In all actuality, making a list of the best movies of 2018 to cap off 2018 is misguided. We should really be looking back three years later to gauge the cultural impact that films have made on a grander level rather than compiling some group together to feed an insatiable need to fit into what qualifies as film criticism today.
That being said, here are 25 films that the group here at Cinematary have come up with.
There are a number of titles that should stand the three year window and still be impacting the cinematic stratosphere in that time (looking at you, First Reformed), but for the rest of them, who knows? Like, think about it for a minute, what happened in The Shape of Water? Outside of the fish sex, what happened that you remember? That won the Best Picture last year! It was on our top-10 list, too. And now, we just think of fish sex. Maybe that’s progress.
Impact is not gauged by gold, but forged through imitation and discussion. You see inklings of Mad Max: Fury Road in blockbuster movies today because it truly impacted filmmakers working today. Wes Anderson’s work may seem kitsch and obnoxious at times, but without it, we wouldn’t have the imagination of Paddington or this year’s sequel. We talk about Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda, Akira Kurosawa, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg and many others because we remember their work and their impact.
It becomes more than just entertainment, but a touchstone of culture, which in turn gives voice to our connections with others.
Too bad none of them included fish sex in their work.
— Zach Dennis
# 25-11
25. Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird)
24. Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker)
23. Blindspotting (Carlos López Estrada)
22. The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci)
21. The Grand Bizarre (Jodie Mack)
20. Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
19. A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper)
18. The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier)
17. Hereditary (Ari Aster)
16. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler)
= Mission: Impossible - Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)
= BlackKklansman (Spike Lee)
= The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)
12. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)
11. Annihilation (Alex Garland)
THE TOP TEN
10
The Green Fog by Guy Maddin
“It’s basically a city symphony set in San Francisco but instead of it being set to a very symphonic piece of music (Maddin) decides to make a supercut video of all the movies he wants to that take place in San Francisco.”
9
Minding the Gap by Bing Liu
“It’s almost using documentary to capture maturity in real time and I think it’s really valuable for that.”
8
“It captures a lot of depth, but it can really make the actual screen space tight on a few parts of a space itself and then characters within it so it makes all of those sounds, and in particular in Zama, feel very paranoid.”
7
Paddington 2 by Paul King
“There’s something beautiful about (Paddington 2) that whenever I watch it, I feel like there’s hope in the world and I know that that sounds stupid to some people but I believe it in my heart.”
6
“It sounds pretty goofy and light-hearted...but I watched it again, and I found it real horrifying and a lot less funny than the first time. Mostly because it is real surreal and a real pointed critique of capitalism (and) our current society.”
5
“There is this degree of scariness to it because I think that for some people you would want a little less degree of the Internet consuming your life but I also think that (Burnham) finds a sort of empathetic lens to an extent.”
4
“It has a way of just submerging you into the world that Yuasa is trying to create.”
3
“It is kind of re-invigorating to see something this new in the world of kids animation.”
2
“At the end, when they’re on top of that fucking building and the overpass with all that white noise of the traffic and having nothing to do but being pissed off, and wanting to scream, uh, that’s a hell of a moment.”
1
“I don’t know if you want to take it as cathartic because I know that people take the ending in different ways...Don’t see it as being that hopeful. It’s like this last hoorah before we go into the black abyss.”