Doug's Favorite Movies of 2018

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
The Incredibles 2
Mary Poppins Returns
Green Book
Bad Times at the El Royale
Can You Ever Forgive Me? 
Game Night
RBG

Honorable mention: 

Mission Impossible: Fallout
Ready Player One

BlacKkKlansman

Watching the first half of this, I was really impressed. Despite some typical Spike Lee weirdness (i.e. scenes going on too long, weird camera angles, etc.), it was an emotional and gripping biopic. But during the second half, I began to roll my eyes. Embellishments to the true story seemed preposterous. The story falls away, the hero’s journey peters out, and the movie becomes just a preachy essay. Too bad. It started out really good.

Vice

Poor Dick Cheney. Poor, poor Dick! His daughter is gay! GAY! That must have been SOOOO difficult for him. How conflicted he and his wife must have been when they found out.

Please.

The filmmaking is expert. The acting is superb. But this is an ugly, off-putting movie about ugly, off-putting people. There’s not a single redeemable, likeable character throughout the whole thing. It’s just about a bunch of assholes. Granted, some of the best actors in the business play these assholes, which makes it watchable in a dumpster-fire, train-wreck kind of way. But heroes they are NOT. Hard to recommend because it might just make you angry, rather than make you marvel in the Richard III, Shakespearean way that America was taken over by assholes.

The Favourite

What starts out as a corset farce skillfully evolves into a corset thriller, which is neat. But the resolution to this is more about the farce and less about the thriller, which is completely dissatisfying. Nevertheless, all of the acting is top-notch, even if the plot is as muddy as the castle moat.

Bumblebee

Use E.T. as a template. Replace E.T. with the lovable robot/car and Elliot with a teenage girl, and voila! You got yourself a toy advertisement. Hailee Steinfeld does a great job here, acting effectively on her own but pretending to care about and hug and love a CG car/robot. It can’t be easy. This movie benefits considerably by not being directed by Michael Bay, so it doesn’t have an unnecessarily macho vibe. It’s sweet, and it works for what it is. Herbie: 2018.