The Best Movies of 2018

The Top 10 movies of the year have a nightmarish twist.

A witches coven screeching violently as viscera pours out of every orifice. A man literally hammering child-abductors on silent CCTV footage. Nicolas Cage scream-chugging vodka in his underwear.

The best movies of 2018 were nightmares brought to life, including those that didn’t quite make my personal Top 10, like A Quiet Place, Climax, Hereditary, Halloween and Annihilation, as well as the year’s worst movie, The Happytime Murders (it haunts me still). Even the latest Avengers doubled as primal scream therapy for the anguished audience. ("I don’t feel so good," said Peter Parker. Same.)

So, what does that say about 2018? Nothing positive. Maybe it says we can’t use cinema as an escape anymore; that real-life horrors, anxieties and atrocities have invaded populist entertainment. Get Out, the best film of 2017, set the trend, and this year, everyone followed suit. Yes, Marvel too.

Thankfully, a lot of these projects—angry, despairing, darkly comic and/or surreal—were pretty bloody great. And sure, more than a few were actually dreamlike, like the time capsules Roma and Cold War, or, in the case of at least one perfect Mission: Impossible sequel, a dream come true. But if these films, from all over the world, say anything collectively, it’s this: help.

Runners Up (In Alphabetical Order):

American Animals, Annihilation, Avengers: Infinity War, BlacKkKlansman, Black Panther, Boy Erased, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Climax, Creed 2, First Man, Halloween, Hereditary, Isle of Dogs, Juliet Naked, The Merger, A Quiet Place, A Star Is Born, Widows.

Now, here's a blanket coarse language and violence warning for the following clips, because, well, did you read that whole preamble about all films being nightmares now?

10. Blockers

Talk about nightmares: the private messages of three teenage girls are intercepted by their meddling parents, who discover their daughters have made a pact to lose their virginity on prom night. The premise and, yes, even title of Blockers seemed hopelessly regressive in 2018, yet Kay Cannon’s directorial debut turned out to be surprisingly hilarious, sweet and subversively feminist. It also had a scene where John Cena buttchugged a beer and then sprayed it into Ike Barinholtz’s face. I’m calling it the tenth finest motion picture of 2018. Read the full review.

9. Roma/Cold War

Twist! This Top 10 was a Top 11 all along. I’m not just squeezing Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma and Pawel Pawlikowski’s Cold War into the same slot because they’re both black-and-white / not in the English language (or because, fun fact, Pawlikowski and Cuarón are buddies). Rather, because they’re semi-sorta-kinda-autobiographical features that help us know their filmmakers more. Cuarón’s Roma is a grand technical achievement that honours his housekeeper and her strength amid the turmoil of Mexico City in the ‘70s, while Pawlikowski’s sexy, elliptical Cold War is dedicated to his folks, and centers on star-crossed lovers defecting from Communist Poland in the 1950s. Read the full review of Roma.

Both movies act as Rosetta Stones for the filmmakers’ individual filmographies. Seeing them helps you understand their makers, and their earlier efforts. Cold War opens Boxing Day, except in W.A., where it plays the Perth Festival in January.

8. Sorry to Bother You

Boots Riley’s unapologetic Sorry to Bother You stars Lakeith Stanfield as a black telemarketer who discovers he’s more successful when he adopts a white voice (David Cross with the assist). This brutal satire demolishes its targets, wickedly, and has 2018’s most unexpected ending. When the credits rolled, I had to collect my jettisoned jaw from under the seats in front of me. Read the full review.

7. Upgrade

It was a decent year for Aussie cinema. However, the best local productions of the year—Upgrade and The Merger—were overlooked by the AACTA Awards. At least they’re getting recognised where it counts: here! Leigh Whannell’s inventive and audacious Upgrade is a bit like Robocop meets Venom, with a paralysed man given back the ability to walk thanks to a computer chip. The chip comes with a voice—like a personal Siri—that convinces the dude to hand over the controls of his body and let it use him as a weapon to seek vengeance. He does and it does and I squealed in delight the whole damn time. Read the full review.

6. Mission: Impossible—Fallout

Unreal in every sense of the word. I’ve watched Mission: Impossible—Fallout twice, pored over the 'making of' footage and listened to hours of director Christopher McQuarrie explaining the stunts. I still don’t know how he pulled off the feats here. Watching Tom Cruise surrender his body for our entertainment became 2018’s most dizzying, morbidly entertaining and electrifying experience. Fallout is a triumph of the human spirit (and moustache maintenance). Read the full review.

5. You Were Never Really Here

In 2019, we’ll see Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker, but in 2018, we got to see him as Joe, the haunted saviour of child abductees with a very particular set of skills: killing kidnappers with a hammer. Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here was much more than an 'artsy fartsy Taken'. It was a cracking thriller with potent and long-lasting emotional resonance, anchored by Phoenix’s performance and some stunning cinematography. Maybe the best part: it was only 90 minutes long! Read the full review.

4. The Favourite

Yorgos Lanthimos’ oddball rom-com The Lobster was my number one film of 2015. In 2017, his thriller The Killing of a Sacred Deer came in fourth. His latest, The Favourite, lands in the same spot this year. Clearly, I’ve made a habit of recommending his movies. And yet, for the first time ever, I can endorse The Favourite without having to add a flashing neon warning sign saying 'it’s not for everybody'. Though this tale of two cousins (Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz) jockeying for power in the court of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) is a singularly strange, alien and deliciously cruel comedy, it’s also… a crowdpleaser? Now that is new. (The Favourite opens in Australia this Boxing Day.) Read the full review.

3. Eighth Grade

Eighth Grade may not look like it fits the 'nightmarish' theme of 2018, but this brilliant American comedy proved to be the most triggering experience of the year. It follows an awkward 13-year-old girl (Elsie Fisher) in the final week of Year 8 as she embarks on a series of highly upsetting social encounters, from the unforgiving glare of school award ceremonies and pool parties, to the private confines of an older boy’s car. Writer-director Bo Burnham makes an astounding, empathetic debut. Seriously though: the cringe is real. Eighth Grade arrives in Australian cinemas 3 Jan 2019. Read the full review.

2. Suspiria

The reverberations of the #MeToo movement could be felt in 2018. And on cinema screens, they were most felt in... Luca Guadagnino’s tactile remake of Dario Argento’s gaudy slasher flick Suspiria? Believe it. An American girl (Dakota Johnson) is summoned to a dance company in Berlin, which, we learn immediately, is a witches coven barely hiding their truth. In his reinvention, Guadagnino reclaims the phrase "witches" and redefines them as a community of self-protecting women. He also delivers plenty of blood and gore, because hell yeah. As Tilda Swinton, in one of her three extremely diverse roles screeches at the end, "It’s not vanity! It’s art!" Suspiria isn’t just a brilliant and defining horror classic anymore. It’s two. Read the full review.

1. Mandy

"Oh Mandy, you came and you blew us away, and you starred Nico-las Cage, oh Mandy." Okay, there’s no way to fuse Panos Cosmatos’ wild and magical Mandy with the Barry Manilow torch song of the same name. And that’s the only issue I have with this one-of-a-kind masterpiece. Cage stars as a lumberjack whose ethereal girlfriend (Andrea Riseborough) is kidnapped by a hippie cult and demon bikers from hell, leaving him with only one choice: forge an axe and set out to kill their "crazy evil". So, it’s not for everyone, but the beautiful, hallucinatory Mandy is both sensitive and sense-shattering. It had to be seen to be believed. I saw it, and I only barely believed it. Read the full review.

Share your faves below.

Header Image: Universal Pictures / 20th Century Fox / Madman Entertainment