Ryan McNeil
2018 will likely go down in my memory as a year where I left a lot on the table.
For all sorts of reasons, my filmgoing slowed a step. “Why” doesn’t matter, nor do any tangents about those still watching at full-stride. What does matter is that while I still tried to taste a little bit of everything – independents, documentaries, foreign films, and a healthy dose of blockbusters – there were lots and lots of selections left on the pantry shelves.
We will begin the final year of the decade and I won’t have seen what sort of craziness Nic Cage gets up to in MANDY. We will start make good on resolutions and I won’t know what SHIRKERS is about (or what they are “shirking” exactly). The Year of the pig will soon be celebrated, and I still won’t have decided if I can ever forgive Melissa McCarthy.
So that’s the bad news – I left a lot on the table.
The good news is that if I left that much on the table, and still came away with a lot to choose from where my favorites were concerned, then 2018 was a really good year for film. I’m not completely certain if it was a great year exactly – time may have to be the judge of that, but “very good”, absolutely. A year like this is the roster I want to hand people who bemoan the fact that there are too many franchises, and too many superheroes. To be sure, there are a lot of both – but beyond them are scores and scores of films like SUPPORT THE GIRLS, THREE IDENTICAL STRANGERS, TO ALL THE BOYS I’VE LOVED BEFORE, THE TALE, and FIRST REFORMED.
All of those titles are over and above the ones listed below, meaning the answer to the question “What was good at the movies this year” is a long one…making it easy to leave so much on the table. This suits me just fine, by the way, as more and more I have tried to watch with purpose. After all, if time to watch is at a premium (and it is, for all of us), why settle with what’s being suggested at the top of the streaming platform splash page?
As for what I took from the table, so much of it was a potent tonic and a soothing balm. Most of them arrived right as I needed them most, and all of them have remained with me as the year has reached its end. I may have moments of uncertainty in these uncertain times, but time and again I was shown the way through some subtle and heartfelt stories. Some helped me gather myself and showed me the way, others let me do the gathering and the guiding.
So as we end one good year, and begin another, I find myself grateful for the gifts that were put on my table, and the many that remain for me to discover in the months and years ahead.
Heres a thought or two on some of the very best.
Ryan’s Top Five Films of 2018
5. EIGHTH GRADE
If there’s one thing we all have in common, it’s to find our place. We want to be normal, to be accepted, to have a seat at the table and a place in the conversation. Some of us will dream of going beyond those things and actually offering the world something special – but normality should be a given right?
…Right???…
EIGHTH GRADE is a melancholy reminder of what it takes to fit in. The average adult would likely meet a girl like this film’s protagonist and see her as bright, friendly, energetic, and sure – a little on the shy side. Unfortunately for her, it’s not average adults she’s looking for the approval of; it’s eighth graders…and eighth graders are rotten.
This film is both universal and highly specific – pretty impressive considering who wrote it and who its about!
The bad news is that we all know full-well that Kayla is still going to have bumpy times in the near future as she moves from grade eight, to grade nine, to college, and becomes an adult. Those feelings she’s having – they never go away completely. The good news is that as she matures, she’ll realize the truth:
That all of us – the cool kids and the nerdy kids…the lookers and average janes/joes; we’re all just trying to fit in. Some of us are just better at hiding the truth than others.
4. HEARTS BEAT LOUD
All things must end.
Stories need final chapters, journeys need a terminal, games need a winner, crops need a harvest, monologues need applause, summers need autumns, love requires heartbreak, and birth demands a death. The song will eventually fade into silence, the needle will eventually reach the end of the record, the band will someday break-up.
These are not bad things. They are sad things, but not bad things. We may want to postpone them, or even revive them, but to deny endings is to misunderstand the meaning of art and life itself.
HEARTS BEAT LOUD is a beautiful story of a father and daughter creating something sweet as they stare down an ending. What the film wants us to understand as they do what they do, is that what we are witnessing is an ending…not the ending (there’s a difference).
The trick is to approach an ending with love and gratitude, and to celebrate that gratitude in song and poetry. They say that when we leave this life, all we can leave behind is art and family. HEARTS BEAT LOUD is a joyous ballad to both of those beautiful things.
3. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK
It would be wonderful if we could look at James Baldwin’s story and consider it a time capsule. It would be lovely to say that life on the Beale Streets of America had changed so drastically, that this story could be consumed as a period drama filled with reminders of who we were.
Unfortunately, we might have made progress since the days of Tish and Fonny…but not near progress enough. Hell, as one listens to Daniel Carty describe life as a black man in prison, one can’t help but be caught up in the modernity of his words.
Through it all though, Barry Jenkins’ follow-up to MOONLIGHT feels optimistic; that difficulties can actually be blessings when one has a loving community to lean on. This film is an offering of communion for any who have the strength to approach the altar. It wants us to remember that help is there for all of us; we need only speak-up and ask. It likewise wants us to remember that there are those we love who don’t know how to ask, and for them we need to offer of ourselves.
Hardships come to all of us in life – when faced with them, we must remember to “unbow our heads”.
2. ROMA
Truly, it’s difficult to say anything about ROMA that hasn’t been said already. If ever there was a worthy challenger for the ‘Netflix v Cinema’ debate, this film is a worthy contender.
If we’re honest, each one of us are who we are because of a variety of influences. “It takes a village”, as they say, but somehow we find ways of forgetting about the villagers as we grow older. There are things about these people we never knew, and things about them we may have forgotten. These secrets, these details, they shaped and formed the people who raised us…so in a small way they shaped and formed us, even if we never knew about them.
ROMA is a story for the silence at the centre of a storm; a prayer of hope as chaos swirls in the world around us.
1. THE RIDER
It might seem like a dig to put all of the films I saw in 2018 aside in the name of a film I first watched in the autumn of 2017. It’s almost suggesting some part of me saw it as an heir apparent, and let it lay in wait for fifteen months. However, that’s not exactly what happened when it came to my appreciation of THE RIDER.
What happened was that I watched so many people in the world feel the ground shift underneath them, and struggle with how to keep their footing. I watched so many men in the world exude toxic masculinity and not see the drastic harm it does to the planet and others around them. Everything got harder and everyone struggled not to becomes the worst versions of themselves.
Into this state of affairs, I returned to Chloe Zhao’s story starring Brady Jandreau. It was a stunning rendering of a part of America many would just fly past, and a tender portrayal of a man I couldn’t have less in-common with. What’s more, this story brings us into the action after the inciting incident. A lesser film might want to show us Brady as a big, hard, American hero before making us watch him remove staples from his head. THE RIDER trusts us to see who he was inside of the fractured soul he now is.
THE RIDER makes no attempt to paint Jandreau and his community as some sort of misunderstood poets. Instead the film lets us into their world and allows us to see the poetry that exists within for ourselves. Zhao’s lens watches patiently as Jandreau deals with everything from facing his own mortality to making ends meet. It examines a simple life at one of its most difficult moments…and in so doing, prompts us to examine our own lives too.
The result is tender, honest, and hopeful in times that are increasingly abrasive, selfish, and cynical – and for these reasons, it takes the prize as my favourite film of 2018.
Other films on my shortlist for 2018 include ANNIHILATION, BEAUTIFUL BOY, BLACKKKLANSMAN, BLACK PANTHER, BURNING, COLD WAR, CRAZY RICH ASIANS, DESTROYER, THE FAVOURITE, HEREDITARY, LEAVE NO TRACE, MADELINE’S MADELINE, A QUIET PLACE, A SIMPLE FAVOUR, SORRY TO BOTHER YOU, SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE, THOROUGHBREDS, TULLY, WIDOWS, and WON’T YOU BE MY NEIGHBOR?