Best of 2018 (Part One)

Well, it's finally that time of year. I always try to post my Best Of lists around the time of the Oscars - it makes everything feel officially official. But it's been rough this year trying to determine my final five in a LOT of categories. If I'm being honest, I don't think 2018 was one of the best years for movies or anything, but there were a lot of individual achievements that transcended the films that housed them. And in many categories, the distance between fifth and sixth (and, in some cases, seventh and eighth) places is infinitesimal. But I wouldn't be a movie blogger worth my salt (to the extent that I am one at all, heh) if I did not make the difficult decisions and made my end of year Best Of lists, so.... without further ado... I give you my "below the line" awards:

Best Makeup & Hairstling

Border

The Favourite

Mary Queen of Scots

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms

Suspiria (WINNER)

The film itself may have been overdone to compensate for an undercooked script, but the fanciful character designs in Nutcracker really stood out as fantastic character creations. Beauty has never looked more wicked, and wickedness never more beguiling, than in The Favourite. Those unbelievably complicated braided hairstyles in Mary Queen of Scots are just gorgeous... all the better to contrast with Elizabeth's pox-marked face. Look at the lead actress of Border, and look at her character in the film. The transformation is unreal, and doesn't impede her ability to emote even one iota. All of these pale in comparison, though, to the monumental feat of makeup that was Suspiria, a film with so much great makeup in such varying styles, that I wrote a whole article about how it deserved the industry's highest honor.

Best Costume Design

A Simple Favor (WINNER)

Black Panther

The Favourite

If Beale Street Could Talk

Mary Poppins Returns

The use of color throughout If Beale Street Could Talk is exceptional, nowhere more so than in its beautifully wearable costumes. Sandy Powell's gorgeously fanciful, colorful creations for Mary Poppins Returns are the polar opposite of the technically ambitious, boldly black-and-white creations she designed for The Favourite, which is even further proof that she is the greatest working costumer we have. Ruth E. Carter won the Oscar for her wildly rangy, vividly memorable costumes for Black Panther, and deservedly so - they were perhaps the biggest piece of the puzzle of making Wakanda feel vibrantly real. That said, there were no more iconic costumes this year than the looks served up by Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick in A Simple Favor. The costumes alone tell you everything you need to know about these characters at first glance - and watch how Lively's Emily is always putting on or removing layers... just like we do with her character over the course of the film. It's highly covetable, genius-level, film-elevating work.

Best Visual Effects

Annihilation (WINNER)

Aquaman

Avengers: Infinity War

First Man

Mission: Impossible - Fallout

God bless practical stunts, and God bless Tom Cruise for continuing to insist on doing all his own, especially when it comes to the Mission: Impossible series. The HALO jump in Fallout is just mind-blowing, to say nothing of that helicopter crash. The practical effects are maybe even more impressive in First Man, for how emotionally impactful they are. Infinity War contains probably the most visual effects of any film this year, and many of them are stunners, but Thanos is maybe the most impressive motion-capture performance to date. No film this year had more fun with its visual effects budget than Aquaman, creating a believable underwater world and characters with lots of personality. No film had more mesmerizing visual effects this year than Alex Garland's under-appreciated Annihilation. The shimmer itself is impressive, but once we're inside, the scenery, the animals, and the heart-stopping finale all make a huge cumulative impact.

Best Production Design

Annihilation

Hereditary

Isle of Dogs (WINNER)

Mary Queen of Scots

Sorry to Bother You

That cave/palace in Mary Queen of Scots is maybe my favorite set of the year, a gorgeously rendered, authentic-feeling place that sets a perfect tone for the film. Sorry to Bother You goes to some crazy places, and the production design is key to keeping everything grounded in some kind of believable world. The miniature dollhouse aesthetic of Hereditary is stunning, and key to the look of the film, creating a living space that traps the characters, who are being manipulated and moved about by unseen forces larger than themselves. Annihilation's production design is responsible some of the most striking images of the year - those plants in the shape of people, that exploded body in the pool, the lighthouse - and all built from concepts moreso than actual things. Wes Anderson has a VERY unique aesthetic, and Isle of Dogs once again proves that animation is the perfect place for it. The sets on that trash island are indelible, meticulously crafted and lovingly shot. 

Best Sound

Annihilation

A Quiet Place

First Man (WINNER)

Roma

Suspiria

I don't think a single sound mix this year had a more immediate effect on me than Suspiria, which wrapped me up and brought me ever deeper into its madhouse of horrors. A Quiet Place is all about sound, and the way the film plays around with what we can hear, and when we can hear it, is brilliant. Roma's sound mix is one of the most immersive I've ever heard, putting you right in the middle of quiet domestic scenes so that when the big moments come, they're even more overwhelming. The kinds of sounds we hear in Annihilation run the gamut from ordinary to extraordinary to WTF, that creepy bear-thing parroting a dead friend's last words being far and away the most impactful. The chaos of First Man's flight sequences are key to selling Neil Armstrong's character as the calm at the center of the storm, and the sound works in perfect concert with the editing and cinematography to sell it - the most vital sound work of the year.

Best Original Score

Eighth Grade

First Man (WINNER)

If Beale Street Could Talk

Hereditary

Mary Poppins Returns

Hereditary's creepy score is key in keeping the audience off-guard and unsettled throughout, until that hymn-like underscoring to the final scene as the film plays its final card, a brilliantly counter-intuitive choice. Marc Shaiman had the unenviable task of composing a follow-up to the greatest classic Disney score, one of the Sherman brothers' most tuneful, and he did so in magnificent style, creating something that feels at once familiar and completely new. If Beale Street Could Talk had the most beautiful score of the year, as perfect a rendering of young love as has ever been heard in the cinema. I've never heard anything quite like Anna Meredith's score for Eighth Grade, which feels so perfectly like the music playing inside the main character's head through all her shifting moods. But nothing else this year can quite compare to Justin Hurwitz's grand, grandiose score for First Man, which feels ever-so-slightly out of place until we blast off into space, perfectly mirroring Neil Armstrong's emotional journey.

Best Original Song

"Hearts Beat Loud" from Hearts Beat Loud

"Hollywood Ending" from Anna and the Apocalypse

"I'll Never Love Again" from A Star is Born

"The Place Where Lost Things Go" from Mary Poppins Returns (WINNER)

"Wrapped Up" from Vox Lux

Anna and the Apocalypse is one of the most unsung films of the year, and "Hollywood Ending" is a perfect encapsulation of everything it does well - there's teenage ennui, a perfect pop backbone, an earworm of a chorus, and some sly humor. "Hearts Beat Loud" is a real winner, and the scene where father and daughter collaborate to make it is one of the best scenes of the year. All of Sia's songs for Vox Lux have her typical polish, but "Wrapped Up" fits so perfectly with the character's story - it feels like a song a teenager would write after a scarring personal tragedy, and that the nation would embrace as a generation-defining hit. Not all of A Star is Born works, but the highly emotional, kinda-throwback-styled "I'll Never Love Again" finale goes a long way towards selling the impact of the central romance. It took a while, but after multiple listens, "The Place Where Lost Things Go" revealed itself as the most elegant, beguiling song of the year, starting with the fantastic line "Nothing's gone forever, only out of place," which perfectly encapsulates the film's ethos. And Emily Blunt sings it so perfectly.

Best Editing

A Star is Born

The Favourite

First Man (WINNER)

Hereditary

Suspiria

Movies in 2018 didn't get much meaner than Hereditary, and the brutal editing is one of its most important elements, constantly keeping the audience off their guard. Even if the rest of the editing was terrible, A Star is Born would earn its place on this list for those last two cuts alone; thankfully, it's pretty great throughout the rest of the film as well. Editing is an underrated tool for comedy, and The Favourite is incredibly smart about how it uses editing to either underline its jokes or to create its own off-kilter humor out of seemingly nothing. If there was a meaner movie than Hereditary, then Suspiria was it, and the editing of its dance sequences alone is filled with a sick, twisted energy that heightens the horror of what's happening. No film in 2018 made you feel like you were right there alongside the characters quite as much as First Man did, and the jaw-dropping editing of its flight sequences were key in creating that feeling.

Best Cinematography

The Favourite

First Man (WINNER)

If Beale Street Could Talk

Roma

Widows

The Favourite is one of the most distinctive-looking films of 2018, but not without purpose - those fish-eye lenses not only distort the images to add to heighten the absurdity of the film, but to make the characters feel alternately boxed in and very much alone in these gigantic spaces. Widows contains the best tracking shot of the year, outside of a car as it drives from a low-income Chicago neighborhood to a high-income one, a stunning feat in and of itself, but the nighttime cinematography is strikingly beautiful, allowing us to see all the action painfully clearly. Alfonso Cuarón clearly learned a lot during his many collaborations with Emmanuel Lubezki, as Roma is full to bursting with stunningly lit, crystal clear imagery and effortlessly complex camera movements. If Beale Street Could Talk is the most beautiful film of the year, and James Laxton's cinematography is key to the film's warmth; the use of color is simply stunning. But First Man is something else on a visual level, simultaneously intimate and epic. The switch to the full IMAX screen once Armstrong sets foot on the moon is the best use of the format in cinema history. Great final shot, too.