Though it is not one of the ten BEST movies of 2018 (it is just on the outside looking in), there is a place for a movie like John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place because of its originality, creepiness, and ability to keep you on the edge of your seat for its fast-flying 90 minutes. In a time where Hollywood is struggling with original storylines, here we find a first-time director and still novice movie star in Krasinski (NBC’s The Office, Promised Land) delivering a downright knockout punch in his debut effort. I love gritty movies. I love movies that are rich in their characters. I love movies where the tone doesn’t change from credits to credits. A Quiet Place had all of this and more, and thus it has found a spot in my Top Ten Movies of the Year for 2018 over other movies that might have been less flawed but were also far less original.
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Category Archives: Top 10 Movie of 2018
Ben is Back (2018)
Lucas Hedges (Lady Bird, Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri) had much early Oscar buzz surrounding his name for his work in Boy Erased. I was as hyped as anyone for that movie and that performance. As I had mentioned in my review of it, Boy Erased was based on a book that I had read before I even knew that there was a movie to be made on it (which NEVER happens). I liked the book and appreciated it being adapted into a movie. It deals with a controversial issue that I have somewhat strong thoughts on, and I was curious to see how it played out on film. And with a cast of Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Joel Edgerton, and Russell Crowe, I thought it would be a Top 10 contender for sure. However, it completely underwhelmed, and Hedges’ performance in the film was not as great as I expected. I did not expect Hedges to dominate every screen he was in during two other 2018 performances after the release of that October. However, he was fantastic as the bully of an older brother in the handful of scenes he was in Mid90s (a film that had no other name actors besides him. And he let the screen on fire, matching Hollywood’s finest actress over the last 25 years in Julia Roberts (August Osage County, Erin Brokovich) in the under-the-radar, poignant Ben is Back.
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Green Book (2018)
The race for the five Best Actor nominations might be the Academy Awards’ toughest race. It seems like Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born) is a lock. There has been some major buzz for a couple of movies that have run in limited release only (Ethan Hawke – First Reformed) and Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate). Ryan Gosling had a huge push heading into First Man, but that movie was completely underwhelmed with critics and audiences, and his fine performance could be a casualty in this tight year. A new crop of contenders could swoop in for a spot or two (Rami Malek –Bohemian Rhapsody), John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman), Lucas Hedges (Boy Erased). And then there are a couple of oldtimers who turned in a couple of possible final career performances (Clint Eastwood – The Mule) and Robert Redford (The Old Man & the Gun). But I will state, for the record, that one of the men listed above, not named Bradley Cooper, will be knocked out for the career-defining role of Viggo Mortensen (Appaloosa, A History of Violence) in Green Book. We can talk about Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Hidden Figures) all that we want (and we will). But Green Book is a Mortensen-driven vehicle and a movie that is an absolute must-see. I am a huge Mortensen fan. The Road is one of my all-time favorite movies, and his performance in 2007’s Eastern Promises was absolutely deserving of an Oscar nomination. But I was not a huge fan of 2016’s Captain Fantastic (a film I enjoyed to an extent but had no desire to review). I absolutely thought that the Oscar nomination should have gone to Jake Gyllenhaal (Nocturnal Animals). If, based on the preview, you are worried about Green Book basically being Driving Miss Daisy 2, rest assured that it is not. That, honestly, was my biggest trepidation. And don’t let the PG-13 rating fool you either into thinking that this will be something light-hearted and fun. It pushed the envelope with its language and tone at times. I’m not going to say that this is as dark as the Tom Cruise/ Jamie Foxx 2004 movie Collateral, but it is not designed that way either. While that movie, too, was driven by the performances of its two leads, I don’t think it had nearly as much to say as Green Book did. And I’m also not going to suggest that this movie doesn’t play out exactly as you might expect it to because it absolutely does.
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Widows (2018)
After watching Widows, the best movie of 2018 that has been released before Thanksgiving) I can very confidently say that if you team up director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Shame) and writer Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, HBO’s Sharp Objects), I’m going to have my butt in a theatre opening weekend. I’ve heard about Widows for months now but never actually saw the trailer until the day before I saw the movie. And I still haven’t seen the whole trailer. I needly only watch the first half of it to know that it was a movie that I wanted to see and that it was a movie I wanted to see right away. With all due respect to A Star Is Born, I think that its parade walk to 2018’s Best Picture just hit a major roadblock in McQueen’s masterpiece of a movie. The man who was narrowly beaten out for Best Director (Alfonso Cuarón – Gravity) hardly seemed upset when half an hour later, his 12 Years a Slave won topped Gravity (and others) for the Best Picture of 2013. He’s been off the grid for the last five years (save for a few shorts), but he is back with a movie that might be better than any of his previous three masterpieces (12 Years a Slave, Shame, Hunger Strike). The only thing missing is an appearance by Michael Fassbender, but you won’t even notice. Not only has McQueen delivered the best movie of 2018 (so far), but he’s brought the best ensemble of the year, one that will likely garner awards for a couple of people and a surefire one for the film’s protagonist Veronica (Viola Davis – Fences, The Help). And while some might think I’m crazy to suggest that her performance in Widows is better than her performances in Fences, The Help, or Doubt, I would counter that she led a star-studded cast in this movie. In contrast, while she was fantastic in her other three films, she wasn’t the center character. AND, I am still upset that she was put up for Best Supporting Actress in 2016 Fences, an award that she won) because that was a leading performance and would have won Best Lead Actress. She was not anymore a supporting character than Denzel Washington was. But I digress…
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Bohemian Rhapsody (2018)
As is the case with many biopics (since being hosed over by, what I believed to be, a movie based entirely on a true story in Remember the Titans), I like to read about what parts of the movie were truly true and which parts were fictional to tell a better story. A good biopic often becomes a great biopic when you learn that what you saw on screen happened in real life. A good movie that bases its claim on being a true story or inspired by true events but one that you later find out has been predominantly fictionalized loses a lot of its original appeal. And, honestly, there is no bigger dagger to a movie that I love when I learn that what I thought was a true story turns out to be not nearly as much as I thought? Truthfully, how can you call a movie a biopic which, by definition, is a biographical movie when parts of the movie are either made up or sequenced in ways that weren’t truthful? Is the goal to honor the true story or to tell a better one and call it true? In the real world, that’s called fraud. So after learning that Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, one of the most influential rock bands of all time, wasn’t actually diagnosed with AIDS until 1987, two years AFTER Live Aid, despite telling his band members BEFORE Live Aid in the movie that he had contracted the virus, a lot of the movie’s credibility was shot out the window. However, despite many of its historical inaccuracies, I’m not going to trash a decent film that tried to do a lot right. If I did that, then I feel I would have to go back and scrutinize some of my other favorite biopics with the same fine comb. First of all, I have no desire to do that. Secondly, I don’t want to learn that some of my favorite movies I thought to be true 100% true was not (i.e., Remember the Titans). As you can see, this movie took a lot of liberties.
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