Ed's Top 30 Films of 2018

Ready Player One, a film which will definitely not be appearing on this list

A tiny bit late with this one, largely so that I could catch up on some of the big awards contenders which didn't hit any theatres near me before the end of 2018, but started to roll out in January and February. And partly because I tend to put things off when I can, especially when it's going to involve a whole lot of writing.

So please enjoy this whole lot of writing, which started out as a Top 25, but expanded a bit as I saw more movies that I loved and wanted to include. 2018 was a good year for movies, all told. Maybe not the deepest bench, though, in the sense that while I found it hard to narrow this list to a mere thirty motion pictures, I couldn't expand it to a top 40 and feel strongly about everything that would be included on that list.

Speaking of, here are some honorable mentions of movies I loved or liked, but didn't feel strongly enough about to include on this list: Let the Sunshine In, Incredibles 2, John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection, Teen Titans Go! to the Movies, A Star is Born, A Simple Favor, The Little Stranger, Blockers, You Were Never Really Here, Zama, Black Panther, Cold War, Ralph Breaks the Internet, and The Miseducation of Cameron Post.

Now, to the list!

The Best (Older) Films I Watched in 2018

The Devils (1971)

In the words of Aaron Lewis and/or Scott Aukerman, it's been a while.

Owing to the demands of my actual real-life job, 2018 was the year in which I wrote the least, even as I didn't stop watching movies old and new. While I do miss writing (though it's probably more accurate to say that I miss having the time to write), I don't really miss the - entirely self-created - pressure to get reviews up as quickly as possible, rather than, you know, enjoying having seen a movie and letting my thoughts and feelings on it percolate for a bit.

To that end, I'll be keeping with tradition and posting lists of the best movies I watched this year over the next few days. This list is a summary of the best older movies I watched for the first time this year (with the cutoff being pre-2010, for cleanliness), and my Best of 2018 list will probably go up in a few days, giving me time for some frantic last-minute movies like Aquaman and The Mule. (Sadly two different movies, but both Warner Bros. releases, and who's to say where the DCEU will go next?)

Before we get into the list itself, I just wanted to mention how much I'll miss FilmStruck. Compiling this list, I realised that almost half of the films on it were ones I saw via that service, and while some were movies that I've been longing to see for years and finally had an easy way of watching, others were ones that I happened to take a chance on because they were included in one of their curated collections. Not since the pre-original content era of Netflix, when they bought huge libraries dirt cheap and you could while away an afternoon watching all four and a half hours of Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, has a streaming service offered the same dizzying rush of discovery. It was like a great local video store that happened to be in your home, and I'll miss it.

Note: The films are presented chronologically by year of release since they're all really good and trying to rank them would probably cause me to unravel like a shoddy jumper.