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| Won't You Be My Neighbor?, Isle of Dogs, Fake Tattoos, Meditation Park, American Animals, and Sweet Country rank as some of the year's best films so far. |
2018 slept in, but what started as a slow year for movies
has become a strong one. I’ll admit that I’m still not covering as many films
as I’d like to here, but there are a lot of films worth championing that I’ve let slip through
the cracks and want to take the time to spotlight.
This year’s crop of standouts could easily hold on and be the top ten at the end of the year. The group is a mix of holdovers from last year’s festival circuit, plus new indies, Can Con, and the best superhero movie in years.
The best film I’ve seen this year is Les affamés, but it is technically a 2017 film having been released
in festivals and in Quebec theatres last year. I’ve omitted it since this list
considers the best of 2018—anything that has been released theatrically from
January to present, but anyone in search of a good horror film really need to
seek it out now that it’s on home video. In alphabetical order, are my picks
for the ten best films so far of 2018.
(Dir. Bart Layton, USA/UK)
Bart Layton follows up his masterful documentary The Imposter with another riveting true
crime tale. As with his previous work, American
Animals is an exhilarating and inventive feat of storytelling. Layton
creates a dramatic narrative to recount the true story of four misguided
college students who plan to knock off the school’s special collections library
by miming heist movies like Snatch
and Ocean’s 11. However, American Animals emphasizes the
consequences of crime, entitlement, and privilege by having the characters’ real-life
counterparts reflect upon their actions in documentary interviews. It shrewdly
straddles style and plays with the line between fiction and reality to invite
empathy for these men who learn the consequences of their actions only when
it’s too late.
American Animals is
now in theatres.
Black Panther
(Dir. Ryan Coogler, USA)
Black Panther is
the most satisfying superhero film in some time. Ryan Coogler (Creed) surpasses the thrill of Patty
Jenkins’ Wonder Woman by creating a
fun, entertaining, and action packed adventure with strong characters and an
impeccably realized world. It’s the only studio tent pole of late that feels
more like a film than a product. What works about Black Panther as opposed to the glut of overly serious superhero
flicks is that it has a self-contained world that doesn’t require one to have
seen three or four other franchise films and their respective marketing
campaigns to understand. The cast is also lots of fun with Chadwick Boseman
offering a strong hero and Danai Gurira stealing every scene as Black Panther’s
partner in crime, Okoye. It’s the most energizing film of the year.
Black Panther is
available on home video.
(Dir. Sebastían Lelio, UK)
Hot off his Oscar win for A Fantastic Woman, Chilean director Sebastían Lelio offers another
engrossing queer romance. Disobedience features
Rachel Weisz and Rachel McAdams in some of the best performances of their
careers playing two members of London’s Orthodox Jewish community who tango
with the oppressive patriarchal codes of their world in a tale of forbidden
love. Lelio plays with the role of ritual as Weisz’s Ronit, an exile from the
community, sees through the emptiness of a lifestyle in which people suffocate
themselves as they go through the motions, denying their hearts when religion
tells them to celebrate love.
Disobedience is a captivating and sensuous exploration of awakening as
faith and forbidden love are cosily intertwined.
Disobedience is
now in theatres.
(Dir. Pascale Plante, Canada)
It might have been hard to see Fake Tattoos on a big screen outside Quebec, but make no mistake:
the film introduces Pascale Plante as a major talent. Plante’s confidence with
the script and the actors ignites the natural chemistry between the two leads
in this story of young love. Actors Anthony Therrien and Rose-Marie Perrault
essentially deliver a two-hander of a film as outsiders in the indie music
scene bond over their love for rebellious beats. Like Jesse and Céline of
the Before Trilogy, the
swell singers of Once, or Clara
and Nikolai of Nuit #1, Théo and
Meg discover one another through intimate conversations and by sharing their
passion for music, movies, and pop culture arcana. The film pulses with the
vitality of youth.
Fake Tattoos hits
iTunes July 3.
(Dir. Paul Schrader, USA)
Paul Schrader has a return to form and delivers his best
film yet as a director with First
Reformed. The Taxi Driver and Raging Bull writer interrogates a world
in moral decline with this tense and tautly composed study of a priest’s crisis
of faith. Ethan Hawke is in top form as the troubled Reverend Toller, a
faltering priest whose concerns for global warming lead him down a road of
doubt and darkness. The actor and director find a perfect union in tone and
restraint as Toller takes stock of his flock and realizes that this world isn’t
worth saving. One is enrapt by the violence and darkness of First Reformed’s final act, but one
cannot at one moment abandon hope for Toller.
First Reformed is
playing in theatres.
(Dir. Wes Anderson, USA)
What an imaginative and whimsical delight Isle of Dogs is! Wes Anderson conjures a
bag of eclectic dog tricks with this madcap adventure set in Japan’s near
distant future as a clan of abandoned mutts helps a young boy find his beloved
dog. Anderson has an eccentric aesthetic that makes his live action films like The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Royal Tenenbaums offbeat originals,
but his visual style works even better on the palette of feature animation. His
films have an unabashed playfulness that isn’t matched by other directors. The
attention to detail and clever nuances of the dogs’ world are an enchanting
delight. The zany energy of the lark—fuelled by Alexandre Desplat’s
Oscar-worthy score—ensures Isle of Dogs
is a storybook adventure one can revisit again and again.
Isle of Dogs is
still playing in theatres and is available on home video.
Meditation Park
(Dir. Mina Shum, Canada)
A hidden gem that got lost with a poorly timed release
amidst award season heavyweights, Mina Shum’s Meditation Park is a treasure of a film worth seeking out. The film
boasts a trio of great performances with Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon’s Chang
Pei-Pei giving a heartbreaking turn as a woman who reflects upon the life she
built for her children in Vancouver when she discovers her husband (Tzi Ma) is
having an affair. Sandra Oh compassionately plays their daughter, Ava, and
steals every scene she’s in as she reunites with Shum to revisit the themes of
family, culture, representation, agency, and heritage with which they broke out
in 1994’s Double Happiness. Shum once
again provides a rich slice of life portrait of Vancouver’s Chinatown community
and her respectfully humane representation of Canada’s immigrant population
reminds a viewer that she is among the country’s most vital filmmakers.
Meditation Park is
available on home video.
(Dir. Warwick Thornton, Australia)
Why can’t we have more films like Sweet Country in Canada? Warwick Thornton’s visionary take on the
western puts a decolonial spin on the myths that the new world offered a virgin
land to be conquered. The film stars Hamilton Morris as Sam, an Indigenous man
who goes on the lam when he kills a white man in self defense, and he finds a
worthy foil in Bryan Brown’s Sergeant Fletcher, the bitter racist who leads the
manhunt for our hero deep into the outback. The film, easily the best I saw at
TIFF last year, rewards on repeat viewings with its artfully reflective
meditation on a nation founded upon colonial violence and cultural genocide.
Sweet Country is
coming soon to home video.
(Dir. Morgan Neville, USA)
Morgan Neville makes America kind again with Won’t You Be My Neighbor?. This
wonderfully sincere film looks at the legacy of TV icon Fred Rogers and the
return to Mister Rogers Neighborhood
reminds audiences of a time when leaders preached messages of passion,
inclusion, and tolerance. Carefully selected archival footage pays homage to
the man who was the first teacher to many children, but Neville also provides
subtle commentary on the current political climate with allusions to the
vitriol of the Trump administration and the culture of toxicity it breeds in
America. For all the talk of “civility” these days, one couldn’t find a better
portrait of the value of kindness than in the tale of Mr. Rogers.
Won’t You Be My
Neighbor? is now in theatres.
You Were Never Really Here
(Dir. Lynne Ramsay, UK/France)
The spirit of Taxi
Driver endures in this brooding thriller from Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin). Joaquin
Phoenix, who won a well-deserved Best Actor prize at Cannes last year, stars a
Joe, a traumatized war veteran who navigates a criminal underworld as a killer
for hire to feed his pain. Joe is a modern day Travis Bickle when a job
inspires him to save a young girl from an underground sex ring and Ramsay
proves she can wield grisly violence with as much artful brutality as Paul
Schrader and Martin Scorsese can. Tense, dark, and very mysterious, Ramsay’s
film employs her signature style that sees the world through a fractured lens of
violent cuts and jarring imagery that finds everyday horror in familiar
objects. The editing of the film is a jarring fever dream that puts the
audience in the headspace of its disillusioned anti-hero. It’s a dark and scary
place to be.
Honourable mentions: Beast; C'est la vie!; The Death of Stalin; Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami; Hereditary; Love, Cecil; Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts; Prodigals;
RBG
The best performances so far:
Best Actor: Ethan
Hawke, First Reformed
Runner-up: Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here
Best Actress: Toni
Collette, Hereditary
Runner-up: Chang Pei-Pei, Meditation Park
Best Supporting Actor: Bryan Brown, Sweet Country
Runner-up: Steve Buscemi, The Death of Stalin
Best Supporting
Actress: Patricia Clarkson, The Party
Runner-up: Sandra Oh, Meditation
Park
