(This article is part of our Best of the Decade series.)
The 2010s were a banner decade for female directors. Despite the still abysmally low number of women working behind the camera, women directors have made significant strides in Hollywood and across the globe, earning as much or even more acclaim — and now, as much money — as their male counterparts.
In just the past decade, which came off of Kathryn Bigelow becoming the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director, Greta Gerwig became the new generation’s rising star, Patty Jenkins became the highest-paid female director working in Hollywood, and acclaimed indie filmmakers like Chloe Zhao and Ava DuVernay used their weight to land high-profile superhero jobs or boost other rising diverse directors. We still have a long way to go, but the glass ceiling has already started to accumulate plenty of cracks.
So without further ado, here are the best female directed movies of the decade, listed in alphabetical order.
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Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: What better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising? This week, let’s rank The Best Movie Trailers of 2018.
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The films of 2018 featured lovely, strange, and sometimes downright terrifying music. Just what it is that makes a good soundtrack? Is it something that stands out, intruding on scenes? Or is it something that hangs back, to the point where you don’t even notice it? Or perhaps it’s something in between. Or maybe the best film scores are the ones that trigger a specific emotion somewhere within your mind; a memory, a regret, a loving embrace. Music that cuts right through to your very soul. Music that you won’t soon forget. These are the best soundtracks of 2018.
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2018 has come and gone, and we’re 84 years older for it. But enough of my opining about what a terrible year it was (you’ll probably get plenty of that in everyone else’s pieces). I’m here to talk about the things I loved in 2018, and that was movies. I don’t ascribe to the belief that there are “good” or “bad” years for movies, there are just the movies that personally speak to you every year. And while that number can swell or dwindle each year, there will at least be a couple that unquestionably leave an impact. And for me, there are plenty, including my honorable mentions Leave No Trace, Mirai, Happy as Lazzaro, First Reformed, and Black Panther.
Now let’s get to what you really want to know: Here are my top 10 movies of 2018.
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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.
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It’s only been a few days since the members of the Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society released the nominees for their annual awards, and the winners have already been determined. However, don’t expect this to be an indication of how any of the major awards are going to go down later this season. Our editor-in-chief Peter Sciretta is counted among this group, and the wide array of film critics from various backgrounds makes the results skew much further from the norm than you might expect at the Golden Globes or Oscars.
However, that actually makes the Los Angeles Online Film Critics Society awards winners a little more interesting than the usual awards fare – they have awarded the adaptation of The Hate U Give Best Picture. How did the rest of the awards shake out ? Check out the full list below. Read More »
Awards season is officially in full swing as the folks at Film Independent have officially announced the nominations for the 2019 Independent Spirit Awards, honoring achievements in independent film for the year 2018.
Jeremiah Zagar‘s film We the Animals led the indie pack with five total nominations. But coming in close behind are two wildly different A24 films, Bo Burnham‘s coming of age comedy Eighth Grade and Paul Schrader‘s challenging drama First Reformed, each with four nominations. Other films landing nods include You Were Never Really Here, Hereditary, The Tale and more
Get the full list of the 2019 Independent Spirit Award nominations below. Read More »
(Welcome to Now Stream This, a column dedicated to the best movies streaming on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and every other streaming service out there.)
In this edition of Now Stream This, you’ll find one of the best movies of 2018, a holiday classic that you can watch any time of the year, a prophetic sci-fi film, Jamie Lee Curtis as a rookie cop, an old violin, a kick-ass action movie, an ’80s horror throwback, a true crime documentary, a tale of resurrection, and Liam Neeson wearing a kilt. What a line-up!
These are the best movies streaming right now. Let’s get streaming!
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Lynne Ramsay was never really trying to break the mold. The director of this year’s critical darling You Were Never Really Here chooses her movies with discretion, with a six-year gap between the Joaquin Phoenix-starring noir thriller and her last film, the haunting psychological drama We Need to Talk About Kevin. Only four feature films total populate Ramsay’s entire catalogue, each of them critically beloved, each of them inflicting a different kind of violence upon the audience. “We’ve seen a lot of violence in film that it’s become almost banal,” Ramsay told /Film in an interview ahead of You Were Never Really Here‘s digital release on the Amazon Prime streaming platform. “It’s actually more scary not to show it.”
That’s the genius of You Were Never Really Here, a taut and moody thriller centering around Phoenix’s PTSD-suffering hit man who rescues trafficked girls. In other hands, the film would paint Phoenix as a glamorous lone wolf, an anti-hero who beats down societal corruption with his bare fists. But in Ramsay’s hands and in Phoenix’s gaunt, weary performance, You Were Never Really Here shows us a different kind of anti-hero.
Here is what Ramsay had to say about defying the “knight in shining armor” clichés, Phoenix’s role in shaping the character of Joe, and what Ramsay thinks about Phoenix’s current role as the Joker.
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(Welcome to Not Dead Yet, a feature dedicated to new Blu-ray releases and what special features you should be excited about. Because yes, some of us still like to own physical copies of our movies.)
This week’s physical media round-up brings you two of the best films of 2018 – A Quiet Place and You Were Never Really Here. There’s also the Criterion release of Bowling for Columbine, Arrow Video’s The Addiction, and Shout! Factory’s release of John Carpenter‘s Memoirs of an Invisible Man.
Here are the new Blu-ray releases and their special features you should check out this week and beyond.
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