Baumer's 36 best films of 2018 (top 3 has been revealed)

[baumer]

#24

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Box office:  392.9 million

Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke...directed by Ron Howard

 

I could go on a rant here as to why this failed at the box office.  I will just briefly touch on my assertion that TLJ pissed off a lot of us SW loonies.  I'm 47 and I've loved every SW film prior to Rogue One.  Rogue One ended up being good imo but it still felt a little off in comparison to the other films before it.  Then TLJ comes along and Rian Johnson decides that he will say fuck you to JJ, George, Kathleen and all of us who were intrigued by the questions that TFA left us with.  Hence Solo failed miserably at the box office.  I mean it was an abomination.

 

Okay, now that that is out of the way, Solo was good.  Not great but it was good.  As a big Star Wars fan I was not expecting anything going into this film.  The trailers were just okay but the film did a lot of things well.  Alden Ehrenreich was the biggest surprise for me because I did not see anyone playing Han Solo but Harrison Ford, however Alden did a fantastic job and was very likeable. The only thing I would say in regards to this is that he was not very grumpy or serious in comparison to Harrison Ford's Solo but this is a young Solo so I had to look past all of that.  Donald Glover was way way over-hyped as Lando.  He was adequate but didn't have near the charisma that Billy Dee Williams did as the gambling scoundrel.  What was good was pretty much everything else.  The pacing was good and the story was good as well.  Seeing the origins of Chewy was nice as well.  Ron Howard is a good director and he handled everything really nicely.  I liked Solo quite a bit.  

 

[baumer]

#23

Aquaman

Box Office:  Soon to be a member of the Big B club

Jason Mamoa, Amber Heard, Dolph Lundgren...directed by James Wan

 

One of the best things about this film is that while most superhero movies do justice to the action aspects and the adventure aspect often gets overshadowed, AQUAMAN is a complete action adventure. You don't just get breathtaking action set pieces but also a lot of enchanting locales. The entire CGI work is impressive and that's another reason to watch it in IMAX 3D.

Jason Momoa is very impressive, as is Amber Heard. Their combo makes the story more fun as they go places. Willem Dafoe is back with another solid act. Nicole Kidman is quite good, as are rest of the cast members. James Wan has done a great job with the direction by sticking to the plot and not resorting to unwanted subplots. The background score is also very impressive.

I like most DC films, more than most of the members here do.  I'm not sure if I'd call this one the best of the bunch so far, but it is very good.  Back to Mamoa, I've always thought he was good, charismatic and he has a presence.  He did a movie with Stallone called Bullet to the Head where he played the bad guy.  He towers over Stallone and yet when they battled at the end, it looked realistic.  I know this has to do with how it is directed and co-ordinated, but there has to props given to Mamoa for allowing his costars to shine.  His presence is felt in Bullet and it carries over into Aquaman as well.  Aquaman is a lot of fun and it is a nice addition to the DC lexicon of films. 

 

[baumer]

#22

Christmas Chronicles

Box office:  N/A

Kurt Russell, Oliver Hudson, Goldie Hawn

 

I love Christmas movies.  It doesn't take much to please me.  Sure, a lot of them are cliched and formulaic but that's the beauty of them.  They do follow a formula and that's what we want to see out of this kind of movie.  The plot is going to sound like so many other Christmas movie plots.  Someone has lost their belief if the spirit of Christmas and someone, this time it being Santa himself, has to get it back for him.  This time, the character in question is a teen who lost his dad in the line of duty.  Before his death, their family was tight and they loved Christmas and they all spent time together over the holidays.  When the father dies, the family starts to disintegrate and the young teen starts to get angry and is heading towards a life of crime.  

 

On Christmas Eve, the kids inadvertently wreck Santa's sleigh and this puts him in jeopardy of not being able to complete his Christmas duties.  Together, Santa and the two kids have to save Christmas while avoiding jail time, angry bar patrons and they have to find the reindeer who are loose in the city.

 

Kurt Russell absolutely lets loose as Santa.  He has fun with it and you can tell.  His persona comes out on screen and his interpretation of Santa is one of my faves.  And the ending of course left a lump in  my throat.  I've said this a million times....my mother loved Christmas and she put that love into me.  She would have loved this one.

 

[baumer]

#21

Deadpool 2

Box office:  742 million

Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Rob Delaney, Brad Pitt

 

Wade Wilson (Reynolds) has been killing criminals for two years now (since the end of the first film), under the name Deadpool. He's planning to have a child with his girlfriend, Vanessa Carlysle (Baccarin), when tragedy strikes. Wade then befriends a young troubled mutant named Russell (Dennison), who he later learns has been targeted for execution by a powerful time traveling mutant, from the future, named Cable (Brolin). Wade forms a team of new superhero mutants, he calls X-Force, to help him protect the kid and stop Cable. 

The movie is filled with nonstop gags and slapstick humour (just like the original), as well as really graphically violent action scenes (also just like the original). For me this film went a little too far in some of it's slapstick humour, whereas I thought the original movie had the perfect balance of action and comedy. This one also has a lot of sci-fi craziness on top of everything else. I still, of course, really enjoyed it, but I definitely can't say it matched the original. Reynolds is once again amazing, in the role he was born to play, and the supporting cast is more than decent. The script is clever and brilliant, and the directing is good enough. I think if they could have kept the original director though, this film could have been even better. As it is, it's still one of the best films of this year, and any year as far as superhero movies go. Too bad we won't ever get a true 'DEADPOOL 3', now that Disney owns the rights (and will never do a hardcore R-rated movie), but we can always dream.

 

[baumer]

10 hours ago, TwoMisfits said:

I don't know what this film is, but is there ever a case where the above statement is true, except maybe at an N'Sync's member's birthday party?:)

 

 

 

Here you go TwoMisfits

[Chaz]

Disney has released tons of R-rated movies. They wouldn’t change a winning formula like this one.

[baumer]

3 hours ago, Chaz said:

Disney has released tons of R-rated movies. They wouldn’t change a winning formula like this one.

 

I hope you're right.  

[SchumacherFTW]

PG-13 deadpool will work, the stuff they shot for the Christmas release works really well. 

[TwoMisfits]

12 minutes ago, Christmas baumer said:

#21

Deadpool 2

Box office:  742 million

Ryan Reynolds, Josh Brolin, Rob Delaney, Brad Pitt

 

Wade Wilson (Reynolds) has been killing criminals for two years now (since the end of the first film), under the name Deadpool. He's planning to have a child with his girlfriend, Vanessa Carlysle (Baccarin), when tragedy strikes. Wade then befriends a young troubled mutant named Russell (Dennison), who he later learns has been targeted for execution by a powerful time traveling mutant, from the future, named Cable (Brolin). Wade forms a team of new superhero mutants, he calls X-Force, to help him protect the kid and stop Cable. 

The movie is filled with nonstop gags and slapstick humour (just like the original), as well as really graphically violent action scenes (also just like the original). For me this film went a little too far in some of it's slapstick humour, whereas I thought the original movie had the perfect balance of action and comedy. This one also has a lot of sci-fi craziness on top of everything else. I still, of course, really enjoyed it, but I definitely can't say it matched the original. Reynolds is once again amazing, in the role he was born to play, and the supporting cast is more than decent. The script is clever and brilliant, and the directing is good enough. I think if they could have kept the original director though, this film could have been even better. As it is, it's still one of the best films of this year, and any year as far as superhero movies go. Too bad we won't ever get a true 'DEADPOOL 3', now that Disney owns the rights (and will never do a hardcore R-rated movie), but we can always dream.

 

Ah, Eagles game or Deadpool 2 DVD....ahhhh...choices!  Okay, this has to wait til post game (unless you tell me it's your highest super:)...

[baumer]

The Eagles Bears game should be the best one of the weekend....I'm watching it as well.

[baumer]

#20

Den of Thieves

Box office:  80 million WW

O' shea Jackson, Eric Braeden, Gerard Butler

 

Written, produced and directed by Christian Gudegast, who has been a script doctor for most of his career, Den of Thieves marks his arrival with a loud and demonstrative bang.  Den of Thieves tells the story of two different groups of "gangs".  One has guns and badges and the other has guns and bandannas.   The "bad guys" are military trained former soldiers of fortune who plan on robbing the treasury, which has never been robbed before.  The good guys are lead by Gerard Butler, in what I think is his best performance of his career.  He does a delicate and precarious balancing act between what is right and what is allowed.  He's a womanizer, an adulterer, beats witnesses and suspects and runs his unit with reckless abandon.  He's also smart, driven and dedicated to his work.  

 

Somewhere in the middle of all of this is O' Shea Jackson's character.  He's not quite a villain but far from on the right side of the law.  

 

I liked this movie immensely but I could have been even more fond of if the plan to rob the treasury wasn't pretty much impossible to pull off.  How they did it was too much for me to believe and they would have been caught in about 7 different places.  But other than that, it's tense, suspenseful, action packed, beautifully shot, brilliantly directed and wonderfully acted.  

 

I liked this movie quite a bit and it was nice to see Eric Braeden in a small role.  

 

And the last 20 minutes is some of the best shootout stuff I've ever seen.  It's up there with Heat.

 

[baumer]

#19

Halloween

Box office:  253.6 million

Jamie Lee Curtis, Judy Greer, Will Patton, Nick Castle....written by Danny McBride and produced by John Carpenter

 

The first time I saw this, I was disappointed in it.  I didn't pay close enough attention to everything and some of it just didn't resonate with me.  Then I saw it the second time and it made much more sense.  McBride and David Gordon Green basically wrote a love letter the fans of Halloween and I definitely appreciate it for that.  The last few entries in the series have been pretty bad and Zombie's films are just abortions of cinema.  This one goes back to the roots.  It brings back the suspense, it brings back some of the snappy dialogue that Debra Hill gave us in the first two films and it of course brings back Jamie Lee Curtis as Laurie Strode.  

 

I didn't care for the ending as they left it open for Myers not to be dead.  I understand it from a business stand point but at this point in Strode's life, I think she would want to see him dead.  Not only would I have watched him burn, I'd of decapitated him for good measure.  

 

Halloween is violent, it's tense and it's suspenseful.  It's the most excited I've been for a horror film since IT and if you take away a few minor disappointments, it was a terrific rebirth of the franchise.

 

@75Live  I loved a lot of the nods to the other films and two of the best ones, for me,  were when Michael looked down after tossing Laurie out the window and she was gone and the music hit like the end of the first film.  My first crowd went nuts for that.  Her face just appearing in the doorway like the first film with Michael was great too.

 

   

[baumer]

#18

Mission Impossible:  Fallout

Box office:  791 million

Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson

 

I'm not sure if this is the best action film of the year but it certainly has some of the best action sequences of the year.  Fallout uses several classic spy tropes and specifically Mission: Impossible tropes (masks, for example). What makes this entry so great, and maybe the best in the series, is the way everything is orchestrated.

The plot centers around Ethan Hunt and his team trying to prevent a nuclear attack to prevent (much like in M:i-5).

Every single action (and non-action) scene of the film is very enjoyable. There are some very outstanding stunts and sequences, also plenty of comic scenes (I didn't expect that I would laugh this much), and the final 10 minutes is just fucking crazy.  The conclusion is predictable,we all know Ethan will save the world.  But it's so well done in every way.  Directing, acting and the editing as well.  
I really liked the visuals as well.  Much of the lighting seems to reproduce a nuclear blast, (the impending danger that has to be prevented) providing this entry of the series with a distinct visual style. There is definitely some very stunning photography.

Christopher McQuarrie seems to give a different direction to some characters, particularly Ethan's wife from M:i-3 (introduced by Abrams) and Rebecca Ferguson's character, introduced in the previous film. The ending suggests that there are some options for a seventh film (which, given the success of this one, is most likely to happen).
 

MI:F is treat for Cruise fans and adrenaline junkies.

 

@MrPink  It's probably the best in the franchise. As a thriller, it's not as adept as the first, and maybe it doesn't lean quite as much into the personal stakes as MI3, but it's suitably ahead in most other aspects. The whole Paris stretch is incredible. The halo jump, the multiple chases in the streets, and the bathroom scene are all edge of your seat stuff, and while the climax doesn't quite reach that high of Paris, it's a more than worthy finale

 

[baumer]

#17

Book Club

Box office:  68.5 million

Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Mary Steenbergen, Richard Dreyfuss

 

I liked it even more than Lone Pirate did (I'll post his thoughts at the bottom of the page).  He hits on some of the great stuff in the movie and for me, it struck a chord in every way.  I agree that maybe younger viewers won't appreciate all of it, but I do think any age group can still enjoy this film.  It's very well written, superbly acted by all four women and even the guys that show up do a terrific job.  My favourite performance in the entire film is from Andy Garcia, who commands the screen when he's on it.  I really wish he would get more roles because there aren;t many actors like him.  He just lights up the screen every time he is given a chance to, especially in this film.

 

Bergen does have perhaps the funniest scene when her and Richard Dreyfuss have sex in the back seat of a car.  But every one of the four women are given their moment to shine.  Diane Keaton brings some very funny moments with her and Mary STeenbergen might be the most gorgeous 60 year old I've ever seen.  Her and Craig T. Nelson (they worked together in The Proposal as husband and wife) have some fantastic scenes together and the viagara scene is really well done.  Jane Fonda and Don Johnson have a sweet relationship as well.

 

I really enjoyed this film and would recommend it to anyone.

 

@LonePirate  

Book Club is a leisurely paced film that offers plenty of rom com style laughs precisely targeted to amuse the film's primary demographic. Even so, several of the jokes and bits are funny for viewers of all ages. The audience at my viewing loved the film. Candice Bergen had two scenes which generated the most laughs but Keaton and Steenburgen also have some amusing moments with their paramours. Of the four leads, Fonda has the worst material but she is perfectly fine in her role. 

 

Younger audiences probably won't connect to the characters due to the age difference; but mature audiences will lap up the film as it is entertaining and the four leads are likeable characters. There are certainly worse films in the theaters right now. 

 

7/10

 

ETA: I have since watched the film a second time and it holds up well. It is a charming and funny movie. Upping my score to 8/10.

 

 

[baumer]

#16

Hunter Killer

Box office:  15.7 million

Gerard Butler, Gary Oldman, Common

 

One of the most entertaining and well paced and scripted films of the year.

 

This film takes it time to build up the tension, it does it well especially when thing start to build up you get a sense of world war 3 is about to happen, it all starts with a simple unknown attack on a Russian and American sub, from there this film kicks in to overdrive and the tension builds between the Russian and American naval fleet that gives you a real sense of disaster.  

Ever since he uttered the immortal line "We Are Sparta" as King Leonidas in the 2006 surprise hit 300, Gerard Butler has filled the screen with machismo and virility. So I was expecting just more of the same when I went to check out the submarine flick HUNTER KILLER, figuring it was just a "B" action flick with Butler throwing up macho line after macho line and punching anyone who was in his way.

But...HUNTER KILLER is, surprisingly, much, much more.

Telling the story of a "Hunter Killer" submarine under a new captain that must go into enemy territory to check out the sinking of another American submarine, this adept action-thriller by South African Director Donovan Marsh is a pleasant surprise for only 1/2 of the film is about the action aboard the submarine, or the action back at HQ where a screaming Gary Oldman insists on less diplomacy and more aggressive action. The other part of the film is a very gripping, tense and exciting "behind enemy lines" war flick following the exploits of 4 Special Ops members (led by Toby Stephens) who must grab a person and then unite with the submarine.

Colour me shocked by this. While Butler and Oldman gave me exactly what I wanted, the Special Ops soldiers, the stakes and the action sequences are a notch above your every day effort. If you are looking for a fun action flick, that can easily pass a few hours on a rainy and cold Saturday afternoon, you could do much, much worse than this one.  The first half of the film takes its time getting into the story.  The last half is hold your breath action with dire consequences in the balance. 

 

@SteveJaros  Basically, if you liked a movie like "Skyscraper" or "The Meg" a few months ago, you might like this. Cheesy by the numbers action movie, every plot twist visible from a mile away,

 

[baumer]

Top fifteen will commence later

[baumer]

Some hints for the next few films:

 

Run DMC stepped on stage at **** ***...the people came and the poor got paid

An indictment of 9/11

A terrific animal rights story disguised as a big budget spring release

 

[Chaz]

Glad you enjoyed Book Club! I didn’t have high hopes but was pleasantly surprised. It was a ton of fun.

[lorddemaxus]

15 hours ago, Christmas baumer said:

A terrific animal rights story disguised as a big budget spring release

 

 

Peter Rabbit?

 

edit: I hope you are talking about Isle of Dogs and not Peter Rabbit.

Edited January 7, 2019 by lorddemaxus

[kaijukurt]

15 hours ago, Christmas baumer said:

A terrific animal rights story disguised as a big budget spring release

 

Rampage!!!

Edited January 7, 2019 by kaijukurt