2019 is already two weeks gone, and that means it’s time to round up the best films of the previous year (or so the Internet informs me). 2018 was a surprisingly strong year for movies, which was reflected both by incredibly strong box office numbers and by the difficulty I had in narrowing down this list. Ultimately, quite a few very good movies didn’t make the cut. It was a great year, in particular, for genre cinema, and I was happy to be able to include so many titles here that weren’t traditional dramas. But enough about the year, let’s get to the list!

Notable Absences

Despite my best efforts, there are some movies that slipped by me in 2018. For the most part, these are late in the year releases that just didn’t make it to my region (in the middle of nowhere) in time for their inclusion on this list. A few of them are legitimate mistakes on my part, movies that I had every opportunity to see, but in many cases didn’t even know about until I started hearing about them now during awards/lists season. So, in the interest of full disclosure, the following are movies that I have not yet seen that might have had a legitimate chance at making this list: Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda), If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins), Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller), Blindspotting (Carlos López Estrada), Destroyer (Karyn Kusama), Minding the Gap (Bing Liu), and Shirkers (Sandi Tan). There are almost assuredly others, but those are the ones that I am aware of. All of them will be eligible for consideration on my 2019 list (since I plan to see all of them as soon as possible).

Deliberate Snubs

There are also a number of movies that might be under consideration by others that I really didn’t particularly like or feel were worth inclusion on the list. I don’t hate all of these movies, but I do consider them notable omissions from the list for a particular reason that’s actually worth talking about, if only briefly. These are movies that I feel might have been asked about if they just went unmentioned. In no particular order:

• Bohemian Rhapsody (Brian Singer): I don’t know how a sterilized hagiography of Freddie Mercury directed by an accused pedophile won two Golden Globes, but here we are. The movie itself is just not very noteworthy–it takes no risks and can’t even be bothered to make a statement other than “Hey, wasn’t Queen’s music really good?” It somehow manages to make Queen boring, and I didn’t think that was possible.
• The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier): Lars von Trier has really been losing me lately. I enjoyed his earlier work all the way through Melancholia and even Antichrist, but he just seems to disappear further and further into his self-important, confrontational, nihilistic cocoon as years go by. I know he’s directly calling out people who think that about him in this movie, I just don’t care. It’s a miserable drag with no catharsis or enjoyment to be had, for me at least.
• Vice (Adam McKay): Another director that’s really been going downhill for me lately. The Big Short was good (not great, but good), but this seems simultaneously defanged and self-important. If you’re going to make a satire, why spend half your movie being nice to the guy? If you’re trying to make an even-handed examination, why have him tip over into comical, audience-addressing, cartoonish evil by the end? The movie has no idea what it wants and nothing but contempt for its audience. Adam McKay thinks he’s smarter and better than you and he wants to make sure you’re aware of that opinion.
• Green Book (Peter Farrelly): Astonishingly, the guy who made Dumb and Dumber didn’t do a great job at making a movie about pre-Civil Rights race relations. This movie indulges in all of the problematic issues that the moviegoing public has gotten used to over the last fifty years–white savior problems, in particular. The movie exists pretty much exclusively to make white people feel good about how nice they probably would have been if they were alive back in the bad ol’ days. Mahershala Ali is amazing (because he always is), but he can’t save a script this trite and trope-filled.
• A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper): This one I did like, but when it came to awards time it just didn’t stick with me like I had hoped it would. It didn’t even make my honorable mentions! I enjoyed the movie fine in the moment, but I think it’s overshadowed by its superior 1954 predecessor (the 1976 one isn’t a slouch, either). The performances were good, the film was adequate, but when I think of the story, I just think of the times it was done better before. I feel bad for this movie. There are definitely years when it would have made my list, but there was too much other innovative stuff to afford this a slot.
• Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Chris McQuarrie): This is a series that continues to elude me. I like them all quite well, but I just don’t see why they keep making everyone’s year-end lists. They are all very good action movies. None of them really measure up to the De Palma original, and none of them seem to have anything to say other than showing us the new and improved way Tom Cruise intends to prove his immortality that year. There’s nothing wrong with this movie, I just don’t see what would make it worthy when there are so many other more interesting options (see spot #10 on my list, for example). I guess they’re notable for having maintained a PG-13 rating, so there’s that.

Honorable Mentions

These are movies that almost made the top ten. There are six movies here, but there could easily have been a dozen. All of them are excellent in their own right, and each of them is worthy for inclusion for a number of reasons. I chose films that I really wanted to talk about for this section. None of these are necessarily better than Roma (which isn’t included but is still great), they just have something distinctive that I wanted to note.

• Burning (Lee Chang-dong): I have always thought of Lee’s previous films (Secret Sunshine, Poetry) as thoughtful, reflective mood pieces with beautiful natural photography. Burning was something else entirely though. While it’s still beautiful and thoughtful, the director is exploring something darker here, more in line with what many people think of when it comes to Korean film. Stephen Yeun, recently freed from the toilet-circling Walking Dead TV show, returns to Korea to turn in one of the absolute best performances of the year. Although a very slow burn, the movie maintains a constantly building tension and drips with atmosphere.

• Champion (Kim Yong-wan): Another Korean sleeper, this is the best sports movie I saw all year (and in a year that Creed II came out, that’s actually saying something). I’m really not seeing people talk about this one at all, and that’s too bad. It tells your traditional underdog story, and has as much fist-pumping joy as you could ever hope for from a movie of its type. It’s a movie about arm wrestling, and you should give this movie a chance even if you think that sounds ridiculous. It will teach you everything you need to know if (like me) you know nothing about the sport, and will absolutely make you care about how it turns out.

• Game Night (John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein): This movie makes the list because it is so much better than it had any need to be. It was such an amazing breath of fresh air: it’s an R-rated, adult comedy that actually has a script! They didn’t just point a camera at some funny people and wait to see what fell out. In fact, this movie is so tightly scripted that it also manages to be a satisfying mystery with real human drama for its central characters. I don’t know if this movie is really that good, but seeing a comedy film in 2018 that actually had setup and payoff for plot points and did shots that were more interesting than middle-distance static camera was so much fun that I had to note it here.

• Hereditary (Ari Aster): Absolutely one of the best debut films of the year (there are a couple further up), this movie manages to be a fascinating exploration of grief as well as a pull-out-all-the-stops horror extravaganza. In functionally any other year this would be in my top ten, but this year was so crazy that we got not one but two horror films even better than this. Aster is a talent to watch, and Toni Collette gives my choice of performance for best lead actress of the year. In general, this is only kept out by its tonal inconsistencies (it really feels like two different films). It also has excellent miniature work and the scariest sound design of the year.

• Paddington 2 (Paul King): This one surprised me more than maybe anything else this year. While the first movie was a very good children’s film, this movie is amazing. It is absolutely the best film for children this year (there are better movies for young adults, but this movie is truly accessible to any child of any age). It has a heartfelt message about the power of human decency, a huge number of legitimately funny jokes for kids and adults. I don’t mean the Shrek-style, kids-won’t-get-this-one stuff, I mean good jokes that are legitimately funny for people of any age. It’s directed and composed with panache and style, and doesn’t dumb down the story. To top it all off it has one of the more interesting examinations of the immigrant narrative that’s been done in recent memory. A real charmer of a film, and one that anyone should see, with or without the benefit of children.

• Revenge (Coralie Fargeat): A colorful, saturated reimagining of the traditional “rape-revenge” story, this movie finds a way to take one of the most lurid horror subgenres and reclaim many of its tropes for the expression of a modern feminist message, which is an amazing feat by itself. Not for everyone, the incredibly brutal and well-researched violence in this film is off-putting, but for an excellent reason. In addition to an excellent story of desperation and survival, it’s also gorgeously filmed in a kind of constantly heightened, surreal mode that gives it the feeling of an allegory or fable. Never letting up on the gas, this is one of the more kinetic and exciting movies of this year.

The 10 Best Movies of the Year

10. The Night Comes for Us (Timo Tjahjanto): There isn’t a more violent movie that came out this year. This movie is an absurd, constant bloodbath. Billed as a kind of follow-up to The Raid duology, this movie is the next evolutionary step in Indonesian ultraviolence. The plot is a slim redemption/savior thing that ultimately isn’t the point, as objects and bodies are weaponized past the viewer’s wildest imaginings. Iko Uwais, who portrayed the hero in The Raid movies, here does excellent work as the villain. This movie has at least three scenes that would be the ultimate, end-all fight in any other movie, and probably more. All the violence is filmed crisply and cleanly, making the viewer feel every slice and blow as if they were there. I spent the majority of this movie in disbelief that the movie managed to continue one-upping itself from scene to scene. Not recommended for the faint of heart, but this movie speaks the universal language of bodily harm better than any other this year.

9. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Peter Ramsey, Robert Persichetti Jr., & Rodney Rothman): This is a functionally perfect film. It’s the most visually inventive animated film from the past two years, and the best Spider-Man movie ever made (despite my love for Raimi’s Spiderman 2). The voice cast is perfect, the message is timely, and the narrative is powerful. It features a great, complicated villain, an endearing cast of oddball heroes, and one of the best scenes of purely physical comedy of the entire year. I haven’t been able to stop singing the praises of this one since I saw it. They simply did everything right. Miles Morales is an excellent hero for a new generation of moviegoers, and his coming of age tale places this in the pantheon of YA home runs that don’t feel like they’re talking down to their audience. Did I mention it’s gorgeous? This is the closest a movie has ever looked to an actual comic book yet, thanks to brilliant art direction and varied stylizations on the different characters. The visuals alone would be worth the price of admission here, but they also nailed absolutely everything else. A can’t-miss movie.

8. Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley): Another confident, aggressive debut film, this one takes the form of a furious social satire of race and money in modern America. The trailers in no way indicated how absolutely off-the-wall insane this movie was going to be. Lakeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson both give powerful performances. It’s hard to maintain drama and pathos in a film that becomes this absurd, but they both do an excellent job of making their characters human despite the insanity of the world around them. This movie also solidified my opinion of Armie Hammer as one of our best character actors working today. His deranged, cocaine-infused Steve Lift was the element of this movie that most surprised me (mostly because he wasn’t heavily featured in the promotional materials). This movie is angry at the world, like a magical blend of angst and hatred compressed into a diamond. While I enjoyed BlacKkKlansman, this was the social movie that stuck with me more strongly, perhaps because of its audacity, or perhaps just because it was so very very weird.

7. Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino): The fact that this isn’t my top film this year illustrates what a crazy year for movies this was. A high-concept, art-house horror film by the director of Call Me By Your Name, this moody, gray movie was beautiful and brooding in all the right ways. Set in a grim and divided Cold War-era Berlin, this almost complete reimagining of the 1977 Dario Argento film follows a young ingenue as she is caught up as a pawn in a supernatural battle. The horror imagery in this is incredibly striking, and uses dance in a thematic and beautiful way to enhance both the horror and the pathos of the movie. The subtle, dread-filled score by Thom Yorke is also one of the standout soundtracks of the year. It fills every tense moment with heavy portent, elevating the film to something almost Shakespearean. Dakota Johnson anchors the entire thing with a vulnerable and nuanced performance, while Tilda Swinton continues to prove herself a bizarre chameleon that can do functionally anything in front of a camera. While it might take more than one viewing (it did for me), the atmosphere and imagery of this one are going to make it hold up.

6. First Reformed (Paul Schrader): I know Paul Schrader primarily as the writer behind some of Marin Scorsese’s best works (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Last Temptation of Christ). I hadn’t really seen any of the movies he directed other than the very middling Nicolas Cage action movie Dog Eat Dog. This movie, though, blew me away. A grim meditation on self-harm, faith, drug abuse, and environmentalism of all things, this movie actually manages to pull off the art-film pretensions that other films generally fail at. It’s my official “art movie” of the year, enigmatic and difficult to interpret. This difficulty isn’t the kind that frustrates, though; it’s the kind that encourages conversation and debate. I’m still not sure exactly what the end of the movie means, but I love reading others’ thoughts on it. The whole thing is centered around Ethan Hawke in a lifetime-best performance (and that’s saying something). Probably the movie this year that I have read the most about, and I don’t consider a minute of that extra time dedicated to it wasted.

5. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos): Any film by Lanthimos was almost guaranteed to make an appearance on this list. He is one of my favorite contemporary directors, and this was one of my most anticipated movies of the year. More rooted in history and more realistic than his previous films, I found this an interesting entry in his filmography. I think it might be his most accessible film to date, without giving up any of what makes him such a unique and interesting director. The three central performances (Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, and Olivia Colman) all manage to portray characters that are simultaneously pitiable and despicable to different degrees as the movie goes on, and I’m still thinking about where my sympathies ultimately lie even weeks after seeing it. Lanthimos also uses the absurdities of eighteenth century society to skewer the superficiality and madness of court in a way that reflects upon the modern world as well. Gorgeously lit with largely natural light and beautifully filmed from every angle that you’re not expecting, this movie brings brilliance and life to the often stodgy genre of historical drama.

4. You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay): Lynne Ramsay continues to prove herself a force to be reckoned with after her 2011 scorcher We Need to Talk About Kevin. I almost don’t mind waiting the better part of a decade for one of her films when they’re this good. A hitman/vengeance story pretty much in name only, this movie is a brilliant subversion of almost all the viewer’s expectations for that genre. Most of the movie’s surprises would be huge spoilers, but it surprised me at almost every turn. A huge, brutal, nearly non-verbal Joaquin Phoenix, as good as ever, is the atypical and haunted driving force of the movie, while 15-year-old Ekaterina Samsonov is the movie’s heart as Nina. Trusting the viewer to piece together the fragmented memories and grim contemporary scenes into a coherent whole, Ramsay’s film is a powerful and deeply-felt meditation on trauma and abuse that everyone should see, with perhaps the most memorable ending of any movie this year.

3. Mandy (Panos Cosmatos): It took me three viewings for this one to finally settle with me. Since I first saw it at release, it probably could have occupied almost any slot on this list (or maybe none at all). A delirious fever-dream of a movie, this acid-tinged, 80s-inspired throwback horror freakshow is one of the most idiosyncratic movies of the year. Following on from his (equally bizarre) Beyond the Black Rainbow, Cosmatos makes a film here that overwhelms the viewer with blinding kaleidoscopic light and deafening sound. Best seen in a theater (and probably on some kind of mind-altering substance), Mandy is a singular work of art. Despite following the typical revenge plot arc, the movie gives surprising agency to its eponymous character, making her more than an object fought over by men and instilling her with a quiet inner life and strength that is all too rare in these movies. Nic Cage, who has received most of the buzz surrounding this movie, is very good, but its his quieter moments (the movie is almost entirely without dialogue for huge stretches) that really sell his character’s tragedy. Absolutely a movie that carries you along in its flow, you have to let the movie happen to you. If you do, it’s one of the weirdest, coolest experiences you can have at the movies.

2. Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham): All my fears that Bo Burnham had burnt himself out or run out of material after his latest (underwhelming) comedy special evaporated instantly upon seeing this movie. It’s one of the most assured film debuts I’ve ever seen, and manages a level of brutal honesty that most movies won’t even attempt, let alone accomplish. I was probably never going to be able to view this movie objectively as an eighth grade teacher myself, but this movie captures so much of the vulnerability and brutality of that tender and almost always traumatic age. With excellent music and a soundtrack that’s used to strong comic and dramatic effect, no other movie this year was as hard for me to watch. Elsie Fisher fills Kayla with so much accurate teen angst that you want to simultaneously shake her and hug her. It’s a timely meditation on the psychological effects of social media on a generation, and a beautifully observed human portrait of a girl at a crossroads. This movie has so much to say, and says it so well, that anyone should see it. It will almost assuredly increase your empathy toward a generation that is all too often written off as a punchline or condescended to by a cynical society.

1. Annihilation (Alex Garland): Garland follows up his brain-melting Ex Machina with an even more brain-melting sci-fi epic. I was surprised this made it to the top spot, but thinking back about it, it was the movie that most combined by disparate film interests into a single perfect movie this year. It manages to combine science fiction, horror, and art house sensibilities into a cohesive whole in a way that doesn’t shortchange any of its many influences. A dramatic divergence from the novel on which it’s based, the movie follows an all-female team of scientists and explorers into a bizarre ecological phenomenon known only as the Zone. From there, the movie runs the gamut from dense psychological examinations of grief and loss to some of the best horror creature-design of any film this year (you’ll know it when you see it). With an ending that is simultaneously thought-provoking, visceral, and horrifying, there is no movie I would recommend more highly from a year of absolutely amazing movies. Natalie Portman’s performance is haunting. I’m not always a fan of her work, but she’s perfectly cast here. Jennifer Jason Leigh continues to have a kind of mini-Renaissance that started with The Hateful Eight, and Tessa Thompson continues to display her versatility as an actor. Oscar Isaac and Gina Rodriguez take relatively small roles and infuse them with complete inner lives and motivations. The movie respects the viewer enough to let them figure things out for themselves, and will leave anyone who watches it with a lot to think about. An improvement on the director’s previous (very good) work in almost every way, this movie was criminally underseen this year. It’s available on Netflix right now, and I would recommend that anyone who likes movies check it out with all due haste.

And that’s it! My best movies of the year, some notable honorable mentions, and even a few deliberate snubs. Agree? Disagree? I’d love to hear your opinion on these or any other movies that came out this year, or what your own picks for the best of the best were. Thanks for reading this incredibly long-winded post, and here’s looking forward to another year of great movies!