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Kevin Ritchie’s top 10 movies of 2018

This year was all about films that question entrenched values around just about everything – art, celebrity, dating, memory, friendship, masculinity – but many of my top movies were about the way we work. Artists are thinking progressively about the systems that allow creativity to flourish while our political leaders – across the spectrum – remain stuck in the past. Here’s a nostalgia-free list of the top 10 movies of 2018.

1. Madeline’s Madeline

D: Josephine Decker

Decker’s visually explosive third feature blurs imagination with reality, taking us deep inside a predatory artistic collaboration between a  volatile teen (Helena Howard) and an experimental theatre doyenne (Molly Parker). In so many ways this feels like a personal and specific film, but Decker manages to hold a magnifying glass to wider cultural conversations around collaboration and artistic responsibility. The result is a mind-bending head trip: romantic, scathing and totally absorbing.

2. Her Smell

D: Alex Ross Perry

What happens when punk ideals collide with capitalism? The answer is Her Smell, a nightmarish backstage drama starring Elisabeth Moss as a narcissistic 90s grunge rocker that will make even the most cold-hearted of celebrity-meltdown enthusiasts flinch.  Halfway through, something switches and Her Smell morphs into a deeply empathetic portrait of friendship persevering against serious, I-just-dropped-my-own-baby-and-probably-stabbed-you-on-purpose odds.

3. Let The Sunshine In

D: Claire Denis

The best movie about being single ever made. Juliette Binoche is on the market, making all the wrong choices and coming back for more. Denis’s sly masterpiece is as sober as they come, but elegantly spits in the face of prevailing cultural norms that position dating as a grind or purely a means to an end. The iconic final scene is an uncynical  and much-needed expression of optimism. (Catch it on the big screen on March 31 as part of TIFF’s Claire Denis retrospective.)

4. Bisbee ’17

D: Robert Greene

This genre-blurring documentary follows the citizens of Bisbee, Arizona,  re-enacting the forced deportation of 1,300 striking immigrant miners from their Arizona town a century ago. Greene subverts an overused documentary device – the reenactment – to uncover the ways past traumas reverberate in the present. His risky cinematic experiment more than pays off thanks to a diverse cast of  local players who are totally game. It’s also stunning to look at.

5. High Life

D: Claire Denis

You know what Solaris needed? More sex. Denis takes the prison drama to an extreme new level by sending a group of inmates hurtling toward a black hole. A simple-yet-strangely-striking sci-fi aesthetic (that is barely futuristic) underscores how life is really just a bunch of basic human impulses – good and bad. Not exactly earth-shattering, but High Life is all about the moving, terrifying and zany ride. Turns out meditative cinema and B-movie plotting are better together.

6. Diamantino

D: Gabriel Abrantes, Daniel Schmidt

A hopelessly good-looking Portuguese soccer star (Carloto Cotta) with a fluffy puppy obsession is unwittingly roped into a series of diabolical schemes as fascism flares up across Europe in this queer and campy socio-political satire. Diamantino is anti-subtlety but refreshing in the way it exalts its male hero’s openness, vulnerability and sexually ambiguity. An incisive yet ridiculous reflection of this surreal moment when the world somehow feels both more closed off and more open.

7. Shirkers

D: Sandi Tan

Director Tan takes the influences from her formative years as a pop-culture-obsessed teen growing up in late 80s/early 90s Singapore and distills them into a wildly entertaining mystery-memoir unlike any other movie to come out this year. Ostensibly the story of a lost classic of Singaporean cinema, Shirkers gradually reveals itself to be a nuanced examination of teenage friendship and how artistic endeavours hinge on chemistry between a specific group of people. A movie about reassessing the past with unsentimental eyes that’s never predictable.

8. Support The Girls

D: Andrew Bujalski

A revelatory Regina Hall stars as the tireless manager of a Hooters-esque “breastaurant” who loves her co-workers (Haley Lu Richardson and Shayna McHayle – both hilarious) but hates her boss in this charming comedy from writer/director Bujalski. There are lots of relationship movies out there, but few really capture what happens when we wind up in unhealthy relationships with our jobs. A smart and essential movie about searching for joy and personal fulfillment in a time of economic anxiety and precarious work.

9. Sorry To Bother You

D: Boots Riley

Riley’s late-capitalist comedy about a telemarketer from Oakland (Lakeith Stanfield) who exploits white privilege to succeed at life is a sharp and unapologetically leftist satire of the interconnectedness of class, race and labour. The comedy grows increasingly bizarre (and low-brow), but the politics wouldn’t fly if the jokes didn’t land. Standouts in the memorable supporting cast include Tessa Thompson, Danny Glover, Steven Yeun and Kate Berlant.

10. Minding The Gap

D: Bing Liu

First-time feature director Liu sets a new bar for skateboarding docs with a film that beautifully examines the sources and consequences of male anger and alienation. As the story about two skater friends coming of age in a depressed Midwestern American town grows more fraught, how the young director handles disturbing revelations becomes just as fascinating and dramatic as the unfolding story. All men should watch this movie.

Honourable mentions

Matangi/Maya/M.I.A., Black Mother, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Widows, What You Gonna Do When The World’s On Fire?, Graves Without A Name, First Reformed, Border, Too Late To Die Young, If Beale Street Could Talk, Isle Of Dogs, Dead Souls, Vox Lux, Lover For A Day and The Tale

@KevinRitchie

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