Best of 2018: Our 10 favourite films of the year

With all the talk of “peak TV” this year, 2018 was another incredible year at the movies, offering up so many great releases that this list could have easily swelled to a Top 25 or Top 30 of the year. While Netflix and other streaming sites continue to dominate the pop culture conversation, many of the titles on our list really deserve to be seen on a big screen if possible, or at least in a distraction-free way at home.

While the dreaded second screen experience may work for a number of exposition-heavy shows that you can simply half watch on the couch while endlessly scrolling on your phone, part of the appeal of movies is that they end after a certain amount of time, and many of these releases, from the awe-inspiring shots in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma to the trippy psychedelic fever dream of Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy, truly require your undivided attention for a couple of hours for them to work their magic.

Most of the below titles are either in theatres or available on VOD now, which easily lets you catch up over the holiday break. How did we do with our list? Be sure to head over to our Facebook page and let us know your favourite films of the year!

10. A Star Is Born
For better or worse, A Star Is Born is old-school Hollywood filmmaking of the sort that we rarely see any longer. There is nothing cloying or ironic about this rags-to-riches tale — it’s earnest, overwrought, and entirely predictable, but features standout performances from Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, while serving as a serious calling card for Cooper’s future work as a director. While the film goes south towards its second half, the first 60-minutes of this movie are a marvel, culminating in the goosebump-inducing performance of “Shallow” that somehow managed to exceed the months of GIF-able excitement leading up to the film’s release. Read our full review here.

9. Thunder Road
Thunder Road was one of the best surprises of the year, a small film that seemed to come out of nowhere and receive rapturous reviews from those that caught it on the festival circuit. Featuring a stunning performance from star Jim Cummings (who also wrote and directed the film), Thunder Road manages a tricky tone, falling somewhere between an awkward Larry David-esque comedy and a serious character study of an unhinged small-town cop. Think of it as Michael Douglas’ character in Falling Down finding himself caught up in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Featuring the best opening scene in recent memory, Thunder Road is a total gem of a movie, and makes for one of the most singular viewing experiences of the year. Check out our full review here.

8. Blindspotting
Blindspotting has a number of parallels with the more popular Sorry To Bother You — both films deal with race and income disparity in Oakland, California, while expanding out from that basis in very different ways. While Boots Riley took Sorry To Bother You in a fantastical, absurdist direction, Blindspotting director Carlos López Estrada keeps things grounded in the hard reality of its characters, believably played by stars and co-writers Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal, in two of the most underrated performances of the year. This is angry, visceral filmmaking at its finest, and feels like a Spike Lee joint from his heyday. With a distinct visual style, and featuring a risky ending that could have easily gone off the deep end, Blindspotting is a thrilling and often hilarious movie that sadly flew under the radar for many. 

7. Eighth Grade
Making his directorial debut, comedian Bo Burnham expertly channels the excitement and terror of middle-school via the supremely-awkward Kayla (Elsie Fisher), a shy 13-year-old girl who spends her free time posting YouTube videos that almost nobody watches. With Burnham’s pitch perfect script and direction, and Fisher’s remarkable performance, Eighth Grade manages to transport you back to that tricky time in early adolescence where the encroaching teenage world is equally exciting and utterly terrifying (the pool scene in this movie could easily rate as the finest horror moment of 2018).

6. Roma
Regardless of where you see this movie (the debate about the theatrical experience vs. Netflix has been raging for months now), Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma is a movie that deserves your utmost attention — this is not something to watch while you scroll through your Instagram feed. Beautifully shot in striking black and white, this exploration of the life of a Mexican maid (Yalitza Aparicio) and the family she works for is a visual feast, the sort of large-scale filmmaking that applies more to the Golden Age of Hollywood than a subtitled movie about the life of a Mexican household and their hired help. Apart from the jaw-dropping camera work, Roma is a film about class and family, filled with heart-wrenching moments and a lead performance that will stick with you long after the film is done (whether you watched it in 70mm at an independent cinema or from the comfort of your couch).

5. Can You Ever Forgive Me?
Melissa McCarthy stars as Lee Israel in this understated biography, the true story of a down on her luck New York writer who begins fabricating fake letters from literary greats in order to pay her bills. McCarthy is a true revelation here, playing the brilliant but depressed Israel in an quietly intense way, while still injecting her with enough wit and charm that we end up rooting for her to keep pulling the wool over the NYC literary establishment’s eyes. Like an issue of The New Yorker come to life, this is a film that will appeal to the sort of crowd that appreciates Dorothy Parker jokes, but Can You Ever Forgive Me? deserves a much larger audience than that small pool of English majors. McCarthy is touching and biting as Israel, a desperate woman using her only talents to try and make a living, while Richard E. Grant eats up every moment of screen time as her (drinking) partner in crime, making for the best on-screen duo of the year.