Most Enjoyable & Most Disappointing of 2018

by Tony Medley

Here are my lists of the most enjoyable and least enjoyable/most disappointing/most overrated films I saw during 2018. Even though I cut back on the number of films I saw this year, the most enjoyable list is much longer than it has been in the past. Am I getting soft?

This is based only on films I saw and does not include those I didn’t see, like “Green Book” a film most people liked. I’m afraid I might have been in the minority because it’s another twisting of the truth by Hollywood, a film that has been thoroughly disparaged by the family of the lead character, Dr. Don Shirley, as “full of lies.”

The negative category includes some films that, while not the worst, were disappointing or overrated, or, while enjoyable, had huge flaws. The positive category is just how much I enjoyed them, not rated as I would rate an Oscar®-winner. But don’t look for any of these in nominated films because I rate them on how well they are made and how entertaining they are. The Academy apparently now rates them on how politically correct they are, and nothing else matters. The "Most Disappointing" are listed by rank of how much I loathed them with #1 the most loathsome.

Most enjoyable:

1. A Star is Born: They keep remaking this movie and, except for the Streisand debacle, they are all good. This might be the best.
2. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again: After the horrible casting of Meryl Streep and other non-singers in singing roles ruined the first one, this is a pure delight with wonderful music, good actors, singers, production numbers, and boffo cinematography.
3. Bohemian Rhapsody: Another musical that knocks it out of the park with a terrific lead performance by Rami Malek as Freddie Mercury.
4. Searching: This is a brilliantly devised thriller that is told in such a captivating way that it is almost impossible not to enjoy.
5. Always at the Carlyle: Loaded with celebrities and royalty, fascinating and funny, producer/writer/director Matthew Miele captures the magic of life in New York City, a fitting companion to his Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s. I hated to see it end.
6. Back to Burgundy: Highlighted by gorgeous cinematography shot on atmospheric location in real Burgundy vineyards, this is a compelling view of winemaking as it really exists in France. Adding to the verisimilitude is the presence of actor Jean-Marc Roulot who is, in fact, an experienced winemaker in Burgundy. In French, English, and Spanish.
7. Bad Times at the El Royale: Best thriller of the year.
8. Chappaquiddick: Ted Kennedy finally gets what he deserves, a truthful story about what a spoiled, selfish, pampered, irresponsible, self-centered heel he was, even though the Democrats hail him as their “Lion of the Senate.” Ha!
9. Adrift: Hollywood finally gets it right in telling a true story of an amazing survival at sea with a wonderful twist at the end, that many viewers completely missed.
10. The Children Act: British High Court Judge Emma Thompson acts with certitude in her courtroom when faced with important decisions often affecting life and death. But when confronted with her own dilemma, she lacks such certainty and runs away from facing up to the problem. It’s a brilliant dichotomy treated with sensitivity and perception.
11. Gringo: A throwback to the old days, a good screwball comedy from the ‘40s as things turn from bad to worse for everybody, and it’s a gas.
12. The Mule: If this is director/actor Clint Eastwood’s swan song, he’s going out on top.
13. A Private War: Rosamund Pike plays the hard-drinking, hard-smoking, hard-living war correspondent Marie Colvin to the hilt.
14. The Guilty: It’s hard to believe that watching a man speak on the phone for 84 minutes could be this entrancing. In Danish.
15. The Wife: With a title that turns out to be tellingly  tongue in cheek, what starts out as a relatively benign story of an elderly Jewish man, Joe Castleman (Jonathan Pryce), winning the 1992 Nobel Prize for literature and his relationship with his WASPish wife, Joan (Glenn Close) and children, morphs into something quite different.
16. Trust Machine: The Story of Blockchain: You’re not going to come out of this understanding bitcoin and the rest completely, but you will know a lot more coming out than you knew going in.
17. Colette: A biopic of the great French writer whose quality is more than a sum of its parts. For me, the best of it is the cinematography (Giles Nuttgens). The locales are so beautifully framed and shot many of the scenes could stand as magnificent oil paintings. The visual values of this movie blew me away.
18. Hal: An engrossing documentary about Hal Ashby, an individualistic, one-of-a-kind maverick who directed some of the more memorable films in the 1970s, highlighted by interviews with many of his actors like Jane Fonda, the Bridges brothers Jeff and Beau, Louis Gossett, Jr., and Roseanna Arquette, along with Judd Apatow, David O. Russell, and Alexander Payne.
19. Leave No Trace: Director Debra Granik’s last film was the surprise stunner Winter’s Bone (2010) that introduced the world to Jennifer Lawrence as a backwoods girl. Once again Granik is in the mountains. This time she introduces us to Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie in her debut, and all she does is give a performance that is the equal of the aforementioned Ms. Lawrence. Granik needs to make more than one film every 8 years.
20. Instant Family: I was not looking forward to this movie. It sounded saccharine and dull. How wrong that was!
21. Journey’s End: A brilliant exposition of what life was like in the trenches of WWI and the futility of even trying to hope. The battle scenes are excruciatingly realistic.
22. Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom: I have liked every one of these, and this is no exception.
23. Love, Gilda: Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about Gilda Radner, but not enough of Roseanne Roseannadanna.
24. Moynihan: An interesting documentary on a fascinating man.
25. Red Sparrow: Excellent performances by Jennifer Lawrence (of whom you see more than you’ve ever seen before) and Joel Edgerton. But, for me, Matthias Schoenaerts, who plays Lawrence’s manipulative uncle, gives the performance that stands out, and that’s saying a lot because Lawrence and Edgerton are near the top of the A List.
26. The Seagull: The play that was the game-changer for Doctor/writer Anton Chekhov translated by a terrific cast is as heavy as you might expect, but well worth it.
27. Sicario: Day of the Soldado: Three big changes from the first, a new director, new composer, and no female lead. Since Taylor Sheridan wrote both films, it’s clear that all the changes led to this much better, cohesive film.
28. Solo: A Star Wars Story: Even without the CGI, this is a good, involving movie on its own. The story could survive if it were set in our galaxy, on our little planet, in today’s time.
29. Tully: After what seems like an interesting, entertaining, well above average dramedy, a reveal in the last moments causes one to wonder if something metaphysical has been going on here.
30. Puzzle: I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant. All should get Oscar® nominations, but that is a pipe dream for a small movie like this.
31. Under the Tree: An involving film about revenge with the moral that it is often better to turn the other cheek and let things roll off your back, to mix aphorisms. In Icelandic.
32. Widows: Loaded with violence, mostly emotional, but physical, too. The acting is outstanding.

Most Disappointing:

1. BlacKkKlansman: Spike Lee adding a fictional ending to a story about a silly prank that a black Colorado policeman played on the KKK. As a screwball comedy it could work but Spike apparently wants to justify the irresponsible, even dangerous, actions that had no raison d’être without the fictional denouement if one were to think about it (I know, that’s asking a lot).
2. The Favourite: Another Hollywood director who tells a story about real people that is almost 100% fiction, although nobody would know it.
3. Girl in the Spider’s Web: A New Dragon Tattoo Story: Yikes! After terrific movies about the first three novels, this one is a horrible dud and one reason is that they completely changed the story.
4. The Old Man and the Gun: If this is the way superstar Robert Redford wants people to remember him, he deserves pity.
5. Robin Hood: They keep remaking this story and it keeps getting worse.
6. Shock and Awe: Nobody can accuse Rob Reiner’s politically biased film of being anything but unremittingly boring, unless one wants to point out how amateurish it is.
7. Blaze: An uninteresting film about a drunken, drug-addled hothead who wasn’t even successful singing in dumpy bars in front of people who were less than enthusiastic about his performances.
8. Book Club: The Ultimate Chick Flick with unremittingly banal slice of life dialogue.
9. Deadpool 2: Ryan Reynolds again plays the caustic titular superhero in an unforgivably violent sendup of the genre, but there is not one second in this codswallop that is even the slightest bit entertaining, after you got the joke.
10. Final Portrait: What’s more boring than watching paint drying? A movie showing people watching paint drying.
11. First Man: Long, depressing, and black, projecting very little feeling for the enormous accomplishment. Immensely disappointing are the promised scenes of the moon in IMAX. There are only a few shots of the moonscape and they were made at a quarry in Atlanta.
12. Front Runner: A true disappointment, an opportunity squandered, not unlike its subject, failed Democratic Presidential candidate Senator Gary Hart.
13. Life of the Party: The key to deciding whether or not to attend a Melissa McCarthy movie is to determine if she or her husband, Ben Falcone, have anything to do with writing or directing, like Tammy (2014) and The Boss (2016), and this thing. If they do, stay away. Their work strains to barely achieve shallowness.
14. Mile 22: Director Peter Berg seems to think that the best way to create tension is to have lots of extreme close ups and rapid fire dialogue. Fast dialogue works with Shakespeare because his lines are astute and clever. Believe me when I say that screenwriter Lea Carpenter is no Bard of Avon. The fast dialogue and extreme close-ups are nothing but annoying.
15. Mission Impossible: Fallout: Dear Tom Cruise, Please stop making action movies like this and Jack Reacher. Best regards, Tony.
16. Ready Player One: At  my screening of the deplorable The Post last year Stephen Spielberg said he took timeout from making this because he thought it was good for the country for him to make The Post (still dealing with your Messiah Complex, eh, Stephen?). The bigger mistake than making The Post, which was dreadful, was going back to complete this turkey.
17. Siberia: Where the makers of this movie should be sent.
18. The Sisters Brothers: With a title that is too cute by half, the two hour movie is too long by quadruple.
19. The Spy Who Dumped Me: Kate McKinnon in the worst performance of the year. Maybe we shouldn’t blame poor Kate alone. Lucille Ball couldn't have done much with this material, but she probably would have been wise enough not to try it.
20. TAG: Director Jeff Tomsic & Co. have drastically changed a sweet true story about 10 high school buddies who continue to keep in touch 30 years after graduating by devoting one month a year playing the game of tag that they spent their time in high school playing, by adding crude Hollywood touches that render the movie wasteful drivel.
21. The Young Karl Marx: If this doesn’t put you to sleep, nothing will.