NBP Top 10's Of 2018 - Tom O'Brien

By Tom O'Brien 

Wow, this has been a tough year to narrow a list down to just ten films. We've had some great films about life in eighth grade, leaving no trace in the woods, becoming the first man on the moon and life in Wakanda. But these ten spoke the most to me and will be what I would love most to revisit in the years to come. You've seen the wonderful Top 10 lists from my NBP colleagues Matt, Danilo, Kt, Josh Parham, Jacey, Celia, Cody, Josh Williams, Nicole Ackman, Daniel Howat, Ryan C. Showers & Beatrice Loayza.

​So let me join them and add my ten cents.

​10. Paddington 2

​Though I had regarded the first "Paddington" film as one of the 20 best films of 2015, I had much lesser hopes for its 2018 sequel. Was I wrong! "Paddington 2," which was released in early January, exceeds its predecessor in almost every way, from the loving family dynamic (which includes Sally Hawkins, Hugh Bonneville and Julie Walters) to Ben Whishaw's wondrous vocal performance as the marmalade-loving bear but particularly thanks to a gloriously Oscar-worthy performance by Hugh Grant as a washed-up leading man who has a particular grudge against this plushy bear. The film contains two of the most astonishing sequences of the year -- a tour of London that is shot as if it was part of a paper pop-up book, and the film's final sequence in which Grant leads a group of hardened convicts in a Stephen Sondheim number from "Follies." One will bring a tear to your eye, and the other will cause your jaw to drop to the floor. I'm normally not one to get all gushy over a film's worldview that there is good inside of everyone, but when it is presented with such skill and artistry as "Paddington 2," well, I'm going to get all gushy.

9. Shoplifters

​"Shoplifters" is the latest film by Hirokazu Kore-eda, a Japanese filmmaker whose wonderfully humane works include "Nobody Knows" (2005) about four young children who are forced to survive on their own and 2014's "Like Father, Like Son" which focuses on a father who learns that his beloved son was actually switched at birth. As you can tell, Kore-eda is great with kids, and so he is here in what is arguably his best film since his 1998 masterpiece "After Life." With "Shoplifters," he gives us three generations of a family that needs to supplement its income by having the grandma, the parents and the kids (even the youngest) pocket needed household items into their purses and backpacks. It is only when they take in a young unwanted child from the neighborhood and welcome her into their home that the family scheme begins to break apart from the inside. There's no rush with a Kore-eda film as he is one of those filmmakers who takes the time to develop his characters fully, which help his emotional endings pay off big. "Shoplifters" won Cannes' highest honor this year, the Palme d'Or, as well as earning an Oscar nomination, and given Kore-eda's detailed crafting of character and relationships, it's easy to see why.

8. BlacKkKlansman

​With "BlacKkKlansman," this year's winner of the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival, Spike Lee is back in fighting form, creating a film that is angry, yet at the same time is still hilarious and important. The real-life story of Colorado Springs police Det. Ron Stallworth (John David Washington) who infiltrated the local Ku Klux Klan chapter with the help of his undercover partner Flip Zimmerman (Oscar nominee Adam Driver) provides Lee with a blank canvas with which create a tale that is politically pointed yet thrillingly vibrant. Although the film is set in the early 1970s, its depiction of the attempt by right-wing elements to mainstream racist attitudes seems even more relevant today. Lee's filmmaking skills have always been evident, but with "BlacKkKlansman," the elements that make his films so distinctive -- the mixture of political anger tempered with leavening humor -- are balanced precisely, and the result is a hugely entertaining film with a whole lot on its mind. 

​7. A Star Is Born

​Bradley Cooper has made the fourth iteration of the show-business chestnut "A Star Is Born" look so easy and enjoyable that it's easy to forget just how many obstacles that the film had to overcome to achieve the financial and critical success that it has become. To begin with, you have the film directed by an actor who had never directed before, starring a singer who had never carried a leading role in a motion picture and a story that could have had a been-there, done-that feel to it. Yet somehow in Cooper's hands, it all feels fresh with an emotionally-charged screenplay, and terrific performances from Cooper, Lady Gaga and Sam Elliott (all Oscar-nominated). Probably the most lasting takeaway from "A Star Is Born" for me is that, despite the big-budget studio look to the film, it has the spirit of an independent film. (That scene of the two main characters talking music in that late-night parking lot could come out of any independent film). And to be able to achieve that within the pressure cooker of a studio film might be the most impressive achievement of all.

6. Annihilation

​Alex Holland's sci-fi horror film is the best film of 2018 that was dumped by its distributor, which seemingly did everything it could not to bring this remarkable film to the very audience that I suspect would have loved it. Holland, the filmmaker behind the similarly striking sci-fi triumph "Ex Machina," has adapted the Jeff VanderMeer novel into an almost hallucinogenic film that, at its core, is about dealing with grief. Lena, an ex-GI and a cellular-biology professor, is still grieving the presumed death of her husband Kane a year later when he suddenly reappears as a shell of the man he once was. Determined to work through her grief and learn what happened to the man she loved, Lena volunteers to recreate the same mission as her husband to go behind "The Shimmer," an iridescent electromagnetic field behind which lie genetic mutations that threaten her 5-woman team in search of the truth. "Annihilation" has just the right amount of monster scares, but it is the mental changes through which the women must go that are the most terrifying part of the film and have still stayed with me more than a year after seeing "Annihilation." Great work all around.

5. Cold War

​Ignore the implications of the title. Pawel Pawlikowski's black-and-white stunner is anything but chilly. Set in Europe from the 1940s through the 1960s, "Cold War" depicts a romance between Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) a musical director who, on a talent search for authoritative folk singers, discovers Zula (Joanna Kulig) who offers him much more than the peasant girl she may be pretending to be. The pair begins a torrid affair that starts with sex but then deepens to a need for one another emotionally. However, when the Communist powers-that-be decree that Viktor's show must reflect the party's values, Viktor decides to escape to The West, but Zula declines to join him. Though now apart, their longing still continues. What Pawlikowski has done here is remarkable, compressing the story of a long-running romance set against the conflict between East and West into a tight and taut 88 minutes. And the starkly contrasting blacks and whites of Lukasz Zal's Oscar-nominated cinematography will take your breath away.

4. If Beale Street Could Talk

​I think of Barry Jenkins' "If Beale Street Could Talk" as a haunting piece of symphonic music. It begins with the strings -- Barry Jenkins' poetic adaptation of the classic James Baldwin novel. That's then followed by the woodwinds -- James Laxton's extraordinary cinematography, producing several of this year's most iconic film images, such as a red umbrella on a rainy Village street or a woodworker being encircled by a waft of cigarette smoke. Then finally there's the soft brass -- the remarkable score by Nicholas Britell that brings it all home. That's not even counting the top-flight performances by relative newcomers KiKi Layne and Stephan James, the one-scene wonder of Brian Tyree Henry and of course, Regina King herself, giving a performance (in a career of award-winning performances) that tops them all. My fervent hope is when the "Green Book's" and "Bohemian Rhapsody's" of this Oscar year get relegated to the trash heap of history, "If Beale Street Could Talk" can be remembered as one of the truly bright lights of 2018.

​3. First Reformed

​Watching Paul Schrader's powerful "First Reformed," I felt the same kind of narrative excitement that I always associate with the films of the 1970s. Here Schrader, who has finally been nominated for his first Oscar for this amazing script, uses the same kind of slow build that he utilized so effectively in "Taxi Driver." Ethan Hawke delivers a towering performance as Rev. Ernst Toller, pastor of the First Reformed Church which has become more of a tourist attraction rather than a vibrant community. Turning to drink that may be the cause of his stomach cancer, Rev. Toller finds his faith beginning to be restored when he meets a new parishioner Mary Mensana (Amanda Seyfried) and her husband Michael (Philip Ettinger) whom he later learns is an eco-terrorist. Shrader skillfully weaves the environmental story with Toller's crisis of faith in a way that leads to a pulse-pounding third act that hasn't made me squirm in my seat as much as...well..."Taxi Driver."

2. Roma

​What more can be said about Alfonso Cuarón's memory piece recalling his childhood in the Mexico City neighborhood called Roma, and his lifelong relationship with his nanny/housekeeper/confidante Cleo (Oscar nominee Yalitza Aparicio)? The more specific Cuarón gets in recalling his boyhood memories, the more universal "Roma" becomes, speaking to all of our joys and disappointments in life. What's exhilarating about experiencing "Roma" in a theater is that you can really appreciate just how powerful a craftsman Cuarón can be, as his sumptuous black-and-white cinematography offers striking tableaux after tableaux, an editing style of long takes that set an effectively deliberate pace and a sound design the likes of which I have rarely heard in a film. (At one point, I thought I heard a guy mouthing off in the back of the theater, only to realize that it was the movie and part of Cuarón's sound design). Add to that, strong performances from both Aparicio and surprise Oscar nominee Marina de Tavira, and you've got a film that's one for the ages.

1. The Favourite

​But I'm putting Yorgos Lanthimos' "The Favourite" as my personal number one thanks to the sheer audacity of this grand mad enterprise. The British costume drama is a genre unto itself with certain stringent rules, which Lanthimos proceeds to break in scene after scene. What struck me on a second viewing was that in between the outrageous moments, from the duck races to the blood-orange pelting, "The Favourite" is actually very disciplined in how it lays out its story. The twists and shifts of power are always a surprise, but looking back, they come at just the right time. It's a glimpse at the politics of power -- how those who have it use it (or don't) and just how far that people that don't have it will go to get it. And to see three female characters, played by three great actresses, set the stage for all the jostling (both in and out of bed) adds an extra kick to what makes this film so special. "The Favourite" turns the table upside down as to our expectations of what a British costume drama can be, and any film that so artfully plays with our notions of what a film should be gets my vote.

Be on the look out for more of our Top 10's, our annual NBP Film Award Nominations this Sunday and you can vote now on the NBP Film Community Awards as we get closer to the 91st Academy Awards (the true end to our film year).

You can follow Tom and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars and Film on Twitter at @thomaseobrien