2018 Movies in Review

This was a long and movie-filled year. Were they all good movies? Nope. Were any of them great movies? A few. This was also the year predicted by some Youtube Nostradamii as the movie apocalypse, a time in which a big budget tentpole/AAA release hits every week through the whole year and leads to the collapse of multiple film studios and/or publishers. Which did not happen...imagine!

2018 does, for me, mark a couple significant changes in film viewing, though: my son is old enough now to enjoy movies in a more sophisticated manner, meaning the palette of movies he can sit still for has grown exponentially; movies are indeed coming out with greater frequency that tick that box which says "kids and family want to see this, and don't want to wait for it to show on Netflix," and finally I still just love seeing movies in the theater, and theaters locally are really making the experience more fun and easy thanks to luxury assigned seating. So yeah...overall we saw more movies this year than I have in, well, forever.

Here's the best movies in 2018, according to the Realms of Chirak household (so YMMV, of course!):

BEST HORROR FILM: Overlord

If you haven't seen Overlord, you are missing out on an unexpected great, if not entirely monumental film. The movie manages to be a compelling, at times nerve-wracking tale of Operation Overlord on D-Day (so, A World War II movie) when it abruptly dives into the deep end of weird Nazi scientist zombie super-soldier horror. I knew very little about this movie before going in to it, and was rewarded with one of my most enjoyable film experiences in years.

Runner Up: there were actually quite a few good horror movies this year, believe it or not. I'll tentatively suggest that Annihilation gets this billing, albeit with the caveat that it was just as compelling as an SF film (see below). So let's also nominate A Quiet Place for runner up!

BEST COMIC BOOK FILM: Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse

I chose the title "comic book film" because this isn't just about superheroes, it's about a comic book style of tale telling writ large. Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse manages to be a great superhero movie but an amazing comic book movie, possibly the best of its class. It takes a relatively incredulous core conceit (the spiderverse), a fan favorite from the comics (Miles Morales) and then tells a tale that does a bunch of things right that not many superhero films pull off: compelling character arcs, plot with resolution, action sequences that you can follow and make sense, surprises all over the place that felt carefully designed that way, and all topped with a CGI cartoon style(s) that blend remarkably well for a perfect package. If you only see one comic book film this year, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse should probably be it.

Runner Up: that easily goes to Deadpool 2, which thankfully had no backstory to worry about this time around, and made for a hysterical take on the Marvel universe through Deadpool eyes.

BEST SUPERHERO FILM: Avengers Infinity War

You could argue all sorts of reasons for why this is a good movie, but it is inarguable that Avengers Infinity War pays off on eight years of Marvel Cinematic Universe buildup and cashes in on that with great success. The sequel will be just as big, as Marvel and Disney left this movie with a cliffhanger that had the entire audience of children in tears, with adults quickly confirming that their beloved characters who appeared to have been destroyed still showed future movies in development, or actors with future movies still on contract.

Runner Up: Black Panther, which was a brilliant film and a unique exploration of Wakanda in the cinematic universe. One could argue that it deserved top billing and Avengers Infinity War get runner up, but the truth is neither film would have been as effective without the years of world building that went in to laying the groundwork, and both benefited greatly.

BEST SCIENCE FICTION FILM: Annihilation

Yes, the best movie in SF this year is the one no one saw. Natalie Portman and a team of scientists enter an anomalous region where life and reality are being warped into strange symmetries by an alien presence, and the film is all about the eerie exploration...at times terrifyingly so, of this event. If you haven't seen it yet, go get a copy or find it on Netflix or something, you have missed out.

Runner Up: Ready Player One deserves this credit for its Spielbergian depiction of a futuristic dystopia in which life is so grey and miserable that even your grandma has retreated into the virtual space, but somehow that's okay because this is an upbeat tale of dystopian futrue romance. Well worth watching, whether you liked the novel or not, for its straight-forward depiction of a future that is unfortunately far more likely to come to pass than the happy singularities optimistic futurists promise us.

BEST COMEDY: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

It's a Netflix exclusive, and it's also a western, and also it's a surrealistic black comedy, but this was probably one of the most enjoyable films I've seen this year. A series of western vignettes, each one a story of tragically arbitrary failure with only two of the tales resolving in a manner equatable to a happy ending, the Ballad of Buster Scruggs should be seen by anyone with a penchant for Coen Brothers films or subtle, dark humor in general.

Runner Up: oh this is a tough one. I guess Deadpool 2? It's the only movie which made me laugh as hard as it did (and also my son, when got to see the slightly less raunchy Once Upon a Deadpool).

FILM OF THE YEAR: Black Panther

Black Panther  deserves high praise for its depiction of the super-science hidden country of Wakanda. Even more significantly, it handled an interesting trope in the depiction of black characters on film, with Killmonger being a serious contender for best villain in the MCU who represented a sort of depiction of the way that black characters are all too often handled in American cinema, vs. the deadly serious, deep and utterly self assured Black Panther and his many supporting characters.The result is a film that manages to portray a subject in a manner that defies conventional racial depictions in western storytelling and, frankly, just crush it. Black Panther may have benefitted from being able to do so as part of the MCU, but it also managed to demonstrate that this can be done..and should be done, from here on out.

What list wouldn't be complete without some raspberries? Here are some duds for the awards:

BIGGEST SURPRISE OF THE YEAR: Venom

Venom deserves no special awards other than somehow being a Sony movie that was actually fun. For bonus credits, watch Venom, then watch Once Upon a Deadpool, and notice how the latter demonstrates how clearly the former film edited itself for a PG13 rating when they realized their R rating would lock out 90% of their target audience.

Runner Up: Aquaman! Who knew they could get Aquaman right, and also make a movie where a thousand laser sharks on screen was a serious moment?!?!?

LEAST INTERESTING MOVIE: Ant Man and the Wasp

It was fun, okay? But this movie was the very definition of playing it safe, and demonstrated (I feel) every case study in what people were afraid would go wrong with the MCU under Disney. It had a toothless villain, a lack of any real sense of gravitas, and a general focus on "feel good but don't think too hard" at it's core that made this the least interesting fun movie to watch in 2018. I get it: they need these kinds of films for the series; but this one was just uninteresting enough that I could (and may very well) sit out the next one and wait for it to show up on streaming somewhere.

Runner Up: Bumblebee! I loved it, but this movie was all about making a family-friendly, earnest, heartful course correction for the Transformers franchise, which it succeeded at, but it left very few surprises in place; when your biggest surprise is that the appearance of the transformers matches their appearances from the original cartoon, then....well, yeah.

BIGGEST FRANCHISE IMPLOSION: The Predator

Look, I can't call it the worst movie of the year because it is technically proficient, and there are worse films out there. But The Predator demonstrates that just because you played a bit role and did some minor dialogue rewrites in a film from 1987 does not mean you are in any way qualified to follow up on it decades later. The Predator effectively killed the franchise and demonstrated that it is completely possible even in this year of 2018 to misunderstand the core conceit of a film franchise in such a manner that you destroy it for the fanbase.

Runner Up: Solo, but not becuase it was a bad movie (it was a lot of fun) but rather because it suffered the backlash of The Last Jedi and demonstrated that Star Wars fatigue had already set in.

WORST MOVIE I SAW IN 2018: Monster Land

So here's the problem with doing a list like this when you're not a hardcore film buff or paid critic: I avoid movies that get bad reviews, or which I suspect I might not find that engaging. The movie doesn't have to be bad (I'm avoiding the Return of Mary Poppins, for example), it just has to be off my radar. As a result, I often don't see the bad movies of the year. However, I may see some truly awful movies within the year, just not films that were released in 2018. For example: Monster Land, a truly miserable little collection of indie vignettes which for the most part are as irredeemable as any Amazon Kindle selection of random short fiction rudderless and without an editor to steer it into some sort of readable direction. So if I elect a truly bad film this year: Monster Land deserves it, even though it was released in 2016.

If I had to mention a movie in 2018 that was truly horrible, I guess I'd suggest Gotti. I didn't actually see the film, but the clips I have witnessed suggest strongly it deserves this honor.

Film Review: Black Panther

This hardly seems like a movie I need to hype or praise, as it's getting a great deal of such from just about every corner, everywhere. But given just how monumental and distinct this movie is, I feel like it's worth talking just a bit about how much of a milestone in film making Black Panther really is. (I'll try to avoid spoilers.)

It's not just that the movie's cast is 95% African and African American...

It's not just that the movie has a shockingly powerful cast of black women in positions of power and responsibility...

It's not just that this movie identifies with a sort of mythic representation of fantasy African culture in a manner highly consistent with how fantasy has done it for ages now with European myth and folklore (this movie does for Africa what the Thor films do for Scandinavia, I'll put it that way)...

It's that it does all of this, and more, and defies genre expectations in some fascinating ways while still managing to be a relatable, distinct comic book movie. I mean....this is possibly the best and most unique Marvel film to date, and it leverages the years of prior films to produce something that just wouldn't have been possible only a few years ago...hell, a few months ago!

Somehow, Black Panther manages to be a rite of passage movie, a spy movie, an action movie, a massive affirmation film and a comic book super hero movie all at the same time. And probably some other things I haven't yet identified. It compellingly sets up and then leverages the concept of a hidden super-science empire in the middle of Africa, makes it "make sense" (in the comic book use of the term, mind you) as to how it is there, why it is there and why it has chosen to remain a secret place (and how they do that).

I really do feel like this film is a benchmark for future films, and it shows that it is possible and indeed desirous to make a positive, exciting fantasy film with non-western thematics, an almost entirely non-white cast, a focus on how this is all good, interesting, exciting and frankly as amazing as you could imagine without relying on any of the underlying tropes, conceits and implied restrictions that Hollywood normally places on a film focused on black actors.

Okay, now for a few comments with spoilers!

First, I thought it was extremely interesting that the one character who is most "in line" with conventional Hollywood presentations of black characters, the usurper Erik Killmonger (played by Michael B. Jordan) is also the bad guy, the literal and symbolic nemesis of both the characters in the film and the metaspace of the movie itself. Killmonger's a destabilizing presence, a man who has survived in the rough ghetto culture of America but with knowedge of a faerie land told to him by his father...which he spends decades preparing to find, usurp, and essentially drive in to chaos and destruction on the principle of revenge against the world. T'Challa's nemesis is a man who has learned hatred and self loathing from the survivor society of slave culture in modern America.

T'Challa (Chadwick Boseman) himself is the caretaker of a culture which watched it's neighbors fall victim to European slavery and quietly worked to hide themselves from discovery, knowing how much they stood to lose. And yet in the end, he sees Killmonger for what he is, realizes that there was a grain of truth....the need for rehabilitation, not destruction, hidden in his story. Fascinating stuff.

I liked how Agent Ross (Martin Freeman) was here essentially as a token white guy, in almost every sense imaginable and very much in a manner consistent with how in most historical Hollywood traditions you usually have the reverse: a sea of white guys, and a token black sidekick or secondary hero. Despite how clearly this was being done, it only added to the story, and Ross as a character proves to be a valuable ally.

Meanwhile, we have T'Challa's technologically gifted sister Shuri (Leticia Wright) who's technological savvy is clearly equivalent to or greater than Tony Stark's, the loyal general Okoye (Danai Gurira), and Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o), Black Panther's flighty love interest with a greater desire to help the helpless than to be his queen. This movie had not one but three fascinating and deeply powerful and well developed female characters, and not even Nakia is specifically there to be the one who swoons to T'Challa.

I predict that in twenty years this movie will be seen in film classes as a seminal milestone how how fantasy and film are not restricted to European origins and expectations. As I watched this movie, I was moved very much by the notion that maybe, just maybe, we can see a future full of interesting science fiction and near future films with a positive message aimed at demonstrating just how great African and African American culture is, and can be destined to be. We don't, it turns out, have to restrict our films to a constant regression on the past: follow Wakanda into a very, very positive future (at least, until Avengers: Infinity War!)

I want to see a Blade Runner type cyberpunk future set in Africa. I'd like to see a far-future starfaring empire grown whole cloth from African origins. How about a hardcore sword & sorcery film that is entirely African in thematics and mythology?

There are so many possibilities I feel like Black Panther has demonstrated are entirely possible, and very desirable, and something which this film demonstrates has been sorely lacking from the superhero genre up to now (in film, anyway; let's not forget that as a character Black Panther has been around since 1966!) I really hope this movie leads the way for a brilliant future in films which fight for a more worldly, broader perspective, with a sense of conviction that stands with the best of them.

I'm sure it goes without saying, but I loved this (as did the family). A+! Just when I wonder if Marvel's hit their apex, they knock it out of the park again.