Noah’s Top 12 Films Of 2018
I saw 79 films in the theater in 2018. Across all mediums, on big screens and small screens and tiny screens, in the theater, on couches, in bed, on planes – and to be honest, it felt like I missed so very much. Consuming film in 2018 is like trying to drink water out of a fire hydrant. You catch what you can and try not to get the shit knocked out of you in the process.
Old and codgerly as I’ve gotten about the slow pull of films from theaters and on to enormous home screens (that I can’t afford), the sheer amount of amazing films by amazing directors – old, new and every where in between – and the creative control they’re now being allowed is refreshing. I’m still skeptical of the vastness of selection (I hate a buffet, sue me) and the quantity over quality method has homogenized the selections so everything feels just a little bit the same. And maybe, maybe this is just the airplane effect – big movies forced on to a small screen lose some of their energy – and as more and more of my cinematic input is viewed on a tablet or, sigh, even a phone, it’ll just fade away.
Regardless, I saw 79 movies this year and a whole bunch of them were amazing.
My Top 12 Films Of 2018:
12. Private Life / Tamara Jenkins
Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn emotionally anchor a fine film about the travails of trying to have a baby in your 40s. It’s a quiet film with all of the impact registering in small emotional explosions. This is the kind of character-driven film for adults we see less and less of these days.
11. First Man / Damien Chazelle
The only reason First Man isn’t sitting atop the throne for the year is that, ironically, it couldn’t stick the landing. Chazelle’s masterful dissection of the grim-faced motivation of Neil Armstrong (played with equally grim-faced emotional containment by Ryan Gosling) is some how heart-wrenching and stomach clenching in the same breath. The film captures the agonizing tension of high altitude flight with the prowess of an IMAX film. Claire Foy is a flinty godsend and Cory Stoll should never play anything but ego-driven assholes ever again.
10. Widows / Steve McQueen
My most antcipated film of the year couldn’t quite live up to expectations, but McQueen’s philosophical all-female heist flick is one to return to time and time again. It’s a cast of all-stars and soon-to-be all-stars and it only slips because McQueen stretches so far.
9. mid90s / Jonah Hill
A film that feels like Jonah Hill reached into the nostalgia center of an entire generation and threw the whole fucking thing on the big screen.
8. First Reformed / Paul Schrader
Ethan Hawke somehow just keeps getting better. Schrader’s late-career film about a priest trying to find something to believe runs the gamut from stoic to cosmic and succeeds entirely along the way.
7. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse / Phil Lord & Chris Miller
No other working directors can take a franchise film and do so much with it. Sure, this is a love letter to every Spider-Man fan who’s ever flipped a comic book page, but it’s stunning almost collage animation and warmly beating heart is enough for anyone and everyone to enjoy it.
6. Mission Impossible – Fallout / Christopher McQuarrie
Best action film of the last 20 years. I’d watch twenty more of these.
5. Avengers: Infinity War / The Russo Brothers
This film, by itself, would’ve made the list based on the masterful way The Russo Brothers were able to effectively craft a film with so many characters, plot lines, and egos on the table. It’s a huge film that managed to make me gasp and cry in equal measure (I did, I cried at the end and you didn’t because they’re letting robots into movie theaters now). BUT, besides that, somehow, SOMEHOW, Marvel managed to connect three phases of films into one giant melancholic blockbuster where HALF of the characters on screen fucking die at the end. Sure, they’re all coming back, but you tell me another movie that did anything that bold with as well known of characters in the last ten years. Thought so.
4. Isle of Dogs / Wes Anderson
I hope Wes Anderson makes stop motion animated films until his body is cryogenically frozen. I saw it three times in the theater and I’ll see it again.
3. Roma / Alfonso Cuaron
There isn’t a film this year that manages to be as visually epic and emotionally intimate as Cuaron’s return to his youth in Mexico. Every scene is a painting, every moment a simple, gorgeous look into it’s characters lives.
2. The Favourite / Yorgos Lathimos
Olivia Colman has been a goddamn saint she played Sophie on Peep Show. Yorgos Lathimos is the most interesting director working in Hollywood right now. Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz and whatever English castle they filmed this movie in do career defining work. It’s funny, disturbing and scathing in the same breath. Colman’s speech about her 17 babies – “some born as blood” – should win her the Oscar.
1. If Beale Street Could Talk / Barry Jenkins
Barry Jenkins stands on the rock solid foundation of Moonlight and knocks it out of the fucking park. If Beale Street Could Talk is true art, a film that becomes more than a treatise on race, instead reminding viewers that as hard as life is (and fucking hell, it can be a doozy) there’s warmth and beauty and love, and everything else is just a part of the context. Moonlight was a great film, this is a career defining one.
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‘Till next year ya’ll.
