And also continuing what is looking promisingly like it will become a personal tradition, here's my third annual personal reflection on my favourites from the year, with the full list of all movies I saw in 2018 at the bottom. (My 2017 list can be found here, and my 2016 list here, for interested parties and dedicated stalkers.)
I feel like people say this at the end of every year but 2018 really did feel like a special year for movies. I mean, in October *alone* I got to see Wildlife (NYFF), Burning (NYFF), Leave No Trace (in-flight), A Star Is Born, First Man, Beautiful Boy, ROMA (NYFF), Won't You Be My Neighbor (also in-flight), and mid90s -- a truly embarrassing embarrassment of riches. I look back at that list and wonder how I got anything done in that month that wasn't related to putting my butt in theater seats...? And yeah, I know, that's the time of year when awards season films all descend at once, but still. That list. That's just not even fair to any of the other months.
And, of course, I will always look back on August 2018 as that glorious and barrier-breaking time we lived through called #AsianAugust. Crazy Rich Asians, Searching, and To All the Boys I've Loved Before landed on the big and small screens, and each one filled me up in a simultaneously new and familiar way. Sometimes you don't fully register what you've been missing until you have it, finally, right in front of you, and then it all crashes over you like a wave, first as a feeling of total revelation, then delight, then awe (mostly that it took this long for this thing to arrive), and finally, a hunger for more. Representation matters, and if you are an Asian-American, British-Asian, Asian-Canadian, or any other kind of Asian-living-in-a-Western-culture, August 2018 felt like it was a long time coming.
I ranked my top ten movies for 2017, but it seemed like a futile undertaking for my favourites from 2018. (The only notable exception to this is the #1 spot, which easily, easily goes to Paddington 2.) So here are my top ten movies of 2018 in alphabetical order, which is kind of obnoxiously #FilmTwitter of me, but oh well!!!
(Also, as with last year, I'm writing this list while still having not yet seen many other noteworthy releases from 2018, because if I waited until I'd watched everything we'd be on the other side of April before this went up. So - still on my watchlist: If Beale Street Could Talk (I know, I know), Shirkers, Free Solo, Madeline's Madeline, Blindspotting, Minding the Gap, Skate Kitchen, RBG, The Kindergarten Teacher, At Eternity's Gate, Boy Erased, and like, five bajillion others.)
Burning
I arrived late to the screening of Burning that Dawn and I had bought tickets for at the New York Film Festival, panting and breathless, and fairly trampled all over the poor elderly couple at the end of our row in my hurry to sit down. By the time I had my rear in my seat (and had apologized profusely to the sweet couple I'd knocked over on my right), Jeon Jong-seo's character, Hae-mi, was in the middle of pantomiming the act of peeling a tangerine over bottles of soju to her childhood friend, Lee Jong-su (Yoo Ah-in). Watching her, I was as transfixed, confused, and maybe as unsettled, as Jong-su.
It was a feeling that wasn't to go away for the rest of the movie, which is as slow a *burn* as you'll ever see, and just as hard to categorize. A depiction of Korean class conflict and pent-up working-class frustration, and also a thriller, and also a character drama, and also, maybe, a love story? Maybe not. "It's just a really...unsettling movie," I vaguely and unhelpfully told numerous friends who asked me what genre it was. But as with most movies, ultimately it doesn't really matter what it is so much as what it does. And Burning does a whole damn lot, building tension and unease through just the slightest psychological shifts until all of that buildup finally boils over in the disturbing (and perfect) climax.
At the end of all that, we haven't even talked yet about Steven Yeun, playing a charismatic, faintly unlikable, mysteriously wealthy Korean Gatsby to chilling effect, and obviously thriving. I am looking forward to the day we get to see him get to play such complex leading roles in American films, but until then, I'm glad we have Burning.
Also, Burning did not make it off the shortlist into the final nominations for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. This is maybe the only good response to this wild injustice.
Crazy Rich Asians
What else is left to say about Crazy Rich Asians?
Well, maybe a few more things, though even these few things have likely been said by others, and more eloquently:
That while I have never been starved of seeing faces that looked like mine on screen, having had Korean dramas and movies to turn to in high school and college, Crazy Rich Asians gave me the first experience of seeing on the big screen faces that looked like mine but that also reflected back to me my own heart struggles over the years of being an individual tossed back and forth between two seemingly opposing cultures. Like the struggle of never perfectly fitting anywhere, of feeling that my identity is determined at any given time by whichever country I am not currently inhabiting at that moment: Asian when in America, American/English/Western (and of these, which?) when in Korea. Like the struggle of choking down tears and fighting the burning behind my eyes every time I say goodbye to my mother at Incheon Airport to come back to America, fearing that my decision to stay here means that I am, selfishly, so American-ly, choosing career and personal fulfillment over family.
That when it showed Asian street foods as dishes to be excitedly drooled over rather than strange foreign substances to be made fun of, it healed a bitterness left over from my childhood, when white schoolmates made rude comments about my rice and gim, and I did not yet have the language to stand up for myself and my culture.
That when it allowed Peik Lin's mother to say "aircon," so naturally, instead of "air conditioning" or "AC," it let me see my own mother on the screen, in a totally new and poignant context.
That when I realized afresh and abruptly, halfway through it, that I was seeing an Asian-American female lead and and a British-Asian male lead at the center of an unabashedly and joyfully Asian story, my heart felt like it would burst.
That in giving me the opportunity to cheer and laugh and gasp and cry along with so many other Asian-Americans in a packed screening room at AMC Times Square, it made me feel a sense of community I'd never felt in a movie theater before.
That it was (and is) the movie I had literally been waiting my whole life -- twenty-five years -- for. That it is, for me and for many others, so much more than a movie.
Eighth Grade
By the time I reached the eighth grade at my tiny private Christian international school in Korea, I was a fairly well-adjusted kid, possessing a healthy amount of confidence, and surrounded by solid girlfriends. But still I had my own very large share of insecurities and anxieties. Is my forehead too big? Why is my skin so oily? Am I outgoing enough? Do the upperclassmen like me? Do my classmates think I am funny? Will boys -- hell, just one boy -- ever be interested in me? Will this nightmare ever end?
Watching Eighth Grade was a deeply uncomfortable experience. Seeing your younger self's most private insecurities (see above) laid so bare on a gigantic screen in a room with a hundred other people can have that effect. I squirmed in my seat, covered my eyes, flinched, and groaned multiple times throughout, as did nearly everyone around me, and yet, and yet, and yet.
Bo Burnham is so tender in his storytelling, Elsie Fisher so raw and vulnerable in her portrayal of Kayla and her anxiety, and Hot Dad Josh Hamilton so wrenchingly earnest in his attempts to convey to his daughter how much he loves her just as she is, that I walked out of the theater dwelling on all of these things instead of on the many painfully awkward interactions that had had me cringing throughout. I thought of my eighth grade self and all of her insecurities, how desperately she wished she had double-lidded eyes and clearer skin, how much she wanted to appear effortlessly cool and confident and outgoing to her peers. And in that moment I found myself silently reaching down through the years to tell eighth grade me something she, like Kayla, couldn't have know then, but would learn eventually: it gets better. I promise.
Leave No Trace
I have only two things I can coherently say with regards to this quietly heartbreaking, beautifully low-key movie, and they are as follows:
1. A world that can overlook Debra Granik for a Best Director Oscar is a world which fully illustrates to me the fallenness of humankind as nothing else does, and
2. The not-exactly-final but almost-final eleven words uttered by 13-year-old Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) to her father Will (Ben Foster), who suffers from PTSD, cut deeper for me than perhaps any other line in any other movie I saw last year. (I think it is probably be a three-way tie between this, Constance Wu's mah jong monologue gut punch, and Eighth Grade Hot Dad Josh Hamilton's campfire monologue tearfest.)
Public service announcement: Leave No Trace is now streaming on Amazon Prime. So do yourself a favour and go watch it.
Paddington 2
Yes, it's true -- my favourite movie of 2018 was a family comedy (with surprising emotional heft) about a bear who adores marmalade sandwiches and believes firmly that basic human kindness can fix anything!
Could it have been anything else, in a year that saw xenophobia run rampant and it felt like every day delivered a fresh new batch of headlines about the deepest sorts of human unkindness from every corner of the country?
Paddington 2 is the bright, joyous, hopeful, and kind antidote that it is for all of the above.* Unlike the jaded heroes of so many (non-family) films, Paddington has a pure, unshakable faith in the basic goodness of humanity ("My Aunt Lucy says, 'If you are kind and polite, the world will be right'"), and readily accepts everyone around him, regardless of race, class, age, status, or even criminal background. He infuses every sphere he inhabits -- his adopted home with the Brown family, the street they live on in London -- with a warmth and joy that's contagious, even the prison he is wrongfully sent to, where he accidentally dyes all the inmates' uniforms pink and institutes bright and colourful tea parties in the prison cafeteria.
ON TOP OF ALL THAT, this damn movie gives you: a Wes Anderson-esque aesthetic bringing additional life to the movie's antics, endlessly creative and clever visual sequences, delightful supporting characters in each member of the Brown family, and a wonderfully roguish villain in Hugh Grant.
But for me the beating heart of the movie is Paddington's unswerving love for his Aunt Lucy, who raised him back in Peru (and for whom he is on a quest to procure a stolen pop-up book as a birthday present). Though we don't see her aside from a couple of flashbacks, we feel her gentle influence throughout, in Paddington's ability to find good in everyone around him, and in every decision he makes to be kind and polite even when others are not so to him. And the ultimate emotional payoff of all of his actions, and his journey, in the movie's ending -- which had me sobbing (both times) with a single frame -- is all the more profound for knowing that Paddington's kindness was never driven by possible personal reward, but out of a belief he holds to with his whole heart, that if you are kind and polite the world will be right. The real world is messy and we know that this isn't enough to fix things, but for a couple of hours, we believe maybe it is, and we go out there and try.
*For a great piece on the new wave of nicecore movies in the age of Trump, check out this from my favourite film critic, IndieWire's David Erhlich.
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse**
The first time (out of a grand total of two times in total) that I ever saw Edwin cry was while we were watching The Lego Movie, spring semester of our senior year of college, on a double date with Yerin and Josh. There was a joke about loose band-aids in Lego boxes and while all four of us laughed, Edwin lost his effing mind. He continued laughing long after the rest of us had stopped, and kept going and going until the tears came, and we stared at him, bewildered.
I thought of that moment while watching Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, aware that it was produced by the same duo behind The Lego Movie, which I remember at the time had blown me away in my seat with its sheer creativity and energy (and ability to make my stoic boyfriend cry laughing). It makes sense, that the same feeling of awe I'd felt seeing the world Chris Miller and Phil Lord had created around a childhood toy washed over me again as I took in the fullness of the comic book animation world of Miles Morales -- a world which could contain infinite alternate universes and show us our hero's most intimate thoughts with one delicate frame and make me hold my breath multiple times and forget I was holding it.
In some sense I don't feel qualified to heap praise on Spider-Verse, not being a Marvel diehard or a comic reader (if you are looking for nerds, I will refer you to my trusty pop culture chat buds Stephen Haw and Nathan Huynh), but maybe that is part of the measure of just how brilliant it is. I understood exactly 0% of Stephen and Nathan's excited chatter about the movie's Easter eggs in our group chat after we all watched it, but I do know I did not need to be a Marvel geek to be fully transported by the art, the soundtrack, the voice acting, the storytelling, and the profound empathy of this world. And I sure as hell did not need to be a Marvel geek to be moved to tears not once, but three times.
Shoplifters
EDIT: Stephen told me this was too spoiler-y so... (vague, but I guess still spoiler-y) spoilers ahead!
Hirokazu Kore-eda's Shoplifters broke my heart this past winter and did not even do it the courtesy of putting it back together again, as some more considerate movies are kind enough to do.
With the first ninety minutes, Shoplifters lulled me into a false sense of security about its being a simple but moving slice-of-life film about a Japanese family living on the margins and shoplifting to get by. Early on, the Shibatas adopt? technically kidnap? take in? five-year-old Juri, whose bruised arms tell them what she won't -- or can't -- tell them herself, and gently, lovingly start to draw her out of her protective shell. As she adjusts to her new, tight-knit family, we begin to get glimpses into the struggles its individual members wrestle with in their daily lives, external difficulties such as being laid off at work, as well as feelings of loss, resentment, doubt and anxiety. But what's always constant and certain is that the Shibatas love each other and will always stick together, because what is family if not the people who love you most, and the ones who will stay by your side even through the hard times? And so I drifted easily through those first ninety minutes, getting to know the everyday joys and worries of this family's life and how they carried each other through their various struggles, moving from one day to the next with a grace and hope that belied their circumstances.
And then something happened that abruptly turned the entire movie on its head, delivering a sucker punch to my stomach as it did so. The film I thought I knew and the family I thought I knew by that point began to unravel, challenging all of us complacent idiots in the audience to reconsider everything we believed to be true -- about family and what really makes a family, about belonging and who we belong to, about what binds people together and whether love is enough.
I walked out of the theater in a daze. The tears had dried by then but I hadn't reached any sort of conclusion for all the questions the final third of Shoplifters had posed me. I still haven't.
Support the Girls / The Favourite** / Wildlife
I'm grouping these three together not only because I crossed the point where this post became "too long" some million and one words ago, but also because, while wildly different from each other in style and story, all three strike a loud and poignant chord on the relentlessly wearying experience of being a woman in a man's world.
Some of the most resonant scenes and images I take away from the movies in 2018 are those of Regina Hall letting the emotional and mental exhaustion -- of constantly dealing with a casually racist boss and the blatantly disrespectful male customers who patronize the "sports bar with curves" she manages -- juuust barely slip through the cracks of a capable and cheerful exterior. So subtle, but you can see the tiredness in her eyes. And of Olivia Colman's Queen Anne, playing the endlessly trying game of keeping order in a Parliament full of men who hold her in contempt and chafe under her authority. And of Carey Mulligan's 1960s Montana housewife, struggling to keep her life together when her restless husband leaves her and their young son behind to go fight the great fires that are raging in the mountains; and after years of having dutifully followed him as he uprooted their family from place to place, she is left with... what, exactly?
Theirs are characters in circumstances far removed from my own in time and space, and yet, watching all of those movies, I identified deeply with their frustration, despair, weariness, and, especially, their anger. But in the very existence of these women and their struggles on screen I also found a profound joy. The women of Support the Girls, well, support each other and scream into the abyss together. The three (!) leading (!) women (!) of The Favourite shine so brightly in their messy (but oh so fun), three-way love/sex/power struggle, while the men hover at the fringes -- I rooted for all of them and none of them. Carey Mulligan's Jeanette is flawed and often selfish as a human being and mother, but the movie doesn't condemn her for her choices; rather, it gives her the space to be fully herself, flaws and all, as she slowly figures out what she wants out of her life. (Side note: at the NYFF screening I attended, a grossly sexist old white dude decided to use the post-screening Q&A to deliver his unsolicited criticism of Carey Mulligan's character as reprehensible and unsympathetic, but she (and director/writer Paul Dano) shut him down real quick.)
In a year when I felt, more than any other year, that I was constantly on the verge of imploding in on my own fatigue and anger, living as a woman in a world where Brett Kavanaugh gets confirmed to the Supreme Court and men still think it's cute to catcall women on the street, I was thankful for these three films. To see complex, stereotype-defying, strong, flawed women be their own heroes, at the center of their own stories, overcoming the challenges of the male-dominated world around them -- 2018 was a mess of a year, but at least it got a few things right.
--
**Technically I watched Spider-Verse and The Favourite in 2019, but I am including them here because they were both 2018 releases.
Honourable mentions aka OTHER FAVES: A Star Is Born, Black Panther, First Reformed, Hearts Beat Loud, Mission Impossible: Fallout, Roma, Searching, Sorry to Bother You, The Hate U Give
And here's the full list of movies I watched in 2018, in order of viewing:
* = highly recommend
- The Greatest Showman (2017)*
- 청년경찰 (Midnight Runners) (2017)
- Goodbye, Christopher Robin (2017)
- The Shape of Water (2017)*
- Paddington 2 (2018)*
- Paddington (2014)*
- The Post (2017)
- Phantom Thread (2017)*
- I, Tonya (2017)
- Black Panther (2018)*
- Before Midnight (2013)*
- Lost in Translation (2003)*
- The Martian (2015)
- A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
- Game Night (2018)*
- A Quiet Place (2018)*
- All These Small Moments (2018) (Tribeca Film Festival)
- Captain America: Civil War (2016)
- Avengers: Infinity War (2018)*
- Logan (2017)
- Gifted (2017)
- Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001)*
- Solo (2018)
- Ocean's 8 (2018)
- American Animals (2018)
- Hearts Beat Loud (2018)*
- Set It Up (2018)*
- First Reformed (2018)*
- The Incredibles II (2018)
- Creed (2015)
- 밤치기 (Hit the Night) (2018) (New York Asian Film Festival)
- Yellow Submarine (1968)
- Eighth Grade (2018)*
- The Princess Diaries (2001) - my millionth rewatch; not entirely sure why this is on my list but
- Sorry to Bother You (2018)*
- The Tale (2018)*
- West Side Story (1961)
- The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (2004) - ditto Princess Diaries 1
- Mission Impossible: Fallout (2018)*
- Crazy Rich Asians (2018)*
- To All the Boys I've Loved Before (2018)*
- 너의 결혼식 (On Your Wedding Day (2018)
- Searching (2018)*
- Juliet, Naked (2018)*
- A Simple Favor (2018)
- Support the Girls (2018)*
- Wildlife (2018) (New York Film Festival)*
- Burning (2018) (New York Film Festival)*
- Leave No Trace (2018)*
- A Star Is Born (2018)*
- First Man (2018)*
- Beautiful Boy (2018)
- Roma (2018) (New York Film Festival)*
- Won't You Be My Neighbor (2018)*
- mid90s (2018)
- The Hate U Give (2018)*
- Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald (2018)
- The Princess Switch (2018)
- Wreck It Ralph 2: Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018)*
- Shoplifters (2018)*
- Bridget Jones' Diary (2001)
- Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
- Elf (2003)
- BlacKkKlansman (2018)*
