10 Best Movies of 2018

by Philip Price
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10. Vox Lux
Never have I felt more bewildered by a movie after watching it. Part of me was fascinated by what I saw unfold as the life of this young woman played out in two halves and three complete acts while the other half of me wanted to completely reject-in a sense-what this woman became or rather, what the world turned her into. It has to mean something for a film to be so internally divisive so as to not even be sure of where one ultimately lands in overall opinion of the film days after seeing it. I still don't know if I liked “Vox Lux” or not, but I kind of loved it and I know I'm still thinking about it and I know "Wrapped Up" continues to give me chills every time I listen to it-which has been damn near constantly since I walked out of the theater. I need to see this again. Immediately.
 
9. A Quiet Place
The third directorial effort from John Krasinski starring real-life wife Emily Blunt in their first on-screen collaboration (and as a married couple no less) is a movie that encapsulates the equal amount of unexpected fear as compared to the expected amount of joy that comes along with becoming a parent. This is something society doesn't often prepare one for and that expectant parents don't hear much about when embarking on this particular chapter in their life. People talk about how having children will change your life, certainly, and how it will do so for the better as well as how tough things will be at different times for different reasons, but no one ever seems to warn expectant parents just how much fear will encompass their lives and in what are otherwise seemingly normal of situations. This isn't what “A Quiet Place” is about outright, but as the father to a now four-year-old daughter it is what “A Quiet Place” is most explicitly about to me and is therefore, the scariest and one of the most affecting films of the year.

8. If Beale Street Could Talk
“If Beale Street Could Talk” is simultaneously simple yet contains mountains of emotions and social commentary aching to be unpacked; ideas, inclinations, and images that will continue to resonate in my mind for months. A meditation session of a movie and a complete experience. There is story if not sporadic plot points that guide the viewer through the series of themes director Barry Jenkins is keen on communicating, but ‘Beale Street’ features what are really only three complete scenes while the rest of it is more montage or anecdotes that swirl around the three major moments to create a deeper context for the more full, finite scenes that pinpoint the beginning, middle, and end of the film. Working with what is more of a loose, jazz-inspired structure the viewer is fed little bits of information from different stages in the characters' lives, but it is through the power of how Jenkins and his editors weave the layers of the story of Tish (KiKi Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James) together that not only do we become convinced of their love for one another, but of their friendship and, as a result, that they are meant to be. Also, that score.

7. Paddington 2
“Paddington 2” is one of those films I would have most likely labeled simply as "great," but not included on this list had I not had a four-year-old daughter. As anyone who's ever been around little children ever knows-they tend to latch onto a movie and stick with it repeatedly for a couple months time. While the daughter had various favorites throughout the year the one, I always found myself suggesting was “Paddington 2.” She and I saw it in the theater over MLK weekend at the beginning of the year and both of us found it endearingly charming (or at least I did and I'm pretty sure she felt the same way). I couldn't wait to purchase the Blu-ray and show it to my wife, and then we would throw it on again, and again, and before I knew it, I couldn't help but to admit that I completely adored “Paddington 2.” If you'd told me in January that I was seeing what would eventually be one of my favorite films of the year I 1) might not have seen as many movies in the subsequent months and 2) probably wouldn't have believed you. That said, Paul King's sequel is infinitely charming and endlessly humble. "If we are kind and polite, the world will be right."
 
6. First Reformed
Paul Schrader has made a career of analyzing the psyches of tortured male souls and their having to grapple with the varied struggles and conflicts their environment and/or time in history dictates they deal with. In “First Reformed,” the writer/director is very much speaking to the time in which the film has been made as this is a story of a man full of anxieties and uncertainties despite his outward facade of peace and a certain serenity that only such measured priests can uphold. “First Reformed” doesn't care to follow a repeated quandary such as a crisis of faith, but instead takes on the story of a man who was beaten down by life long before he decided to make the church his one and only true love. Ethan Hawke portrays Reverend Toller in one of his best performances to date in a career filled with memorable performances as Schrader analyzes the mentality of suffering to earn salvation, but as Toller at one point poses, "Who can know the mind of God?" At another point though, Toller derives what is necessary to please God in his own, twisted way, thus painting the broad themes of contradiction that often informs the religious as well as “First Reformed.” In short, it's a thinker, but it's a stunner.
 
5. Mission: Impossible - FALLOUT
The older Tom Cruise gets, the less time there is between his ‘Mission: Impossible’ sequels. “Mission: Impossible – FALLOUT” is the pinnacle of what it seems this entire series, knowing or unknowingly, has been leading to. It is writer/director Christopher McQuarrie's “The Dark Knight,” it is Cruise's commitment to celluloid that will define the middle act of his career, and it is by far one of the best action movies ever made. Yes, ‘FALLOUT’ is everything a fan of the previous films could want in that it revolves around a convoluted plot of double crossings and inconspicuous baddies throwing obstacles at our beloved team of core heroes, but what elevated this latest entry above many of the others is the way in which it caps off this trilogy of sorts that began with ‘Ghost Protocol’ where these movies weren't just using Cruise's Hunt as a conduit for action or trying to humanize him, but more discover the person Hunt actually is while detailing his journey to figure out who he truly wants to be. 

4. BlacKkKlansman
A history lesson and galvanizing procedural all in one, Spike Lee's “BlacKkKlansman” is one for the ages. An incredibly heavy, effectively powerful film that drenches you in the world in which it operates, pulls absolutely no punches, and delivers a film from a focused filmmaker who is not only presenting a timely conversation that needs to happen, but conveying his side of the conversation with style, eloquence, and immense profundity. Many of Lee’s films are pointedly about what they’re about, but when Lee actually has a story to work his themes through, he is able to create more fulfilling and impactful experiences. This is what makes “BlacKkKlansman” the perfect story for Lee to tell. The true life events the film is based on provide an entertaining template to discuss the politics Lee desires to discuss while the true story is also entrenched in the racially charged dilemmas of the late seventies (and unfortunately, of today as well). In essence, it’s a perfect melding of artist and material.

3. Ready Player One
Director Steven Spielberg has a way with not only bringing the viewer into the spectacle but making them appreciate the aura of the spectacle he has concocted on screen. We're not just in awe of what we're seeing on screen, but we're in awe of how it makes us feel. Spielberg is a master of this kind of spellbinding visual storytelling, but as the filmmaker has grown older his filmography has naturally become more serious. That is to say, it's been a decade since that fourth Indiana Jones movie, but with his latest, “Ready Player One,” Spielberg returns to that era he helped define as “Ready Player One” mines the kind of wonder each of those films elicited as they were all, in some fashion, told from the point of view of a child who was allowed to run wild with and fully indulge in their imagination. “Ready Player One” doesn't just utilize the same tone and a barrage of references to trick audiences who might have an affection for any one of the many cameos this thing trots out in order to make them feel an affinity for this new product, but rather it takes the real world into account, advances it into a hyper, but probable reality, and then comments on how it's nice to indulge in our imaginations and appreciate what others have given us with theirs, but that-as with everything-balance is key and it requires real-world interactions, relationships, and experiences to allow those imaginations to grow.
 
2. A Star is Born
Often in movies about individuals who strive to make a living telling stories the process of capturing the true essence of such lives strays from the actual topic of why the way these particular people tell stories is so special. What it actually takes to get from a lyric to a melody to an arrangement or in whatever order inspiration decides to strike is completely glossed over. With “A Star is Born,” Bradley Cooper goes from movie star to film director, screenwriter, musician, and songwriter. In taking on these new roles and applying them to what is the fourth incarnation of “A Star is Born” Cooper has found a way to work through his creative process by exploring the creative process. Cooper and Lady Gaga's performances define the film, their chemistry enrapturing, and the music is pretty damn great too. While this is the fourth incarnation of the film, 2018's “A Star is Born” is more than capable of standing on its own and nails the ending in a way that is so devastatingly heart-wrenching it's impossible to not feel everything that has come before it.

1. Avengers: Infinity War
‘Infinity War’ is as sprawling as you could imagine, as epic as you would hope, and as devastating as it needed to be, but hoped it wouldn't be. That this works as well as it does and that it was pulled off at all is a miracle and earns the movie points upon points, but that-by the time the credits come to a close-the film has shaken you to the core and chilled your skin off is a sign of something more than satisfying, popcorn entertainment, but more it signifies the arrival of a game-changer and if ‘Infinity War’ is anything at all it is groundbreaking. It's understandable how this choice for my number one film of the year might be baffling to those who haven't been following Robert Downey Jr. and the rest of Marvel Studios for the past decade, but what ‘Infinity War’ signifies (and furthermore delivers upon) is something that has never before been accomplished successfully in the film industry or in movie-making and should be applauded for that reason alone, but that the directing team of the Russo Brothers were actually able to pull this off in a fashion that barely registers as two and a half hours due to the relentless pacing and amount of stuff happening is incredible. The fact we, as an audience, feel all of this stuff though, is what is most incredible and if you have any investment in these worlds or these characters at all it's not difficult to see why ‘Infinity War’ is the triumph it is.

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