The 20 Can't Miss Movies from 2018!

Top 20 Movies of 2018

It’s that time of year again! Something I look forward to towards at the beginning of every year is looking back and sorting out what I thought the best movies of the previous year were. I am no professional film critic, so most of these are emotional decisions.  I consider many factors when discerning whether or not I’m watching a great movie: Screenplay (does the dialogue sound natural, are the characters fleshed out, and is the narrative coherent?) Performances, direction, and whether or not I feel the movie accomplished what it set out to achieve. Other things to consider: Do the cinematography, the score, the editing, and the sound design help take the movie and its audience to the places of the director’s intent? If a movie doesn’t accomplish these things it often distracts and takes away from the filmmaker’s intent, making it difficult for it to grab my heart.

Having said that, 2018 was a year full of movies that did this successfully! I included a list of honorable mentions that you definitely should not skip out on just because they didn’t make the top ten of the year. Anyone of these could have been on there.

Honorable Mentions:
The Incredibles 2

Love, Simon

Widows

The Endless

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Mission Impossible: Fallout

Lean on Pete

Creed 2

Game Night

Unsane

Also, I don't include documentaries in my top twenty. However, this year saw a few documentaries that are more than worth a watch. These would probably end up on my list if I included the genre. Here are the three must watch docs ranked:

1. Won't You Be My Neighbor

2. Minding the Gap (this is on Hulu, WATCH IT!)

3. Three Identical Strangers

20. A Quiet Place

Director: John Krasinski

Starring: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Milicent Simmonds, and Noah Jupe

John Krasinski’s directorial effort should set him up for a prospering career moving forward. Creating a terrifying analogy for parenthood, and casting his wife, made this movie feel like a deeply passionate project. Mastering the use of sound and bringing a visual flare, this is a crowd-pleasing horror movie that many will be re-watching for years to come.

19. Bad Times at the El Royal

Director: Drew Goddard

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, and Chris Hemsworth.

Have you ever wondered what The Hateful Eight would have looked like if Quinton Tarantino had a soul? Wonder no more! Cabin in the Woods co-writer and director Drew Goddard returns with his second directorial outing, and he hits the ball out of the park. Creating a colorful ensemble cast in a secluded setting with lots of twists and violence, Goddard is clearly channeling his inner Tarantino… Yet, Bad Times carries within it an inspiring optimism and characters in search of redemption. This is a fun, weird, intense, and immensely entertaining movie.

18. Vice

Director: Adam McKay

Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carrell, Sam Rockwell, and Tyler Perry.

At times hilarious, and other times enraging, Adam McKay’s manic style he presented in The Big Short is amped up (for better and for worse) in this Dick Cheney biopic. Christian Bale continues to prove why he’s the best actor of his generation in his fully immersed interpretation of the infamous V.P. Add to the mix a biting script, sharp editing, fantastic supporting performances, and you have a movie that shouldn’t be missed. 

17. First Man

Director: Damien Chazelle

Starring: Ryan Gosling, Clair Foy, Kyle Chandler, and Jason Clark

Damien Chazelle’s third outing (after Whiplash and La La Land) only further proves his fantastic versatility. Ryan Gosling and Clair Foy bring honest, nuanced, and complicated depth to their performances that never wink at the camera. The final act will definitely leave you looking at the moon with a little more awe.

16. American Animals

Director: Bart Layont

Starring: Evan Peters, Blake Jenner, Berry Keoghan, and Jared Abrahamson.

There is not a dull second in this movie. Documentarian Bart Layton expertly merges the movies one half biopic and one-half documentary into a funny, poignant, thrilling, and ultimately sobering film. And it is worth mentioning how fantastic the main cast is.

15. Avengers: Infinity War

Directors: Joe and Anthony Russo

Starring: Who isn't in this movie?

How do you take a movie that is the culmination of nineteen previous movies, stars dozens of main characters, and not have it feel like a manic, over-crowded mess? I don’t know, but if you want to know ask Infinity War directors Joe and Anthony Russo. They accomplished the impossible, while taking the DCEU to task on bringing some darkness and edge to the universe.

14. Tully

Director: Jason Reitman

Starring: Charlize Theron, McKenzie Davis, Ron Livingston, and Mark Duplas.

Tully plays out like as a comedy, drama, psychological thriller, and horror movie. Charlize Theron delivers one of the best performances of her career and Jason Reitman brings his best game since Juno. It may be the most effective movie version of birth control since Rosemary's Baby.

13. Beautiful Boy

Director: Felix van Groeningen

Starring: Steve Carrell, Timothee Chalamet, Maura Tierney, and Amy Ryan

Steve Carrell (one of my favorite actors working today) and Timothee Chalamet (the Leonardo DiCaprio of his generation) deliver some of the best performances of the year in this tough and tender look at drug addiction and its effects on a family. The movie excels in helping you understand how someone allows themselves to travel down this destructive path without glamorizing it. Made with lots of heart, Beautiful Boy will stick with you long after the credits role.

12. Annihilation

Director: Alex Garland

Starring: Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, and Oscar Isaac.

It should be no-surprise that Ex Machina’s writer/director Alex Garland’s next outing would be a strange and challenging sci-fi thriller tackling dark themes, but I don’t anybody was expecting it to be this strange or challenging. Featuring dazzling visual effects, chilling performances, and some genuinely horrifying moments, Annihilation isn’t for everybody, but for fans of think-y movies it is a real treat.

11. 8^th Grade. 

Director: Bo Burnham

Starring: Elsie Fischer and Josh Hamilton

Bo Burnham has such a dry and seemingly cynical presence in comedy act that it caught me off guard to see such aching compassion in his first outing as a writer/director. 8^th Grade tells the story of a young girl expected to live and look like an adult, but still living on the edge of childhood. It is funny, sweet, heartbreaking and at times horrifyingly awkward, but it is one of the best coming-of-age movies we’ve had in years. Elsie Fisher and Josh Hamilton bring a lot of heart and soul to their performances, and Bo Burnham paints every scene with love and empathy. 

10. A Star is Born

Director: Bradly Cooper

Starring: Bradly Cooper, Lady Gaga, Sam Elliot, Andrew Dice Clay, and Dave Chapell

This is so much more than a vanity project. When it comes to directing, Bradley Cooper is the real deal. Lady Gaga gives one of the best performances of the year in a naturalistic and raw display, and Cooper excels at everything he does for the movie (acting, singing, writing, producing, and directing). I loved this movie because it manages to take a story that has been made 3 times (1937, 1954, 1976) and make it feel fresh. This doesn’t feel tired, or like a classic case of Hollywood running out of ideas, it shimmers with movie magic and entertains every second of its two hours and fifteen minutes.

9. Roma.

Director: Alfonso Cauron

Starring Yalitza Apricio, Marine De Tavira

Alfonso Cuaron directed one of my favorite movies of all time with Children of Men, but here he brings us his most passionate and personal work. In what is mostly a autobiographical work, Cuaron finds beauty in the mundane, and delivers a loving homage to the women who raised him in the backdrop of the turbulent Roma, Mexico. Roma packs a punch with its heart, style, skill, and profound sense of wistfulness.

8. If Beal Street Could Talk

Director: Berry Jenkins

Starring: Kiki Layne, Stephen James, Regina King, and Colman Domingo

Barry Jenkins, the writer/director of 2016’s Moonlight (another one of my favorite movies), shows us with his most recent outing that he is a true auteur. That is to say that his influence over and vision of the movie make it feel as if he is the films author. Like Moonlight, If Beal Street Could Talk feels like a musical without any flashy numbers: The dialogue is the lyrics, the score the melody, the camera the dance, and it’s all orchestrated by his masterful directing. The movie manages to evoke rage and beauty within the same breath, a rare feat that only a poet/prophet like Jenkins could pull off. This filmmaker is no fluke, and it is an absolute sham this movie did not get more Oscar attention.

7. Black Panther

Director: Ryan Coogler

Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lapita N'Yongo, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Andy Serkis, and Forrest Whitaker

Black Panther may not be the first superhero movie worthy of a Best Picture nod from the Academy (I see you The Dark Knight and Logan), but it certainly deserves all the praise it is getting. Writer/Director Ryan Coolger’s heart and soul bleed through every frame, and Michael B. Jordan gives us one of the most complex and engaging villains in movie history. This is a film with a lot to say about colonialism, heritage, race, legacy, holding the powerful accountable, the current political climate… oh and it’s a superhero movie.

6. Blindspotting

Director: Carlos Lopez Estrada

Starring: David Diggs and Rafeal Cassel

This was the biggest surprise of the year for me, in that it was not on my radar at all before I saw it. Blindspotting managed to have me laughing until my stomach hurt in one moment, shaking with rage in another, and brought tears of sadness to my eyes the next. It accomplishes all of this without any sense of tonal inconsistency, and that is insanely hard to pull off (watch any Tyler Perry movie to see what I mean). Daveed Diggs and Rafael Cassel (real life best friends and the writers of the movie) are a revelation, and I hope this is only the beginning of more material from them.

5. Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

Directors: Bob Perischetti and Peter Ramsi

Starring: Shameik Moore, Jake Johnson, Hailee Steinfeld, John Mulaney, Liev Schreiber, Katheryn Han, Mahershala Ali, Lily Tomlin, Brian Tyree Henrey, Chris Pine, and Nicolas Cage

As good as Black Panther was, it wasn’t even my favorite superhero movie of the year. This movie was so much better than it had any right to be. Not only is it a visual masterpiece, but it takes what should have been an insanely complex narrative and makes it totally palatable. Add to it the fact that Miles Morales is an instantly love-able hero, profound cultural relevance, a screenplay and voice performances that give these animated characters a soul, and you have my second favorite Spiderman movie (behind 2004’s Spiderman 2).

4. Boy Erased

Director: Joel Edgerton

Starring: Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Troye Sivan, and Joel Edgerton

Joel Edgerton has written and directed a deeply emotional and passionate project in Boy Erased. Led by the reliably phenomenal Lucas Hedges and featuring Oscar worthy supporting performances from Nicole Kidman (the greatest actress of all time, don’t @ me) and Russell Crowe, this movie brings nuance and sensitivity to a subject that could have been handled in such an ugly way. Telling the story of a pastor’s kid who is subjected to the abusive horrors of a gay conversion therapy program after coming out to his parents, Edgerton makes room to truly establish the humanity of his characters without excusing the devastating impact of conversion therapy. Opting not to make the boy’s parents villains, but a couple doing the only thing they know to do to help their son. That is a risky move in today’s world, but for anyone who has loved someone they fundamentally disagreed with, it’s wonderfully refreshing. 

3. BlacKKKlansman

Director: Spike Lee

Starring: John David Washington, Adam Driver, and Topher Grace

Spike Lee is a provocative auteur. That’s not news to anybody. Still, the maestro fits his message, his love for cinematic history, his social awareness, his conviction, his sense of humor, and his uncompromising style in BlacKKKlansman effortlessly. This movie should

have drowned in tonal inconsistency, but it manages to provoke side-splitting laughter and deft rage within the same scene. This is Spike’s best movie since Do the Right Thing.

2. Hereditary

Director: Ari Aster

Starring: Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolf, and Ann Down.

Let me start this off by saying this movie is horrifying. If you hate scary movies, anyone who tells you to watch this is not your friend. However, the horror in Hereditary is not just in gruesome visuals (though there is some of that) or the supernatural elements, but rather the brutally honest depiction of grief, guilt, and mental illness. First time director Ari Aster floods every shot with multiple levels of meaning, and demands multiple viewings to catch all the nuance he brings to the picture. Toni Collette gives the best performance of her career. This is one of the most underrated and overlooked movies of the year, and if you love a good horror movie, or even more so you love movies that illustrate the deeper life experiences, you owe it to yourself to watch this one.

11.     First Reformed

Director: Paul Schrader

Starring: Ethan Hawke, Amanda Seyfried, and Cedric the Entertainer.

If you know me you know I am a sucker for movies that love to tackle the light and easy questions like faith, doubt, God, and human responsibility. First Reformed joins an elect club of fantastic movies from the 2010’s that takes these themes seriously (Tree of Life, Silence, Higher Ground etc.). Writer/Director Paul Schrader, who grew up in the Reformed Christian tradition, tells an agonizingly honest portrait of a pastor who experiences a crisis of faith. As a pastor myself, the scenes of him doing ministry were all too familiar, and the theological debates reminded me of my Facebook profile during my deconstruction. Ethan Hawke delivers the best performance of his career, and his Oscar snub is one of the most criminal in my lifetime. Schrader tells the story with an incredible visual flare that rivals anything else he has done, and the ending will stay in your mind for days after the credits role. If you are a fan of Taxi Driver, if you love movies that deep-dive into faithfulness and doubt, First Reformed is a must see.

There's Still Time to be Surprised

Still the Seasons Change.

I was walking along the bike path near my house one fall evening. The sun was setting quickly, as it tends to do during autumns in Springfield, Oregon. The leaves crunched under my feet, the crisp air chilled my face, and I was walking with all the brooding of a Green Day music video. I needed the air, I needed the outside. I had spent so much of that week feeling trapped inside my emotions that I needed to feel like I could get somewhere, anywhere. So, I walked playing the last couple days over in my head. Days filled with some of the worst depression I felt in years.

I remembered how the night before, I left my house in a state of rage and fear after a small argument with Kelsey. Talk about making a mountain out of a moll-hill. I contemplated the ways in which joy and peace felt inaccessible to me, and wondered in my soul: “How long, O Lord?” This pattern was getting too familiar. How long would depression follow me? How long was I expected to put up with this? I wondered if I could continue to do my job. I don’t know any pastors who were fighting depression. I wondered if I was a burden to my wife, who has had to deal with my bouts of sadness as long as we have been married. I wondered why, in that moment, it felt like God would just let anything happen.

I approached a bench on the path, and sat on it. I tried talking down my emotions. “You’re going to be okay. Your brain just isn’t producing the serotonin it needs to calm your amygdala (the part of the brain responsible for fear and anger). Your new medicine will help you. You won’t feel this way forever.” Sometimes understanding why you feel as terrible as you do is all you need to feel a little better. This was not one of those times. So, I remembered what a few of the guys from my small group always tell me when I feel like I’m drowning, “Invite God into your process. Get new input.”

I bow my head and repeat over and over the ancient prayer from our Eastern brothers and sisters: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me.” Tears fill my eyes as my consciousness enters into the Presence. I don’t feel joy, I don’t feel the depression lifted, but I feel an internal warmth. Spirit is with me, even in my sorrow. Not taking me out of my pain, but getting me through it. I look up and see a tree in front of a brilliant purple and pink sunset.

About half the leaves had fallen from of this tree, leaving the remaining half dry and withered. They too will soon fall. I see the tree and think of how just a few months ago it was full, bright, and green. This tree looked how I felt. But then another thought occurred to me… in time, Spring will come. This tree will be restored to its glory and beauty. Soon, the tree will be dead, but not long after it will be resurrected. The seasons change.

The depression is here for now, but it won’t be here forever. It seems as if depression will always come, but it always manages to go, too. And like it or not, that’s the cycle. That’s the divine system. Some people may experience one season longer than the others, but in this life, we all enter into some sort of death, and we all receive resurrection.

In John 15, Jesus tells his disciples they are intimately connected to him, like branches to a vine, but he also said they needed to be pruned. Pruning means cutting, reshaping, and removing what diminishes vitality. When we look at a Vineyard after it’s been pruned we can hardly believe it will ever bear fruit. Yet, when the harvest comes, we realize that all that pruning allowed the vines to concentrate their energy and produce more grapes. I don’t think God causes my depression. I don’t think God dreamed of me having a wounded brain. I sincerely believe that is a result of the curse on creation until Jesus comes back to right all wrongs. But, the redemptive purposes of my Creator see to it that while I’m in the shadowlands he prunes me.

So, I take a deep breath. I dry my eyes. I look at the tree, and rather than seeing a dying plant, I behold a thing of beauty. It is withering, yet still the seasons change. This allows me to see myself as a thing of beauty. My depression is a liar, always telling me things will never change, but Spirit continues to whisper mercy to my soul. She guides me, heals me, and prunes me. Spirit tells me “This is not the end, and there’s still time to be surprised.”