Chris Evangelista's Top 10 Movies Of 2018

Several people have told me they thought 2018 was a disappointing year for movies. I say: nuts to that. Any year that gives us Nicolas Cage fighting with a chainsaw, Ethan Hawke having a crisis of faith, and Rachel Weisz, Emma Stone and Olivia Colman in a power-grabbing love triangle is a-okay in my book. Below you'll find my top 10 movies of the year – a list I struggled with, because there were so many films competing to make it into these top spots. In addition to the 10 below, let me just throw an honorable mention shout-out to the following titles: Burning, Widows, Suspiria, BlackKklansman and The Sisters Brothers. Now, onto my top 10 movies of 2018.

Ari Aster's Hereditary grafts a family drama narrative onto an absolute nightmare, with remarkable results. What at first seems like a meditation on grief slowly reveals itself to be a story that's really about the cruelty of fate. The characters in Hereditary are little more than helpless puppets, unable to break free of their strings. Toni Collette delivers one of the year's best performances as a woman dealing first with the death of her mother, whom she was estranged from, and then the sudden, violent death of her young daughter. These two deaths send the entire family into chaos, with Collette's son (an incredible Alex Wolff) is tormented and attacked at every turn. It culminates in a ghoulish, darkly comedic, blood-soaked conclusion from which is there is no escape.

Nicole Kidman raises hell – and goes through it, too – in Karyn Kusama's brutal post-modern noir Destroyer. Kidman is playing the kind of sloppy, drunk, violent cop that's typically played by a male actor, and that might throw people off. But the results are stunning. Kusama is staging two films here: one is a violent crime drama about Kidman's cop Erin Bell trying to track down a killer. The other, set in the past, finds a younger, less-haggard Bell infiltrating a gang along with an FBI agent (Sebastian Stan). These two stories catch up to each other in a surprising, clever way. In the midst of all this, Bell deals with the fallout of her personal life, primarily her reckless, wild teenage daughter (Jade Pettyjohn). What easily could've been a generic cop thriller is transformed – in the hands of Kusama, and screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi – into an intense, emotional experience that leaves you shaken.

Annihilation was mostly ignored in U.S. theaters, and didn't even go to theaters in other countries. That's a damn shame, but not surprising. Alex Garland's challenging sci-fi saga is dealing with grief, regret and disease – not exactly your typical science fiction escapism that burns up the box office. Very loosely adapted from Jeff VanderMeer's novel, Annihilation follows a team of women (Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, and Tuva Novotny) into an area that's been affected (or perhaps the right term is infected)  by an alien anomaly. What they find there is both beautiful and horrifying – and often hard to describe. There are no easy answers here, and that's point. This trip into the unknown is about the journey, not the destination. Expect this to the type of film that's rediscovered years from now, and hailed as a misunderstood modern-classic.

Abstract and illusive, Lynne Ramsay's You Were Never Really Here doesn't follow the rules. Ramsay and editor Joe Bini are out to subvert expectations, and deny the kind of catharsis that accompanies stories like this. Joaquin Phoenix – who is astonishing here, often using his body language in place of actual dialogue – is Joe, a hammer-wielding bruiser hired to rescue young girls. One of his cases backfires, though, leaving Joe to make a choice: he can cut and run, or he can attempt to do the right thing. Lots of people die along the way. But while the more Hollywood version of this story would involve Joe engaged in violent, bloody battles with his enemies, You Were Never Really Here uses precise, surprising edits to keep everything just out of view, to the point where we can't even be sure what we're seeing. In fact, we can't even be sure we're really here.

"Will God Forgive Us For Destroying His Creation?" That's the question at the heart of First Reformed, Paul Schrader's modern-day love-letter to movies like Winter Light and Diary of a Country Priest. A blend of existentialism, theology, and apocalyptic panic, First Reformed has Ethan Hawke giving the best performance of his career as Toller, the pastor of a run-down, historic church in upstate New York. Toller goes about his priestly duties; he stands at the pulpit and recites the words to scarce audiences. But his faith has faded, and his nights are spent mixing booze with Pepto-Bismol to treat a stomach ailment. Toller is jolted from his malaise when parishioner Mary (Amanda Seyfried) comes to him for help. Her husband (Philip Ettinger) is in despair because of how rapidly the planet is succumbing to the effects of climate change. Listening to the young man's concerns triggers something in Toller's mind, almost as if the words themselves are a contagious airborne disease he's now caught. Schrader keeps us entirely within Toller's mind, via narration in a notebook he's writing. It traps us within his deteriorating mindset, leading to circumstances we can't even be sure are real, leaving it up to us, the audience, to decipher the meaning – and truth – behind a haunting, jaw-dropping ending.