Andrew Swafford: Top Films of 2018
#10: (Tie) Nanette
By Hannah Gadsby, Jon Olb, and Madeleine Parry
Assassination Nation
By Sam Levinson
In this spot are two movies grappling with the idea of “cancel culture” in completely different ways. In Nanette, comedian Hannah Gadsby turns her stand-up set into a TED Talk / sermon / treatise on the dangerous power of comedy to sweep atrocity under the rug. In doing so, she demands we reckon with popular narratives of so-called great men who have done terrible things, making a strong case for cancelling Picasso. Assassination Nation takes this much-needed battle for cultural cleansing to the 
street: with smartphones surreptitiously collecting all of our most mundane, intimate, and shameful moments, who will be left standing when everyone’s exposed? To some, Nanette may feel sanctimonious; to others, Assassination Nation may feel reactionary. I haven’t been able to shake the potent questions posed by either one all year.
Nanette is on Netflix. Watch the trailer here.
Assassination Nation is available to rent on Amazon. Watch the trailer here.
#9: Leave No Trace
By Debra Granik
Sensitively told and confidently constructed, Leave No Trace is the story of a survivalist’s daughter, raised far from civilization in the quiet, green bounty of a national park by her troubled but nurturing father–until authorities intervene and the family struggles to adapt to modernity. The film is given a strong emotional core thanks to the acting talents of Ben Foster and newcomer Thomasin McKenzie, who communicate a complex bond with few words–but it is elevated to greatness by director Debra Granik, who modulates the film’s many immersive soundscapes and landscapes to suggest a deep well of emotion often unexpressed by her characters.
Leave No Trace is available to rent on Amazon. Watch the trailer here.
#8: Zama
By Lucrecia Martel
Critics everywhere are raving about how Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite explodes the costume drama with absurd farce, but for my money, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama is still the movie to beat. Following the hopeless journey of a Spanish colonizer in Latin America who longs to be sent back to his homeland, Zama makes black comedy (and sometimes surrealism) out of the seemingly endless string of roadblocks keeping him stranded. But Zama can’t be done justice with mere plot summary, as Lucrecia Martel is one of contemporary cinema’s great masters of sensory experience: the sounds and textures here are evocative and capable of hypnotizing the viewer into a state of total absorption.
I wrote in-depth about this one for Arts Knoxville ahead of its local premiere, if you’re interested in reading more. Zama is available to rent on Amazon–and free on Amazon Prime. Watch the trailer here.
#7: The Night is Short, Walk on Girl
By Masaaki Yuasa
Speaking of movies that can’t be done justice with plot summary…The Night is Short, Walk On Girl defies any attempt at plot summary, using a young woman’s bar crawl as a frame story for a sprawling, episodic odyssey of ridiculous, cosmic proportions. Japanese animator Masaaki Yuasa has made a statement piece here, creating a work of hand-drawn animation like no other. All is in flux in Yuasa’s nocturnal, candy colored world of expressive, constantly morphing designs. This film got a very small stateside release in 2018, but fans of animation should prioritize checking out the Blu-ray release next year–it is sure to make you laugh, get your adrenaline pumping, and make your jaw drop with its dazzling art style.
The Night is Short, Walk on Girl is currently unavailable to stream. It will be distributed on home video in January. Watch the trailer here.
#6: (Tie) The Grand Bizarre
By Jodie Mack
The Green Fog
By Guy Maddin, Galen Johnson, and Evan Johnson
Two playful avant-garde features that compile disparate pieces of video footage with fascinating results. In the globetrotting The Grand Bizarre, Jodie Mack animates everyday household objects that are key to cultural exchange: textiles, books, clothing, etc. All set to a wonky electronic soundtrack that at one point samples the Skype ringtone, The Grand Bizarre is a galaxy-brain movie about the internet of things. The Green Fog, on the other hand, is far more high-concept: a one-hour reconstruction of Vertigo using footage from other 
movies, TV-shows, and other cultural ephemera (an N*Sync music video, for example). Equally hilarious and strangely uncanny, The Green Fog makes the recurring motifs of cinema feel at times like building blocks, and at other times like haunting spirits.
Due to a dearth of distribution for avant-garde cinema, The Grand Bizarre and The Green Fog are currently unavailable on streaming services and home video. Watch the trailer for The Green Fog here. (There’s not even a trailer for The Grand Bizarre, sadly.)
#5: Minding the Gap
By Bing Liu
24-year-old director Bing Liu spent his adolescence filming his friends skateboard; Minding the Gap is the culmination of that personal project. Far from the skateboarding doc he initially set out to make, Minding the Gap is an accidental study in masculinity and the ways in which toxic behavior cycles through generations. In the skateboarding sequences, Bing Liu’s camera soars over the crumbling infrastructure of a city increasingly affected by industrial collapse, and in the interview sessions (shot over several years), the real-life bonds between childhood friends bring about incidental wisdom and painful revelations. Minding the Gap is powerful, big-hearted, and essential.
Minding the Gap is on Hulu. Watch the trailer here.
#4: Eighth Grade
By Bo Burnham
At once universally relatable and inextricably linked to our current technological moment, Eighth Grade chronicles the final weeks of middle-school for Kayla, who copes with her social-anxiety by making self-help vlogs for an audience of basically no one–her like-and-um-filled monologues to her MacBook Air don’t sound fundamentally different from her prayers. Written and directed by former teen YouTube sensation Bo Burnham (and brought to life by the absolutely incredible acting talent of Elsie Fisher), Eighth Grade captures the way in which the internet fulfills the emotional needs of young people (successfully and otherwise) with reverence, humor, and near-weaponized awkwardness.
I wrote in-depth about this one for Cinematary, if you’re interested in reading more. Eighth Grade is available to rent on Amazon. Watch the trailer here.
#3: Cam
By Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei
Those who have read much of my Arts Knoxville writing should know that I adore horror films, and to me, Cam is the best horror film of the year. The film juxtaposes the pink, neon dream-space of a camgirl’s personal studio with the drab mundanity of the world outside–where she is increasingly stranded as her online persona becomes hijacked. Written by a former camgirl, there seems to be a critical consensus that this is a “sex positive” or “pro-sex-work” look at pornography, but I am unconvinced that Cam’s messaging is so black-and-white. Rather than moralizing about pornography specifically, I find the film to be a nerve-rattlingly scary look at online spaces, with all their freedom, toxicity, and incomprehensibility. Without giving anything away, I think it’s worth mentioning that the film’s fictional horror-threat ended up being invented for real while Cam was in post-production. (Spoilers in both links–beware!)
Cam is on Netflix. Watch the trailer here.
#2: Support the Girls
By Andrew Bujalski
Support the Girls has been called “The Great American Breastaurant Movie,” and with good reason. It would have been easy to make a film about women working at a Hooters-type restaurant into a harsh social drama about the objectification / commodification of women’s bodies–but Support the Girls, miraculously, somehow manages to be a loving, feel-good comedy about the absurd normalcy of late capitalism. No film this year has quite matched Support the Girls in its lightness of touch; filmmaker Andrew Bujalski and his fantastic cast (which includes Regina Hall, Haley Lu Richardson, and the rapper Junglepussy) have managed to make each scene feel breezy and delightful, all the while illuminating subtle truths about a labor market that is driving all of us a little bit insane.
Support the Girls is available to rent on Amazon. Watch the trailer here.
#1: First Reformed
By Paul Schrader
No film captured 2018’s particular feeling of hopelessness quite like First Reformed. Ethan Hawke plays the pastor of a small historical parish operating under the shadow of a corporately funded megachurch. Early in the film, he undergoes a political awakening; his issue is climate change, but you could easily swap it out with any other. How does one respond to deep conviction about something we are essentially powerless to change? Director Paul Schrader, an early scholar of what many now call “slow cinema,” combines classic formal techniques (from the likes of Bergman, Dreyer, and Bresson) with digital cinematography and contemporary concerns in order to create something that feels both timeless and urgent in our present moment.
In the words of First Reformed’s Reverend Toller: “People have, throughout history, woken up in the dead of night confronted by blackness…Man’s great achievements have brought him to the place where life as we know it may cease in the foreseeable future–yes, that’s new. But the blackness? That’s not.”
First Reformed is available on Kanopy, a streaming service that is free for those who hold a public library card. It’s also available to rent on Amazon and free on Amazon Prime. Watch the trailer here.
Andrew Swafford’s Honorable Mentions for 2018 (in alphabetical order)
Anna and the Apocalypse by John McPhail – a high-energy, crowd-pleasing Zombie-Christmas-Musical (!) inspired by Shaun of the Dead and High School Musical that was criminally under-distributed this holiday season.
Annihilation by Alex Garland – A heady sci-fi blockbuster packed with unique prismatic images that I can’t get out of my head, as well as one of the most thrillingly strange endings of the year.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs by Joel and Ethan Coen – An anthology of short-form riffs on Western tropes buoyed by the Coens’ ear for witty dialogue and interwoven by the common thread of looming death.
Burning by Lee Chang-dong – A patient and perplexing South Korean mystery / romance (?) about three people of different social classes who can’t quite figure each other out. I’m still processing this one.
Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse by Peter Ramsey, Robert Persichetti Jr., and Rodney Rothman – The first CGI-animated studio film to ever feel truly radical in its style. I thought about tie-ing this with The Night is Short, Walk on Girl (they’re both beautifully bonkers), but decided I had already cheated too much.
Reid Ramsey: Top Films of 2018
By Lee Chang-dong
In Burning, visions of a dancer backlit by a sunset calmly lull the viewer into a trance only later to be harshly brought back to reality. A seemingly simple love triangle constantly folds in on itself underneath the hazy charm of Ben (Steven Yeun). Anchored in the necessarily elusive lead performance by Ah-in Yoo, Burning becomes more twisted and dangerous with every scene. When the lingering charm finally burns down, all that remains is the ashes of these characters’ lives.
Burning is currently unavailable to stream. It will be distributed on home video in March. Watch the trailer here.
#9: (Tie) The House That Jack Built
By Lars von Trier
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
By Joel and Ethan Coen
What happens when veteran filmmakers direct anthology projects related to mortality, comedy, tragedy, and legacy? This pairing of films is what happens. Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built is an ambitious and brutal portrait of a serial killer (Matt Dillon) who tells his life story by vignettes of his favorite murders; the Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is a Western anthology, highlighting the filmmakers’ 
best and worst sensibilities, yet culminating in an enjoyable and provocative experience. Both films are uneven and have had their fair share of distribution trouble. Jack and Buster, however, each masterfully stick their landings with different, haunting visions of hell that rank among the most memorable movie moments of the year.
The House That Jack Built is available to rent on Amazon. Watch the trailer here.
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs is on Netflix. Watch the trailer here.
#8: Leave No Trace
By Debra Granik
Leave No Trace is all about escape and survival. While the motivation for Will (Ben Foster) and his daughter Tom’s (Thomasin McKenzie) escape often shifts as the characters grow, the need to escape remains the same. Will, reeling with PTSD from the Iraq War, and Tom live off-the-grid deep within a Portland National Park. They’ve carved a transient, yet healthy life for themselves in the woods, but it’s all undone when Tom is discovered and the two are forced to reintegrate into the world. Debra Granik’s film is full of heartache and good people coming to tough realizations. In the end, it’s a story of mutual survival and coming to terms with what is truly best for each of them.
Leave No Trace is available to rent on Amazon. Watch the trailer here.
#7: (Tie) Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
By Ol Parker
A Star Is Born
By Bradley Cooper
In 2018, we were lucky to receive two of the best musicals of recent memory. They each attempt a unique catharsis for viewers. Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is a beacon of joy during an ever-darkening year. The sequel to the 2008 smash-hit, surpasses its predecessor by fully believing in the ability for spontaneous bursts of music to fill a room with jubilation. The constant joy of Mamma Mia!, meets its match in Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut A Star Is Born, which engages in 
the opposite musical pursuit. Cooper wants to make us cry; he succeeds. The two movies use music and nostalgia to show love and heartache, joy and sorrow, and to make us experience emotion in a world that devalues feeling.
Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again is available to rent on Amazon. Watch the trailer here.
A Star is Born is still playing in some theaters, and will be released on home video in February. Watch the trailer here.
#6: The Rider
By Chloé Zhao
What do you do when you have one purpose in life that is suddenly taken away from you forever? That question is at the heart of The Rider, the second feature film from director Chloé Zhao. When Brady (played by the character’s real-life inspiration, Brady Jandreau) first comes into frame, he is bruised and covered in bandages and stitches. He is recovering from a traumatic rodeo injury and doctors have told him his career is over. This isn’t one of those comeback stories, though; his career really is over. The Rider is all about finding a reason to live following a loss of hope. The artistry of Zhao’s film, however, comes mostly in her experiment. She casts Jandreau, who had this same experience in his own life, and his father and sister. The family embodies a naturalness and cohesion in the midst of chaos that cannot be found in more manufactured stories. The Rider is a thoughtful story of hope shot with more grace than any other film this year.
The Rider is available to rent on Vudu. It’s also free to stream for those with a Starz subscription. Watch the trailer here.
#5: Support the Girls
By Andrew Bujalski
In many ways, 2018 was a year for movies about working. The Rider, BlacKkKlansman, Western, and, heck, even Mission: Impossible Fallout are all about the desire for work and especially dignified work. Perhaps one of the all time great films about work, though, comes from indie director Andrew Bujalski in the form of Support the Girls. Lisa (Regina Hall), the manager of a local Hooters-esque sports bar and grill, tries to balance her employees, her employer, her regulars, and even her own family to give them the best of herself. She works harder than anyone around her and is always trying to pick others up and, as one employee says, be generous to everyone. Perhaps one of the strongest criticisms that someone could have of Support the Girls is that it verges on hagiography for Lisa. Bujalski, though, undercuts every moment with humor, anger, and that intangible ability possessed by local business managers to just keep going.
Support the Girls is available to rent on Amazon. Watch the trailer here.
#4: Private Life
By Tamara Jenkins
Tamara Jenkins’ Private Life is all about the images that stick with you long afterwards: the sterile fertility clinic waiting room; the overstuffed, lived-in New York City apartment; an exhausted, yet hopeful couple occupying a restaurant table. This exhausted couple are trying to have a baby any way they can. And trying. And trying. Private Life is a film filled with images that speak louder than the characters. It’s one of the most sure-footed directorial efforts of the year; Jenkins always knows exactly where to place the camera. In addition to its lasting images, Private Life is further supported by the strength of the performances. With Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn, the movie soars.
Private Life is on Netflix. Watch the trailer here.
#3: Mission: Impossible – Fallout
By Christopher McQuarrie
Speaking of lasting images from the year in movies, Tom Cruise rope-climbing to the bottom of a flying helicopter, only to disarm the pilots, take over, and chase another helicopter to the edge of the massive IMAX screen is the most exhilarating sequence of the year. Tom Cruise returns as IMF agent Ethan Hunt for yet another mission with his oft-disavowed team in Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Director Christopher McQuarrie fills every frame with legendary action, but it is Tom Cruise’s enduring smile and his willingness to be part of the team that makes this movie so special.
I wrote about in-depth about this one for Think Christian, if you’re interested in reading more. Mission: Impossible – Fallout is available for rent on Amazon. But please, listen to Tom Cruise and turn off your motion smoothing. Watch the trailer here.
#2: Paddington 2
By Paul King
The unlikely best-reviewed movie of all time, Paddington 2 took critics by storm at the beginning of 2018. Anyone who has seen the movie can explain, though, that this small bear and his many hijinx are not simply shooting for easy laughs. A literal pop-up book wherein the filmmakers forge a 3D work from simple 2D material, Paddington 2 is also about so much more than its explosive imagination. Immigration is an issue on the mind of the filmmakers as much as anything else. 2018 is as good a time as ever to Free Paddington.
Paddington 2 is free to stream for those with an HBO subscription. Watch the trailer here.
#1: First Reformed
By Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader’s First Reformed is brimming with theological and philosophical statements that could be brushed off in a movie created by a less deft filmmaker. Yet in Schrader’s hands, the quiet story of a Reformed priest’s crisis of faith has the fire of Schrader’s earlier work Taxi Driver and the stillness of those transcendental auteurs Schrader admires. The crisis that Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke) undergoes is less about his belief in God and more about the hopelessness he sees when looking at the church. As Eli Smith said on Letterboxd, First Reformed is, “birthed out of that growing movement of angry people who believe the church is supposed to be a force for justice.”
First Reformed is a masterpiece not for how it answers questions, but for how it asks the questions no one wants to. “Will God forgive us?” is Rev. Toller’s common refrain. He isn’t questioning God’s grace; he is, instead, questioning why he would love a God who offers such grace to unworthy people.
First Reformed is available on Kanopy, a streaming service that is free for those who hold a public library card. It’s also available to rent on Amazon and free on Amazon Prime. Watch the trailer here.
Reid Ramsey’s Honorable Mentions for 2018 (in alphabetical order)
BlacKkKlansman by Spike Lee – A black police officer goes undercover with the KKK in 1970s America, as told by one of the greatest living directors.
The Commuter by Jaume Collet-Serra – A 21st Century Speed features Liam Neeson unwittingly caught up in a criminal plot. Electric guitars will, in fact, be smashed.
Eighth Grade by Bo Burnham- A thirteen-year-old girl faces the horrors of being thirteen.
Instant Family by Sean Anders – Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne star as a couple who accidentally adopt three foster children. Laughter, tears, and heartache ensue.
Minding the Gap by Bing Liu – The best documentary of the year—I chose to leave documentaries off my list—and a story of confrontation and empathy disguised as a skateboarding movie.
Photos courtesy of:
Netflix (Nanette, Cam, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Private Life)
Neon (Assassination Nation)
Bleecker Street (Leave No Trace)
Strand Releasing (Zama)
GKIDS (The Night is Short, Walk on Girl)
Jodie Mack (The Grand Bizarre)
Balcony Releasing (The Green Fog)
A24 (Eighth Grade, First Reformed)
Magnolia Pictures (Support the Girls)
CGV Arthouse (Burning)
IFC Films (The House That Jack Built)
Universal Pictures (Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again)
Warner Bros. Pictures (A Star is Born, Paddington 2)
Sony Pictures Classics (The Rider)
Paramount Pictures (Mission: Impossible – Fallout)
StudioCanal (Paddington 2)
