In the 2nd Post post-Oscars, my true love sent to me: my favorite genre movies of 2018.
RECAP
—2018 Favorites: Introduction
—In the 1st Post post-Oscars: 2018 Movies — Intro + Complete List
Warning: some of y’all may not consider a few of the categories below as proper genres unto themselves.
Well, fuck y’all.
JK, I love y’all!!!
But not JK: my website, my rules, my inventions.
The categories aren’t listed in any particular order, but — where applicable — I rank the movies within in each category in order of personal preference.
And now, my favorite 2018:
SPY MOVIE
Mission: Impossible — Fallout
WESTERN
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
- The Old Man & the Gun
- Let the Corpses Tan
- Damsel
NOIR
Gemini
- It’s more of a neo-noir, which is about as close as we get to proper film noir this days, unless you count comedic send-ups like The Happytime Murders…
…you’re right, let’s not.
HIGH SCHOOL MOVIE
(As in, a movie about high school, not a movie made by a high-schooler,…I find myself wanting to put a concluding “obviously” after that comma, but honestly, I’d be kind of interested in seeing a high-schooler’s take on their contemporary and contemporaneous high-school experience, because they’d probably avoid the condescending artifice of adults attempting to bridge the decades between their former selves and what they imagine high school to be like in this, the year of our lord 2018. There’s a reason Bo Burnham — basically a recent graduate himself — is responsible for my favorite 2018 movie about adolescence. Speaking of which: his Eighth Grade would be at the top of this list…if I was listing my favorite 2018 school movies. But since it’s a middle-school movie — a far less prolific genre, which makes Eighth Grade all the more novel; it might be my favorite middle-school movie…ever? — we’ll have to wait a few categories until it makes its first of many appearances on these lists. One last note regarding the following: these aren’t just my favorite 2018 movies that happen to involve high-schoolers; to qualify, they must be primarily about the high school experience)
- Love, Simon
- Midnight Sun
- Flower
DISASTER MOVIE
(As in, a movie about a natural disaster…though weather-related catastrophes seem to be more man-made than natural nowadays. Basically, shit’s gotta go boom in a big bad way for human civilization — the more devastation, the better. And now, the winner of 2018’s Roland Emmerich Award for Achievement in Cinematic Destruction:)
ACTION MOVIE
Mission: Impossible — Fallout
- Honorable Mention: Upgrade
- Not even close to one of the year’s best action movies, but it includes some of the year’s best action sequences. Yay dynamic cinematography, a baffling and blasphemous rarity for the genre!
COMEDY
(These movies are listed in order of which made me laugh the most; as overall movies, I’d rank them differently)
- The Death of Stalin
- Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
- An Evening with Beverly Luff Linn
- Under the Tree
- The Favourite
- Private Life
- Vice
- A Bread Factory, Part One
- Eighth Grade
- Poop Talk
- A documentary all about poop! Specifically, comedians telling funny stories about poop! Exclaim in excitement about excrement!
HORROR MOVIE
(Similarly, these movies aren’t listed in order of scariest, nor in order of which I like the most; rather, I rank them in terms of how deftly they exist within, or/and expand, the horror genre)
- Hereditary
- Border
- Unfriended
- Caniba
- The Bleeding Edge
- Good Manners
- Not scary, but a thoughtful riff on the genre’s monster tropes.
ZOMBIE MOVIE
The Cured
WEREWOLF MOVIE
Good Manners
ROMANTIC COMEDY
The Boy Downstairs
MUSICAL
(Note: I do not consider Vox Lux a musical, because it’s really just a regular movie that leads into an extended musical performance at the end. Otherwise, it’d 1000000000% appear on this list).
- A Bread Factory, Part Two
- Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
- Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
- Musicals love titular exclamations!!!
- Forever My Girl
- Night is Short, Walk on Girl
KIDS MOVIE
Paddington 2
SCIENCE FICTION MOVIE
Sorry To Bother You
- Honorable Mention: Hotel Artemis
NEW YORK CITY MOVIE
(Not just a list of my favorite movies that happen to be set in the greatest city on earth; I rank them in order of how much they capture some essential essence of it)
- If Beale Street Could Talk
- Private Life
- Permission
- The Boy Downstairs
- Golden Exits
LOS ANGELES MOVIE
Gemini
- Honorable Mention: Destroyer
- Note: In future years, I shall focus on movies that expertly delve into other cities than the country’s big two.
SNIFFLER
- If Beale Street Could Talk
- Eighth Grade
- Minding the Gap
- On Her Shoulders
- Oscar-Nominated Short Films: Animated
- Instant Family
- RBG
- Crazy Rich Asians
TEARJERKER
- 1985
- Midnight Sun
- Far from the Tree
- What They Had
- Oscar-Nominated Short Films: Documentary
- If “End Game” was a feature length, it’d top this list.
- Pick of the Litter
- Ben is Back
- Love, Simon
- Boy Erased
- The Death of Stalin
- Comedies can jerk tears of laughter, too!
TORTURE PORN
- Honorable Mention: Makala
DELIGHTMARE
(My favorite so-bad-they’re-good delightful cinematic nightmares)
- Welcome to Marwen
- Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
- Acrimony
- Forever My Girl
- Hurricane Heist
- Midnight Sun
- Aquaman
MILLENNIAL MOVIE
Eighth Grade
MOVIE ABOUT CHILDHOOD
(Madeline’s Madeline is the best movie STARRING a child, but to me — and with a movie as richly-nuanced and wonderfully-expressive as Madeline’s Madeline, it’s open to endless personal interpretation — it’s not predominately interested in probing the childhood experience. These, on the other hand, are:)
Eighth Grade
- Honorable Mention: We the Animals
FRANCHISE FLICK
Mission: Impossible — Fallout
- Honorable Mention: Black Panther
- Marvel’s only chance of winning this award is to fundamentally shake-up their formula; Black Panther makes the most of this structure, but fails to completely transcend it. While we’re on the topic, let’s hold our noses and end with an unnecessary evil:
SUPERHERO MOVIE
- Teen Titans Go! to the Movies
- Black Panther
- Incredibles 2
- …Aquaman!
- …..VENOM!!!!
- Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
- Ant-Man and the Wasp
- Deadpool 2
- Avengers: Infinity War
WRITE ALL NITE 