Top 10 Films You First Saw in 2018

yeah, I was making this list a couple of days ago for these "year-end" lists and I got carried away, not in a real order obviously shit changes.

1. Le Notti Bianche (1957, Visconti)
2. A Brighter Summer Day (1991, Yang)
3. La Dolce Vita (1960, Fellini)
4. The Favourite (2018, Lanthimos)
5. Woman in the Dunes (1964, Teshigahara)
6. Grave of the Fireflies (1988, Takahata)
7. The Deep Blue Sea (2011, Davies)
8. The Human Condition (1959-61, Kobayashi)
9. Harakiri (1962, Kobayashi)
10. The Sacrifice (1986, Tarkovsky)

11. Phantom Thread (2017, Anderson)
12. La Notte (1961, Antonioni)
13. Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985, Babenco)
14. Notorious (1946, Hitchcock)
15. Only Angels Have Wings (1939, Hawks)
16. Wings of Desire (1987, Wenders)
17. Roma (2018, Cuaron)
18. Distant Voices, Still Lives (1992, Davies)
19. High and Low (1963, Kurosawa)
20. Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985, Schrader)

21. Leave Her to Heaven (1945, Stahl)
22. The Face of Another (1966, Teshigahara)
23. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946, Capra)
24. Disobedience (2018, Lelio)
25. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946, Wyler)
26. Stop Making Sense (1984, Demme)
27. Dressed to Kill (1980, De Palma)
28. McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971, Altman)
29. All About Eve (1950, Mankiewicz)
30. Gosford Park (2001, Altman)

31. Kwaidan (1964, Kobayashi)
32. The Leopard (1963, Visconti)
33. Rififi (1955, Dassin)
34. The Red Shoes (1948, Powell & Pressburger)
35. Right Now, Wrong Then (2015, Sang-soo)
36. The Piano (1993, Campion)
37. Poetry (2010, Chang-Dong)
38. Pale Flower (1964, Shinoda)
39. The Drop (2014, Roskam)
40. The American (2010, Corbijn)

41. The Proposition (2005, Hillcoat)
42. First Reformed (2018, Schrader)
43. A Woman is a Woman (1961, Godard)
44. After Life (1999, Koreeda)
45. Pierrot le Fou (1965, Godard)
46. Blow Out (1981, De Palma)
47. The Love Witch (2016, Biller)
48. Bad Times at the El Royale (2018, Goddard)
49. Charade (1963, Donen)
50. Sisters (1972, De Palma)

I’ll do 20

1. The Phantom Carriage (1921)
2. Blue Velvet (1986)
3. Leaves from Satan’s Book (1921)
4. The Burning Brazier (1923)
5. Phantom Thread (2017)

6. The Death of Stalin (2017)
7. Nosferatu (1922)
8. Inglorious Basterds (2009)
9. In Bruges (2008)
10. The Monastery of Sendomir (1920)

11. Safety Last (1923)
12. La Roue (1923)
13. Collateral (2004)
14. El Dorado (1921)
15. Coeur Fidele (1923)

16. Destiny (1921)
17. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)
18. BlacKkKlansman (2018)
19. From Morn to Midnight (1920)
20. Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922)

Roughly:

01. Buffalo '66
02. The Cremator
03. O Lucky Man!
04. Rabid Dogs
05. Bad Lieutenant
06. The Beyond
07. La Notte
08. I Saw the Devil
09. Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
10. A Brighter Summer Day
11. Naked
12. Paris, Texas
13. Lady Snowblood
14. Ran
15. Dekalog
16. La Cérémonie
17. Phenomena
18. Oldboy
19. The Wicker Man
20. Army of Shadows

order could change depending on my mood. Might be forgetting some...

Phantom Thread (2017, Anderson)
Holy Motors (2012, Carax)
The Cook, the Thief, his Wife, and her Lover (1989, Greenway)
Rififi (1955, Dassin) 
Tampopo (1985, Itami) 
Some Like it Hot (1959, Wilder)
Certified Copy (2010, Kiarostami) 
Army of Shadows (1969, Melville) 
All About Eve (1950, Mankiewicz) 
First Reformed (2018, Schrader) 

And ten more, for good measure: 
Harold and Maude (1971, Ashby) 
Tropical Malady (2004, Weerasethakul) 
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring (2003, Kim)
You Were Never Really Here (2018, Ramsay)
Stop Making Sense (1984, Demme) 
Amarcord (1973, Fellini) 
Beau Travail (2000, Denis) 
Girl Walk: All Day (2011, Krupnick) 
Brief Encounter (1945, Lean) 
4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (2007, Mungiu) 

I'll do this later. And Film Socialism had the right idea last year by actually saying that we have to talk about ours.

I wasn't trying to put it that way, more trying to encourage discussion. But I was tired and phrased myself poorly.

1. Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve) -- I like the original well enough, but I don't see what's so great about it. But 2049 is a different beast. An epic that feels like something that could have been made in the 1950's era of biblical films, in a way. Where Blade Runner felt small (and all the better for it), this feels expansive, encompassing gods and mortals, monuments to dead civilizations, prophecies and miracles. But more than anything, it is the tale of K, an ordinary man in the midst of all this, trying to find his way, his focus narrow and his goals modest. It beautifully humanizes a very large story, and makes it both intimate and expansive. 10/10

2. Girl Walk: All Day (Jacob Krupnick) -- I hate hip hop and "dance" music. Pretty much without exception. I want to say that upfront, because even despite that built-in weakness for me, this is the most damn fun I've had watching a movie in ages. It's an ode to the beauty in people, in discovering the joy of finding the similarities inherent in all of us, instead of the differences. But that's not what I was thinking any of the three dozen times I've found myself watching a piece of it only to spend half an hour grinning like an idiot. I was too busy being happy. 10/10

3. The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci, 2017) -- Because I'm a terrible person. 10/10

4. Shame (Steve McQueen, 2011) -- I wrote a rambling and not very good Letterboxed review at the time, but it gets the point across, more or less. 10/10

5. The Thing (John Carpenter, 1982) -- I could complain that the characters are all pretty interchangeable, but this is a rare case where that works to the film's advantage, as being unable to keep track of everyone makes the setting all the more scary. As a piece of paranoid horror, it doesn't get much better than this. 9/10

6. In This Corner of the World (Sunao Kutabuchi, 2016) -- A gentle, warmhearted portrait of a family coming together as a war happens around them. It thankfully isn't as grave as Grave of the Fireflies, instead taking an episodic, slice-of-life approach that portrays both the happy and the sad. One could find issue with its ignorance of the Japanese wrongdoing in the war, but I'd argue that this story isn't about that, and shoehorning it in would be insulting. 9/10

7. Molly's Game (Aaron Sorkin, 2017) -- Aaron Sorkin has been writing the same movie since The Social Network, and that is fine by me. I'm a sucker for his tales of parents sinning against their children, creating pain in their attempts to love. Where Molly's Game shines is in portraying the tales of Moneyball and Steve Jobs through the eyes of the child, as she tries to forge her own path away from the shadow of who she once was. 9/10

8. Logan Lucky (Steven Soderbergh, 2017) -- Sometimes it's nice to just sit down and watch a goofy Soderbergh movie. 9/10

9. Lucky (John Carroll Lynch, 2017) -- An obviously personal piece that is so sincere that I don't really care if it has any faults. 9/10

10. The Immigrant (James Gray, 2013) -- Well, I only saw 9 movies this year hitting those high notes. But this one comes mighty close. I don't feel like saying anything about it, though. 8/10

1) Last Summer ’69
...... in a sort of trilogy with The Swimmer and Diary of a Mad Housewife, three in a row from Frank Perry that are brilliantly evocative dissections of the American ideal. Last Summer is a perfectly encapsulated "boiling point" movie; it has a languid summer mood but with a transgressive undercurrent of the exhilirated angst and unease of a trio that thrive under the guise of friendship-fun, and becoming something like a charged cult when a hapless outsider joins them. There's a very clever comment on a kind of bannered immaturity, the trio's adolescent spree of gamesmanship, namecalling, pranks, etc, being a form of cruelty, condescension, humiliation. Barbara Hershey centers everything with her great performance, pitched at a charismatic simmer, that is at once alluring yet hints to a deeply sly malice. Ebert said it's "One of the finest, truest, most deeply felt movies." And more, it's still relevant.

the rest are somewhat out of order, 20 first watches that I loved -

By the Law '26
The Heiress '49
The Best Years of Our Lives '46
Meantime '83
Fraulein '86

The Collector '65
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde ’31
The Killing of A Chinese Bookie ’76
Diary of a Mad Housewife ’70
A Man Escaped '56

Ms 45 ’81
Starman '84
City of Hope ’91
Roman Holiday '53
Beauty and the Beast ’46

Avalon '90
Missing ’82
Looking for Mr Goodbar ’77
The Hanging Tree '59
Tin Men '87

some underseen or unjustly low rated: Unlawful Entry '92, Only Two Can Play '62, Cash on Demand '61, Girlfriends '78

fav horror firsts: Killer Party '86, He Knows You're Alone '80, New Nightmare '94, Short Night of Glass Dolls '71

Happy to add some thoughts on the ten movies I listed.

After Life is the only film from Hirokazu Koreeda I've seen, needless to say I plan to check out more from him this year. This drew me in, struck and rattled my heart over and over again. It's very straightforward on just about every level, which I don't always like, but no complaints here. I came away with the impression that this was one of the most beautiful movies I'd ever seen, one that glowed with an immense appreciation for life and art.

Guy Maddin continued to amaze me after I saw and adored Brand Upon the Brain! in 2017. Keyhole is a hilariously strange, drowned and illusive descent into twisted memories that have not been put to rest. The haunted house surrounded by police while a storm rages outside is just about the most awesomely atmospheric backdrop I could imagine for this kind of thing, and Maddin pulls it all off with a great sense of personal style and vision. The Forbidden Room is even better, and currently my favorite film of the decade. I could also see My Winnipeg getting bumped up to a favorite of mine on rewatch.

Trust did me in. I have a real soft spot for coming of age stories when they're actually done well (which isn't too often, sadly). I love movies that are so unfashionable/kitschy and yet utterly confident in what they are. "Let us praise an artifice that is cultivated without remorse", and all that good stuff.

My Neighbor Totoro was lovely beyond words. I wish I saw Miyazaki's stuff as a kid.

The Saragossa Manuscript lost me a bit in the second half, but I found it extremely immersive and entertaining overall. Kind of the OG Mysteries of Lisbon.

Himizu is the best movie about depression I've ever seen. That ending tore me apart.

If Tarkovsky had a quieter and similarly artistically inclined younger brother who had a very bleak outlook on mankind, I think he would've made something like Angel's Egg.

The Great Silence - wasn't completely in love with this at first but that ending is undeniable. Best spaghetti western I've seen, hands down.

I'm glad that Phantom Thread and Inherent Vice (when are we getting a Gravity's Rainbow adaptation, Paul?) have brought some skeptics around on Anderson. He's so, so much better than the directors he sometimes gets lumped with, like Nolan, Tarantino, Fincher, and I'm glad more people seem to be realizing that