This was a record-breaking year at the box office. Thanks to the success of Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, Incredibles 2, and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, among other blockbusters, numerous records were broken, including domestic gross ($11.9 billion) and worldwide gross ($29.8 billion). But this post isn’t about praising how much money movies made, or even naming the best films of 2018 (we’ve already got you covered there). It’s to name the moments that made this year a memorable one at the theater. These are my own personal favorite choices, based on the 160-plus new films I’ve seen since January, and because taste is subjective, etc., there’s some odd selections. Pizza and sadness show up multiple times! But in a decade, when I look back at the movies I saw in 2018, these are the moments I want to remember.
1. When Sara gives herself over to the dance in Suspiria.
2. The bracingly real bathroom fight in Mission: Impossible – Fallout that director Christopher McQuarrie filmed in such a way that it felt like you were getting pummeled, too. Related: Henry Cavill loading his arms like a gun.
3. The pair of depressing horse movies: The Rider, written and directed by Chloé Zhao (who Marvel Studios tapped to helm an Eternals movie), and Lean on Pete, my pick for the most overlooked great film of 2018. It was a good year for horse movies, overall, with those two, alongside the dark-comedy Thoroughbreds and the even-darker comedy Sorry to Bother You.
4. Gotti is the best bad movie of 2018.
https://twitter.com/thepatrickwalsh/status/1010561100708888577
5. Daughter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) and father Frank (Nick Offerman, in a surprisingly tender performance) composing and performing “Hearts Beat Loud” from the touchingly uber-Brooklyn movie of the same name.
6. A never-better Ethan Hawke (and that’s saying something considering he was in Boyhood, and the Before trilogy, and Training Day, and…) desperately pleading that “somebody has to do something” in First Reformed.
7. Tom Waits searching for “Mr. Pocket” in The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
8. I’M OFF THE DEEP END WATCH AS I DIVE IN.
9. The majestic scene in Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, where Ben (Steven Yeun) mysteriously and sinisterly reveals to Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in) that “sometimes I burn down greenhouses,” this after the object of both of their affections, Shin Hae-mi (Jeon Jong-seo), dances topless while stoned in front of the sunset.
10. Gary’s Tostitos Scoops suspicions in Game Night.
11. There are too many amazing moments in Eighth Grade (my favorite movie of 2018) to single just one out. There’s Kayla’s pool party panic attack, and the “just sort of my hopes and dreams” box burning, and the relatable terror of dropping and cracking your phone, and the uproariously casual school-shooting drill, but those are all pretty depressing, so let’s go with the cute nuggets-and-sauce date. It was a bad year for Nice Guys, but Gabe is a good nice guy.
12. The competing rallies in BlacKkKlansman, with Jerome Turner (Harry Belafonte) solemnly detailing the lynching of African-American teenager Jesse Washington on one side, and rowdy Ku Klux Klan members, led by David Duke (Topher Grace), taking in a screening of The Birth of a Nation on the other.
13. The octopus drummer in Aquaman. Or maybe Mera’s jellyfish dream. Or possibly Patrick Wilson screaming “OCEAN MASTER.” Or how about the multiple animal reaction shots. Aquaman is a deeply weird blockbuster, and the best DC Extended Universe movie to date. Yeah, that’s right.
14. Peter (newly-minted romantic-comedy hunk Noah Centineo) putting his hand in Lana’s (Lana Condor) back pocket in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, and then smoothly spinning her around. The scene was even improvised!
15. The beach sequences in Roma, where the ocean is loud, intense, and terrifying, and Shoplifters, where it’s a source of unbridled joy. (Best Foreign Language is going to be the most stacked category at the Oscars. Roma, Shoplifters, Burning, and Cold War rank among the finest films of 2018; The Guilty and Capernaum, from Denmark and Lebanon, look promising, too.)
16. The creature design in The Ritual. (I won’t spoil it by including an image, but it’s one of the coolest movie monsters in years, and especially impressive since it comes from a low-budget feature that was released on Netflix. Instead of watching the overrated Bird Box, check out this supernatural survival movie. Or Annihilation. I still think about that nightmarish screaming bear.)
17. Tom Hardy sitting in a lobster tank in Venom. Big mood.
18. The car ride, showing Chicago’s segregation from the hood of a white politician’s automobile, is the scene from Steve McQueen’s excellent heist film Widows that’s getting most of the critical attention. It’s a visual and technical achievement, but I’m partial to what happens in the gymnasium. Note to self: never invite Daniel Kaluuya to a freestyle rap battle. Or a bowling alley.
19. The [SPOILER] in Hereditary. (The fact that the [SPOILER] could refer to, like, five things in Ari Aster’s feature-length directorial debut is part of fun, and by fun, I mean Hereditary is very scary and the best example of “I don’t generally get scared, but this movie scared the bejesus out of me” in recent memory.)
20. Cam‘s refreshingly positive look at sex workers.
21. Let’s knock out the other superhero movie highlights in one entry: X-Force’s entrance in Deadpool 2; The Snap in Avengers: Infinity War; a giant ant playing the drums in Ant-Man and the Wasp (a good year for percussive creatures; see: Aquaman); the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents in Teen Titans Go! To the Movies; Killmonger’s entrance in Black Panther; every scene in the visually stunning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse; and the post-credits sequence in Deadpool 2. (I’m including Deadpool 2 twice, because it also has my least favorite scene of the year, when Deadpool dies… then comes back to life and talks… then dies… then keeps talking, and you get the idea. Ugh.)
22. “I wanna f*ck this pizza.”
23. Literally everything Nicholas Hoult says in The Favourite. (Everyone freaked out over the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse script being online, but I, personally, demand the screenplay for Yorgos Lanthimos’ funniest film.)
24. The ending of Support the Girls, which hits like a (not-confetti) bomb.
25. Also the devastating final shot of Summer 1993… and the imaginative conclusion to Madeline’s Madeline… and Neil and Janet Armstrong’s quarantine reunion in First Man. It was good year for endings (probably because everyone has been waiting for this year to end since, like, March).
26. “This story is so f*cking dope.” It really is.
27. When Frank “Tony Lip” Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) orders a pizza, folds it in half, and shotguns the entire pie, because he’s Italian you see, in Green Book, a movie about racial inequality in the South. Liz Lemon would be proud.
28. Here’s what I wrote about Mandy at the time: “Nicolas Cage wields a crossbow named The Reaper; Nicolas Cage welds (yes, welds) a battle-ax; Nicolas Cage stares awestruck at a commercial for macaroni-and-cheese brand Cheddar Goblin; Nicolas Cage snorts a heaping load of cocaine; Nicolas Cage gets into a CHAINSAW FIGHT; Nicolas Cage takes shelter in a bathroom, swallows massive gulps from a bottle of vodka, and incoherently wails while pouring the liquid over his wounds; Nicolas Cage is in his tighty whities for the scene I just described.” Mandy is a good movie; you can watch it on Shudder.
29. The wedding in Crazy Rich Asians, which makes me cry every time.
30. And, of course, Hugh Grant performing “Rain on the Roof” in Padding2on.
If Grant doesn’t win Best Supporting Actor, the Oscars are canceled.
