Probably the most notable thing about 2018 was the box-office success of big-budget franchise films and sequels - Deadpool 2, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Jurassic World and Fantastic Beasts.
Once
again, the year in popular film has been a little underwhelming –
with a few exceptions. 2018 has brought to our screens the usual
plethora of biopics and films based on true stories, big-budget
entries in seemingly endlessly proliferating franchise series,
sophomoric indie comedy-dramas and some solid, if minor, genre films.
And the year isn’t even over yet.
Probably
the most notable thing about 2018 was the box-office success of
big-budget franchise films and sequels, including films I have no
intention of seeing (Deadpool
2, Solo: A Star Wars Story, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom; Mama
Mia! Here We Go Again, and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of
Grindelwald, to name a few) and some still to be seen that look a
little more promising (Creed II, Mission: Impossible – Fallout and
The Predator, for example).
Here,
then, are my top five of the year, some of the more notable
disappointments, and a few I am eagerly anticipating.
Suspiria
Luca
Guadagnino directed one of the best films of 2017, the elegant,
beautifully realised, coming of age film Call Me By Your Name. His
remake of Dario Argento’s horror masterpiece of 1977 is similarly
exceptional. As with Argento’s
film, the setting is an elite German dance academy run by a coven
of witches, but whereas Argento’s Germany is a phantasmagoric,
expressionistic nightmare-scape, Guadagnino sets his film in a
historically acute Berlin, against the backdrop of the actions of the
Baader-Meinhof group.
The narrative follows the descent of American
dance ingenue Susie Bannion (Dakota Johnson) as she realises things
are not what they seem at the academy. The film is punctuated with
genuinely terrifying moments – the witches are of the scary, rather
than Charmed, variety – but it mostly burns along slowly, inviting
the viewer to let its hypnotic images and sounds wash over her. The
tension then explodes in the final section, and we are confronted
with one of the most gruelling, and vibrant, horror sequences outside
of Argento.
Halloween
Like
Suspiria, this is a genre film done really well. Co-written by
comedian Danny McBride (Pineapple Express, TV’s Eastbound and Down,
etc.), and directed by David Gordon Green, whose filmography offers a
striking balance between outrageous comedy and sombre melodrama, this
is, arguably, the best film in the popular slasher series that
features masked killer Michael Myers. (The best film in the series,
Halloween III: Season of the Witch, is a bizarre and incisive
critique of American consumer spectacle, but doesn’t feature
Myers.) The plot for a slasher film, of course, is not the point –
a guy walks around killing people – but the tone of Halloween, with
its remarkable seriousness and intensity, effectively engages the
viewer. Its sincerity is all the more striking in the context of a
21st century in which popular culture tends to be evaluated through
its capacity for irony and cleverness. Kudos to Halloween for
reinvigorating the slasher film as a serious genre after it was put
to death by the Scream films in the 1990s... Read
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