When I first heard that they were making Ocean’s 8, I was skeptical. I was unimpressed with the all-female Ghostbusters movie, despite being a fan of the cast. I am not much of a fan of Hollywood’s apparent decision to make every franchise some kind of shared cinematic universe like the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It works for Marvel, it quickly loses its appeal much beyond that. And while every film should be taken on its own merits, I’m not a fan of the gender-swap trend that seems to be happening in Hollywood; I am a fan of a lot of films featuring great female actresses, and I want more movie roles for them overall, but I also want more original roles for them to play (and, really, I’ve been beating the drum for more original content in Hollywood in general for years). So I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this spinoff from the Steven Soderbergh/George Clooney trilogy of films of the last decade.

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If the tale as old as time is Beauty and the Beast, the oldest tale in Hollywood might be the troubled production. For all of the financial and critical success of the Star Wars franchise since it was bought by Disney and they set out to launch a new trilogy and a slew of spin-offs and origin stories, there has been a lot of behind the scenes turmoil, most notably on Solo: A Star Wars Story, where the originals directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller were fired for “creative differences” and replaced with Ron Howard, who reshot approximately 70% of the film. Typically, troubled productions produce troubling results, so a lot of curiosity has surrounded this spin-off about a young Han Solo.

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One of the things I love most about movies is that they can be a glimpse into the lives and experiences of others. There is only so much of the world I can experience from my little corner of the globe in Maine, even if it is “the way life should be.” Movies provide a chance from the comfort of a living room or movie theater to see things from someone else’s perspective and partake in experiences that are different than my own.  I love sitting in the darkness of a movie theater, near the front so that the screen takes up practically my entire field of vision, and immerse myself in someone else’s world for that brief bit of time. In a time when we seem to be in desperate need of it, movies can serve as great empathy vehicles as we walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. That may be with a character that doesn’t even speak our language or look the same as me from the other side of the globe, or it can be something domestic but still different from my individual life.

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There is a 2012 piece in The New Yorker that came out after Moonrise Kingdom (my favorite Wes Anderson film), titled “Does Wes Anderson Hate Dogs?” Given the fate of Buckley in The Royal Tenenbaums and Snoopy in Moonrise Kingdom (still my favorite Wes Anderson film), I suppose it was a fair question to ask. Maybe Wes Anderson read that article, maybe he didn’t, but Isle of Dogs is an emphatic answer to that question, not in the least because the title literally sounds like “I love dogs” when spoken quickly. It’s also Anderson’s second stop-motion animated feature after his 2009 adaptation Fantastic Mr. Fox.

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It’s all been building to this. Except for when everything was building to The Avengers. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has been building to this moment, more or less, over the last decade’s worth of movies, eighteen so far. Avengers: Infinity War is supposed to represent the beginning of the end for what is known as Phase Three of the MCU. With a planned (and already filmed) sequel due to arrive next summer that concludes the story, Infinity War leaves Earth’s mightiest heroes hanging on a perilous note with the stakes pushed higher than perhaps any movie has ever pushed the stakes before.

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One of my most anticipated films of 2018 was The Death of Stalin. Adapted from a French graphic novel, it is directed by Armando Iannucci. Iannucci is responsible for some of the funniest political satire of the 21st century in the form of the BBC series The Thick of It, the spin-off movie In the Loop, and the HBO series Veep. These satires are biting, critical, and hysterical. It has been on my radar since early 2017 when I first heard of it and was pleased to discover it was finally getting a spring theatrical release here in the US. Unfortunately, the film failed to live up to my high expectations.

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Films are mostly perceived as a visual medium; most people when asked to explain the difference between a book and a film adaptation of the same book will talk about how books are conveyed through words whereas movies are depicted through images.

Lost in this discussion is the fact that film is more often than not also an audio medium. In some films the audio can be just as important and the visuals. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation is riveting because of the audio recording that Gene Hackman’s Harry Caul obsesses over. The Blair Witch Project relies almost entirely on the unnerving sounds heard in the woods to be terrifying as anything actually shown on screen. Soundtracks and scores and instrumental (pun intended) in cluing the audience into how the director wants them to be feeling about what is happening on screen. A Quiet Place is a horror film that relies heavily on the aural aspect of experiencing a film and executes its mastery of sound to incredible effect.

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Tomb Raider is one of the most popular video game franchises in the history of video games. It has spawned several video games over several generations of platforms. Angelina Jolie famously portrayed the iconic Lara Croft character over two lackluster movies back in 2001 and 2003. After a recent reboot of the character on the latest video game generation, the character has been rebooted on the big screen, this time with the very talented Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander stepping into role.

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A Wrinkle in Time is a classic children’s book that I never read growing up, but was keenly aware of its existence, one of a number of books that slipped through the cracks for me growing up. I had purchased the book on my Kindle a few years ago with the intention of reading it eventually. With the release of the film adaptation, I decided to cram this week and read the book between Wednesday evening and Friday morning before catching a Friday matinee of the film. The previews of the film had caught my eye for months and interested me, and, given the quality of Selma, I wanted to see what director Ava DuVernay would do with the project. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the outcome.

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Red Sparrow is a competent thriller that has some solid moments, but never quite rises to the heights of a John le Carre adaptation or some other truly great espionage film.

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Overall, Annihilation has the courage of its convictions to not pander to audiences and spoon-feed its viewers easy answers as to what is happening. Even if it doesn’t quite rise to the level of Garland’s previous film, Ex Machina, for me, it is a notch just below it and still gave me plenty to chew on.

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Last year, Get Out was released around the same time of the year (Feb. 24) and it was the first movie of 2017 to be penciled into my year-end list. Black Panther has done the same in being the first movie that I will be penciling into my Best of 2018 list.

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