The Best of 2018 Pt. II: Sound and Vision

FILM

To stream or not to stream. The theatrical experience vs. watching a movie in the comfort of your home. NetFlix, Amazon, Shudder have all contributed to ways I saw a new film this year. Two of the best looking films- Ballad of Buster Scruggs and Roma- became talking points of the debate. New voices like Bo Burnham, Jonah Hill, Bradley Cooper and Paul Dano emerged.

The top 5 are films that I could easily see appear on my decade 'Best of' list.


Isle of Dogs (Century 12 Evanston/CineArts 6)
Annihilation (Century 12 Evanston/CineArts 6)
You Were Never Really Here (AMC Theaters River East)
A Quiet Place (AMC Theaters Crestwood)
Avengers: Infinity War (Logan Theater)
First Reformed (AMC Theaters River East)
The Tale (HBO GO)
Hereditary (Century 12 Evanston/CineArts 6)
Sicario: Day of the Soldado (AMC Theaters Crestwood)
Eighth Grade (AMC Theaters Crestwood)
Won't You Be My Neighbor (Logan Theater)
I'm Sorry to Bother You (Logan Theater)
Hold the Dark (Netflix)
Halloween (Logan Theater)
Mid90s (Logan Theater)
Suspiria (3 times) (AMC Theaters River East/AMC Theaters Crestwood/The Music Box)
First Man (AMC Theaters Crestwood)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Netflix)
Terrified (Shudder)
Unsane (Amazon Prime)
Revenge (Shudder)
The House That Jack Built (Directors Cut) (The Music Box)
Mandy (Shudder)
The Other Side of the Wind (Netflix)
They'll Love Me When I'm Dead (Netflix)
Widows (AMC Theaters Crestwood)
The Favourite (Century 12 Evanston/CineArts 6)
Roma (2 times) (Landmark Century Cinema/Netflix)
BlackKklansman (Amazon Prime)
Let the Corpses Tan (Amazon Prime)
Mission Impossible: Fallout (Amazon Prime)
Bird Box (Netflix)
seen in 2019:
Shoplifters (The Music Box)
If Beale Street Could Talk (Marcus Cinema Orland Park)
A Star Is Born (AMC River East Dolby)
Wildlife (YouTube Movies)
Leave No Trace (Amazon Prime)
Vice (Logan Theater)
Burning

To see:
At Eternity's Gate
Destroyer
Filmworker
The Rider

TOP 25

25. Won't You Be My Neighbor (Morgan Neville)
"Love is at the root of everything, all learning, all relationships. Love- or the lack of it."

24. Leave No Trace (Debra Granik)
A meditation on life as lived on the fringes between father and daughter. Ben Foster is good as always but it's Thomasin MacKenzie who shines brightest here.

23. BlackKklansman (Spike Lee)
Spike's best joint in a while. As entertaining as it is harrowing. What keeps it from ranking higher is the on-the-nose ending after what should have been the ending.

22. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel and Ethan Coen)
As with many anthologies, this one is uneven. Thankfully, even in those lacking stories, we are treated to indelible cinematography from Bruno Delbonnel. Favorite stories: The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, The Gal Who Got Rattled and All Gold Canyon which stars Tom Waits as a prospector who nearly steals the whole movie.

21. Avengers: Infinity War (Joe and Anthony Russo)
I have no stake in this. Marvel isn't a movie brand I'm clamoring to see what is up its sleeve next. So when word got around that this was it's best offering I decided to check it out. If a superhero movie is only as good as its villain, then this one is in the upper tier. Thanos is a fascinating character I hope to see more of in the next installment.

20. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)
The surrealist social parables of Dogtooth and The Lobster is where Yorgos is at his best. This one feels the least subversive and imaginative. The third act is when it finally kicks into full on Yorgos style madness.

19. Wildlife (Paul Dano)
Probably the quietest movie on this entire list. Carey Mulligan's performance and Dano's directing chops are exceptionally good. And hey look, it's Bill Camp!

18. Sicario: Day of the Soldado (Stefano Sollima)
Misunderstood movie where the the blinders are conveniently donned whenever it  eschews convention and conveniently off when critics try to box it in as a masculinity-gone-mad vanity project. Like Good Time last year and The Counselor in 2013, critics tend to attack films where there is no good guy or present a landscape that "is just too bleak and a reminder of the times we are going through today." Along with Don Winslow's Cartel books, the two Sicario films are absolutely necessary in these times. Taylor Sheridan has continued crafting great scripts.

17. Hereditary (Ari Aster)
Domestic drama that shifts from psychological horror to outright horror. Toni Collette outshines everyone here.

16. Mission Impossible: Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)
In which the spirit of Buster Keaton enters Tom Cruise and results in some of the most jaw dropping stunts in recent memory. It also helps that the film has a relentlessly paced script.

15. Annihilation (Alex Garland)
Taps into the horror I've been responding to the most recently: the unknowable and man's incromprehension toward it. Alex Garland opened up the cosmic horror door just a crack for movie audiences and said "Hey, if you like this, there's a whole sub genre waiting to be explored."

The lighthouse sequence remains my favorite cinematic moment of the year.

14. First Man (Damien Chazelle)
Chazelle has already proven his technical chops with his first two films and while its on full display here, the set pieces, score and attention to detail show that he's the real deal. It uncovers bits of information I had no knowledge of regarding Neal Armstrong as a person. A film I've been waiting for since The Right Stuff.

13. Eigth Grade (Bo Burnham)
Another movie about kids from another comedian. Only this time its at the end of eighth grade and is geared toward contemporary times. Where social statuses are funneled through how many snapchat likes you have and self help videos on youtube are tutorials for helping you fit in.

12. A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper)
If you had told me at the beginning of 2018 I will enjoy a movie with Lady Gaga in the lead more than the latest Coen Brothers or Yorgos Lanthimos movie, I would have laughed in your face. Yet here we are. Cooper, Gaga and Sam Elliot are terrific and the acclaim is fully deserved. It plays out with the sensibilities of a 70's flick. The only other 2 movies that surprised me more this year were Suspiria and...

11. Mandy (Panos Cosmatos)
Nicolas Cage has become a punching bag in certain cinematic circles. Ones that are still desperately trying to ride on the coattails of a Wicker Man joke that stopped being funny years ago and somehow view all of his other performances through that prism. Cage once said at a Q and A that he is the California Klaus Kinski and I can't help but agree. He always gives 100% in his performances. The problem is a handful of directors know how to utilize the guy- the Coens, Lynch, Figgis, Jonze, Herzog. Panos Cosmatos can now be added to the list.

Heavy metal, horror and revenge inextricably tangled up together and an opening that has King Crimson's Starless playing. The movie gods gifted this one for me. A rise to the challenge for being the son of the man who brought us Tombstone and Cobra.

10. Mid90s (Jonah Hill)
The conversations, the clothing, the music. Jonah nails the authenticity of the period. The kind of coming age film I didn't know I needed from someone who I had no idea had this in him.

8. Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Beneath the gentility and family dynamic lurks an underlining darkness. There's no cheap sentimentality to be found. In fact, until the last 30 minutes, there's very little conflict to be found. It's an observational portrait of what it means to be a family until that definition is given new and startling meaning. Honest. Humane. Remarkable.

7. If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)
James Balwin's prose in the book is both sensual and hard hitting. So when I found out Barry Jenkins was directing it, I couldn't be more excited. Few directors are as good as Jenkins in creating an immersive world with their camera. Nicholas Brittell's score adds an emotional depth to an already galvinizing movie about love and the hardships black America endure and are still enduring. Passion defined.

6. Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
Unsettling thriller that plays out through gorgeously rendered visuals and functions like a cerebral puzzle. Chang-dong's films have centered around the difference of values between the lower class and the middle class. Here we find two men. One an introvert. A contemplater. The other a man of action and social status. As Hae-Mi, the female caught between the two of them points out- there is small hunger and great hunger. The power of Burning lay in its ambiguity that looms over all three of its main characters.

5. The House That Jack Built (Lars Von Trier)
Lucky enough to see the Director's Cut in theaters. If this isn't a clarion call for help from a deepy depressed soul I don't know what is. His last three were known as "The Depression trilogy" but this feels like a final movie more than Nymphomaniac. If so, he went out on a high note. This isn't just a "brutal serial killer movie", it manages to be remarkably funny in places.

4. You Were Never Really Here (Lynn Ramsay)
What if Bresson made a movie about a hitman? In particular, to have said hitman played peerlessly by Joaquin Phoenix. Visceral peril collides with disjointed editing and impressionistic sound design to create a world defined by repercussions of his trauma. The directorial choices by Ramsay were some of the boldest of the year and stands her out as one of the best filmmakers working today regardless of gender.

3. First Reformed (Paul Schrader)
This film has haunted me ever since I saw it. Located somewhere between Bresson's Diary of A County Priest and Dreyer's Ordet is Schrader's sweet spot that he tapped into to make this work This is a film about struggle. About recognizing the darkness in the world. When the pains and the joys do hit, they create some of the most harrowing and hopeful scenes I've seen in film. Schrader has had a spiritual throughline running through some of his best scripts. This one shows how religion has been distorted by fundamentalism and big business.

2. Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino)
Remakes are a tricky thing. The go to criticism of any remake of any property is "why mess with the original?" Given how much I adore Argento's film, and the fact that I had not yet seen Call Be Your Name when Luca Guadagnino was announced to take on the project, I did have trepidation. What I got was something wholly and delightfully unexpected.

This decade has seen what many are calling a "new wave" of horror- It Follows, The Babadook, The Witch, It Comes At Night, Get Out and Hereditary. All exceptional. Though all use the genre as means of social message. Something that has been done with the genre as early as Night of the Living Dead and Rosemary's Baby. This doesn't necesarrily invalidate the original Suspiria, which when viewed through this lens, offers less commentary and more visual feast. What it shows is that horror can operate in two different modes and is still able to elicit a response to each. Both the original and the remake are peaks in their respective takes on the genre- one a phantasmagoric fairytale, the other a political fable. It results in a something I don't think has happened - two films that bear the same name that I love equally.

Suspiria is divided up into six chapters plus an Epilogue. While unfolding in a linear narrative, it manages to mend historical context with its dance school storyline. What results is a glass cathedral that could have shattered at any time.

As much as I adore the original, we don't really see Dario doing anything with the art of dance. This new version stretches, contorts and- in one scene- literally twists these bodies to the point of exhaustion. None of this is done in burning technicolor gloom. It's switched out for a color pallette consisting of greys and deep reds (pun intended?).

Another thing is how each mistress/witch in the Markos Dance Academy is distinct. The amount of detail regarding the witches here surpasses The Witch and even Lords of Salem. Two films that, up until this point, took the lead as being "the films" to beat regarding this particular subgenre. There are hierachies, secret meetings and rituals that this coven partakes in.

The closest comparison I can make to this version of Suspiria is what Herzog did with his remake of Nosferatu. He didn't make a beat for beat remake. Instead, it is a celebration to a feeling the original gave the director. The Fly, The Blob and The Thing are all films whose originals I have found inferior to their remakes because of the depths that those remakes probe. The biggest criticism I can offer is that it bears the name Suspiria. If you had asked me what I felt at the ending of it I more than likely would have responded "I think it felt like what it must feel like to fuck."

1. Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)
The history of 1976 Mexico as seen through the eyes of a housekeeper. The force of society unfolds in the background all the while we watch this middle class woman (beautifully realized by Yalitza Aparicio) tend to an upper class family. Moved me to tears with its poetic tenderness. Among my favorite films of all time.

FAVORITE PERFORMANCES

ACTOR
10. John David Washington as Ron Stallworth in BlackkKlansman
9. Daniel Kaluuya as Jatemme Manning in Widows
8. Ryan Gosling as Neil Armstrong in First Man
7. Steven Yeun as Ben in Burning
6. Nicolas Cage as Red Miller in Mandy
5. Bradley Cooper as Jackson Maine and Sam Elliot as Bobby Maine in A Star Is Born
4. Stephen James as Alonzo 'Fonny' Hunt and  Brian Tyree Henry as Daniel in If Beale Street Could Talk
3. Matt Dillon as Jack in The House That Jack Built
2. Joaquin Phoenix as Joe In You Were Never Really Here
1. Ethan Hawke as Reverend Toller in First Reformed

ACTRESS
10. Natalie Portman as Lena in Annihilation
9. Elsie Fisher as Kayla Day in Eighth Grade
8. Kiki Layne as Tish Rivera and Regina King as Sharon Rivera in If Beale Street Could Talk
7. Ando Sakura as Nobuyo Shibata and Miyu Sazaku as Aki Shibata in Shoplifters
6. Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne, Rachel Weisz as Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough and Emma Stone as Abigail in The Favourite
5. Yalitza Aparicio as Cleo in Roma
4. Carey Mulligan as Jeanette Brinson in Wildlife
3. Lady Gaga as Ally in A Star Is Born
2. Toni Collette as Annie in Hereditary
1. Tilda Swinton as Madame Blanc/Dr. Josef Klemperer/Helena Markos in Suspiria

Special mention: Amy Adams as Camille Preaker in Sharp Objects

FAVORITE SCORES
1. Nicolas Brittel- If Beale Street Could Talk
2. Justin Hurwitz- First Man
3. Johann Johannsson- Mandy
4. Thom Yorke- Suspiria
5. Jonny Greenwood- You Were Never Really Here

NON-2018 DISCOVERIES
Ganja and Hess (1973)
Broadcast News (1987)
Beyond the Darkness (1979)
Stagefright: Aquarius (1987)
Blood Rage (1987)
Threads (1981)
Christmas Evil (1980)
The Swimmer (1968)
Liquid Sky (1982)



FILMS I ANTICIPATE IN 2019
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
I'm Thinking of Ending Things (Charlie Kaufman)
The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers)
Us (Jordan Peele)
Waves (Trey Edward Shults)
Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)
Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler)
The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent)
The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)
The Beach Bum (Harmony Korine)
Uncut Gems (The Safdies)
It: Chapter Two (Andreas Muschetti)
The Hunt (Craig Zobel/Damon Lindelof)
The Goldfinch (John Crowley)
Where'd You Go, Bernadette (Richard Linklater)
Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley)
3 From Hell (Rob Zombie)

TELEVISION

My read-a-thon didn't leave much time for television shows. Because of this, I was selective about what I watched. I've always loved Bill Hader and Barry is perhaps his best role yet. The Deuce continues to be the best 70's period piece since..well, since Boogie Nights. It continues the David Simon tradition of "the best show that nobody is watching." First The Wire, then Treme, now The Deuce. Better Call Saul languishes in "still have to catch up" land and without it streaming anywhere, Blu Ray is the safest bet.

As far as limited series go, Sharp Objects continued Jean Marc Vallee's strong presence in directing what feels more like a 7 hour movie.


5 FAVORITE THINGS

5. Specialty Coffee shops
Third Wave coffee shops, that's coffee shops that carry a variety of beans sourced from African, South American and some Asian counties, took hold after the Starbucks boom left a burnt coffee taste in our mouths. Intelligentsia and Passion House became two mainstays for me. Mistobox subscription service allowed me to acquire beans from coffee buyers from all over the country. Enough to make Dale Cooper jealous.

4. Vinyl Soundtracks
Waxwork Records knocked it out of the park and released the soundtracks to some of my favorite films this year. The Burbs, Night of the Living Dead, Manhunter, Deep Red, Inferno, Phenomena, Tenebrae, and Beetlejuice.

Mondo released the 40th Anniversary edition of Halloween along with the soundtracks to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th installments of the franchise. If you know me you know the 2 vinyls I got.

3. Blu Ray Labels

Criterion had a stellar year: The Breakfast Club, Night of the Living Dead, The Silence of the Lambs, The Age of Innocence, The Passion of Joan of Arc, Dead Man, Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters, Midnight Cowboy, Female Trouble, A Matter of Life and Death, sex lies and videotape, Andrei Rublev, Some Like It Hot, Sisters, True Stories, and the mammoth release of Ingmar Bergman's Cinema.

Arrow pulled out all the stops and released The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, Cat O'Nine Tails and Deep Red in beautiful Limited Editions. They also put out fantastic editions of Basket Case, Killer Klowns From Outer Space, Torso and Twelve Monkeys.

Blue Underground remained dormant and just as fans were about to count them out they released 2 of the best blu rays of the year in Zombie and Maniac. Both definitive releases of those horror staples complete with their respective soundtracks on CD.

I was introduced to one of my new favorite labels in Vinegar Syndrome and participated in their Black Friday sale.

2. Days of the Dead Horror Convention
Meeting Dana Ashbrook (Bobby Briggs from Twin Peaks), John Kassir (Voice of The Cryptkeeper) and Clive Barker, an author/filmmaker/painter I've gotten into towards the end of the year, were major highlights.

1. Podcasts
Last Podcast On the Left remains my favorite podcast. I was finally able to see them live in Champaigne, Illinois.

You Must Remember This did a special on one of my favorite books on tinseltown- Hollywood Babylon.

All corners of my interests for this year were covered in the new podcasts I found. I was introduced to two great casts that tackled history and politics in Behind the Bastards and Citations Needed, genre film centric discussions in Shockwaves, Pure Cinema, Movies That Made Me.

MUSIC

5. Earl Sweatshirt- Some Rap Songs
4. Sleep- The Sciences
3. Death Grips- Year of the Snitch
2. Daughters- You Won't Get What You Want
1. Kanye West/Kid Cudi- Kids See Ghosts