The top 27 films of 2018--current ranking (and the worst films of 2018 afterwards)

I have a preference for complex characters who are not dressed up Hollywood style, in narratives that offer surprises or challenge genres.   If you agree, you'll love these movies as much as I do.

Rolling ranking of top films of 2018, including two that start with "I am Not..."

1. BlackkKlansmen--there's so much to love about this film.   First, Spike Lee has once again done something wonderful after a period of what appeared to be intentionally amateurish efforts (OK, some would argue that he went off a cliff after the Original Kings of Comedy in 2000.  Anyway, it's been a long time.)   Then there's Denzel Washington's son, John David Washington, who acts as well as, and dances better than, his dad.  And there's the politics--in this happy story, the 1972 versions of the Charlottesville supremicists actually blow themselves up while trying to assassinate the black student leader at Colorado College.  And Adam Driver at his most wonderful--"I've thought a lot about being a Jew recently."  And a final positive:  the film editing, including a spectacular jump cut session between white nationalists watching the hanging scene in Birth of a Nation vs a beautiful monologue by Harry Belafonte.  I don't know how any one can watch this film and not understand Trump's racism and the violence of the GOP agenda.  (Another highlight---the faces of black pride juxtaposed with a Stokely Carmichal speech...wow.)
2. Black Panther--given my top-rated film this year, is it a surprise that another black film--this one of a utopian pacifist world honoring women and minorities, feels spectacular?   Can we all move to Wakonda?   The outfits are beautiful and not degrading, every one has a sense of humility and humor, and technology and medicine are beneficial.   Compare this to Trump.  OMG.   Besides bathing us in this beautiful vision, Black Panther also trumps the Marvel/DC formula--it's the best ever.   Even the bad guys have decent justifications for being "killmongers."
3. Roma--Ah, ‎Alfonso Cuarón.   Maybe his best?   I don't know, but come to this and spend a year with a wealthy family and their woman-of-few-words maid in Mexico City in 1970.   You won't want to leave, even though Bernal is not starring in this one.
4. Lean on Pete-- a film that evokes, and surpasses, Wendy and Lucy.  The last tether is lost when a boy's father is killed by the husband of a one-night stand.   Without guidance, money, or even much hope, the boy essentially walks from eastern Oregon to Laramie, Wyoming--most of the way leading a five-year-old quarter horse named Lean on Pete who has just lost one too many times at Portland Downs.  Great Steve Buscemi, yet again (how many of the top films of 2018 will he be in???).  And Chloe Sevigny as an 8-pound overweight, broken-backed jockey!  Laramie has never looked so beautiful, when the moment arrives.
5. My Happy Family--Manana lives with her kids, husband, and parents in Georgia--and the daughter wants to get pregnant and add a fourth generation.  This may be a typical southern-Asia family setup, but at 52, she can't take it any more and moves out to live by herself in an apartment across town. The result? She learns that everyone else places their own needs and perspectives far ahead of hers--so perhaps it's fair to say she could not have survived without leaving (the previous resident of the new apartment committed suicide so the audience is aware of the risks). Where does a solo 52-year old woman fit into the social structure of Georgia? Watch this movie and a stunning lead performance and you'll find out.  (First screened in 2017 but no release in the US until Netflix picked it up in 2021).
6. The Death of Stalin--one-liners that never stop match slapstick led by an unusual straight man--Steve Buscemi as Nikita Khrushchev.  This is the best yet from Amanda Ianucci (In the Loop, Veep).  The film makes the point that those who aspire for power can never stop, not even when doing funeral planning or trying to find campaign poster children.  Since power-grabbing is their only skill, you get to see how stupid those in the Kremlin, or Oval Office, or any other center of political leadership, really are...and laugh at them.   Of course, the soundtrack to all this is the pop of guns as citizens are murdered, by the hundreds of thousands.   In this instance, the lists belong to Stalin and Molotov, but they could be any other dictator's.   A+ comedy here.
7. The Cakemaker--a lonely German man falls in love with a closeted Israeli man, who dies in an accident.   Having no where else to turn, he moves to Israel and introduces spectacular non-kosher baking to the bakery run by his lover's wife.   Tolerance at the highest level, and the usual mundane bigotry accelerate.   This is a gorgeous love story that barely fits into a triangle or any other geometric pattern, and it gives you realistic hope.
8. The Rider--2018 films seem to be going back to the land--one can only guess it's a sign of the moral turmoil we're in that every one is riding horses across prairies or living in secret utopian cities this year.   Anyway, The Rider stops at almost nothing to pull at the heart strings--shooting horses point blank, horse whispering, and casting Lane Scott (college bull rider injured in car accident in 2015) as Lane Scott (injured bull rider in rehab) come to mind.  It all works wonderfully and makes you lust for a life where you trade a back window from a Chevy Camaro for half payment on an untrainable horse.  And for the record, you can't take your eyes of Brady Jandreau.   Wow, that's a striking kid actor.
9. Land of Steady Habits--best suburbia is hell movie since The Ice Storm!  Real pain, real suffering, real joy...this movie deserved a lot more attention than it got.   Go see it!
10. The Favourite--Yorgos Lanthimos is on my list of must-follow directors.   He never lets you gain your balance, in this case by putting a lesbian love triangle in the middle of a traditional courtly power epic.   "Let's shoot something," Rachel Weisz gleefully declares, setting off the fun, and soon she and Emma Stone and even Olivia Colman (who deservedly won the Academy Award for best actress) as Queen Anne (who got pregnant 17 times without producing a surviving heir!) are splattered in blood and everything else.  Men shove women into ditches. Clandestine meetups in long corridors occur regularly but never between the characters who should be there.   And meanwhile the French are barking at the door.   Wonderful.   If you haven't, make sure to go back and see The Lobster, Killing of A Sacred Deer, and of course  Dogtooth.   Lanthimos offers so much in all of these.
11. Capernaum--this may be the most heroic 12 year old ever seen in film.   How does he keep going?   Should have won best foreign film.
12. Western--Germany continues to do interesting films comparing self perception to reality--some of same producing staff were involved in this film and Toni Erdmann, my fifth favorite film of 2016.  Again, there's a central "Gary Cooper" who may or may not understand himself.   But at least he reaches out to the "natives;" in this case Bulgarian villagers, many of whom only disdain the Germans for their murderousness near the end of WWII.  Touching friendships emerge even though words are not understood, the potential for violence is everywhere, resources are very scarce, and the German construction workers are less than sensitive to the harm they're creating every moment.  At the "High Noon" moment, amazingly, the hero gets up, his weapon is returned to him, and every one goes to a dance together.   Take that, John Ford!
13. Green Book--well, this film won the Academy Award and it was great.   Wonderful acting all around.   There was backlash that a white guy "saves" a black guy...though I think the much more interesting political issue in this film is that a straight guy "saves" a gay guy.  We are a culture defined by race here in the US, so of course that issue dominated discussion.   Still, a film with warmth and understanding and characters who learn.   The only place these essential societal events occur is in Disney animated features any more...and Green Book.
14. I am Not an Easy Man--if you somehow missed this French fantasy, stop now and go see it. Be careful if you bang you head.  You (male) might wake up wearing short shorts, shaving your legs, talking about your emotions, crying over books, and getting ignored or belittled during group conversations. At least you'll know how to get coffee for everyone and hold babies.  What's amazing about this gender-switch movie is that it considers every aspect (I mean EVERY aspect--a woman seduces a guy and then gets grossed out when she discovers his legs aren't shaved and leaves) with an eye for extraordinary detail.  And the final scene is transformative--the most important equal rights march in history!
15. Three Identical Strangers--moral questions upon moral questions.  Jews experimenting on their orphan kids?  Stern parents accused of leading children to suicide?  Research that could affect any of us locked up until 2066?   And in the middle, three very interesting kids of share more than Marlboros and high school wrestling...without knowing it.  Don't go to Sullivan County Community College--you might find your doppelgänger.
16. Can You Ever Forgive Me--I love Melissa McCarthy (is this her best ever?), and she makes a great Dorothy Parker too, in forged letters that are bigger and better than the original.  She and Richard Grant (as Jack) have lost jobs, friends (to AIDS  and behaving badly) and a tad of their self-respect.   But, in one of the best buddy films recently, the show must go on and their criminal victories are breathtaking while they last...and it takes characters as strong as Jane Curtin or Anna Deavere Smith to say no to the whole house of cards.   BTW, Jane Curtin's apartment scene was filmed in my building!  Those are our front steps!
17. Leave No Trace--another Sundance premier about a PTSD dad and his daughter who live in the Portland Oregon woods (you could do a film festival of films set along the Wildwood trail).  She makes a small mistake and the two of them are arrested and brought back into civilization, such as it is.  The daughter makes the switch but dad tries, and fails, leading to a heart-wrenching moment of joint self-knowledge.  Apparently, this is the most reviewed adult film of all time to maintain a 100% Rotten Tomatoes rating during the first year.  It's got something to appeal to everyone, so that honor makes sense to me.
18. I Am Not a Witch--welcome to a fantastical Africa where women are tethered to trucks and the economy depends on tourism to see "witches."  Huge humor--many of the scenes are stolen by the pompous head of the local political party and his wife, who manage to participate in the worst efforts to limit every one's liberty.  "And we even got you all extra-long tethers so you can walk for kilometers!"
19. Sorry to Bother You--it's not Get Out! by any means but it's the next best thing, and it offers many cover-your-mouth moments.   Dialing for dollars is still tough, even when the product is slave labor (even if you share the largest line of coke in history with Armie Hammer).  I wish the world had more love interests who possessed pure moral and artistic visions.   We'd all be better.   For the record, I've NEVER crossed a picket line, and I'm 63.
20. We The Animals--great where-are-the-adults film, though I'd recommend The Florida Project from 2017 first if you're in the mood for a cracked bildungsroman. 
21. Border--(In Swedish, Gräns) There are so many "borders"here, some crossed and some ignored...that we are forced to confront all of our own...a great movie for self-reflection.   Are you ugly?  Male?   Foreign? Happy? In love?   Violent?  This Swedish/Danish movie will force you to reevaluate! 
22. Annihilation--a science-based SF thriller from the director of Ex Machina where every one (led by Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh) gets what they think they deserve.   Great female cast (though The Favourite tops this group in a year of strong female acting).   This movie is like going to a meditation training and then having every one turn into whatever mind wanderings they experienced.   Fun to watch--particularly for some beautiful graphics overlaid against an Everglades background.
23. Night School--It's all Tiffany, and all Kevin, all the time this year, which is a huge blessing.   They're amazing.   This is the best examination of why our education systems fail us since the fourth season of The Wire.  Only these two comic stars could stage an effective argument for the return of corporal punishment (well, actually, knocking out your student), at least in GED programming. 
24. Museo--Bernal in Mexico, stealing 140 historical artifacts from the National Archeology Museum.   He pulls off the heist with duct tape and electrodes...but hey, who's going to buy Mexico's heritage?   So the problem becomes how to give it all back.
25. A Star is Born--wow, Lady Gaga is fun to watch on film.   HOWEVER, while Bradley Cooper is also fun, and convincing, as a rocker, and you should see this version, big warning:  it breaks my rule that you should never attend a film when the same person is star, producer, and director.  Barbra Streisand created this problem with Prince of Tides.  Cooper also takes credit for some of the screenplay, so this is a quadruple warning sign.   As fun as the film is, be prepared for major self-indulgences.  I wanted Bradley to cut his hair off half way through so he'd stop playing with it.   A real director would have noticed that flaw.
26. Ballad of Buster Scruggs--The Coen brothers wants us to know that the American myth is fucked.   You'll be certain to agree after watching cowboys with angel wings. 
27. Army of Lovers in the Holy Land-- the Swedish dance bad had loads of top 10 Eurochart hits starting in the late 90's, taking full advantage of idiosyncratic video techniques and gay iconography. So what happens when the band leader decides to move to Haifa and reconnect with his Judaism?  A campy concert, of course!
28. Velvet Buzzsaw

2018 Films I enjoyed but that didn't make the Top Films ranking

Crazy Rich Asians--it's a good love story (improbable as they all are) but you'd think you could do more with billions of dollars, a PhD in game theory, and some very attractive Chinese super-actors. 

Young Karl Marx--This film opened in 2017 elsewhere but not until February 2018 in the US.  I think we're getting a number of films that circle the topic of Utopia.   Black Panther opened in the US the same week as this film.   In this case, Karl and Friedrich (Engels), along with their sparky gals, commandeer the workers' movement to create the Communist union.   Power to the proletariat.   Who wouldn't take this bohemian tour of Berlin, Paris, Brussels, and Manchester over Trump, MeToo and stupid Washington DC?   You can get your laundry done easier now...but that's the only good thing.

The Happytime Murders--Melissa McCarthy is the closest thing this generation has to Gilda Radner--a comic based in love.  She's wonderful here, fighting off "Henson Alternatives" (you'll know what that means after you see the sex scenes and the gangland murders).   Sadly the film can't stop paying homage to Henson.  The tagline is "Less Sesame.  More street."   Perhaps even less Sesame might have made this movie tastier. 

Widows--I didn't believe a single one of the characters--Viola Davis has never been a favorite but she's flat.   Liam Neeson is a bad lover who supposedly has the guts to triple cross his partner--really?   He can't even get dressed properly.  Colin Ferrell tries to overcome a problematic dad but I still don't see him dancing on the grave (or in this case the second floor landing).   Anyway, kind of optimistic if you think a bunch of poorly directed women are entertaining just because they're working for Steve McQueen.   OK, but really, you can skip it.   Even Gillian Flynn seems lost in the love scenes--her story doesn't have much else going for it.

Beautiful Boy--Steve Caroll and Timothee Chalamet try to make this film intense, but being a cute teen isn't quite enough to create deep interest.   The film, however, does provide an illustration of the fact that no one can help an addict except themselves.   If you're family, you're part of the ecosystem that created the problem, unfortunately, so digging deeper only exacerbates the damage.

The Guilty--a Danish cop gets a desk job after the questionable shooting of an unarmed teen.   He's a 911 (or 112 in Denmark) response agent.   One night before his hearing on the shooting, he gets a call from a kidnapped woman, and begins a cycle of making the exact same bad judgements he made that led to the death of the teenager.   Every one has to confront the question of who's guilty here, even if in a phone room, listening, alone.

Nobody's Fool--let's all be thankful for Tiffany Haddish and Kevin Hart.   These two are singlehandedly trying to save the film industry in 2018.   Please see this film if only for the best comic moment since maybe Eddie Murphy and Steve Martin--in this case Haddish and Whoopi Goldberg playing mom and wayward daughter through a kitchen window.   Goldberg is stoned and pretends or believes that the window is a cell phone.   Turns out that you can hang up, even when you're standing face to face with some one you love.   Love story is silly but it works.  Most improbable barista of the month award of all time.

Uncle Drew--more great comedy, mostly around getting old.   Shoot more, dribble less. 

You Were Never Really Here--Joachim Phoenix is wonderful (he got best actor at Cannes in 2017 for this, though the film didn't release in the States until 2018) and like The Lobster this film gets way way under your skin. 

Mute--Alexander Skaarsgard plays a mute Amish bartender...and you think you have girlfriend problems?

The absolute worst films of 2018

Fortunately, there's not much in this category yet, which is a relief after Mother! and The Phantom Thread in 2017!  And the entrants (mostly) aren't really that bad.

• Isle of Dogs--I love Wes Anderson.   Hard stop.   And this film is fun.   I don't think there's been a more amazing voiceover cast ever assembled...look at the list of marquee names, led in my opinion by Brian Cranston and Ed Norton.   So why is it the worst film of the year?   Sexist stereotypes is why.   The guys are all rebels, and the girls are all sex kittens.   Or sex dogs.   I'm not sure...they act like kittens.   Wes--this was unnecessary and sloppy.
• Mission Impossible:  Fallout.  I've also loved this Tom Cruise franchise...a worn out genre but the MI series has always added it's own combination of woodiness and prat falls in an original way.   This one adds woodiness to...woodiness...it's so weak you can't even tell if Alec Baldwin is joking. 
• Zama--most readers of this blog will probably take it for granted that colonialism was bad.  Avoid this movie...you might be confused.   The Spaniards are violent, carriers of disease, venal...and all bad actors?   No wonder the Aztecs disappeared.  You won't learn a thing.
• Mary and Elizabeth--again?   Another serious retelling?   Elizabeth locks up Mary for 25 years and never visits.   Some friendship.  Their supposed meeting was drummed up for 19th Century theater-goers (by Schiller) and this version is worse.  
• Free Solo--I'm mildly afraid of heights, so caveat my review isn't impartial.   I just don't understand why, even if your amygdala doesn't recognize fear, we need to celebrate people whose contribution to their small communities is to not tell them what they're doing in case they don't come back alive.  You can romanticize hobos, and lost artists, but not rock climbers, because there's nothing enlarging about watching people take risks they could easily avoid.  

2018 Films I haven't seen yet

First Reformed--Paul Schrader script with Ethan Hawke
Love, Gilda
First Man--Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong (from director of Whiplash and La La Land
Sollers Point
Madeline's Madeline--Miranda July
Burning--Murakami short story mystery
Mandy--Nicholas Cage out of control in revenge movie
Let the Sunshine In--Binoche
Happy as Lazzaro
The Road Movie—apparently all Russian cars have dashboard cameras because law enforcement often results in false accusations.   This is a documentary of all the bizarre things that get recorded…a real chaos film, apparently…
Game Night
Gemini
On the Basis of Sex--I love RBG, but I don't think we need revisionist histories of her yet.   She's still rocking the Supremes...

2018 Films I don't want to see

The Mule--Clint--please stop
Private Life--from the director of The Savages, but about more white parents wanting babies.   Yuck.
Leave No Trace--I already feel off the grid, and no one is making films about me.