Top 10 Films of 2018
- Roma – Alfonso Cuarón: Undoubtedly will become a towering, timeless classic.
- The Favourite – Yorgos Lanthimos: A leading lady trio with insanely entertaining yet nuanced performances, and fittingly complex characters to boot.
- They Shall Not Grow Old – Peter Jackson: A jaw-dropping cinematic experience, especially in 3D. The best of Peter Jackson: fantastic feats of technical innovation provide for the harrowing and epic yet intimate journeys of extremely sympathetic characters.
- Shoplifters – Hirokazu Kore-eda: A group of misfits and petty criminals end up being quite an effective and loving family to a young girl they save (kidnap) from a neglectful home. We end up caring deeply for each character, yet Kore-eda never shies away from their faults.
- Cold War – Paweł Pawlikowski: A purposely distant yet still engaging and moving story of an ever-changing love affair. Surprisingly ambitious. Every time location and time period change, the production design is subtle but perfect.
- The Sisters Brothers – Jacques Audiard: A deceptively simple western, with uniformly great performances. An effective and excellently crafted tale of best-laid plans. So often, the films that sum up America the best are from outsiders: Stroszek (Herzog, 1977); Atlantic City (Malle, 1980); Paris, Texas (Wenders, 1984); etc.
- Transit – Christian Petzold: Just like with his previous film, Phoenix (2014), Petzold uses WWII to tell an anachronistic fantasy. Setting this Casablanca-esque story of refugees scrambling for letters of transit in the modern day adds another layer and makes it all upsettingly prescient.
- Widows – Steve McQueen: An incisive portrait of class differences in Chicago. McQueen’s direction gives us a hard-hitting geography lesson. And this is all just the backdrop for a very realistic but still quite tense and exciting heist thriller.
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs – Joel & Ethan Coen: This film of six vignettes is like a great album: you have immediate favorites, but the more times you experience it, the more you appreciate and enjoy the parts you initially took for granted.
- If Beale Street Could Talk – Barry Jenkins: No one lights black bodies like Mr. Jenkins. He is such a gift to American cinema. I must also mention the music. Those lyrical, sorrowful trumpets make it the year’s best score.
Top 10 Films of 2017
- Call Me by Your Name – Luca Guadagnino: A movie for the senses. You can feel the summer heat, taste the food, and smell the country air and the nostalgic must of the old mansion. A mix of Rohmer and Merchant-Ivory.
- Phantom Thread – Paul Thomas Anderson: Sumptuous production and costume design belie a delightfully twisted relationship. Vicky Krieps fearlessly spars with Daniel Day-Lewis. She is not overshadowed by him; she is his equal, just as her character demands to be.
- Blade Runner 2049 – Denis Villeneuve: A more than worthy sequel. Not just the luxurious mood bath that the original was. There is a much more layered, complex and intriguing storyline, and the cinematography is simply peerless. The music is not Vangelis, but will suffice.
- Dunkirk – Christopher Nolan: Given characters with little-to-no backstory, we become invested in the event itself, and must rely on the casting and performances, all of which come through. A nerve-wracking tension piece with an ingenious score and a fascinating structure.
- A Ghost Story – David Lowery: A masterclass in low-budget visual story-telling. Incalculably deep and dark emotions are poetically conveyed with very little dialogue, especially in the later acts. Also, we are given the gift of not having to look at Casey Affleck for most of the film.
- The Florida Project – Sean Baker: A harrowing and rich portrayal of a destitute little girl and her mother and friends, living, ironically, just outside the gross extravagance and wealth of a certain mouse. Basically Italian Neo-realism except modern-day America.
- The Shape of Water – Guillermo del Toro: Cheesy and sweet in all the right places, while serious, tense, and disturbing everywhere else. A tricky tonal balancing act pulled off well. Also, who else but Del Toro could make $20 million look like $50 million?
- 1945 – Ferenc Török: Criminally under-seen! A damning morality play set in early post-war Hungary, but stylized like a classic western (to great effect).
- The Death of Stalin – Armando Iannucci: A blacker than black comedy with belly laughs to spare. Scathing, intelligent, and entertaining. The best ensemble cast of the year.
- War for the Planet of the Apes – Matt Reeves: Unquestionably the best in the trilogy. Just as much a classic biblical epic as it is a sci-fi action-adventure. The merits of the visual effects and the central motion-capture performance have been stated again and again, and speak for themselves, anyway.