Friday, March 29, 2019

2018 Recap - The Favorites


Hello, hello! It is once again time to hand out awards for the TwoOhSix.com favorite movies and performances of 2018 and this just so happens to be the 10th edition of this recap post so it has been expanded and broken into categories for your reading pleasure. Thank you for joining me for another year of movie adventures, I hope you are able to find some films you may have missed or look at others you have seen in a different way.


There are several movie categories that have been selected including Asian Cinema, Documentary, Film Festival, and Horror, as well as the overall favorites and favorite performances. During 2018 I watched and reviewed a total of 171 movies which is a new record for the website so the narrowing down process was quite the task.

Let's begin with the special category winners each of which has a list of nominees in its own recap post which you will find a link to here as well. These categories are ones I feel should be highlighted because I tend to focus on them over the course of the year and so many of the films deserve to be talked about as much as possible so here goes.

First up is a very special CATegory that isn't confined to a genre or type of movie, the winning film is paw selected by Flash, the official cat of TwoOhSix.com. This year's selection, Catwalk: Tales from the Cat Show Circuit is a documentary that was shown at the Seattle International Film Festival and can now be seen on Netflix. As you've probably gathered, Flash is my cat (pictured on the left) and he likes movies. He really liked this movie, a documentary about cats, so of course he did. Honestly, it's a really fun movie. I wrote a review about it to tell you why. - Full Review



DOCUMENTARY:
First category up is Documentaries. Here are the nominees.
And the winner is...


Shirkers is a wonderfully crafted documentary that nails the heart and soul of indie film struggles and shows how anyone, anywhere can have the potential to create, or in this case almost create, something truly magical.


ASIAN CINEMA:
Now for the second category which is Asian Cinema. Special note, three of these films also made the nominee list for favorite overall film. Here are the nominees:
And the winner is...


One Cut of the Dead is everything I love about watching movies. No joke, I had tears of joy from watching this film. This is easily the funniest movie I've seen in a long time and one of the best zombie movies I have ever seen.


HORROR:
Next category up to bat is Horror, which also happens to be my favorite movie genre.. Here are the nominees:
And the winner is...


I put One Cut of the Dead right up there with The Cabin in the Woods as one of my all time favorite genre films because of how it puts an entirely new and refreshingly unexpected spin on something we've seen many times before.


FILM FESTIVALS:
The Film Festivals category had the longest list of nominees because there were just so many great movies to choose from although I have manged to narrow it down to ten for this post. You will find the full nominee list with links to each film's review on the Film Festival recap post.
And the winner is...


Blindspotting is a modern day Do the Right Thing. It's Boyz n tha Hood flipped upside down. The story really hit home for me in a lot of different ways and by the end I was an emotional mess.


FILM FESTIVAL PERFORMANCE:
Before we move on to the overall favorite film award, let's look at the best acting performances of the year starting off with the film festivals. Here are the nominees:

  • Chloë Grace Moretz / The Miseducation of Cameron Post
  • Daveed Diggs / Blindspotting
  • Ella Hunt / Anna and the Apocalypse
  • Emily Bett Rickards / Funny Story
  • Madeline Brewer / Cam
  • Matilda Lutz / Revenge
  • Miguel Ángel Solá / The Last Suit
  • Rafeal Casal / Blindspotting
  • Rina Kawaei / For Love's Sake
  • Rose-Marie Perreault / Fake Tattoos


The primary character in this story is a young socialite mistress who finds herself in a really bad situation during what is supposed to be an all guys weekend hunting trip. After a series of escalating events leads to her being abused, discarded, and left for dead, this surprisingly resilient woman resurrects and recreates herself into a deadly, revenge seeking, killing machine. This amazing transformation is brought to life by Matilda Lutz who really held nothing back in her performance and the result is one of the more iconic genre characters we've seen in a long time.


SPECIAL CATEGORY PERFORMANCE:
Here are a few other special category winners as seen in the 2018 acting performances recap post.







OVERALL PERFORMANCE:
And now for my favorite overall acting performances of the year. Here are the nominees:
And the winner is...


At times Sakura Ando's character Nobuyo seems like a bubbly young woman without a care in the world but then in other moments she is forced to be a more mature mother figure, especially to Yuri who she ends up desperately caring for as if the little girl represents a life she herself will never have a chance to fully realize. The range and depth she gives the performance is something truly special to see and she ends up with one of the most endearing and authentic characters I have seen in some time.


2018 FAVORITE MOVIE:
Okay you guys, here is the moment you've all been waiting for, the TwoOhSix.com Favorite Movie of 2018. Here are the nominees as revealed on the 2018 movies recap post.


Listed here descending in order from ten to the number one most favorite movie of the year.
  1. Operation: Red Sea
  2. Revenge
  3. Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse
  4. Anna and the Apocalypse
  5. Black Panther
  6. Crazy Rich Asians
  7. Shoplifters
  8. Blindspotting
  9. One Cut of the Dead
  10. And the Winner is...



Avengers: Infinity War is one of the single greatest achievements in film making history for so many different reasons. It is big, it is bold, and it holds nothing back. You are not prepared for what happens and you will leave the theater in some sort of emotional state that you weren't expecting to experience. After 10 years of build up, Marvel absolutely knocks this one out of the park and sets things up perfectly for a finale of unprecedented proportions. - Full Review


Thank you so much for following along as I chronicle my movie watching adventures and rank my favorite films and performances each and every year. While I started this website in 2011, I created favorite movie recaps for 2009 and 2010 so I now have ten years worth of favorite films. The list of movies is very impressive and really gives you an idea of what types of movies I really enjoy.

Ten years of reviewing and ranking my favorite films! 
As I was putting that graphic together, I thought it would also be interesting to see which was my number two favorite film for each year.



2018 Recaps:

Annual Favorite Film Recaps:




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