#the top one here has remained a leading candidate for my favourite ever picture of him

[reachexceedinggrasp]

[gyrlversion]

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: The Tory Twit of the Year race takes to the field

Unless Mother Theresa decides to come back from the dead by doing a Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction and emerges from the bathwater wielding a carving knife, we’re in for a Tory leadership contest.

Nothing can, of course, be ruled out after the past week of complete madness at Westminster. May has so far only said she’ll go if her risible ‘deal’ passes the Commons.

And the chances of that happening still seem as remote as ever. So could she, in the event of it being rejected again refuse to stand down after all?

Stranger things have happened. She hasn’t kept the promises she made to the electorate in the Tory manifesto, so why should she feel obliged to follow through on assurances she has given to her own MPs?

Theresa May faces a crucial third and final vote on her Brexit deal on Friday after it was hurriedly arranged on Thursday

Sajid Javid (left) in Downing Street yesterday. Rumours are growing of a joint ticket that would see him enter Number 10 with Michael Gove (right, today in Downing Street) as Chancellor 

Meanwhile, the runners and riders to succeed her are under starter’s orders.

Bookies are laying odds and the tipsters are making their selections. Michael Gove is reported to be teaming up with Sajid Javid, aka Albert R. N., on a ‘dream ticket’ to stop Boris. There are at least a dozen MPs throwing their rings into the hat — and more are considering putting their names forward.

One or two may be vaguely familiar, but the rest aren’t even legends in their own homes. Still, when 17.4 million people backed Leave in the 2016 referendum, they had no idea that they were voting to put Theresa May in Downing Street. Yet after Call Me Dave resigned, all sorts of obscure Tories were being mooted for the top job.

There was a strand of opinion which even claimed that the Brexit vote really meant: what we want is Stephen Crabb.

Then Welsh Secretary, or something, Crabb was briefly touted as the unity candidate, even though he had backed Remain and virtually no one had ever heard of him.

    More from Richard Littlejohn for the Daily Mail…

Sadly, we’ll never know if he could have been the nation’s saviour, since shortly after announcing his candidature it was revealed that he’d been sending sexually explicit text messages to a 19-year-old woman he’d interviewed for a job. Collapse of leadership campaign.

Oh, dear. How sad. Never mind.

Anyway, if all goes according to plan, the starting pistol this time will be fired on May 22 and the whole business could take up to six weeks.

How the heart sinks. Six whole weeks of wall-to-wall Tory leadership coverage dominating the news. Six weeks of intense campaigning, six weeks of speeches, six weeks of aides and bloggers scouring social media for a ‘gaffe’ one of the hopefuls may have committed in the dim and distant past.

Spare us, please, the televised candidates’ debates.

If they must face off against each other on TV, stick them on Pointless or The Chase.

I’d much rather hear them being quizzed by Bradley Walsh or Alexander Armstrong than any of the usual political insiders.

Maybe they could have a special Pointless picture board, featuring all the Tory leadership candidates. Apart from Boris, how many members of the public could put a name to any of them? There would be plenty of pointless answers to choose from.

Here’s another plan. Instead of dragging the process out for six weeks, why not just hold a one-day event to pick a winner?

‘It’s going to be like Ben-Hur — there’ll be a cast of thousands,’ a Tory MP told the Mail. Now there’s a good idea.

Make them all take part in a Ben-Hur-style chariot race, provided the chariots were all fitted with rotating blades and the competitors were kitted out with swords, maces, grappling hooks and nets.

Maybe let loose a few wild animals — lions, tigers, that kind of thing — to make it more interesting. There’d be no shortage of punters, especially if they were guaranteed plenty of claret and severed limbs. Mind you, attractive as the idea sounds, I can’t see elf’n’safety putting up with it. So I guess we’ll have to look for a more gentle alternative.

I’ve got it. They could model the leadership on Monty Python’s famous Upper Class Twit Of The Year sketch. Most of the front-runners would qualify, despite doing their best to burnish proletarian credentials.

Jacob Rees-Mogg wouldn’t have looked out of place in the original, alongside Nigel Incubator-Jones, Gervaise Brook-Hampster and Oliver St John-Mollusc, like Rees-Mogg an old Etonian. His father was a Cabinet Minister and his mother won The Derby. So roll up for the Tory Twit Of The Year contest. Your commentator is Clare Balding, obviously.

‘And they’re lining up for the first race. Let’s talk you through the field. There’s Jacob Rees-Mogg, a hedge fund manager. He’s brought his son along with him. And his nanny, who is going to push him round the course in a vintage Silver Cross Balmoral pram, bought in 1952.

‘Alongside Jacob, today’s favourite, Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, popularly known as Bonking Boris, another Etonian with a reputation for chasing the fillies.

Boris Johnson remains popular with Tory grassroots who choose the party leader in a final head-to-head vote. But he faces a battle getting through the opening rounds of a leadership contest, which are determined by votes from less enamored MPs

‘Jeremy Hunt, a former head boy at Charterhouse, eldest son of an admiral, is heavily fancied, as is Esther McVey — especially by Boris.

‘Amber Rudd, Cheltenham Ladies’ College, represents the Remain stable, and Matt Hancock wears the colours of the private King’s School, Chester.

Bringing up the rear, Michael Gove, from the fee-paying Robert Gordon’s College, Aberdeen, like most of the rest of the field trained at Oxford.

‘And they’re off. And Boris immediately makes a beeline for Esther, but he’s pursued by Gove, who seems intent on stabbing Boris in the back.

‘They round the first bend, manage to avoid the tricky Customs Union fence, but — oh, my goodness — Amber, Matt and Jeremy have all fallen at the Single Market. Jacob has refused and nanny is pushing him back to the start.

‘As they approach No Deal, Boris and Gove are neck-and-neck, but Gove is giving it the whip and trying to force Boris into the rails.

‘They’re safely over, but now for the Backstop, which has unseated dozens of jockeys on this notoriously difficult course.

‘I can’t watch. This is turning into a bloodbath. Boris is in the lead by a short head, but as they reach the final straight, Gove rugby tackles Boris and wrestles him to the ground before he can cross the finishing line.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve never seen anything quite like this. It’s like watching Ben-Hur…’

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[weekendwarriorblog]

The Weekend Warrior’s Top 25 Movies of 2018!

What a year we’ve been having with all the politics and internet craziness and my own personal life, struggling to survive without a job and very little work, and YET, it was an absolutely fantastic year for movies. There is no arguing that fact when a good percentage of my annual top 25 came from movies I saw at Sundance way back in January. While there may be a few noticeable omissions that appear on many other top 10s, as well as a few movies I liked that were obvious awards fodder, I’m pretty happy with what turned out to be one of my more eclectic top 25 lists with a mix of smaller indies and big budget blockbusters. (In case you’re interested, I saw 248 movies in 2018, and that is only counting the new movies released during the year and not dozens more movies I saw at film festival and hundreds of older films.)

I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it…. Or rather, I hope you enjoy reading this because it took me a long time to write it.

25. Stan and Ollie  (Sony Pictures Classics) – One of the recurring trends I saw happening during what was a relatively sucky year was that many of my favorite things from childhood were brought to the big screen. In this case, it’s the story of Laurel and Hardy, as ably played by Steve Coogan and John C. Reilly, as it covers the last few years of their partnership as they’re struggling to fill theaters during a UK tour. The performances by the duo were splendid, as were the two actors playing their respective wives (a hilarious Nina Arianda and Shirley Henderson), the script by Jeff Pope really putting you into the comedy duo’s world and mindset. Kudos to Jon S. Baird for this fantastic biopic, which opens next week in New York and L.A.

24. Annihilation  (Paramount) – Alex Garland’s sophomore film, his follow-up to the excellent Ex-Machina, was a fantastic adaptation of Jeff Vandermeer’s sci-fi novel that should have been as accepted as Arrival, especially with the fantastic premise and performance by Natalie Portman, as well as Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tessa Thompson and Oscar Isaac. Sadly, I didn’t rewatch it on Netflix when I had the chance but this is definitely something I’d buy on blu-ray.

23. Mary Poppins Returns  (Walt Disney Pictures) – Continuing the theme from Stan and Ollie, Disney finally made a sequel to one of my favorite movies as a kid with the wonderful Emily Blunt stepping into the shoes of Julie Andrews, and I was shocked by how much I enjoyed it, especially since I wasn’t a fan of Rob Marshall’s Into the Woods… or Chicago, for that matter. For this one, Marshall perfectly captured the magic I felt first watching Mary Poppinsand listening to the album over and over as a kid, with really fun songs, including some co-written by Lin Manuel Miranda, I believe.

22. Aquaman  (Warner Bros.) – While Aquaman has never been my favorite DC superhero, I had high hopes for director James Wan’s first foray into superheroics, and I wasn’t disappointed. Granted, there was a lot to keep up with, since he fit a lot of story into one movie… I mean, who wouldn’t, considering the chances of there ever being an Aquaman sequel? But yeah, Jason Momoa really sold me on the character, and the way the movie remained faithful to the Aquaman lore and mythos made in the comics, and there was just so much to enjoy that I can’t wait to see it again.

21. Boy Erased (Focus Features) – Another second feature, this one from Joel Edgerton, who adapted, directed and co-starred in this adaptation of Garrard Conley’s memoir of growing up with a preacher father and religious mother who sent him to participate in a gay conversion program run by a zealous fanatic (played by Edgerton).  I thought Lucas Hedges was just fantastic in the lead in this as well as in his father Peter Hedges’ movie Ben is Back, so this year finally put me on the Lucas Hedges wagon despite him appearing in multiple Best Picture-nominated movies over the last couple years. (I also want to point out the Honorable Mention The Miseducation of Cameron Post, which was also quite good as it looked at the problems caused by these gay conversion programs.)

20. Crazy Rich Asians (New Line/Warner Bros.) – I fought tooth and nail against buying into the hype for this all-Asian cast adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel, but I’m a total sucker for romance, especially the romantic comedy genre, and this was a fine one for the ages. My worries about this being seen as Asian wealth porn was somewhat off-base – although there was some of that in there – and this ended up being the perfect movie for one of my fave directors, Jon M. Chu, to finally be taken seriously in Hollywood. Granted, I already loved Constance Wu from Fresh Off the Boat and Michelle Yeoh from a million movies, but I loved what newcomers Henry Goulding and Awkwafina brought to the mix, and I even liked Ken Jeong in this, so yeah, a pleasant surprisw, and one I probably will rewatch again soon.

19. Roma  (Netflix) – Likewise, I finally saw this movie at New York Film Festival after tons of hype out of Telluride, Toronto and Venice, but I immediately was able to relate to the love the kids in the film have for their maid, something similar to my own childhood living in Brazil in the early ‘70s. There’s no denying that director Alfonso Cuaron makes stunning films that leaves your jaw agape in every scene, and what an amazing coup for first-timer Yalitza Aparicio, an indigenous woman who might have had a hard time getting roles if not for Cuaron’s brilliance in casting her. This movie hit me even harder emotionally a second time, although I still wouldn’t place it higher on my year-end list since I thought some of it was noticeable directorial wanking i.e. Cuaron could do these big set pieces merely because he had the ability and money to do so.

18. On the Basis of Sex and RBG (Focus Features / Magnolia) – I’m cheating here a little bit just because this year saw two fantastic films about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, first in the doc by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, which created a beautiful portrait of the amazing woman.  Later in the year, Felicity Jones portrayed Ginsburg in a pivotal point in her career where she goes before the Supreme Court to fight for gender equality. It’s an important case but also an important turning point in our country, and I love how Ginsburg’s relationship with her husband, played by the dashing Armie Hammer, was portrayed.

17. Monsters and Men (Neon) – A movie that was seemingly missed by anyone who didn’t see it at Sundance, and even by many who went to Sundance was Reinaldo Marcus Green’s drama about a shooting by a Brooklyn policeman and how it’s viewed by three different people from the neighborhood. Two of those people are Anthony Ramos’ Manny and John David Washington (from BlackKklansman) as a fairly young policeman dealing with the corruption and racism in the force. It also deals with a young baseball prodigy (Christopher Jordan Wallace) who wants to get involved with the protests against the killing even if it might hurt his chances at getting into a good college. If you have a chance to see this movie, you’re likely to be impressed by Green’s storytelling abilities and how it’s used.

16. Searching (Sony/Screen Gems) – Aneesh Chaganty’s directorial debut was an amazing thriller starring John Cho as a man whose daughter has disappeared and using only what can be viewed on a computer screen. Sure, it sounds like a gimmick, and it’s one that’s been used in films like Nacho Vigalondo’s Open Windows and the Unfriended series, but Cho’s performance is a career-best, and Chaganty finds a way to create a plausible thriller that keeps you invested in Cho finding his daughter. (And I loved the hint I discovered to the movie’s big twist on watching a second time.)

15. Widows (20thCentury Fox) – While I liked 12 Years a Slave just fine, Steve McQueen really blew me away with his foray into the heist genre, starring Viola Davis as the wife of a criminal (Liam Neeson), who dies in an attempt to steal millions from a local Chicago mob boss… and political candidate (Brian Tyree Henry – one of this year’s major MVPs). It seems like a fairly simple plot, but McQueen finds a way to integrate the local politics (incl. amazing performances by Colin Farrell and Robert DuVall), surround Davis with some amazing women (including Cynthia Erivo and Elizabeth Debicki) and create a heist film unlike any you would have seen before, as it was far more unconventional than other heist films, as one might expect.

14. Mary, Queen of Scots  (Focus Features) – Fantastic performances by Saoirse Ronan as the title character and Margot Robbie as her cousin and rival Queen Elizabeth made Josie Rourke’s feature directorial debut quite an amazing film. It wasn’t just another costume drama, and as much as it sadly is being overshadowed by The Favourite, the material told this fascinating story about two feuding queens in such an interesting and exciting way, including an impressive battle sequence, making this very different from other period pieces, including the many that have been directed by men.

13. Instant Family (Paramount) – Another one of this year’s surprises was seeing Sean Anders, the director behind Daddy’s Home and its sequel, take on a more serious comedy based on his own real life. Apparently, he and his wife adopted three kids, so in this very funny, sweet and warm comedy, it’s Rose Byrne and Mark Wahlberg as a couple who take in three Latino kids, including the amazing Isabela Moner, who I think is going to be amazing as Dora the Explorer. But there was so much to enjoy about this film from the easy laughs to some of the sweeter and more touching human emotions on display.

12. Hereditary  (A24) – Another film that premiered out of Sundance (that I missed there) was Ari Aster’s directorial debut, an absolutely horrifying film about a mother (Toni Collette) dealing with all sorts of strange supernatural occurrences after the death of her own mother. A24’s marketing for the film was such a brilliant bit of Red Herring creation that you might go in thinking that Collette’s daughter Charlie (played by Milly Shapiro) was gonna be the main antagonist/conflict… nope! Colette’s amazing performance was countered by a similar one from Alex Wolff, and if you weren’t totally creeped out by this movie’s ending, there’s probably something wrong with you. Aster proves himself to be a fascinating visual storyteller, so I can’t wait to see his next movie.

11. The Citizen (ArtMattan Productions) – Roland Vranik’s Hungarian film that premiered at the Berlin Film Festival all the way back in 2016 finally got a U.S. release thanks to New York’s Metrograph where it played for a number of weeks. After seeing the trailer a bunch of times, I ended up checking it out, and I was blown away by how timely and prescient the story of an African immigrant trying to become a Hungarian citizen related to what was going on in this country over the past year. It’s a wonderful indie film that sadly didn’t get the attention it deserved.

10. Eighth Grade (A24) – Yet another Sundance “discovery” was comedian Bo Burnham’s debut, which featured newcomer Elsie Fisher as 13-year-old Kayla, who is trying to deal with puberty, her last year in middle school and a pesky but lovable father, played by Josh Hamilton. This is just such an enjoyable even if you went to middle school so long ago that you barely remember it. Even so, Burnham found a way to tap into those feelings to create an extremely enjoyable comedy. I’m convinced Elsie Fisher is gonna be a superstar.

9. The Hate U Give (20thCentury Fox) – Probably one of the most underrated films of the year, which thankfully has gotten some critical love in the past few weeks.  I thought this adaptation of Angie Love’s Y.A. novel about a teenager named Starr, played by Amandla Stenberg, fighting with the two sides of her life with the advent of #BlackLivesMatter after watching her childhood friend killed by a white police officer. The cast that producer George Tillman Jr. built around Stenberg was quite impressive, including Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, Anthony Mackie and Common, with many powerful emotional moments that did a good job explaining what young black people in urban areas must deal with daily. It’s a fine return to form from the director of Notorious and Soul Food.

8. Ant Man and the Wasp  (Marvel Studios) – I bet you didn’t expect to see THIS Marvel Studios rank so high while a couple others didn’t even place in my list (or even Honorable Mentions), huh? Maybe I’ve just gotten sick of the whole thing where every movie is basically set-up for the next movie, which has been the case for a while now. Sure, Ant-Man and the Wasp is a sequel to Ant-Man and there was a post-credits Avengers: Infinity War tie-in, but otherwise, this was the Ant-Man movie I had been hoping for after the rather disappointing first movie. Obviously, having Paul Rudd involved in the writing and not working from a previous plot (as was the case with the first movie) helped the characters from the first movie shine. (Also, loved the Ghost as an antagonist.)

7. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse  (Sony) – It was a fairly tight race for my favorite superhero movie of the year, but after seeing this animated take on Marvel’s webbed wonder a second time, it was obvious to me that this was indeed one of the best feature film iterations of Spider-Man outside the comics. Sure, I was a fan of what Brian Bendis had done in the Ultimate comics, maybe not some of the Spider-Verse stuff introduced by Dan Slott, but taking those two disparate things and turning it into a true story about Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore, who should be cast as Miles in a live action MCU movie) and then having Jake Johnson voicing the older “mentor” Spider-Man just made for a fun movie that exemplified all of the previous films directed and produced by Lord and Miller including The LEGO Movie and 21 Jump Street. I’m looking forward to more big-screen animated superhero movies, and yeah, I liked Incredibles 2 just fine but I was never that attached to the Pixar movie.

6. Love, Simon  (20thCentury Fox) – After blowing up the DC Universe via his many CW TV shows, Greg Berlanti returned to the movies with this coming-out coming of age romantic comedy starring Nick Robinson as Simon Spier, a closeted gay teen who discovers that there might be another gay teen in the closet at his high school. This simple plot led to a wonderful high school coming-of-age rom-com that really brightened me up on a miserable day I was having (the first of many this year), and I loved how relatable Berlanti made the story.

5. Bad Times at the El Royale  (20thCentury Fox) – Possibly one of the most underrated films of the year, Drew Goddard’s second film as a director after the similarly excellent Cabin in the Woods, featured a cadre of individuals converging on a mostly-abandoned hotel on the border of California and Nevada. Jeff Bridges plays a priest, Jon Hamm plays a travelling salesman and Broadway star Cynthia Erivo (also in Widows) is a singer who all show up at the same time, as we quickly discover, very little about the El Royale is as it seems. I almost don’t want to reveal too much more, because it’s the way the story unfolds which had many comparing it to Tarantino (both positively and negatively). I felt that so many filmmakers have tried to ape Tarantino and not understood what makes his storytelling style work so well, but Goodard figured it out, and delivered a rich film full of many surprises. I can’t recommend the film more, since I know very few people had a chance to see it in theaters.

4. Mission: Impossible – Fallout   (Paramount) – Considering how much I was disappointed by Christopher McQuarrie’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, I expected its direct sequel to be more of the same, and boy, was I wrong. Tom Cruise and McQuarrie pulled out all the stops to create a viable conclusion to the four movies that had been produced along with JJ Abrams and Bad Robot, which included the extraordinary 4thmovie directed by Brad Bird. I was impressed the first time I saw this in IMAX… but then I saw it again… and again… and again. I just couldn’t get enough of the amazing action scenes and the intricate plot (even though I found a few holes in it). I’m so psyched to see what McQuarrie does next, and it successfully reminded everyone why Cruise is the star that he is.

3. Juliet, Naked  (Lionsgate / Roadside Attractions) – The fact that filmmaker Jesse Peretz was able to adapt one of my favorite Nick Hornby novels in a way that’s faithful but not to a fault made this one of my favorite movies of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. If you couldn’t tell from my love for Instant Family, I absolutely love Rose Byrne, and she killed it as Annie, a woman living in a seaside English town with her boyfriend Duncan (Chris O’Dowd) as an avid fan of musician Tucker Crowe. When Annie posts something negative about a newly-discovered Crowe rarity on Duncan’s blog, they break up, but she also ends up having a long-distance relationship with the actual Crowe, played by Ethan Hawke. There’s just something so spot-on about Hornby’s book and this adaptation was just as enjoyable, genuinely warm and very, very funny. I wish more people went to go see it.

2.  A Star is Born  (Warner Bros.) – Believe me, there may be no one more surprised by how far this movie has placed in my year-end list than myself. I’m not a huge Bradley Cooper fan, nor do I particularly like Lady Gaga or her music, but this is a great old Hollywood story that’s perfectly modernized with Cooper playing rock star Jackson Mane who sees Gaga’s Ally performing at a cabaret club and falls for her just as he tries to help her career. It’s a story that’s been told a number of times before, and sure, I can understand why some women might not like the implications that a man might help the woman have success in the movie industry, but Gaga killed it playing a character possibly not too removed from herself. I’ll be thrilled with any and all Oscars this movie earns, especially for Bradley Cooper, making a stunning directorial debut. (And I always love Sam Elliot in anything he does. He’s so deserving of an Oscar here, too.)

1A. Won’t You be My Neighbor  (Focus Features) – As always, I separate the docs from my overall year’s best list just because I tend to like the genre so much that my entire top 10 would be docs if I didn’t separate them into their own category. But yeah, Morgan Neville has done it again with another 10/10 doc following his Oscar-winning 20 Feet to Stardom. Barring some major push by one of the other docs that made the shortlist (and my top 12 below), there’s a very good chance that Neville’s doc about beloved PBS host Fred (Mister) Rogers will win him a second Oscar. Rogers is beloved by adults who grew up watching his show and getting a chance to look behind the scenes made many adults cry, mainly for joy but also for sadness that these trying times doesn’t have a Mister Rogers to help us through it.

1. Green Book (Universal) – Yes, I’m well aware of the controversy and backlash from many black film critics (most of them who write for ShadowAndAct.com, oddly enough) who hate this movie for one reason or another. By the time all that controversy had reared its ugly head, I had already seen the Peter Farrelly historic buddy comedy twice, and I loved it both times I saw it.  If you’re unaware, it stars Viggo Mortensen as Italian stereotype club bouncer Tony Lip, who is hired to drive and safeguard Mahershala Ali’s jazz pianist Dr. Don Shirley on a tour of the Deep South during the early ‘60s when racism still was running rampant.  The growing chemistry built by these two actors through the situations they find themselves in made me far more interested in Shirley and the Green Book of the title, so anyone complaining about the movie should realize that through entertaining humor, Farrelly has opened a conversation that I hope will continue through next year.

Honorable Mentions:

There were so many good movies this year that all of these fine films ended up just outside my top 25…

A Private War (Aviron) Operation Finale (MGM) First Reformed (A24) Lean on Pete (A24) The Rider (Sony Pictures Classics) Collette (Bleecker Street) Cold War (Amazon Studios) The Miseducation of Cameron Post (FilmRise) Leave No Trace (Bleecker Street) Suspiria (Amazon)

TWELVE GREAT DOCS

This was most definitely the year of the theatrical doc, even though, yeah, there’s still a few Netflix docs on here… okay, one. Otherwise, it was important to see most of these movies in a theater, which culminated in Peter Jackson’s 3D WWI doc They Shall Not Grow Old, which just missed my top 12. Sorry, this feature has gotten a little too long or otherwise, I’d write more about each of these, but most of them I wrote about in the weekly column.

1. Won’t You be My Neighbor (Focus Features) 2. Free Solo (National Geographic) 3. Hal (Oscilloscope) 4. Three Identical Strangers (Neon) 5. Minding the Gap (Hulu) 6. RBG (Magnolia) 7. Rock Rubber 45s (Saboteur Media) 8. Crime + Punishment (Hulu/IFC Films) 9. Shirkers (Netflix) 10. Fahrenheit 11/9 11. Far from the Tree (IFC Films) 12. Whale of a Tale (Giant Pictures)

STUDIO OF THE YEAR:

Every year I like rewarding a studio that goes above and beyond both in terms of releasing great, entertaining movies and also being generally decent to deal with. While Universal has the top movie and Warner Bros. is #2 and Fox has a lot of movies on the above list, I think I’ll have to give this year’s award to Paramount Pictures, not only for making the best Mission: Impossible yet, but also with two wonderful surprises in Instant Family and Overlord, which both were far better than their trailers. (They also released A Quiet Place, which didn’t make my list but was still a solid thriller.) But most importantly, they’re the most improved in terms of press/critical outreach, and I greatly appreciate that, especially in the tough year I had.

ALBUMS OF THE YEAR

I always like sharing some of the music I’m listening to each year and though my music budget has been cut rather drastically this year, my favorite album of the year was Metric’s “Art of Doubt,”followed by Buffalo Tom’s “Quiet and Peace”and The Fratellis’ “In Your Own Sweet Time.” I also dug Monster Magnet’s “Mindf*cker,” Ash’s “Islands” and James’ “Living in Extraordinary Times,” but none of this gets me more excited as the prospect for a new Cure album in 2019!

Oh, fine.. I’ll tack on my Terrible 10 for the year, but I don’t feel like revisiting any of these: 10. Kin  9. Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich  8. The Spy Who Dumped Me  7. Before I Wake  6. Truth or Dare? 5. London Fields  4. Head Full of Honey  3. Mandy  2. Aardvark  1. Assassination Nation 

That’s it for this year. Hopefully, I’ll have more to come soon.