Keith Simanton's Top 25 Films of 2018
I'm IMDb's Senior Film Editor and, though I haven't seen every film 2018 had to offer (like THE MULE) I have seen a LOT of films. This list has changed over the year, as it should, as movies have surfaced, risen up, and fallen off the list. Just outside of this 25 include titles such as LEAVE NO TRACE, SHOPLIFTERS, RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET, INFINITY WAR, BOOK CLUB (really! quite sweet) and WON'T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR? -- by Keith Simanton
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25 titles
- DirectorJacques AudiardStarsJohn C. ReillyJoaquin PhoenixJake GyllenhaalEli and Charlie Sisters, an infamous duo of gunslinging assassins, chase a gold prospector and his unexpected ally in 1850s Oregon.Arnaud’s THE SISTER BROTHERS has the heart of LONESOME DOVE, the brains, guts, grime, and grit of UNFORGIVEN, and the backdrops of Sergio Leone (much of the film was shot in Spain and Romania). John C. Reilly once again crafts a nuanced role from what could have been a bone-head "star" part, playing the decent foil to the once-again excellent, crazed, Joaquin Phoenix, as the hired-guns Eli and Charlie Sister, respectively. They're killers staked to a bygone world, one that is barbaric and unreasoning. They're hired to kill Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed's characters, two partners who provide a counterpoint as the civilized and unrealistic team, the way of the future, which bears its own concomitant terrors.
- DirectorChloé ZhaoStarsBrady JandreauMooneyTim JandreauAfter suffering a near fatal head injury, a young cowboy undertakes a search for new identity and what it means to be a man in the heartland of America.No film reminded me of what our current film isn't as this one. There's nothing like it. These characters feel as real as rain, with stories true as those of your oldest friends, unvarnished, funny, uncomfortable, and the most human.
- DirectorYorgos LanthimosStarsOlivia ColmanEmma StoneRachel WeiszIn early 18th-century England, the status quo at the court is upset when a new servant arrives and endears herself to a frail Queen Anne.Most quotable screenplay of the year, from Davis & McNamara, with three of the best performances of the year. It's also the ultimate expression of themes that Lanthimos has been exploring for years, particularly the establishment of arbitrary rules and the power structure behind them that must obeyed.
- DirectorAlfonso CuarónStarsYalitza AparicioMarina de TaviraDiego Cortina AutreyA year in the life of a middle-class family's maid in Mexico City in the early 1970s.A garage too narrow, a wall of mounted dogs’ heads, a riot, a tragic birth, all rise up in memory long after Cuaron’s movie, ROMA, ends. But it is slow, slow, sloooow going in-between.
- DirectorJohn KrasinskiStarsEmily BluntJohn KrasinskiMillicent SimmondsA family struggles for survival in a world where most humans have been killed by blind but noise-sensitive creatures. They are forced to communicate in sign language to keep the creatures at bay.Clean, sharp, and a throwback to silent films, showing you what's happening because "monologuing" isn't an option. Why do I have a feeling that an ALIENS-like offering is next? I welcome the inevitability with open arms.
- DirectorPaul KingStarsBen WhishawHugh GrantHugh BonnevillePaddington, now happily settled with the Brown family and a popular member of the local community, picks up a series of odd jobs to buy the perfect present for his Aunt Lucy's 100th birthday, only for the gift to be stolen.This was a 2017 film in the UK but didn't appear in the U.S. until this year. Inventive, delightful, tender, heart-felt, this is a movie to cherish for years and years to come. Thanks Paul King et al.
- DirectorPawel PawlikowskiStarsJoanna KuligTomasz KotBorys SzycIn the 1950s, a music director falls in love with a singer and tries to persuade her to flee communist Poland for France.Makes you want to smoke too much, drink too much, stay up to a gray dawn in a seedy club, travel to exotic, seedier countries, wreck your life for love, shake it off, pick the sad confetti and cocktail napkins off of your suit, and do it all again.
- DirectorBob PersichettiPeter RamseyRodney RothmanStarsShameik MooreJake JohnsonHailee SteinfeldTeen Miles Morales becomes the Spider-Man of his universe and must join with five spider-powered individuals from other dimensions to stop a threat for all realities.The best superhero movie of the year. The best animated film of the year.
- DirectorRyan CooglerStarsChadwick BosemanMichael B. JordanLupita Nyong'oT'Challa, heir to the hidden but advanced kingdom of Wakanda, must step forward to lead his people into a new future and must confront a challenger from his country's past.Coogler makes the most non-Marvel movie in the MCU with a political and social statement. This film, however, is a force of nature, a perfect culmination of many roads leading to a perfect moment in time.
- DirectorPeter FarrellyStarsViggo MortensenMahershala AliLinda CardelliniA working-class Italian-American bouncer becomes the driver for an African-American classical pianist on a tour of venues through the 1960s American South.This film reminds us that mature decency and common sense (versus youthful, naive, carte blanche whatever acceptance) matters. One can't really ask more from a film. Two of the best realizations of characters this year.
- DirectorDamien ChazelleStarsRyan GoslingClaire FoyJason ClarkeA look at the life of the astronaut, Neil Armstrong, and the legendary space mission that led him to become the first man to walk on the Moon on July 20, 1969.Chazelle & Gosling are heads-down, in shirt-sleeves, for the excellent FIRST MAN, about a breed of men, stoic, driven, emotionally walled-off, who fought two wars, got us to the moon, and raised two generations. They employ great restraint in the telling, putting us always in the pilot’s seat with Armstrong, eschewing easy emotional cues. Justin Hurwitz's, score docks magnificently with cinematographer Linus Sandgren and Chazelle’s visuals, often tight, fogged, and isolated views of what, in another director's hands would be great vistas, the expanse of the earth and space. The film, straight-backed, solemn, about a very real marriage as well, lacks the approach-ability as a result, earning our respect, as those men did, while remaining distant and inscrutable. That, in itself, is a dangerous choice and laudable for a filmmaker.
- DirectorJon M. ChuStarsConstance WuHenry GoldingMichelle YeohThis contemporary romantic comedy based on a global bestseller follows native New Yorker Rachel Chu to Singapore to meet her boyfriend's family.Chu gives us the best comedy of the year. Best date-night movie of the year. Introduced us to Henry Golding (and me to the wonderful Awkwafina and Gemma Chan). A grand and imposing turn by the stately Michelle Yeoh. Most of all it features humorously observed, universal themes of family, wealth (and what it amplifies in some people), tradition, class, & culture.
- DirectorJimmy ChinElizabeth Chai VasarhelyiStarsAlex HonnoldTommy CaldwellJimmy ChinAlex Honnold faces the biggest challenge of his career, climbing El Capitan in Yosemite National Park. He pursues it Free Solo, which means climbing without a rope and alone.More than just a pulse-raising, sometimes gasp-inducing film about climbing without ropes. It’s about Alex Honnold whose internal makeup is just not like most people (like another subject this year, Fred Rogers). Directors E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin give us the background to start to understand a different breed and what propels someone like Honnold to risk everything for perfection.
- DirectorJonah HillStarsSunny SuljicKatherine WaterstonLucas HedgesFollows Stevie, a thirteen-year-old in 1990s-era Los Angeles who spends his summer navigating between his troubled home life and a group of new friends that he meets at a Motor Avenue skate shop.Jonah Hill has made one great damn movie. A reminiscence that feels honest and true, including the ugly and nasty bits. This film has teeth and this guy is a filmmaker.
- DirectorSteve McQueenStarsViola DavisMichelle RodriguezElizabeth DebickiFour women with nothing in common except a debt left behind by their dead husbands' criminal activities take fate into their own hands and conspire to forge a future on their own terms.This film proves the greatness of Steve McQueen, taking a straight-up genre pic and turning it into an exciting, emotionally-involving heist flick. Viola Davis is ferocious & all business. Eizabeth Debicki does what she does best, turning what could have been a one-note role into a remarkable one. This film is why the Academy opened up the Best Picture category.
- DirectorTim WardleStarsRobert ShafranMichael DomnitzHoward SchneiderIn 1980 New York, three young men who were all adopted meet each other and find out they're triplets who were separated at birth. But their quest to find out why turns into a bizarre and sinister mystery.Publicist hype labeled this film as "jaw-dropping." That's publicist speak, Pete Travers hyperbole employed carelessly. Except in this case. This film is jaw-dropping. And not only that, it contemplates huge themes such as the methods of science and nature vs. nurture.
- DirectorRon HowardStarsAlden EhrenreichWoody HarrelsonEmilia ClarkeDuring an adventure in the criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his future co-pilot Chewbacca and Lando Calrissian years before joining the Rebel Alliance.I went to SOLO with great reluctance. It was thus much to my great surprise that I enjoyed it so much, much more than any of the most recent lugubrious, po-faced STAR WARS efforts, save the first nostalgia-sopped half of FORCE AWAKENS. SOLO achieves lilt and lift by its superb casting of Ehrenreich, Glover, Clarke, and Harrelson. It also creates a rogue’s world of bandits and thieves, only flirting with the solemnity that has doped up the others. Entertaining all around.
- DirectorEthan CoenJoel CoenStarsTim Blake NelsonWillie WatsonClancy BrownSix tales of life and violence in the Old West, following a singing gunslinger, a bank robber, a traveling impresario, an elderly prospector, a wagon train, and a perverse pair of bounty hunters.The audience in Venice watching BALLAD burst into spontaneous applause twice, once in each of the first two segments. The first time for a surprising bit during a showdown between Buster Scruggs (Tim Blake Nelson, better than he’s ever been) and Clancy Brown. The second was for a line of dialogue delivered by James Franco, in a movie packed with Coen wit. There’s two nods to TRUE GRIT (“Grandma Turner” and the Midnight Caller get a mention) and many allusions to other Westerns and the evolution of the genre over the years. It's a celebration of a genre we don’t even get to see anymore. I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it.
- DirectorBing LiuStarsKent AbernathyMengyue BolenNina BowgrenFilmmaker Bing Liu searches for correlations between his skateboarder friends' turbulent upbringings and the complexities of modern masculinity.This first time documentary effort by Bing Liu is this year's BOYHOOD. It's a time-capsule wherein youth, hope, and the clouds of future disappointment reside. Emotionally resonant and Liu's camerawork is starkly gorgeous.
- DirectorBo BurnhamStarsElsie FisherJosh HamiltonEmily RobinsonAn introverted teenage girl tries to survive the last week of her disastrous eighth grade year before leaving to start high school.What does Bo Burnham know about being a pubescent girl in 2018? A lot, apparently. So truthful it’s uncomfortable bordering on painful, so funny it's forgivable.
- DirectorFelix van GroeningenStarsSteve CarellMaura TierneyJack Dylan GrazerBased on the best-selling pair of memoirs from father and son David and Nic Sheff, Beautiful Boy chronicles the heartbreaking and inspiring experience of survival, relapse and recovery in a family coping with addiction over many years.Contains two of the year’s most powerful performances. Chalamet continues to astound as a lying, broken son, caught up in his own youth, brilliance, and incandescent flameout, while Carell nails the helpless bewilderment & impotent rage of the father of an addict.
- DirectorAlex GarlandStarsNatalie PortmanJennifer Jason LeighTessa ThompsonA biologist signs up for a dangerous, secret expedition into a mysterious zone where the laws of nature don't apply.Garland's Book of Revelations continues with a new chapter devoted to our ultimate evolution/destruction. And no one is a better John the Apostle than Garland.
- DirectorBradley CooperStarsLady GagaBradley CooperSam ElliottA musician helps a young singer find fame as age and alcoholism send his own career into a downward spiral.Three-fourths of this movie are one of my favorite movies of the year. The last fourth betrays everything that came before it (and I'm not referring to the big dramatic moment) taking this film down several pegs. But nearly everything else in this big movie, particularly Lady Gaga, is excellent. Kudos to Cooper.
- DirectorChristopher CaldwellZeek EarlStarsSophie ThatcherJay DuplassPedro PascalA teenage girl and her father land on a forest moon to mine for gems, but a malfunction forces them to confront dangerous rival prospectors and treacherous conditions to complete their mission.Aces first feature by Caldwell & Earl. Part RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND, part Duncan Jones’s MOON, with a DYI feel that lends it even more authenticity. The young leading lady, Sophie Thatcher, is magnificent. Strong yet vulnerable, petulant yet steely. A star.
- DirectorPeter MedakStarsPeter MedakJoe DunneSimon van der BorghA comedy genius, a hot new director and a 17th Century pirate film. What could possibly go wrong?Not since LOST IN LA MANCHA have I seen anything so heartbreaking as this behind-the-scenes expose of a Peter Sellers/Peter Medak film that was shot but then shelved in 1973. GHOST ups the ante over LA MANCHA, however, by having the man at the center of the matter, Medak, directing, narrating, exorcising the guilt over a truly insane shoot, and laying to rest his animosity towards a troubled genius 45 years after the fact.