The Movie Magistrate (2025)

All the 2018 films I saw, ranked from worst to best. This will probably be the last time I do one of these, so thank you to those who have read them so far.

85. Holmes & Watson

I suppose the best way to judge a movie that sells itself as a comedy is to note how often you laughed. Well I counted here; I chuckled twice (once during a scene where John C. Reilly tries to commune telepathically for the first time, and once during an Elephant Man reference that none of the fat mouth-breathers in the audience got), and there were three moments thatalmostworked. For example, a scene where Reilly and an American doctor played by Rebecca Hall make saucy gestures at each other while licking cake off a cadavercouldhave been funny if the scene had kept going and got grosser and sillier, but they just stop before the bit really got going. It’s these few moments that lead me to conclude that while the film has some decent comedy ideas, it was written and directed by someone who has seen a lot of comedies but has no idea how to make one themselves.

The problem is that the film just doesn’t have a consistent direction in how it wants to be funny. A comedy like this should either be committed to your standard setup/punchline jokes and situations based on a storyline, or to the anarchic stupidity of something like “Step Brothers”. Instead it tries to find some awkward middle ground between the two, flipping back and forth between painfully dragged-out improv riffing, trying to have an actual plot, or relying on stupid slapstick or potty humor, which it doesn’t even do right. Compare the puking scene here, where Will Ferrell is squeamish at a morgue and quickly vomits in a garbage can before dry heaving several times after, to the scene in “Team America: World Police”, which goes so far and so long in projectile vomiting that it becomes arguably the funniest scene ever made about bodily fluids. One works because it gradually escalates the joke, the other fails because it just repeats it to diminishing effect. The plot about Holmes and Watson trying to foil the Queen’s assassination is toilet-paper thin (which is appropriate since that’s what the script was probably written on, and I don’t mean with a pen), so the film feels slow and disjointed as they get themselves from one “whacky” situation to another.

I didn’t expect the film to be good (at all), but after watching it, it’s astounding to see the level of talent that gets wasted on this crap. An impressive supporting cast including Hall, Lauren Lapkus, Steve Coogan, Kelly Macdonald, Hugh Laurie (in a one-minute scene where he’s not even asked to stand up) and RALPH GODDAMN FIENNES are all left to flounder as they desperately try to mine something funny out of this pathetic material. Reilly is likeable and pretty funny, but in a reflection of the film’s plot, he’s constantly held down by Will Ferrell, who is just awful here. Ferrell has a habit of being the least funny person in his movies, but it’s just embarrassing how unfunny he is here. Ferrell was frequently gold on SNL, but his movie career just shows how he’s best in limited doses. His annoying British accent only exacerbates the scenes where he just keeps talking in hopes that he’ll find something funny to say, like he’s at a comedy show and there’s a gunman forcing him to stay on stage.

Really, the only positives I can say about my experience watching this film was that it was only 90 minutes long, and that I didn’t spend any money on the ticket. My friend with whom I saw the movie put it best; “If I was from the Midwest, and grew up on a farm, and was retarded, I’d probably find ‘Holmes & Watson’ very funny.” As it is, the funniest part of the film was when the ticket-boy told us to “enjoy the movie”.

84. The Hurricane Heist

No, this is not some Sy-Fy Original Movie that I caught on TV while half passed-out on vodka and Xanax. This was an actual motion picture released in theaters (shockingly not in January, Hollywood’s usual dumping ground), was directed by experienced action director Rob Cohen, and has actors that…well, that belong in a Sy-Fy original movie. Starring Victor Von Doom from “Fant4stic”, the daughter from “Taken”, and the dad from “The VVitch”, “The Hurricane Heist” tells the tale of a group of thieves that rob a US Treasury facility during a Category 5 storm, and of the brave Treasury agent and a dorky meteorologist who try to stop them.

Obviously this isn’t highbrow art, but at least having an actual director ought to make this schlocky good fun, right? The thing is, this movie is not only really boring (thanks in no small part to that star-studded cast, and a script that feels like it’s been kicking around Hollywood dustbins for a couple of decades), it’s actually so aggressively stupid that it goes too far and becomes anger-inducing. The biggest problem is that the thieves opt for a non-lethal heist, subduing and tying up the treasury agents to finish their mission. The mission itself is to steal money that was going to be destroyed anyway, so it’s not like anyone would miss it. They’re about to subdue the Treasury agent, when she is “rescued” by the meteorologist, and their subsequent attempts to stop the thieves lead to many people getting killed. It’s the sheer fucking idiocy of this premise that not only makes the protagonists impossible to root for, it makes the movie as a whole feel kind of mean-spirited and hard to enjoy. It’s a shame, because you could tell Cohen at least tried to maximize his modest $30 million budget by including lots of real stunts and practical effects, especially in the finale, but the utter disdain I had for this film’s story shut that admiration down.

The sole moment of fun I had in this movie is when a character threw a hubcap into the air and the gale-force winds cause it to impale a bad guy down the street. The rest was just my initial sense of excitement at seeing fun trash slowly wither away into angry boredom and eventually outright contempt. Put it this way; I’m the type of guy who likes seeing films called “The Hurricane Heist”, and

even I can’t recommend this garbage.

83. Vice

I remember seeing Adam McKay’s previous recent-history satire “The Big Short” back in 2015 and liking it a lot, but now after seeing his follow-up “biopic” about Dick Cheney, I’m seriously reconsidering it. To say that “Vice” is bad is an understatement; it’s so bad, so atrociously fucking awful, that it actually lessens my opinion of an unrelated movie that I genuinely liked.

I said “biopic” in sarcastic quotation marks because while the basic narrative is about Dick Cheney’s rise from alcoholic college dropout to arguably the most powerful VP in American history, the film is actuallymuch more interested in the same 4th-wall-breaking meta-commentary from “The Big Short”, just with a more smug, lecture-y vibe to it. “Vice” doesn’t just want you to know the evil shit that Cheney has done; it wants you to know how stupid you are for not knowing it and for “letting” it happen, and worse, how clever it thinks it is for telling you. Considering how I was age 6-14 during the Bush administration, I figure the film is less for me and more for the people who were adults at the time. Hindsight’s 20/20, but that’s not good enough for Adam McKay, who seems to insinuate that we should have stormed the White House with pitchforks and torches and lynched Cheney as soon as we invaded Iraq. Pretty much any time it stops being a film about characters and their interactions and more about narration and jokey asides (which is very often), it becomes insufferably smug. It’s worth noting that I agree with a lot of the film’s politics, but I hate its approach and condescending nature so much that it makes me want to vote Republican out of spite.

It’s a shame, because there are hints of a good movie buried underneath all the bullshit. When the film actually focuses on characters talking and plotting and contemplating, it’s actually somewhat engrossing. This is chiefly due to the cast and how good they are at embodying their roles. Christian Bale in particular is captivating as Cheney, giving one of his most subtle but impressive performances as a quiet, ambitious bureaucrat whose greed and lust for power takes him to the top. I was particularly surprised that the film even humanizes him at parts, showing him to be a loving father and husband during the scenes with his family (the best scene in the movie is where his daughter Mary comes out to her parents). But even these flashes of quality are undone by the film’s lack of interest inwhoCheney is. I can’t recall a single time where the film attempts to explain his motivations for the things he did in office, or what he’s trying to accomplish in the end, because again, the film is more interested in lecturing the audience in how they should feel about it, rather than giving us a reason to care.

And even if you like being talked down toanddon’t care about story and characters, the film is a mess, both structurally and visually. The plot is fairly linear, narrated by a character played by Jesse Plemons whose eventually-revealed connection to Cheney almost made my eyes roll out of my head, but is frequently interrupted by cutesy visual asides, flashbacks, and archival news footage which just feel like band-aids for a script that doesn’t know how to tell a story through characters and dialogue. And my god, does the film look like absolute shit. If you liked the shaky-cam/close-up visual “style” of “The Big Short”, you’ll be pleased to hear that McKay’s already-crappy eye for visuals has developed cataracts. Even the editing feels like it was done by an adolescent, scenes frequently ending on a character beginning a sentence, like the film is trying to cut on a joke that isn’t even funny.

Speaking of which, while he handled mixing comedy and tragedy much better in “The Big Short”, McKay’s smug attitude and desire to lecture only exacerbate the film’s jarring shifts in tone, showing Steve Carrell hamming it up in his Prison Mike voice as Donald Rumsfeld in one scene, and showing on-the-ground footage of 9/11 in another. You could splice a scene from “Cannibal Holocaust” into “Ralph Breaks the Internet” and it would still feel more nuanced and less jarring than “Vice”.

If you want to know what kind of movie this is, there’s a part where the narrator tells you that Cheney’s story isn’t some Shakespearian tragedy, only to be followed by an entire 2-3 minute scene showing Cheney and his wife reciting Macbeth verbatim, and it took a concentrated effort from me to now walk out of the theater. If you can put up with all of the negatives I’ve mentioned (or if you’re dumb and think they’re positives), there are some clever, touching, and illuminating moments in the film. But ultimately, the film was just too tedious and condescending for me to recommend. I ended the film glad that it was finally over. My friend and I were a little paralyzed from how bored we were, so we sat there for a minute trying to work up the energy to get up and leave, only to be surprised by a mid-credits scene. I will not describe this scene, and I encourage you to seek out yourself, because it is *the* single most stupid and cringe-worthy thing I’ve ever seen in a motion picture.

82. Hidden Man

Ever watch something that you can tell from the get-go was not meant for you? Like an extremely niche porno such as one where the participants spout obscure 4chan memes? Even though you know someone’s getting off to this, you’re just sitting there, confused and kind of wanting the ordeal to be over. Well, unlike “Meme Lover 2: Dawn of JUST”, the Chinese period-action film “Hidden Man” was most definitely not for me, and left me feeling like I needed to shower afterwards, not so much from dirtying myself, but from sitting in a crowd of people who were definitely getting a bit sweaty themselves.

The film comes to us from China, the same country that brought us last year’s testosterone-fueled insanity “Wolf Warrior 2”, and is about a man who, as a young boy, watched his master and his family get murdered by two gangsters, vowing revenge and embarking on it 20 years later in 1930’s Japanese-occupied China. If you think it’s a straightforward revenge film, think again; the plot is a convoluted mess involving gangsters, corrupt cops, Japanese military, spying, mistaken identity, romance, cuckoldry, father figures and what could charitably be described as “comedy”. Saying this film is tonally inconsistent is like saying the Germans were poor houseguests in the rest of Europe circa 1941. “Hidden Man” veers on a dime between absurd comedy, cheesy prolonged melodrama, references to older movies, and the occasional over-the-top action scene, with no regards for pacing or proper progression in plot. It’s like a Tarantino film minus the subtlety and restraint.

And speaking of Tarantino, this film has every bit of racism that your average Quantum Tortellini film has, only without the irony or remembering that thebad guysare supposed to be the racist ones. I’ve lost count how many times the film and its characters trash the Japanese and their culture. It even has the main character’s adopted father, a white American dude who speaks fluent Chinese, casually giving a whole speech about how the “Japs” have never known defeat and need to be humbled, like an Allied version of the “White Man’s Burden”, and treats it like we’re supposed to cheer that. I mean, fair enough; if anyone has a right to be cross at the Japanese, it’s the Chinese, but including this so prominently in a ridiculous revenge action-comedy and it having no effect on the main story smacks of trying to eat one’s racism cake and choosing not to digest it.

There is not a single character in the film to latch onto, because all of them are just as inconsistent as the movie itself. Is the main character an aloof, smooth-taking badass who’s focused on revenge, or is he a whiny little bitch with daddy issues with a tendency towards randomly monologue-ing whatever theme the film thinks of at the time? Is his mentor for the latter half of the film a clever underworld crime figure that subtly manipulates the strings of everyone else, or is he a buffoonish comic relief side-character that regularly gets his ass handed to him? Why does the film go on for so long but offer so little progression? Between the main character arriving and the finale where he gets his revenge, almost nothing noteworthy happens. It’s wheel-spinning masquerading as build-up. It’s just going from one character to another, with the main guy cracking jokes, yelling, crying, or jumping around on rooftops, like if “Assassin’s Creed” was a cross between a soap opera and a fever dream. The level of agonizing, pointless repetition in this film is worthy of Tommy Wiseau, and fuck you, I don’t mean that as a good thing. This isn’t so much writing as it is vomiting onto a jumbled rough draft for a comic book written by a racist 13-year-old with ADHD and a tire-iron lodged in his skull. And while the action scenes are reasonably fun, they don’t come into the film until like the last 15-20 minutes, and by that point they’re too-little-way-too-late. At almost two-and-a-half hours, this film feels like a joke that isn’t all that funny going on for about an hour longer than it should, and when I’m in the theater, practically begging for the film to end, it’s hard to squeeze out a recommendation.

I saw this film in the Toronto Film Festival with a mainly Chinese crowd, and they were sure as hell having a good time, guffawing at every silly death and bit of melodramatic acting and dig at the Japanese. And I admit, the occasional funny moment or whacky visual kept me intrigued and hopeful that the film’s payoff will be worth it, but it wasn’t. In the end, I lack either the cultural connection, the patience, or the retardation to enjoy “Hidden Man”. I appreciate certain parts of the film, like the committed cast and the onscreen energy and the costume design, so I don’t exactlyhatethe film, even if I hated watching it. I just concede that it isn’t for me, and I perfectly understand that some people might enjoy “Hidden Man”, even if disagreeing with me in any way whatsoever makes you WRONG and STUPID and FAT and I HATE YOU.

81. The Cloverfield Paradox

Between the pretty good “Cloverfield” and the excellent follow-up “10 Cloverfield Lane”, JJ Abrams’ small sci-fi anthology series seemed like one of the most promising film franchises going. JJ Abrams’ showmanship as a producer served well in the marketing for these films, tantalizing audiences with vague-but-cool trailers and viral marketing that really enhanced the mysterious and unpredictable nature of these films. When JJ dropped the film announcement and the trailer in the middle of the Super Bowl and told the world the new Cloverfield film was available to stream on Netflix after the game, it seemed like the most audacious mic drop in recent Hollywood history. It was easy to get caught up in the excitement and forget that most direct-to-Netflix films are trash that are dumped there by studios for fear that they won’t make their money back in theaters, and unfortunately that realization came into fruition as I watched the movie. I’m going into spoiler territory, so if you actually want to see this film and want to be surprised by its badness, skip to the last paragraph.

The mystery was one of the most tantalizing aspects from the two films, both in their own stories and how they might connect, but I can’t have been the only one that hoped any connection between the Cloverfield films would go unexplained. After all, what mystery doesn’t lose its zeal once the truth has been revealed? If anything, I’d have liked the movies to be completely distinct anthology films, “Twilight Zone”-style (that’s “Black Mirror”-style if you’re stupid) with no connection whatsoever, opening up an unlimited potential to make far-out science fiction on a studio budget. Anyway, Paradox ruins this by pretty much explaining the connection between the three films, so that while re-watching the first two films you won’t help but think about what’s going on in a bigger picture. Which at least wouldn’t be so bad if the bigger picture was interesting, but the movie feels like someone dug through JJ Abram’s wastepaper bin and made a film out of his rejected ideas.

The movie just can’t figure out how to handle its material. Once the crew arrives in the alternate universe, weird things start to happen in the ship. They find a stranger embedded in the tubes inside a wall; a crew member gets all the display case worms transported inside their digestive system; another character dies through some sort of sentient synthetic tendril. These occurrences give the impression that the ship is alive and is attacking the crew, haunted house-style, but this literally leads nowhere and it’s just forgotten about near the end. It wasn’t enough that these people transported themselves to an alternate-universe (which I’m fine with as a sci-fi concept) and are trying to repair a ship that’s falling apart to get back home; the film also feels the need to take some shitty pseudo-horror approach to desperately try and make stuff happen in order to fill the feature-length runtime.

Speaking of, there’s also a subplot about the lead character’s husband on Earth that is completely pointless except to give more insidious tie-ins to the previous films, and as a further insult, it just kind of just ends without resolution.

The cast deserves better than this. This is a prime example of good actors being let down by their material. Poor Chris O’Dowd is stuck being the comic relief with a dull script that’s utterly devoid of funny lines. Gugu Mbatha-Raw has the only good character, a scientist with a tragic past who has an actual moral conflict in the film, and she almost makes the film work through sheer performative power of will…almost. Elizabeth Debicki also tries really hard to make her character undergo a believable transformation from sympathetic engineer to mad villain, but writing-wise the transition is about as smooth and subtle as a half-whittled wooden dildo. Everyone else just kind of flounders around in the dull void of “We Have Nothing for You to Do Except Deliver Exposition and Die”.

It’s not enough that this film it’s bad; it also attaches itself to the good movies in the series and saps their life from them. “The Cloverfield Paradox” is the first movie I’ve seen that’s so bad that it actually makes other movies worse by association. While something like “Die Hard 5” resembles a cancerous tumor, at least I could mentally excise it from existence and enjoy the other four films. If you’ve seen and loved “10 Cloverfield Lane” like I have, avoid this film like the plague that it is. The nicest thing I can say about the film is that it’s somewhat watchable thanks to Mbatha-Raw’s performance and the fast pace racing through all the bullshit, but even that is ruined by the final few seconds of the film, one of the most mind-numbingly stupid finales I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Good soundtrack, though.

80. Mute

Duncan Jones’ debut film “Moon”, a deliciously sad and thought-provoking movie about a lonely Sam Rockwell having an emotional breakdown while working as a maintenance man on the moon, is one of my favorite sci-fi movies. And despite his movies since then getting progressively shittier, they still had enough good that made me excited for “Mute”, a long-developed “spiritual successor” to his breakout opus that is also set in the same universe, centering about a mute bartender looking for his missing girlfriend in futuristic Berlin.

I sat down to watch it, and as my previously fully-erect, moody-cyberpunk-loving penis steadily deflated, I realized that this is possibly the most pointless movie I’ve ever seen. The movie constantly introduces characters, backstories, and plot-points that hold your attention and make you think it’ll all lead somewhere interesting, but it just…doesn’t. It kind of just ends, leaving you sitting there bored, bewildered, and with your pants down. It’s like the film is a metaphor for Duncan Jones desperately trying to find the missing point, not aware it’s been dead the whole time (whoops, spoilers). I’m not saying every film needs a message or moral or deep philosophical disposition, but if it’s not entertaining (which “Mute” isn’t) then the whole movie feels like an explorer setting sail and sinking while trying to reach an island that doesn’t exist.

I don’t feel like writing a straightforward review of the movie, so I’ll just write it as a series of Why’s. There are many more than what I have, but I don’t feel like remembering the film more than I have to. The film isn’t really worth watching to understand most of these questions, so this is just for the poor souls who have seen it:

Why is the main character Amish? This isn’t a twist (it’s established early on), but what is the point of him being Amish? He’s not tech-savvy or anything, but he figures out technology fairly quick and without problem when he starts searching for his girlfriend, and it’s not like the finale hinges on him churning-enough butter to grease himself through a tight vent or quickly building a barn to contain a team of cyberhorses or something wonderfully stupid like that. It’s not to show him as lonely/isolated, because he has a loving girlfriend, and the movie even makes a point that Amish people have recently started moving to Berlin. It’s like Duncan Jones was trying to think of how to make him stand out and landed on the first random trait that came to mind.

Why are Amish people moving to a neon-lit, futuristic Berlin?

Why is the movie set in futuristic Berlin? Pretty much all the characters speak English, and there’s nothing thematic or plot-related that necessitates the futuristic setting. I mean sure, it’s pretty and Jones still has an eye for visuals, but it just makes it feel like a story-deficient “Blade Runner” knock-off someone would have made in the 80’s if that movie wasn’t a box office flop.

Why is the main character mute? I don’t remember any part of the movie where his lack of a voice hinders him, and again, it doesn’t really make him more isolated, since people pretty freely spout their life story at him and there’s only a handful of times when others make fun of him for it. When the reason behind your film’s title is pointless, it’s not a good look. As an alternate title, may I suggest “Mr. Sadface and the Hunt for the Missing Story”?

Why was the girl so in love with the main character? Fair enough, when you look like Alexander Skarsgard, you probably beat off passing members of the opposite sex with a stick on your morning commute, but he has no personality beyond looking sad, confused or angry, so she’d be just as well dating me while I’m watching “Mute”. She mentions something like “he’s a really good guy”, but that’s something you tell your friends when they inquire why you’re seeing someone who’s completely boring.

Why is the film set in the same universe as “Moon”? It only has one brief glimpse on a TV of Sam Rockwell’s character, and there’s a token visual reference late in the film to a company name, so it all bears as much relevance to the film as a name-drop.

Why does the film spend so much time with the villains? (I actually know why; it’s because no one story in this film is interesting enough to sustain a feature-length running time, so it just frequently veers between the main character and the villains)

Why is one of the two main villains a pedophile?

Why did Duncan Jones think “I chopped your girlfriend’s tits off and wore them as fucking earmuffs” was a good enough line of dialogue to include in the film?

Why did I think a Netflix original movie would be good?

79. Bohemian Rhapsody

Look, I could talk about how I’m not that interested in the personal/backstage lives of musicians.

I could talk about how I like Queen but am not madly in love with their music.

I could talk about Sacha Baron Cohen’s original involvement and how the band’s desire for a sanitized, legacy-preserving, PG-13 version of the story led to him leaving the project (for worse).

I could talk about Rami Malek and how he does a good impression of Freddie Mercury but how I always felt like I was watching a caricature rather than an actual embodiment of one of rock’s greatest frontmen (and how those fake teeth were distracting and stupid-looking).

I could make some tasteless joke about director Brian Singer’s fondness for putting his finger inside skinny gay boys of questionably legal age.

And I could talk about the fact that I inadvertently attended a sing-along screening of the film, and how the crowd I was with wasn’t even all that into it, which made it even worse.

But ultimately, the main takeaway is that any musical biopic in a post-“Walk Hard” world that still aggressively follows this “humble beginnings à success à ego/drama/break-up à reuniting for a great show” formula without any irony is doomed to bore me to tears, even if it weren’t 135 fucking minutes long.

A more appropriate title would be “Another One Bites the Dust”.

78. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

For the record, I didn’t see “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” thinking it would be good. Much like “Jurassic World”, I just wanted to see some fun schlock about dinosaurs running amok and eating folks. Sure, it’s a formula that has more than run its course in the past 3 decades, but at least it might prove an inoffensive time-killer. Well, Universal somewhat subverted my expectations, by actually deviating from the formula a little bit. While the first hour of the film concerns a group of people traveling to the dino island to rescue them before a volcano erupts and re-extincts them, the 2nd half takes a really weird turn into a large mansion involving shady dino-auctions and eventually a genetically engineered raptor breaking loose and killing folks.

This structure basically results in 2 really disjointed hour-long movies, both of them feeling incredibly rushed. Sure, it makes charging through all the garbage easier, but it feels like they half-assed two things instead of whole-assing one thing. And man, is the film garbage and half-assed. Putting aside the pedestrian script, the human characters in this are the stupidest and most illogical human beings I’ve ever seen in a monster movie. Why would the smarmy head of a billion-dollar company decide to illegally auction off dinosaurs to arms dealers, despots, and shady CEOs in order to raise what is probably chump change for his company? Why would anyone even buy dinosaurs with the intent of weaponizing them when, y’know, guns and tanks exist? Why would anyone even want to keep breeding carnivorous dinosaurs after 4 fucking movies have shown the fallacy of doing such a thing? Why do any of the protagonists so willingly trust characters that are clearly evil? Why can’t the characters (or script) decide whether dinosaurs are beautiful creatures that are worth saving or horrific monsters that must be destroyed? Why is there almost no security in the secret underground lab and literally none in the holding cells area the characters find themselves imprisoned in? This is genuinely the stupidest film I’ve seen all year (maybe a few years), and that’s saying something.

I wouldn’t even mind the stupidity if it was at least fun or contained an ounce of self-awareness, but “Fallen Kingdom” is just so boring, because after a while the stupidity became so predictable and the complete lack of interest in the characters or story made it impossible to get engaged. I genuinely had a hard time sitting through this film, especially in the second half. It’s legit the first time I’ve ever watched a movie at home and went to the bathroom without bothering to pause the film first.

The film is not entirely without merit, so let’s get the good out of the way quickly before the killing blow; Michael Giacchino’s score is great, J.A. Bayona is a much better visual filmmaker than his predecessor Colin Trevorrow and actually made a good-looking film here, and like I said earlier, the rushed pacing at least means you can get to the finish line without too much effort. But with that out of the way, this is one of the most aggressively cynical, cheap, and mean-spirited summer blockbusters I’ve ever seen. Every single aspect of this movie just feels so calculated and exploitative, like it’s secretly determined to quash any ounce of wonder and joy that this franchise provided. Too bad that most people don’t notice the irony of watching a greedy, corporate film that’s about the evils of corporate greed. The only poignant and affecting moment in the film, where the characters leave the island and have to watch a

lone brachiosaurus succumb to the encroaching volcano ash, is also the scene that’s most emblematic of

the film as a whole; your childhood is dead, buried under a cloud of cynicism and greed. Also, fuck Blue.

77. Operation Red Sea

Last year’s “Wolf Warrior 2” was a racist and ultra-violent piece of Chinese military propaganda about an elite military man who, after foiling a cargo ship hijacking by Somali pirates, gets sent to a war-torn African country to rescue some Chinese nationals from rebels and mercs, and it became the highest-grossing movie of all time in China. 2018’s “Operation Red Sea” is a racist and ultra-violent piece of Chinese military propaganda about an elite military unit who, after foiling a cargo ship hijacking by Somali pirates, gets sent to a war-torn African country to rescue some Chinese nationals from terrorist rebels, and it became the second-highest grossing film of all time in China.

It’s pretty obvious what tickle’s Chinese audiences’ collective prostate, but in addition to the effect of diminishing returns, “Operation Red Sea” is just nowhere near as insane or funny (intentional or otherwise) as “Wolf Warrior 2”. Where the latter was aping macho 80’s action movies, this one just apes virtually every American war movie of the past few decades. Where the latter had a groan-worthy sense of humor with really obvious characters and clichés, this one has no sense of humor at all. And finally, where “Wolf Warrior 2” had the charismatic Jackie Chan-meets-Tom Cruise flair of writer/director/star Wu Jing, this just has some lesser-known Chinese actors being forced to play po-faced soldiers who at any given moment are either shooting people, or professing their love of country and hatred of terrorists.

Its boring attitude towards its story and characters is only exacerbated by how excruciatingly long and bloated it is. The action scenes (while admittedly pretty well-shot and edited, with top-notch production values) just go on forever, and mainly consist of people shooting other people. It’s only when something silly and action-y happens (a car riding sideways on a wall before hitting a sign and somersaulting, or a tank battle in the middle of a sandstorm) does the film briefly come alive. There’s absolutely no reason for a movie like this to be 2.5 hours long, unless Chinese audiences just get off on seeing Middle-Eastern terror men getting blown to bits or other forms of needlessly graphic carnage.

Like last year’s piece of blockbuster propaganda, the film is excessive in pretty much every way you can imagine, but while “Wolf Warrior 2” was nationalistic, offensive and ridiculous to the point where it bordered on self-parody, “Operation Red Sea” does almost exactly the same thing but plays it completely straight, ironically becoming the bigger joke.

76. Mile 22

In the past, I’ve called Peter Berg a good action director (“The Rundown” was a really fun action flick and his 3 recent tragedy-porn thrillers were at least well-made and exciting), so with his newest outing “Mile 22”, it feels like either he’s either purposely taken an approach to make his film awful in almost every way in a Producers-esque scam, or he just had a massive stroke but still insisted on directing the film, drool steadily dripping down his chin.

Starring everyone’s favorite hate-crime committer Mark Wahlberg, the plot is about a mentally unstable agent leading a secret CIA paramilitary unit on a mission to extract a high-value informant from an unnamed Southeast Asian country while being hunted by local government assassins (maybe?). The plot hardly matters (it’s just one team trying to get from point A to point B without dying) but it’s genuinely worrying the degree to which the writer of the film agrees with me. No attempt is made to explain the people hunting Wahlberg’s team or why they’re doing it, no characters show any growth or emotional arc, the film cuts away to a group of Russians doing shady stuff every now and again without explaining their purpose until the ending, and the dialogue consists entirely of swearing and techno-thriller lingo. This script feels like 2 pages of a rough draft of a “Call of Duty” game stretched out to (mercifully only) 90 minutes. The film literally has to bring in John Malkovich wearing the most unnecessary wig in history about 30 minutes in just so he can explain the plot to everyone.

Ultimately, a film like this lives or dies on its action scenes. Are you unfortunate enough to remember “Taken 3”, and how the action scenes had a cut every 0.5 seconds to try to hide the fact that 60-year-old Liam Neeson couldn’t fight, and then added even more cuts to make the film “exciting” and “intense”? I wouldn’t say the editing in “Mile 22” is as bad as that, but it’s easily the worst I’ve seen since “Taken 3”. What makes it more painful however is that starring as the informant is Iko Uwais, the ass-kicking Indonesian star of “The Raid” and its sequel. This guy is easily the best genuine action star that Berg has ever worked with, and whose clear athleticism and even acting charisma is hampered by the aforementioned editing. It’s like the film is trying to hide the fact that this guycanfight, so he doesn’t make Marky Mark look so lame (though his flannel-shirt, black jacket combo does a plenty good job of that). Oh yeah, and the film has Ronda Rousey in it, and not only doesn’t give her any hand-to-hand fight scenes, it also just needlessly kills her off halfway through the movie. I’m guessing Walhberg (who also produced) was just jealous of anyone who could kick his ass in real life and decided to hamper their screen presence.

Surprisingly, the film’s saving grace is actually Wahlberg himself. His character is a bipolar savant and ex-soldier who at any given moment is either berating people, snapping a rubber-band on his wrist, or shooting a gun. He is such an irredeemable prick to every single person around him (including his team) that he actually becomes really fun to watch. There’s a scene where he’s yelling at his team during a debrief, when someone brings Rousey’s character a small cake for her birthday, and Wahlberg knocks if off the table, breaking both the plate and the cake, before yelling “No birthday cake. NO BIRTHDAY CAKE”. Later in the film, after risking his life and going out of his way to save a team member from being killed, he says something like “Get a move on. We just wasted 10 fucking minutes saving your ass”.

By almost all accounts, this is one of the worst action movies I’ve ever seen, but I got such a kick out of watching Mark Wahlberg being a completely unrelenting asshole to literally everyone he interacts with that I couldn’t help but have fun watching this garbage, so if the thought of seeing Mark Wahlberg running amok in Southeast Asia gives you some perverse glee, gather some friends and enjoy making fun of this film. I guess this counts as me plopping out a recommendation, even if some of it gets stuck and I have to wipe it out and there ends up being some blood on the toilet paper.

Sorry, that metaphor got away from me a bit.

75. White Boy Rick

I forgot to log this film in my list for two months after I saw it, and it was only after looking through 2018’s releases on Wikipedia did I notice “White Boy Rick” sticking out. Since I was genuinely struggling to remember whether I saw it or not, I decided to keep this review short because from what little I remember, the movie isn’t worth the brain power. It has the same rise-and-fall structure of every crime movie made after “Goodfellas”, this time centering on Richard Wershe Jr., who after working for his low-rent gun-running dad, became a Detroit drug kingpin and eventual FBI informant all before the age of 18. My problem with the film, other than how bland and forgettable it is due to the most rudimentary screenplay of the year, is that the film tries to portray Rick as a tragic and heroic victim of his own circumstances who only dealt drugs to support his family, acting like he’s an innocent victim of the system. While this might be true to an extent, the film really goes out of its way to take away his personal responsibility for his crimes (even ending with audio of the real Rick talking about his family and how he was screwed). Like, if he was dealing pot or Adderall, fine, but this little fucker was dealing heroin and coke to a 1980’s Detroit that was already more in shambles than it is today. Pretty much the only things keeping the film afloat are the grimy visual style and Matthew McConaughey’s performance as Rick’s dad, bringing gravitas to the character while not shying away from his sleaziness. This is one of Matty Mac’s better performances, and he tries so hard that he almost makes the film worth watching. But ultimately, if you’ve seen any crime movie in the last three decades, you’ve seen “White Boy Rick”.

74. Roma

“Oh, there goes Mike again,” you say. “Look at that contrarian tool put the most critically-acclaimed film of the year alongside stuff like ‘White Boy Rick’ and ‘Venom’. Isn’t he just soooo cool, the way he shits on the stuff everyone likes for a fleeting feeling of attention that can only briefly mask the pain of his own crippling insecurities?”

Well, you might be on to something (you prick), but that doesn’t change the fact that most of Roma bored me to tears.

Alfonso Cuarón’s story of Sofia, a maid for a middle-class family in early 1970’s Mexico City, is based on his own childhood and was made as a tribute to his housekeeper. Surely an intimate story like this would require him to tone down his directing and cinematography to something more grounded and personal, right? Well too bad, because Cuarón’s show-off camerawork and directing are on full display here. The film is filled to the brim with long takes that involve lots of background extras performing elaborate action, and almostnoneof it feels like it matters to the story or is used to enhance our viewpoint of his main character. What is the goddamn point of a shot where Sofia walks down a sidewalk at night and crosses the street, while tons of costumed extras walk around and drive period-era cars in the background, or another long-take where a man in an animal costume takes off his mask and starts singing while people try to put out a forest fire in the background (just two examples of many) other than Cuarón to announce “HEY LOOK AT ME DIRECT THIS, AREN’T YOU IMPRESSED”? Shut up about that “immersion” nonsense I hear critics gush about; I couldn’tstopthinking about how this is a film.

Maybe I could get immersed if the story wasn’t so minimal that LITERALLY NOTHING HAPPENS for the first hour and 40 minutes. I wish I was exaggerating, but it’s just these people living their lives normally for the length of an average movie. If you saw “Boyhood” and thought, “Yes, this is groundbreaking storytelling”, then “Roma” is the film for you. It’s only after 100 minutes where the film decides to drop absurd levels of tragedy out of nowhere onto Sofia where my eyes finally opened up, but it just came across as desperate. That bloody protest scene comes out of nowhere, and serves no purpose other than to get her to the hospital where she suffers another over-the-top calamity.

Maybe I wouldn’t mind the slow pace and eventual melodrama if Cuarón gave a shit enough about the main character to actually make her a character. Sofia is depicted as very timid and quiet, which would be fine if the camera allowed us to get close to her, but as we’ve established, Cuarón is too busy showing you how great he is, and he keeps the camera at a distance so we can better admire all the scenery and extras. So we have a character that isn’t expressive along with a director who won’t let us near her. We empathize with her because she’s kind and we sympathize for the awful things that suddenly happen to her, but you get the idea that Cuarón never really knew his maid that well and views her as more of a figure rather than an actual human being.

Roma is a great movie for people who pretend to love film. You can bang on about the (pointless) background details, and the (pointless) long takes, and the black-and-white cinematography (also pointless), and how pretty and impressive it all is, but the film simply missed the mark in connecting with me on any deeper level. The nicest thing I can say about it is that I didn’t hate watching it; the mise-en-scene creates a fairly absorbing atmosphere and the actors (especially lead Yalitza Aparicio) are so good and so natural that they make the film watchable. But don’t be fooled; “Roma” is ultimately a technical showcase with all the emotional depth of “Gravity”, just more pretentious and lacking any shots of Sandra Bullock in her underwear.

73. Venom

I’m getting pretty bored of writing the same stuff about mediocre superhero movies, so I’ll try to keep this concise. “Venom”, despite being ostensibly a Sony movie, has all the usual problems that plague the Marvel Cinematic Universe: bad CGI, a pointless and forced love interest, a lame and undeveloped villain, a boring 3rd act fight where two computer-generated things punch each other a lot, and frequent unfunny quips. But it also has its own problems, like poor writing, a contrived and rushed plot (according to Tom Hardy, 40 minutes or so of his favorite part of the movie was cut from the final film), a desperate lack of an R-rating, and a credit scene featuring Woody Harrelson in a stupid wig that genuinely feels like it was done as a joke. And unlike Marvel’s films, this doesn’t have the foundation of a solid cinematic universe to fall back on. Note: this film is supposed to kick off Sony’s own Marvelverse based around the Spider-Man characters they have the rights to, but without actually using Spider-Man. Point and laugh, kids.

That said, I didn’t hate the film. I was gonna be a smart-ass and say this is easily Hardy’s best role since Shinzon in “Star Trek: Nemesis”, but it cannot be overstated how much he saves this film. His performance as a broken, shabby dude who is rightfully freaking out over being taken over by an alien goo is frequently entertaining, with Hardy visibly straining to carry this film on his shoulders. And I liked the character of Venom; having thought he was just going to be some antagonistic force that takes control every now and again, I like that Venom has his own character and motivations, even if they aren’t all that deep. The core of the film is Tom Hardy’s performances as Eddie Brock and Venom, and the relationship between man and symbiote. And because that part is decent, “Venom” is actually watchable, despite literally everything else in the film being terrible. Get some friends together, have a few drinks, and sit back to make fun of this crap and you might just have a good time. And as weird as this sounds, all this movie’s flaws carry some sort of rough charm that makes it stand apart from a typical MCU film. It’s like watching a puppy eagerly try to catch a ball, but fail and face-plant into an expensive vase, causing it to break. You want to be mad, but it’s actually kind of cute.

72. Ready Player One

Ugh….

It’s with no small amount of resentment that I saw this movie. I tried reading the book some years back and made it through 20 pages of extremely tediously self-indulgent fanboy nostalgia before deciding to never pay it any attention ever again. When I saw it was being adapted, I said “Well, there’s something I wouldn’t see unless someone actually paid me to do it” but then I saw that it was being directed by none other than Steven motherfuckin’ Spielberg, one of cinemas purest and most gifted storytellers. I spent a few minutes agonizing over someone I greatly admire attaching his name to such awful source material before conceding that I’ll probably see it but I’ll be buggered before I pay money to do so. So one totally legal stream later, my verdict for the film is a resounding “Ugh….”

Look, it’s OK. Maybe a notch above mediocre. Spielberg couldn’t make a bad movie if he tried. The film packs plenty of visual flair and creativity, the score by Alan Silvestri feels like a nice throwback to his 80’s action scores, and the film sometimes has this fun adventurous spirit that dulls the pain of watching nostalgic, pop-culture obsessed fanfic. I found the IRL sections somewhat interesting, with all these people essentially living in a trashy dystopia that depends mainly on a bullshit video-game economy that would make an EA executive blush for being too fan-friendly. Too bad about the story and the characters.

The main character is a boring white dude named Wade Watts whose entire personality revolves around consuming pop-culture, so at least the audience of 30-year-old neckbeards this film was made for have someone to project onto. He has that author self-insert problem where he’s constantly the least interesting person onscreen, but almost the entire movie revolves around him. Any of his sidekicks would have made a more interesting protagonist, since they actually have personalities and ambitions. The icing on the Mary Sue cake is the love interest, who is an elite player herself and also a prominent member of a resistance movement against the evil corporation attempting to seize control of the game. When they meet in game, Wade falls in love with her very quickly (a funny comment about how much reclusive losers project onto others, intentional or not), but she rebukes him because they barely know each other, never met IRL, and she’s insecure about her looks. Turns out, when they do meet IRL, she’s actually a smoking hot young woman in her early 20’s, who feels unattractive because of a circular birthmark around her eye. But oh, don’t worry, Wade is such a not-shallow “good guy” that he still loves her despite that hideous deficiency.

The story is just a hunt for three digital MacGuffins that lead to a (literal) Golden Easter Egg which would grant ownership of the Oasis (the game and its universe) to whoever finds it. There’s a nice, obvious three-act story structure here, and it moves along at a decent pace, and only someone dragged down by the myriad of weightless pop-culture references and cameos, which almost all fell flat to me (I do admit to having a bit of a squirt seeing Starcraft’s Jim Raynor getting like 30 seconds of screen time). The film peaks at the middle when the characters are stuck in the hotel from “The Shining”, Spielberg having a great time recreating the creepy locale and scaring the characters. The problem with the film is that it just drags on too long, a feeling exacerbated by the unending 3rd act giant battle between pop-culture avatars and the evil corporation’s army. When I’m sitting there, covering my eyes, groaning for the allegedly “fun and exciting” climax to end, it’s generally not a good thing for your movie. I was completely worn out by the time Spielberg’s trademark schmaltz coated the ending like really thick and sticky marmalade, but hey, I’ll take Spielberg desperately trying to wring some genuine emotion instead of the source material’s masturbatory self-indulgence any day.

The fact that despite the lavish tonguing that the book gives him, Spielberg’s refusal to include any references to his own movies just reinforces how he’s too good for this crap. Like I said, he couldn’t make a bad movie if he tried, but it’s disappointing that he’s wasting his time with something like this instead of, I dunno….getting “Indiana Jones 5” finished while Harrison Ford is still alive and motivated enough to act by more embarrassing amounts of cash?

71. Solo: A Star Wars Story

I used to understand you, Star Wars fans. You had a trilogy of movies that were quite good, some quality video-games, and a solid selection of memes. While I never cared much for Star Wars, I can certainly understand a fan’s enthusiasm for their favorite franchise (most people I know have wanted to hit me to stop me from talking about “Mass Effect”). But I genuinely cannot think of a series that has lostmoreartistic integrity than your Star Wars. Putting aside how heavily merchandised the series was under George Lucas, at least his stupid and misguided ambition at least signified a desire to evolve or do things differently. Now, however, it seems that Disney’s acquisition has destroyed any chance “Star Wars” had to once again feel like art, rather than a product. Now instead of evolving or taking the series in a new direction, all Disney wants to do is keep Star Wars familiar and safe for the fans until the udder runs dry.

Take Disney’s firing of original “Solo” directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller, two guys known for their energetic, imaginative andvery funny comedies, for “creative differences” when they had already finished shooting most of the film. Sure, we’ll never know the precise things they wanted to do differently, but it’s easy to infer that their film was going to be an irreverent, self-aware comedy that would dare to stand out from past films. Why would you even hire these guys in the first place, knowing what kind of movies they make? Instead, they brought on poor Ron Howard, one of the most competent directors and nicest dudes in Hollywood, not so much to make his own Star Wars film but to salvage this one and take the blame for its failures.

The resulting film isexactlywhat you would expect a Han Solo origin movie to be. Chewy, Lando, Millenium Falcon, Kessel Run, shooting first, etc. But it’s downright obnoxious how much the film crowbars in to tie it into previous (and optimistically, future) Star Wars movies. References to Jabba, the dice, Correlia, and an absurd last-act cameo by a character that even the most ardent of Star Wars fans wouldn’t expect; all of these (and more) just add up to a movie that’s so desperate to be part of the big boys’ table (or rather, is forced to sit there) that it kind of ruins what should be the point of these anthology films, which is to flesh out the universe and make it bigger than the same core conflict and group of characters that have been Star Wars-ing it up since 1977. The desire to Marvel up the franchise with inter-connectivity has become downright desperate and cringeworthy. I suppose that was obvious from the get-go for a company that felt Han Soloneededan origin story, like his implied mysterious roguish past wasn’t enough. I’m fine with them making a young Han Solo film but just have him already be Han Solo, partnered with Chewy doing fun stuff; all the exposition does is get in the way of the fun. And for fuck’s sake, don’t explain his how he got the name Solo, andespeciallyfor fuck’s sake, don’t make the explanation as stupid as it is here.

It’s a shame, because once you get past all the garbage (and the awful, murky cinematography that made me wonder if the projector was malfunctioning), there’s actually a fairly decent movie underneath. The film largely eschews the mythos’ Light vs. Dark, Rebellion vs. Empire conflict and instead focuses on Han and a group of fellow criminals stealing starship fuel so that a crime boss won’t cap their ass, and the focus on the grimy underbelly of the Star Wars universe is most welcome. Since the plot is essentially a heist movie, it goes from set-piece to set-piece, all well-crafted by Ron Howard, who is easily the best action director the series has ever had.

Alden Ehrenreich is the surprise standout as Han, capturing the spirit of the character while still making it his own (matching young Harrison Ford in terms of charisma is impossible and I’m glad he didn’t just do an impression of Ford). A lot of fuss has been made about Donald Glover, but really, he’s just doing a really good Billy Dee Williams impression and his performance doesn’t feel unique in any way. Woody Harrelson is Woody Harrelson. Dragging the film down considerably is Emilia Clarke as Han’s love interest. I’m sure that she’s a wonderful person in real life, but between this and “Terminator: Genysis”,it feels like the quality of her acting ranges from “little kid acting like a grown-up in an elementary school play” to “competent but bland line-deliverer”. She’s just so damn boring in her role, and it’s a shame, because her character is not just typical forced demographic-appealing love interest. She and Han were young and in love but were tragically separated, and while he’s more or less the same dude, she’s changed a lot and became this hardened crime figure but still harbors feelings for him, etc. It’s unfortunate that she and Ehrenreich have so little chemistry, because it feels like a better actress could have salvaged this whole sideplot and significantly improved the film. Also, that robot is the most annoying Star Wars character since Jar-Jar, and feels like something that might have worked under Lord and Miller’s wackiness but feels like an obnoxious cartoon under Ron Howard’s more grounded direction.

One more thing I want to mention is the score by “How to Train your Dragon” composer by John Powell. John Williams wrote the main theme with Powell composing the rest to build off of it, but man, the guy took the ball, leaped across the field into the end zone, slammed the ball down so hard it hit some Chinese man right in the crotch, then played a bitchin’ guitar solo while the whole stadium exploded into fireworks and confetti. He brilliantly merges Williams’ intelligence and majesty with his own percussive firepower and dynamic orchestral glory to create what I honestly think is better than all the previous Star Wars scores. There’s a scene between Han and Emilia Clarke in the closet of the Millenium Falcon that has the most swoon-worthy romantic music cue I think I’ve ever heard, and the ball-bustingly awesome action cues are as dynamic and exciting as anything I’ve heard in I don’t remember how long. I usually do a “Best Film Score” superlative at the end of these lists, but it’ll be a fight for second place this year. The “Solo: A Star Wars Story” score by John Powell is awesome and is (one out-of-place, in-movie, space-jazz-pop song aside) so good at merging past identities with grand, epic modernity that it really makes you wish the film it belongs to would have done the same.

And with that masterful segue, I come back to the movie’s central conflict; not between Han and other criminals, but the film’s own potential struggling with the Disney-branded chains it wears. The tight structure and fun setting are a refreshing change of pace from the usual wannabe epic mysticism of the other Star Wars movies, but the film is weighed down by so much trendy studio-mandated bullshit (the firing of Lord/Miller, the predictable story, the forced references and foreshadowings, Emilia Clarke, etc.) that the film feels all the more disappointing for it. I guess the film works as fan-service for Star Wars fans, but as evidenced by this film’s box-office failure, even the fans are only willing to take so much corporate mediocrity (though I know you’ll just be all giddy again when the title/trailer for Episode IX drops). While it’s unfortunate that the good parts of this film probably won’t find themselves in a sequel, it’s probably for the best that this film bombed, since now Disney will be forced to take a step back and actuallyworkto come up with something original for the anthology series. Maybe they’ll create something new and wonderful that’ll capture the imagination the way the original trilogy once did for countless audiences. Or maybe they’ll just go and make the Boba Fett movie you losers keep clamoring for.

70. Sicario: Day of the Soldado

It’s weird how the progression of this film’s title made me less and less excited any time they renamed it. First it was “Soldado”, which I was all on board with. Then it was “Sicario 2: Soldado”, which is fine, I guess you can capitalize on the first one’s name recognition. Finally, it became “Sicario: Day of the Soldado”, which is too long and doesn’t fit comfortably in the mouth, like a…nope, too obvious.

Anyway, I was quite looking forward to this film, despite “Sicario” director Denis Villeneuve not returning. I liked the idea of the progression from the first film’s murky morality of the intersection of police and military action, to the sequel’s supposed dropping of the policing aspect and focusing on an amoral CIA-started war between Mexican drug cartels. If only the film actually delivered on this promise. Sure, the first 30 minutes or so set up a nice, manly drug war, but then the film inexplicably becomes about protecting the teenage daughter of a cartel boss, pretty much dropping the whole “war” aspect and instead being a small-scale thriller. It’s not bad, per se, but it’s definitely false advertising. In addition to Benicio Del Toro and Josh Brolin’s Adventures in Babysitting, there’s also a subplot about a Mexican-American teen who gets roped into working for a cartel helping them smuggle people and contraband across the border, that is pretty much pointless and uninteresting until it comes together with the main plot in the last act.

It’s hard to describe how I feel about the film. Like, it’s a solid, sometimes nicely brutal thriller that’s never boring and even pretty gripping at certain parts, but due to the change of direction it took, the film feels kind of pointless. I’m not sure what, if anything, it has to say about the cycle of violence from the War on Drugs and U.S./Mexico relations that the first film didn’t already say, but better. My friend and I came out of the theater thinking it was pretty good, but the more we discussed the plot holes and odd character development (like how Del Toro’s character becomes a protective guardian to a teen girl despite capping an entire family in the last film), the more we realized we didn’t like it all that much. And the film certainly doesn’t have any gripping set pieces like the border crossing from “Sicario”. And whereas the first film felt like a grand, almost surreal thriller with a lot on its mind, this film feels more like a conventional sequel, especially when it unfortunately tries to grow a moral compass near the end. It’s not a chore to sit through and you’ll probably be into it, and Del Toro and Brolin still act with enough conviction to make this watchable, but it’s ultimately kind of forgettable and definitely misleading.

69. The Predator

Of the many movies I’ve seen, there have been plenty of films that have annoyed, angered, bored, and (even one or two that) genuinely offended me. But I cannot recall a movie that has left me as bitterly disappointed as Shane Black’s “The Predator”. Sure, there was “A Good Day to Die Hard”, but looking back on it, that film was deep-fried dog poo from the get-go. If back then I put an ounce of effort into researching it beforehand, I’d have known that a film directed by John “Style Over Substance but Without the Style” Moore and written by Skip “I Won’t Let a Lobotomy and a Few Extra Chromosomes Stop Me from Shitting out a Screenplay” Woods would inevitably be awful, and I only let my love for the “Die Hard” franchise color my vision before I actually saw the film.

With “The Predator”, it seemed like a sure thing. A big-budget R-Rated “Predator” soft-reboot about misfit soldiers hunting a Predator in modern suburbia written and directed by Shane Black seemed like a surefire hit, and my expectations were raised even higher by that rad poster. My anticipation was so high that I didn’t even let the very average trailers throw me off, having convinced myself that Black’s films are unique and hard to market. I even elected to shell out the dough and see the film at the Toronto International Film Festival. So taking my year-long anticipation and traveling several hundred miles and paying extra to see this film into account, I apologize if this review is over-long, but like a scatophile with an upcoming meeting, I got shit to get off my chest.

I almost immediately noticed stuff going wrong (SPOILERS but who cares). First, the implication that the trailer gave was that the plot was about a young boy who acquires Predator tech and inadvertently brings a Predator ship crashing to Earth which leads to the ensuing fight. The filmactuallyopens with a big space chase between two ships that ends with one getting shot down to Earth. This doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but it signified two things to me that eventually ended up being true, which were 1. The film had a hellacious production that involved lots of the film getting reshot/rewritten in order to change the plot, and 2. The reason there are warring Predator factions that come to Earth would be mind-numbingly stupid.

Anyway, the Predator lands on earth, fights our main character Quinn McKenna (a name that sounds like Shane Black wrote in in the 80’s while on coke), then gets captured and sent to a shadowy government research lab. The first act is slow, but picks up once Sterling K. Brown’s government agent shows up. Naturally, the Predator breaks out, and starts hunting for McKenna’s autistic son, who secretly received the alien tech via mail from his dad. McKenna breaks out of government custody himself and teams up with a group of whacky, misfit, PTSD-afflicted soldiers and a biologist played by Olivia Munn to hunt down the Predator before it gets to his son. This part of the film is actually pretty good, as it feels simple, relatively focused, and has funny character interactions and dialogue. It’s in the 3rdact that the film that the film becomes kind of awful, starting with a lame stand-off and ending with a borderline incomprehensible forest fight in which almost all established characters get picked off one-by-one. I especially want to mention that Sterling K. Brown (themain human antagonist) dies at one point, but it happens so quickly and unclearly that I didn’t even notice it and had to look it up after the movie ended. And finally, the film culminates with the most cringe-worthy and pathetically optimistic sequel-baiting epilogue I think I’ve ever seen.

Shane Black has always been a much better writer than director, so I can forgive some unexciting action scenes that are filled with endless, ineffective machinegun fire. But what I can’t forgive is what a mess the plot is, and how thin and undeveloped and inconsistent pretty much all the characters are. Olivia Munn is a just a biologist, but when the Predator escapes her lab, she grabs a tranquilizer rifle and starts chasing after it, running around on rooftops and jumping onto a moving bus like some badass action hero, and at no point does she use her scientific know-how to help defeat it. Maybe she had a backstory about being military-trained in an earlier cut, but without the explanation, she just feels ridiculous, like the filmmakers confused being badass for having an actual character. It’s a shame because Olivia Munn is actually decent here, showing enough life to suggest she could do well in action films (much more than in “X-Men: Apocalypse”, anyway).

All of the loony squad feel like one-trait archetypes, except for Alfie Allen’s character, who is a no-trait nothing. Again, a shame, because most of the actors playing them are fun and know how to be funny, particularly “Moonlight” star Trevante Rhodes and Thomas Jane, the latter of whom is unfortunately saddled with a Tourette’s gimmick and just swears obnoxiously, akin to the film itself. Keegan Michael Key, however, feels very out of place, and even by this film’s standards feels overly cartoonish.

Jacob Tremblay stars as the autistic son, but the movie kind of keeps forgetting about his autism until it’s needed for the plot (yes, the film literally weaponizes autism at one point), and he just has to act like a boring regular kid for much of it.

Australian geek goddess Yvonne Strahovski only has one measly scene as the main character’s estranged wife where she gives a speech and is then abandoned for the rest of the movie. I got really excited at the idea of Strahovski getting her due and actually tagging along for this big-budget action film, but that’s just another notch on the disappointment list.

Jake Busey plays the son of his dad’s character in “Predator 2”, and since I think “Predator 2” is the single most underappreciated filmever, I was hyped to see some sort of canonical acknowledgement of my beloved and unfairly maligned sequel. But Busey is a scientist in the lab and he’s also in the movie for just one scene where he delivers some expository dialogue and gets injured. He doesn’t die, mind, which would have given the film a good excuse to write him off; he just gets mildly injured and never appears again.

Sterling K. Brown is actually the highlight of the cast, taking all his character’s smart-ass, tough-guy dialogue and adding some real pizazz to it. He steals pretty much every scene he’s in, but it’s a shame that his character is needlessly antagonistic. He decides to hunt down and kill the soldiers for no real reason, which just makes that entire conflict feel forced.

Last on the cast is Boyd Holbrook who plays the main character, and all I’ll say about Holbrook is that he’s literally just an American Charlie Hunnam, but about 5% less boring.

I really want to hate this film, and I suppose I do, but if you shut your brain off and lower your expectations so much that even an ant couldn’t limbo under them, I won’t deny the film is watchable and mildly entertaining. Though the gags and one-liners are much shallower than his usual sharp wit, Shane Black still knows how to make these jokes work in the moment. I was expecting a ton of forced Marvel-esque references to past Predator films, but thankfully, there are only a small handful (the “Get to the chopper” reference is even pretty funny here). And the film moves quickly enough that you only really notice a lot of the flaws after it ends.

This project was an ambitious attempt to marry the macho 80’s attitude with modern action sensibilities and a healthy amount of gore, and even with all its flaws, you can see and appreciate the attempts while watching the film. But this mercenary sequel-baiting mentality just doesn’t suit the Predator franchise. The movies are just very simple, self-contained stories of people coming into contact with extraterrestrial hunters, and (other than the irredeemably awful “AVP: Requiem”) all of them turned out good. Trying to set up a sequel in which our boring main character uses a mechanical Predator suit to fight future battles just left a bitter taste in my mouth. That, not the messy plotting or poor characters or dull action scenes, is what hurts “The Predator” most, because the film’s desire to offer explanations and ideas and “lore” sabotages its own story’s focus and pacing, and it even tries to ruin the mystery and wonder the previous films instilled. Maybe Shane Black was drunk, or didn’t have his heart in it, or he purposely tried to make it awful as a joke and see if he could get away with it. It sucks, because I really want R-Rated sci-fi tentpoles like this to make a comeback, and the sparks of life this film had gave me just enough hope that it would work, but the direction this film took makes me kind of glad it flopped. And that is a sad far cry from how I first felt about this film’s existence.

Anyway:

Predator > Predator 2 > AVP > Predators > The Predator > literal dogshit > AVP: Requiem

68. Halloween

I feel like I don’t have much to say about 2018’s “Halloween”. It’s a faithful sequel to John Carpenter’s 1978 original (which I do like a lot) that eschews all the convoluted sequels and remakes that came after. The plot is nicely straightforward; Michael Myers escapes a mental hospital and starts killing folks, and Laurie (traumatized and hardened after the events 40 years prior) goes on the hunt to protect her family. It’s a solidly made movie, with some scary, efficient thrills, a kickass performance by Jamie Lee Curtis, and a wonderfully atmospheric score by Carpenter himself. If you like slasher films, this film comes easily recommended. Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of slashers because that it just feels like they sell themselves on murdering innocent people in brutal ways, and that’s always felt exploitative and uncomfortable for me. Yes, I know complaining about a horror film making me uncomfortable is like complaining that being in the submissive end of an S&M relationship feels demeaning, but it just doesn’t appeal to me.

This film actually takes the time to characterize its victims (usually in the few minutes before they get pulped by Myers), and most of them are kind of likeable. It’s a letdown that the second biggest douche in the movie (the main girl’s philandering boyfriend) never gets his comeuppance, as he just vanishes halfway through the film. And the biggest douche in the movie (no spoiler) is at the center of the most retarded and unnecessary plot twist I’ve ever seen in a horror film, and it’s just a nonsensical and convoluted way to get some characters where they need to be for the finale. Still, despite thatreallystupid moment, the film is fairly solid. After the slow and kind of silly opening ends and Michael breaks free, the film delivers exactly what is expected of it with style and some welcome humor courtesy of co-writer Danny McBride and that little black kid who is probably the funniest minor character of any 2018 film.

67. Hotel Artemis

In the near-future, in a world plunged into chaos by dwindling resources, and in the midst of a massive Los Angeles riot, a secret member-only hospital for criminals called Hotel Artemis is run by a nurse (Jodie Foster) and her assistant (Dave Bautista). The converted hotel has strict rules such as no violence and weapons on the premises among others, and naturally they all get broken over the course of a single night, as various criminals (Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, and Jeff Goldblum among others) with their own agendas end up at the hospital. This sounds like a rad premise, but the plot takes it in pretty much the most generic direction possible, with assassination and revenge and other boring shit. It doesn’t help that most of the characters are just one-note stock character criminals (the professional, the femme fatale, the obnoxious wise-guy, etc.) who speak entirely in clichés and callbacks to earlier dialogue with a “lesson learned” feel that I’m sure the writer felt oh-so clever when he came up with them. That the plot revolves around these characters so much is a letdown, as I’d love to see a movie about the nurse and assistant going about their business on an average work day.

With the exception of Charlie Day as the wise-guy who can’t go one sentence without saying “fuck” or screaming in an embarrassing mobster voice, the cast is great, with Jeff Goldblum being the best part of the movie, though he unfortunately only gets like 5-10 minutes of screentime. Sofia Boutella may be kind of typecast as a femme-fatale at this point in her career, but damned if she doesn’t do it so well. She even gets a sweet corridor fight scene against several goons that really shows off her athleticism. Foster and Bautista are also great, though it’s worth mentioning that while a fight scene from Bautista is teased, we only get shown a few snippets from it rather than an extended beat-down, which feels like a huge missed opportunity.

“Hotel Artemis” is a great premise in search of a story, a great cast in search of actual characters, and a great visual style (the crumbling art-deco halls serving as a nice visual metaphor for America’s societal decay) in search of direction. I hope more original, mid-budget genre films like this get made, just with proper care instead of a script made of individual, unrelated sticky notes. Seriously, this is Jodie Foster’s first film in 5 years, and thisis the script that made her want to act again?

66. Anna and the Apocalypse

Despite my general dislike for musicals, I was actually really looking forward to “Anna and the Apocalypse”, a Scottish Christmas-zombie-musical about a high school girl and her friends who find themselves in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. It’s worth noting that this is an actual musical, as it has songs well spread-out over its running time instead of just front-loading them (*cough* La La Land *cough*), with the best probably being “Turning My Life Around”, which plays as the characters sing-and-hop to school blissfully unaware of the apocalypse happening around them. The first half is breezy and fun, with some juicy zombie kills, but the problem with the movie is that it never quite maintains the wonderful genre-mashing absurdity of that sequence, as everything that follows after is a pretty unoriginal zombie picture that just happens to have some songs in it.

The film places emphasis on its characters, which is nice, and it has some touching moments as it wants to be as much a drama as it does a comedy. Too bad that much of the humor fell flat for me, and it was hard to stay invested dramatically due to the characters’ incredible stupidity and how easily they let themselves get killed by slow, shambling undead. I know that suspension of disbelief is required for a horror movie (especially a zombie one), but I just couldn’t get past it. The film never really does anything clever with either genre, nor does it blend them in a way that’s satisfying.

The cast is game, the premise is unique, some of the songs are good, and I can even forgive the modest budget. The film is breezy enough that it’s watchable. But ultimately, the tone is all over the place, the direction is scattershot, the script is pedestrian, and a film I was excited for ultimately became just another musical with a promising first half and a sigh-inducing second. I’d genuinely like to see this get remade, because with a better script, a better director, a higher budget, and a more focused approach, this could have been something really special. I appreciate that that’s almost like saying it’d be better if it was a completely different movie, but there you have it.

65. Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Continuing my contrarian streak from “Roma” comes my opinion of “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”, the critically acclaimed biopic of biographer Lee Israel and her foray into the world of forging letters by famous people and selling them to collectors. I want to clarify that I in no way think the film is bad or that anyone involved did their job poorly. The filmmaking is solid, the script has some good insights into self-destructive personalities, and the acting is excellent, with Melissa McCarthy playing against type in a serious role that really shows how much those garbage studio comedies waste her talents, and Richard E. Grant as her flamboyantly gay partner-in-crime, even if he is just playing an older and gayer version of Withnail. My problem is just the story itself. Did you wet yourself at the prospect of seeing a film about art forgery? I’m not saying there isn’t any merit to Israel’s story, but I don’t agree with the filmmakers that it’s worthy of a feature-length film. It’s a low-key approach to a low-key character, and it’s honestly kind of dry and boring, without some grand insight about art and writing or even much emotional punch to it. While it’s refreshing that it’s not your typical crime drama, it still follows the same rise-and-fall/crime doesn’t pay structure, and it’s ultimately little more than an acting showcase. And honestly, I can’t recommend a film that bad-mouths Tom Clancy the way this does.

64. The Commuter

Take director Jaume Collet-Serra and star Liam Neeson’s 2014 film “Non-Stop”, switch Liam Neeson from an Air Marshal to a cop-turned-businessman, make the conspiracy smaller in scale and more about the negative effects of capitalism instead of 9/11, and add a scene of Liam Neeson beating the shit out of a dude using a left-handed guitar, and you have “The Commuter”. It’s not as good or as ridiculous as “Non-Stop”. The material is pretty boilerplate, and pretty much every aspect of the production is solid if unremarkable, but Liam Neeson can still carry a geriatric action film, which makes sense since he’s the one who almost single-handedly popularized the genre. Like all mysteries, it becomes less fun once you figure out what’s going on, but while “The Commuter” is a bumpy ride, it’ll still get you to the end of the line.

63. Manhunt

For the most part, this feels like John Woo made a silly modern action movie that doubles as a parody of John Woo movies. Many of his trademark mannerisms (wild operatic gun-fu, child endangerment, adversarial friendship that border closely on the homoerotic, doves, etc.) return, but it’s all wrapped up in such a silly, twisty, over-the-top story with stuff like evil pharmaceutical corporations, mind control drugs and super soldier serums, that it’s impossible to take seriously by the standards of his early Hong Kong classics. But as nonsensical and convoluted as the story is, it’s more of a loose framework in order for him to hang his melodramatic masculinity and action sequences on, and on this end the movie is actually quite entertaining. While Woo has succumbed a bit to over-editing and using CGI coupled with a kind-of ugly digital look, he still knows how to direct the hell out of an action scene (the mid-movie farmhouse shootout jolting you into remembering how good of an action director he is). While it’s pretty much impossible to connect with this film as far as story and character go, it represents a nice return to form stylistically for Woo, who injects enough imagination and infectious fun into “Manhunt” to make this schlock worth checking out.

62. A Simple Favor

Normally when reviewing a film, one would say a big-shot director is coming hot off the success of their latest film, but after the failure of 2016’s “Ghostbusters”, writer/director Paul Feig comes colder than a snowman with premature ejaculation, which brings us to his latest film “A Simple Favor”, an adaptation of some airport bookstore trash about a mommy vlogger (Anna Kendrick) who tries to solve the mystery behind her cool new friend’s (Blake Lively) sudden disappearance. The film has a lot of the hallmarks of Paul Feig’s shittiness; characters talk like young, smartass, improv-comedy troup performers in really unnecessary moments, the film is about half an hour too long, and Feig is still very much a point-and-shoot type of director with no visual wit or style of his own.

If that paragraph has convinced you to skip this, brace yourself, because this movie is actually sort of good. In fact, it’s really good for much of its running time, as you follow these shitty, self-centered people scheme and fuck around in a sort of poor-man’s “Gone Girl”.It’s kind of amazing how much a little focus and a smaller scale can improve a Paul Feig film, ‘cause despite my endless railing on him, he’s actually created a mostly solid movie here. The material is, again, just airport trash, but by embracing the trashiness rather than shying away from it, the film has a fun spirit that makes it enjoyable. It’s only in the last half hour where the film gets overly twisty and more than a bit stupid and it starts to fall apart. Anna Kendrick’s character, despite being subtly manipulative and obsessive throughout the film, never gets her comeuppance, like the film refuses to acknowledge her own shittiness. The film just wraps up too neatly with a happy ending considering what’s come before it, with the climax ending with a comic-relief minor character running someone over before they shoot someone in an eye-rolling “Dumb People Clap” moment.

Still, as I said, the film works and is intriguing for much of the running time, and if you can put up with its more annoying elements, the whole film is worth watching just for Blake Lively’s hilarious and venomous performance. If this was a tighter and more serious film, she’d be contending for Oscar gold.

61. Damsel

Robert “Fuck Twilight” Pattinson stars as a man named Samuel, a wealthy pioneer in the Old West who enlists the help of a drunk clergyman to venture across the frontier so he can marry his beloved Penelope (played by Mia Wasikowska). As they reach their destination we learn that certain characters and their relationships were not what we were lead to believe. It’s a fun, clever subversion of Western heroes and the women who so often play lovers or victims or both, with really solid performances all around and a number of funny moments (one character throwing a stone at the clergyman’s face actually made me do a spit-take). My problem with the movie is that its story doesn’t really justify its length. Halfway through is when the movie makes a hard-right turn, making the point that Wasikowska’s character isn’t a damsel-in-distress. Then the movie just keeps going for another hour, continuing to make that point, along with “The Old West sucked”. The movie feels like a segment from “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” stretched out to two hours. Certainly not an unenjoyable two hours, but the film kind of just leisurely exists for that amount of time and then ends. The miniature horse makes it worth it, though.

60. Crazy Rich Asians

From the director of “GI Joe: Retaliation” comes this year’s best (and possibly only, I haven’t checked) romantic comedy. The film is about an economics professor at NYU who travels to Singapore to meet her boyfriend’s family, only to find out that they’re not only amount the richest families in East Asia, they also have mixed feelings about their prodigal son dating an American. It’s a bit weird how the film has a pretty uncritical portrayal of the super-wealthy upper class, with the first hour feeling like a travelogue that focuses the visual wonderment and diverse culture of Singapore (including food porn scenes that’ll make some Buzzfeed editor seethe with jealousy). It’s only at the halfway point before any conflict is actually introduced into the plot, and at that point it becomes more engaging. While glaringly unoriginal as a rom-com and filled with go-nowhere subplots and more pointless asides than my film reviews, the pretty set design/costumes/people, charming cast (especially Michelle Yeoh, who always kicks ass, figuratively or literally), and tried and true formula make this an altogether pleasant film.

59. Braven

Residing in the upper-tier of direct-to-video action films is 2018’s “Braven”. Jason Momoa plays a man named Braven, a logger and family-man in a snowy mountain town who runs afoul of gangsters who have stashed cocaine at his isolated cabin. The movie is pretty much a siege film as he and his father (who partially suffers from dementia) hold off the thugs, though Braven’s wife and daughter also get involved, etc. The movie is a moves along at a nice clip, is very well-shot, and the cast is strong, with Momoa himself making a good impression on me as a likable action star (I haven’t seen “Game of Thrones” outside of that one gif). I like that the movie shows him as crafty but desperate, adding much-needed humanity to a guy who looks like he can bite someone’s head clean off. I really like that his wife is not a damsel in distress and can actually kick ass herself, but believably and not in the over-the-top ultra-serious badass action heroine role. Sure, the bad guys as super generic (apart from a fun, douchebag henchman played by “Fargo” star Zahn McClarnon), and the climactic fight ends on a bit of a silly note, but this is a film that makes the most of its limited budget and location. I especially want to mention a moment with a flaming axe (see the above pic) that not only single-handedly makes the whole film worth watching, and made me laugh so hard I had to pause the film, but it’s also the single greatest cinematic moment of 2018. The movie’s a fun watch, but if you’re pressed for time, skip to 1 hour and 14 minutes into the movie to see it. As of writing, the film is on Amazon Prime, and I promise you won’t regret it.

58. Hold the Dark

Much like Duncan Jones, Jeremy Saulnier is a filmmaker whose first impression (“Blue Ruin”) floored me with how good it was, and whose subsequent features have gotten noticeably weaker. Not exactly a ringing start to this review, but Saulnier hasn’t reached Mute-levels of awfulness (not yet, anyway), and his latest “Hold the Dark” is still pretty good. It tells the story of a hunter being summoned to Alaska by a grieving mother to hunt down the wolves who took her son, as he (literally, at one point) uncovers something more sinister. Naturally, as can be expected from Saulnier and the title, the film gets really dark, with grueling, hard-to-watch violence punctuating this bleak tale. The problem is that the film doesn’t really have much in the way of sympathetic characters for you to latch on to, so the darkness is really all there is. The characters who do bad things in the film (no spoiler) all talk in this bizarre, ethereal tone of voice, like they’re not from planet Earth and they’re just talkingatother people rather thantothem. It just screams pretentious arty trash to me, and it’s kind of laughable the way a couple of characters wear wooden animal masks and we’re supposed to think it’s creepy as opposed to stupid. Maybe if the film actually had some clear point to make, I’d feel more positive towards the stuff that we as an audience are asked to endure (the closest thing to a point I could think of is that “people are therealwolves”). Still, despite the film’s unnecessary desire to “be about something”, it ultimately works as a grim, splendidly-shot, and really well-acted mystery-thriller. I saw this at the Toronto film festival at 10 in the morning, and I can honestly say that I can’t think of a shittier and more miserable way to start one’s day (I mean that in a good way). I still think highly of Saulnier, but I do hope that if he keeps making these dark ruminations on violence, he would stick to the human elements rather than the metaphysical ones.

57. Unsane

A twisty psychological thriller from Steven Soderbergh about a young woman who gets involuntarily committed to a mental institution and starts to question her sanity totally sounds like my cup of tea, but the film only ends up on the “pretty good” end of the scale of Garbage-Awesome, and it’s chiefly due to one reason; without spoiling too much, the film plays its card far too soon and reveals about half an hour in whether she’s actually crazy or not. After that, this psychological thriller kind of loses the psychological aspect, and becomes more of a schlocky, nasty Lifetime movie. It’s still decent, thanks to the good cast (especially a strong Claire Foy in the lead) and the intelligent subtext about mental health, abuse, capitalism, consent, etc. The film was shot on an iPhone, which does make the film kind of look like shit, but it enhances the tight, claustrophobic environment our protagonist is trapped in, so I’m fine with it. The ending however, where it ends on a freeze-frame and slow zoom as the credits play, feels like something a B-average film school student would do.

56. Apostle

If, like me, you watch this thinking that Gareth Evans would bring the same balls-to-the-wall action sensibilities to this early-20th-century cult thriller that he did to his “The Raid” films, you’d be sadly mistaken. While there are a few (and I mean a smallfew) brutal and totally rad moments of action, Evans is much more interested in a slow-burn cult movie that deals with organized religion and loss of faith that eventually degrades into gruesome violence, madness and even some creepy supernatural stuff. Evans shoots the film really well, contrasting the gorgeous and sprawling Welsh exteriors with grimy and uncomfortable interiors, and Dan Stevens kicks ass as a former man of God who infiltrates a remote island to rescue his kidnapped sister from the cult and dealing with its three head figures. “Apostle” is slow and maybe a bit too long, but it never bored me and it’s a fun, straightforward ride that doesn’t contain any unnecessary twists. It’s a film whose grasp perfectly matches its modestly ambitious reach, and there’s something to be said for that.

55. Destination Wedding

This movie is just Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder bickering with each other for 80 minutes. That’s no exaggeration; it’s literally the entire movie. They play two bitter and jaded guests at a wedding, who after initial hostility find in each other someone to vent to. There are background extras (and one mountain lion), but otherwise, they have all the dialogue and the film is just several extended conversations, often shot with long-takes with little-to-no camera movement or onscreen directing. The film is very play-like and I wouldn’t be surprised to learn if that’s what it was originally intended to be, and that unfortunately comes with what I call “theater dialogue”; y’know, the way actors onstage sound like smartass writers bouncing ideas off of each other, always having the perfect retort to what the other is saying, and is so wildly overwritten that it’s impossible to see these characters asactual people. It can be annoying initially, but Reeves and Ryder are so charming that they make it work through sheer charisma. It’s easy to imagine this film falling apart in the hands of lesser actors, and while it can be a bit too cutesy at times (especially the ending and the way it gets built to), it’s ultimately a fun verbal spar about relationships between two misanthropes who have nothing positive in common. It’s always wonderful to see Ryder in a feature film, and super fun to see Keanu play a total bitch.

54. Black Panther

Isn’t it weird to live in a world where the most culturally significant film of the year is a comic book movie with CGI war rhinos? Maybe it’s just my inner contrarian talking, but I can’t help but be baffled at not so much the financial success (the Marvel/Disney juggernaut has shown no sign of slowing down), but rather the critical praise and awards that have been bestowed upon this film. I’m not naïve; I know that this praise stems mainly from the film’s inclusivity (I hesitate to use the word “diversity” since the cast is all black save for a couple of white dudes) and for being the first film of this size to have a mostly-black cast and be directed by a black director. Quality-wise, on the other hand, “Black Panther” strikes me as just slightly above average for Marvel, and all the more disappointing considering all the talent involved.

The story is initially about T’Challa/Black Panther, the newly crowned king and protector of the isolated and highly technologically-advanced African country of Wakanda, who struggles with the duties of being king while also hunting for arms dealerUlyssesKlaue,whorobbed his country ofsome oftheir precious metal vibranium, killing lots of his people in the process. Eventually the plot morphs into a power struggle for the throne by T’Challa’s long-estranged cousin Erik/Killmonger, who has become bitter and angry over their country’s isolationism and refusal to help the oppressed peoples of the world, along with his own personal connection to T’Challa’s father.

The plot is nicely focused without having too many villains, and isn’t encumbered with lots of pointless action scenes. What action there is, however, is too reliant on CGI and not enough ongenuineexcitement or imagination, and feel like a massive step down from director Ryan Coogler’s excellent fight scenes in “Creed”. The finale in particular is pretty lame, with some spaceships shooting each other in the sky while a bunch of extras fight in a field, while Black Panther and Evil Black Panther fight on a murky train track, and it all looks like a PS2 cutscene if the PS2 had an axe lodged in it. Even the one-on-one duels during the challenges to the throne suffer from the shaky-cam/fast-editing cancer combo, missing even a nice dose of brutality to the kicks and punches. If anything feels like Marvel’s formulaic nature stifling a talented filmmaker, it’s the action in “Black Panther”.

Speaking of which, for all of this film’s wonderful costumes and artistic design, the film feels like it’s not showing nearly enough of Wakanda. We get a few flyovers of the main city and one street where people walk happily along, but most of the time in Wakanda is either in fields or a lab where Black Panther’s Q (and sister) makes gadgets and patches people up for him. So much hype is made about the wonderment of Wakanda, but visually we really don’t see much that’s interesting in it. The sequence in Seoul where it briefly becomes a Black Bond film (the best part of the movie) is also the best looking part because of Seoul’s naturally pretty nighttime aesthetic.It’s really only in the dream sequences where characters speak to their fathers in some ancestral plane where the film finds its own visual groove (love that purple), but this only happens a couple of times in the movie. And while there’s some creative camerawork at play, the colors mostly feel the usual muted way they do in Marvel’s films, the film desperately needing some vibrant stylization and color (ironically).

The story shows flashes of ambition and works better than the action or the visuals. Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger has considerably more depth than the typical one-dimensional Marvel villain, his anger stemming from the real world injustice that his people have faced for centuries, and wants Wakanda to take global power and help the oppressed of the world. This stuff feels so real that the film almost seems scared to embrace him, so of course they have to counteract his valid points by making him a murderous psychopath who executes people who don’t fall in line with him, and who wants to spread laser-guns around the world and start World War 3 (I guess I shouldn’t expect too much for a character named Killmonger).The film makes the occasional stab at political awareness, but never quite commits to it, which just makes the ending speech about opening borders feel so frying-pan-to-the-head blunt that it could have been written by Spike Lee.Speaking of villains, Andy Serkis is very entertaining as the arms dealer Klaue, bringing so much swagger in every scene he’s in that the impish fun he’s having is infectious, so it's unfortunate that the movie gets rid of him so early, even if it’s understandable why.

The rest of the characters are a mixed bag. While the king's sister/gadget scientist is a bit annoying at times (the "WHAT ARE THOOOSE?" line made my skin crawl), she's played with enough enthusiasm and comic timing that she works.I really like the character of Okoye, the king's bodyguard/general, because she has an interesting moralconflictin the film as her unwavering loyalty to the throne clashes with her personal beliefs and convictions (the film would have probably been better if it was about her). I even like Martin Freeman as the film's tag-along CIA agent (and token white guy), and the bit players all have their moment to shine. The main problem with the cast is actually T'Challa himself. It's refreshing that he's not the same smarmy, quippy white dude that all the other heroes are, but while they got rid of that trait, the writers forgot to replace it with anything else. How can you describe his personality? Noble? Boring? The character has a good conflict set up for him, a new king thrust upon the throne by tragedy and struggling to determine Wakanda's future, but he just has no charisma in this film, something desperately needed if Chadwick Boseman (who is generally a good actor) is to carry his own franchise.

Ultimately, "Black Panther" works as another solid Marvel film, the safety net of Marvel's lack of ambition being slightly elevated by a good cast, the Seoul scenes, the villains, and Ludwig Göransson's kick-ass score. But ultimately, thefew reaches that "Black Panther" makes for greatness only serve to highlight how cookie-cutter the rest of the film feels.Other than its brief flirtations with interesting subject matter and the refreshing sight of an action blockbuster’s cast having an average melanin level greater than 1%, it’s still more typical MCU, filled with lame humor, a dull and muted color palette, and the same ol’ large, cluttered 3rd-act battle filled with embarrassingly bad CGI.Wakanda Whatever.

53. Suspiria

Coming hot off of the success of “Call Me By Your Name” is director Luca Guadagnino, who follows up his film about lovely scenery and hot peen-on-peen action with “Suspiria”, a film with really dreary scenery and no sex (or dudes) whatsoever, and remake of Dario Argento’s beloved 1977 horror flick. The basic premise is the same; a young American girl attends a prestigious German dance academy but soon finds that there’s spooky supernatural shit going on. Like most good remakes, 2018’s “Suspiria” uses the same basic premise to explore new themes and have an almost completely different style. I’m not going to go into the plot too much because the film is less about the plot and more about the fantastical series of sounds and images that you experience. You could also say there’s a lot of subtext about feminism, East German politics, fascism, terrorism, power, etc. The film drops references to all of these things liberally throughout the film, but I feel like it doesn’t have an actual point it’s trying to make about any of them and if you say otherwise, I bet you’re full of shit.

I’mfine with a movie not wanting to be transparent, but this film is so opaque that I personally saw nothing through it. Sure, I couldtry tocobble together the film’s myriad of flirtations with actual points and convince myself I saw something significant, but in all honesty, I’m not trying to impress any film-school friends of mine.To me, the film is little more than a phantasmagoria of sounds and visuals masquerading as something deep, so in a way it’s a pretty faithful remake of Argento’s original. And don’t get me wrong, I still like the movie asthat, admiring the technical aspects(the cinematography and atmosphere are out of this world), a number of genuinely unnerving sequences, and Tilda Swinton’s performances (she can stare a hole through a wall, best exemplified by a wonderful scene at a restaurant later in the film). But where the first film was vibrant,surreal, and appealingly simple, the 2018 film is cold, pretentious, andwaytoo fucking long.But again, I still enjoyed the experience of it. I equate “Suspiria” to the time I saw an interpretive dance version of “The Tempest” back in college; I didn’t pretend to understand it, and I don’t think there’s as much to understand as the creators think there is, but I still enjoyed seeing those sexy people in skin-tight clothing perform all those elaborate dance sequences.

52. Summer of ‘84

I’m glad we’re finally getting over the whole 80’s nostalgia fad, even if we’re just moving on to the 90’s instead (can’t wait until we start listening to grunge and doing crack again). And from the filmmakers of 2015’s delightful “Turbo Kid” comes “Summer of ‘84”, which feels like one of the last squeezes of the tube of 80’s nostalgia toothpaste.

The plot is about a teenager who begins to suspect that his outwardly friendly neighbor and local cop is a serial killer, so he enlists his friends to investigate and possibly expose him. Of course, the film is bathed in references to 80’s stuff and the exact electro music you’d expect to be the score, but the film actually quite intelligently subverts what we’ve come to expect from these nostalgia fests, bringing the rose-tinted past into the frightening reality of that decade. As the investigation progresses and shit gets more and more real, the nostalgia starts to wash away and it becomes a genuinely frightening thriller, and the climax of the film chilled me to my bones.

I understand the criticism of this movie feeling slow and drawn out, as much of the first hour is the kids investigating and finding one suspicious, inconclusive clue after another, but I liked the characters and their interactions enough that it didn’t bother me too much. It was refreshing to let the cast breathe and emphasize that this is as much a coming-of-age film as it is a mystery. The cast is damn good; their chemistry and banter is believable and it’s refreshing to have teens in a movie actually feel like teens, and the adult actors play their archetypal roles very well. Some of the characters’ actions and motivations become a bit nonsensical when you think about them, especially towards the end. I guess it’s standard for characters in horror films act like imbeciles, but it’s still annoying when everything else works so well.

But again, if you’re patient, I ultimately recommend “Summer of ‘84” as both an effective mystery thriller and a clever and unexpectedly poignant subversion of the past several years of 80’s revivals, and the last 15 minutes of the film will definitely stick with you whether you want them to or not.

51. Annihilation

After a small meteor crashes into Earth and creates a mysterious quarantined zone called “The Shimmer”, a team of military scientists lead by Natalie Portman ventures inside to investigate and look for the previous missing teams that have gone into the film. Most people who review this would write a lengthy dissertation on the film’s thought-provoking themes and visuals, but while the film definitely held my interest, I didn’t personally get anything deep and meaningful out of it. There are plenty of scary and other-worldly things that happen in the film, but the film respects the audience enough to not hold their hand and explain everything (the really unnecessary framing device notwithstanding), and I would recommend watching the film and seeing what you get out of it, as long as you don’t mind slow, obtuse, and heady sci-fi. I’d say that the film’s main weakness is just that the characters aren’t terribly compelling. The film is basically Tarkovsky’s “Stalker” with estrogen, but the characters in “Stalker” were interesting and had compelling motivations for venturing into The Zone. While the characters in “Annihilation” have some backstory and motivation revealed, they aren’t terribly interesting, mostly talking in quiet, serious tones that make them feel more robotic than intended.

Maybe you find this to be the deepest and most intellectually compelling movie of the year, or maybe you’ll just see it as an artsy monster-horror with boring acting. But again, I’d recommend checking this out for the interesting ideas and Alex Garland’s strong visual style, and because two scenes in this (one involving found footage of a previous team, and another with a mutated bear) are genuinely terrifying, unnerving, and are likely to stay with you for a while after you see this.

50. Mohawk

From Ted Geoghegan (have fun trying to pronounce that name without looking up how), director of 2015’s tribute to Italian horror films “We Are Still Here”, comes his follow-up “Mohawk”. The film is about a trio of lovers, a Mohawk woman, a Mohawk man and a British man, who during the War of 1812 set fire to an encampment of American soldiers, and are subsequently hunted down by a squadron of vengeful survivors. Watching the film, you can tell it was made on a pretty low budget (much of the film is shot in the woods and the cinematography doesn’t quite make the film feel like it took place two centuries ago), but the props and costumes and make-up are all convincing enough that it’s not too bothersome. The film is a tense cat-and-mouse thriller that is surprisingly quiet and slow-paced with a minimal plot, and is pretty straightforward until things really kick in during the 3rdact, including a transformation of a character into what can only be described as a forest spirit, along with supernatural and hallucinatory sequences. It sounds very weird for the film to suddenly develop this way, but it sure as hell got my attention and I found it very entertaining. The acting (from mostly unknowns) is top-notch, with standout performances from Kaniehtiio Horn as the Mohawk woman, the malicious American leader with the comically huge ears (Google image search “Ezra Buzzington”), and WWE wrestler Jon “Luke Harper” Huber as a reluctant soldier. A solid “worth checking out” if you’re interested in a low-budget version of “The Last of the Mohicans”.

49. Shock Wave

Straight from Hong Kong’s extremely dependable action-thriller assembly line comes “Shock Wave”, an awesomely-titled film about a bomb disposal officer who must lead negotiations when a criminal he betrayed several years ago as an undercover cop holds the busy Cross-Harbour Tunnel hostage, threatening to detonate it and kill all the civilians trapped inside. Much of the film is a tense hostage negotiation film, though in classic Hong Kong fashion the film manages to fit in car chases, shootouts, romance, explosive diffusing, corporate conspiracy and melodrama. The tone does tend to go all over the place, but the filmmaking skill and the strength of the actors (particularly lead Andy Lau) surprisingly hold it all together. The film has some really nice touches like the criminal’s arrested brother, who has reformed and just wants to serve his sentence, and assessment of the property damage and how much it can hurt the city. I’d say it feels like the filmmakers didn’t really know how to end the film, as after mounting frustration (SPOILER), the police kind of just say “fuck it” and do an all-out assault on the terrorists with irresponsible levels of collateral damage, although the ensuing bomb diffusing scene helped make up for it. All in all, a really solid and compelling movie with top-notch acting, and I especially want to mention a scene where a hostage (and off-duty cop) is forced to wear a bomb vest and the hero has to diffuse it while trying to reassure him, and this is one of the most harrowing, intense, and emotional scenes I’ve seen in any movie this year.

48. Bad Times at the El Royale

Over the course of one day and night in 1969, several characters with checkered pasts and motivations all converge on a once prosperous motel on the California/Nevada border, and naturally their interactions and goals conflict and you begin to realize that not everyone will make it until morning. Its premise is very reminiscent of “The Hateful Eight”, only it actually has more on its mind than “everyone ends up shooting each other”. Like in Tarantino’s film (and like a lot of post-“Pulp Fiction” quirky crime films), the characters are pretty much all stock characters that can each be described in a brief sentence, but it feels deliberate, and the film feels like a response to those movies, asking the audience to look at their own propensity for voyeurism and to question the morality of the types of characters you typically root for. It takes these clichés and it gives them genuine purpose, if not much in terms of character depth.

I can’t quite say the story justifies its 2.5-hour length, but honestly I was never bored and I was pleased with how much time all the characters had to develop themselves and their relationships. The way the film shifts between characters’ perspectives using title cards and time jumps, as well as the steady stream of revelations about who’s good and who’s bad always manages to keep what’s going on feeling fresh. It’s certainly more subversive and thought-provoking than you’d expect, and it’s much subtler about its intentions than Drew Goddard’s previous film, the amusing but self-satisfied “Cabin in the Woods”. The cast is excellent (with the slight exception of Dakota Johnson, who only stands out in the sense that she’s the only one who doesn’t stand out), especially as the layers are peeled from their characters and their true selves are revealed. The film is gorgeously shot, the lavish retro décor of the hotel nicely encapsulating its former glory and providing a nice contrast to its current status as a “pervert motel”.

Bringing it back to “The Hateful Eight”, the film’s dialogue isn’t as rich or characters as full-blooded, and the filmmaking is (purposefully) less flashy and wild, but “Bad Times at the El Royale” is still a twisty, clever, surprisingly thoughtful and always interesting crime thriller. If the daunting length doesn’t dissuade you, this comes easily recommended, especially if the thought of Chris Hemsworth being shirtless for much of his screen-time entices you.

47. Upgrade

Logan “Stop Calling me Tom Hardy” Marshall-Green plays a mechanic who, after a brutal attack that leaves his wife dead and him paralyzed from the neck down, gets a second chance at life and revenge when an experimental AI chip is fused to his spine that not only gives him the ability to walk, but also superhuman strength and reaction speed. While the movie is not without its dramatic moments and intriguing sci-fi concepts, it’s nice that (unlike its forebear “Black Mirror”)the film doesn’t take itselftooseriously. It actually becomes a lot of fun once our hero goes into badass cyborg-mode, and Marshall-Green is great here, playing a normal dude who starts to embrace his ridiculous circumstance in a way that’s funny and believable. Speaking of “badass cyborg”, the fight scenes in this are (while not frequent) so damn fun and unique. The first fight scene in particular is great, as the AI takes control, and our guy is kicking ass while being bewildered at how he’s not controlling his own body. Again, it’s a really impressive performance by Marshall-Green in that he makes all these acting plates spin so naturally. The cinematography/choreography during these scenes is also very distinct and cool, director Leigh Whannell (much like his buddy James Wan) showing an aptitude for genre films beyond just horror. The film is set in the near future, and the light-cyberpunk aesthetic and art design is subtle but effective in communicating its setting, as well as masking its low budget. Sure, the film can be slow at times, the dialogue isn’t great, the twist is fairly obvious, and a lot of the supporting roles are stock characters played by budget actors, but take it from someone who isn’t a fan of “Black Mirror”; I enjoyed this feature-length “Black Mirror” episode quite a lot.

46. Avengers: Infinity War

Well, here we are, the culmination of 10 years and almost 20 films of the biggest movie franchise of all time, a two-and-a-half-hour conclusion of the massive amounts of stories, characters, Infinity Stones, and quips that have come before. Well, the 1sthalf of the culmination, anyway.

Thanos, who looks a cross betweenHafþór Björnssonand a California Raisin, has finally come in contact with the Avengers in his quest to obtain all six Infinity Stones in order to kill half the population in the universe in order to quell overpopulation (instead of, y’know, creating enough resources for everyone). I honestly don’t know what angle to take this review from, because I’m covering one of the biggest movies of all time, something that encompasses the best and worst of the MCU, and something unprecedented in terms of how much you need to know going in to get the intended experience. What’s even the point of whether I do or don’t recommend it? Either you’ve already seen it, or you haven’t watched the prerequisite 18 films of homework to understand what’s happening, in which case you probably shouldn’t bother.

What the film does poorly is the usual Marvel stuff; the dull colors, the repetitive fight scenes that just consist of really strong people punching or shooting lasers at each other a million times, and the humor. Oh God, the cringey quip-filled Marvel humor is on full display here, a minute rarely going by without a character uttering something lame and unfunny, and often in a situation that completely deflates the dramatic tension in a scene. Dave Bautista’s Drax is literally the only one who could make me laugh in the entire film, while every other time the audience guffawed at some “Well, isn’tthisawkward?”-tier wisecrack, it made me feel like the most alienated person in the world.

What the film does well is the story and the villain. The film is weirdly structured, with only half of the film following the fractured Avengers groups mounting their own fight against Thanos’ forces and safeguarding the Stones that are in their position. The way the film’s limited time has to split itself between all the Avengers characters kind of limits all of their individual character development and interactions, though everyone gets a moment or two to shine, and the way the Russo Brothers manage to keep all these plates spinning is impressive. What’s really surprising is the other half of the movie which follows Thanos on his journey. The way the movie gives his character time to breathe and develop is startling considering how most Marvel villains are throwaways. He’s a genuinely compelling and even tragic character, who like a lot of great villains is 100% convinced of his own righteousness and is willing to sacrifice everything for what he believes to be the good of the universe, and is brought to life through terrific mo-cap acting from Josh Brolin. The film feels like two separate movies, one infinitely (har-har) more compelling that the other, but even the Avengers’ stories, for all the godawful humor, still had the occasional really compelling moment that kept me going; Thor’s admission of his own insecurities and loneliness because all of his loved ones are gone which he masks with his macho bravado, Gamora and Peter Quill's conversation over not letting her get captured by Thanos, the romance between Vision and Scarlett Witch, Thor and giant Peter Dinklage harnessing the power of a star to craft an axe*, etc.

And how could I go this long without mentioning the ending? Let’s get this straight, I fuckinglovedthe ending of this movie, as it not only feels like a culmination of Thanos’ story, but the sheer shock factor of what happens made this like, the only genuinely jaw-dropping moment of possibly the entire series. Watching a crowd that was previously laughing at all the shitty jokes suddenly fall into deathly silence punctuated by gasps and cries was an incredible moment that made everything that came before worth it. As a friend of mine put it, it’s like studying really hard for a difficult exam, and then getting an A+ for your troubles. I think for the first time in the entire series, an MCU movie has ended with me saying “I cannot wait to see what happens next.” I guess it’s pretty obvious that not all of the characters who died will stay dead (they really shot themselves in the foot by “killing” Spider-Man and Black Panther), but if you watched this film and “Avengers: Endgame” isn’t one of your most hype films of 2019, you’re lying to yourself.

*Between this and “Thor: Ragnarok”, Thor has quickly gone from the worst Avenger to the best.

45. Jailbreak

In my ongoing effort to diversify my movie taste, I decided to watch the exact same type of movie I usually watch, just from a different country, so I checked out “Jailbreak”, a Cambodian action flick that is basically a toned-down version of “The Raid”. A group of 4 cops is escorting a high-value mob member to prison, but when the criminal’s boss orders a hit on him so he won’t narc on her, the cops must defend their witness and survive when a whole prison-full of inmates is let loose on them. The plot is as barebones as you’d imagine based on that description, and while the cast have their charms, their characters range from one-note to nonexistent. What you’re really here for is the action and this movie sure as hell delivers on that department. The Bokator martial arts sequences are shot coherently and filled with long-takes (with hidden-well-enough cuts), often moving fluidly from one cop beating the shit out of a group of thugs to another doing the same a few meters away. The choreography and filmmaking on display here really serve to highlight how athletic and talented the cast and stunt crew are at kicking ass. The action sequences are so cool that they really help mask how low-budget the film is, since the prison apparently just consists of like three rooms and 4 or 5 identical-looking hallways with jailcells. The film is toned-down in the sense that the violence is much less graphically brutal, and there’s less death in the film, just lots of maiming. But this approach is well-suited to the relatively lighthearted story and the silliness of some of the characters, with names like Madame Butterfly, Playboy, and Scar. “Jailbreak” is a straightforward, easy-to-watch, and (most importantly) fun little action flick that really makes you want to check out what the cast and director Jimmy Henderson do next.

44. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies

Look, I know. From the few episodes I’ve seen, Iagreewith you that the “Teen Titans Go!” TV show is trash, and I’m not even a huge fan of the original. But hear me out; “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies” is actually pretty fun. The plot concerns Robin’s jealousy over every superhero but him getting their own movie, so the Titans go to Hollywood to show everyone they’re not jokes and can star in their own movie, and discovering the power of friendship along the way. It’s basically a PG version of “Deadpool”, and is filled with pop culture jokes and references, especially about other superhero movies, just without feeling the need to be edgy. Sure, there are a few too many poop/fart jokes, but most of the humor is anarchic randomness that I personally found charming. While the animation usually looks like the show, I was surprised by how the movie had a number of sequences where the animation style is completely changed. There’s also a number of moments that made me genuinely laugh, so already I could call this one of the biggest surprises of the year. The funniest scene in the movie involves them traveling back in time to try and prevent everyone’s origin story so that they’ll be the only superheroes left.

I really don’t have much to say about this film because I’m not a man-child, but if you can put up with some of the kiddie humor, there’s a surprisingly funny, inventive and self-aware movie in here, which is more than you can say about most superhero films to come out in recent years (or even this year).

43. You Were Never Really Here

Have you ever watched “Taken” but wished it was more like “Drive”? Probably not, but director Lynne Ramsay sure as hell did. It tells the story of a traumatized veteran who works as an under-the-table investigator who specializes in rescuing missing girls, and whose latest job involves him in a sinister conspiracy while his own mental state is deteriorating. The plot is super bare-bones, but it works because the focus is clearly on Joaquin Phoenix’s character, as flashbacks and fantasy blend with the reality of what he’s going through, creating a fragmented but compelling portrait of a broken man trying to help others but is only good at hurting people. The movie feels like it was edited down to 90 minutes from a longer film, as lots of plot points are glossed over (the villains get literally no development), but again, the focus on character and the whole questioning of the main character’s sanity makes it work. This film is tight, well-shot, and has a strong central performance from Phoenix, and even if it feels hacked to pieces, I won’t complain about a movie going out of its way to make itself shorter for me.

42. The Other Side of the Wind

As much as I like to shit on Netflix for their lack of quality control, the sheer volume of stuff they make or pick up means that even occasionally something tasty will slip through the crack…that was poor wording, don’t read into it. Anyway, what other company would actually buy and distribute “The Other Side of the Wind”, an experimental (and thus difficult to categorize and market) film that Orson Welles shot in the first half of the 70’s, and whose post-production turned into a legendary development hell due to various legal, financial, and creative complications, not to mention Welles’ own death in 1985. The film was completed in the past few years using Welles’ footage, some edited by himself, and his countless notes of what the film should be like, and it’s the strangest and most fascinating film of the year.

The basic story is that of the last day in the life of famous film director Jake Hannaford (played by famous film director John Huston) as he hosts a screening party for his friends and Hollywood insiders in order to raise funds for his work-in-progress film “The Other Side of the Wind”. Hannaford’s side of the story is a composite of mockumentary-style footage shot by various film students who are invited to cover and film his day, and the film doesn’t have a typical structure or narrative. Conversations between characters are often made with little to no establishment of who they are and what their relationships are, there are few establishing shots, and there’s no real plot beyond the various things that happen in the party. The film can be difficult to follow, since it’s essentially up to the audience to piece everything and everyone together, and the film is more about the themes and being a satire of Hollywood than having a traditional narrative.

The rest of the film is footage of the film-within-a-film, a hilariously pretentious and self-indulgent satire of European arthouse cinema that’s intended to revive Hannaford’s waning career. The (actual) film’s parallels with Welles’ own films and life are clever if you’re a fan and are familiar with him, which is especially sad considering that this film was supposed to be the one that would revive Welles’ career, as his last decade was marked by the difficulty of finding finance for his projects, and hilarious commercial blooper reels.

Going back to “The Other Side of the Wind”, if you want to check this out, you should be prepared for the fact that you might not understand a lot of it, but longtime fans of Orson Welles and of auteur-driven 20th century cinema will find a lot to chew on here, and the film definitely benefits from repeat viewings. The editing in this film is wild, frequently jumping from various handheld angles with different lenses, between color and black-and-white, but the fact that this all feels intentional is a testament to both Welles’ vision for the project and editor Bob Murawski’s talent for salvaging so much footage into something vaguely coherent. This is not a film meant to be watched casually, but film buffs will find an important piece of film history, while others will be amused by how much nudity and phallic imagery is in the film. If Orson Welles’ last contribution to the world is extended footage of Oja Kodar’s ass, then the man’s cinematic legacy will never be topped.

41. Bumblebee

It’s funny how right around the time Michael Bay was leaving the “Transformers” franchise did I finally sort of start appreciating his “All insane energy, all the time” approach to these films. Well, before Bay’s departure, Hasbro and Paramount assembled a writer’s room in order to plan out and expand the Transformers franchise into something beyond Shia LeBeouf’s screaming and Marky Mark’s Bud Light-chugging goofiness. Enter Travis Knight, president of stop-motion film studio Laika and director of “Kubo and the Two Strings”, who signed on to direct the first of these spin-off’s, the origin story “Bumblebee”. Whether or not you think the Transformers series is deserving of a genuine, loving director like Knight is up to you, but you can’t deny that he made a real movie (arguably the firstactualfilm in the series).

The plot is standard stuff; war on Cybertron, Bumblebee escapes to 1980’s Earth, gets damaged, loses his memory, and gets found by a teenage girl in a scrapyard. If you’ve ever seen “E.T.” or any of its young-person-meets-fantastic-creature derivatives, you know what to expect. But Knight’s deft touch actually makes this film a lot more touching than you’d expect. The girl is still grieving over her dead father who yearns for a new life outside her crummy hometown, and in Bumblebee finds a kinship and a way to grow and move on. It’s this relationship that serves as the emotional core of the film, and it’s done so surprisingly well that the film works even with the sillier “Transformers” stuff bolted on. After the action-packed opening on Cybertron, we mostly follow the girl’s down-to-earth point of view as she lives her life and finds Bumblebee, so when the film suddenly cut to two cartoonishly evil Decepticons executing some Autobots on the Moon, it was the funniest tonal shift I’d seen all year.

And speaking of cartoonish and hilarious, I really hope after this that John Cena gets put in as many movies as The Rock. Playing an all-business government agent with a neck that is wider than my leg, who swaggers into every scene with a grimace and physique that even Rob Liefeld would find a bit over-the top, Cena is by far my favorite part of the movie. He looks more out-of-place amongst other human beings than the giant CGI robots do. He looks like they filmed him exclusively in widescreen.

Going back to the film, it’s not a deep movie, and a lot of the side-characters are either annoying or undeveloped, but all in all “Bumblebee” is a pleasant surprise. The CGI is seamless, the character designs are nicely streamlined and look more like their cartoon show counterparts, the action scenes are fun (and comprehensible), the 80’s nostalgia is strong but not overbearing, and that emotional core I previously mentioned holds everything together well. It doesn’t have the sheer audience-hating bravado that Bay has, but since most people would find that a positive, this film is easy to recommend to anyone.

40. The Guilty

Asger is a Danish policeman working the emergency line while awaiting trial for shooting a suspect, who gets a call from a woman who had been kidnapped, and he must use his phone and his resources to figure out where she is and what’s happening before she is lost. The film takes place in just a couple of rooms in a police station, and happens pretty much in real-time. This film is a top-notch thriller with a great, well-executed premise. The camerawork, editing, and acting (even phone acting) are all so strong that the limited environment never feels repetitive, and you’re fully drawn into the tense, twisty story. Oh, did I say “twist”? Funny I should mention that, because it’s pretty much the only thing preventing this film from being higher on my list. It’s not really the movie’s fault, but I predicted the shocking twist several minutes before it happened, so the impact that was meant to take the 3rd act into the next level was sort of lost on me. I was still engaged right up to the end, but I can’t help but feel like I messed up by figuring the movie out too soon. But, as the late Stephen Hawking taught me, it’s perfectly OK to have genius-level IQ, and even if you’re just too smart (like me), you can still enjoy a really solid, high-concept thriller with a terrific central performance.

39. Kursk

As a fan of disaster movies, submarine movies, and depressing Soviet-looking imagery, Thomas Vinterberg’s “Kursk” was basically catnip for me, and as a really solid thriller with sincere political/social commentary, it doesn’t disappoint. The film is about the real-life 2000 disaster where an explosion sunk the eponymous Russian Navy submarine, and where rescue efforts for the surviving sailors stuck on the seabed were hampered by the incompetence and arrogance of the bureaucratic Russian leadership. The film splits itself between the perspective of the trapped sailors, dealing with dwindling oxygen, supplies, and hope, and the efforts of the sailors’ families to urge naval brass to accept international help when their own rescue efforts fail. It’s a really harrowing and sometimes hard-to-watch film, with one scene in particular sticking out; the sailors have to get canisters for their oxygen generator, so the main character and a comrade have to swim through the cold, submerged section of the ship to look for it, and it’s all done as one agonizingly long continuous shot that nearly gave me an anxiety attack. The film is basically the 3rd-act of “Das Boot” stretched out to a whole film, with the other stuff tacked on to make a point about bureaucracy and corruption. The melodrama involving the families is alright and well-acted, but it really doesn’t compare to the stuff in the sub. It’s a purposely frustrating film, and I question whether the unsatisfying nature of the story lends itself to a feature-length film, but I was still absorbed throughout. Maybe I’m genetically predisposed to loving submarine films, or maybe they just all happen to be good. If you can think of a bad submarine film, let me know and I’ll check it out.

As a nitpick, it annoyed me that the characters all spoke accented English instead of Russian, which I suppose is understandable considering the whole cast isn’t Russian. But I guess that a Russian cast speaking such an ugly language in such an already-depressing scenario would just tip some emotionally fragile people over the edge.

38. The Night Comes for Us

Did you ever watch “The Raid” and its sequel but think they just weren’t violent enough? Well, you’re in luck (you psychopath), because straight from Indonesia comes another martial-arts-heavy crime film starring Iko Uwais, just with more stabbing and mutilation instead of smashing and breaking. After saving a little girl during a massacre of a village he was ordered to carry out (and killing his own men in the process), an elite Triad assassin (played by Joe Taslim) becomes huntedby the criminal elements of Jakarta, including a rising thug and former partner of his (played by Uwais). There’s a surprising amount of downtime in between the action beats where the characters have time to shout melodramatic dialogue at each other, and while it’s good enough for one to be invested in the stakes, it’s hardly brilliant or groundbreaking. No, what we’re here for is the action, which is highly entertaining; lots of impressively choreographed ass-kicking, filled with plenty of punches, kicks, stabbings, bone-crunches, stabbings, the occasional shootout, finger-rip-offings and so much bloody stabbing. It was excessive to the point where even I felt it was a bit much, but certainly not a dealbreaker. The final fight in particular makes you wonder if people in Indonesia have self-healing Wolverine powers, because the two participants just ruin each other with stabbing and the fight still ends with one character just leaving instead of finishing off his opponent. The film is worth watching just for the sheer creativity in the variety of ways that people harm each other, drenched in sharp lighting and the heroic bloodshed of classic Asian action cinema. It’s absolute insanity, with only pacing issues holding it back from classic-status, but it’s absolutely worth it just for the gag where one goon unwillingly unloads an assault rifle clip into his friend’s face at point-blank range when he is tased into doing so.

37. Isle of Dogs

Generally, I hate seeing films about danger and possible death that involves dogs. That shit tugs at my heartstrings, sure, but I’ve always found it to be a cheap and manipulative way to generate emotion and sympathy from the audience. Leave it to Wes Anderson to solve that conundrum but making the dogs actual characters with voices and motivations, so that we can relate to them as characters and not just pets.

“Isle of Dogs” is Wes Anderson’s second stop-motion animated movie after the aptly named “Fantastic Mr. Fox”, and is about a near future where after an outbreak of a canine flu, the mayor of a Japanese city banishes all dogs to a garbage dump island, where a young Japanese boy ventures to in order to find his beloved bodyguard dog. The film is surprisingly dark and bleak, where despite all his deadpan humor and whimsical visuals Anderson is not afraid to show the pain and danger that his characters endure. Not that it’s dreary, mind you; the film looks absolutely gorgeous, with Anderson’s perfect framing and meticulous attention to detail shining through in every frame, and the voice actors all pull off a great balance between quirk and pathos. The film isn’t nearly as brilliant as “Fantastic Mr. Fox”, but it’s an ambitious film that takes a nice amount of narrative risks.

One of these is to have all the human Japanese characters speak in unsubtitled Japanese while having all the dogs speak in English. There’s a lot of human dialogue in the film, and while a fair amount of it can be inferred through the strength of the visual storytelling, the film lacks confidence in this choice and frequently manufactures reasons to have in-world English text, having someone appear to translate, or most egregiously, making one of the main characters a white American foreign exchange student. I don’t see why we couldn’t just have regular subtitles or even Japanese-accented English, and while I’m not one of those bandwagon-jumping douchebags who lives to complain about the latest hot-button topic (I’m my kind of own douchebag who complains about everything), I can’t help but agree with people who feel that the story is a bit needlessly whitewashed because of that character.

Still, while not on par with Anderson’s best films, “Isle of Dogs” is an easy recommendation, with a likeable characters, a touching story, Anderson’s trademark humor and terrific visuals, and a top-notch voice cast of Anderson regulars. It’s a loving tribute to Japanese cinema and culture, and especially to man’s best friend. Keep saying the film’s title until you understand the pun.

36. The Old Man and the Gun

Robert Redford stars in “The Old Man & The Gun”, a film based on Forrest Tucker, a lifelong criminal who became famous for over a dozen successful prison attempts, who in his 70’s pulled off an unprecedented string of bank robberies without ever firing his gun. If you’re old and want to see Bobby Redford be charming and suave as hell through a light-hearted crime drama, his magic will remind you why he’s been such an enduring, magnetic star all these years. And if you’re unfamiliar with Redford and his work because you’re too busy using your dad’s credit card to pay your favorite Fortnite streamer enough Bits to say your name in a desperate attempt to fill some void in your soul that eating Tide Pods on Snapchat just doesn’t do anymore (and also your balls haven’t dropped yet), this is the cinematic equivalent of a warm blanket on a rainy Sunday afternoon at your grandparents’ house. A very lovely, if deliberately slight, film with an excellent supporting cast that genuinely feels like it could have been made in the 70’s. Director David Lowery’s talent in evocating a setting and atmosphere is undeniable.

35. A Star is Born

He’s a part-time washed-up country star and full-time drunk. She’s a waitress with all the talent in the world but stuck in a rut. They meet and fall in love, and as her career blows up, his declines even more. You can complain about the fact that this is the 4thtime this movie has been made, but honestly, shut up; you haven’t seen the others and you never will. Having said that, the film still seems to include one out-of-place element from the 1970’s version with Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson; much is made about how the girl is considered unattractive and her nose is too big and her not having the right look is why she’s been held down. Now, with Streisand you could sort of understand because she looks like a Nazi caricature of a Jew, but you could beat Lady Gaga in the face with a shovel for a few hours and she’d still be an 8/10 on herworstday,if you’re super judgmental. So any time she or anyone else talk about how she doesn’t look good enough to succeed it’s kind of laughable, especially y’know, considering Lady Gaga’sactualsuccess.

Anyway, everyone’s been talking about this film like it’s all about Lady Gaga and it’s her star-making performance (like she isn’t already one of the biggest stars in the music business), but this response and marketing has been deceptive in that it’s actually more about Bradley Cooper’s character. In fact, despite Lady Gaga’s genuinely strong and believable performance, she’s sort of relegated to the sidelines in the second half as the film shifts focus from her rise to his succumbing to alcoholism and drug abuse and how it affects their relationship. In fact, the lack of depth afforded to her character is my biggest gripe with the film. We know she’s a talented singer and that she loves Bradley Cooper, but the fact that we never really see her rise to fame from her perspective means a fair amount of feeling is lost. My second biggest gripe is the ending (no spoilers). I know a lot of people found it emotionally devastating, and even I admit to watching it with a lump in my throat, but it feels like a cop-out, the easier ending that will elicit tears from the audience but doesn’t really leave them with something to ponder. It’s a melodrama instead of a film with something new to say about addiction and self-destructive behavior (which is ironic considering how many times the characters bang on about “having something new and real to say”).

Still, don’t let all my complaints fool you, because this is still a surprisingly really good film. I was seriously impressed and frightened by Bradley Cooper’s performance, something that my alcoholic friend agrees is one of the most realistic and un-romantic depictions of pants-pissing, black-out habitual drunkenness ever committed to film. You ever watch pro wrestling and one of them looks like they got hurt and they sell it so convincingly that you genuinely worry for them? That’s what Bradley Cooper has done in this film. He looks like he just gave his directing notes to an assistant and then drank an entire bottle of motor oil to prepare for the scene (edit: turns out Cooper is a recovered addict, so this is a hell of a case of art imitating life.) As a first-time director, he doesn’t try anything fancy or showy; his work behind the camera is clean and focused on the story, which I admire. Gaga and Cooper both offer terrific individual performances and have excellent chemistry together both on and off-stage in the film. I thought it was cute when I heard that while he was teaching her how to act, she insisted on simultaneously teaching him how to sing and perform on stage. Sam Elliott is always a joy, his baritone voice feeling like someone gently massaging warm maple syrup into my ear hole, and Dave Chappelle and Andrew Dice Clay making convincing cases in their short screentime that they should do more movies.

Overall, the film is a flawed but compelling melodrama. You could argue that it’s a bit too long, but I like how the film gives the characters enough time and breathing room to develop organically, and there’s no contrived subplots; just a sweet and sad story of a man and woman who love each other but their relationship is strained by career stuff and his self-destructive nature.

34. The Meg

Seeing “The Meg” in IMAX was one of the most pleasurable theater-going experiences I’ve had all year. A product-placement filled, Chinese pandering piece of shark attack schlock, all watched by an audience that knew exactly what kind of movie they’re going to see.

The plot concerns an oceanographic research facility (crewed by sexy and diverse people) that discovers a deeper section in the Mariana Trench that hosts ancient marine life thought to be extinct, unwittingly providing an escape route for a megalodon to get to the surface and start wrecking shit up. They then set out to destroy the shark before it reaches civilian areas, unaware of an even greater danger (spoiler: it’s a second megalodon). The film is delightfully silly and self-aware, but without being smug about it. More tongue-in-cheek than wink-wink, like director Jon Turtletaub’s “National Treasure” films, which is 100% the right tonal approach.

Jason Statham is hilarious as the macho hero with a troubled past, easily carrying a low-effort, thinly-written role through sheer charisma and Cockney charm. He also gets possibly the most gratuitous beefcake moment I’ve ever seen in a film. The rest of the cast is an assembly of stereotypes, Chinese nationals, and character actors enjoying an easy paycheck. Their relationships and developments are as predictable and basic as can be in a movie, but considering the material, it adds to the campy charm.

I agree with those who say that the first two-thirds of the film could have been stupider, wilder, and more R-rated (although the way the largest shark in history keeps sneaking up on people never failed to make me laugh), but it works as decently entertaining buildup for the wonderful finale. The way the shark is defeated by Statham at the end is one of the most hilariously, stupidly awesome things I’ve seen in a film all year, and how could anyone possibly hate a shark film that actually, literally ends on a title card saying “Fin”?

33. Den of Thieves

Is there any actor out there who can single-handedly rescue a movie better than Gerard Butler? Don’t get me wrong; even without him, “Den of Thieves” would be a perfectly acceptable B-movie version of Michael Mann’s “Heat”, but it’s really Butler that makes this film as entertaining as it is. There’s a Butler-level system my friends and I came up with, where we rank how Gerard Butler-y one of his performances is, with “London Has Fallen” being a 10/10 insane, frothing-at-the-mouth, more-whiskey-than-blood-in-his-body Butler and something like “P.S. I Love You” being 1/10 subdued, boring Butler. I’m happy to say that in “Den of Thieves”, he’s a solid 9/10 on the scale, and he’s at his terrifying and hilariously hyper-masculine best. There’s a scene where he visits his ex-wife during a double-date to drop off some divorce papers, where he sizes up and intimidates her new boyfriend, and it’s such an uncomfortably tense scene it’s almost impossible not to laugh. There’s another where his group of cops take O’Shea Jackson Jr.’s character to a safe house where they drunkenly harass him, while Butler emasculates him, smacking his face and flicking his balls while interrogating him about the heist crew he’s running with. Even the way he eyes a stripper at a titty bar is more angry than lustful. I cannot understate how great he’s in this movie, and how much he makes it worth watching.

Anyway, the actual film is pretty good. It has surprisingly confident and solid direction from first-time director Christian Gudegast. The last 45-minutes or so of the film is basically one really long action sequence, and it was tense and exciting stuff. All the stuff before is mainly buildup and character stuff with little action, and I understand some people getting impatient with it because most of the characters were thin and underdeveloped, except for Butler, who doesn’t need your pussy “nuance” or “writing” to be an entertaining character. But despite the long running-time, I was honestly never bored. And the whole film is worth watching just to see Butler acting drunk, looking like he smells like cigarettes and cheap whiskey, smacking people with his gigantic baseball-mitt-sized hands, and yelling in a fury to psych himself up before the final shootout in a manner that can best be described as “cocaine/testosterone fueled”.

32. A Quiet Place

"A Quiet Place" is some of the most fun I've had in a theater in a while. I practically jumped every time someone in the audience coughed or farted or talked or answered their phone or started watching Snapchat videos or goddddddamn it, I hate people so much.

But seriously, this is a film that for better or worse deserves to be seen in a large crowd. Uniquely for a horror film, it revolves around a family being quiet so that the sound-sensitive monsters don’t get ‘em, and the whole film, from sound design to performances is built on silence as a core concept. John Krasinski introduces himself as a talent to watch in genre films, as he nimbly builds tension through the movie while never shying away from the emotional core of familial bonding, all while getting great performances out of his cast (and himself).

I liked a lot of the world-building stuff early on, that shows how the family has adapted to living quietly, from placing sand in their walking paths, to walking barefoot, to painting areas in a wooden floor that creaks when stepped on. It’s this effort in detail that actually becomes somewhat of a hindrance later on, as characters make baffilingly stupid choices, along with the lack of proper following of rules in terms of how well the monsters can hear. I mentioned the commitment to quietness earlier, which is why it’s surprising that the film has a soundtrack, and one so prevalent. It’s certainly not a bad soundtrack, but I can’t help but feel like most of the film would have benefitted from just silence and sound design.

Quibbles aside, I really enjoyed “A Quiet Place”, as it’s a fun, short little thriller that at 90 minutes long, never outstays its welcome. It’s well-crafted, splendidly acted, and Krasinski is so good (for the most part) at visual storytelling and ratcheting up the stakes through the film that I didn’t even mind when the last 10 minutes or so devolved into silly schlock.

31. Game Night

I’ve expressed for the longest time how building a comedy film around improv tends to ruin it, so allow me to explain why. I’ve always found that the best comedies are very tightly structured, with very specific jokes and gags, that are placed at proper moments in order to get the biggest laugh. Extended improv takes away that structure and timing by centering itentirelyaround the comedic talents of the actors and hopes that they can supply enough funny all on their own. There have been actors who could do this (Eddie Murphy springs to mind), but most cannot, however revered they may be in their city’s sketch comedy circle. When they’re left dangling in the water without that structure and script, they tend to sink, along with the film itself, because there’s nothing worse than a joke that doesn’t land while everyone stands there pretending like it was funny.

It’s super refreshing that the filmmakers behind “Game Night” seem to agree with me (and not just because I’m 100% right). This film is tight as a corset, fast-paced, and plot-focused, which is why even when a joke doesn’t land, the film immediately gets up and keeps speeding along. But many of the jokes do land, and this a frequently funny film. The story is about a weekly game night hosted by a highly-competitive couple that takes a turn for the dangerous when a kidnap-mystery game involving the husband’s brother turns real. The cast is excellent, with a career-best performance by Rachel McAdams who is hysterical during the first half of the film when she doesn’t realize the danger they’re in and still acts competitive and arrogant, and she maintains that comic momentum even when she figures out the situation. Jesse Plemons is also great as their creepy neighbor cop. The plot is fun and is actually engaging in that the mystery is always one step ahead of the characters and audience, creating a level of engagement as we try to figure it out as well. I’d say that there’s precisely one plot twist too many (you’ll probably know it when it happens), and it temporarily slows the film down, but it picks back up for the silly, over-the-top climax.

I also want to mention something you almost never see in American mainstream comedy films; directing. This is a genuinely visually inventive and well-crafted film, with clever camerawork that reflects both the subject matter and the characters. It’s so refreshing to actually see a comedy film rather than just listen to one. I wouldn’t say this is the funniest film in recent memory (I’d give it about a 7/10 in the laughs department), but it so exceeds one’s expectations that I couldn’t help but enjoy the hell out of it. That scene where Rachel McAdams tries to dig a bullet out of Jason Bateman’s arm killed me.

30. Eighth Grade

Bo Burnham’s filmmaking debut is one of the best and most honest coming-of-age stories I’ve ever seen. The story is about Kayla, an eighth grader going through her last week of middle school, as she struggles with her insecurities and socialization while her single dad struggles to connect with his social media-fixated daughter. Burnham is young and sharp enough that he can make a movie about modern-day teens feel both authentic and insightful. The acting by lead Elsie Fisher is outstanding, as she fully encapsulates Kayla’s endearing awkwardness in a very believable way. As a first-time director, Burnham really impresses with his grasp of filmmaking; one scene that stands out in particular, where Kayla is seen entering a pool party where she doesn’t know anyone, and the camerawork and editing on display are as claustrophobic and tense as in any horror film. The film is smart, entertaining, and even heartwarming. I really don’t have any negatives to say about the film. If you’re wondering why it isn’t higher on my list, it’s because of this; I love cringe comedy, but this movie was too much even for me, as the cringe often slipped from funny to painfully true and even downright horrifying at times. I simply cannot watch this film twice; it’s just too real and too relatable. But this realness is definitely worth experiencing at least once.

29. Shadow

From Zhang Yimou, the ace filmmaker behind Chinese warrior classics “Hero” and “House of Flying Daggers” and “The Great Wall”, comes “Shadow”, the most Chinese movie I’ve ever seen. The film is about two kingdoms who for a long time have fought over control of a major city, and who are currently in a truce, which is threatened by scheming from behind the throne of the kingdom that lost control of the city years ago. There’s lots of nice political intrigue involving the king, his trusted general, his wife, and his sister, and their relationships develop in entertaining and engaging ways. This part of the film is even surprisingly funny thanks to some well written dialogue and back-and-forth arguments, as well as the melodramatic way characters in these period pieces tend to stare into the middle distance with a tear streaming down their face. The first 2 acts of this film are very slow paced, relying wholly on character drama, intrigue, cuckoldry, etc. but in the last 45 minutes, everyone goes to war and everyone gets wrecked with heavy sabres and blade-umbrellas, with Yimou’s wonderful inventiveness with action scenes on full display (everyone should watch this film for the Beyblade soldiers part; you’ll see what I mean).

My problem with the movie is that the last 15 minutes or so just has a few too many betrayals and twists, to the point where they kind of lose their impact, and I felt a disconnect because the main character has (purposely) been kind of a blank slate and I never quite figured out what his motivations were for his actions at the end. But these are relatively minor complaints, as the terrific production design, strong cast, and totally rad action, all shot in a breathtakingly gorgeous monochromatic color scheme, make this an easy recommendation.

28. They Shall Not Grow Old

Filling out my documentary quota for the year (which is 1) is Peter Jackson’s “They Shall Not Grow Old”, a unique and fascinating look at those who served on the Western Front in WWI. The film takes 100-year-old archival footage from the war, restores it, colorizes it, giving it sound, and transforms it into 3D (if you see it in a 3D theater), while structuring the footage around sound-clips of interviews with actual veterans of The Great War telling their stories, from the enlisting at the outset of war to the horror of living and fighting in the trenches to finally going home after 4+ years of some of the most brutal fighting in human history. Some may question the effect of colorizing the footage but I can’t deny that the footage is, in addition to just being astonishing to look at, gives the experiences of the men who served on the front a bracing immediacy, and really helps you connect to the horrible things they went through. I’ve been watching the YouTube documentary series “The Great War” for the past few years, so with the series concluding back in November (100 years after the actual war ended), I was in prime condition to watch and enjoy this film. I found it to be an insanely impressive and deeply moving experience, that’s so different from typical documentaries not just in its format (no talking heads or reenactments) but also in its approach; the film avoids the political issues at play and the specific movements/developments and is more focused on giving the audience an idea of what it was like to be in these soldiers’ shoes. It’s still a documentary, so it made me a bit sleepy at times early on, but still wholly recommended to people who are into war and documentaries, and if you can, also check out the super neat 30-minute companion documentary that shows Jackson and his team’s technical process in making this film.

27. BlacKkKlansman

My history with Spike Lee’s films is more often than not, one of disappointment. While his films are usually visually strong, filled with good actors, and have fascinating subject matter, his approach to storytelling (beating the audience over the head with a frying pan while screaming “DO YOU GET IT?”) has often let me down. Even his really good films, like “Do the Right Thing” and “25thHour”, leave me feeling disappointed by the end because the test tube just broke under Lee’s preachiness and lack of nuance. His best movie, in my opinion, is “Inside Man” because it’s a tight and focused heist film, that still has some of Spike’s unsubtle social commentary bloating it up but never to the point of bursting.

I say all that because for the longest time watching it, I thought Spike had finally broken his streak of letting me down with “BlacKkKlansman”, a based-on-a-true-story account of black Colorado Springs officer Ron Stallworth’s infiltration of the local Ku Klux Klan chapter during the early 70’s. Sure, it’s hardly subtle in its depiction of racism (both institutional and rebellious) and the strong parallels between modern-day racism and that of the 20th century, but it feels well-integrated into a genuinely compelling story about identity and duality which come with the undercover work but also with how people present themselves to the world.

The acting is terrific, with lead John David Washington showing plenty of the charisma that made his daddy Denzel such a star, Adam Driver giving a very nuanced and quietly funny performance as Stallworth’s partner who’s the one actually going undercover, and a surprisingly great turn by Topher Grace as KKK grand wizard David Duke that really shows how smarmy pretend-politeness can go hand-in-hand with evil. The film isn’t as funny as its excellent trailer makes it out to be (pretty much all the funny parts are in the trailer itself), but it really works as a character drama, social commentary and buddy cop film. I especially want to mention the scenes with the Black Student Union and how powerful and well-edited they are, and how they’re an excellent example of combining plot and themes. We see the faces of hope in the audience listening to Stokely Carmichael speak, while at the same time Ron is following his orders in “observing the audience”. The film works terrifically until the end. After a nice hallway shot that pays homage to blaxploitation films of the era, the film has a great opportunity to nicely wrap up right there with a lovely bow on top.

BUT THEN, the film literally ends on a 3-minute montage of news footage from the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville (along with Trump’s subsequent speeches), culminating with actually showing that girl getting killed when one of the white supremacists plowed a car through a crowd of counter-protesters, while ending with “Rest in Power, Heather Hayer” and an upside down American flag slowly turning black and white.

WHAT. FUCKING. TRASH. Thanks, Spike Lee, I totally didn’t see any fucking parallels between your story’s already unsubtle themes and their relevance today. I really needed a fucking montage that shows a young woman getting murdered to really hammer it home. And after you have the fucking gall to exploit her death ON SCREEN, you end it as a “tribute” to her. It’s shockingly tasteless, condescending, and just plain awful. It’s even worse than a similar montage in “Vice” because this is actually stapled onto an otherwise really good movie. It feels the need to make a point that the film had already fucking made loud and clear, but doing it after the movie practically finishes. I cannot imagine any other filmmaker literally cease being a storyteller during their film so they can start sermonizing. Spike Lee’s head is stuck so far up his ass he could look up his own throat. I’ve heard the argument that this is meant to be eye-opening for some audiences who wouldn’t otherwise “get it”. Fine, I admit, I’m not a fucking moron, so this clearly wasn’t for me. This scene made me straight up mad, and damn sure not in the way that Lee intended.

If you can leave as soon as the cross-burning happens near the end, you’ll have enjoyed an entertaining, timely, and sometimes powerful look at race and identity, but after containing the bullshit for almost the entire film, the test tube finally broke in the end.

26. Incredibles 2

Did you see and love “The Incredibles”? If yes, then congratulations, you’ve seen (and really like) the long-awaited follow-up. The plot is super derivative of the original; one of the two parents gets back into superhero work while the other stays at home to take care of the kids, there’s a conspiracy involving a villain that wants to destroy all superheroes and it turns out to be one of the Parrs’ benefactors, Violet has teenage problems, Dash doesn’t really have much to do outside of the action scenes, and Jack-Jack has whacky powers. All they really did was give Helen/Elastigirl the superhero duties while making Bob/Mr. Incredible the stay-at-home dad. It feels like a hastily-written sequel, which is weird considering it’s had 14 years to think of something new to do (though the rushed production owing to the film getting released a year earlier so that “Toy Story 4” could have the later release might have something to do with it). And I’m not a fan of how the sequel picks up immediately where the first ended, so the characters haven’t grown or changed in the last decade in a half, so it only makes sense that they’d still be doing the same stuff.

Still, despite the story weaknesses, “Incredibles 2” is super fun in the moment, thanks to Brad Bird’s incredible filmmaking flair and the talented cast and hardworking animators. Elastigirl’s plot and action sequences are enjoyable, but I enjoyed the stay-at-home dad stuff more, as Bob struggles to be the parent to his kids, simply because it feels more human and funny. It’s a very good film that just has the unfortunate problem of having to follow up “The Incredibles”, to this date one of Pixar’s very best, but I recommend “Incredibles 2” solely for the fact that it has almost the exact same climax as “Speed 2: Cruise Control”.

25. If Beale Street Could Talk

As someone who liked but didn’t love Barry Jenkins’ prior film “Moonlight”, let me be the first to say that I think this is much better than his Best Picture winner. “Moonlight” just couldn’t crack me emotionally, but “If Beale Street Could Talk” managed to move me because it has such a tenderness and care for its characters, even minor and supporting roles, and a much more nuanced and affecting message about the injustices that black Americans face than say, “BlacKkKlansman”. The film is based on James Baldwin’s book, which tells the story of Tish, a young black woman, who must deal with a pregnancy while she and her family rally to try and get her wrongfully-imprisoned fiancé Fonny out of jail. The story is told non-chronologically, simultaneously showing her deal with being pregnant and trying to free him, while flashing back to their courtship and what led to his imprisonment. The love story can be a bit sappy, but it’s achingly romantic because the characters are just so likable and optimistic about getting their own place and starting a family. As predictable as it may be, it hits you when you see this optimism crash against the hard facts of life and prejudice. The cast is uniformly excellent, with particularly noteworthy performances by Regina King, Teyonah Parris, and Colman Domingo as Tish’s family. I almost yelled unironically yelled “Yaaaaaasssss!” when Fonny’s religious mother cursed Tish’s unborn child for being conceived out of wedlock, then Tish’s mom and sister just verbally destroy the bitch. Owing in part to the non-linear storytelling, the film doesn’t go for a traditional plot progression so much as it does a portrayal of both a relationship and the hardships that affect black people, so don’t go in hoping for a satisfying three-act story. And the film is so sad that it’s hard to work up the desire to re-watch it. But it’s this honesty, along the top-notch writing, the sensitive and tight direction, and the terrific cast, that makes this bittersweet pill easy to swallow.

24. Journey’s End

Like I said in my “They Shall Not Grow Old” review, I’ve been really into WWI stuff lately, so this drama about British soldiers nervously awaiting the German Spring Offensive of 2018 was right up my depressing alley. We follow a small number of characters in the company, including Paul Bettany as a kind lieutenant and family man who might as well have a target painted on his head, a green-as-grass young officer played by Asa “I will forever look like an adolescent” Butterfield, eager to reunite with his old schoolmate, and Sam Clafin as the schoolmate, the company’s bitter, alcoholic veteran captain who looks like he’s constantly on the edge of a breakdown. The film is fantastically acted, impressively detailed, and filled with a profound sense of that particular melancholy that affects characters awaiting their inevitable death. It’s not the most original film, and as with most war films, don’t see this if you want to be cheered up, but as a moving character study of soldiers fighting a hopeless, pointless war, “Journey’s End” more than does its job.

23. Support the Girls

Reginal Hall stars in her best work since “Scary Movie 2”, as Lisa, a caring manager of a Hooters-style highway sports bar, whose optimism is tested on a tumultuous day at work, having to put up with an attempted robbery, belligerent customers, her own family issues, her dickhead boss, and the cable being down on the night of a big game, all while trying to care for her employees and their own issues. The film is very funny (mainly owing to Haley Lu Richardson’s hilarious performance as a bubbly and exuberant waitress) and heartfelt in its treatment of the characters, as well as doubling as a thought-provoking tale of working-class struggles and the flawed reality of the American Dream. Essential viewing for anyone who’s ever worked in a service job, “Support the Girls” is a thoroughly enjoyable and compassionate movie, and one that earns the double-entendre in its title.

22. A Prayer Before Dawn

Billy Moore is a heroin-addicted English boxer fighting in Thailand when he gets busted for drugs and weapons possession, and he gets incarcerated in one of Thailand’s most brutal prisons among heavily-tatted criminals who don’t much care for the pale-as-the-driven-snow white boy that now serves with them. The first half of the film is Moore adjusting to prison life, witnessing awful treatment of other inmates, while doing favors for guards and thugs in order to keep up his smack habit. Later he works to kick his addiction while taking up Muay Thai prison boxing.

Let me say now that this is the most uncompromising and ruthless portrayal of prison I’ve ever seen in a movie. I’m not one to give out trigger warnings for films, but there’s a horrific rape scene of another new prisoner by the long-timers that’s all the more frightening because it doesn’t happen to Billy, he’s held in the corner at knifepoint and forced to watch. The way the prison serves as an allegory for hell, with Moore being stuck in the worst place imaginable in order to battle his demons, is earned for how unvarnished it is. I particularly like how the Thai dialogue isn’t subtitled, so we feel just as isolated and lost as the protagonist. And this makes the film’s glimmers of hope and redemption all the more effective, as Billy starts to work out, take up training with the prison’s boxing team, having sex with a Thai ladyboy (multiple times, I might add), and start to break his heroin addiction. It’s downright inspirational how the film finds humanity in such inhumane environments.

The film is very well directed and filmed, particularly during the handheld behind-the-back tracking shots that follows lead actor Joe Cole’s massive back, the boxing scenes are very well filmed and realistic, and Cole’s very physical and impressive performance all make this film worth watching.

If you skipped the bulk of the review just to get to my final opinion of it, here it is; “A Prayer Before Dawn” is a heartwarming, hilarious tale about a man finding Jesus through the power of prayer, and one that the whole family can enjoy.

21. The Mule

Clint Eastwood, despite being in his late 80’s, shows no sign of slowing down as far as his work output goes, putting out 5 movies in the last 5 years, culminating in “The Mule” a based-on-a-true-story yarn about a 90-year-old veteran who, due to financial troubles, becomes a drug mule for a Mexican drug cartel, while being hunted by a determined DEA agent. The film is easily one of Eastwood’s best late-period films, a moving character drama about a lifelong workaholic who sees his newfound wealth as an opportunity to reconnect with his estranged family, while also doubling as an easygoing and sometimes tense crime thriller. The plot goes the way you’d expect it to, but Eastwood’s magnetic screen presence and the surprisingly emotional core of the film in the latter half helps keep things fresh. The film is notably more heartfelt and personal than Gran Torino, and it also serves as a smart examination of the American Dream and what it means to the people who work themselves tirelessly to pursue it. Also worth mentioning is how funny the movie is; it’s downright adorable how Eastwood’s character befriends the hardened cartel members who supply him with coke, and he’s probably the only white dude in Hollywood that can make casual racism seem charming.

The film is a bit rough around the edges in terms of some awkward editing and shots and line deliveries (owing to Eastwood’s notorious habit of shooting his scenes with as few takes as possible), and some of the cartel thriller stuff in the second half feels unnecessary and half-baked, but this is still a moving, thoughtful, and surprisingly entertaining film, one that could easily serve as a great swansong for Clint Eastwood the actor if he wanted it to. Plus, Clint has not one, but two different threesomes over the course of the film.

20. Leave No Trace

It’s really difficult to talk about this film without spoiling it. I went in blind as to what the movie’s about, and I feel that is the best way to experience it. Don’t even look it up on Wikipedia because the plot description gives away an important part of it. I’ll just say that it’s about a father and daughter who live in the woods whose lives go through unexpected changes, and if you like slow but moving character dramas, “Leave No Trace” is well-worth checking out. The two leads, Ben Foster and Thomasin McKenzie, are both excellent and have a very natural and believable chemistry, and they’re great at communicating their characters without having the movie over-explain them. It’s a smart, low-key, and compassionate film that is well-worth seeing.

19. Green Book

Possibly the biggest “Fuck you, I liked it” entry on this list, “Green Book” is also one of the most purely enjoyable films I’ve seen all year. Telling the story of how in 1962, Italian-American bouncer/stereotype Tony Vallelonga was hired to drive black piano prodigy Dr. Don Shirley on a tour across the Deep South, and the friendship the two developed despite their differences among the turbulent times. If you rolled your eyes at that description, you should know that this is exactly the kind of movie you think it is. This is easily the cheesiest, schmaltziest major film released in 2018, but I’ll be damned if the sweetness and heart and humor at its core didn’t melt my heart.

A lot of that is owed to the two lead performances; Mahershala Ali gives his best film work to date as Shirley (much better here than he was in Moonlight), an intelligent, reserved and lonely man who struggles with being too black for white people and too “white” for black people, and Viggo Mortensen also gives some of his best work as a walking, sentient New York pizza. Seriously, I cannot stress how funny Mortensen is in this movie, playing just the most absurd stereotype, composed mainly of eyys and ooohs and hand gestures and FUHGEDABOUTITs. At one point, he suddenly pulls a pizza out, folds it in half, and starts eating it like a fucking sandwich. But it’s a testament to Mortensen’s acting that he still somehow makes him feel like a human being and a well-developed character despite his goomba corniness (in a nice analogue to the film itself).

Its depiction of racism is a point worth discussing. The film doesn’t exactly sugarcoat the racism that Shirley and other black men experience (especially back in 1962), though the film is more focused on the buddy-comedy-drama aspect with the mismatched central pair. Much of the racism is done by easily-dismissible white Southerners, and even Tony’s own prejudice is kind of glossed over and not really dealt with as he and Shirley become friends (also that the film is told from Tony’s point of view instead of Shirley’s). I’ve heard the argument that this is an easily-digestible film about a difficult subject made by white people for other white people to feel good about. I’d like to paraphrase Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s thoughts on the film: it’s made for a white audience because they’re the ones who can most be changed by it. Sure, there will be white people who see this and dismiss it because “at least it’s not like that anymore”, but others will see this and understand how historical prejudice has shaped our current issues, while black people can see Shirley’s journey and be inspired by his achievements and his strength of character whether he’s the lead character or not. And if you’re just too #woke for this film and think this film’s impact is honestly more negative than positive, ask yourself this: are you the record holder for Most Career Points in NBA history and six-time NBA MVP?

Anyway, “Green Book” is an entertaining and incredibly charming film about two unlikely friends who bond over their differences that, while it probably takes a number of liberties with the facts of the story, carries the unmistakable ring of truth due to the passion of the filmmakers and the conviction of the performers. Certainly a much better remake of “Driving Miss Daisy” than anyone could expect.

18. Paradox

A Hong Kong cop’s daughter goes missing in Thailand, prompting him to go on a Taken-esque quest to find her, receiving help from a local Chinese expat detective and uncovering seedy criminal elements and a political conspiracy. This is one of the best action thrillers to come out of Hong Kong in recent years, with a tight and engaging plot and a powerful and emotional performance from Louis Koo that never wavers whether he’s begging for help looking for his daughter or snapping people’s arms like wishbones. While the action scenes aren’t numerous, the ones that are there are lengthy, balls-to-the-wall displays of ass-kickery, terrifically shot/edited and choreographed by legend Sammo Hung. It’s really impressive how the film makes it look like non-martial artist Koo can actually fight. If I had to nitpick, I’d say the actor playing one of the lead goons is a bit too over-the-top, and feels like he should be in a sillier movie. But honestly, this comes easily recommended. No prior experience with HK films is necessary, as this is accessible, emotionally satisfying, and totally rad. It even has an extended fight/chase scene involving “guest star”/human wire-fu act Tony Jaa.

17. Hearts Beat Loud

You think a movie about a widowed hipster father and his teenage daughter making music together before she goes off to college would be the most excessively twee indie bullshit released in 2018 (that isn’t a Netflix Original), but this is actually one of the sweetest, gentlest films I’ve seen all year and it really charmed the hell out of me. He’s the owner of a struggling record store who wants to make music with his daughter full-time due to the unexpected Spotify success of a track they put together in one night, and she’s a maturing young woman who loves her dad and is saddened by the fact that she has to leave her Brooklyn home yet is still determined to follow her dream of becoming a doctor, while also forming a relationship with a local female artist (worth noting that the filmneverdwells on the fact that it’s a lesbian relationship, it’s just perfectly normal and sweet). I’d describe the film as a light drama, since while there’s character conflict, it feels natural and not overblown. Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons are terrific and have very believable chemistry with each other, a nicely refreshing case of a positive familial relationship that isn’t hampered by contrived dramatic bullshit. Offerman in particular is terrific in using those expressive blue eyes to wordlessly communicate pain or happiness, or a combination of the two. And the music, while it can best be described as “indie”, is pretty good and emotionally resonant due to how it reflects the inner feelings of its characters.

Look, I’m as surprised as anyone over how much I liked this movie, but it’s honestly a wonderfully charming and touching film about a father/daughter relationship, with good music, strong performances, and positive vibes. Bonus points for having Ted Danson play a bartender. Extra bonus points for naming the female lead “Sam Fisher”.

16. Deadpool 2

This is the easiest film to review of 2018, because I’ve already seen the first “Deadpool” and this is literally just an improved version of it. It’s still a basic smaller-scale superhero story, with a wisecracking 4th-wall-breaking protagonist who makes sex jokes and pop culture references. The jokes are funnier, Ryan Reynolds is still an engagingly smarmy protagonist, the antagonist (a hyper masculine Josh Brolin playing time-traveling supersoldier Cable) is more menacing and memorable, the action scenes are better and more numerous thanks to John Wick/Atomic Blonde helmer David Leitch taking the directing reigns, the supporting cast is stronger (particular shout-out to Zazie Beetz as Domino, whose superpower is luck and is one of the most fun ideas in any recent superhero flick), and the pacing is tighter. If all you want out of a sequel is the same thing but better, than “Deadpool 2” comes easily recommended. I just can’t help but feel a little disappointed that for a film series as self-aware as its character, the sequel doesn’t really do anything interesting with the premise of being a “Deadpool” sequel and having the story reflect it. The closest thing we get to narrative inventiveness is in the credits scenes, which are hilarious and arguably the highlight of the film. Don’t get me wrong, the film is still highly entertaining and I laughed quite often, but it feels weird to call this movie “safe”.

Still worth watching just for that X-Force sequence, and *that* A-list actor cameo.

15. First Reformed

Ethan Hawke plays a priest and former military chaplain who serves at a small historical upstate New York church while tending to his dwindling Ethan Flock. One day, he gets a visit from a young pregnant woman asking him to meet with and provide guidance to her depressed, radical environmentalist husband, and the ensuing crisis of faith the priest experiences after their Ethan Talk. His research into environmental issues and activism puts him up against the head of a megachurch that owns his small church and a wealthy industrialist who has Ethan Stock in the church, who both think his concerns are a bunch of Ethan Crock. In addition to that, his physical state is deteriorating due to alcoholism and medical issues, which he tries to remedy by visiting his Ethan Doc and drinking cocktails made of whiskey and Pepto Bismol (on the Ethan Rocks), and he’s also plagued by the death of his son, who died fighting in Ethan Iraq. This film feels like a return to form for Ethan Hawke as a serious actor, after a few years of mostly making Ethan Schlock. I particularly love the scene where he brutally rejects some woman who wants his Ethan Cock, leaving her absolutely Ethan Rocked. The movie’s quality can mainly be Ethan Chalked up to his intense and soulful performance, as well as a strong supporting cast and Paul Schrader’s excellent writing. While the ending felt a bit silly and I’m still not sure how I feel about it months later, it’s hardly an Ethan Knock on the movie, for the film as a whole is hard to Ethan Mock.

I’m truly sorry for this review, just not enough to not post it. Feel free to have me Ethan Blocked.

14. Ant-Man and The Wasp

Despite all its insubstantiality (or probably because of it) and the canning of original director Edgar Wright in favor of literal and figurative “Yes Man” director Peyton Reed, the first “Ant-Man” is still one of my favorite MCU films. The visuals and action were creative, the colors were vibrant, the tone is lighthearted, the stakes are low, and Paul Rudd was extremely charming, and the film was a perfect antidote to the bloated and boring “Avengers: Age of Ultron”. Releasing the sequel after the similarly bloated and depressing “Avengers: Infinity War” was a brilliant move on Marvel’s part, as this also feels like the small, funny, creative antidote to that film. The plot is fairly straightforward stuff; Scott Lang (on house-arrest after the events of “Civil War”) and the newly-superheroic Hope Van Dyne team up with her father Hank Pym to develop the technology to possibly rescue Hope’s mother after learning she might still be alive in THE QUANTUM REALM. They’re hindered at all stops by a mysterious figure that can phase through matter, as well as a shady arms dealer played by a paycheck-cashing Walton Goggins, and the whole film is basically about them fighting for and playing hot-potato with Hank’s shrunken-down laboratory.

I wouldn’t say the film is hard to follow at any point, but it does tend to get bogged down in overplotting every now and again, with multiple pacing-subplots that don’t affect the story much. My feelings on MCU humor is well-established at this point, so it’s worth noting that it has about a 1:1 hit-to-miss ratio when it comes to the jokes, which is much higher than anticipated. The only unexpected drawback to the humor is that they’ve kind of made Scott more of an idiot and goofball than the schlubby everyman who just wants to be a hero to his daughter. My last major complaint is that the film is less visually colorful than its predecessor, no doubt due to it following the rest of the MCU’s pallet, but also because most of it is shot in grey, daytime San Francisco.

Having said all that, this is superb fun, filled with charming actors, an appealing story, likable characters, and genuinely inventive action scenes that really get a lot of mileage out of the shrinking/growing technology. I love the scenes between Scott and his daughter, as well as the ones between Scott and his parole officer/FBI agent, played by the always hilarious Randall Park. I also like that the antagonists aren’t even really villains, just misunderstood. The only actual villain was Goggins’ character, and I thought it was funny that even the movie acknowledged him as disposable. In the end, I'm all for Black Panther's inclusivity and Infinity War's sadism, but as someone who likes actual movies instead of Disney products masquerading as movies, "Ant-Man and The Wasp" is easily my favorite Marvel joint since “Winter Soldier”.

13. Cold War

“Cold War” is the least romantic love story I’ve ever seen. Zula, a young singer, meets somewhat older musician Wiktor, both working for a traveling music company in post-war Poland. These two broken souls fall madly in love, for even if they often can’t stand to be with each other, they can’t bear being apart too. Circumstances force them apart, and we follow the moments where their lives intersect over the following years. The film is a very tight and engrossing story, focusing entirely on the performances and the atmosphere while leaving pretty much no room for exposition. When they reunite, we are left to piece together details of their intervening time through inference and their behavior. Telling a story by omission is ambitious, and while I totally understand people wanting more out of this movie, I found it riveting. I’d even say it adds to the film, because since we’re getting so little detail we’re trying to understand a relationship that even the couple might not understand. That the film is barely 80 minutes long, fantastically acted, and is shot in some of the most stunning and crisp black-and-white cinematography I’ve seen all year (this is how you use camerawork to tell a story, Alfonso Cuarón) is just the icing on the cake.

Don’t watch this if you’re depressed.

12. Aquaman

I know, I know, I can’t believe it either. I couldn’t have possibly been less excited for this movie, except maybe as a morbid curiosity, but I’ll be damned if this isn’t one of the most stupidly entertaining films I’ve seen in recent history. Willem Dafoe exclaims “Surface dwellers. To arms!” while riding a hammerhead shark. Nicole Kidman fights armored sea-soldiers in a living room. An octopus plays drums before a ceremonial duel to the death. A globe-trotting plot that spans oceans, deserts, Sicily and the center of the goddamn Earth. The secondary villain has a pop-song montage where he develops his power-armor. Crab-people. All this (and much, much more) adds up to the wildest, most visually inventive superhero film I’ve seen in ages. All superhero films have a certain level of stupid that comes with the material. “Aquaman” goes so far above and beyond the normal level of stupid that it actually somehow becomes brilliant.

James Wan solidifies himself as one of the best blockbuster filmmakers working today, his endlessly creative and energetic direction making even the clichéd parts (like the general plot of the reluctant outsider embracing his role as hero/leader, or the lame 80’s-fantasy-meets-dudebro dialogue) seem fun and tongue-in-cheek. Wan isn’t interested in making a deep, meaningful comic book adaptation; he made a visionary Movie! with a capital M, and the exclamation point being on fire. The film’s excessive length and frenetic pace makes it pretty exhausting, but it’s such a fun ride that it still felt super satisfying by the end.

I’d say the film’s only major weakness is Amber Heard as the love-interest, who would make a terrific department store mannequin but is ill-suited to the role of a charismatic warrior-queen. The movie could have definitely used a fun romance angle, but her and Jason Momoa (who is likeable and solid) have comically low chemistry, which is at least makes it kind of funny in how forced their romance scenes are.

Between this and “Wonder Woman”, it’s like DC is finally getting its shit together and embracing director-driven superhero films. I understand every problem people have with this film’s plot and dialogue and characters, but if you can tune your brain to a certain wavelength as I did, this is one of the most ridiculously entertaining, shamelessly dorky, and incredibly stupid things I’ve seen all year, and I still can’t believe someone greenlit this for $200 million and actually released it in theaters.

11. The Favourite

Greek absurdist Yorgos Lanthimos has really hit his stride in recent years, culminating in his most straightforward film “The Favourite”, which despite having less inherent weirdness than “The Lobster” or “Killing of a Sacred Deer” sacrifices none of Lanthimos’ trademark dark humor and bite. The film, set during the early 1700’s is about the frail and mentally unhinged Queen Anne (Olivia Colman), whose affections and favor are vied for by her long-time friend and confidant (Rachel Weisz) and the palace’s newly-arrived servant (Emma Stone) while England fights a costly war with France. All three women give career-best performances in one of the best-acted movies of the year, and all deserving of their Oscar nominations (though it must be said that Nicholas Hoult was snubbed). It’s very tightly written, serving as a hilarious dark comedy, a fascinating historical costume drama and satire of class and politics, and a raw portrayal of the ever-changing relationship between these three women and how it reflects on human nature as a whole. And it’s all wrapped up in gorgeous production design and beautifully-lit, idiosyncratic cinematography with an atmosphere so thick you could cut it with a knife. Easily the best film of Lanthimos’ films that I’ve seen, and easily the best Best Picture nominee. Plus, seeing people in Ye Olde times scheming and fucking and swearing is just endlessly amusing to me.

10. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

If Netflix’s goal was to get serious about their movie production, then snagging the Coen Brothers’ Western anthology film was a hell of a step in the right direction. It goes without saying that the film is impeccably written, beautifully shot, well-acted, and loaded with the Coen’s wonderful trademark mixture of wit and weirdness. The way to properly review this film would be to review all six vignettes, but I’m not going to do that because I don’t want to give away any of the wonderful surprises the film has in store. The film as a whole is a fascinating look at less-archetypal stories of the Old West, all with the common theme of death and mortality, and as a middle-tier Coen Brothers film, it’s easily one of the best films of the year.

9. Overlord

The night of D-Day, during the airborne invasion of Normandy, a paratrooper squad is sent to a French village to find and destroy a Germans communications station in order to greatly help the Allied landings in the morning. Once in the village, they team up with a local French woman and discover the Nazis plotting something far more horrifying and deadly than they could have imagined.

This is a classic men-on-a-mission WWII film crossed with a Wolfenstein-y Nazi mad science vibe, glossed up with the finest CGI, make-up, and gore effects that producer JJ Abrams can provide, but retaining the old-school straightforward plotting and a fairly grounded approach. The plot is easy to follow, the stakes are always clear, the action is loud (the sound design in this film is amazing), impactful, and always has a purpose in the plot, and the characters, while simple, are engaging and consistent in their characterization (especially love Wyatt Russell channeling his father’s masculine charisma). The film takes itself fairly seriously, the sparse humor more stemming from characters’ natural reactions to their situations and the escalation of the film’s B-movie premise, but the approach has the slightest tongue in cheek which is the perfect way to do this. And best of all, it wraps up neatly in the end with no sequel-baiting whatsoever. If I had to nitpick, I’d say the first half can be a bit slow at times and I wish they did a bit more with the Nazi scientist character. But “Overlord” is such a simple, unpretentious film, so confident in its craft, premise, and unrepentantly violent glee, I can’t help but love it. It’s something of a miracle this film came out on 2018. Thank God this wasn’t attached to the now-ruined Cloverfield franchise.

8. Blindspotting

For most films I watch, I have my expectations going in that admittedly affect my judgement; I don’t know if I’d have rated “Aquaman” so high if I wasn’t so damnsurprisedby it (only a re-watch will tell), but my point is that I saw “Blindspotting”, not really having expectations because I was kind of winding down this list and just trying to squeeze in a few more films. Having said all that, this film just blindsided me with how good it is. The film is about Collin, a black man in Oakland in the last three days of his parole, who witnesses a police shooting and must contend with his internal struggle and the trouble that his white, best friend Miles often gets them in. The movie is feels incredibly alive, showing Oakland and its inhabitants as vibrant, colorful and multifaceted, as a city more than the sum of the issues it faces. The film perfectly straddles the line between comedy and drama, deftly maneuvering between the two leads shooting the shit while working at a moving company and confronting the heartbreaking reality of racial identity in a rapidly-gentrifying city. The two leads (Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal) are both great, really adding depth to two characters who could have easily been portrayed as merely victims or troublemakers. The script (also written by Diggs and Casal) contains very smart and often hilarious dialogue, and the story is perfectly paced as it builds to an absolute stunner of a climax. Easily the year’s best and most nuanced film about race relations, while also possessing a compassionate, honest heart at its center.

7. Widows

Steve McQueen (the director, not the dead actor) steps away from his prestige dramas about human suffering to make his first, and hopefully not last, foray into the world of pulpy crime thrillers, with the help of Gillian “Gone Girl” Flynn. Which isn’t to say he’s made a film lacking in substance; “Widows” is very smart about feminism, class, institutional racism and politics, and the fact that it manages to blend it so seamlessly with the story in such a satisfying way is a testament to the talents of all involved. The story is a gritty, twisty thriller about a trio of women who plan a ballsy heist to remedy their money troubles after their criminal husbands die during a botched robbery, while getting mixed up with local crooked politicians. The film is terrifically directed and edited (tell me the editing in the opening scene isn’t the most startling start to a film in 2018), the writing and character development is super satisfying, and the film has one of the best acting ensembles of the year. If I had to pick an MVP, I’d go with 6’3” Australian goddess Elizabeth Debicki who undergoes a hell of a character arc during the film and gives her best screen performance to date. I’d say the film’s only flaws are the generic Zimmer-esque thriller music (no surprise considering it was scored by Hans Zimmer himself), and that one character’s role in the last third of the movie (while a genuinely shocking twist) felt a bit unnecessary and overly paperback-pulpy.

But seriously, I cannot believe everyone (especially pretty much every major movie award) has been sleeping on “Widows”, because McQueen expertly mixes his thematic substance with strong character development and audience-pleasing thrills, adding up to one of 2018’s most satisfying films.

6. At Eternity’s Gate

You know something I’ve realized while watching this film? I’ve never actually seen a film where Willem Dafoe, one of my favorite actors, plays the lead. The guy has always made such an impression in his supporting roles that I hadn’t realized how good a film starring him could be (no, I haven’t seen “The Last Temptation of Christ” yet, nerd), at least until I saw “At Eternity’s Gate”, a recounting of the last years of Vincent Van Gogh, who despite his brilliant artistry and view of nature was an outcast plagued by poverty and mental illness. The film’s cinematography is very distinct, often moving to the beat of Van Gogh’s state of mind, often in a state of frenetic disarray. It can be distracting at first, but it really suited the story and did a terrific job in getting the audience to feel Van Gogh’s mental state. I understand some people getting annoyed with this often-handheld approach to a film about a painter, but it’s important to remember that this film is more about the artist than the art. Not giving the slightest shit about Van Gogh going in, I was shocked at how much I was into the movie, entranced by both its beauty and despair. But going back to the whole Willem Dafoe thing, he’s the reason to see this film. Given the reigns to the film, Dafoe gives a commanding, entrancing and magnificent performance as the troubled artist, easily one of the best performances of the year and of his sterling career (definitely his best since “Speed 2: Cruise Control). A captivating look at life, death, and art that is a must for any fan of art, film, and Willem Dafoe.

5. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Fresh off their unceremonious but karmically satisfying exit from “Solo: A Star Wars” story, Lord and Miller return as producers and writers to bring us “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, one of the best and most original superhero films ever made. The story is about Miles Morales, a Brooklyn teenager who suddenly finds himself thrust into the role of Spider-Man after acquiring powers from a radioactive spider, and ends up teaming with various incarnations of Spider-Man from different universes to stop Kingpin from using a particle accelerator before he inadvertently destroys New York.

Along for the ride is an outstanding supporting cast with various Spider-people, including an older Peter Parker from an alternate universe, Nicolas Cage’s hilarious Spider-Man Noir and John Mulaney’s Looney Tunes-esque Spider Ham, as well as a badass Aunt May and a strong sympathetic-but-not villain in Kingpin.

I love the way all the supporting characters’stories and actionsgraduallycenter around Miles; it’s a really organic way of showing us how much Miles grows more confident and inspired through his journey.Miles himself is a fun, likable protagonist, but the film’s real standout is actually Peter Parker. It’s a ballsy move to take Spider-Man’s most famous alter-ego and turn him into a jaded, out-of-shape, past-his-prime adult with sweatpants and a perpetual 5-o’clock shadow, a man with more regret than pride. His history in his own universe would be enough to make him a compelling character, but the reluctant-mentor relationship he forms with Miles and his own growth as a result really makes him my favorite depiction of the Spider-Man character.

All of this is wrapped up in an incredible animation style unlike anything done before in a motion picture, the film genuinely looking like a comic book come to life. And that’s without mentioning the super-fun and inventive action scenes, the funny, self-aware humor (though I do have to knock the film for making fun of “Spider-Man 3” but neither of the Andrew Garfield ones), and genuine love and care the filmmakers have for the characters.

We’ve finally done it. It’s only taken 14 years, but we’ve finally made another superhero movie that can live up to “Spider-Man 2”. May Lord and Miller make many, many more films in their lifetime, and may other mainstream filmmakers take inspiration from them to make something this different.

4. One Cut of the Dead

A Japanese B-movie film crew making a zombie movie gets unwittingly attacked by actual zombies, the film opening with an impressive 37-minute long-take. That is literally all I’m going to tell you about this film, because this wonderful, hilarious, heartfelt, and endlessly inventive zombie-comedy is by far the biggest surprise of the year, and even though a beat-for-beat spoiler of the whole plot wouldn’t necessarily ruin it, its surprises are worth discovering for yourself. I’ll just say that the first two acts are fun and amusing, but are secretly setting up in many subtle ways the absolutely fan-fucking-tastic 3rd act, possibly my favorite stretch of filmmaking of the entire year, during the entirety of which I was either laughing or grinning like an idiot. Please seek “One Cut of the Dead” out however you can. I cannot stress how much I love this.

3. The Death of Stalin

I’ve always loved Armando Iannucci’s work, from his workplace comedies to his dark political satires, so when he combined the two into a story of the power struggle amongst Soviet leaders in the wake of Stalin’s death in 1953, it’s hardly surprising the result is one of my favorite films of the year. It obvious to anyone who knows Iannucci’s stuff that the film is goddamn hilarious, with ace writing, some really good physical comedy and solid gold one-liners delivered from the year’s finest ensemble cast. Particularly worthy of praise are Steve Buscemi as Khrushchev, Rupert Friend as Vasily Stalin, Jason Isaacs as General Zhukov, and Jeffrey Tambor as Georgy Malenkov (I could honestly keep going in listing the great performances in this film). What is surprising is how dark and serious the subject matter is treated, as the film deftly veers from political satire of the bumbling and scheming leaders to the horrific effects that their actions have on the Soviet populace. The film itself starts out hilarious but gets progressively grimmer until you notice you’ve stopped laughing and it really hits you how terrifying living in this place and time was. It’s an absolutely brilliant balance of tone and I couldn’t be more satisfied with how the film keeps playing with the audience’s expectations, even if you know your Soviet history. Easily the funniest, smartest, and most startlingly dark film I’ve seen all year, and it really makes one hope that Armando Iannucci keeps up this whole filmmaking thing.

2. Paddington 2

No, I’m not kidding. This is legit one of the best sequels of all time. The first “Paddington” was a very charming, though somewhat clunky, film that introduced moviegoers to Paddington, a polite and well-meaning anthropomorphic Peruvian Bear who finds himself adopted by a British family, and the various mishaps that ensue due to Paddington’s fish-out-of-water circumstances and his general clumsiness. The sequel finds Paddington working to buy a present for his aunt, only to find himself framed and imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit.

Before you assume something, no, this is not a dark, serious sequel. In fact, this is one of the most joyous and delightful films I’ve seen in a long time, as Paddington’s sweet nature inspires kindness in those around him, even the hardened inmates, as they try to free him from prison and catch the real criminal (a show-stealing Hugh Grant as a flamboyant actor). The bright colors and brilliantly filmmaking and camerawork from Paul King are so appealing that they actually make dull, gray London seem like a wonderful town. The action sequences and visual gags are so perfectly framed and executed that this film often feels like the best film Wes Anderson never made. The entire supporting cast, particularly Grant as well as Brendan Gleeson as the mean prison cook, is excellent and perfectly complements Ben Whishaw’s lovely voiceover work as the titular bear. The film has light (though obvious) anti-Brexit subtext, though it is perfectly integrated to the message of the film (“If you’re kind and polite, the world will be right.”) and in no way distracts from the story or characters, SPIKE LEE.

Look, I seriously cannot say enough good things about “Paddington 2”. The difference between a kid’s movie and a family film is that the latter is something that anyone can enjoy, and that statement absolutely applies to this. Even jaded misanthropic assholes (not unlike myself) would be seriously hard-pressed to not find joy in this movie.

And when people mention the greatest film performances of all time, they'll still mention the usual ones; Brando in "On the Waterfront", De Niro in "Raging Bull", Day-Lewis in "There Will Be Blood", etc.

But now, they'll also mention Hugh Grant in "Paddington 2".

1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Holy shit, this movie is fucking nuts. I said that phrase to my friend multiple times when we saw it opening weekend in IMAX (if you didn’t see it in theaters, you seriously missed out). In terms of jaw-dropping, cinematic spectacle, no other movie this year captured the wonder and possibilities of the medium to such a degree. This might be the most fun I’ve ever had in a movie theater.

The plot involves Ethan and his IMF team (minus Jeremy Renner) on the hunt for three stolen plutonium cores after losing them in a botched exchange, accompanied by a CIA assassin (Henry Cavill, glorious mustache and all) sent to ensure their retrieval. It’s the kind of gripping and tense globe-trotting plot we’ve come to expect from the series, though it’s greatly helped by an old-school, low-tech approach, focusing more on espionage and deception, with the classic Mission: Impossible mask reveals never getting old.

Christopher McQuarrie returns to write and direct after the strong “Rogue Nation”. I was initially concerned about this because part of the appeal of this series was always putting each film in the hands of a different director and letting them put their own spin on it, but McQuarrie goes out of his way to make this film feel different from all the previous entries, the film notably much faster, grittier, and more personal than the last few entries. There’s not a lot of humor in the dialogue (which I appreciate for a film this big to take itself seriously), but there’s enough levity from Simon Pegg and the absurdity of the action scenes to compensate. The film as a whole feels like a massive step up from “Rogue Nation”, McQuarrie having grown leaps and bounds as an action director and even a storyteller. Even the returning bad guy from “Rogue Nation”, who I thought was kind of lame in that film, is much more threatening and badass here. My only complaint is that in his attempt to make the film feel grittier and more different, McQuarrie replaced “Rogue Nation” composer Joe Kraemer with Lorne Balfe, whose overly-processed Zimmer-esque score works well during the action scenes, but in all other areas feels like generic, droning, postcore memewave “noise” unfitting for such a fun series.

Whatever few weaknesses there are in plot (the mysterious villain’s reveal could’ve been less obvious, and all the double-crossing and factions get a bit convoluted at times) and score are easily offset by the incredible filmmaking and sheer bravado on display by Tom Cruise. Watching him sprint across London rooftops, get involved in not one or two but four incredible vehicular chases, throw down in one of the most brutal fistfights I’ve ever seen in Hollywood movie, and perform a HALO jump out of a cargo plane in the most ballsy one-shot ever recorded on film (which he did almost a hundred times during filming), it’s impossible not to appreciate how much this man risks his life for our entertainment. That he is so smoothly charismatic and such an underrated actor (pay attention to his facial expressions during the scene where he reunites with his ex-wife and must hide his reasons for being there) is only the icing on the cake.

Tom Cruise unironically deserves an Academy Award for his performance here. It’s such a committed, impressive, physical performance, one that so effectively blurs the lines between actor and character. It’s up there with anything Chaplin and Keaton have ever done, and I sure as shit don’t recall seeing “actors” like Meryl Streep or Daniel Day-Lewis become a helicopter stunt pilot for a film role, or breaking their ankle during a stunt and still finishing the take in character. No one but Cruise can pull off something like this, as the script is keen to remind us in its meta-textual portrayal of a man so willing risking his life for the greater good, and it’s reassuring that there’s at least one actor in Hollywood who is even willing to try. I’m willing to rank Cruise as the 2nd greatest action star of all time (right behind Jackie Chan himself).

Every year after I write these reviews, I overexpose myself and become sick to death of movies, and usually wait until something incredible comes out to again remind me why I love this medium so much. “Mission: Impossible – Fallout” is that cinematic moment, and then some. This is the best movie I’ve seen since “Mad Max: Fury Road”, and possibly even better. Please keep making these for as long as you want, Tom, because you’re the only man in the industry who can make the impossible…possible.

The Golden Michael Awards

The Double-Wide Award for Best Trailer

Nominees:

Runner-up: Cold War

Winner: Mission: Impossible – Fallout

The “Why Isn’t This an Oscar Category” Award for Best Scene

Nominees:

Ant-Man and the Wasp – Shrinking car chase

Aquaman – Sicily fight

Avengers: Infinity – Ending

Bad Times at the El Royale – One-way mirrors

BlacKkKlansman – Stokely Carmichael speech

Blindspotting – Garage confrontation

Deadpool 2 – X-Force mission

Den of Thieves – Double-date interruption

Kursk – Cold swim

Mission: Impossible – Fallout – Bathroom brawl

Mission: Impossible – Fallout – HALO jump

Mission: Impossible – Fallout – Helicopter chase

Mission: Impossible – Fallout – Paris extraction

One Cut of the Dead – The entire 3rd act

Overlord – Paradrop

Paddington 2 – Prison Break

Paddington 2 – Song-and-dance finale

Paradox – Apartment fight/chase

Shock Wave – Bomb vest disposal

The Death of Stalin – Funeral

The Night Comes For Us – Final fight

Upgrade – First fight

Widows – The heist

Runner-up: Mission: Impossible – Fallout – Helicopter chase

Winner: One Cut of the Dead – The entire 3rd act

The Objectification Award for Most Attractive - Male

Nominees:

Alden Ehrenreich – Solo: A Star Wars Story

Henry Golding – Crazy Rich Asians

Jason Statham – The Meg

John Krasinski – A Quiet Place

Keanu Reeves – Destination Wedding

Michael B. Jordan – Black Panther

Paul Rudd – Ant Man & The Wasp

Tom Cruise – Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Tom Hardy – Venom

Chris Hemsworth – Avengers: Infinity War

Runner-up: Tom Cruise – Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Winner: Chris Hemsworth – Avengers: Infinity War

The Objectification Award for Most Attractive - Female

Nominees:

Blake Lively – A Simple Favor

Dakota Johnson – Suspiria

Haley Lu Richardson – Support the Girls

Joanna Kulig – Cold War

Lady Gaga – A Star is Born

Laura Harrier – BlacKkKlansman

Olivia Cooke – Ready Player One

Sofia Boutella – Hotel Artemis

Winona Ryder – Destination Wedding

Zazie Beetz – Deadpool 2

Runner-up: Blake Lively – A Simple Favor

Winner: Joanna Kulig – Cold War

The Zoolander Award for Most Really, Really, Really, Ridiculously Good-Looking Film

Nominees:

Aquaman

Bad Times at the El Royale

Cold War

Crazy Rich Asians

Incredibles 2

Isle of Dogs

Leave No Trace

Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Mute

Paddington 2

Roma

Shadow

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Suspiria

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Favourite

They Shall Not Grow Old

Runner-up: Cold War

Winner: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

The Brahmin Award for Best Cast

Nominees:

Avengers: Infinity War

Bad Times at the El Royale

Crazy Rich Asians

Isle of Dogs

Paddington 2

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The Death of Stalin

The Favourite

Widows

Runner-up: Paddington 2

Winner: The Death of Stalin

The “It’s no ‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ by John Powell” Award for 2nd Best Film Score

Nominees:

Ant-Man and the Wasp – Christophe Beck

Black Panther – Ludwig Göransson

BlackKklansman – Terence Blanchard

Game Night – Cliff Martinez

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – Michael Giacchino

The Cloverfield Paradox – Bear McCreary

The Death of Stalin – Christopher Willis

Runner-up: The Cloverfield Paradox – Bear McCreary

Winner: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – Michael Giacchino

The Jussie Smollett Award for Best Performance

Honorable Mentions:

Adam Driver – BlackKklansman

Andy Lau – Shock Wave

Ben Foster – Leave No Trace

Christian Bale – Vice

Claire Foy - Unsane

Clint Eastwood – The Mule

Emma Stone - The Favourite

Gugu Mbatha-Raw – The Cloverfield Paradox

Jakob Cedergren – The Guilty

Jamie Lee Curtis - Halloween

Jason Isaacs – The Death of Stalin

Jason Statham – The Meg

Joaquin Phoenix – You Were Never Really Here

Joe Cole – A Prayer Before Dawn

John Cena – Bumblebee

Lady Gaga – A Star is Born

Logan Marshall-Green – Upgrade

Mark Wahlberg – Mile 22

Matthew McConaughey – White Boy Rick

Melissa McCarthy – Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Michelle Yeoh – Crazy Rich Asians

Nick Offerman – Hearts Beat Loud

Rachel Weisz - The Favourite

Robert Redford – The Old Man and the Gun

Ryan Reynolds – Deadpool 2

Sam Clafin – Journey’s End

Steve Buscemi – The Death of Stalin

Takayumi Hamatsu – One Cut of the Dead

Thomasin McKenzie – Leave No Trace

Tilda Swinton – Suspiria

Tom Hardy – Venom

Viola Davis – Widows

Wyatt Russell – Overlord

Nominees:

Blake Lively – A Simple Favor

Bradley Cooper – A Star is Born

Daveed Diggs – Blindspotting

Elizabeth Debicki – Widows

Elsie Fisher – Eighth Grade

Ethan Hawke – First Reformed

Gerard Butler – Den of Thieves

Haley Lu Richardson – Support the Girls

Hugh Grant – Paddington 2

Joanna Kulig – Cold War

Louis Koo – Paradox

Mahershala Ali – Green Book

Olivia Colman – The Favourite

Rachel McAdams – Game Night

Rafael Casal – Blindspotting

Regina Hall – Support the Girls

Richard E. Grant - Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Tom Cruise - Mission: Impossible – Fallout

Viggo Mortenson – Green Book

Willem Dafoe – At Eternity’s Gate

Runner-up: Willem Dafoe – At Eternity’s Gate

Winner: Hugh Grant – Paddington 2