Top-20 List of Films for 2018 - Entrepreneur Generations

It's the day of the Oscars, my deadline for my year-end list. Here were my favorites of 2018!

1- Blackkklansman: my most emotional experience at the movies this year, but also one of the most entertaining and funny. I’ve heard all the critiques - that its heavy handedness makes it flawed - but this is a time for boldness and Spike Lee is hitting on all cylinders here.

2-Black Panther: I’m not a comic book movie person in general, but this one throttled me: the world building; the riveting metaphors about colonialism, race, and our responsibilities to others; one of the all-time villains; the action sequences, likethe bar scene. After Fruitvale Station and Creed, Ryan Coogler has had a masterful start to his career.

3-Eighth Grade: Sometimes excruciating, always emotionally authentic, Bo Burham’s stunning portrayal of middle school in the modern age, and the duality that social media creates, has a keen sense of humor and a fierce empathy for its characters.

4-Paddington 2: A gem of pacing, writing, animation, and simply one of the most optimistic and enchanting films I saw all year. Easily transcends its status as a children’s movie, it’s a story of a refugee and of wrongful conviction, and, just so sweet and beautiful - a true piece of art.

5-Widows: Inaccurately advertised as a caper film, this one is about so much more, a character study and political thriller featuring tremendous performances and the single best shot of the year (that hood-on-the-car shot).

6-Can You Ever Forgive Me?: A funny, sad film that creates intrigue out of literary forgery, bolstered by terrific performances by Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant. A simplistic version of this movie would have rounded off Lee Israel’s rough edges, but the character is acerbic, depressed, and so authentic.

7-Annihilation: A beautiful, creepy, and haunting film that had me pondering for weeks what it was all about. Thought-provoking, ambitious, and legitimately scary, with some of the most brilliant cinematography and scoring in film in 2018. I loved the female-centric scientist team as well.

8-A Simple Favor: My outlier - most critics liked this one but I didn’t see it on any year-end lists. But I loved this movie, a genuine comic thriller: funny, twisty, exciting, well-performed (Blake Lively is so good). It’s already stood up to multiple viewings for me. Paul Feig, after Bridesmaids and Spy, has produced some of our best comedies this in recent years.

9-The Favourite: A beguiling, often hilarious love triangle that has a slow build but builds to a series of often riotously entertaining scenes. Olivia Coleman’s dotty, gut-wrenching performance is matched by Rachel Weicz and Emma Stone.

10-Sorry to Bother You: I love Boots Riley’s boldness with this film, which starts off as a funny satire about race and ends up being a call-to-arms for the working class. The thought-provoking magical realism of the ending was daring and, for me, effective. Lakeith Stansfield not being nominated for Best Actor is the biggest snub of Oscars 2019.

11-Fahrenheit 11/9: If you’ve ever enjoyed being led along by Michael Moore in his earlier works, you will enjoy this: it’s up there with his best works. It’s not going to add to his fan base nor is it his most efficient work (it could have been a TV series). What it lacks in focus -- this is a movie about the 2016 election, about the Flint water crisis, about Trump’s regime, about gun violence -- it makes up for in hopeful inspiration, provocativeness, and highlighting people not usually highlighted in film. I sobbed through much of it; it was so powerful.

12-If Beale Street Could Talk: there are at least five amazing scenes in this film (the family meeting; the trip to Puerto Rico; Fonnie and Tish’s first time; Brian Tyree Henry’s scene; the apartment shopping scene), and while it’s slow with a few too many lingering shots of staring into eyes, I thought Barry Jenkins’ script (expertly adapting James Baldwin), James Laxton’s cinematography and Nicholas Britell’s score made this film a beautiful, powerful experience. As a fan of the novel, I didn’t like the changes made at the end, though.

13-Spiderman in the Spiderverse: Visually dazzling with a lot of humor and heart, this breathed life into a tired franchise. Voice work by Bryan Tyree Henry was especially affecting, and his scene outside the door of his son, Miles Morales, was one of the best of the year.

14-Mission Impossible: Fallout: This brilliantly consistent franchise offers perhaps its best effort yet. And “effort” is an operative word here: there’s never any doubt about how much Tom Cruise is exerting. The results are thrilling, realistic, and that Wolf Blitzer scene (and the helicopter scene) have stayed with me months later.

15-Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: a character study and a call to arms for empathy, just as impactful and tear-inducing as I suspected it would be.

16-The Hate U Give - A strong adaptation, with a tighter ending, of a great novel, this one is marked by Amandla Sterberg’s prodigious lead performance and Russell Hornsby as her father; he has some of the most affecting scenes of the year.

17-A Star is Born: A couple of the best scenes of the year occur fairly early on (the meeting in the gay bar, the quiet performance by Bradley Cooper to the drag queens, the performance of “Shallow”), and the rest of this is a big old-fashioned Hollywood film, and I went along with it - hook, line and sinker. The second half isn’t nearly as good as the first half, but Lady Gaga, Cooper, and Sam Elliot are all tremendous.

18-Hereditary: the scariest movie I’ve seen in years. The clicking sound still gives me chills. And Toni Collette is tremendous.

19-Blindspotting: Carlos Lopez Estrada’s directorial debut is similar, in some ways, to Boots Riley’s: both are Oakland-based, both deal with issues of race, both are audacious. The ending of this one worked a little bit less for me than that film, but I loved Daveed Diggs’ lead performance, and I loved how it veered from comedy to drama so sharply. In the end, it says a lot (about racism, recidivism, gentrification, relationships), and says it well.

20-Game Night: A mainstream comedy that fulfills everything it sets out to do, propelled by a tremendous lead performance by Rachel McAdams and a hilarious supporting turn by Jessie Piemons. Laugh-out-loud funny at times, with a couple of the funniest scenes of the year.

Honorable Mentions: Leave No Trace, Minding the Gap, Free Solo, Private Life, First Reformed, Isle of Dogs, RBG, Three Identical Strangers