Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

2018: It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.

I take it back – it was just the worst of times.

War, famine, with no action on Climate Change. volcanoes erupting, tsunamis, mass killings, ethnic cleansing, child refugees thrown into prisons, and incompetent but vengeful buffoons ruling more than one country. Good, safe Toronto (like many cites) suffered two mass killings by deranged nutbars, and somehow Ontario elected the brother of a man who made this city the laughing stock of the world. Yeah, it was the worst of times.

But at least a lot of people are still making great, original movies. (I’m a movie critic, not a newscaster.) This week I’m talking about the best movies of 2018. Some were made earlier but played this year, some screened at festivals and are opening in 2019, but all of them were open to the public at a movie theatre in this city at some point in 2018. There were way, way too many excellent movies to fit on any short list, so I’ve tried to find not just ones I liked, but also movies that somehow, shocked, surprised or delighted me in unexpected ways. Films that tickled the eye, pleased the ear, warmed the soul… or chilled the heart.

I’m intentionally shying away from Oscar Bait, superhero movies and sequels. And just to keep it within limits, I’m not including animated films or documentaries… but not because I don’t love them. (I do.)

There are also a bunch of movies I just haven’t seen yet, so of course I can’t include them.

So here, in no particular order, are my choices for best movies of 2018.

Let me start with some first movies or first in a long time movies, all from the US.

Hereditary is Ari Aster’s first film, and it goes so far beyond the usual cheap scare scenes I hesitate to call it a horror movie, but it is. It’s about a family – Mom’s an artist who builds doll houses exactly the one they live in; son’s a pothead, and daughter is a bit tetched in the head – who somehow conjure up an evil entity. I wish all horror movies were this well-made.

Leave No Trace is Debra Granik’s latest since the Winters Bone ten years ago. This is a subtlety moving film about a man raising his daughter in a nomadic life in the woods with minimal human contact… until they’re discovered by the authorities and forced to join civilization.

Sorry to Bother You is Boots Riley’s first film. It’s about an everyman in Oakland working as a telemarketer who discovers a secret about the company. It’s a combination political satire, science fiction, comedy drama. Not flawless, but brimming with brilliant new ideas and adventures in an old genre.

With honourable mentions to:

Jeremiah Zagar’s We The Animals

Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs (a cartoon, so doesn’t qualify on my main list)

Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman

Coen Brothers’ The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Robert Redford’s The Old Man and the Gun

Paul Schrader’s First Reformed

Here are four fantastic movies playing right now.

Border directed by Iranian filmmaker Ali Abbasi is a Swedish movie about an unusual looking border guard who discovers she may not be completely human.

The Favourite is Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’s latest and most accessible movie, a historical dark comedy about two female rivals fighting for Queen Anne’s attention.

Burning is Korean director Lee Chang-Dong’s mystery drama based on Haruki Murakami’s story about an intense young writer, the holly golightly woman he is obsessed with, and a slick rich guy who may have sinister motives.

Shoplifters is Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s family drama about a makeshift but loving family of petty criminals disrupted by government intervention.

And here are three more films coming in the first few months of 2019.

Cold War is Pawel Pawlikowski’s flawless romance about two musicians in postwar Poland, separated by the Iron Curtain.

Birds of Passage is an epic saga about how an indigenous family in Colombia is affected by the marijuana trade in the 60s and 70s.

The Good Girls is Alejandra Marquez Abella’s scathing look at the uppper class in Mexico City in the 1980s. Of course I loved Cuaron’s Roma, a visually beautiful film, but in my mind The Good Girls gets deeper and closer to the characters.

There are many more I really wanted to include, including Roma:

Lázsló Nemes’s Sunset (Napszállta)

Lucretia Martel’s Zama

Mouly Surya’s Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts

Gaspar Noe Climax

Audiard’s The Sisters Brothers

Luis Ortega’s El Angel

Lars von Trier’s The House That Jack Built

…but I decided to stop at 10 this year.

Once again, my favourite films of 2018:

The Good Girls

Birds of Passage

Cold War

Sorry to Bother You

Leave No Trace

Hereditary

Border

The Favourite

Burning

Shoplifters

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.