Top 10 films of 2018

This is a top 10 based on Australian release dates only, and includes only films that got genuine cinematic releases in Australia. I'm not including things that got streaming-only releases (though certainly there was quality stuff that was only released as streamers), and I'm not ranking the list. So with those caveats covered, here's the list in alphabetical order

Bad Times at the El Royale - A combination crime-thriller, retro-pile-up-of-conspiracy-theories and memory of the passing of the 1960s, this combines some great actors, great music and constantly twisting plot to make a film that kept me constantly delighted.

Blakklansman - I don't know whether this or "Do the Right Thing" is Spike Lee's best film, but I'm definitely glad he's playing at the top of his game in this clever bait-and-switch of a strange-but-true story about a black cop infiltrating the Klu Klux Klan  - it plays right on the edge between drama and comedy before pulling the rug out ruthlessly to remind us that this isn't just history, this is a stain on the US that still holds true today.

Custody - A tense french thriller that builds and builds from what seems like a simple story of a father and son forced to be together on weekend custody into something far more insidious - a dense character study, and an examination of that thin line between love and destruction.

Isle of Dogs - Wes Anderson is, undoubtedly, a divisive figure, but for me the high styalisation is always matched by an equally strong emotional inner life to his stories as misfits struggle to find their place in the world. In this case it's the story of Bryan Cranston's Chief, a dog with very little time for humans who finds himself brought back into society despite his best intentions. It's visually lovely, plays nicely with its cross-cultural background (the world between the dogs and the humans) and it's more an act of love of Japanese culture than an insult or appropriation of it.

I Used to Be Normal: A Boyband Fangirl's Story - This got a pretty tiny release despite being a great Australian-made documentary - looking at four different fangirls in four different eras through their fascinations with their respective idols - The Beatles, Take That, Backstreet Boys and One Direction. There's a warm heartedness here that allows the fangirl's passion to be fully explored from their own perspectives - and filming over multiple years allows us to see each of them have their relationship with their idols change and develop. It's a gently human documentary that has that great feeling of just watching life through a different perspective in a way that makes the heart feel larger.

See You Up There - This big French historical epic has heart and soul to go along with the incredible production design telling the story of two friends coming out of the final days of World War I and into the hedonistic 1920s - with a very personal sense of wit and whimsy that never lets the charm soften the rougher edges of the story. There's a dark story of loss and betrayal underneath that never gets lost even as the production design gets more and more beautiful - and there's great payoff at the end. Overlooked but spectacular.

The Shape of water - Yes, it's the year I think the Oscars actually got it right. Guillermo Del Toro's best english-language film and among his best overall, this is a romantic fairy tale with a bite and a twist to it, with an incredible cast (Richard Jenkins is my personal favourite for a performance that is full of heartbreak, but everybody is top of their game here). It's enchanting, scatological, somewhat insane, beautiful and adorable. 

Sorry To Bother You - A knife-edged parody of corporate America, this is smart, savage, disturbing and brilliant. It's got a strong visual style that in some ways resembles Michel Gondry crossed with Karl Marx, and is provocative as hell. I loved it.

Upgrade - A great action movie that transforms as it progresses into an even better horror movie, this is an ever-escalating film that channels the feeling of pure pulp into a ruthless examination of the relationship between human and machine. Spectacular physicality, great twists and turns and a nice sense of ruthlessness make this a great watch. 

Widows - This is a crime thriller on the level of LA Confidential or Heat, with a wonderfully stacked cast in a film that seems to have upset expectations by not having the expected female-bonding-and-light-caper-ness, but instead letting all the characters be spiky, tricky characters with their own independence and personal things to get through. It's emotional, political, thrilling and brutal when it needs to be, and I loved the hell out of it. 

Honourable mentions go to a bunch of films that couldn't fit into the 10 but deserve a look anyway: Can You Ever Forgive Me, Climax, Halloween (2018) Hereditary, In the Fade, Lady Bird, Molly's Game, Three Identical Strangers, Shadow, A Simple Favour and Unsane. 

And two that were streaming only releases that should be seen: Ballad of Buster Scruggs and The Night Comes For Us. 

Ralph Breaks the Internet

The original "Wreck It Ralph" was a perfectly pleasant Disney flick playing on video-game tropes for a tale of transcending your position in life through friendship and a little bit of heroism. The sequel is only necessary in that it allows us to get back together with a pair of characters we really like - Ralph, the dopily warm-hearted big lug, and Vanelope, the girl racer who befriended Ralph and got him to be a better person. The plot, such as it is, is sorta a collection of three or four storylines that happen in succession, seeing the pair explore various aspects of online culture, with a little bit of inner growth along the way.

If there's a through-line, it's the relationship between Ralph and Vanelope, which is allowed to develop in ways that do change their status quo permanently in interesting ways. The much-trailered integration of other Disney properties, including princesses, Star Wars and Marvel characters, isn't allowed to monopolise the film, instead just being one of the elements of online culture that the film travels through. So all in all this is a worthy sequel knowing what's worth further exploration in the characters and what can be safely left as casual-references-to-the-last-film, and is definitely worth a watch.

Bumblebee

Returning to the world of Transformers with a notable increase in coherence (I can actually tell the robots apart this time, and I can tell what the action is doing!), "Bumblebee" takes a familiar "troubled teen meets visitor from another planet" storyline and plays it for all the emotional beats it can get. There's a nice warmth between Hailee Stanfield and the yellow-sometimes-a-Volkswagen-Robot-in-Disguise that means that even while this film is resolutely not really exploring much new territory, it's at least getting the fundamentals right. The setting of 1987 is, perhaps, slightly overplayed (there's a succession of about four or five background songs within about five minutes which feels like trying too hard to give the era), although it at least picks some of the less-beaten-tracks to go down. THis is more of a case of "good when judged on the curve of previous Transformers movies" than necessarily "great viewing on its own" - and perhaps it does play things too safe - but it's nicely enjoyable for all that.

Cold War

This Polish production tells of the romance between a composer and a singer across the Iron curtain from the mid 40s to the early 60s, dropping in and out as they move from Poland to Berlin to Paris to several other locations. The problem, for me, is that, though this is gorgeously shot throughout in immaculate black and white, with a sweet jazz soundtrack, I never got remotely invested in the central romance - it all feels awfully shallow, stylish images without anything really going on underneath. Everything's at the level of a perfume advertisement. The tendency of the film to stop-and-start at various intervals, picking them up a couple of years on, never really develops any momentum or shape within the segments or across them - neither of the couple are particularly intriguing seperately or together. Yes, they're physically attractive people, but there's nothing particularly going on beyond that to make them in any way compelling. So in the end, this is classy dullness.

Vice

Adam McKay's latest film works as a hybrid between biopic and documentary-as-political-essay - it does have all the famous-actors-playing-famous people covering the narrative highpoints of Dick Cheney's career, but also has a cynical voice-over narration from Jesse Plemons (as a character whose involvement in the wider storyline isn't revealed until quite late) and is very fond of subjective and highly edited montage to make wider points. It's a very distinct style that I've not seen before, and what it loses, perhaps, in personal involvement in the characters (I don't think Christian Bale has a single "big oscar scene" in the entire film - Amy Adams is probably the only castmember who does), it gains in being focused entirely on making its point about what's being going on behind the scenes in US politics over the last half century. And it's a fascinating, if slightly terrifying, look at how we got to where we are  (and I'm always interested in films that attempt to show a wider sense of how big political movements are put together - that wonkish kinda how-the-sausage-is-made approach always makes me interested).

Of course in a day and age when it appears, we're all too aware of how badly offcourse political power has gone, but seem to not be able to come together to work out any solutions to how to get anything back, the question could be asked "how useful is all this information". And the answer is probably going to vary around different audience members. But for those who want a download of recent political history told with cynicism and verve, this definitely gets the job done.

Collette

This look at the life of the early 20th century novelist Collette and her experiences as ghost-writer with her material sold under her husband's name covers some familiar territory but does it reasonably well. Keira Knightley charts the arc of Collette's growing assurance from innocent wife to sophisticated bisexual in control of her life with vim, and Dominic West as the dodgy husband at least gets a reasonable chance to show why the manipulative bastard of a husband is at least somewhat charmingly seductive during the early stages. And it's nice and glossy and there's a certain charm to it, but this never really drew me in particularly. It's perfectly adequate cinema that probably won't frighten the horses, but I was never more than mildly engaged.

The Favourite

Yorgos Lathimos' latest film is a bit of a departure from his recent pair, "The Lobster" and "The Killing of a Sacred Deer" - both were very styalised films with a strong sense of deadpan in exploring their chosen genre, whether it was sci-fi-romantic-comedy in "The Lobster" or modern-day-greek-tragedy with "Sacred Deer". The deadpan tone feels a little downplayed in this one, whether it's because the general trappings of an English period drama concentrating on the monarchy already have their own styalisations to them, or because Lathimos didn't write this one. But it's still a fascinating look at powerplays in the court of Queen Anne during the early years of the 18th century, as the Queen's relationship with her trusted advisor, the Duchesss of Marlborogh, is disrupted by the arrival of one of Marlborogh's distent cousins, Abigail Hill. All three actresses have a wealth of material to play, whether it's Olivia Colman's slightly bewhildered Queen, Rachael Weitz's domineering Marlborogh, or Emma Stone's striving-for-survival Abigail. It's a beautifully designed film, too, full of late-restoration era wigs and grand dresses, while letting everybody also get down-and-dirty as the power-plays get more serious. The script is blooming with wit, and there's a formal brutality that Lathimos gets right - this is determinedly unsentimental and prepared to let the main character's ruthlessness show. Absolutely a film worth catching.

Roma

This beautifully shot film tells three intertwining stories in a Mexican household in the early 70s – the breakdown of the parent’s marriage, the pregnancy of one of the maids, and the increasing political unrest in the streets. Full of lush visuals and crowd scenes, in gorgeous black and white, the more personal stories are told with delicacy and care (albeit neither are exactly presented with a lot of urgency). The more political story, though, tends to be only touched on when spectacle is needed (as with a sudden uprising near the end) rather than presented with any coherent information about its causes and rationales – telling the story though the viewpoint of the pregnant maid means that, given she’s not particularly politically active, we can only be nearby observers rather than getting any understanding of why there’s unrest, what it’s coming from and why it’s slipping out of control.

And yes, a film is under no responsibility to particularly represent any individual political point of view – but in this case, presenting the politics as spectacle without actually trying to understand them means we get a fairly shallow view of what could be a complex and intriguing element of the film. It turns what could have been an incisive film into something more sentimental and fuzzy. And as a sentimental and fuzzy presentation of personal history, it’s quite a gorgeous looking film. I just wish the ideas underneath the beauty meant a bit more.

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

We’ve seen an even half-dozen Spiderman movies with three different young men playing Spiderman. But it’s always the same Peter Parker, with the same origin story … until now. Using a distinctly modern art style, this film tells of Miles Morales, an African-American-Latino, whose life gets complicated by the inevitable radioactive spider, plus one very complicated cross-dimensional engine that drags in multiple other Spider-people from other universes. In cutting edge animation that gives the screen a comic-book quality, we get everything from sound-effects to voice-over panels. This level of styalisation has proved a mess in things like Ang Lee’s “Hulk” but here, it works.

If I don’t completely lose my mind over this, it might be that … this isn’t quite the Miles Morales that the comics have given me. He’s a little more urban, a little more street-wise, a little more keen on graffiti and stickers than the more mild-mannered character from the comics. And it’s not necessarily a bad change, and it’s a compelling kaleidoscope of comics pleasure all around, and there’s some really clever choices in there with the supporting cast – but it’s just not quite the Miles that I loved. He’s not a bad character, but he’s just not quite mine any more. And that’s my own baggage to bear.

Peppermint

This is a fairly rote revenge thriller, with Jennifer Garner playing the woman whose family is gunned down in front of her, whose attempts within the system to get justice lead to naught, and who finds herself gunning down vast amounts of Latino gang members. There’s some nice ludicrousness in the setup (her preparation involves disappearing for five years after robbing a bank for $55,000 – that seems an incredibly low budget to be come, basically, Batman), and a few reasonable twists and turns, but this is pretty conventional by the numbers stuff that just doesn’t have a lot of fun with what it’s doing, and doesn’t really provide any new ideas or deep insight beyond the obvious that Jennifer Garner really does deserve to be in more action movies, although probably better ones than this. It’s difficult to argue with the rote racism or vengeance prone politics because the film doesn’t particularly seem to have very much invested in its ideas or in its execution - it’s just going through the motions.

The Mortal Engines

This big-scale young-adult fantasy epic feels a little squished at a little over two hours, but it does the job in combining a distinctly odd premise (a post apocalyptic future where cities-on-wheels roam the land devouring other cities) with a familiar personal story of one girl’s quest for revenge on the man who killed her mother. If this suffers a little from lore-overload (the characters have a tendency to recite backstory if even slightly prodded), there are a couple of subplots and minor characters where it feels like a larger subplot has been chopped down to meet running times (a couple of characters seem to exist largely to get plot from A to B rather than really getting much time of their own to develop), it’s still an intriguing examination of a rich fantasy world. The relationship between the two leads does smack a little of “well, our two leads are opposite genders, so therefore there’s going to be a love plot here regardless of chemistry”, and only Hugo Weaving and Stephen Lang as two of the villains really get much to sink their teeth into acting wise, but the storytelling is constantly propulsive as the leads are constantly on the run and in jeopardy, either chasing or being chased. The distinctly steampunk aesthetic means that there’s always a lot to look at, even if the overall arc is somewhat familiar.

Sorry To Bother You

This modern satire of corporate culture, 21^st century capitalism and the state of interracial America is a winner. Cassius Greene (Lakieth Stanfield) is our bemused hero as he starts working for a call-centre, struggling to make a connection to people across the nation to sell some useless product or other. But when he’s told of the secret power of using his “white voice”, opportunities open up to him – and expose him to more surreptitious ways that corporate America plans to use him and his friends.

Director Boots Riley has a sure visual style here – this is, in some ways, Michel Gondry crossed with Karl Marx, as he captures complex issues in a few deft images and unusual sights. The cast is all-round strong – whether it be Stanfield’s bemused protagonist, Tessa Thompson back again as the artistically inclined girlfriend of the lead (it’s unfortunate in a way that this film has been held back long enough in Australia that it looks like Thompson’s stereotype next to her appearance in “Creed II”, but she’s got enough other things coming that hopefully she’ll be a lead before too long), or Armie Hammer carelessly embodying the don’t-give-a-shit nature of the wealthy as a careless corporate mogul. The satire only gets more extreme as the film goes on yet it’s never enough to break the immersion, for me – it’s a finely provocative look at the modern American landscape.

Can you ever forgive me?

Lee Israel is a biography writer who’s finding it harder and harder to get published. Her distaste for modern writing trends, together with a disposition that sees her liking cats more than people and generally isolating herself sees her running broke in early 90’s Manhattan. But on finding a letter while researching a Fanny Brice biography, she gets involved with the world of collectible memorabilia. And soon it becomes easier to manufacture her own fake memorabilia for the various literary snobs, and with the assistance of her drinking buddy, the vain but impoverished Jack Hock, she starts to pull off a scam that can only end in disaster.

Melissa McCarthy is a bit of an odd case of superstardom – coming reasonably late to the job (while she’s been a working actress for over 20 years, her big break in “Bridesmaids” was only 7 years ago, after the age of 40). And it’s true that some of her recent star vehicles have been less than impressive – such middling nonsense as “Identify Thief”, “Life of the Party” and “The Boss” are less the work of a comedic powerhouse than a hack milking her moment in the sun (It doesn’t help that her husband, Ben Falcone, has been the deeply middling director behind some of these duds). But underneath all that there is a deeply impressive actress who should not be underestimated – when given the right meat to chew on. And this is exactly the right meat – Lee is a fully rounded, complicated human being whose frustration verges but never tips over completely into self-pity. Her erudition, pride and disappointment with the rest of the world gives us a smart heroine whose adaptation to circumstances sees her finding a perverse kinda pride in capturing the voices of her beloved literary celebrities. Richard E. Grant is a worthy companion – the relationship remains spiky and ever-close to dissolving into complete disaster, and Hock’s independent pride that can never quite communicate how desperate his circumstances really are makes him a fascinating figure who keeps his dignity no matter how bad things get. This knows how to choose the “true story” elements and play them so that nothing feels thrown in just because it’s an interesting anecdote – everything contributes to the core portrayal of this character and how she finds herself in these circumstances. It's pretty standard for awards season to offer mildly contrived biographical arcs that feel twisted into fake inspiration – but this feels genuine and immersive and with a smart literary heart to it.

Climax

Gaspar Noe is one of cinema’s great provocateurs. Experimental in form and in content, he delivers films that are unlike anything else – extreme and astounding and with strange moments of beauty bashing up against intense and disturbing material. And this is him delivering a short, sharp shock to the senses as he examines a dance troupe assembled in the French countryside whose meet-up party spirals out of control when the sangria is tainted by LSD. Noe does things that simply shouldn’t work – putting the credits in at a random point, shooting entire sequences from odd angles (there’s a dance sequence shot entirely from overhead that enthrals, and later another scene is shot upside down), with a mulit-racial, muitl-sexuality troupe of some 25-odd characters each with their own moods, opinions and agendas. It’s a letting go of all inhibitions yet despite that, it’s also a controlled, clever, emotional and intense masterwork – able to be at any moment joyous, horrific, romantic, brutal, political, abstract and precise. Absolutely worth indulging in.

Lean on Pete

Looking at the barely-surviving Midwest underclass in the US through the story of a teenage boy and the horse he relies on as his situation gets increasingly dire, this is not exactly the most uplifting or gentlest of stories. But it has a raw honesty to it, whether it be through the performances (Charlie Plummer’s determined but naïve boy, Steve Buscemi and Chole Sevigny as the resolutely practical trainer and jockey who he works with) or the unfussy style that director Andrew Haigh applies to the film. The film turns the knife a few times more than is necessary in the last 15 minutes - one particular incident about twenty minutes before the end feels like it should be the climax of the film,  and instead the film piles on more events before reaching resolution (and the performances continue to be good here, it’s just … I don’t know the extra material really justifies the screentime in terms of theme or characterisation – I know this is based on a novel, but this feels like the bit of the novel you cut for the movie). That doesn’t completely ruin the film but it does water down my appreciation a little bit.

Creed II

I’ve never seen a full “Rocky Film” – but I have seen the previous “Creed”, and liked it as a smart, populist boxing film about a young man finding himself and coming to terms with his legacy and his desire to excel at his chosen profession. And I’m aware of the Rocky films as a sort of shared cultural memory – the mild-mannered Italian boxer who rises to the championship in the face of various rivals while developing his relationship with his girlfriend, then wife, Adrian. I’m particularly aware of the wildly nationalistic, very very 80s, Rocky IV, which sees Rocky take on Ivan Drago, an evil Russian who kills his former opponent Apollo Creed in the ring before Rocky sets things right in a climactic fight right in the middle of the Soviet Union.

And to a certain extent, the setup for this film is a little gimmicky – Adonis Creed fights the son of the man who killed his father, Viktor Drago. It’s acknowledged early on that this is a cheap marketing ploy on the part of a boxing promoter, but there’s also emotional baggage here – Adonis’ desire to avenge the father he never knew, and Viktor, trained by Ivan to redeem what he perceives as his 30-years-old failure. And certainly the melodrama comes fairly regularly – Adonis also has to deal with his girlfriend’s encroaching deafness, and Rocky’s own reluctance to reengage with the brutality of the  past. This does lack the finely tuned sense of the first Creed, bringing far more melodrama and flat out cheese to the story. But dammit, a lot of this cheese works. I do think Adonis gets a little bit lost in the multiple subplots – the film never quite comes as clearly from his perspective as it did in the first one- and some plot points feel more like they are happening because they have to happen to get us to the next thing, rather than naturally earning them. But there’s still the strong cast – not only Jordan and Stallone, but also the wonderfully engaging Tessa Thompson as Adonis’s Girlfriend and the just plain spectacular Phylicia Rashad as his adoptive mother, pumping out wisdom and authority with every pore. Dolph Lungren is surprisingly good as the returned Drago, communicating the pain and rage of the previous decades (and pretty much embodying the term “toxic fatherhood”), and the climax feels incredibly climactic. So yes, it’s a little less well-constructed than the first film – but still, it is a pretty decent film that (damn the pun) still packs a punch.