All it lacked was a new release by Olivier Assayas featuring Kristen Stewart...
Though the best features came from Latin America, I must admit that the film moment that titillated me the most in 2018 must have been the trailer drop for A Star Is Born. I spent a lot of time streaming hacked together tracks of the isolated audio, waiting for the full reveal of Lady Gaga accompanied by Bradley Cooper as voiced by Sam Elliott.
Best Supporting Actor
Flyest use of capes in 2018 is a title shared by Jason Isaacs in The Death of Stalin and Donald Glover in Solo, both of whom were the most irresistible things in their films. As I've said elsewhere, the only interesting five minutes across all 20 Marvel films is the sequence when it appears Michael B. Jordan will be righteous king in Black Panther. Tom Waits was the best bit in the kinda disappointing but kinda what you expected The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. But the easy winner in this category is Steve Yuen in Burning, the man who gave us our postmodern Gatsby.
Best Supporting Actress
Rarely has our inability to communicate with each other been expressed as poignantly as by Regina King in If Beale Street Could Talk. And poignancy is not something you'd expect from a queen vomiting blue cake, but Olivia Colman's badgery self in The Favourite does it exquisitely. Elizabeth Debicki was excellent in Widows and not just because she stood a head taller than everyone else. Lola Dueñas delighted in keeping the title character at a low boil in Zama but the best laughs and best pajamas belonged to Awkwafina in Crazy Rich Asians.
Best Actor
Give me lean Christian Bale in the tasty Hostiles over fat suit Christian Bale in the execrable Vice. Give me Daniel Giménez Cacho in Zama and help me rediscover all of his other roles. The most stirring moments in BlackKklansman occurred when John David Washington sounded exactly like his father. As someone who never tires of insulting Ethan Hawke, it's absurd that he wasn't nominated for First Reformed. Adriano Tardiolo convinced as a time-traveling supernatural Italian peasant in the remarkable Happy as Lazzaro. But in a put up or shut up role, Bradley Cooper—a guy I have not particularly enjoyed since Wedding Crashers—gave us a massive gift with A Star Is Born.
(And, just to go on record, Cooper's goldendoodle Charlie edges Olivia the West Highland White Terrier in Widows for Best Doggo.)
Best Actress
Charlize Theron is so good in Tully that I'm in the awful position of praising something about a Jason Reitman film. Praising something about a Claire Denis film is less surprising, and Let the Sunshine In benefited from Juliette Binoche, who is wonderful in everything, all the time. Praise also to Viola Davis who, as Michelle Rodriguez tells it, was kissed by Liam Neeson in a non-racist way in Widows. The year, however, belonged to non-actors. Lady Gaga was fabulous, even with that terrible tangerine dream hair color, in A Star Is Born. Late in Madeline's Madeline, Helena Howard had the finest audition since Naomi Watts in Mulholland Dr. But the prize is for Yalitza Aparicio carrying a family of six (and an entire nation) on her back in Roma.
Best Pictures
Outside the Top 10 you might also consider Annihilation, First Reformed, Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Happy as Lazzaro, Hostiles, Leave No Trace, Madeline's Madeline, Tully, and Widows. And any film not made by a white male director.
10. The Death of Stalin - Armando Iannucci is the best ever at satire that is not quite satire because he is too right about the grotesque sausage-making of empires. In the same way Veep scripts began to predict Trump's White House, The Death of Stalin doesn't feel at all out of step with the bumbling series of events that would occur in the event of King Trump's longed-for demise. The stacked cast, from Steve Buscemi to Jason Isaacs to Simon Russell Beale to Jeffrey Tambor skillfully convey the endless absurdity of each political power grab. And their clothes are so vile you can almost smell them through the screen.
9. Let the Sunshine In - Claire Denis will always give you something different. Let the Sunshine In pairs her with Juliette Binoche in a comedic mode, as the legendary actress faces middle age and all manner of insufferable Gallic nincompoops. From the cretin who insists of "gluten-free olives" to the ignorant, Harry Dean Stanton-type drifter, it's all garbage until she hangs out with Alex Descas, one of the classiest figures in contemporary cinema. And, like a gout-inducing glass of port, Gerard Depardieu ends the picture with a fantastic cameo.
8. If Beale Street Could Talk - With the recent documentary I Am Not Your Negro and this film, it's been great to have James Baldwin's words back in the public imagination. Barry Jenkins adapts Baldwin's 1974 novel with tremendous tenderness for his star-crossed leads, KiKi Layne and Stephan James. In a one-sequence but brilliant appearance, Brian Tyree Henry succinctly describes the prison-industrial complex: "This country really does not like n---as." Jenkins's cinematographer James Laxton lights the faces in the film with the unusual radiance he finds in any space, but he makes sure the prisons are never beautiful.
7. Burning - Lee Chang-dong made good films with Secret Sunshine and Poetry but he has far exceeded those with Burning, a completely engrossing study of three characters full of literary affinities, from The Great Gatsby to Crime and Punishment (the film is based on a Haruki Murakami story). In addition to the scorching work of Steven Yeun, Yoo Ah-in and Jeon Jong-seo give great, troubled performances as poorer souls. Yoo's slow writer is on the receiving end of the shiver-inducing diss, "What kind of 'writing' are you planning to 'create?'" Even more chilling, as cooly delivered by Yuen, is the line, "I have a habit of burning greenhouses..."
6. The Favourite - Yorgos Lanthimos is back at his best with The Favourite. Olivia Colman, as the gout-afflicted Queen Anne, vomiting blue cake and surrounded by rabbits, is served by her sharp lady-in-waiting Emma Stone, whose enormous eyes were made to gawk at the goings on, and her even sharper confidante Rachel Weisz, who does some of the strongest work of her career. And then there's the marvelous Nicholas Hoult, whose speech is powdered as prettily as his resplendent wig. The biting insults, vicious repartee, and impromptu breakdancing make for a giddy two hours.
5. Isle of Dogs - Moving from one polarizing auteur to another, there's Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs, in which he again flexes his mastery of stop-motion animation. The canines quarantined on Trash Island are hilarious, especially Jeff Goldblum's mutt, who knows all the rumors. Anderson is seen as an apolitical stylist, but has made a picture very relevant to these times—Isle of Dogs touches on the environmental destruction of the planet and the plight of "aboriginal" dogs born on Trash Island that are unable to gain asylum and enter the wider world.
4. A Star Is Born - While his direction would hardly be confused with the ultra-controlled mastery of Anderson, Bradley Cooper acquits himself well as a first-time filmmaker. He gets great performances from Lady Gaga, Andrew Dice Clay and himself (borrowing Sam Elliott's voice). The music is tremendous, real pop and real country, all of it listenable—especially for those of us who found "Shallow" atop our year-end most-played playlists. You really feel the Jason Isbell-penned lyrics of Cooper’s signature tune—it takes a lot to change a man, hell, it takes a lot to try.
3. Roma - As with Cooper's A Star Is Born, this film is clearly a passion project Alfonso Cuarón, and a beautifully conceived one at that. The household of a well-to-do Mexico City family in the 1970s is seen through the eyes of the incredible non-actor Yalitza Aparicio. She does her daily business against a fabulous city backdrop, full of large-scale, "how’d-he-get-that-shot?!" choreography. There are a dozen memorable sequences, highlighted by a nude shower bar martial arts demonstration and an uproarious, "The Rules of the Game"-style interlude in the country. Roma is mid-career masterpiece full of nods to Cuarón’s former films, especially Y Tu Mamá También and its desperate, breathtaking climax at the beach.
2. Minding the Gap - Bing Liu's debut film is a riveting look at Rockford, Illinois and the intergenerational damage caused by poverty, abuse and alcoholism. It's also the foremost skateboarding documentary ever, with Liu following skaters Keire, Zack, and himself. The cinematography is tremendous, so skillfully tied together it's almost inconceivable that Liu produced this landmark documentary in only his mid-20s, after filming for a dozen years. Minding the Gap shows the ways in which, to help deal with trauma, you control the minutest actions while you’re on your board skating...or in your editing bay, cutting together a masterpiece.
1. Zama - As played by the brilliant Daniel Giménez Cacho, protagonist Don Diego de Zama is at the end of the alphabet, the end of the world, and the end of his rope. Lucrecia Martel's adaptation about a Spanish colonial functionary stuck in the South American interior improbably improves upon Antonio di Benedetto’s must-read novel of the same name. As the hero loses track of time, so does the viewer, lost in immersive lushness of Martel's vision. The film ends in the emerald beauty of the countryside, as Zama tries to move out of the fetid ennui of his colonial outpost, even if the quest is sure to be fatal. The most lasting image of the year is the hungry landscape swallowing him whole.
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