The Best Movies of 2018 (So Far)
Cinephilia is a year-round condition, and thus it’s always an ideal time to honor the best of the current movie crop. Now nearing the end of 2018, a wide range of stellar offerings have illustrated that, no matter the genre, potential greatness abounds at both the multiplex and the art house. With seasons to go until the calendar once again turns, this rundown will undoubtedly transform in a variety of unexpected ways before reaching its final form in December—a situation almost guaranteed by the fact that works from the likes of Alfonso Cuarón, Robert Zemeckis, and Barry Jenkins are still on their way. Nonetheless, at present, these are our picks for the best movies of 2018.
1. SWEET COUNTRY
In the bleak, barren Outback circa 1929, an Aboriginal man named Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) finds himself on the run from pursuers—with his wife in tow— after he kills a nasty white man in self-defense. Dramatized without musical accompaniment, Warwick Thornton’s gripping and gorgeous Australian Western recounts Sam’s fictional ordeal with potent authenticity, his feel for the hardscrabble region and its legacy of violence and bigotry doing much to infuse the action with rugged life.
As a preacher with Sam’s best interests at heart, Sam Neill is his usually magnetic, compelling self, while Bryan Brown brings complex determination to his role as a military sergeant tasked with tracking Sam down. Most powerful of all, though, is the standout performance of Morris, who with minimal words and slight gestures—a nod of the head, a shift in body weight, an expression of closed-eyes resignation or defiance—conveys the immense toll of ingrained historic prejudice on an individual’s, and a nation’s, soul.
2. BLACKKKLANSMAN
As energized as anything he’s made in years, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman tackles our current white nationalist-stained era via the based-on-real-events tale of 1970s African-American rookie undercover detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), who infiltrates the KKK with the aid of Jewish partner Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver). Lee has a tendency to let scenes run on long after their point (and impact) has been made, yet here, that habit rarely undercuts the electricity of his action, which has Stallworth and Zimmerman posing as a racist white man (the former on the phone, the latter in person) to gain the confidence of the Klan and its leader, David Duke (Topher Grace)—all as Stallworth develops a less-than-upfront relationship with an African-American activist (Laura Harrier).
Concerned with issues of intolerance and identity (and what it takes to “pass” in particular societies), rife with current-events parallels, and canny about its own place in cinema history (and movies’ effect on the national discourse), it’s amusing, suspenseful, and intensely engaged with the present moment
3. REVENGE
Few exploitation-cinema subgenres are as durable (and problematic) as the rape-revenge fantasy, and French writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s contribution to that group has a fierce vitality and self-conscious sense of humor that invigorates its familiar premise. In a vast desert, a married man’s (Kevin Janssens) sexy young mistress (Matilda Lutz) is sexually assaulted by one of his two visiting friends; when she subsequently flees, they attempt to kill her, albeit unsuccessfully.
That instigates a game of cat-and-mouse in the vast, arid middle of nowhere, which Fargeat stages with extreme stylishness, whether it’s close-ups of gushing wounded flesh or a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-hallucination sequence that underlines her playful attitude toward the proceedings. Refusing to revel in its heroine’s torment, indulging in over-the-top symbolism, and delivering action set pieces that are equally thrilling and goofy—including a mountain-road showdown and climactic single-take pursuit that confirm Fargeat’s formal dexterity—it proves a righteously wicked midnight movie for the #MeToo era.
4. HOLD THE DARK
Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier once again pits men against each another in a hostile environment in Hold the Dark, a frost-bitten clash between the modern and the ancient. In a remote Alaskan town, a woman (Riley Keough) claims that her son has been snatched by wolves, and calls upon an author (Jeffrey Wright) with considerable experience living amongst the creatures to find the kid. The writer’s search soon takes a turn for the twisted, and then for the deadly, once Keough’s mom goes AWOL and her husband (Alexander Skarsgard) returns from overseas military duty, a look of cold, amoral ruthlessness in his eyes.
These characters’ ensuing game of hunt-or-be-hunted is cast in bleak shadows and blinding whites by Saulnier, whose serpentine camerawork augments his panoramas of grief, isolation, misery and viciousness. Complemented by a terrifying Skarsgard and mysterious Keough, Wright delivers a performance of quiet, complex intensity that reconfirms his status as one of cinema’s premiere actors.
5. I AM NOT A WITCH
Film Movement
In Zambia, women are still accused of being witches—and then sent to live in camps, forced to perform manual labor, and (most stunning of all) compelled to preside over criminal trials, where they’re supposed to use their supernatural powers to make judgments. This insane real-life scenario is brought to bleakly satiric life by I Am Not a Witch, Rungano Nyoni’s directorial debut about a young girl dubbed Shula (Maggie Mulubwa) whose world is turned upside-down after authorities determine she’s a witch.
Under the guidance of government official Mr. Banda (Henry B.J. Phiri), Shula embarks on an odyssey that’s littered with indignities and absurdities, including appearing on a TV talk show where she’s asked to hawk magic “Shula eggs” to the audience like some infomercial huckster. Set to an eclectic score (sharp strings, harsh noise) that’s sometimes at odds with the action, Nyoni’s drama—playing like a droll, horrifying 21st century riff on The Crucible—is a startlingly inventive story about modern institutionalized misogyny.
6. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT
Paramount Pictures
Tom Cruise risks life and limb—literally, in many instances—for his sixth go-round as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the finest action film since 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. In writer/director Christopher McQuarrie’s adrenalized espionage thriller, Hunt is tasked with recovering a trio of plutonium cores while juggling his relationships with colleagues (Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin), alluring spy Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), and former wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan)—not to mention CIA-assigned assassin August Walker (Henry Cavill), who has orders to kill Hunt should he stray from his assignment.
That intertwining of the personal and professional provides a sturdy backbone for a series of set pieces that, especially in IMAX, are nothing short of astonishing, as McQuarrie begins with a slam-bang bathroom brawl and then continually ups the eye-opening ante, culminating with an aerial showdown between Hunt and Walker aboard helicopters that establishes Cruise, and the series, as the reigning kings of Hollywood spectacle.
7. BISBEE ’17
4th Row Films
In 1917, the sheriff of Bisbee, Arizona—a remote mountain-nestled enclave then known for its wealth of copper—rounded up the town’s striking German and Mexican miners and, with the aid of a 2,000-man posse, took them out to the desert and left them there, never to be seen or thought about again. Robert Greene’s daring and accomplished Bisbee '17 refuses to consign those unjustly persecuted victims to the forgotten realms of history, instead using traditional documentary footage and dramatic reenactments—often taking the surprising form of musical numbers—to revisit that calamitous event.
As in his prior Actress and Kate Plays Christine, Greene’s blending of fiction and non-fiction techniques is assured, and results in an insightful investigation into race relations, class conflicts, and the nature of memory. A mournful ghost story that doubles as an act of resurrection and reclamation, it’s a saga about past crimes with undeniable present relevance.
8. BURNING
CGV Arthouse
The angry disaffection of South Korean youth, and the sinister trouble it can breed, is the focus of Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, which melds suspense and social commentary to eerie effect. Jong-su (Ah-in Yoo) is a delivery boy whose heart is enflamed after a run-in with beautiful Haemi (Jong-seo Jun), a former classmate he can’t remember. After having Jong-su catsit for her while she visits Africa, Haemi returns with a new friend in tow—wealthy, suave Ben (Steven Yuen), whose intrusion into their budding romance frustrates the jealous Jong-su.
While that set-up suggests a love triangle drama, what ensues is something far more beguiling, as Haemi goes missing and Ben expounds on his fondness for setting rural greenhouses on fire. Thrust into the role of detective, Jong-su searches for Haemi but, as with her cat (which is never seen), he finds few answers to his questions about anyone, or anything. Led by exceptional turns by Yoo and Yuen, Lee’s latest is an ambiguous examination of class, envy and the unknowable mysteries of the world.
9. LEAVE NO TRACE
Bleecker Street
Eight years after her last fictional feature (2010’s Winter’s Bone) introduced the world to Jennifer Lawrence, writer-director Debra Granik returns with Leave No Trace, a pensive, thorny character study about a father (Ben Foster) and daughter (newcomer Thomasin McKenzie) illegally living off the grid in the national forests of the Pacific Northwest.
Once again teaming with co-screenwriter Anne Rosellini and cinematographer Michael McDonough (this time on an adaptation of Peter Rock’s novel My Abandonment), Granik details the ins and outs of her characters’ isolated circumstances while plumbing the trauma that’s driven Foster’s dad to r
1. SWEET COUNTRY
In the bleak, barren Outback circa 1929, an Aboriginal man named Sam Kelly (Hamilton Morris) finds himself on the run from pursuers—with his wife in tow— after he kills a nasty white man in self-defense. Dramatized without musical accompaniment, Warwick Thornton’s gripping and gorgeous Australian Western recounts Sam’s fictional ordeal with potent authenticity, his feel for the hardscrabble region and its legacy of violence and bigotry doing much to infuse the action with rugged life.
As a preacher with Sam’s best interests at heart, Sam Neill is his usually magnetic, compelling self, while Bryan Brown brings complex determination to his role as a military sergeant tasked with tracking Sam down. Most powerful of all, though, is the standout performance of Morris, who with minimal words and slight gestures—a nod of the head, a shift in body weight, an expression of closed-eyes resignation or defiance—conveys the immense toll of ingrained historic prejudice on an individual’s, and a nation’s, soul.
2. BLACKKKLANSMAN
As energized as anything he’s made in years, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman tackles our current white nationalist-stained era via the based-on-real-events tale of 1970s African-American rookie undercover detective Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), who infiltrates the KKK with the aid of Jewish partner Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver). Lee has a tendency to let scenes run on long after their point (and impact) has been made, yet here, that habit rarely undercuts the electricity of his action, which has Stallworth and Zimmerman posing as a racist white man (the former on the phone, the latter in person) to gain the confidence of the Klan and its leader, David Duke (Topher Grace)—all as Stallworth develops a less-than-upfront relationship with an African-American activist (Laura Harrier).
Concerned with issues of intolerance and identity (and what it takes to “pass” in particular societies), rife with current-events parallels, and canny about its own place in cinema history (and movies’ effect on the national discourse), it’s amusing, suspenseful, and intensely engaged with the present moment
3. REVENGE
Few exploitation-cinema subgenres are as durable (and problematic) as the rape-revenge fantasy, and French writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s contribution to that group has a fierce vitality and self-conscious sense of humor that invigorates its familiar premise. In a vast desert, a married man’s (Kevin Janssens) sexy young mistress (Matilda Lutz) is sexually assaulted by one of his two visiting friends; when she subsequently flees, they attempt to kill her, albeit unsuccessfully.
That instigates a game of cat-and-mouse in the vast, arid middle of nowhere, which Fargeat stages with extreme stylishness, whether it’s close-ups of gushing wounded flesh or a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-hallucination sequence that underlines her playful attitude toward the proceedings. Refusing to revel in its heroine’s torment, indulging in over-the-top symbolism, and delivering action set pieces that are equally thrilling and goofy—including a mountain-road showdown and climactic single-take pursuit that confirm Fargeat’s formal dexterity—it proves a righteously wicked midnight movie for the #MeToo era.
4. HOLD THE DARK
Green Room director Jeremy Saulnier once again pits men against each another in a hostile environment in Hold the Dark, a frost-bitten clash between the modern and the ancient. In a remote Alaskan town, a woman (Riley Keough) claims that her son has been snatched by wolves, and calls upon an author (Jeffrey Wright) with considerable experience living amongst the creatures to find the kid. The writer’s search soon takes a turn for the twisted, and then for the deadly, once Keough’s mom goes AWOL and her husband (Alexander Skarsgard) returns from overseas military duty, a look of cold, amoral ruthlessness in his eyes.
These characters’ ensuing game of hunt-or-be-hunted is cast in bleak shadows and blinding whites by Saulnier, whose serpentine camerawork augments his panoramas of grief, isolation, misery and viciousness. Complemented by a terrifying Skarsgard and mysterious Keough, Wright delivers a performance of quiet, complex intensity that reconfirms his status as one of cinema’s premiere actors.
5. I AM NOT A WITCH
Film Movement
In Zambia, women are still accused of being witches—and then sent to live in camps, forced to perform manual labor, and (most stunning of all) compelled to preside over criminal trials, where they’re supposed to use their supernatural powers to make judgments. This insane real-life scenario is brought to bleakly satiric life by I Am Not a Witch, Rungano Nyoni’s directorial debut about a young girl dubbed Shula (Maggie Mulubwa) whose world is turned upside-down after authorities determine she’s a witch.
Under the guidance of government official Mr. Banda (Henry B.J. Phiri), Shula embarks on an odyssey that’s littered with indignities and absurdities, including appearing on a TV talk show where she’s asked to hawk magic “Shula eggs” to the audience like some infomercial huckster. Set to an eclectic score (sharp strings, harsh noise) that’s sometimes at odds with the action, Nyoni’s drama—playing like a droll, horrifying 21st century riff on The Crucible—is a startlingly inventive story about modern institutionalized misogyny.
6. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT
Paramount Pictures
Tom Cruise risks life and limb—literally, in many instances—for his sixth go-round as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, the finest action film since 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road. In writer/director Christopher McQuarrie’s adrenalized espionage thriller, Hunt is tasked with recovering a trio of plutonium cores while juggling his relationships with colleagues (Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Alec Baldwin), alluring spy Ilsa Faust (Rebecca Ferguson), and former wife Julia (Michelle Monaghan)—not to mention CIA-assigned assassin August Walker (Henry Cavill), who has orders to kill Hunt should he stray from his assignment.
That intertwining of the personal and professional provides a sturdy backbone for a series of set pieces that, especially in IMAX, are nothing short of astonishing, as McQuarrie begins with a slam-bang bathroom brawl and then continually ups the eye-opening ante, culminating with an aerial showdown between Hunt and Walker aboard helicopters that establishes Cruise, and the series, as the reigning kings of Hollywood spectacle.
7. BISBEE ’17
4th Row Films
In 1917, the sheriff of Bisbee, Arizona—a remote mountain-nestled enclave then known for its wealth of copper—rounded up the town’s striking German and Mexican miners and, with the aid of a 2,000-man posse, took them out to the desert and left them there, never to be seen or thought about again. Robert Greene’s daring and accomplished Bisbee '17 refuses to consign those unjustly persecuted victims to the forgotten realms of history, instead using traditional documentary footage and dramatic reenactments—often taking the surprising form of musical numbers—to revisit that calamitous event.
As in his prior Actress and Kate Plays Christine, Greene’s blending of fiction and non-fiction techniques is assured, and results in an insightful investigation into race relations, class conflicts, and the nature of memory. A mournful ghost story that doubles as an act of resurrection and reclamation, it’s a saga about past crimes with undeniable present relevance.
8. BURNING
CGV Arthouse
The angry disaffection of South Korean youth, and the sinister trouble it can breed, is the focus of Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, which melds suspense and social commentary to eerie effect. Jong-su (Ah-in Yoo) is a delivery boy whose heart is enflamed after a run-in with beautiful Haemi (Jong-seo Jun), a former classmate he can’t remember. After having Jong-su catsit for her while she visits Africa, Haemi returns with a new friend in tow—wealthy, suave Ben (Steven Yuen), whose intrusion into their budding romance frustrates the jealous Jong-su.
While that set-up suggests a love triangle drama, what ensues is something far more beguiling, as Haemi goes missing and Ben expounds on his fondness for setting rural greenhouses on fire. Thrust into the role of detective, Jong-su searches for Haemi but, as with her cat (which is never seen), he finds few answers to his questions about anyone, or anything. Led by exceptional turns by Yoo and Yuen, Lee’s latest is an ambiguous examination of class, envy and the unknowable mysteries of the world.
9. LEAVE NO TRACE
Bleecker Street
Eight years after her last fictional feature (2010’s Winter’s Bone) introduced the world to Jennifer Lawrence, writer-director Debra Granik returns with Leave No Trace, a pensive, thorny character study about a father (Ben Foster) and daughter (newcomer Thomasin McKenzie) illegally living off the grid in the national forests of the Pacific Northwest.
Once again teaming with co-screenwriter Anne Rosellini and cinematographer Michael McDonough (this time on an adaptation of Peter Rock’s novel My Abandonment), Granik details the ins and outs of her characters’ isolated circumstances while plumbing the trauma that’s driven Foster’s dad to r
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