Here we are again, dear reader. Another Oscars is upon us. And you know what that means – I’m gonna nominate my own best pictures. Even though I’m a music critic. And even though I own the expanded editions of the Hobbit trilogy on Blu-Ray (there are two really good movies hidden in there!). Why? Because these eight films got to me in 2018, and I would like to share those feelings. What, you’re against SHARING now?
The envelope, please…
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
The Coen Brothers had been off their game this decade, mythologizing subjects that had already been beaten to death on film – e.g. white guys with guitars; the golden age of Hollywood. So the first time somebody is literally beaten to death in their existential Western anthology The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, it’s like welcoming home a nihilistic, hilarious old friend. 22 years after Fargo, these brothers are still unbelievably good at wringing poignancy from the casual depravity of human beings. Staring into the void like a grizzled old prospector, searching for gold.
Blindspotting
Within the boundaries of a small narrative window – the last three days of an Oakland man’s probation – Carlos López Estrada’s debut feature tackles issues of racism, police brutality, gentrification, corporate branding, gun control, and cultural appropriation. And it does so with a mixture of humor and high theater that underlines how little things have changed since the 1989 release of one of its clear inspirations, Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing. Daveed Diggs plays the mild-mannered Collin, a black man who works for a moving company with his white, hot-headed friend Miles (Rafael Casal). Their interplay, written by Diggs and Casal themselves, undulates between tension and release, hard-won bonds and deep-seated divisions. In other words, it’s American.
Can You Ever Forgive Me?
In the most prominent antihero narratives of this century, we were given permission to cheer on the acts of violent men, thanks to contrived character devices – they need therapy; they have a disease; they only hurt bad people. Marielle Heller’s film Can You Ever Forgive Me? lets us root for a rule-breaker too, but this time it’s a real person, with nuanced motives, who isn’t hurting anyone but themselves. Melissa McCarthy gives a brilliantly layered performance as Lee Israel, the down-on-her-luck biographer who got busted for selling forged letters from literary greats in the early 1990s. As Heller shows how much the cards were stacked against a middle-aged lesbian writing about what interested her, McCarthy lets us feel the depth of Lee’s frustration, as much through humor as anything – her wit is so sharp, it hurts.
The Endless
With The Endless, filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead prove it’s possible to make a low-budget, high-concept sci-fi original that’s way better than a SyFy Original. And they do so by turning their limitations into assets. Because it was cheaper, they cast themselves as the leads – two brothers who decide to go back and visit the bizarre sky-worshipping cult where they were raised. They’re convincing as people trapped in an impossible situation, probably because they really felt that way. They successfully build a compelling, creepy atmosphere, using little more than intimations and clues –getting more scares from a scene with a rope than 1,000 CGI zombies. And the unexpectedly moving moral they lay on us, about the value of communicating with the ones you love? Priceless.
The Favourite
Films about British monarchs are always Oscar favorites. But Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest makes The King’s Speech look like a box of stale crisps. It’s 1708, and Queen Anne (Olivia Colman, who should win everything) is in ill health, relying more and more on her friend, political advisor and lover, Sarah the Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz, not fucking around). When Sarah’s cousin Abigail (Emma Stone, convincingly conniving) arrives at court looking for work, the film becomes a no-holds-barred power struggle between the three women. Full of blood and dirt and shit-talk and hilarious parodies of cotillion dances, The Favourite almost feels like a spoof of prestige palace intrigue dramas. But the acting is too damn good for that. When we see the ache in Colman’s eyes as she explains why she owns 17 rabbits, we see human need. And the understanding that there will always be people lining up outside her chambers, waiting for their chance to exploit it.
Hereditary
When I reviewed The Shining as part of my ongoing series about Stephen King, I was struck by something the novel did better than the movie – explore how horrifying the idea of heredity can be. In 2018, first-time director Ari Aster came along and picked up those threads that Stanley Kubrick ignored. Hereditary is an intense, visionary horror story about a family with inescapable darkness in its DNA. Anchored by a riveting performance from Toni Collette, who plays a mother torn apart by grief and haunted by ancestral evil, Aster is free to absolutely drench his movie in dread. Small things like candy bars, doormats and clucking noises become unforgettably corrupted. Even scenes that happen in broad daylight are not reprieves. And why would they be, when the call is coming from inside your genes?
Mandy
As a fan of Clive Barker, Ash Williams, and the most committed actor on the planet – Nicolas Cage – I probably would have enjoyed Mandy even if it was directed by some hack. But filmmaker Panos Cosmatos has made a psychedelic horror revenge spectacle, alive with mesmerizing, satanic-Lisa-Frank energy. In just one early scene where Red (Cage) and Mandy (Andrea Riseborough) are lying in bed, talking about their favorite planets, Cosmatos wholeheartedly establishes their deep, quiet love. So when disaster strikes at the hands of a druggy, demon-summoning cult, the stakes are real. The ensuing long take of Cage crying in his underwear is probably what Mandy is most famous for – but it’s not a moment to rubberneck at weird ol’ Nic. It’s genuinely heartbreaking. As Red sets out for revenge on humans and hellspawn alike, we get a full hour of the best kind of B-movie thrills, elevated by A+ artistry.
Support the Girls
Support the Girls may be officially categorized as a workplace comedy, but make no mistake – this is a superhero movie. Over the course of one workday as the manager of Double Whammies, a locally owned “breastaurant” mired in a thicket of Texas highways, we follow the unflinchingly optimistic Lisa Conroy (Regina Hall, nominated for Best Actress in an alternate dimension more just than our own), as she deals with one shitty situation after another – an attempted robbery, a cable outage, a racist boss, an alienated husband, a staff under constant threat of harassment. Writer/director Andrew Bujalski establishes a heartbreaking pattern: Lisa puts love out into the world, then the world throws it back in her face with onion-ring-slurping indifference. Each time, Hall’s smile slips just a little bit more. Until eventually, it’s Lisa’s turn to be supported. In the final scene, women that Lisa loved and protected help her process her outrage. Standing side by side, on a roof, as forces for good.
Honorable Mentions: Apostle, Black Panther, Breaking In, Chappaquiddick, Crazy Rich Asians, Eighth Grade, Ghost Stories, Halloween, Minding the Gap, Mom and Dad, Proud Mary, A Quiet Place, Shirkers, Sorry to Bother You, Suspiria, Unsane
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