Annual GONG SHOW 2018

2018 was a year that offered the good, the bad and the ugly at the cinema. Michael Doherty looks back in celluloid

The year 2017 was the least profitable in Hollywood in over a decade, so the pressure was on 2018 to deliver at the global box-office. And it did. Four movies – Black Panther, Incredibles 2, Avengers: Infinity War and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom – raced through the magic one billion dollar mark, confirming the fact

(if it needed confirmation) that Tinseltown relies on sequels and franchises to balance the books. The final-quarter box-office performances of movies such as A Star is Born, Venom, Bohemian Rhapsody, Halloween and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, sealed the deal.

But 2018 was also a year in which Hollywood was forced to take a cold hard look at itself, aided in no small manner by the pressure being asserted by the #metoo, #oscarssowhite and #timesup campaigns. It was a year in which the studio landscape changed with the merger of two of the six giants, Disney and Fox. They, like every Hollywood studio, had to contend with the threat from smaller screens as A-list actors, award-winning writers and top directors were willingly seduced by the freedom (and the money) being offered by steaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime.

On this side of the Atlantic, the Irish film industry continued to thrive, delivering an impressive variety of compelling dramas, including Rosie (Dir: Paddy Breathnach), Michael Inside (Dir: Frank Berry), The

Dig (Dir: The Tohill Brothers), Black 47 (Dir: Lance Daly), The Little Stranger (Dir: Lenny Abrahamson), Float Like a Butterfly (Dir: Carmel Winters), Kissing Candice (Dir: Aoife Mcardle), Papi Chulo (Dir: John Butler), The Delinquent Season (Dir: Mark O’rowe)