Top Ten Films of 2018: A Retrospective

I like to leave it a few months before taking a look back at the previous year’s releases and picking my Top Ten films of the year – partly because it gives me some extra time to catch up with films I missed in the cinema, but mainly because often the real test of a film is how well it ages in the months after you first see it.

With that in mind, it’s now time for my retrospective Top Ten review of 2018 – and once again, there were many films that I really loved that still narrowly missed out on a spot in the Top Ten…

10)  Game Night:  My favourite straight-up comedy of 2018, this action-comedy-romp feels like a bit of an 80s throwback (in a good way), and each member of its great cast get plenty of comedic moments in which to shine.  Highlights include Rachel McAdams’ bullet surgery, and a running gag about Denzel Washington.  Oh, and stay for the end-credit gag too.

9)  Tomb Raider:  This is where we get into the difference between “objectively great” films and “subjectively enjoyable” films.  Objectively, there were other films that were “better” than Tomb Raider that didn’t make it onto my Top Ten – but subjectively, as a fan of the 2013 videogame on which the film is based, I loved Tomb Raider and could happily watch it again and again.  I know the film as a whole is objectively flawed, but I thought Alicia Vikander was great in the Lara Croft role, and I can’t wait for the next instalment (which, despite a so-so box office performance from the first film, is apparently currently being scripted).

8)  Bad Times At The El Royale:  This film came out of nowhere for me, and I wasn’t sure what to expect, but writer/director Drew Goddard’s follow up to his 2011 genre-smashing Cabin in the Woods does for neo-noir films what his debut did for horror tropes.  A fantastic ensemble cast where no one is quite what they seem make this pulpy, twisty, Tarantino-esque, multi-narrative thriller a huge amount of fun.

7)  Mary Poppins Returns  This was my Family Film of 2018, and it’s a joy to watch from beginning to end.  Capturing the innocent tone and joyous spirit of the original film, it also doesn’t feel like a pointless re-hash, and it has some real emotional weight to go alongside the singing and dancing.  This was the least cynical film of 2018, and is an instant pick-me-up in the same way the Paddington films are.

6)  A Simple Favour:  Is this a comedy, or is this a thriller?  Well, the truth is, it’s both, and how much you enjoy this film will probably depend on how comfortable you are with its weird blend of genres.  I found it switched easily from being laugh-out-loud funny one moment (with a pitch-black sense of dark humour) to a gripping murder-mystery the next, and it oozes coolness in every scene.  I’m not sure Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively have ever been better, and it’s a great film to watch with a martini in hand...

For me this year, my Top Ten has a definite divide between my “silver medal” films in 6th to 10th place, and my “gold medallists” in the Top Five, which were all a cut above everything else that I saw in 2018.

5)  Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse:  Perhaps the most visually creative film of the year, this deservedly won the Best Animated Film Oscar.  A standalone film that you can enjoy even if you’ve never seen another Marvel film, it’s original, inventive, funny, emotional and accessible, and should appeal to viewers of all ages.  Don’t be put off by the fact it’s “just a cartoon” - this is one of the best films of the year, full stop.

4)  Black Panther:  Arguably the most culturally significant film of 2018, it’s also one of the most powerful and thought-provoking super-hero blockbusters to date.  Michael B. Jordan is fantastic as the “villain” of the film, who actually has some valid points to make about racial injustice, while Letitia Wright almost steals the show as Princess Shuri.  Chadwick Boseman is the rock on which everything else stands, and how brave is it for a film to pitch it so that, ideologically speaking, the "“hero” is wrong and the “villain” is right?

3)  A Quiet Place:  This was, by far, the best “original concept” film of 2018 (in fact, it was possibly my favourite “original” film for quite some time).  I’m not even a fan of “horror” films per se, but this focused more on creating tension and suspense, with a real emphasis on the characters and their relationships.  Intelligently written, expertly directed, and carried by fantastic performances from real-life couple John Krasinski and Emily Blunt (her second film in my Top Ten) and newcomer Millicent Simmonds, this is an emotional rollercoaster that really stuck with me long after the end credits.

2)  Mission: Impossible – Fallout:  Wow.  This is one of the best action films in years, and certainly has some of the most impressive stunt work I’ve seen in cinema.  In any other year, this could have easily been my Number One film – but we were absolutely spoiled this year!  And as impressive as the real-life stunt work is (and it is frickin’ impressive), the film also delivers everything you could want in terms of plot and characterisation, making the sixth instalment in the franchise its best one yet.  Effectively forming a two-part story with 2015’s Rogue Nation, I can’t want to see what writer/director Christopher McQuarrie has up his sleeve for Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 which he plans to film back-to-back next...

1)  Avengers: Infinity War:  I don’t throw around the phase “masterpiece” often, but it would certainly apply to Infinity War, which is unquestionably the most impressive blockbuster of the year and my Film of 2018.  The complexity of having to juggle over 20 main characters really can’t be overstated, and yet not only did the writers and directors find a way to give everyone a proper storyline and moment in the spotlight, but they also introduced a surprisingly three-dimensional (and oddly tragic) villain with Josh Brolin’s Thanos.  The film doesn’t pause for breath, picking up the action immediately after the end of the Thor: Ragnarok and then not stopping until the closing moments – yet during its two-and-a-half-hour runtime, it expertly balances the shifting tones between laugh-out-loud comedy, tense drama where the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been before in the MCU, and punch-the-air moments of pure joy and triumph.  And then there’s the ending, which let’s face it, is probably the greatest cinematic cliff-hanger since The Empire Strikes Back in 1980...

If you want to read my full (non-spoiler) reviews for any of these Top Ten films, just click on the above links.

While I don’t do a list of the "worst" films of the year (because I try to avoid paying to watch "bad" films), here's a brief run-down of my biggest disappointments of 2018 in terms of the films that I did see:

4th place – The Cloverfield Paradox:  This wasn’t a bad sci-fi film per se, but the amazing cast were badly let down by a muddled plot that managed to be simultaneous both predictable and confusing.  It has the feeling of having been extensively re-written, so that several plot threads don’t make sense or aren’t concluded, and it’s a criminal waste of the talented cast, hence being a big disappointment.  It also seems to have killed off the “Cloverfield” brand, as Overlord was rumoured to be the fourth Cloverfield film, but it ended up dropping the label.

3rd place – Mile 22:  This was certainly the worst film I saw in 2018 (earning my first ever 1-star review), but it wasn’t the biggest disappointment, as I wasn’t expecting much from it.  That said, it is unwatchable rubbish – an action film with awful action scenes really has nothing to offer anyone.

2nd place – Venom:  This film wasn’t the total car crash many were expecting … but there’s still not a lot to like.  Tom Hardy does have some good moments, but the plot is dire, the characters lack any consistency from one scene to the next, Riz Ahmed and Michelle Williams are totally wasted, and the finale is a barely watchable mess of CGI-nonsense.  Given the potential of the source material, this is still not the movie that the character deserves (and, to be honest, for all its many faults, even the Spider-Man 3 version of the character was closer to the comic book origins than this).

Biggest Disappointment of 2018 –The Girl In The Spider's Web:  Again, I’m talking about “disappointments” here, so although there were many worse films, this was my biggest disappointment, because they took the daring, provocative and complex characters from the original novel trilogy and stuck them in a run-of-the-mill, mid-90s, sub-Jason-Bourne techno cyber-thriller.  Not to mention the fact that they also tried to retcon the characters' histories from the original trilogy, just for cheap shock value (which didn’t work).

I’m not saying that the above films were necessarily the worst films of 2018, but they were by far the most disappointing.

Still, let's not end on too much of a downer - you can also check out my earlier blog of my Cinematic Highlights of 2018, which includes my nominations for “Hidden Gem of the Year”, “Guilty Pleasure of the Year” and “Best Cameo(s)”!