Well, it’s been nearly a month now and I feel like I’ve seen as many 2018 movies as I’m going to, so I might as well get started on this. And to start things off on a positive note… Boy, 2018 sucked, didn’t it?
Seriously, I know at this point it’s more a cliche to say it than anything else, especially since I said the exact same thing for the last two years as well, but that doesn’t stop it from feeling true. This year was a rough one. Even ignoring the slow-motion trainwreck that is the UK’s Brexit negotiations and Trump just being Trump, I’ve personally been dealing with some pretty hefty personal anxiety-related issues, (which hit especially bad towards the tail end of the year), a lot of which I still haven’t fully shaken.
Still, it’s not been all bad. I managed to get my Masters Degree, finally got a decent writing schedule together, finished the first draft of a book (even if editing it is still currently going nowhere) and even started up my own author’s website. I mean, sure, currently it’s a website that’s lucky if it gets more than single digit views a week, but hey, gotta start somewhere, right? I also watched a lot of movies in 2018. Like, a lot. 88, to be precise, in case you didn’t notice the title. Hence why we’re all here.
Yup. All that teeming attentive online audience…
See, in case you’re new to this, when it comes to the typical end-of-year ‘Best Movies’ list, I like to do something a little different from the norm. Specifically, rather than just pick a handful of best and worst movies, I instead prefer to rank every movie I saw this year and write up some thoughts on each and every one of them. There are a multitude of reasons for this. It lets me talk about some of the ‘middle-of-the-pack’ movies that I want to comment on, it lets me highlight some obscure films that other people might be interested, it gives me something different to do than just a generic ‘Top’ list, whatever the reason it’s just something I enjoy doing.
And boy, this year was an… interesting one for films, I’d say?
Honestly, I’m not entirely sure how I’d rank it quality wise. My top picks for the year didn’t really initially excite me as much my top picks for last year, admittedly, but I also saw significantly less in the way of bad films than in the last couple of years. Point in fact, I’m still uncertain if my worst movie of this year would make my bottom ten worst of last year (although it’s still pretty dire). But whether that’s actually because there have been less bad movies or because I’ve just grown better at avoiding them, I can’t tell. Once again, it was another banner year for the superhero genre (don’t worry, I’m sure superhero fatigue will set in aaaaaany second now) and I found plenty of interesting animated movies to enjoy, both domestic and foreign. Horror movies made another great showing and there were a surprisingly large number of high profile-ish movies with hefty racial themes that I enjoyed as well. And one not so much.
I’m not going to name names here, but let’s just say it rhymes with ‘Breen Brook’.
Still, I’m not here to make vagueish and inaccurate generalizations about the year’s trends in movies, I’m here to talk about the movies I saw. And I will say I’ve definitely got a nice mix of movies in here. Some mainstream, some obscure, a lot in the way of animation and horror (as usual), a handful of foreign movies here and there, some blockbusters, some action, admittedly not much drama (not really my thing) but enough to make for an interesting mix. I’ll admit, I did end up skipping a lot of the big popular dramas, since they’re rarely my thing, so there might be a fair few high profile movies left off the list entirely. For example, I never watched A Star is Born or Roma and don’t really intend to because they’re not really my thing. On a more positive note, there’s probably not going to be as much in the way of controversial rankings compared to last year (where I came out thoroughly ‘eh’ on the subject of Dunkirk, Blade Runner 2049 and Logan), but it wouldn’t be a Ruk list without some controversial opinions here and there. (#45 in particular should get some interesting reactions.)
Still, as mentioned, I saw 88 movies this year. And that’s quite a lot. Which means I should probably get on with this, shouldn’t I? And as much of a forum cliche as it is to use this gif, there’s no better way to start this off than by saying….
P.S. Because release dates and festivals are kind of a screwy thing, there are a number of movies that, while technically counting as 2018 films, I actually saw in 2017 and put them on last year’s list to match. So the following are not going to be making an appearance. But, for fun, here’s where I probably would’ve ranked them had they made this year’s list.
- Night is Short, Walk on Girl– 1st in last year’s list, 1st in this year’s.
- The Death of Stalin– 5th in last year’s list, 3rd in this year’s.
- Paddington 2– 14th in last year’s list (in hindsight I regret not ranking it higher), 10th in this year’s.
- MFKZ (also known as Mutafukaz)- 19th in last year’s list, 15th in this year’s.
- Big Fish & Begonia– 28th in last year’s list, 26th in this year’s.
- Fireworks– 55th in last year’s list, 52nd in this year’s
- You Were Never Really Here– 72nd in last year’s list, 81st in this year’s. (Sorry, really wasn’t my thing.)
Anyway, with that out of the way, on with the list! Get started here>>>
Ineffectual Comic Relief 