I Review Every Movie I Saw in 2018 in 3 Sentences or Less

(Reading from top-left to bottom-right)

Avengers: Infinity War, The Wolf of Wall Street, The End of Evangelion, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, Anomalisa, The Revenant, Burn After Reading, The Tale of Princess Kaguya

Note: Not all of these movies were released in 2018, these are just what I saw during the year.

Action

• Django Unchained
  • A well told, over-the-top revenge story. Never before have I wanted so much to see the hero triumph over his villains.
• Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
  • The fact that I watched this in China was the only thing I remembered about this movie.
• Black Panther
  • A good Marvel flick made memorable by its villain. The final fight ended with a touching moment that I didn’t expect from the company.
• Avengers: Infinity War
  • An achievement on all fronts – writing, visuals, and direction. This movie has achieved the near impossible task of making a fresh movie out of roughly 20 tried and true main characters. Deserves all the memes and attention it gets.
• Ant Man and the Wasp
  • Better than the first Ant Man, but that isn’t saying much. Marvel made an excellent marketing choice releasing this right after infinity war – I don’t think I would’ve watched it otherwise.
• Batman: The Dark Knight Rises
  • The script gets muddled in some places, but the movie has its moments. Though nowhere near Ledger’s Joker, Bane is great nonetheless.
• Captain America: The Winter Soldier
  • Tells a usual Marvel story with an unusual amount of amazing fight choreography and debates on morality.
• Deadpool 2
  • The same Deadpool we know and love but with more budget. Didn’t really stick the rewatch.

Comedy / Dark Comedy

• The Wolf of Wall Street
  • A hilarious yet harrowing exploration of a life of excess. I made the mistake of watching this movie on a flight.
• Burn After Reading
  • Very similar to In Bruges in terms of minor characters and events always becoming vital to the story. An excellent script.
• Nightcrawler
  • A tad boring aside from Jake Gyllenhaal’s performance.
• Isle of Dogs
  • The most Wes Anderson out of all the Wes Anderson movies I’ve seen. Has great animation, but otherwise not really my thing.
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
  • Six western stories that will make you laugh, cry, and gasp. Some I liked more than others (and I know this will be an unpopular opinion) but here is my list of the stories, in order from my favorite to least favorite: 1, 2, 5, 4, 6, 3.
• The Hateful Eight
  • My least favorite Tarantino movie, but that doesn’t mean much.
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
  • Heartwarming, sad, funny, and well directed. Wes Anderson’s style is apparent but doesn’t come at the cost of anything else.

Drama

• Taxi Driver
  • A tad overrated in my opinion, but an amazing movie nonetheless. Some of its moments will stick with me forever.
• The Deer Hunter
  • A Vietnam-war epic that goes to great lengths to breathe life into its characters – including making its introductory wedding scene an hour long. It uses this to great effect, but I still feel immature for getting bored when the movie would go more than 30 minutes without a gunshot.
• Blood Simple
  • You can see the beginning of the Coen brother’s distinct dialogue and direction, but it falls a little flat in those two areas. The film’s use of music, however, is superb.
• The Revenant
  • I didn’t watch the Revenant. I felt the Revenant.
• Anomalisa
  • The best stopmotion movie I have seen and one of the most underrated movies of all time.
• Silver Lining’s Playbook
  • I don’t watch a lot of romance movies, but this might be my favorite.
• Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
  • This is by the same director as In Bruges, and also contains its excellent scriptwriting, characters, and use of music. The same dark comedy style as this movie’s predecessor, however, doesn’t really fit with the change in subject matter.
• Seven
  • A tad overrated. The style wasn’t quite campy enough or dramatic enough to find its place.

Animated

• Incredibles 2
  • An amazing family movie, but doesn’t approach the first.
• The End of Evangelion
  • I don’t get it.
• Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse
  • My favorite movie released in 2018. Impeccable animation, story, voice acting, and music.
• The Tale of Princess Kaguya
  • My favorite of the Ghibli movies I’ve seen so far, complete with one of the most emotional endings I have seen in a long while.
• Howl’s Moving Castle
  • A heartwarming story with amazing characters that lost me at its conclusion.
• Spirited Away
  • Some of the best animation I’ve ever seen, with excellent voice acting and character design. In my opinion, the quality drops a tad whenever scenes don’t take place in the awe-inspiring Yubaba’s bathhouse.
• Big Fish of Begonia
  • Has a story chock-full of animated fantasy clichés, but manages to pull everything off rather well.