Elsie Fisher – Memphis Flyer

If there is a common theme among the best films of 2018, it’s wrenching order from chaos. From Regina Hall trying to hold both a restaurant and a marriage together to Lakeith Stanfield navigating the surreal moral minefields of late-stage capitalism, the best heroes positioned themselves as the last sane people in a world gone mad.

Dakota Johnson in Fifty Shades Freed

Worst Picture: Fifty Shades Freed

In her epic deconstruction of the final installment of everyone’s least favorite BDSM erotica trilogy, Eileen Townsend called Fifty Shades Freed a “sequence of intentionally crafted visual stimuli” that “bears coincidental aesthetic similarity to a movie … But I believe Fifty Shades Freed is nonetheless not a movie at all, but something far more pure — a pristine document of the market economy, a kind of visual after-image created as an incidental side effect of the exchange of large sums of capital…We literally cannot perceive the truest form of Fifty Shades Freed, because to do so, we would have to be money ourselves.”

Sunrise over the Monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey

Best Moviegoing Experience: 2001: A Space Odyssey in IMAX

The Malco Paradiso’s IMAX screen, which opened last December, has quickly earned the reputation as the best theater in the city. During the late-summer lull, a new digital transfer of 2001: A Space Odyssey got a week’s run to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary. Even if you’ve watched Stanley Kubrick’s film a dozen times, seeing it the size it was intended to be seen is a revelation. Also, all lengthy blockbusters should come with an intermission.

Chuck, the canine star of Alpha

Best Performance by a Nonhuman: Chuck, Alpha

Director Albert Hughes’ Alpha is a sleeper gem of 2018. The star of the story of how humans first domesticated dogs is a Czech Wolfhound named Chuck, who dominates the screen with a Lassie-level performance. Chuck and his co-star, Kodi Smit-McPhee, spend large parts of the movie silently navigating the hazards of Paleolithic Eurasia, and the dog nails both stunts and the occasional comedy bits. Chuck is a movie star.

KiKi Layne and Stephan James in If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Scene: The Family Meeting, If Beale Street Could Talk

Most of Barry Jenkins’ adaptation of James Baldwin’s novel is an intimate, tragic love story between Tish Rivers (KiKi Layne) and Fonny Hunt (Stephan James). But for about 10 minutes, it becomes an ensemble dramedy, when Tish has to tell, first, her parents that she’s pregnant out of wedlock with a man who has just been arrested for a crime he didn’t commit, then his parents. If you pulled this scene out of the film, it would be the best short of 2018.

Rukus

Best Memphis Movie: Rukus

Brett Hanover’s documentary hybrid had been in production for more than a decade by the time it made its Mid South debut at Indie Memphis 2018. What started as a tribute to a friend who had committed suicide slowly evolved into a mystery story, an exploration into a secretive subculture, and a diary of growing up and accepting yourself.

Ethan Hawk stars as a priest in existential crisis in First Reformed.

Best Screenplay: First Reformed

Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader penned and directed this piercing drama about a small town priest, played by Ethan Hawk, who undergoes a crisis of faith when a man he is counseling commits suicide. 72-year-old Schrader is unafraid to ask the big questions: Why are we here? Is it all worth it? His elegantly constructed story ultimately looks to love for the answers, but the journey there is harrowing.

Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger in Black Panther

MVP: Michael B. Jordan

Michael B. Jordan played a book-burning fireman with a conscience in HBO’s Fahrenheit 451 adaptation and the heavyweight champion of the world in Creed II. But it was his turn as Killmonger in Black Panther that elevated the year’s biggest hit film to the realm of greatness. Director Ryan Coogler knew what he was doing when he put his frequent collaborator in the the villain slot opposite Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa, making their personal rivalry into a battle for the soul of Wakanda.

Regina Hall in Support The Girls

Best Performance: (tie) Regina Hall, Support the Girls and Elsie Fisher, Eighth Grade

In a year full of great performances, two really stood out. In Support the Girls, Regina Hall plays Lisa, a breastaurant manager having the worst day of her life, with a breathtaking combination of technique and empathy. We agonize with her over every difficult decision she has to make just to get through the day.

Elsie Fisher as Kayla in Eighth Grade

Elsie Fisher started work on Eighth Grade the week after the 13-year-old actually finished eighth grade. She carries the movie with one of the most raw, unaffected comic performances you will ever see.

Emma Stone takes aim in The Favourite.

Best Director: Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite

Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ previous efforts has been bracing, self-written satires, but he really came into his own with this kinda true story written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara. Everything clicks neatly into place in The Favourite. The central troika of Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne and Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz as backstabbing cousins vying for her favor are all stunning. The editing, sound mix, and costume design are superb, and I’ve been thinking about the meaning of a particular lens choice for weeks.

Daniel Tiger (left) and Fred Rogers, star of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood

Best Documentary: Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

Once in a while, a movie comes along that fills a hole in your heart you didn’t know you had. Morgan Neville’s biography of Fred Rogers appears as effortlessly pure as the man himself. Mr. Rogers’ radical compassion is the exact opposite of Donald Trump’s performative cruelty, and Neville frames his subject as a kind of national surrogate father figure, urging us to remember the better angels of our nature.

Sorry To Bother You

Best Picture: Sorry to Bother You

Boots Riley’s debut film is something of a bookend to my best picture choice from last year, Jordan Peele’s Get Out. They’re both absurdist social satires aimed at American racism set in a slightly skewed version of the real word. But where Get Out is a finely tuned scare machine, Sorry to Bother You is a street riot of ideas and images. When his vision occasionally outruns his reach, Riley pulls it off through sheer audacity. No one better captured the Kafkaesque chaos, anger, and confusion of living in 2018.

Elsie Fisher as Kayla in Eighth Grade

FULL DISCLOSURE: Once upon a time, I was in eighth grade. So I may have some bias in my feelings about this film. Eighth Grade follows Kayla (Elsie Fisher) through her last week of middle school, complete with a one-sided crush, pool party, awkward sex ed video, and all the classic elements of a teen movie. It also investigates Kayla’s online persona and relationship with social media, which, in addition to casting actual young people in the parts of the teenagers, makes the movie feel shockingly accurate.

Half the story is told through the screens of digital devices, with Kayla’s entire life outside of school revolving around her laptop and smartphone. She posts video blogs of herself speaking to her computer’s camera, with monologues that are partially the sage wisdom of self-help memes (“You can’t be brave without being scared!”) combined with tongue-tied word vomit that is both familiar and painful to watch. Although Kayla’s video blog personality preaches confidence, it’s clear that she’s uncomfortable in her skin. The success of vloggers hinges on their performance of authenticity — “being real” while simultaneously appearing optimistic, carefree, and cool — which Kayla mimics, but ultimately fails to conceal her anxiety and awkwardness.

Teens today are six times more likely to experience anxiety and depression than they were 80 years ago, thanks to the impossible expectations of neoliberalism and social media. While my generation of Old Millennials used the internet to explore our identities and our feelings through online forums and blogs, we were almost always anonymous. We had been taught that it was dangerous to use our real names, and through our internet names and avatars, we were able to play with aspects of ourselves in a private/public way without the risk of social ridicule or the permanence of making a real-life decision about how we spent our time and who we spent it with. We could choose to sit at a different lunch table in the virtual world with none of the social consequences we knew at school.

The internet I grew up with officially died when Google bought YouTube and forced us to give up our anonymity, to use our legal names in place of our chosen handles. Now that social media encourages users to showcase their real lives, teenagers perform as themselves, all of them trying to mirror what they see as acceptable or cool according to the unending feeds on their screens. In Eighth Grade, Kayla is constantly scrolling, reacting, living on her phone. In her desperation to be cool and to be accepted, she creates an overly curated online persona, applying makeup along with a video tutorial, so that she can get back in bed and post a selfie captioned, “I woke up like this, ugh.” Like many of Kayla’s statements, these words are not her own, and by utilizing memes rather than speaking in her own way, Kayla can bypass the chance that she will be judged or ostracized in case her personal thoughts are deemed “wrong.” The scrutiny, from herself and everyone around her, is constant. The performance never ends.

Kayla is probably becoming an interesting person, but most of what we learn about her is surface level. I wanted to see a little more of Kayla’s off-screen home life, but maybe she doesn’t have one. Even in her room, typically a teenager’s safe haven, Kayla obsessively interacts with an internet audience that rarely responds. She’s never truly alone. So who would Kayla be if she were performing only for herself? If she ever does get close to solitude, Dad barges in with his dorky jokes and exasperating “I love you’s.” Her replies to his attempts to communicate range from stone-cold to downright mean, mirroring the popular girls’ reactions to Kayla. The parallel hints at a larger cycle of violence, in which young people respond to traumatic experiences of growing up by enacting cruelty on each other and themselves. At school, the students participate in active shooter drills (with special thanks to the drama club) but there are no lessons on communication, compassion, or consent.

The movie never pushes too hard in any one direction, but rather orbits smoothly around its protagonist. The new frontiers of dating and sexuality are approached with caution, and thankfully, we’re spared most tired teen movie tropes. The storytelling feels gentle and supportive, with small doses of blood, fire, and tears, because it just wouldn’t be a coming-of-age story without the hard stuff. Director Bo Burnham’s well-rounded approach presented a full picture of a modern middle schooler. I’m glad he didn’t go further to tackle the reality of adolescent girlhood, considering he’s never been one. Other directors could take a page out of Burnham’s book in that regard.

ACTUAL FULL DISCLOSURE: Once upon a time, I was a dorky eighth grade girl with acne, anxiety, and exactly zero friends, just like Kayla. I also played cymbals in the school band, and if I’d had a smartphone, laptop, and wifi, I probably would’ve been just as internet-obsessed as Kayla. I related to her immensely and low-key cried through the whole movie, not only because of the genuine representation of teen girl loneliness, but also because I realized I was still holding so much pain from my life as that person, in that body, and watching this movie was a healing experience I didn’t even know I needed.