Awards – My Top 15 Films of 2018

Top 15 Films of 2018.

So far in our awards, we have looked at Action, Animation, Best of Australia, Cinematography, Costumes, Emotion, Fun, Music, Tension, and Worldbuilding.

As well as this, we have taken a walk down the lane of our most disappointing films of 2018. However, in this last entry into in our Best of 2018 awards, we crown our winner of the best film of 2018.

Now all films are subjective, so our list might look completely different than yours, also we didn’t get to see every film this year which means we will be only drawing our Top 15 from the 90 films we did get to see, which you can see a list of HERE.

Also we had to draw the line somewhere So I am going to take a moment and list some highly commended entries: Annihilation, Ant-Man and The Wasp, Avengers: Infinity War, BlacKkKlansman, Ladies in Black, Love, Simon, Mirai, Searching, The Breaker Upperers, The Favourite, and The Shape of Water.  

Also, I should point out right from the start that Paddington 2 is not on our Best of 2018 list, that is because it was on our Best of 2017 list.  

Okay with that out of the way let dive into the first entry in our list of Best Films of 2018.

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Awards – The Costumes of 2018 That Made Us Say ‘Hot Damn’

There are many techniques you can use to help build your world, or ground your setting, or give dimensions to your characters. You can use music, you can create elaborate sets, but one of the best ways is the costumes you create.

People make instant judgments about a character within moments on the screen and the outfits are a really important part of that first impression. More than this, you can also use costumes as a way for storytelling, what do they say about this world, what do they say about how a character is progressing.  

Costumes can build worlds, tell us details we can only see, but also they can just make us say ‘hot damn’ look at that beading on that dress, that must have taken hours to do. So without further ado, these are the costumes that made us say ‘hot damn’ in 2018. Be warned that there may be some slight spoilers ahead for the films in question.     

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Awards – Cinematography That Made You Go Wow!

Cinematography That Made You Go Wow!

Cinematography is an art form that can be as bold as a gong crashing after a moment of silence, or as subtle as the tide coming in. It is something that elevates a film to the heights of accolade or turns a film into a frustrating mess when it misfires.

While at the heart of cinematography is the Director of Photography or Cinematographer, to get something from the script to the final shot takes a whole team of professionals, and it is their talent that we champion today.

So without further ado, these are the moments of cinematography that took our breaths away in 2018. Be warned that there may be some slight spoilers ahead for the films in question.

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Movie Review – A Simple Favor

TL;DR – Crazy, absurd, ridiculous, tense, and an amazing ball of fun

Score – 4 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene

A Simple Favor. Image Credit: Lionsgate

Review

The tone is something that can make or break a film, and you would think it would be an easy thing to get right, but alas it can be a tightrope to walk at times. This is especially important when you are blending genres and still trying to make it feel like a constant whole. Today we look at a film A Simple Favor that walks that tightrope from absurdity to high strung tension and makes it look effortless. Now before we get into the review proper, I do want to say that I have not read the book so I will leave it to others more knowledgeable than me to let you know if it is a good adaption or not, and I’ll just focus on the film.

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Movie Review – Crazy Rich Asians

TL;DR – During the film, I along with the whole cinema, laughed, cried, gasp ‘oh no you didn’t and I can’t remember a film that had that same reaction

Score – 5 out of 5 stars

Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid-credit scene

Crazy Rich Asians. Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Review

There are some films that simply be being made are making a statement of intent. These are films like last year’s Black Panther (see review) and Wonder Women (see review), films that “conventional” Hollywood wisdom states that they shouldn’t be made because they won’t make any money. There is a long history of information coming from focus groups that people are not interested in films helmed by women and people of colour, information which is inevitable proven wrong time after time when the box office numbers are released. To put this in perspective, the last live-action film from Hollywood to feature a predominately Asian cast was The Joy Luck Club twenty-five years ago in 1993. This means a whole generation of people have grown up and not seen their stories or people like themselves up on the big screen, and well folks this is why representation matter. So while Crazy Rich Asians is important for just existing, it is even more power from the fact that it is also a fantastic film in its own right and one of my films of the year so far.

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