The 10 Best Movies I Watched in 2018

As we gradually transition from cinemas to discs to streaming, I watched relatively few recent movies over the past year and watched a lot more episodic series, increasingly are the source most entertaining and literary form of cinematic expression, but here is a list, alphabetically arranged, of the 10 Best Movies I Watched in 2018, w/ a few runners-up:

Andrei Rublev, by Andrei Tarkovsky (1966). It's best to give up any pretense of trying to follow a traditional plot or narration in this Soviet-era film and just focus on what you're seeing on the screen: an amazing and beautiful series of scenes the re-create better than anything I've ever seen the look and feel of what life must have been like in the middle ages.

An Autumn Afternoon, by Yasujiro Ozu (1962). The great Ozu's final film centers on a old-school Japanese businessman who wrestles with the idea that his daughter at 24 may be ready for marriage and who, over time, comes to accept that she must begin her own life no matter what the cost to him.

Beyond the Hills, by Cristian Mungiu (2012). For those (like me) who love long and thoughtful narratives about "real" people, movies in the tradition of great 19th-century naturalist (and realist) fiction, Romanian director Mungiu's Beyond the Hills, about a 20-something woman, recently "released" from the orphanage where she was raised who has now entered a strict Eastern Orthodox convent in the hills beyond the borders of a small city, is a must-see.

Blackkklansman, by Spike Lee (2018). Lee's bold and exciting drama Blackkklansman tells the story of Ron Stallworth (based on his book Black Klansman and played well by John David Washington), who in the 1970s became the first black police officer in Colorado Springs and on his own initiative began the infiltration of a violent and sadistic local chapter of the KKK.

Funny Games, by Michael Haneke (1997). Funny Games (the original, German-language version) is a cruel and frightening movie about a home invasion; if it were just a horror/snuff picture, we wouldn't even be talking about it, but Haneke is into something deeper and more reflective as he breaks the 4th wall of cinema and has one of his characters address you the viewer.
Layla M, by Mijk de Jong (2016). Layla M is a terrific drama that's both topical and universal: the story of a young (last year in high school) girl in Amsterdam, of Moroccan descent, who gets drawn into a jihadist movement.

Life Is Sweet, by Mike Leigh (1990). Life Is Sweet, from the under-appreciated Leigh, is a domestic drama about a working-class family in an English row-house suburb, generally making the best of tough times, spirited and, at least at first, seeming to love one another so that at first we think we're seeing a sweet domestic comedy but then the fissures appear in the wall, the cracks widen, and we see the trauma and trouble at the heart of the family.

The Salesman, by Asghar Fahradi (2016). Farhadi's Oscar-winning Iranian drama is about an actor/school teacher whose wife (and co-star, in Death of a Saleman) is assaulted in their new, somewhat sketchy apartment and whose search for the perpetrator leads him, and the film itself, in some completely unexpected directions.

The Unknown Girl, by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (2016). The Dardenne Brothers mvie (from Belgium) tells of a young doctor who single-handedly runs a clinic that treats many immigrants, all of them working class, none wealthy, whose world is upended when she learns that a woman has been killed outside of her clinic.

Woman in the Dunes, by Hiroshi Teshigahara (1964). One of the great art-house films of the 60s, with a screenplay by the author of the source novel, Kobo Abe, about a man held captive by a mysterious lady and by malevolent villagers in a small house in a swale beneath enormous sand dunes - a drama, an allegory, and in some ways better and more frightening than the novel.

And also worth watching are: Orson Welles's adaptation of Henry IV, Chimes at Midnight; Bergman's The Passion of Anna, Silence, and Winter Light; two key 2017 films, The Post and The Shape of Water; the low-budget I Don't Feel at Home in This World Anymore; and Mungiu's Graduation.