2018 has been an odd year. The days churn by with grueling intensity, draining you emotionally with every single blow. Yet, you blink and suddenly, it’s June. How did that happen? Regardless of how 2018 has treated you, personally, the year has presented cinephiles with plenty to laud over, already. In a year that continues to challenge us like 2018, it’s a relief when art can continue to surprise you, impress you, move you, persuade you, gratify you or just simply entertain you. While 2018 hasn’t been filled with a full slate of winners (we’re looking at you, “Show Dogs“), there are certainly many movies worth celebrating, and we’ve rounded up a list of the films that took us away.
You might not love them all. You might not have seen them all either. But these are the movies that we believe everyone should check out. Keep in mind, we’re going by official U.S. release dates, so while we just gave a rave review to “The Incredibles 2,” for example, it’s actually not officially out yet which makes our life and this list a little bit more manageable.
“Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”
The world could use more kindness. Fred Rogers left this world in 2003 at 74, but his legacy continues to live on in the hearts of many. Not only with his indelible children’s television program “Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood,” but with Morgan Neville’s gentle, greatly caring and sincerely lovely film tribute, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” The newest documentary from the Oscar-winning “20 Feet To Stardom” director — while not always willing to dive deep into Rogers’ off-screen persona — is exactly what it should be. A deeply compassionate, resoundingly emotional and beautifully moving look at the man’s contributions and the impact his small-scale program made on the world at large, for multiple generations, Neville’s endearing, immensely touching tribute to Fred Rogers is a warm and meaningful reminder of the power of pure, absolute niceness. In Kimber Myers’ A- review, we celebrate it by proclaiming that “you leave wanting to be the better person that Rogers believed you could be and knowing that you’ll likely fall down a YouTube hole of episode clips to keep basking in his kindness.” And that wealth of kindness and goodness and genuine decency is exactly what a dark, wrenched year like 2018 needs. – Will Ashton
“The Rider”
Leave it to a Chinese woman to make the best American Western of the year so far and one with a perceptive eye about American masculinity as well. Director Chloé Zhao showed tons of promise with her debut, “Songs My Brothers Taught Me,” but she nearly grows staggering leaps and bounds with her intimate, graceful, poised sophomore effort “The Rider” which uses non-professional actors to tell a true-life story about a young rising star in the rodeo circuit who, following a near-fatal accident, can no longer ride horses. With profound empathy the movie follows the young man’s quest to find a new identity in the Heartland of America where a high social currency is placed on his former vocation. “Zhao reimagines the entrenched masculine persona of the cowboy. The result is an entrancing, deeply moving effort, one that is certain to steal the hearts of audiences on its wider release,” Bradley Warren wrote in his review from Cannes. And frankly, that lassoes it all up pretty perfectly. – Rodrigo Perez
“Game Night”
What a brilliant idea and one we didn’t see coming. The concept: what if you took David Fincher’s “The Game,” but you turned it into a comedy ALL the while directing it stylistically dead serious, as if it were a David Fincher film. You MUST hand it to directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein—whom we’ve slagged in the past for junk like the “Vacation” reboot, but they’ve laughed last— “Game Night” is a terrific, meta-cinema idea and more importantly, works beyond its clever design: a group of friends who meet regularly for game nights find themselves dangerously entangled in a real-life mystery. Starring Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Sharon Horgan and an absolutely outstanding Jesse Plemons, “Game Night” is thrilling, hilarious and yes, a bonus, amazingly shot; cinematographer Barry Peterson does an incredible job of mimicking Fincher’s DP Jeff Cronenweth and composer Cliff Martinez (“Only God Forgives”) does an incredible NIN-like electronic pulsation. “Game Night” has no right to be this good, but it’s even better than that and now we bow down to Daley and Goldstein. [Will Ashton’s review] – RP
“Gemini”
It’s exciting to watch a filmmakers grow. Aaron Katz started out in low-budget mumblecore (“Quiet City,” “Cold Weather“), graduated to the uncannily mature road-trip buddy movie about nothing (“Land Ho!”), but for his latest, the stylish, neo-noir “Gemini” he evolves leaps and bounds with a moody, murder mystery about friendship, trust, and duplicity. Lola Kirke and Zoë Kravitz star as a personal assistant and a celebrity actor, respectively. Both BFFs too which complicates a relationship. But when the actress goes missing, a dogged local L.A. detective (an outstanding John Cho) keeps turning up to find out what, if anything, Kirke’s character did. Meanwhile, to prove her innocence, Kirke has to don disguises and lurk through the back alleys of Hollywood to find out what the hell all went wrong. “Gemini” is clever, funny, atmospheric and quirky and yet still delivers a lovely undercurrent of detective story threat and menace. It’s superb [My review]. – RP
“Zama”
Argentinian filmmaker Lucrecia Martel is simply one of the greatest filmmakers on the planet, she disorients like none other and she makes enigmatic movies that are so subtly unusual, they become the most unsettling of experiences. And yet, she’s an acquired taste to be sure. Her first film since the brilliant “The Headless Woman” in 2008, “Zama” is even more challenging. A kind of historical fiction existential drama, “Zama” centers on an officer of Spanish crown (Daniel Giménez Cacho) born in the Americas, who waits in vain for a transfer to a more prestigious location. By all accounts a hypnotic and surreal affair, Jessica Kiang’s review calls it “patience-testing, yet undeniably visionary” referencing the maddening futility of Kafka, Samuel Beckett, Campbell’s Colonel Kurtz and Quixote. What more could you possibly want? – RP
