films of the year.
23. Mandy
You can call this a cult curio, a piece of crap or a modern masterpiece but what you can’t argue is that you’ve seen anything like it in film this year… or, really for what it is, ever. It’s a conventional revenge B-movie injected with LSD and then set loose to shower down a psychedelic rainstorm of violence, relentless in presenting its unique hellscape vision until there’s actually nothing conventional left.
22. A Prayer Before Dawn
This is a brave, committed piece of filmmaking. I was genuinely blown away by it. It was so all encompassing that it completely engulfed and, at one point (the gang rape scene), I had to pause the whole film and physically retch. It was so grim yet so driven in the detail of a very specific story that it wanted to tell without a single compromise that I came to thoroughly respect and admire what it was doing. There was the mid-budget, studio-backed Charlie Hunnam version of this that thankfully fell apart months before production and it would have been a TOTAL disaster. This film needed to be as low-to-the-ground, real and pushed by natural performances. And boy, it IS that.
21. Ghost Stories
This is an effective as HELL ride. It absolute burrows underneath your skin. It’s not at all what a modern horror audience will be expecting and that’s very much a good thing - we need things like this that draw us back to a classical and traditional ‘ghost’ story every now and again, and away from everything being zombies and slashers!
20. First Reformed
This is absolutely not an easy 'entertaining’ watch in the conventional sense but if you want your thoughts, feelings, religious leanings and opinions on climate change and the environment prodded and provoked then this is absolutely well worth a watch. Somewhere along the way to securing his place as a solid and reliable performer in B-movie genre fare, Ethan Hawke has quietly cemented himself as one of the great actors of our generation too. And whilst all the plaudits will inevitably lead towards him, there’s some serious 'Best Supporting Actress’ level work laid down by Amanda Siegfried. This is a really brave, original piece of cinema.
19. Hereditary
I would’ve loved to have been one of the minority who turned my nose up at this and bucked the trend on pouring adoration all over it but… it’s SO good! For the first hour, one monumental shocker aside, I spent it admittedly transfixed by the wondrous work Toni Collette was doing but still thinking the movie needed to be tighter and less wishy-washy with its intent and then… at the seventy minute mark it started to burrow under my skin, making me deeply uncomfortable and yet thoroughly enthralled. By the final third I was a complete wreck and I have to admit that HEREDITARY delivers hard on relentless and intense scares that left me a tiny bit ringed out by the end. If Collette isn’t nominated for her work in this film it will be a crime.
I’m going to be 'that’ guy who sat down to watch this under the weight of all the acclaim and buzz and found myself struggling to connect with it. I could see and appreciate all the technical marvel that makes Cuarón one of the all-time greats but it just didn’t pull me in and I started to get frustrated with myself; What was the rest of the known universe seeing with this film that I wasn’t? … THEN, in the dying ten minutes of the film, I found myself sat with tears streaming down my face and I came to realise that I never noticed how deep it had burrowed. I’ll hand it a place on this here list purely for that beach scene alone!
I came to this having read very little about it in way of plot but only having heard extremely superlative things about it in terms of performance and, as expected, direction from Paul Thomas Anderson. Because of my isolation from it from a plot point of view, I took to this as a really dark and twisted comedy in the style of a Julia Davis effort (who appears in this movie as Lady Baltimore). No one has ever really corrected me on this, so to me Daniel Day Lewis’ apparently final project as an actor has turned out to be one that shows him to be a deftly talented actor of very dry, perfectly observed comedy. And speaking of performances, Vicky Krieps is truly phenomenal!
This is a terrific low-key thriller that takes your breath away and has you totally gripped as to where it’s going to go next. It takes you down usual “fish out of water” paths then twists your route, wrongfooting your expectations along the way. The easy comparison is to put it in line with EDEN LAKE or DELIVERANCE but really it’s more in line with WAKE IN FRIGHT and AFTER HOURS in terms of the relentless sense of escalating and inescapable tension…. And that final, haunting image? Wow! That will stay with you!
This is really something else! …. This is what TAXI DRIVER would look like if written by the devil and directed by a PTSD sufferer off their meds! It’s phenomenal stuff. End of.
I will offset my fury that I was denied the opportunity to experience this on the biggest cinema screen possible against the fact that I was lucky enough to just experience it at all. What an absolutely astoundingly gorgeous, mesmerising, challenging, unsettling and thoroughly brilliant pieces of science-fiction to come along in quite some time. “It’s a men-on-a-mission movie but with women!” “It’s sort of an ode to Kubrick and 2001 and sort of Apocalypse Now!” “It’s a creature feature AND a possession movie!” “It’s an alien invasion flick!” … Second time around it felt lesser because the shine had dimmed a little but first time out, it worked exceptionally in so many expertly layered ways.
I really liked this and boy did we NEED this movie in 2018. You only have to close your eyes for 10 seconds watching it to realise the lead is very much the son of Denzel - in the best possible way. Like much of Lee’s output nowadays, it carries some bloat and doesn’t always seem that focused on what it’s trying to be. But, like ALL of Lee’s output, when it does land a hit it’s a helluva knockout… and that’s no more apparent than in the denouement and how it’s used. Brilliant film!
This is the true story of the 400 people who attempted a prison break from a forced labour camp on Hashima Island during the Japanese Colonial era. It is affecting, thrilling and full of jaw-dropping moments of ‘as real’ stunt work amidst a deeply moving story of salvation and tenacity. It was incredibly under-promoted here in the UK and too few have seen it but it is well worth seeking out.
This was such a beautiful and moving ode to a wonderful, talented and inspiring man. A man who seemed to JUST finally come to understand himself, his complexities and his flaws at the moment life unfairly took him. Shandling was the first stand-up comedian I ever remember really seeing on TV as a kid. I spent most of my time laughing at Shandling’s voice than I did in understanding the jokes he was saying. As I went into my teens I used to tape IT’S GARRY SHANDLING’S SHOW intermittently and it would blow me away as there was absolutely nothing like it on TV. The man would go on to reconfigure the television comedy once more and deliver one of the greatest, if not the greatest, sitcom in TV history with THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW. And on top of that he had his arm around the shoulders of pretty much every single major comedic and film talent of our generation, mentoring and guiding them - passing the ladder back down as he felt it had been done by George Carlin to him! Best of all though, towards the end, one of many Shandling journal entries is shown and it is quite possibly the greatest teachable moment to anyone who grieves, anyone who struggles with life and anyone who just doesn’t feel good enough… and for that reason and that reason alone, this is quite possibly essential viewing for anyone who wants to learn how to be a better human:
This is not just impressive on a technical level but also as a structured piece of writing that shows an impressive skill-set in the economy of storytelling. The latter of which works, rather astoundingly, not through any exposition or character-arc dumping but purely through wordless performance. And whilst all the justifiable rave reviews touch on the technical excellence, too few highlight just how fantastic it is on a performance-level: Millicent Simmonds and Noah Jupe are *astoundingly* good and Krasinski and Emily Blunt are amazing. It has to be said that as great as it is, this film would be NOTHING without these particular four performances. The labour sequence is the one everyone seems to be going crazy for and it is truly terrific as tension-drenched scares go… but get this; it isn’t even the best sequence in the movie! It’s just one of about four in a lean-as-hell 90-odd minute run time that stand as some of the best set-pieces the modern horror/thriller genre has seen in some time.
I was left rocked by this; a film that deals with its plot - a gangland enforcer instigates a treacherous and violent insurrection within his Triad crime family when he refuses to murder a child - within the first 5 minutes then opens up the remaining 115 minutes to a non-stop, relentless cavalcade of fights. As an action movie it’s quite possibly one of the best of 2018. However, it’s also possibly the most sickeningly violent and grotesquely graphic film I’ve EVER seen. Shitteth ye not. It should be admired for its absolutely unforgiving pace and an all-you-can-feast-on series of fight set-pieces (that very nearly equal THE RAID) that, no exaggeration, never EVER stop for the whole stretch of its running time… but it’s just so, so, sooo violent. SO violent that it essentially becomes a living cartoon before the end is anywhere in sight. To say it’s a fantastic action extravaganza is no hyperbole but to say it’s not for the faint of heart either is definitely not overstating it - I knew three people since it debuted on Netflix that haven’t been able to endure more than thirty to forty minutes of it.
This is a pitch perfect film noir and a tremendous homage to old school PI movies whilst standing as its own worthy entry to the subgenre too. The plotting is tight and the acting is across-the-board excellent. It’s written and directed in a way that serves to just escalate and build until the big valve-releasing burst of gunfire come the end. It’s a great, great little movie!
7. Upgrade
This is the ‘little movie that could’ – a low-budget loving ode to the straight-to-video B-movie and bargain basement genre flicks of the 80s as much as it is to THE TERMINATOR and MAD MAX and the like. This is a film made with love by someone who loves those sorts of films and in the process delivers a stupendously entertaining, lean sci-fi action fight-fest, shoot-em-up that never falters!
if you’re going to be having a conversation about the best superhero movies of the year and what not then PSYCHOKINESIS needs to be held up there alongside BLACK PANTHER and INFINITY WAR. Seriously. It’s brilliant - providing a final act “dust-up” that’s up there with the best Marvel has put out and, as a result, delivers the same genre rejig for superheroes that the same filmmaker did for zombies with TRAIN TO BUSAN.
I really liked Infinity War. Really liked it a lot. It’s not without its flaws but it carries them gloriously in a sort of shrugged “What do you expect us to do?” manner. For example, it plays more like a series of sketches across a two and a half hour running time rather than a wholly cohesive film - but then you have to consider its a two and a half hour film with six+ active storylines and 75+ characters and cut it some slack… Captain America is completely underserved. You knew this was going to be a problem with someone within a cast of 75+ but the MCU’s greatest character? Really? … But… But… BUT… what exists on screen is both a delight and a triumph in terms of long-form, multi-verse storytelling. It’s pretty impenetrable to anyone who’s not been in on the MCU from the beginning but absolutely glorious to all those that’ve stayed committed. Surprisingly, for what the plot is, the film is very, very funny with some great laugh-out-loud zingers and in terms of set-pieces it is understandably one of Marvel’s most ram-packed - with action and FX sequences every fifteen minutes or so that would be the whole finale of other blockbusters!
This represents an absolute game-changing moment in blockbuster franchise filmmaking equal to / possibly superior to AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR. It is an utterly astounding endeavour that loses not a jot of its awe-inducing propulsion and scope on the small screen - The bathroom fight would be the high watermark if it weren’t drowned out completely by the Paris sequence… which in itself we’d be holding up as an all-timer in action cinema if the climax didn’t surpass it and then some! It’s a film of continuous escalation, always in competition with itself to one-up itself, that serves to promote Christopher McQuarrie as possibly the greatest action director working in the genre today.
This was a film that delighted in its love of storytelling to just infectiously show you all that is great about great old fashioned storytelling in the modern age – all the while delivering sumptuous visuals and wall-to-wall terrific performances (Zoe Kazan will break your heart in two!). It was lovely and funny and moving and thrilling and really just an outright delight of a film that not even James Franco could ruin.
Not only did this turn out to be one of my favourite films of the year but it’s also one of the best comedies I’ve seen in a LONG time. It’s a tight and impressively constructed comedy full of brilliantly staged and well-earned comedy set-pieces stacked precariously on top of one another; each time one lands you think it’s going to be the one that 'misses’ and topples the movie and it never does. The cast are absolutely tremendous (Rachel McAdams remains an international treasure of the highest order and Sharon Horgan steals pretty much every scene she’s in that Jesse Plemons isn’t with just her glances!), the action sequences are really well done and it has one of the best end credits in comedy movie history with more visual jokes layered through it then most studio comedies have in their whole running time these days.Loved, loved, LOVED it! … The alleyway / gunshot scene nearly broke me.
This is a straight-out-the-gate modern American masterpiece who’s box office reception shows, like with WARRIOR, THE THING and SHAWSHANK, Americans just don’t know shit. It’s an engulfing, fascinating and at times incredibly moving epic that procedurally does for deep-dives on space exploration what ZODIAC did for investigation, ZERO DARK THIRTY did for terrorism and PRINCE OF THE CITY did for corruption. It truly is an astounding piece of work that deserves to be held in the highest possible esteem. I still break into a smile thinking about the sheer cinematic exquisiteness of it all, how it used sound to shred away at your senses and how, with the simplest of close-ups of a child’s bracelet, it took a hammer to my emotional resolve and has me welling up even now thinking about it. It really is an absolute work of art that I am champing at the bit to revisit.
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