#films i watched in 2018

[to-all-the-boys]

'to all the boys i've loved before' is absolute perfection. i can't believe i'm saying this but oh my gosh i forgot just quite how good it is. my sister just put it on and of course i insisted i rewatch it with her and wow. the colour grading, the direction, the palpable chemistry between the leads, and sweetness and innocent joy that permeates the film...oh that movie is absolutely everything to me. all time banger

[creamiumsplendor]

I tried to find good critiques about Mandy (2018) on YouTube, because I think it’s a hauntingly beautiful film and I wanted to see who else felt this way, and was instead greeted with a wall of videos with “ENDING EXPLAINED” plastered all over the thumbnails, and this drives me up the wall for two reasons.

Spoilers for Mandy I guess, but if you’re at these tags you already know.

First, the film is really not that complex, the plot is incredibly straight forward and it’s not shy about the primary theme being loss of both someone you love and the stability that comes with that person. If the actual series of events seems confusing, you had to really not be paying attention, like not just occasionally checking your phone, but just missing an entire chunk of the film, in which case you should just start over and not resort to content mill garbage to find out what you missed.

Second, the idea that the ending, an unapologetically abstract and evocative set of images as Red loses himself to The Darkness while still holding the pure image of Mandy in his memory, NEEDS explanation just feels so incurious as a way to engage with media, especially this film. Whatever ending you think happened (Red is just tripping super hard, Red has actually transported to a demonic realm, Red has been dead the whole time), or that there explicitly ISN’T a clear ending, are all completely valid readings of the ending, because it’s not meant to concrete, it’s not supposed to make sense, THAT’S THE POINT. Red has become unmoored from his reality by the shock, the trauma of having his whole life ripped from him, and the line dividing the fantastical and the “real” has blurred even further than it already was at the start of the film. Trying to assign a quantitative solution to “Red + Drugs + Murder=“ misses the point because the emotionality, the way Red is feeling, the way YOU are feeling as you watch the scene, is the important bit. The act of watching and experiencing IS the explanation.

I don’t mean to malign this entire genre of videos, there are definitely movies with complex plots where having someone who does understand it give you a quick breakdown can help one’s own understanding and therefore enjoyment of a film or series. If you watch these kinds of videos, or even one of them for this movie, that’s not a bad thing. I just don’t think it was necessary for this film, where I get a lot of joy just thinking about how it made me feel, and I want to hear how it made other people feel, not just providing a bland explanation to get views.

Anyways if you haven’t yet, watch Mandy and then DON’T go to YouTube to find other takes.

[matt-tholomule]

i'm not immune to the sudden popularity surge of trolls

[fujikasa]

YOSHIZAWA RYO as ISHIDA URYŪ BLEACH (2018)

[abirdie]

Gael García Bernal in Museo (2018, dir. Alonso Ruizpalacios)

(These gifs also feature Leonardo Ortizgris and Alfredo Castro)

Gifs are all 540px wide so you can click to see larger.

[other gael filmography gifsets]

[hazel-callahan]

Ruby Cruz in AGING OUT (2018) — dir. Chester Milton

[gatalentan]

Jennifer Lopez & Leah Remini in SECOND ACT (2018)

[maskedbeliever]

People will thirst after Pedro Pascal in The Last of Us but won’t even watch his best “weird lonely guy adopts strange girl” movie, Prospect (2018), because it’s indie

[satoriberry]

finished watching matpat's finale, i think i'm gonna combust

[six-demon-bag]

LAKE PLACID: LEGACY (2018)

[sometimesiwanna-disappear]

SO.. Halloween 2018 is actually quite good and I enjoy it more than the original now that I've finally worked up the courage to watch it 👍 I wish the color grading and the film and the vibes emulated the original a bit better because , like, obviously aesthetically a 70s film will win out for me. Period end of. But the way the characters were written in H2018 were so endearing and felt like real people (especially the kids/teens! I FELT something when they died!!) the plot moved at faster than Michael himself's average walking speed, and the emotional hooks were SO much better. I feel like you could watch H2018 without seeing the original and still understand Laurie's trauma and her choices and empathize with them.. the family's struggle to enter the future while shackled to the past -- and the way allowing the past to inform the future ended up letting them all survive in the end... Laurie's validation and the connection she, her daughter, and her granddaughter all shared by the end.. the commentary on true crime and our obsession with woobifying these monstrous people, all while we neglect the broken victims they left behind... I can't believe how much I really loved this movie. I will definitely be rewatching it soon and looking for more.

i would be remiss, however, if I didn't mention that obviously the original was precisely that- an original film. John Carpenter's vision was fresh and his writing / directing / composing was incredible in a way I can't really appreciate having been born roughly 20 years after it came out, in the era of remakes and sequels and the overall world's exhaustion with the genre. Halloween 1978 set the tone and everything afterward was trying to emulate it, whether I like it or not, and its success allowed films that I love far, far more to be made -- even to be conceptualized. I can't love Scream 1996 without recognizing how Halloween LITERALLY paved the way for it to exist. (The film itself even plays a role in the final act of the film!!) There's something to this genre that really fascinates me, and while H1978 may not be my favorite or even in my top 10 rewatched slashers, it's difficult for me to say H2018 is "better" because it stands firmly on the foundation of not just its predecessor , but ALL of the films in between.

It's so cool that it was a standalone film and didn't have any sequels either! Just Halloween and Halloween, nothing else :>>>>>>

[mikimeiko]

Venom (Ruben Fleischer, 2018)

[mangle-my-mind]

I just watched Climax and holy shit

[thornheartless]

Oh, okay. Realised that I can barely remember how my cat's meowing sounded. That hurts. I know that it was high pitched but not always squeaky, but sometimes squeaky. Picturing it in my mind isn't so easy anymore though.

[thejadecount]

To me, one of the best parts of having watched ATSV and go on Tumblr is to find out that apparently just EVERYONE missed the part in the first movie with the spider glitching, meanwhile I’ve known the entire time and just been waiting for the writers to do something about it. Anyone else?

[waterlily2005]

the food in little forest (2018) looked so good. it looked good in a way that reminded me of home, in a way that made my heart warm. it was comforting to watch after a difficult day.