Your Favorite/Least Favorite Movies in 2018 and What 2019 Movies Are Yo Excited For?

Going by UK release dates...

Favourite Films
1) Avengers: Infinity War
2) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
3) Isle of Dogs
4) A Star is Born
5) I, Tonya
6) They Shall Not Grow Old
7) The Incredibles 2
8) You Were Never Really Here
9) A Ciambra
10) A Quiet Place

Worst Films
1-9) Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
10) Aquaman

Nothing else came close to their class of awful. Other disappointments were Fantastic Beasts, First Man, and the baffling BlacKkKlansman (why have different agents on the phone and in real life?!).

2019 is all about the Avengers, but I'm also looking forward to the Irishman, Star Wars, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Little Women, Hobbs & Shaw, the Lego Movie 2, How to Train Your Dragon 3, and Toy Story 4. The Lion King is perfect - leave it alone.

 

I am not looking forward to StarWars... Will be interesting to see what all this "course correction" they've been talking about is, though.

~Thylo

 

You should watch "The Predator: An Unbridled Rage" on YouTube if you want a good rundown of how horrible this movie is I won't link the video because his unbridled rage videos are a bit NSFW but I think they'd be right up your alley His video on Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is actually what inspired me to make my rant of the movie. Beware, though, his videos are often very long and best listened to how one would listen to a podcast, not a CinemaSins video.

~Thylo

 

I'm looking forward to Star Wars, but I think I might be the only one.

"Like" this post if you are looking forward to Star Wars.

 

You know me too well...

 

I've been longing to see that one with my bois for a while now...

 

I haven't commented on my entertainment tastes here before, but I know my taste fairly well and consciously separate movies I like from movies that may fit an objective measurement. I respect that conventional protagonist-driven narrative is structurally superior despite my preference for ensemble films, however, which tend to be slightly shakier on story ground.

My viewing was pretty liberal until August, and then I was forced by irl circumstance to taper off my film viewing for the year.

Favorites
- The Avengers: Infinity War
- Black Panther
- Ant Man and the Wasp
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

Three of these films catered more to my personal love of strong character-based ensembles, but I would have to argue for Black Panther as the best film by traditional measures of cinema, which favor narratives driven by a single protagonist; all that said, each of them had minor story problems I could gripe with. I can completely understand why some people loathe Fallen Kingdom, the most controversial entry, but it landed just on the side of forgivable to me.

The Oddity
- The Death of Stalin

I don't know what to say about this film, except that I very much liked it, but it also feels like MUCH longer since I've seen it than anything else listed here. Thus 'the oddity' - it's not my usual kind of film nor has a sure place in ranking.

Middle of the Pack
- Solo: A Star Wars Story
- Halloween (2018)
- Ready Player One

This was the difficult spot. All of these films were fairly solid within the framework of what had been set up, but none of them satisfied me in a specific, personal way. I really love the film Solo was trying to be, but something feels like it was lost that I can't put my finger on, which is not a common problem for me. Halloween was a mostly excellent film that happened to fall on a few pet peeves in the final Act. I don't think any of these films were actively bad though, just resoundingly okay.

Least Favorites
- Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
- Deadpool 2

Both of these films felt like despite having large casts of interesting characters, they only chose to concern themselves with a few of them in earnest; the latter example felt a little too structurally restrained in my opinion. I would consider them subpar blockbusters but neither was poor.

 

Here's my ranking list for the year. I still need to watch Roma and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, both have been highly recommended to me.

The Great
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse: 9/10

The Good
A Star is Born: 8.5/10
Annihilation: 8/10
Isle of Dogs: 8/10
Avengers: Infinity War: 8/10

The Alright
Incredibles 2: 7.5/10
Deadpool 2: 7.5/10
Black Panther: 7/10
Eighth Grade: 7/10

The Average
Aquaman: 6/10
Ant-Man and the Wasp: 6/10
First Man: 6/10

The Mediocre
Alpha: 4.5/10
Cloverfield Paradox: 4/10

The Dogpoop (to paraphrase from Jeremy Jahns)
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom: 3/10

And as a bonus
Most Anticipated for 2019: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Avengers: Endgame, Dark Phoenix, IT: Chapter 2
Least Anticipated for 2019: Sonic the Hedgehog

 

The Predator above Infinity War? Come on Chli, I thought you'd reappraised Infinity War whilst thoroughly planning Predator? Or are you just being a hipster?

And Deadpool 2 is awesome, no argument there!

 

And Deathwish above Infinity War, too! Absurd!

~Thylo

 

Should have been panning, bloody auto-correct!

 

Love the analogy, don't agree with it but love it. But can a tin of corned beef gooff that quickly? I know it has a Best Before date but I always assumed that, come the apocalypse, that's what we'd be stuck with. We don't get Twinkies in the UK..... p

Deadpool 2 made him half metal, not much of an improvement. Well, unless you're in to that sort of thing... Oh yeah, I forgot about your blue-cyborg infatuation with Karen Gillan!

That's looking better, I still haven't watched MI:Fallout yet so won't pass judgement.

 

Well I saw Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse today and WOW that was a fantastic movie. I don't think I enjoyed it as much as I did Infinity War, but I think it's probably the superior film if that makes sense to anyone. My main criticisms are that this movie does that thing where someone gives the main hero an incredibly motivational speech and then they suddenly gain (almost) perfect control of their abilities just in time for the final battle, and there is not as much Spider-Man Noir and Spider-Ham as I'd have liked. I'll give points back for the former, though, because he's still not quite perfect and does struggle quite a bit at times, but he still goes from barely being able to survive against foes to kicking ass in about a song's length. For the latter I guess you do want to leave your audience wanting more.. but still I feel they could have given us a lot more of what Nick Cage and John Mulaney had to offer. Otherwise it's an absolutely fantastic story with a lot more twists and heart to it than I expected. I'm not a huge fan of the animation style personally, but I would say it fits very well with the more "out there" comic-book tone this type of a story naturally gives off.

And whatever you do, watch the final end credit scene. When the credits were rolling I had a quick thought to myself that it'd be amazing if they had a nod to what the scene shows, but while this movie is pretty self-aware of Spider-Man pop culture in general, I thought it was something way too meta and silly for them to actually do. Oh but I was wrong, and that scene was more than I could have ever asked for

The two Stan Lee cameos are great, and the little Stan Lee and Steve Ditko remembrance bit during the credits was a very lovely touch.

~Thylo

 

Best bit of the film, and that is saying something of the quality of that scene alone! It was also the part of the film that me and my daughter were quoting to each ther all the way back home! What did you think of the nod to the dancing in Spider-Man 3? And yeah, Nic Cage definitely was the highlight for me, even with minimum lines!

I did get a little choked up when Miles first gets his suit, made me realise that Stan really is gone and the days of his cameos will soon be over.

 

I probably would, especially since I've only seen one film out of the three...

Pretty sure that's the actual phrase, my blue cyborg mates are always saying it!

The only time I've ever heard of boiled goose is in a Lonely Island song, Boombox, so I'm guessing it's to do with that?