Hoai-Tran Bui's Top 10 Movies Of 2018 So Far

Good job guys, we've made it halfway through 2018! Now there's only six months left of this hellish year to go. But we'll always have movies, and thank goodness this year's movies have been more than up to the task of alternately letting us escape reality or tapping into our deepest intimate and sociopolitical anxieties.

Each day this week, a different member of Team /Film has been counting down his or her favorite films of the year so far. I'm the last to go this week and may have a few surprises on my list — which ranges from heartwarming family films, to pitch-black comedies, to meditations on life, love, and grief. So without further ado, here are my top 10 movies of 2018 so far.

The Death of Stalin shouldn't work. A pitch-black comedy that telegraphs the fallout of the death of tyrannical Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Armando Iannucci's political satire walks a razor-thin line between absurd and brilliant that, more often than not, devolves into pure slapstick. And yet, it just works. The Death of Stalin follows the group of Stalin's closest confidantes who scramble for power after the dictator's untimely and humiliating death. But while their power grabs feel more farcical than not, there is a real undercurrent of darkness and brutality. The most absurd twist of all is how current The Death of Stalin feels, even when the bumbling cronies exchange simplistic barbs for five minutes straight. This movie is, after all, loosely based on the people and events that transpired at the height of the despotic Soviet Union. But instead of being horrified at the past and its echoes in the present, Iannuci makes the ingenious point that sometimes all you can do is laugh.

Diablo Cody and Jason Reitman are building their own Before series through each of their collaborations. With each new film, the screenwriter-director tap into the deep insecurities and struggles of a different period in their lives, progressively getting to a little darker, a little sadder, and a little more honest. Of all three of their collaborations (from the smart, smug Juno to the tumultuous Young Adult), Tully feels the most real. The dramedy was based off of Cody's own struggles with postpartum depression, and because of that, feels like one of the most sincere and tender odes to motherhood that has ever hit the big screen. Tully stars Charlize Theron as a mother who begins to buckle under the weight of parenthood, as she recovers from the birth of her third child and faces a well-meaning but clueless husband (Ron Livingston). But her life makes a dramatic turn for the better when her brother (Mark Duplass) gifts her with a nighttime nanny (Mackenzie Davis), who is both part-Mary Poppins, part-fresh-faced millennial. Theron gives a powerhouse performance in this uncomfortable, raw portrait of motherhood and the sacrifices you make for it.

As a blockbuster, Black Panther is something of a miracle. It manages to be an entertaining superhero flick, a potent sociopolitical film, and a sweeping portrait of a young man grappling with his legacy all at once — and not once does it feel overcrowded. But one thing it is crowded with is stellar performances. Chadwick Boseman is a steadfast anchor for the film as a new king who must come to terms with the disastrous consequences of his father and his country's actions. But everyone else is so good that they threaten to overshadow the lead. Michael B. Jordan, who plays the righteous but ultimately destructive villain Killmonger, is the MVP of the film, making such an incisive impact that his final lines are the ones that still ring loud long after the movie ends. But Letitia Wright, Danai Gurira, and Lupita Nyong'o are all scene-stealers who enrich a fantastically tight film. Ryan Coogler, who directed and co-wrote the film with Joe Robert Cole, crafted a sumptuous, affecting, and powerful tale that is a heavy contender for best Marvel movie yet.

Memory and reality collide in director Jennifer Fox's harrowing and haunting interrogation of her own childhood sexual trauma. Laura Dern gives a stunning performance as the fictionalized version of Fox, a documentary filmmaker and professor whose peaceful life is shattered when her mother (Ellen Burstyn) discovers a letter that she wrote when she was 13. The letter paints a picture of a bullish, introverted girl who is delighted by the attention of two adult coaches, only to be pulled into a damaging and abusive relationship with them. Structured partly like a mystery and partly like a dreamy Sofia Coppola-inspired depiction of teen ennui, The Tale lures you in with its rosy fantasies until you're watching with wide-eyed horror as the sexual assault is played out in painstaking detail. There are a few creative flairs that could play as gimmicks — at several points, Jenny turns her lens inward, unpacking her memories like a documentary and interviewing the figments of her imagination — but they only ever feel unabashedly honest.

The film premiered at Sundance earlier this year and was quickly picked up by HBO, but it's a real shame that The Tale never received a theatrical release. It's too important. True, it can be hard to watch a movie so inherently tied to the Me Too movement without being wary that you'll be accosted by politics. But The Tale handles this tragic tale of abuse with such grace that it feels like it captured a delicate moment, not a movement.

You Were Never Really Here is a tremendously lean film that makes every blood-soaked, tense moment count. Lynne Ramsay's thriller is notably absent of thrills, instead honing in on the moments in-between, when Joaquin Phoenix's dense, hulking mass of a hitman is lumbering up the stairs, his breath catching and his scars slowly wearing at his soul. Phoenix plays a hired gun who rescues young girls from child prostitution rings, until he one day runs into a case that exposes widespread corruption. It's a narrative that feels familiar: the brute who enacts vengeance on those who harm the innocent, along the lines of Taxi Driver and its ilk. But You Were Never Really Here offers no such catharsis. Where Schrader's First Reformed felt like a cathartic reckoning with Taxi Driver, You Were Never Really Here acts like a disillusioned breakdown of its mythos — where Phoenix's hired gun has made a living out of this line of righteous vengeance, but himself remains a stunted child. There's a scene where Phoenix plays with a jelly bean in the office of his employee, slowly crushing it until sugary flakes coat his fingers, underscoring his brute force with a childlike amusement. He's a man out of place with this world, only able to live on the periphery of society and in the shadows of its villains. You Were Never Really Here is a brilliantly subversive — dare I say feminist — take on the illusion of masculine vengeance.