Ringing out 2018

I used to resist these year-end roundup posts, now I kind of look forward to them. I actually took the day off yesterday to write this - then out-of-town guests showed up and I got a better offer. So, as 2018 recedes into a distant memory, here we go.

It looks like we watched 19 movies from 2018 in 2018. The rate at which we are watching new movies seems to be increasing. Most of the big action movies or sequels were just OK - enjoyable but not knockouts. Deadpool II was probably our favorite there. For new, original movies, again, not so many great ones. We enjoyed DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time more than most, I think, partly because of the cast, partly out of love for the book. But I’d say our fave was Annihilation. I can see why some people had a problem with it - I thought some parts looked a little cheesy, like a TV movie (or Netflix). But I couldn’t resist the world building, and the mystery of it all.

Ms. Spenser is still looking for good horror, and we’ve found some. We watched the entire Wan/Whannel Insidious franchise in 2018, capping it with 2018’s Last Key. It’s good series, made great by the characters of Elise, Tucker and Specs. Hereditary, on the other hand, was a beautifully made, extremely scary horror movie that we just didn’t take to. Possibly because it was too extreme, possibly because the ending was so ordinary in what started out so original.

It doesn’t quite fit into the horror category, or any category, really, but we also saw Sorry to Bother You. It was a lot of fun, and pretty brilliant, but also kind of a mess. The shaggy anything goes structure cost it points in the black-comedy-horror-political-metaphor contest (winner: Get Out). 

But our favorite 2018 movie was probably Crazy Rich Asians. It had plenty of problems: wealth porn, racial representation, and the fact that we usually don’t care for modern soap opera rom-coms. But it had so many gorgeous, charming stars (of all Asian persuasions), and was so much plain fun, we couldn’t help it.

For non-2018 movies, we watched a lot of recent-ish (2017 for ex) movies. Baby Driver was pretty cool. My plan to watch dance movies instead of action movies didn’t really pan out after we’d watched two or three. We didn’t watch as much Shakespeare as I’d planned - mostly because Ms. S. got tired of it. 

We didn’t watch as many “old” movies (black and white, studio system era) as I would like - they just aren’t making them any more. We did see a few Boris Karloff’s and some noir/crime B movies. 

We did get a few movies off of the Saved queue: we saw Candy, which wasn’t all that great, but I’m glad to have seen it. 

One change we made in 2018 was to drop Netflix streaming, and replace it with Hulu. We’re watching on an Amazon Firestick, so we can watch some Prime as well. We’re not in love with either one - Amazon makes it hard to find the free, Hulu plays ads for other shows over the credits, series go away just when we’re starting to like them (Lucifer) and shows we expected to like get gross and violent (Dirk Gently). We will probably go back to Netflix, if only for the new season of MST3K and Orson Welles’ Breaking of the Wind. We’re realizing that, for streaming, it’s not a matter of picking a service and sticking with it. We’re going to do a month here, a few months there, as shows come and go.

In Christmas news, Ms. S. got me a DVD of Forty Guns. We haven’t watched it yet, or any other DVD this year. I’m afraid that the first DVD of 2019 will be Skyscraper. Stay tuned.

In conclusion, the best movie of 2018 is Bringing Up Baby, same as every year. But I’m beginning to think maybe we should replace it with something by the Marx Bros. 

Happy New Year!