2018 Poll

[greennui]

Pick your favourite movies of 2018 (according to IMDB), up to 20 films.

20-film ballots must be ranked as follows (with point totals assigned):
Five tiers 5-4-3-2-1
Four tiers 4.5-3.5-2.5-1.5
Three tiers 5-3-1
Two tiers 4-2
One tier (aka unranked) 3

Ballot totals that aren't divisible by the number of tiers must be unranked. So 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19 film ballots are unranked.

[greennui]

Transit 2018 Directed by Christian Petzold
Burning 2018 버닝 Directed by Lee Chang-dong
Knife+Heart 2018 Un couteau dans le cœur Directed by Yann Gonzalez
Suspiria 2018 Directed by Luca Guadagnino
Shoplifters 2018 万引き家族 Directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda

I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians 2018 Îmi este indiferent dacă în istorie vom intra ca barbari Directed by Radu Jude
Mission: Impossible – Fallout 2018 Directed by Christopher McQuarrie
Flame 2018 Polte Directed by Sami van Ingen
The Favourite 2018 Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
The Wolf House 2018 La casa lobo Directed by Cristóbal León, Joaquín Cociña

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead 2018 Directed by Morgan Neville
The Other Side of the Wind 2018 Directed by Orson Welles
If Beale Street Could Talk 2018 Directed by Barry Jenkins
Cold War 2018 Zimna wojna Directed by Paweł Pawlikowski
Fourth Era 2018 Directed by Aaron Berry

[flip]

Transit (Christian Petzold)
Leave No Trace (Debra Granik)
Keep an Eye Out (Quentin Dupieux)
Flame (Sami van Ingen)

Searching (Aneesh Chaganty)
Bird Box (Susanne Bier)
The Guilty (Gustav Moller)
How to Live With Regret (John Wilson)

Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg)
Burning (Lee Chang-dong)
The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)

Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)
Dead in a Week (Or Your Money Back) (Tom Edmunds)
Mission Impossible: Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Mike Newell)
Every Day (MIchael Sucsy)
Set It Up (Claire Scanlon)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coen Brothers)

[sally]

the portuguese woman - rita azevedo gomes
classical period - ted fendt
how fernando pessoa saved portugal - eugène green
lady j - emmanuel mouret
belmonte - federico veiroj
operation: jane walk - leonhard müllner, robin klengel
grass - hong sang-soo
hotel by the river - hong sang-soo
black pond - jessica sarah rinland
aquarela - viktor kossakovsky
winter's night - jang woo-jin
hammam - nick collins
INT. LANDSCAPES - daniel & clara
flow - su ming-yen

[Lencho of the Apes]

Barely enough to start with...

La Flor
Knife + Heart

The Wild Pear Tree - Ceylan
Birds Of Passage - Ciro Guerra, Cristina Gallego
No One Will Ever Know- Jesus Torres Torres
Las Ninas Bien - Alejandra Marquez Abella
Museo- Alonso Ruizpalacios

[Silga]

Provisional list:

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Ethan Coen, Joel Coen)
The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Vox Lux (Brady Corbet)
Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)

Rojo (Benjamín Naishtat)
Non-Fiction (Olivier Assayas)
Widows (Steve McQueen)
Ramen Shop (Eric Khoo)

Unsane (Steven Soderbergh)
Hereditary (Ari Aster)
Mary Queen of Scots (Josie Rourke)
The Hummingbird Project (Kim Nguyen)

Bad Times at the El Royale (Drew Goddard)
Tully (Jason Reitman)
If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins)
Destination Wedding (Victor Levin)

Vice (Adam McKay)
A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper)
Solo: A Star Wars Story (Ron Howard)
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie)

[rischka]

transit - petzold
la flor - llinas
the portuguese woman - azevedo gomes
kaala - pa. ranjith
altiplano - szlam

[greennui]

Two Basilicas 2018 Directed by Heinz Emigholz

[DT.]

The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel and Ethan Coen)
Capernaum (Nadine Labaki)
Cold War (Paweł Pawlikowski)
An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo)
First Man (Damian Chazelle)
Halloween (David Gordon Green)
Hereditary (Ari Aster)
High Life (Claire Denis)
The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier)
Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird)
Knife + Heart (Yann Gonzalez)
Minding the Gap (Bing Liu)
The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent)
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles)
Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg)
Shadow (Zhang Yimou)
Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey & Rodney Rothman)
The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Want to watch:

Asako I & II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler)
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)
I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Radu Jude)
Never Look Away (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)
The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard)
3 Faces (Jafar Panahi)

[Monsieur Arkadin]

Diamantino - Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt
Aruna and Her Palate - Edwin
Under the Silver Lake - David Robert Mitchell
I Signed The Petition - Mahdi Fleifel
Everybody Knows - Asghar Farhadi

Shoplifters - Hirokazu Kore-eda
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Joel and Ethan Coen
The Other Side of the Wind - Orson Welles
Ave Maryam - Razka Robby Ertanto
The Favourite - Yorgos Lanthimos

Leave No Trace - Debra Granik
Shirkers - Sandi Tan
First Man - Damian Chazelle
Knife + Heart - Yann Gonzalez
The Shadow Play - Lou Ye

[karl]

Not many for this year either:

Roma
Burning
Ayka
Shoplifters

The Public
How Fernando Pessoa Saved Portugal
Green Book (yeah, I liked it, and I don't care what all you haters say - and now, for your edification, THE ATTACKS ON GREEN BOOK AND THE RACIALIST INFECTION OF THE AFFLUENT MIDDLE CLASS by David Walsh and Joanne Laurier!: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/0 ... e-m08.html)

[rischka]

I censored myself -- moderators shouldn't behave like that

kinda stressed lately not sure why!

gonna watch films.

[Lencho of the Apes]

You have the right to post a counterpoint to other peoples' opinions.

[rischka]

thx but u don't wanna get me started on the 'fascism' of political correctness xD

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Notes on an Appearance (Ricky D'Ambrose)

A young man disappears amid talk of violence and demagoguery, leaving behind an obscure cache of letters, postcards, and notebooks.

[therouxxx]

No tiers---

The 15:17 to Paris (Clint Eastwood)
Asako I & II (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine (Takahisa Zeze)
Death Wish (Eli Roth)
Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler)
Green Book (Peter Farrelly)
KGF Chapter 1 (Prashanth Neel)
The Land of Steady Habits (Nicole Holofcener)
Maari 2 (Balaji Mohan)
Manmarziyaan (Anurag Kashyap)
Maya (Mia Hansen-Love)
October (Shoojit Sircar)
Pariyerum Perumal (Mari Selvaraj)
Peranbu (Ram)
Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg)
Transit (Christian Petzold)
Unfriended: Dark Web (Stephen Susco)
Vada Chennai (Vetrimaaran)
The Week Of (Robert Smigel)
Zero (Aanand L. Rai)


Cutting room floor---

Kedarnath, Naachiyaar, Nobody's Fool, Padi Padi Leche Manasu

[greennui]

Phantom Islands 2018 Directed by Rouzbeh Rashidi

[St. Gloede]

I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018, Radu Jude)
Lazzaro felice / Happy as Lazzaro (2018, Alice Rohrwacher)
Pájaros de verano / Birds of Passage (2018, Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra)
The Favourite (2018, Yorgos Lanthimos)

Transit (2018, Christian Petzold)
Di qiu zui hou de ye wan / Long Day's Journey Into Night (2018, Gan Bi)
S He (2018, Shengwei Zhou)
A Portuguesa (2018, Rita Azevedo Gomes)

Zimna wojna / Cold War (2018, Pawel Pawlikowski)
Da xiang xi di er zuo / An Elephant Sitting Still (2018, Bo Hu)
High Life (2018, Claire Denis)
Climax (2018, Gaspar Noé)

The Old Man & the Gun (2018, David Lowery)
Utøya 22. juli (2018, Erik Poppe)
Khrustal (2018, Darya Zhuk)
Todos lo saben / Everybody Knows (2018, Asghar Farhadi)

The House That Jack Built (2018, Lars von Trier)
Ahlat Agaci / The Wild Pear Tree (2018, Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
Le livre d'image / The Image Book (2018, Jean Luc-Godard)
Napszállta / Sunset (2018, László Nemes)

Honourable mentions:

Isle of Dogs (2018, Wes Anderson)
Another Day of Life (2018, Raúl de la Fuente, Damian Nenow)
Oiktos / Pity (2018, Babis Makridis)
Supa Modo (2018, Likarion Wainaina)
In den Gängen / In the Aisles (2018, Thomas Stuber)
Obscuro Barroco (2018, Evangelia Kranioti)
The Death & Life of John F. Donovan (2018, Xavier Dolan)
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018, Bob Persichetti & Peter Ramsey)
Zhuang si le yi zhi yang / Jinpa (2018, Pema Tseden)
Capharnaüm (2018, Nadine Labaki)

Mid90s (2018, Jonah Hill)
The Bra (2018, Veit Helmer)
A Very English Scandal (2018, Stephen Frears)
Doubles vies / Non-Fiction (2018, Olivier Assayas)
The Other Side of the Wind (2018, Orson Welles)
Yomeddine / Judgment Day (2018, A.B. Shawky)
Hmyz / Insect (2018, Jan Svankmajer)
Brothers' Nest (2018, Clayton Jacobson)
La casa lobo / The Wolf House (2018, Joaquín Cociña & Cristóbal León)
Ruben Brandt, a gyujto / Ruben Brandt, Collector (2018, Milorad Krstic)

Raiva / Rage (2018, Sérgio Tréfaut)
Ni de lian / Your Face (2018, Ming-liang Tsai)
L'heure de la sortie / School's Out (2018, Sébastien Marnier)
First Man (2018, Damien Chazelle)
Aniara (2018, Pella Kågerman, Hugo Lilja)
La ciudad oculta (2018, Víctor Moreno)
In Fabric (2018, Peter Strickland)
Roma (2018, Alfonso Cuarón)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018, The Coen Brothers)
Madeline's Madeline (2018, Josephine Decker)
Yara (2018, Abbas Fahdel)

[rischka]

I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018, Radu Jude)

i'm going to watch this again since i don't remember anything about it

[St. Gloede]

I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018, Radu Jude)

i'm going to watch this again since i don't remember anything about it

It might hit a little close to home in the current political climate in the US, but tragically I think it will only become more relevant and important.

[rischka]

I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018, Radu Jude)

i'm going to watch this again since i don't remember anything about it

It might hit a little close to home in the current political climate in the US, but tragically I think it will only become more relevant and important.

it helps me process. plus i loved his most recent film don't expect too much from the end of the world

[oOgiandujaOo]

O Horizon (2018 - The Otolith Group)
Le livre d'image / The Image Book (2018 - Jean-Luc Godard)
Isle of Dogs (2018 - Wes Anderson)
Un couteau dans le coeur / Knife + Heart (2018 - Yann Gonzalez)
郊区的鸟 / Jiao qu de niao / Suburban Birds (2018 - Sheng Qiu)

The House That Jack Built (2018 - Lars von Trier)
Vox Lux (2018 - Brady Corbet)
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018 - Joel and Ethan Coen)
Довлатов / Dovlatov (2018 - Aleksey German Jr)
The Favourite (2018 - Yorgos Lanthimos)

[wba]

Not seen much that's worth watching from 2018...

Films seen: 110+


Final list


two tiers

Apostle (Gareth Evans, UK/USA)
Ahlat Agaci "The Wild Pear Tree" (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Turkey/North Macedonia/France/Germany/Bosnia & Herzegovina/Bulgaria/Sweden/Qatar)
Nur ein Tag in Berlin "Only One Day in Berlin" (Malte Wirtz, Germany)
A Simple Favor (Paul Feig, USA/Canada)
Den of Thieves (Christian Gudegast, USA)
Game Night (John Francis Daley/Jonathan Goldstein, USA)

The House with a Clock in Its Walls (Eli Roth, USA/Canada/ India)
HERRliche Zeiten "Outmastered" (Oskar Röhler, Germany)
Kayhan (Togan Gökbakar, Turkey)
The Christmas Chronicles (Clay Kaytis, USA)
Death Wish (Eli Roth, USA/Canada)
In den Gängen "In the Aisles" (Thomas Stuber, Germany)

[rischka]

andhadhun (raghavan) is a blackly comic thriller about a blind pianist who gets mixed up in a murder. fun structure, style and suspense



and a little shoutout to tirez sur la pianiste. thx to nrh for this rec!

[MrCarmady]

attempt #2 to contribute to an ongoing poll

Roma (Alfonso Cuaron)
Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski)
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham)
Leave No Trace (Debra Granik)
Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda)

Holiday (Isabella Eklöf)
Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski)
Widows (Steve McClaren)
Transit (Christian Petzold)
Burning (Lee Chang-dong)

The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard)
Bros: After the Screaming Stops (Joe Pearlman, David Soutar)
The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell)
Leto (Kirill Serebrennikov)

The Miseducation of Cameron Post (Desiree Akhavan)
Climax (Gaspar Noé)
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos)
Blindspotting (Carlos López Estrada)
BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee)

[Lencho of the Apes]

Mixed feelings about it (mostly positive, but never *wildly* positive), but Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 is timely and topical in this moment.

[Holdrüholoheuho]

Neptune (Adéla Babanová, 2018)

This black-and-white film combines re-enactments with original footage from Operation Neptune, one of the Czechoslovak secret police’s first attempts at media manipulation, during which a group of reporters comes across secret Nazi documents at the bottom of a lake. The film’s focus, however, is on the struggle between a skeptical journalist and a high-ranking police official, and the failed attempt at revealing the state-sponsored disinformation.

In 1964, important Nazi documents were discovered at the bottom of a South Bohemian lake. Years later, this turned out to be part of a communist propaganda campaign codenamed “Neptune”. Combining live-action sequences with manipulated original documentary footage, photos, and animations, the film develops topics that oscillate between subjective and collective memories that include both solid facts and gossip and lies, and touches on issues of propaganda, information warfare, and media influence both today and in decades past.

→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation ... espionage)
→ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Martin-Bittman

https://www.filmovyprehled.cz/en/revue/ ... pectations

What brought you to the topic of Operation Neptune, one of the first disinformation campaigns of the Czechoslovak State Security that took place in the mid-1960s?

It was my brother Džian Baban, who wrote the screenplay of the film; he came up with the idea. He stumbled across the operation in the book Špionážní oprátky (“Spy Nooses”) by Ladislav Bittman, the architect of the actual Operation Neptune, which took place in the Bohemian Forest in 1964.

You used the original footage taken by Czechoslovak Television. Why did you decide to not only reference it but also use it to develop the story further?

I considered it to be an interesting viewpoint for us to adopt when looking at this historical event; we took the original story and brought it to a more symbolic level. We used the same approach when working with archive materials. We reference all of the circumstances connected to Operation Neptune, but we translate them into fiction and adjust the re-enacted scenes to the news coverage from that time. We basically allowed ourselves to manipulate them because the material itself was supposed to serve a propaganda purpose or to manipulate public opinion. That is why we resorted to a similar principle.

In your work, do you link the issue of manipulation to the past regime or rather to the present day?

I hope there is both. Hopefully, by choosing historical causes we will not typecast ourselves as artists who only process our past. Maybe our next film won’t have anything to do with history. Naturally, I’m still drawn to different events, and I like to come back to them or read about them. It is however always about the analogy to what is happening now. Neptune, too, is conceived as a reaction to the events that surround us, as if some things from our past that have not been sufficiently reflected upon were re-emerging. We may be choosing historical causes subconsciously because they are easy to work with as well as visually attractive. But next time, why don’t we do something about what is happening now? In our case, the choice of themes definitely arises from the scepticism we feel when looking at today’s world.

From your perspective as an artist who works with parallels between the past and the present, what is your view on the phenomenon of “fake news”?

When, about three years ago, Džian started to write the movie screenplay, the coverage about fake news and disinformation was not yet that prominent. Gradually though, while we worked, the issue kept growing. One piece of news piled onto another. Today, to single out fake information is absolutely vital. One isn’t even that scandalized about it anymore. It’s a step we take daily when we process information, so it’s no longer so shocking. And that is the part I feel helpless about.

You are critical of the notion of collective memory and, at the same time, you also question eyewitness accounts. In your opinion, is it even possible to look at the past objectively?

That is an extremely interesting and complex topic and also a personal issue of mine. I don’t believe a completely objective view is possible. In this context, the only thing I can do is to address history from my own subjective perspective. When telling the story in the film, I adhere to the principle of personal memories, which are by nature always incomplete and cannot give a “competent” testimony of events. That is also why some absurd situations, as well as a certain dreaminess, find their way into my films. We work with missing facts, rumours, propaganda or affairs that haven’t yet been solved but still provide sufficient space for different interpretations and conspiracy theories.

Archive materials represent a thematic and formal base for your films, but you work with them in a very subversive way. Is the primary goal to create a parody or rather to warn about the possibility of media manipulation?

I wouldn’t say a “parody”. I find the word “subversive” interesting because it captures my effort to slightly flip over the classic genres and ways of working. It doesn’t have to be a straight-up manipulation; it is rather about playing around with a certain form in a way that allows for a relationship between the viewer and the work or story to be established. I don’t like to put the viewer in a passive consumer role. That is why I leave some elements of the story open-ended. It is also the reason I am fond of open endings and unresolved plots. At that moment, they create space for the audience to draw their own conclusions and interpret more freely what might have happened.

[rischka]

Mixed feelings about it (mostly positive, but never *wildly* positive), but Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 11/9 is timely and topical in this moment.

I WANT TO BUT I CAN'T RIGHT NOW I'M STILL SCREAMING

so i'm watching the other side of the wind and enjoying the zabriskie point satire



iconic shot. lol america

[rischka]

enjoyed both hong sang-soos. in elegant black and white. i think hotel by the river is one of his very best that i've seen. esp with 'the holidays' coming









it could by my favorite for that cat cameo alone. he not only stays on the cat he zooms in highly recommended if one vibes with hong at all

grass is a very clever short film. more films under an hour plz. both will make my list. thx sally ♥

[rischka]