Cynthia Li’s Top Ten Films of 2018

This was the first year that I actively saw new releases in the theater rather than waiting for them to come out on streaming services. While MoviePass was still a functioning entity, there were weeks in which I watched a new film every day. However, with that gone along with 2018, it is time for me to look back on my favorite films of 2018. Before I jump into my list, I have to briefly give honorable mentions to First Man, Minding the Gap, Incredibles 2, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, You Were Never Really Here, First Reformed, Annihilation, Blackkklansman and If Beale Street Could Talk. Honestly, I could have made a Top 20 list, but here are my Top 10 films of 2018:

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Ivy Pottinger-Glass’ Top Ten Films of 2018

2018 was a pretty spectacular year for film. This past year I particularly enjoyed some films that came from outside of the US and UK — as you’ll see, half of my top 10 favorite films are in languages other than English. It was hard to narrow it down and there are plenty of terrific films that just didn’t quite make the list. My method for choosing these particular films was to ask myself whether, and to what extent, I would implore people to go out of their way to watch the specific film I had in mind. With that being said, here are the 10 films of 2018 that I would very strongly encourage everyone to make time to see…

10. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee, 2018)

Cannes Grand Prix 2018 winner BlacKkKlansman comes in at number 10 on my list. Set in the 70s and based on some “fo’real, fo’real sh*t,” the film depicts the unbelievable tale of the first African American police officer in Colorado Springs, Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), as he infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan over the phone whilst using his co-worker, Flip Zimmerman, (Adam Driver) for face-to-face interactions. With an expert blend of dark humor and relevance to the present day — especially in light of the film’s release coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville Rally — BlacKkKlansman delivers on all fronts.

9. You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay, 2018)

With one of the most brilliant and intense soundtracks in recent memory, courtesy of maestro Jonny Greenwood, You Were Never Really Here is a psychological thriller that keeps you on edge for the entirety of its short but not-so-sweet 90-minute run time. In her first feature since We Need to Talk about Kevin (2011), Ramsay triumphs again with this equally dark story in which psychologically tortured hitman, Joe (Joaquin Pheonix), rescues the victims of trafficking and inflicts gruesome punishment onto those behind the crimes.

8. Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

Wes Anderson did it again in 2018 with another charming and witty stop-motion animation, with an all-star cast to boot. I thought that any other Anderson-led animation would pale in comparison to Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009), and while I don’t think that Isle of Dogs quite lives up to its predecessor, I can safely say that I extremely enjoyed this canine-packed adventure set within a dystopian vision of the Japanese archipelago 20 years in the future.

7. Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham, 2018)

Not only is Bo Burnham a successful comedian and musician but he’s proven this past year that he’s also a filmmaker to be reckoned with. His directorial debut is more of a horror film than a comedy in that it forces us all to relive the cringe-worthy and downright painful reality of being a young teenager through the trials and tribulations of socially awkward teen Kayla Day (Elsie Fisher), but it’s so endearing and hilarious that it’s definitely worth the trauma of being transported back to early adolescence. Elsie Fisher delivers a veritable masterclass in authentic, natural performance and is so utterly relatable and genuine it’s impossible not to fall in love with her. Sitting through Eighth Grade is pretty agonizing, but it’s worth it . . . I promise.

6. Loveless (Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2018)

Bleak and beautifully tragic, Loveless tells the story of a fractured family in an unforgiving, unnamed city in the Leningrad region of Russia. The film centers around the search for a missing child who vanishes whilst his parents are in the throes of a hostile separation. Their son’s disappearance forces the pair to work together in a desperate attempt to find him. It’s a tough watch, and I can’t say it’s a particularly fulfilling one at that, but it is really a tour de force of filmmaking.

5. Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2018)

From here on in my list, you’ll see some of the nominees for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. One of the hottest names is Shoplifters. A Palme d’Or winner at Cannes 2018, it certainly lives up to the hype that’s been building up around it for the past few months. Set in Tokyo, the film focuses on an unconventional family that — as you can guess from the title ­— steals and embezzles to make ends meet. It’s a complex tale that takes you on an unexpected emotional journey, especially at the film’s climax, and the performances from the film’s actors, both young and old, are superb all ’round.

4. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)

Yorgos Lanthimos, the king of the “Greek Weird Wave” strikes again and this time he’s struck gold. With a spectacular cast including Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, and Nicholas Hoult, it’d be a crime if this film was anything less than brilliant. Though based on the life of Queen Anne — the ruling monarch of Great Britain for a short period in the 18th century — this is not a period drama like one might expect. With wacky cinematography and Lanthimos’ signature dark comedy, The Favourite is possibly the most entertaining films in my top 5 and it’s definitely my “favourite” Lanthimos film thus far.

3. Burning (Lee Chang-dong, 2018)

A surprising snub in the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Academy Awards, this film adaptation captures the sense of mystery and magic of the Haruki Murakami short story on which it is based. Jong-su (Ah-in Yoo) randomly meets Hae-mi (Jong-seo Jun), a girl from his past, and he agrees to look after her cat whilst she is in Africa. She returns alongside Ben (Steven Yeun), an enigmatic stranger, who quickly becomes the object of Jong-su’s fascination after discovering his favorite pastime. This film expertly delivers a sense of magical realism that will keep you bewildered, yet completely transfixed.

2. Cold War (Paweł Pawlikowski, 2018)

Both this and the number 1 film on my list are up for top prizes in Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director and Best Cinematography at the Academy Awards. I had a hard time choosing which one to place first in my own ranking. Paweł Pawlikowski is a formidable filmmaker, and in this cinematic masterpiece, he tells a love story that spans many years and locations, following the turbulent and tragically beautiful course of a relationship between two people who, despite the harshest of conditions, are fated to be together. Shot black and white in “Academy Ratio,” Cold War had some of the most beautiful cinematography I’ve ever seen, so watch it on a big screen if you can.

1. Roma (Alfonso Cuarón, 2018)

There’s a reason why everyone has been talking about Roma. It’s one of those films that will stay with you long after the credits have finished rolling, and that’s why I’ve chosen it as my top film of 2018. It’s a story about family — based on Cuarón’s own childhood in the titular neighborhood of Roma in Mexico City — it follows the story of Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), a live-in nanny for a middle-class family. The film beautifully depicts the complex relationship between Cleo and the family with whom she is so close to, and yet will never truly be one of. The film’s cinematography is unobtrusive and yet skilfully artistic, allowing the authenticity and raw emotion of the story to remain the central focus. You can really tell that Cuarón put his heart into this film, and the effects are simply breath-taking.

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Review: Eighth Grade Radiates Affirmation and Authenticity

This film was seen at the 44th Seattle International International Film Festival. The film is now in wide release in Seattle. You can read our interview with director Bo Burnham and lead Elsie Fisher here.

To no one’s surprise, A24 has done it again. They have put their name on one of the most original, earnest, and memorable films of the year. This is Eighth Grade, Bo Burnham’s directorial debut. It follows Kayla (Elsie Fisher) through her last week of middle school as she endeavors to break out of her “quiet girl” image. As she grows, she shares her advice with her YouTube audience of one or two, a sort of visual diary. Burnham himself began his career in comedy and music on YouTube over ten years ago; since then taking to Vine, to Comedy specials, and now exploring a new chapter. It is apparent he hasn’t forgotten where he came from, with a loving look at humble beginnings. Kayla’s objective is to find and share confidence and self-love. He has found his creative match in Fisher, who is so endearing we don’t even realize how exacting and purposeful she is in her portrayal. Bearing witness to her life is familiar yet anxiety inducing, as she radiates a nervous energy that Burnham and Fisher have said comes naturally to them.

I had the privilege of attending Eighth Grade’s screenings at SIFF, standing with Burnham and Fisher at the back of the theater as we watched the first five minutes to make sure everything was up to his standards. He requested the already bombastic audio be turned up to an overwhelming and immersive degree so that everyone could feel just how Kayla felt. In that moment, it drove home how involved he was with his direction. It is clear throughout the film how effective sound design, production design, editing, and everything else can be with such intentionality. 

Burnham also takes his young lead very seriously, and it rings true. The movie isn’t out to make Kayla seem small or silly, rather it convinces us to relate to her and believe her circumstances are important. Her journey has real stakes with the tiniest of victories, like singing karaoke in front of a birthday party and talking to the cutest boy at school. We shrink into our seats as we watch the situations she finds herself in, but she is never the butt of any joke. I’m personally sick of movies that make fun of how kids and teenagers (specifically girls) behave and what they enjoy, teaching internalized misogyny from a young age. None of Kayla’s emotions or reactions are trivialized or written off as ‘cringe’ or immature. The film seriously deals with the idea that people can be affected with anxiety from a young age, perfectly describing the feeling. 

Eighth Grade intentionally dates itself as a 2018 film, not a film about nostalgia for a past childhood. Though some experiences like crushes and bothersome parents are almost universally relatable, this is the Gen Z telling of that reality.  It lives in the here and now, even politically. It carefully dissects what contemporary middle schoolers are facing, from fixation on social media to school shootings. The film also conceptualizes social media at least as successfully as last year’s Ingrid Goes West. It is authentic to the current online landscape, playing with memes and fads that have come with Gen Z flocking to Instagram and snapchat. Burnham realizes we don’t have to understand what eighth graders talk about because half the time they don’t understand it themselves. He lets these kids be kids in their own language. These kids move at a breakneck pace, and it is impossible to keep up with them, and far more fun to have our sense of humor taken for a ride. The film’s R rating is dismaying, as I am fascinated by the idea of eighth graders’ reactions to seeing themselves in this mirror. 

And while the film reaches moments when you cannot help but laugh out loud, it remains in balance with times when there is nothing to do but cry for Kayla. Her relationship with her father Mark (Josh Hamilton) is a true highlight of the film, as they push and pull on each other in a tumultuous period of her life. He is helpless to keep his daughter from being miserable, unsure how even to begin to relate to her. Alongside him, our hearts shatter for Kayla when she is anxious and hurt, because we can do nothing but watch. Again Eight Grade brushes close with reality, as it confronts the expectation that teenage girls are forced to grow up too fast. They are pushed to appeal to adult beauty standards and become sexual entities. They are told to change who and what they are for others; messages reinforced by the media. Fisher herself said she had planned to take a break from acting because of her acne. In any other film this actor, who is well on her way to becoming a young phenom, may have been overlooked in favor of an unrealistic, fantasized idea of what a middle school girl should look like. She is living and breathing proof that authentic casting is far more rewarding than putting a twenty-something in the role. 

Overall, Eighth Grade is heartfelt and fun as simply a Bo Burnham film, but Elsie Fisher is what makes it extraordinary. She commands attention and sympathy because we all have been in her place, in some manner or another. Her vulnerability is powerful as she attempts to conquer her fears and not only that, but then have the humanity to turn her experiences into advice for others. And she doesn’t stop even if her videos only get a couple views. She is an icon for everyone who doesn’t want to be the quiet girl anymore, which is immeasurably valuable for a time like middle school when expressing individuality can be utterly terrifying. I am thrilled for Fisher’s future, and for all the teenage girls who would watch this and hopefully learn to love themselves a little bit more. Because being yourself can be really hard. 

Gucci! 👌

Score: 5 / 5 

Want more? You can read (or listen to) to our interview with Bo Burnham and Elsie Fisher that we conducted at this year’s SIFF and hear their thoughts on the film, defining the term ‘YEET’, and Dungeons & Dragons.

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SIFF 2018 : Eighth Grade Interview with Bo Burnham and Elsie Fisher

At the tail end of SIFF 2018, we were lucky enough to interview Bo Burnham and Elsie Fisher about their latest endeavor: EIGHTH GRADE. In it, guest interviewer Delaney Fry asked Burnham how he incorporated his own career into the film as well as how Fisher so naturally portrayed such a relatable character. The film comes out July 13th, but you can read the transcript below or listen to our interview now, complete with Pogs, Dungeons & Dragons, and defining the term ‘Yeet’.

This interview has been edited for clarity and readability.

D: So if you want to get started, we have a couple questions for each of you, and we can just go back and forth. You’ve probably been asked this one a lot, but we were wondering how did your own Youtube experience…

B: Am I blue? [referring to highlighter on our question sheet]

D: No, actually the blue questions are our primary questions and pink ones are our secondaries if we get to them.

B: Oh good, I was gonna say, “Boy we’re really living in a retro gendered world. Blue for me and pink for her!”

D: Well you get all the questions and we get two questions for the girls. So how did your younger Youtube experience impact Kayla’s experience in the film with regards to her own Youtube channel?

B: It certainly did. Obviously it engrained some sense of being meaningful to me, but I really did draw more on my current experience with the internet than I did then. I just didn’t think the internet asked that deep of questions of us in 2006. It was, “You have a funny thing? Post it,” and now it’s like, “Who are you as a person on a deep level.” There was definitely some of me in there for sure, but I really set out to explore what I was feeling at the time I wrote it when I was 25 or 24. It wasn’t a story of my past more than it was about my present, so of course it set me on a course of life that was really caring about the internet because it provided me with a lot of success and pain and all that stuff.

D: Elsie, being as young as you are and with your experience on YouTube, how has this movie reflected your own experiences? 

E: I like the way the internet is portrayed through Kayla because it just shows it as it is. It’s just her scrolling on her phone at at 3am and what not. Another part I like is that when I was in sixth grade I had my own really shitty YouTube channel. I didn’t put as much effort into it as Kayla’s did. It was just like Minecraft, but it was really cool for me to portray a character who had their own [channel] and see them struggle in their own way that I could weirdly relate to: to make things and not be cared about. But they’re good for yourself. I cared a lot. I use to post my art on the internet and no one would care, but I would still felt good about it.

B: That should keep going. Leonardo DiVinci probably had most fun painting. It should be for you. Even this [film] should be for us first. Like it shouldn’t matter if it’s seen or not.

E: Yah I don’t care if it’s seen. I use to and I think Kayla cares a little bit if it’s seen because that’s what she wants to do, but in my personal life right now, I stopped caring. I’m like, “Whatever. I’m having fun making it.”

D: And between the two of you who came up with “Gucci”?

E: Me

D: How’d you come up with that? Were you like, “Let me just throw this in?”

E: So I’m a naturally anxious person. This was my first lead and I all the way over in New York [where we filmed], I just had this nervous tick, so I would end conversations with “Gucci.” And then [Bo] started doing it to embarrass me, and then it caught on on set. When we filmed the videos way later, [Bo] wanted me to have a sign off, so it became “Gucci.”

D: I love how it starts so ironically and then it just infects yourself with it.

B: Yah exactly. The thing people don’t realize with inside jokes that kids do is that the they don’t even get them. Just just like doing it. 

E: Yah, people ask me what Gucci means and I’m like, “I don’t know.”

D: One of the best things my parents have asked me is, “What does ‘Yeet’ mean?” and I don’t know how to explain it to them. I can’t stop saying it, but I don’t know… YEET!

B: Is that Y-I-T?

D: It’s Y-E-E-T. It’s from a Vine.

E: Yah it’s from this vine where this kid has a Mountain Dew bottle, he throws it, and he goes, “YEET.” It’s like his brother or mom or something. 

D: And it’s just caught on so whole heartedly. It’s a thing that we’ve seen a lot in college.

B: I’m gonna have to check that out. 

E: It’s so stupid.

D: Yah, but’s so beautiful. It was what the internet was meant to do. 

B: The internet is meant to be indescribable.

D: So next, kind of from both of you: when you look out into the audience, it’s a huge age range. We had people standing up and talking yesterday [at the SIFF screening] who were in seventh and eighth grade themselves, both boys and girls. And then we had people who were 70 years old.

B: These two [screenings] were particularly good. I think the festival had a really good range. 

D: Even with this huge age span, we’ve seen a huge positive response to it, Obviously, [Elsie] has won the Best Actress award and the Gold Space Needle [for Best Feature], so when you two were making this film, were you trying to make it applicable or were you gearing it more towards a heartfelt story that ended up being so applicable to all of us?

B: I had a vision board that just said “Golden Space Needle” and I was like, “How do I get here?” *laughter* Our approach was not to be relatable for the sake of being relatable. The hope is that the more specific, the more universal it will be, but I just wanted to be honest, truthful, not manipulative, just portray things as they are, and hopefully it will resonate with people. I felt that [Elsie] resonated with me and I’m not her. If I’m feeling connected to this story and I’m not circumstantially like her, then other people can too. I think the feelings of anxiety, how you view yourself, how the world views you, and then going from how you perceive your own self versus how you articulate them are common [sentiments]. Everyone’s pretty awkward, but I’m so glad I’m not that awkward anymore. Every social situation is incredibly loaded, and awkward things are happening all the time. Like, have you been in an elevator? Everyone spends half their day blushing, so for me as an audience member, I wanted to make a movie I want to see. When I feel that someone is trying to relate to me, which a lot of things recently have been trying to occupy that nostalgia space, I’m like “Ugh, I get it.” POGS, RIGHT?! I don’t really give shit, I just want it to feel real. [Looks over to Elsie] Pogs were an old thing.

E: I know what Pogs are.

B: You know what Pogs are?!

E: I vaguely do. I mean I grew up in a very dated town. I grew up with VHS and no internet. I didn’t get internet until I was like…

B: She would not have been of age. She was born in 2003. Yah you should not have [known about Pogs].

E: Yah but I are grew up with VHS, and I was like, “[An entire movie] fits on this [tape]?”

D: Craziest thing for me was trying to explain how CDs and DVDs work because I still don’t get it. I think it’s magic. 

B: Well vinyl is really confusing because you scratch it and then it makes the sound? Huuuuh? Literally makes no sense.

E: I remember though at my school we didn’t even have projectors. We had the light thing [transparency projector]. That was weird. I sometimes have weird dreams about where did it come from because no else my age knows what I’m talking about. 

D: So Elsie, the film ends really beautifully with that hug [from her dad played by Josh Hamilton] because the whole time watching it I too wanted to reach in for a hug. How did you begin to connect with Hamilton and develop that authentic relationship?

E: We hung out off of set with Josh, myself, and my own father…

B: Did you go to the Statue of Liberty or Museum of Modern Art with Josh?

E: Well we got ice cream and then Josh kind of left us there at MOMA. Like he walked with [me and my father] there and was like, “YEET.” Yah, but it was basically hanging out with him and we did a little bit of stuff like that. Then we had rehearsals of the scenes we were in, and those were the only scenes we really did because that relationship is so familiar and boring to Kayla.

B: Everything else we wanted to capture [in the film was] the nerves, but with [Kayla’s] dad, she was so comfortable to begin with so that had to feel super bored [at the dinner scene]. 

E: But with the fire pit scene it had to feel different. It’s not all boring, so maybe boring isn’t the right word. It was just about getting the scene to feel right with him by doing it over and over again. Like we did the dinner scene a hundred million times? Four billion? 

D: And it was so perfect. I just saw my sister in you.

B: You have a younger sister? 

D: Yah I have three siblings, so for my younger sister, I saw the most of her in you. 

B: And she’s how old now? 

D: Now she’s eight-teen. She just graduated high school yesterday, so very exciting. I had her grad party right after the movie, so I had to ditch setting it up, but I was back for the fun part… But Bo, being that you’re so musically inclined with you music and comedy, how involved were you with choosing the film’s music, specifically for Aiden’s? 

B: Oh yah. For Aiden’s [music], it was this band called ‘Hurter Baiter’ which is this Swedish, weird techno music…

E: I am Swedish. My family is very Swedish. 

B: Perfect, that is incredibly fascinating *sarcastically*. You look very Swedish. Anyway, back to my question, I wrote a temp score for the movie that I didn’t want to use, but I was just trying to feel out the film. I had a few months before the movie had started to think about things and I wrote a lot of music just to explore the movie in a different way. Then I stumbled upon Anna Meredith’s music who was an incredible electronic music composer. She was a classically trained composer out of London and she’s just amazing, theatrical, and big. We wanted the music to be visceral and feel like foreground music that made Kayla’s experience bigger than it is rather than this mandolin, staccato string, indie tween score that makes everything cute and small because the movie is not cute to [Kayla]. It’s not small to her. Music is just a great subconscious way to make things more visceral and intense. 

D: I would say I totally felt [those emotions] in the movie where it may not be a big deal to us because we are just watching it, but the part where the music got louder and louder made me feel it more and more. Along with the music, Kayla has a lot of mannerisms that are really noticeable such as the crossing of the arms or slouching and I was wondering if you just know how to do that naturally or was it something you two had to coach a little?

E: Nah, it was just good old Fisher anxiety mannerisms. That’s just me. That’s just how I do stuff or at least how I use to. I’m trying to be confident with thing like… power posing.

D: Do you do power posing? 

E: No, but i probably should. 

B: Posture is good. Walk down the street with your chest puffed out and it feels good. I try to do that because I’m so tall and I don’t want to slouch. It’s very psychosomatic to have good posture. But yah the mannerisms shouldn’t be conscious. We didn’t want her to be like Winston Churchill [all frumpy like], and be like, *Churchill impression* “I’m Kayla” because it would be less effective. 

E: The only one that felt a little bit conscious was when I held my arm [across my chest], but I just kept doing that because when Fred, who plays one of the high schoolers, pointed it out [as something from a different generation], I decided to stick with it. But everything else was just natural. 

D: Well we are almost out of time. I just wanted to leave you with a general question at the end. Sometimes we ask very specific questions, and you don’t get to talk about something you’re very passionate about, so is there a story from the film, any fun fact about yourself, or thing you’ve just been dying to share that no one has asked you a question about that you wish someone had? 

E: Ummm, I don’t know. I like playing Dungeons and Dragons.

D: We’re [pointing to Megan] in a D&D team together! What do you play? 

E: I play a tiefling bard.

D: What’s your instrument?

E: I have a ukulele and an electric guitar. It’s super exciting. I’ve been playing with my friends for about a month now and we’re actually making a podcast out of it now. It’s really exciting. 

D: Oh that’s so beautiful. Well, hopefully we’ll find it when it comes out. Do you have a name for it?

E: Yes, it’s called “X-Treme D&D.” I’ve been writing a bunch of music for it. It’s very fun. 

D: See that’s the kind of stuff people never get to hear about. 

B: Yah, I can’t top that shit. Um, I don’t know…

D: How’s your dog doing? We were told by a friend to check on your dog.

B: He’s doing great. He’s doing real good. Bruce is a good guy. He turned three. He’s chilling out. He got in a little fight with his sister and he had to get staples in his head, so he’s a little staple head right now, but those are coming out soon.

D: Does he have a little cone? 

B: Oh no, they’re on the top of his head so he literally can’t get there. He’s just a little staple head boy right now. 

D: Very cute. Well we could keep going, but we won’t waste your time. So I think we’re good from here. We appreciate you guys talking to us.