Beyond that, it was at best a mediocre year. There were some highlights, and there were some fine films -- movies that were really worth admiring -- but the year lacked an emotional standout, a movie that captivated and enchanted me like the movies of the last few years. There was no La La Land or Moonlight, no A Monster Calls or The Walk (a movie I still insist never got its due), and certainly no Call Me By Your Name.
There were good movies, enjoyable movies, and maybe over time some of them will start to feel great, but 2018 felt lackluster, and the fact that Black Panther -- unquestionably a solid and impressive action movie -- is being seriously discussed as a Best Picture Oscar nominee tells you something about the way the year went.
With that, here are 10 movies that stood out from a middling crowd:
#9
See Roma on the biggest screen you can -- don't watch on it on Netflix if you care about the movies -- and ideally with the best possible sound. The images and the sound design in Alfonso Cuarón's meditation on memory are incredible and indelible. The barely-there story is perhaps less captivating, but if you give it a chance you'll discover that the sights and sounds of this movie stay with you long, long after it's over. While they may lack a certain emotional heft, there are moments in this movie I think will stay with me permanently. It's a ravishingly beautiful movie and a wonderful examination of the things we remember from childhood, the feelings and visuals that get stuck in our heads even if we didn't completely understand the context. Roma is hauntingly lovely.
#8
There were so few reasons to laugh in 2018 that every moment of levity was welcome, and few were as effective as Game Night. It's a weirdly violent movie, but one that manages to make the violence cheery. Its relentless energy almost never flags, even when the film veers off into detours so unimaginably off-kilter, silly and overwhelmingly unbelievable that a lesser film would lose us. Game Night makes it all work, and its anchored by wonderful performances, not just from Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman in the leads as the organizers of a close-knit group of game enthusiasts, but especially by Jesse Plemons in what may well go down as one of the screen's really great comedy roles.
#7
Quiet, gloomy, unnerving and at times just plain weird, First Reformed hinges everything on a brooding and intense performance by Ethan Hawke as Ernst Toller, a man who has lost everything a man can lose, including whatever definition he has of faith. The irony, then, is that Toller has become the pastor of a small, historic church, and as he reaches out to a parishioner in trouble, he begins to discover a number of wider worlds that he never realized existed. Writer-director Paul Schrader's drama requires patience and effort, especially when it moves into a couple of unexpected detours. It also demands to be viewed with different eyes than we usually bring to the movies. But its many layers are rewarding, and the film as a whole is a welcome throwback to the highly personal, auteur-driven and deeply specific psychological dramas of the 1970s.
#6
Message movies aren't supposed to be fun, but Spike Lee's best movie in a very long while combines both a sobering and terrifying message with sensational moviemaking, resulting in a bang-up film that is a joy to watch ... even if it was better in the moment than in the memory for me. The movie's torn-from-the-headlines coda will likely not age particularly well, but the same can't be said for a sequence involving an attempted bombing, which is the kind of scene that deserves to be dissected and studied for years. It is pure filmmaking, something that was largely missing from the movies in 2018, and it is dizzyingly good.
#5
Of course the nostalgia is what makes it work. I imagine anyone who hasn't seen Mister Rogers' Neighborhood would come away from Won't You Be My Neighbor? slightly befuddled that America put so much trust into one man. But we did, and what makes Won't You Be My Neighbor? so special as a documentary is that it takes measure of the weight of that trust. Fred Rogers didn't necessarily intend teaching children to be a lifelong pursuit, much less his primary legacy, and he went through more than a few crises of faith and confidence as he became the most beloved man in America. It's a blast to watch Won't You Be My Neighbor? for the clips and vintage film footage; it's an education to watch it and discover just how much went into the show; but it's a revelation to watch it and learn about the very real human being who was Fred Rogers. It's hardly a groundbreaking documentary, but it's a very, very good one, indeed.
#4
Mary Poppins Returns represents everything that's wrong with today's Disney: It's a bloated retread that trades off of an earlier era of originality and imagination. It shouldn't work at all ... but it does, and wonderfully well. Though it tries far too hard to walk precisely in the footsteps of its better predecessor, director Rob Marshall and star Emily Blunt manage to overcome their considerable obstacles to deliver a film with considerable charm while maintaining the melancholy undertones of the original. There's a lot here for children to enjoy, but there's even more for parents to appreciate, especially as the film explores the inherent disappointment that comes with growing up. As a permanent adult, Mary, the film hints, knows more than her fair share of the emotion, but nonetheless she persists. It's something of an unexpected joy to have her back, even though you get the sense that with every remake and reboot, Disney is pushing its luck.
#3
A thriller needs to thrill, and Searching does that tremendously well. While it didn't get the attention of 2017's Get Out, I'd argue that Searching is an even more riveting thriller that arguably lacks the style and import of Jordan Peele's movie but is more flat-out entertaining. It also comes closest to mimicking the way we experience life in the early 21st century, told entirely -- and I mean, entirely -- through the filter of second screens. It can be a disorienting experience: We're watching a movie screen filled with other digital screens, and that experience will be amplified at home in a way that may actually further benefit the movie. But at its core, it's a captivating, relentless thriller about a father searching for his daughter, and John Cho holds it together with a performance that is both technically impressive (consider what he's doing, playing the emotions on so many screens) and emotionally honest. Searching is likely the best thriller you didn't see in 2018: Now is your chance to change that.
#2
Eighth Grade is a flat-out joy. This little film about the smallest of small subjects -- a girl trying to make her way through eighth grade -- but about the biggest of big themes. It tackles alienation, success, failure, family, love, sex, body image, self-confidence, loneliness and anxiety, topics most films about grown-ups shy away from, but which Eighth Grade knows are really the only things anyone cares about anyway. Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher) might be 2018's most memorable character, and writer-director Bo Burnham makes her in to neither a caricature nor an irritant; she's entirely herself, which, the movie argues, is the best thing anyone could possibly be. She just doesn't know it -- and isn't that the way with all of us? Eighth Grade can be difficult to watch, but that's because it knows that every single one of the people watching it has felt like (or still feels like) Kayla. So, grin and bear it. You'll be glad you did. "Gucci!"
#1
Oh, come on, you're probably thinking. There's no way a super-hero movie could be your favorite movie of the year, much less an animated super-hero movie. Come on! You don't even like super-hero movies. Generally speaking, that's true. But Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a genuinely special movie, one that takes its story seriously, treats its characters with humor and respect, and above all rethinks and redefines movie making -- not just animated movies, but movies in general. This is a film that soars. It has a happy and precocious spirit. It is filled with excitement, and takes a real joy in being something marvelously different. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is the closest thing you'll ever see to a comic book that has sprung to life, and maybe the highest praise that can be afforded it -- beyond the fact that it's so vastly superior to any of the other films in the decade-long spate of super-hero movies -- is that after just a few minutes you forget you're watching an animated film at all. You're watching pop art in action, you're watching a story that is at once familiar and new, and you're watching the work of filmmakers and artists who clearly love what they're doing. If you haven't seen it, you must. And if you have avoided seeing it because you don't like super-hero movies, well, neither do I. But this film, more than any other of 2018, is one I loved.
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