Last year I said “It’s been a pretty awful year in politics, so I find looking back at my year in film a pleasant diversion.”
Well, politics this year has been far far worse. Let’s hope that sense and kindness prevails in 2019.
Thankfully, there were some great films in 2018.
Here’s my list of favourites, ordered alphabetically within each rating:
New releases in 2018, including limited releases, online releases, and festival screenings
10/10:
Cold War [Pawel Pawlikowski]
9/10:
Arcadia [Paul Wright]
Custody [Xavier Legrand]
Faces, Places [JR, Agnès Varda]
The Favourite [Yorgos Lanthimos]
The Hymns of Muscovy [Dimitri Venkov] (short)
Isle of Dogs [Wes Anderson]
Phantom Thread [Paul Thomas Anderson]
Shoplifters [Hirokazu Koreeda]
You Were Never Really Here [Lynne Ramsay]
8/10:
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs [Ethan Coen, Joel Coen]
- Battles [Isabelle Tollenaere]
- Beast [Michael Pearce]
- Before Summer Ends [Maryam Goormaghtigh]
- The Breadwinner [Nora Twomey]
- A Branch of Pine Is Tied Up [Tomoyasu Murata]
- Calibre [Matt Palmer]
- Great Expectations [Stefan Georgiou] (short)
- Invisible [Pablo Giorgelli]
- Island [Steven Eastwood]
- Lady Bird [Greta Gerwig]
- Leave No Trace [Debra Granik]
- Private Life [Tamara Jenkins]
- Red Dress. No Straps [Maryam Mohajer] (short)
- Roma [Alfonso Cuarón]
- The Silence of Others [ Robert Bahar, Almudena Carracedo]
- The Silent Child [Chris Overton] (short)
- Summer 1993 [Carla Simón]
- Wajib [Annemarie Jacir]
- Western [Valeska Grisebach]
- A Woman Captured [Bernadett Tuza-Ritter]
Older films which I discovered for the first time
8/10:
- 52 Tuesdays [Sophie Hyde, 2013]
- The Blot [Lois Weber, 1921]
- Dina [Antonio Santini, Dan Sickles, 2017]
- Dreams Are Free [Gary Barber, 2013]
- German Concentration Camps Factual Survey [ Sidney Bernstein, Alfred Hitchcock, 2014]
- The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki [Juho Kuosmanen, 2016]
- Mudbound [Dee Rees, 2017]
- The Party [Sally Potter, 2017]
- Shoes [Lois Weber, 1916]
- White Right: Meeting the Enemy [Deeyah Khan, 2017]
- Yellow Submarine [George Dunning, 1968]
- Z32 [Avi Mograbi, 2008]
when curiosity threatens 