The Final Entry THE TOP TEN films of 2018!

Here we are! I won't pontificate as I usually do before an entry like this since the suspense is killing you. So here they are.

10) "Ms. Hyde" - Serge Bozon

Wow, the study of the duality of the human mind can be so...Damn, I'm actually making myself yawn. Most of the additions into the whole Jeckle and Hyde concept are insipid and obvious, aren't they? Tripe. But "Ms. Hyde" bursts out of the model and shoves its revolutionary ideas on the story right down your throat. The rare film of this series of stories that has just a bit of profundity.

9) "Disobedience" - Sebastian Lelio

Sebastian Lelio's follow-up to 2017's Oscar-winning "A Fantastic Woman" is every inch as good as its predecessor, maybe even better. When her father dies, Ronit (Rachel Weisz) is called back to her Orthodox Jewish home. She gets there only to be confronted by Esti (Rachel McAdams,) the love of her youth. With their affair reignited, they are once again faced with the question of how to respond to their conservative community. The real drama is between the two women and Esti's husband Dovid (Alessandro Nivola.) What pulls your heartstrings most in this film is the contrast between Esti and Ronit's joyous homecoming and watching this good man's heartbreak in real time as he slowly realizes what's going on.

8) "Beautiful Boy" - Felix van Groeningen

"Beautiful Boy" follows David (Steve Carell,) a father desperately trying to save his son Jasper (Timothée Chamalet) who is struggling with an addiction to crystal-meth. We follow the duo in the present and back to when Jasper was young, juxtaposing the effed-up junkie with the adorable, loving son David raised. In the end, "Beautiful Boy" is a film about the intimate and heart-rending between father and son. When a boy suffers, the father feels the pain. He matches his son's pain, blow for blow and hurt for hurt. Groningen, director of 2012's "The Broken Circle Breakdown," a film about a man struggling with finding a way to break through the grief of losing his daughter, is no rookie when it comes to telling stories of heartbreak and fatherhood. So just a warning, if you are a father this film will make you cry.

7) "The Favourite" - Yorgos Lanthimos

"The Favourite" demonstrates plainly that sexual politics are the most efficient to manipulate. They're also the most malicious. I don't know what I enjoyed watching more, the two vindictive-to-the-point-of-sadistic women vying for power and the queen's affections or just how delighted Queen Anne (Olivia Coleman) seems to watch it all play out in front of her. It's a very dark comedy that gleefully celebrates what it really means to be cruel.

6) "Hereditary" - Ari Aster

Oh my God, did this movie throw the template for horror films into a bonfire! "Hereditary" has no rules. Every character is vulnerable and the evil has no restraints and that's what makes it so horrifying. The film is so terrifying that you want to turn away but feels forced to face it just to see where the hell it goes.

5) "Hotel Artemis" - Drew Pearce

Bizarre for the sake of itself can be entertaining, but in the end, it's not a solid foundation for a film. Lucky "Hotel Artemis" earns the right, through strong stories and well-written characters, to be bizarre as it wants to be. A healer known as "the Nurse" (Jodie Foster) runs an underground makeshift hospital at a former hotel. The characters who come to her are desperate, naturally. But there are strict rules for anybody needing to be stitched-up. Writer/director Drew Pearce takes us on a ridiculously fun ride through a single night at the Armetis when the rules are for shit.

4) "Cold War" Pawel Pawlikowski

If you disagree with me that "Cold War" is one of the best films of the year, you have to concede that it's certainly the most beautiful. Director Pawel Pawlikowski and Cinematographer Lukasz Zal were nominated for Oscars for their work on this film. But good looks can only get you so far if you don't have a good story with solid characters. "Cold War" has both. We follow Zula (Joanna Kulig) and Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) chasing each other through the fifties both behind the Iron Curtain and on this one. They're first separated in a self-sabotaged escape from occupied Poland. After that, they come across each other every once in a while, longing to be reunited. "Cold War" is more than a celebration of impossible love though. There's the simple joy of life in every frame.

3) "Border" - Ali Abbasi

Most years, "Border" would easily take the top spot as the best film of the year. The fact that it's only number three is just a testament to how brilliant Boots Riley's and Anne Ramsay's offerings were. Tina (Eva Melander) is a Swedish customs officer with an aptitude for sniffing out all sorts of smugglers and criminals. She also has a physical deformity that makes her feel less than human. Then Vore ( Eero Milonof,) someone with the same deformity but incomparably high confidence comes along, questioning everything Tina had come to assume over her life. The film is really about monsters and how they are defined. We learn along with Tina that a deformity does not define a devil.

2) "You Were Never Really Here" - Anne Ramsay

If "We Need to Talk About Kevin" was Ramsay's "Reservoir Dogs" then "You Were Never Really Here" is her "Pulp Fiction." Lynne Ramsay's follow up to her disturbing 2011 masterpiece "We Need to Talk About Kevin" became iconic instantly when the film was released. She attempts to study and submit the psyche of a self-loathing, violent revenge-seeker and she nails it to the wall. She understands that the source of Joe's (Joaquin Phoenix) compulsion to rescue innocents and murder wrong-doers is an underlying sense of helplessness he's had beaten into him since he was a child. "YouWere Never Really Here" is basically a celebration of righteous violence and boy, is it glorious!

And here we are – the greatest film of 2018!

1) "Sorry to Bother You" - Boots Riley

With "Sorry to Bother You," Boots Riley delivers what is most likely the greatest dark comedy so far this century. Aside from the morbidity that glues the whole thing together, we're also looking at rare, biting and important satires you'll ever see. Desperate for money and employment, Cassius Green, a.k.a Cash (LaKieth Stanfield,) takes a job as a telemarketer. He quickly learns that the key to doing the job well, to pull down those fat commission checks, is to put on his white voice. His numbers skyrocket and get the attention of corporate. After that, Cash slowly sells off his soul, piece by piece as he repeatedly compromises his sense of ethics. In the end, Cash finds himself essentially, a slave trader. Finally, the powderkeg explodes as we see the truly sadistic underside of corporate America, our citizens' lackadaisical response to true evil and just how far a grassroots revolution can go.

30 Best Films Passed Over by Marty, The Doc & Jennifer in Back to the Future: Volume 1

I'm a couple of years too late to be posting on this, but I love lists so and you'll indulge a temporarily disabled genius who's been up to his eyes in prescription medication, right? You pardon my tardiness, yeah? I take your silence as a yes and continue.

So I understand that this should have posted in 2015 and that this post is now coming a year and a half too late.

In the year 2015, much ado was made about the 30 years that have passed since Marty, Jennifer and the Doc traveled into their future and right into our present.

Most of the speculation has centered on the technology and fashion, but I don’t care much about that.

I care a great deal about cinema, maybe music, but not much else.

So, here are the 30 best films these characters skipped over when they sling-shot themselves from their present, 1985, all the way to 2015, our present.

To be short: the 30 finest films in the past 30 years.

As always, the list is in descending order, as all lists shall be. (And you'll pardon me, but I couldn't quite stop, so this will be the top 31, not just the top 30.)

And, for your further amusement, you'll find pics and quotes from the films. Enjoy, I say. 

And, once more, a warning to any squares and/or prudes out there. Some of the quotes from these films are in bad taste, to say the least. Read at your own risk.

31) Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer by John McNaughton (1986)
The single most disturbing horror film I've ever seen. That sick feeling you get when any stomach-churning violence you've ever heard of. That's what "Henry" offers you. Not much blood or gore. No effects. Just the sick.

"You all right? You want some fries?"

"It's always the same, and it's always different."

"Yeah, I killed my mama. One night, it was my 14th birthday. She was drunk and we had an argument. She hit with a whiskey bottle. I shot her. I shot her dead."

"Didn't get along with your daddy, huh?"

30) The Skin I Live In - Pedro Almodovar (2011)
 Not to speak in a pretentious way, but this film can only be described as surreal. The film is a deconstruction of an amoral mind. Antonio Banderas plays Dr. Robert Ledgard, the most extreme misogynist you're ever likely to come across. His insistence that women are by nature imperfect drives him to create something better. He's developing fire-proof skin. One could argue that he's operating out of grief because his wife had burned to death in a car crash. But we're witness to the way he treats his guinea pig. The process of changing women can never be a sane one. It's a cautionary fable from the filmmaker who arguably loves women more than any other. In the end, what we're left with is a Gothic horror film and a terse thriller.

"I'm sick of these heels! And this jacket, too! Clothes make me feel claustrophobic. I wish I could stay naked all the time."

"If you wanted to die die, you would have cut your jugular."

"They don't seem pneumatic now, do they? They're like drops of water sliding along a glass surface."

29) Martha Marcy May Marlene by Sean Durkin - 2011
My God is this girl's mind terrifying and beautiful? Why does she and every other person, myself included, need God? Or a god. It may be a need for something tangible to cling to. A constant presence that is always there to love and protect you. And if one is not careful, they can open themselves up to malevolence. (And I could not find a way to include in this paragraph, but but MMMM is beautifully cut. All praise to film editor Zachary Stuart-Pontier.)

"You know that death is the most beautiful part of life, right? Death is beautiful because we all fear death." 

"I am a teacher and a leader. You just never let me be that. But now, I am...I know who I am."

"Is it true that married people don't fuck?"

"Do you ever have that feeling where you can't tell if something is a memory...or if it's something you dreamed?"

"That cat reminds you of some fluffy think you think you used to love. You're clinging...(gunshot)...clinging to some misguided emotion."

28) Fight Club - David Fincher (1999)
Oh, sweet Jeebus, I was expecting a really cool action movie. What I discovered is that "Fight Club" has raised the bar both on dark, dark comedies and satire. At times, even I started to believe in Tyler Durdin's whole vision. Fincher balances dark comedy with squeamish violence and he pulls it off gloriously.This movie a god.

"I am Jack's Broken Heart."

"Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The 2nd rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club! 3rd rule of Fight Club: someone yells 'stop,' goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. 4th rule: only two guys to a fight. 5th rule: one part at a time, fellas. 6th rule: no shirts, no shoes. 7th rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the 8th and final rule of Fight Club: if this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight."

"Self improvement is masturbation."

"My God. I haven't been fucked like that since grade school."

"It's a bridesmaid's dress. I got it at a second hand store. It was loved intensely for one night...then cast aside."

27) Frances Ha by Noah Baumbuch - 2012
I am not certain why I connected so intimately in "Frances Ha." Frances is making the transition from child to grown-up and she is stagnant. She needs courage to start building a life of her own. Baumbuch presents her to us as a struggling child-adult and makes us empathize with her as she transforms.

"Sometimes it's good to do what you're supposed to do when you're supposed to do it."

"Don't treat me like a three-hour brunch friend!"

"It's sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don't have the ability to perceive them. That's...that's what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess."

"I'm so embarrassed. I'm not a real person yet."

26) The Last Temptation of Christ by Martin Scorsese – 1988
A loving portrayal of the human part of Jesus Christ. What kind of temptation would Satan use to try and make Christ turn his back on his divinity? Would he use riches and power? Or would he just show Christ what it would be like to have a family of his own? But after all of these temptations, The Lord Jesus Christ declares, "It is accomplished!"

"What if it is God?  You can't drive out God. Can you?"

"You will, Judas my brother. God will give you the strength as much as you lack, because it is necessary - it is necessary for me to be killed and for you to betray me."

"I want to rebel against everything, everybody - against God! - but I'm afraid. If you look inside me you see fear, that's all. Fear is my mother, my father, my God."

"It is accomplished!"

25) Crash by David Cronenberg - 1996
Sigh. Everything is a fetish nowadays, even car crashes. How do we respond to that? Do we worry about the state of the word? Or are we just a little bit delighted? I went to see it and it kinda excited me. Everybody has desires they can not explain. So what are we left with? Silly, silly satire. Nothing is silly. These needs speak about how lost a person's spirit can alienate itself from the core of who you are.

"Don't worry, that guy's gotta see us. Don't worry, that guy's gotta see us. These were the confident last words of the brilliant, young  Hollywood star, James Dean."

"Would you like to put your penis right into his anus? Thrust it up into his anus?"

"The crash is a fertilizing, rather than a destructive event."

"Do you see Kennedy's assassination as a special kind of car crash?"

24) Blue Velvet by David Lynch - 1986
What is evil? Can you harbor a fascination for it without being seduced yourself? At some point, after struggling against the villain, you're so drawn in that yes, you do have to hit the girl.

"Mommy!  Mommy!  Baby wants to fuck!"

"Don't you fucking look at me!"

"Shut up! It's Daddy, you shithead! Where's my bourbon?"

"A candy-colored clan they call the Sandman tiptoes to my room every night."

Raymond - "Do you want me to pour it, Frank?"
Frank Booth - "No, I want you to fuck it! Shit yes, pour the fucking beer!"

"Here's to your fuck, Frank."

23) AntiChrist by Lars von Trier - 2009
The depth of this film's spirituality still leaves me shaken after each viewing. It's about gender dominance and exactly that has to do with death in general. The dialogue is sparse because "AntiChrist" shows its thesis instead of telling us everything.

"What do you think is supposed to happen in the woods?"

"A quiet woman is a scheming woman."

"Nature is Satan's church."

"Acorns don't cry, you  know that as well as I do. That's what fear is, thoughts distort reality. Not the other way around."


"The acorns fell on the roof vent. They kept falling and falling. And die and die. And I understood that everything that used to be beautiful about Eden was perhaps hideous. Now I could hear what I couldn't hear before. The cry of all the things that are to die.

22) Magnolia by Paul Thomas Anderson – 1999
When I first heard about "Magnolia," before it came out, it sounded like a cheap knockoff on Robert Altman's "Short Cuts."Damn was I wrong. It is enthralling in and of its own right. These are tales of heartbreak loss. Any hack can pull this off. But what Anderson does here is flawlessly tie ever one of these narratives around a thread of hope.

"The book says, 'We might be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us.'"

"Life ain't short, it's long. It's long, goddamn it. Goddamn. What did I do? What did I do?"

"Now that I've met you, would you object to never seeing me again?"

"I lost my gun today. And I am not a good cop. And I'm looked down at. And I know that. And I'm scared that once you find that out, you may not like me."

"Have you seen death in your bed? In your house? Where's your fucking decency? And then I'm asked fucking questions. What's wrong? You suck my dick. That's what's wrong. And you, fucking call me 'lady?' Shame on you. Shame on you. Shame on both of you!"

"Respect the cock and tame the cunt!"

"Because, what? I'm made to feel like a freak if I answer questions? Or if I'm smart? Or I have to go to the bathroom? Why is that, Jimmy? What is that? I'm asking you that."

21) Repo! The Genetic Opera by Derren Lynn Bousman - 2008
I've always been enchanted by musicals. Not only do you get a story, but all the delightful songs and dances. They're seductive. Add some horror to it and it's just a wonder. But there's more to it than that. Bousman creates a wonderful world for us to visit and sing along as people are dissected and slaughtered. This movie is a joy.

"It's a thankless job!  But somebody's got to do it!"

"What's the matter, Grave-robber? Can't get it up if the girl's breathing?"

"The most dashing, panty-snatching. I will leave your diapers dripping!"

"Everybody, everybody! Make your genetics your bitch!"

"I warned you about this! Happiness is not a warm scalpel."

Please stay tuned for numbers 20-11!

T2: Trainspotting - Danny Boyle (2017)

First comes an opportunity, then comes betrayal.  T2: Trainspotting centers around the connection between betrayal and revenge.

Sitting down to watch T2, I went in with two questions:

1) What's happened over the past 20 years with this cast of characters, none of whom had a likely long self life.

2) Is this going to even come close to the feverish brilliance of Danny Boyle's 1996 original breakthrough, Trainspotting? 

Mark Renton is back in Edinburgh after 20 years and his friends are pissed.

The original film ended as Renton stole 12,000, the take from a profitable drug deal, from his three best friends, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie.


On top of that, he called the cops on Begbie, wanted for armed robbery and the violently dangerous bully of their little group.

Renton had returned Spuds take from their deal at the end of Trainspotting and he's the first person Renton visits now that he's back.

Surprisingly, Spud is not thankful for the cash Renton had left him.

It seems that the money financed Spud's immersion into the world of heroin, which has dogged his life with the losses of his wife and child, and any hope he'd ever had about holding down a job.

Spud is so far gone that when Renton calls on him, he's in the act of attempting suicide.

He doesn't emotionally move far away from that sad despair until the final act of the film.

Renton finds Sick Boy the sleaziest kind of professional blackmailer.

Sick Boy's partner in crime and girlfriend, Veronika replaces Diane as the focus of Renton's dysfunctional lust.

The sadistic and vengeful Begbie has escaped from prison to find out that Renton is back.

That means Renton is not safe, nor is anyone in the path from Begbie, even Spud and Sick Boy, to his revenge.

It's unsure whether Renton's other friends will stand with him through this mortal danger because of how he'd burned them so badly 20 years before.

But Spud and Sick Boy know that Begbie is a danger, even when he's not hunting down Renton and any of his possible accomplices.

He's volatile and unpredictable and they can sleep better when he's back in prison.

So after all this works itself out, the questions is does T2's entertaining sequences, and the nostalgia from the first film equal the amazement we all felt 20 years ago when we walked out of the theater speechless, knowing we had just watched cinematic history.

In a word, no.

A large part of the fun of Trainspotting was being introduced to these characters and their insane natures. 


Now that's been established and the first act of T2 feels noticeably emptier.

It doesn't feel like they're reintroduced them properly, even though it answers some questions about how these 4 have been spending these past 2 decades.


The answer is that none of them have been doing much of anything, nor have any of them grown as people at all.

In the end, we're left with a lovely little film in and of itself.

But it doesn't even come close to the hyperactive intensity that defined the original "Trainspotting."

The Greasy Strangler by Jim Hosking (2016) - "Hootie Tootie Disco Cutie!"

"The Greasy Strangler" is an odd duck of a film that centers on, Big Braydon, a man-child who lives with his father/landlord, Big Ronnie, an old man whose interests are disco and grease.

Braydon is a severely socially limited man. 
To be honest, he made me think of the worst-case scenario of what Napoleon Dynamite could grow up to be.


Braydon's boring life is shaken up by when he starts to suspect that Ronnie is the serial killer known as The Greasy Strangler. 

At the same time, he meets Janet, played by Elizabeth De Razzo, and falls in love. It feels like the worst thing for his victims isn't death as much as it is having those greasy, greasy hands around their necks.

The story follows not only the murders but an insane love triangle between Braydon, Ronnie and Janet.

Throughout the film, I kept being reminded of John Waters. It's as if director Jim Hosking was brought up on a steady diet of "Pink Flamingos" and "Hairspray."After one viewing, it looks like he succeeded, but we'll have to wait a decade or so to see if we're still watching "The Greasy Strangler."

In the end, this film is as disgusting and hilarious as the title suggests. Everything Ronnie eats is either cooked in, slathered in, or dipped in grease. 

Yes, you will cringe while watching this movie.

Whether you're a Waters fan or like cult films, I highly recommend you watch "The Greasy Strangler." 

It really is a wonderful, revolting experience.


We, the audience already know that Ronnie is indeed The Greasy Strangler as we've seen him in action. Ronnie's murders are more gross than gruesome.

Of course, these two story lines come together to give us a bizarre twist before its puzzling ending.

It's obvious that Hosking set out to make a cult classic. And I think he did. History will tell.