Everything else in the world might crashing and burning in 2018, but God knows that we still have great movies to look forward to week after week. While I have already commented on the recent uptick in phenomenal horror movies in recent years, in truth it is so very much more than that. It’s not just horror movies that are proving to be exceptional. In fact, it seems that this entire year has just been one essential viewing experience after another.
There’s no question that Black voices are finally being heard at the cinema. Black Panther (2018), the first genuine smash hit of the year, envisioned what Africa may have looked like had it not been subjected to European colonialism. Pulling double duty as both as great piece of pop entertainment and an important vision of an afro-futurist utopia, it set the bar high for nonwhite filmmaking in the age of Trump, and a whole legion of filmmakers readily stepped up to meet its gaze.
Shortly after Black Panther took the world by storm, Ava DuVernay made her triumphant return to theaters with what might be the definitive adaptation of Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time (2018). The First Purge (2018), now appropriately helmed by a man of color, finally dropped its fleeting pretense at being about anything other than an exaggerated, funhouse reflection of systematic, real-world racism. Sorry to Bother You (2018) addressed all of the dehumanizing ways that capitalism exploits workers (and, disproportionately, minority workers) in a brilliant sendup of Eugène Ionesco absurdist play Rhinoceros. Blindspotting (2018) showcased the impossible standards by which Black Americans are held. And on the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville riots — in which honest-to-God Nazis took to the streets in a chilling scene pulled directly from the darkest chapters of German history — seminal director Spike Lee released BlacKkKlansman (2018), an uneasy look back at the dispiriting sameness of race relations over the last forty years.
But that is only the beginning. In the closing months of the year, even more Black creators and Black stories are coming forward to join the throngs already in motion. Oscar-winner Barry Jenkins is returning to the big screen once more with If Beale Street Could Talk (2018), as is also-Oscar-winner Steve McQueen with Widows (2018). We’re getting a harrowing look at police violence in The Hate U Give (2018), the triumphant return of Adonis Creed in Creed II (2018) and audiences will finally see the first biracial Spider-Man in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018).
And still this isn’t all 2018 has going for it. Crazy Rich Asians (2018), which features the first all-Asian cast in a Hollywood film in a full twenty-five years, elevated the romantic comedy beyond its base and formulaic trappings (and promises to do so at least twice more in its promised sequels). Just as Black Panther was followed by A Wrinkle in Time, creating a one-two box office punch unlike anything in recent memory, Crazy Rich Asians was shortly thereafter followed by Searching (2018): a gripping, tightly shot and incredibly powerful film about an Asian-American man desperately searching for his missing daughter. Oh, and a little movie called Roma (2018), an autobiographical, Spanish-language film about director Alfonso Cuarón’s upbringing in Mexico City, is the presumed frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar ahead of its commercial release this winter.
Although not itself directed by a woman, Bo Burnham’s resplendent Eighth Grade (2018) perfectly taps into the awkward self-consciousness of pre-teen girlhood in the YouTube era. Joining that movie this week is Assassination Nation (2018), a madcap fusion of The Crucible and The Purge (2013), told through the lens of for teenage girls whose town devolves into violent anarchy in the midst of a massive leak of the townsfolks’ personal data.
The only recent year that I would even begin to compare it to is 2014: a twelve-month stretch where seemingly everything and anything that hit theaters was a virtual masterpiece. Even though 2018 isn’t quite as consistent in terms of the raw quality of the films being released (although, to be clear, it very nearly is at this point), nearly every one of them feels essential. These are films that are boldly telling stories that Hollywood is rarely interesting in dealing with, most of which are presented by the very people who these stories are about (an even greater rarity in the industry). Movies are bold and exciting and interesting in a way that they simply haven’t been for years, and I, for one, am loving every minute of it.