Our big-screen stars of the year
IT was the year when Netflix entered the multiplexes, when horror used its brain and the renaissance of the musical gathered steam. After much deliberation, here are my top 20 films of 2018.
1. You Were Never reallY Here
Lynne Ramsay’s brutally beautiful crime thriller was one of those rare productions where everything came together. Joaquin Phoenix’s jittery performance chimes beautifully with Jonny Greenwood’s unnerving score, Thomas Townend’s astonishing cinematography and Joe Bini’s boundary-pushing editing.
This story of a troubled hitman tasked with rescuing a girl from a paedophile ring is a tough watch but I found it impossible to look away.
2. I, ToNYa
Director Craig Gillespie pulled off the cinematic equivalent of the triple axel with a riotously entertaining black comedy about figure skater Tonya Harding. He seamlessly stitches together the sport biopic, the crime caper and the mockumentary.
Margot Robbie and Allison Janney are disgracefully funny as the “white trash” skater and her viperish mother.
3. leave No Trace
This beautifully performed drama tells the story of a traumatised army veteran (Ben Foster) raising his 13-year-old daughter (Thomasin McKenzie) in a tent hidden deep in the vast national park surrounding Portland, Oregon. Director Debra Granik delivers a touching film about life on the margins.
4. FIrsT MaN
La La Land director Damien Chazelle’s spectacular Neil Armstrong biopic is one of those rare films that demand to be watched on the big screen. You can hear the rivets rattle, feel the rocket fuel roar and sense Armstrong’s exhilaration as his foot dangles over the pristine lunar surface. Ryan Gosling impresses as the stoic explorer who takes a giant step for mankind while mourning the death of his daughter.
5. a sTar Is BorN
This third remake of the 1937 original was packed with surprises. We knew Lady Gaga could hold a tune but we didn’t know she was an Oscar-worthy actress. And we knew Bradley Cooper could act but we had no idea he could cut it as a rock star. This touching musical drama proved he’s also a formidable director.
6. DarkesT Hour
Gary Oldman deservedly won his first Oscar for an astonishing performance in Joe Wright’s rousing Winston Churchill movie.
The chameleonic actor completely disappeared into the fat suit and fake jowls to play the Second World War leader as he tries to persuade a treacherous Tory party (some things haven’t changed) to back his decision to continue fighting Hitler following the retreat at Dunkirk.
7. MIssIoN: IMpossIBle – FallouT
Tom Cruise proved he’s still the greatest action hero with a string of jaw-dropping stunts in the sixth film in the spy series. Highlights include Tom leaping out of a plane at 25,000ft, hanging on to a helicopter’s landing gear and taking deathdefying (and in reality anklebreaking) London rooftop leaps.
8. coco
The tear-jerking finale to Pixar’s joyous film about a boy who befriends a skeleton during a trip to the underworld, right, cut me to the emotional bone. The story is based around the Dia De Los Muertos festival, when Mexicans remember dead relatives. Great songs, cute side characters and a witty script keep the tone bright and breezy.
9. peTerloo
Mike Leigh’s drama about the 1819 massacre of Manchester millworkers is one of his greatest achievements. Some critics
found the wordy build-up and the heavy use of the Lancashire dialect hard going but for me its power lies in the way it contextualises the atrocity. When the workers gather for the rally, we know precisely what is at stake.
10. HEREDITARY
The horror film’s renaissance was confirmed by Ari Aster’s slowburning chiller. Instead of jump scares and trips to dark attics, he anchored the supernatural in the gritty story of a troubled artist (Toni Collette) coping with the aftermath of her abusive mother’s death. When the shocks arrive, they are unexpected and horribly real.
11. FUNNY COW
Inspired very loosely by the life of Marti Caine, this tells the story of a Yorkshire woman who escapes poverty and domestic violence by gatecrashing the male-dominated stand-up circuit of the 1970s. Actor-turned-screenwriter Tony Pitts delivered a brutally authentic script and Maxine Peake weighed in with a ferocious turn as the comic.
12. APOSTASY
Daniel Kokotajlo’s debut takes us inside a community of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Oldham where the cult’s apocalyptic dogma is testing the faith of Siobhan Finneran’s single mother. The performances are excellent and the characters are complex and credible. A dark film that radiates with humanity.
13. DEADPOOL 2
Marvel broke the curse of the comedy sequel with a riotous second adventure for Ryan Reynolds’s mutant mercenary. Once again the black sheep of the X-Men franchise sends up and celebrates superhero movies with in-jokes, foul language, over-the-top violence and tirades to camera.
14. ROMA
Alfonso Cuarón took us back to his childhood in 1970s Mexico City with a beautifully shot family drama. A middle-class household slowly pulls itself apart, seen from the perspective of one their maids. As the photography and the sound design are the film’s greatest assets, this was a strange project for home streaming service Netflix.
15. ANT-MAN AND THE WASP
The superhero’s second solo movie offered everything I had wanted from his too-straight 2015 debut. Rudd deadpans salty one-liners, the manic Michael Peña has two funny rambling monologues and the special effects team craft punchy, size-based visual gags.
16. BLACK PANTHER
Marvel took its claws to the superhero formula with a royal family saga set in the secret African kingdom of Wakanda. The catsuit proved a snug fit as Chadwick Boseman delivered a dignified turn as its crime-fighting monarch while Michael B Jordan was a refreshingly nuanced villain.
17. SEARCHING
It wasn’t the first drama that played out entirely on computer and phone screens but this thriller took an as-yet-unnamed genre to unexpected places. As John Cho investigated his daughter’s disappearance, director Aneesh Chaganty uses old-fashioned techniques like red herrings and twists to build up tension. A great debut from a budding Hitchcock.
18. A QUIET PLACE
Keeping schtum is the key to survival in this horror from John Krasinski. Giant, blind, ravenous monsters are stalking the cities of a ruined America so a family have dumped their shoes and learned to communicate by sign language. As Emily Blunt’s character is pregnant, you hope they find a way to soundproof the cot.
19. THE WIFE
Glenn Close deserves to win her first Oscar for a flinty performance in this adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s novel. She plays the long-suffering wife of a vain writer (Jonathan Pryce) who is set to win the Nobel Prize. Director Björn Runge’s film puts the ball in the court of his two leads. They both play it beautifully.
20. SORRY TO BOTHER YOU
Rapper-turned-director Boots Riley’s debut movie borrows perhaps a little too heavily from the work of director Mike Judge but there are some wildly original ideas in this absurdist comedy set in an alternate-reality version of Oakland where Lakeith Stanfield’s Cassius Green has taken a job in telesales.