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.