The Second Entry Concerning the Best Films of 2018 - Runners Up

Welcome back consistently confused moviegoer!

We're getting closer to where I'll inform you which films are the finest so you don't have to discern for yourself because thinking is hard and you deserve a break. So let's take a look at the runners up of 2018. These are the upstanding films worthy of a place on any critic's TOP-TEN list. But ten is a finite number and I just loved ten other films than I liked a bit more than these. I've put this list in alphabetical order so as not to play favorites.

"A Quiet Place" is a quiet masterpiece. There's no other way of saying it. The pervasive silence pulls this terrible sense of dread together. It's one of the most brilliant horror films of late. It's tense throughout with a wonderfully concealed villain.

"BlacKkKlansman" didn't quite make my top ten list, but it's every bit as relevant as Spike Lee claims. Yes, this is an incredibly ambitious film and most directors would not be nearly be up to the task of putting it together. But Lee balances humor, anger and self-righteousness perfectly.



"Black Panther" achieves what nobody would have thought possible. It's a social commentary with primarily black characters on race relations and black-on-black violence, and it's an audaciously determined comic book movie. It's also entertaining as hell, so it works on several levels, doesn't it?

"Eighth Grade" harshly brings us back to our adolescent years and reminds us just how awkward we felt. We can also clearly see the cruelty pervasive among students, subtly encouraged by the teachers and principal.




"The Hate U Give" startles and grabs you demanding you join this visceral experience. The problem we have of police brutality and corruption needs as much light shone on it as possible. Starr (Amandla Stenberg) is a girl caught between two worlds. Her parents have enrolled her in an esteemed and private (white) school but she lives in a black neighborhood. When she witnesses a police shooting, she is pulled into a dangerous situation.

"I Kill Giants" is the story about a lonesome little girl who has just lost her mother and is coping by imagining monsters for her to defeat. She just doesn't know what to do without her mom and she lashes out, leaving only her older sister, a school counselor and a new friend who just moved in next door willing to help her. As much as this film focuses on this heartbroken child, it's about the journey of these three people desperately wanting to help this girl and wondering if they're up to the task.

"Let the Sunshine In" is the perfect romantic comedy, if you like that sort of thing. I usually don't but damn, I loved this movie. Isabelle (Juliette Binoche) is on an expansive quest for true love. It evades her, leaving us to wonder if it's them or if it's her or if true love even exists in her world.

"The Miseducation of Cameron Post" follows Cameron (Chloe Grace Moretz,) a gay teenager who, when caught making love with her girlfriend, is checked into a Christian conversion camp. Watching Cameron getting beaten down is as sad as the delusions and the quiet contradictions the leaders of the camp live with and teach by. You'll feel as bad for the staff as you will for these poor kids. (Well, almost as bad. Or just a bit bad. Maybe.)

"Overlord" is a treat for anybody who loves B-movies. It starts out as a perfectly serviceable WWII thriller, but then descends into a story involving scientific experiments and monsters. I just sat there with a huge grin planted on my face. "Overlord" easily won my undying affection.

"The Other Side of the Wind" is a joyous dream of what filmmaking can be. Yes, it's damning to today's Hollywood system, but it invokes a strong hope about how far art can take you. One of the best film-about-films I've seen, plus watching John Huston is just hypnotic.

"Won't You Be My Neighbor?" does more than make us feel nostalgic. It reminds us of the importance of truly relating to children as Fred Rogers effortlessly makes a connection with children everywhere. Watching it, I wondered whether or not this generation of children will breed more psychotics just because of his absence. He may have been that important. "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" would have been my #eleven had I been willing to lengthen my TOP-TEN list.

Coming in the next couple of days – THE TOP TEN FILMS OF 2018!

A Quiet Place - John Krasinski (2018)

All my life, I've associated fear with cinema. I don't know how much of that fear came from growing up in the era of Tobe Hooper's "Poltergeist," Wes Craven's "A Nightmare on Elm Street," etc. The boy-into-donkey sequence in "Pinnochio" traumatized me as did the trailer of "Poltergeist" which they played before "E.T." Children are easy to scare, at least I sure as hell was, but as we mature we become jaded, desensitized.

But once that element of menace is established, our throats are in the hands of these storytellers, we're at their mercy. To genuinely terrify grown-ups, filmmakers have to work hard to fill us with that much-desired dread. So many turn to gore a lazy response. There are much better ways to successfully thrill, even terrify, horror movie fans. The element of sound is a time-honored method of injecting that bit, turning a bore into an experience where we find ourselves holding our breath.

Right at the start of John Krasinski's "A Quiet Place" it's made clear that nobody here is safe. It's a world where humans are hunted. These blind terrors can hear anything, any small noise and that's how they find their prey, for food or for sport, it doesn't really matter. They can't see, but they don't have to. Their ears are that sensitive and the hunters are that fast.

The Abbot family, with three children just like any family you might come across. In the opening sequence, the Aboots strip a small grocery store/pharmacy for whatever food and medical supplies they need. When the youngest child of the family if he can take a toy, Lee Abbot (John Krasinski) gives it to him, putting a finger against his lips, warning the child to play with it quietly.

Of course, there are other Abbot children. One sister, too young to grasp the gravity of their situation but old enough to take batteries off the shelf to power up a toy. Later, the child turns the toy on, setting off flashing lights and loud sirens, violating the primary rule of survival. What happens next is some of the tightest seconds in recent memory. So now the Abbot family shares a trauma.

Flash forward one year. We can see from Lee's scavenged newspapers' headlines that these creatures have taken the entire planet. That they are indestructible. That they are the end of the world.

The Abbot family still lives in silence and fear. Lee's wife, Evelyn Abbot (Emily Blunt) is expecting a baby which is problematic, to say the least. How the hell could a family survive with a baby? They have managed to keep their children silent, but how can one expect that from an infant?

The rest of the film follows what should have been a typical day for the Abbots in this hopeless, new reality - how they find their food, how they contact their neighbours, how they manage to stay alive. How they learn to enjoy life while walking on a tightrope.

One thing more needs to said about this film - what separates "A Quiet Place" apart from other horror films is that the focus is not only on the monsters but its characters. We come to deeply care for the Abbot family.

"A Quiet Place," effectively pins down an atmosphere of un-breathable fear and epic panic right at the start. Krasinski takes us to a place where making a sound, even a small one, could be fatal. The premise takes us to a malevolent place, how could anybody survive?