Did your favourite movie make the list for 2018? Photos / Supplied
Did your favourite movie make the list for 2018? Photos / Supplied
The TimeOut team put their heads together to pick the top 10 movies of 2018 - count down to number one below and see if your favourites made the cut.
10 – YOU WERE NEVER REALLY HERE
Overladen with a grimy fatalism that feels depressingly pertinent in this day and age, director Lynne Ramsay's long-awaited follow-up to 2011's We Need To Talk About Kevin demonstrates that her ability to mine gripping drama from incredibly dark subject matter has not diminished at all. Joaquin Phoenix gives a layered performance as a PTSD-suffering combat veteran who helps recover kidnapped girls. When a case involving a politician suddenly takes a dark turn, he finds his already fractured world spiralling further out of control. Violent in a manner that feels both repellent and responsible, this haunting neo-noir lingers longer than you want it to. - Dominic Corry
Oscar-winning La La Land director Damien Chazelle's film about Neil Armstrong and the first moon landing may not have ended up the box office smash hit it was positioned to be, but that shouldn't take away from the artistic achievement of the work. A masterful fusing of the intimate and the epic, First Man traverses huge psychological and physical distances without ever losing sight of the people taking those journeys. Ryan Gosling's opaque performance uses the taciturn astronaut's unknowability as a vehicle for the audience to understand Armstrong, while Chazelle portrays space flight with a tangible, jittery intensity that puts you right inside the rocket. - Dominic Corry
8 – CRAZY RICH ASIANS
Crazy Rich Asians is a fun and vibrant romp through the world of romcoms through an explicitly Asian lens. Like Black Panther, CRA also marked Hollywood's cultural shift; it is the first Hollywood studio film to feature a majority Asian cast and crew in some 25 years and its characters mercifully don't fall into the same stereotype-laden pitfalls as others. Instead, they get to put a new spin on a genre desperately in need of refreshing, in a warm, glitzy and purely romantic, feel-good film. - Siena Yates
7 – LADY BIRD
Like a high school scrapbook come to life, Lady Bird remembers adolescence with the love and respect it deserves. Funny, charming and deeply moving, writer-director Greta Gerwig succeeds by centring her narrative on a mother and daughter (Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf, both brilliant) who can't quite figure out how to love each other in the right way. Gerwig's vision of Sacramento in 2002 is somehow distant but familiar, and with her delicate pace, she perfectly captures the way time slips by alarmingly fast for teenagers standing on the precipice of the rest of their lives. An absolute gem. - George Fenwick
6 – BLACKKKLANSMAN
BlacKkKlansman already had a head start due to its intensely fascinating subject matter; the Spike Lee film follows the true story of a black detective named Ron Stallworth who infiltrated the KKK back in the 70s. But on top of that, this is widely regarded as Spike Lee's best work in years, and here his cinematic style truly works with the story, adding to the absurdity of it all while never losing sight of how serious it actually is. And despite the 70s setting, Lee didn't miss opportunities to subtly comment on modern-day America. It's at once funny and horrifying, entertaining and grim, and always compelling. - Siena Yates
5 – INCREDIBLES 2
In the 14 years between the release of Pixar's superhero classic and its long-desired sequel, superhero movies became the most popular cinematic genre in the world. So how did writer/director Brad Bird address the superhero boom in Incredibles 2? Simple: he didn't. Just as The Incredibles worked entirely on its own merits, driven by character rather than pop culture references, Incredibles 2 carried the story of the super-powered Parrs forward by focusing on the intra-family dynamics. Bird continues to set the standard in animated action scenes, which struggle to generate any sense of peril elsewhere. There's also a cool bit with a boat. - Dominic Corry
4 – HEREDITARY
Curiously, Hereditary and Sharp Objects juggle very similar themes – but Hereditary's version turns family trauma into a full-throttle horror, making this one unforgettable (and awfully upsetting) film. It's not the kind of scary movie that makes you afraid of the dark; rather, it's a relentless nerve attack that finds maniacal terror in one family's grief, deepening its sense of dread when you understand just how human its horror is. It sometimes verges on sadism, but its vision is so fresh, and Toni Collette's performance so good, that it greatly exemplifies how horror films can act as conduits for some of life's painful truths. - George Fenwick
3 – ANNIHILATION
Who knew that this cerebral sci-fi would double as one of the most heartbreaking films of the year? Underneath its genre thrills, Annihilation uses its dreamlike environment to reflect on the human impulse to self-sabotage and, most affectingly, the unforgiving weight of depression. Though its front end is weakened by flimsy dialogue, the latter half is a transcendent experience, with a mesmerising and completely terrifying climax that finds Natalie Portman deep-diving into some astonishing emotional depths. It's perplexing, but Annihilation isn't asking anyone to unspool its mystery; it instead asks us to look inwards, using this haunting, mutating world as our prism. - George Fenwick
There were so many ways this could've gone wrong: a first-time director (Bradley Cooper) teaming up with an unproven actor (Lady Gaga) to tell a story that had already been told very successfully twice before. But all the elements of A Star Is Born 2018 came together beautifully, providing a magnificent platform for Gaga's glorious pipes and obvious acting talent. It's so hard not to be cynical about musicals, which tend to be inherently earnest in nature, but Cooper infused his film with just enough grit to win over non-musical fans, without sacrificing any of the film's wish fulfilment power. - Dominic Corry
1 – BLACK PANTHER
Not only was Black Panther one of the biggest and most highly-anticipated blockbusters of the year, it also marked a massive and important cultural shift in Hollywood, as the most successful blockbuster film ever with a majority African-American cast and crew, and an African-American director. It shattered box office records and, more importantly, gave kids of colour heroes they could look up to and see themselves in. It also showed the demand for - and profitability of - diversity, which has seen other productions hustle to follow suit. Plus it was full of badass female warriors, superpowers and lols. What more could you want? - Siena Yates
