Madeline's Madeline

In a year defined by division, the one thing we could all agree on was movies. Just kidding! If anything, film discourse grew more contentious and fractured than ever in 2018, which began with a battle for the soul of the world’s most popular franchise and moved on from there to debates about the value of Netflix and seeing movies on the big screen, the politics of a biopic about an American icon, the importance of representation in not just cinema but also criticism, and of course picking a side in the big box-office standoff of the year, Lady Gaga versus Tom Hardy as a sexy, slobbering monster. If consensus ever really existed in the thunderdome of movie opinion, the internet has officially slayed it. Hell, even the critical favorite of the year (see our No. 7 below) has its very vocal detractors.

All of which is say that The A.V. Club’s rundown of the best films of 2018 is destined to tick you off. Hell, we could barely agree on it, which is one reason we’ve posted, as we do every year, the individual ballots of contributors. But if the following list is little more than a snapshot of what this particular group of cinephiles loved over the last 12 months, it’s one that acknowledges a spectrum of successes, from intimate documentaries to visionary spins on film noir to one belatedly completed curiosity from a dead master of the medium. (Netflix, it must be admitted, had quite the year, and is accordingly represented.) Because though we might not have been enthusiastic about all the same movies, there were plenty of movies worthy of enthusiasm. On that, hopefully, we all can agree.

https://film.avclub.com/the-best-films-of-2018-1831159568

Add a movie to the collection

This list will be frequently updated as movies move in-and-out of contention.

*Updated 1/23/19:
Final update for the year! Removed all moves not nominated for Academy Award, Golden Globe, SAG, or Independent Spirit Awards. Add missing Academy Award nominated films. Good luck watching them all. See you next year!

Added:
A Night at the Garden
Ant-Man and the Wasp
Avengers: Infinity War
Bao
Black Sheep
Border
Christopher Robin
Detainment
End Game
Fauve
Late Afternoon
Lifeboat
Marguerite
Mission: Impossible – Fallout
One Small Step
Period. End of Sentence.
Ready Player One
Skin
Solo: A Star Wars Story
Weekends

Removed:
22 July
Ad Astra
Bad Times at the El Royale
Batman Ninja
Ben is Back
Bird Box
Creed II
Crime + Punishment
Disobedience
Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot
Duck Duck Goose
Early Man
Hearts Beat Loud
Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation
Judy
Lu Over the Wall
Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
Monster Family
Next Gen
On the Basis of Sex
Paddington 2
Smallfoot
Teen Titans Go! To the Movies
The Front Runner
The Grinch
The Hate U Give
The Miseducation of Cameron Post
The Mule
The Other Side of the Wind
The Sisters Brothers
Three Identical Strangers
Vox Lux
Welcome to Marwen
What They Had
White Boy Rick
Widows

2018 released movies I probably want to watch.