10. ANNIHILATION

177 LISTS | 14 TOP SPOTS Alex Garland | 115 mins | Adventure/Drama/Horror Natalie Portman | Jennifer Jason Leigh | Gina Rodriguez | Tessa Thompson

“Annihilation is the best sci-fi film in years, a mind-blowing trip into an inscrutable heart of darkness that marks writer-director Alex Garland as one of the genre’s true greats. Desperate to understand what happened to her soldier husband (Oscar Issac) on his last mission, a biologist (Natalie Portman) ventures alongside four comrades (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny) into a mysterious, and rapidly growing, hot zone known as the “Shimmer.” What follows is an unsettling and hallucinatory tale of destruction and transformation, division and replication—dynamics that Garland posits as the fundamental building blocks of every aspect of existence, and which fully come to the fore during a climax of such surreal birth-death insanity that it has to be seen to be believed. Apropos for a story about nature’s endless cycles of synthesis and mutation, it combines elements of numerous predecessors (Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stalker, The Thing) to create something wholly and frighteningly unique.” – Nick Schager, Esquire

9. A STAR IS BORN

191 LISTS | 20 TOP SPOTS Bradley Cooper | 136 mins | Drama/Music/Romance Lady Gaga| Bradley Cooper | Sam Elliott | Andrew Dice Clay

“After two foreign-language films (in black-and-white, no less), it’s time to give Hollywood its due. I was not a particular fan of either the Judy Garland or the Barbra Streisand version of A Star Is Born, and yet another remake of the story—the fifth overall—initially seemed to me a poor idea. But in his directorial debut, Bradley Cooper continues to prove that he can do more, so much more, than almost anyone imagined back when he was pigeonholed in cocky, ladies’-man roles. As an actor, he has a range that has been expanding with every passing year: In the familiar leading roles of this film, he and Lady Gaga are both fresh and both fantastic. And as a director, Cooper gets so many little things right that it’s hard to believe he hasn’t been doing this for 20 years. A star is born, indeed.” – Christopher Orr, The Atlantic

8. BURNING

222 LISTS | 28 TOP SPOTS Chang-dong Lee | 148 mins | Drama/Mystery Yoo Ah-in | Steven Yeun | Jong-seo Jun | Soo-Kyung Kim

“A bone-dry comedy of class warfare. A perplexing missing-person mystery worthy of Hitchcock or Antonioni. An existential meditation on the little hungers and great hungers that drive us. There’s no single right way to classify Burning, so why not just call it the best movie of the year and leave it at that? Returning after an eight-year hiatus from filmmaking, South Korean master of the slow burn Lee Chang-dong (Poetry) did more than perfectly capture the subjective ambivalence of Haruki Murakami’s original short story, “Barn Burning.” In stretching it out to fill two-and-half perfectly paced hours, he also teased from his source material a wealth of new meanings and ambiguities, percolating through the love triangle of sorts that envelops an introverted writer (Ah-in Yoo), his hometown classmate-turned-crush (Jong-seo Jun), and her slick, wealthy new beau (Steven Yeun, rivetingly loathsome in a tricky role). You didn’t have to look hard to see a disturbing relevance in the film’s simmering stew of resentments, the working-class and explicitly male rage that boils over into a shocking climax. (Not for nothing does Donald Trump make a televised cameo.) But Burning’s power is more timeless that it is timely, located as it is in big questions without clear answers: real riddles of desire, longing, and motivation, none any easier to solve than the disappearance at the center of this captivating enigma.” – A.A. Dowd, AV Club

7. BLACK PANTHER

226 LISTS | 18 TOP SPOTS Ryan Coogler | 134 mins | Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi Chadwick Boseman | Michael B. Jordan | Lupita Nyong’o | Danai Gurira

“Neither its cultural importance nor financial success can be understated. It’s a wonder of technical majesty, from Afro-futuristic landscapes to impeccably designed costumes. Probably no other superhero film has the nerve to take on colonialism and global resource-sharing. But here’s the thing about “Panther”: It’s just an endlessly enjoyable film. The personality lineup is so strong, you’ll have a new favorite character every time – maybe Letitia Wright’s precociously genius Shuri, then Michael B. Jordan’s captivating antagonist Killmonger the next – with Chadwick Boseman anchoring the whole thing with winning gravitas. And need we mention the armored war rhinos? Nothing was the complete package this year quite like director Ryan Coogler’s Wakandan treasure.” – Brian Truitt, USA Today

6. BLACKkKLANSMAN

229 LISTS | 13 TOP SPOTS Spike Lee | 135 mins | Biography/Crime/Drama John David Washington | Adam Driver | Laura Harrier | Topher Grace

“Meanwhile, Spike Lee’s “BlackKklansman” — which Boots Riley, in a public “political critique,” condemned as a whitewash of police malfeasance — was the second movie of the year to make use of a black character’s “white voice” as a major plot point (and a source of comedy); perhaps Lee, too, worried that a movie in 2018 that makes heroes of law enforcement represented too much of a “white voice” itself, so the film’s most powerful passages are lengthy digressions that abandon the plot to memorialize the victims of lynching; to mourn the role of Lee’s beloved chosen art form, cinema, in the stoking of racism; and to condemn — with news footage from Charlottesville that is presented with fury and sorrow — the public encouragement of racial violence. Inspired by an actual event, the film stars John David Washington as a rookie Colorado police detective who recruits a white Jewish veteran officer, played by Adam Driver, in a plan to infiltrate the Ku Klux Klan.” – John Beifuss, Memphis Commercial Appeal

5. EIGHTH GRADE

249 LISTS | 18 TOP SPOTS Bo Burnham | 93 mins | Comedy/Drama Elsie Fisher | Josh Hamilton | Emily Robinson | Jake Ryan

“It was an extraordinary year for directorial debuts: Ari Aster’s familial horror drama, Hereditary, Boots Riley’s fever-dream social satire, Sorry to Bother You, and Carlos López Estrada’s politically charged buddy comedy, Blindspotting, all marked the start of careers to keep a sharp eye on. But no first-time filmmaker produced a work as unexpectedly assured as the former YouTube performer and stand-up comic Bo Burnham with this intimate portrait of a painfully shy middle school girl named Kayla, played with astonishing openness by then–14-year-old Elsie Fisher. The supporting cast, made up largely of nonprofessional middle schoolers chosen by Burnham, emerges as a group of real, differentiated individuals, not archetypal teen-movie types. And in a year notable for its many loving on-screen dads (in A Wrinkle in Time, A Quiet Place, A Star Is Born, Creed II), Josh Hamilton’s nerdy but noble Mark may be the dad-est of them all.” – Dana Stevens, Slate

4. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK

279 LISTS | 17 TOP SPOTS Barry Jenkins | 119 mins | Drama/Romance KiKi Lane | Stephan James | Regina King | Teyonah Parris

“In adapting James Baldwin’s 1974 novel, filmmaker Barry Jenkins has created something even more self-assured and visionary than his Oscar-winning “Moonlight.” Ripe with a bursting, overwhelming sense of beauty in the world, the movie also acknowledges the frailty of joy, telling a story of young lovers torn apart by a system set up against them. Jenkins never burnishes over the thornier, political aspects of Baldwin’s story — as in, Brian Tyree Henry’s fulcrum-point monologue that the movie pivots on — creating a rare literary adaptation that captures the tone, the imagery and the feeling of its source material.” – Mark Olsen, Los Angeles Times

3. THE FAVOURITE

317 LISTS | 32 TOP SPOTS Yorgos Lanthimos | 119 mins | Biography/Drama/History Olivia Coleman | Emma Stone | Rachel Weisz | Joe Alwyn

“I know acting categories are an awards season necessity, but I can’t bring myself to think of Olivia Colman as the “actress in a leading role” of The Favourite. She is, don’t get me wrong, fully delightful, playing Queen Anne as a gouty toddler of a monarch, impulse-driven and querulous while also being capable of bursts of devious plotting. But it feels wrong to declare any of the three women at the forefront of Yorgos Lanthimos’s indelibly strange and wonderful period comedy as the main character, when it so deftly shifts the audience’s sympathies around as it goes. For a while, it’s a maybe-career-best Emma Stone as Abigail Hill, who seems like the hero, the young underdog seizing opportunities to get herself into the Queen’s good graces. Then it seems like Rachel Weisz’s gloriously imperious Sarah Churchill is the one to root for, especially after a nasty accident, when it seems like she’s going to return to fuck shit up in her lace facial wrap. And of course, the Queen herself can be a compellingly tragic figure, since the only relationship in her life that seems to be even remotely genuine is hopelessly unhealthy. But to hand ownership of the story to only one of these women seems to miss the point — that there’s no winning the game they’re playing. It sure is a joy to watch, though.” – Alison Willmore, BuzzFeed News

2. FIRST REFORMED

357 LISTS | 51 TOP SPOTS Paul Schrader | 113 mins | Drama/Mystery/Thriller Ethan Hawke | Amanda Seyfried | Cedric the Entertainer | Victoria Hill

“By turns thoughtful and outrageous, Paul Schrader’s drama about an alcoholic ex-military chaplain (Ethan Hawke, in one of his finest performances) pushes its writer-director’s career-long interest in contemplation and grotesque, gratuitous self-destruction to new extremes. As the minister and caretaker of an old clapboard church in upstate New York, Hawke’s depressed, soft-spoken Rev. Toller struggles with the betrayed promise of Christianity—and with the secrets of a Marian young widow (Amanda Seyfried) whose husband left behind an explosive suicide vest. The material may be borrowed from Ingmar Bergman’s Winter Light, Robert Bresson’s Diary Of A Country Priest, and Schrader’s own screenplay for Taxi Driver, but First Reformed’s perturbed vision of the modern End Times of terrorism and ecological disaster is very much its own. For all of its boxy visual asceticism, the result is one of Schrader’s richest films—and one’s that likely to grow on the viewer, as it has on this writer.” – Igntiy Vishnevetsky, AV Club

1. ROMA

389 LISTS | 110 TOP SPOTS Alfonso Cuarón | 135 mins | Drama Yalitza Aparicio | Marina de Tavira | Diego Cortina Autrey | Carlos Peralta

“Alfonso Cuarón’s haunting portrait of a socially, racially, and sexually stratified Mexico City in 1970 and ’71 comes dressed as an autobiographical memory play: Cuarón’s stylized recollection of his newly broken middle-class family and of the housekeeper, Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio), who struggled to find her equilibrium in a world in which she had so little power. An indigenous Mexican (her primary language is Mixtec) in a country ruled by the descendants of Spanish colonialists, Cleo holds herself in reserve, and at first even the camera can’t quite penetrate her mask of stoicism. But slowly … slowly … the audience is drawn in, and Cuarón’s formal, black-and-white cinematography (nearly every shot is a gliding horizontal line) begins to pay off emotionally. Cleo is buffeted, trapped, nearly broken, until her suffering and endurance takes on the quality of myth. Does Cuarón overidealize Cleo? Certainly. But the hard, material fact of her and of Aparicio’s performance gives Roma its human core. If you weep through the final credits, you won’t be alone.” – David Edelstein, Vulture

Full Top 50:

R Film L #1 AR L% #1% TCL TCL1 TCL% TCL1% 1 Roma 389 110 3.4 45% 16% 170 61 49% 19% 2 First Reformed 357 51 4.1 41% 7% 166 21 48% 7% 3 The Favourite 317 32 4.1 37% 5% 124 12 36% 4% 4 If Beale Street Could Talk 279 17 4.7 32% 2% 116 9 33% 3% 5 Eighth Grade 249 18 4.8 29% 3% 93 11 27% 3% 6 BlacKkKlansman 229 13 4.9 27% 2% 82 5 23% 2% 7 Black Panther 226 18 4.9 26% 3% 67 4 19% 1% 8 Burning 222 28 4.4 26% 4% 102 13 29% 4% 9 A Star Is Born (2018) 191 20 4.2 22% 3% 57 4 16% 1% 10 Annihilation 177 14 4.8 21% 2% 60 4 17% 1% 11 Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse 173 16 4.5 20% 2% 66 6 19% 2% 12 Hereditary 172 10 5.4 20% 1% 65 5 19% 2% 13 Leave No Trace 167 4 4.7 19% 1% 87 4 25% 1% 14 You Were Never Really Here 166 15 4.8 19% 2% 71 8 20% 3% 15 Sorry to Bother You 165 13 5.4 19% 2% 66 3 19% 1% 16 Shoplifters 159 14 4.7 18% 2% 77 6 22% 2% 17 The Rider 147 18 4.8 17% 3% 70 7 20% 2% 18 Mission: Impossible - Fallout 145 5 4.9 17% 1% 53 2 15% 1% 19 A Quiet Place 142 9 5.2 16% 1% 36 3 10% 1% 20 First Man 137 9 5.2 16% 1% 50 2 14% 1% 21 Widows 135 9 5.6 16% 1% 54 5 15% 2% 22 Paddington 2 125 10 4.8 15% 1% 50 4 14% 1% 23 Zama 124 16 4.6 14% 2% 62 8 18% 3% 24 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs 124 6 5.2 14% 1% 57 4 16% 1% 25 Can You Ever Forgive Me? 122 3 5.0 14% 0% 62 1 18% 0% 26 Cold War 115 8 4.4 13% 1% 61 5 17% 2% 27 Won't You Be My Neighbor? 101 6 5.2 12% 1% 25 1 7% 0% 28 Mandy 95 8 5.4 11% 1% 38 3 11% 1% 29 Blindspotting 94 8 5.5 11% 1% 40 6 11% 2% 30 Support the Girls 89 4 5.2 10% 1% 55 4 16% 1% 31 The Death of Stalin 88 6 5.0 10% 1% 39 1 11% 0% 32 The Other Side of the Wind 84 15 5.0 10% 2% 38 10 11% 3% 33 Avengers: Infinity War 83 10 5.1 10% 1% 15 2 4% 1% 34 Minding the Gap 83 3 4.5 10% 0% 43 2 12% 1% 35 Green Book 80 8 4.9 9% 1% 28 2 8% 1% 36 Isle of Dogs 80 1 5.4 9% 0% 23 1 7% 0% 37 Suspiria 70 5 5.2 8% 1% 23 4 7% 1% 38 Vice 70 3 5.3 8% 0% 24 0 7% 0% 39 Happy as Lazzaro 67 3 4.9 8% 0% 32 1 9% 0% 40 Private Life 67 2 5.1 8% 0% 38 1 11% 0% 41 Madeline's Madeline 65 5 5.0 8% 1% 36 2 10% 1% 42 Let the Sunshine In 63 3 5.2 7% 0% 33 3 9% 1% 43 The House That Jack Built 57 4 4.5 7% 1% 16 0 5% 0% 44 Western 54 6 4.9 6% 1% 27 3 8% 1% 45 Crazy Rich Asians 47 0 5.3 5% 0% 17 0 5% 0% 46 Shirkers 45 0 5.5 5% 0% 19 0 5% 0% 47 The Hate U Give 44 0 5.6 5% 0% 20 0 6% 0% 48 Three Identical Strangers 38 0 5.5 4% 0% 19 0 5% 0% 49 Lean on Pete 37 3 5.1 4% 0% 17 0 5% 0% 50 Amazing Grace 34 2 3.9 4% 0% 15 1 4% 0%

Lists Included 861 | Top Critics’ Lists Included 349

R Rank

L Total number of lists where the film was selected as one of the top 10 films of the year

AR Average position on ranked top 10 lists

#1 Total number of lists where the film was selected as the best film of the year

L% Percentage of total lists where the film was selected as one of the top 10 films of the year

#1% Percentage of mentions where the film was selected as the best film of the year

TCL Number of times that the film was selected as one of the top 10 films of the year on top critics’ lists

TCL1 Number of times that the film was selected as the best film of the year on top critics’ lists

TCL% Percentage of times that the film was selected as one of the top 10 films of the year on top critics’ lists

TCL1% Percentage of lists where the film was selected as the best film of the year on top critics’ lists

Share this: Twitter

Facebook

