The Best (well, not the worst) Movies of 2024

2024 was terrible for a lot of people. I won't elaborate on why--you've probably got your own ideas about what that means. I have things that I could complain about, but I would rather look for reasons not to. Many of those reasons came from the movies. And I still believe that a theater is the best way to experience motion pictures. I saw about half of them that way this year. I think I'm up there with the national average--maybe even above it. In any case, Hollywood is doing its best to deal with that new reality in the moviegoing audience. And, like every time it comes to a crossroad--from projection to sound to color to 3D to Dolby--the answer the industry came up with was, Spectacle!

Well spectacle is all well and good, but sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. The spectacle--heroic running gorillas and such--didn't really connect with me this year, which is why three of my selections are documentaries (a record), only two are made from an existing property and six are non-IP original films. If you're counting, that means I have 11 on the list. You'll see what I mean.

As always, I am trying to make this *my* list, no one elses. I have tried to avoid award season talk. I don't even know what the Golden Globe nominees are, as of this writing. I have my reasons. In the end, I want to explore what I really think and feel about today's pop culture. So here I go again. On my own. Going down the only road I've ever known.

Remember, each film has a link to where you can watch it, or find out more about it. Just click the title. It's hotlinked. Check it out. Seriously, people always seem to miss that.


So: Best Movies (American, single-shot stories) of 2024:
#PPLLCTenBest2024 #TenBest2024 #TenBest

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The Fall Guy, 87 North and Universal Pictures, Directed by David Leitch

As light and forgettable as the TV show that inspired it, and just as much fun. Stocked full of cliches, like the secret recording of the bad guy confessing to everything, and fun surprises--even if we've seen those surprises before. A romantic comedy with explosions--I'm pretty sure there's a genre there somewhere. A bonus with this film was the way it reaffirmed my connection to my older brother. The two of us watched it on the same night separately in our own little worlds without realizing it until afterwards. Movies can do that.

Conclave, Indian Paintbrush, Directed by Edward Berger

At some fundamental level, every organization in the world is just like high school. Conclave is a slow-burn action movie. Seriously. The leaps of faith and mind games that Ralph Fiennes navigates are no less harrowing and complex than those that Tom Cruise takes on in his Mission Impossible movies. Every silent hallway was exploding with tension, every vote a leap from a cliffside. I'm not kidding. And like any action movie, I figured out pretty early what the big reveal would be and who the bad guys were, but getting there and watching Ralph get there too was riveting. And for good measure, there was a twist ending that came out of nowhere but connected cleanly back to the bread crumbs (and my original guess) that were left along the way.

Now....[looking it up]...how do you spell hermaphrodite?

Juror #2, Dichotomy Films, Directed by Clint Eastwood

There's nothing I enjoy more than a movie that keeps me thinking about it after the end credits have rolled. Many of the films I think about, are ones where I take apart the story. In 2009, before I even started making top 10 lists, I did an small blog post about what was wrong with the movie, "9." (And about my Grandma.)

I like doing that. Most great movies will have me gushing about them and their characters and structure, such as my 2015 review of The Revenant. But that's still me engaging with the film's writing, as a writer. The even better movies don't engage me that way. The better ones get me thinking, not about how I would handle the story, but about how I would handle *myself* if I were in fact in that story.

Clint Eastwood does moral dilemma stories better than anyone else. And in his best films, this being one of them, he poses the question without providing the answer. There were so many times I thought I understood what was going to happen next or what--if I were there--my responses would be, but I soon saw that I understood nothing at all. And Josey Wales, bless him, wasn't going to explain it to me.

Jim Henson: Idea Man, Imagine Documentaries, Directed by Ron Howard

When I first went into film, studying at BYU, I made documentaries more than I made any other genre, even though I was studying screenwriting. Fellow students, not to mention a couple of professors, thought I was mixing formats. They thought I should concentrate more on being a writer. But I instinctively knew that making a documentary was a fabulous lesson in writing: you don't just showcase a series of events when making a documentary; a series of events is simply a newsreel, but a documentary is storytelling. And you can't just point the camera to find it. You're a watcher, a waiter. Be patient, listen, and the story finds you. Often, it doesn't come until the editing room, when you reflect on everything, and see what it means. Documentary film is reflection, it's seeing the small moments where great things came to pass, after they have already passed.

Jim Henson took green cloth and a ping pong ball and did great things.

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Spaceman, Netflix, Directed by Johan Renck

I don't usually like "serious" Adam Sandler movies, or any Adam Sandler movies. But this isn't an Adam Sandler movie. This is a piece of existential art by the director of "Chernobyl," Johan Renck. Apparently he's Swedish, very Swedish. Somehow he convinced Isabella Rossellini to play the head of a Czechoslovakian Space Agency.

This is, I kid you not, a movie about an extraterrestrial trying to get a man to understand his feelings about the breakdown of his relationship with his wife during a mission to Jupiter. To tell you any more than that, particularly the nature of the alien, is to ruin it. It shouldn't work, not as entertainment. It should be as incomprehensible as the student project of my Norwegian classmate at film school. Instead, it is beautiful and haunting--despite sharing a very specific trait with said student film project. BUT DARN IT IF I SAY WHAT IT IS I'll RUIN IT.

This film tells the story of a man who doesn’t truly see the woman he married, he’s focused on himself--very shallow for being lonely in space and stuff--his journey to enlightenment is not only beautiful to watch but eye opening as well. AND DARN IT I WANT TO SAY MORE.

How about this: Frodo would not be surprised by what this Spaceman saw inside his claustrophobic spaceship.

Carry On, Dylan Clark Productions and DreamWorks Pictures Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra

A new and fun entry in that ever so specific film genre of the Christmas Movie Action Film. I watched it uninterrupted the day it came out, and I can't tell you anything more about it than that, because I don't remember. That's okay. Movies should be fun, and don't have to leave you with anything more than a smile.

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Nosferatu, Universal Pictures and Focus Features, Directed by Robert Eggers

Every so often I will include a film in my list that I must admit I haven't seen yet. This is the one for this year. Because of the fact that I know I will not find a chance to see this one until after the new year, I also broke my usual "no spoilers" approach and read/watched reviews from people and publications I respect. It apparently is as simple and fantastic as a 1-1 retelling of the original film....with added bonus of the heroine doing what she does out of choice, not just out of desperation. And Count Orlok is pure evil, just so. No backstory or sympathetic childhood. Sometimes that's all you want.

And it looks amazing.

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Civil War, A24, Directed by Alex Garland

As far as I'm concerned this isn't a war movie. It's a disaster film. And it's a rare disaster movie that can make it personal. That is, feel like there are any stakes. Watching a film, when I speak to the screen then I know it has affected me. When Sammy died, and his colleague said he didn't die for anything. I immediately shouted out, "He died for you! He died for the girl!" In all the chaos, that was personal. That's not nothing, buddy.

Some people in critical circles questioned Alex Garland as to why he would make his main characters journalists. And why there wasn't some clear understanding of which side was right or wrong, good or bad. Seems pretty simple to me: the press is supposed to see both sides. And both sides did terrible things in this movie. A Civil War was not the way to fix it.

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Heretic, A24, Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods

I'm a Mormon (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). This movie caused quite a stir among my people when it was announced. I wanted to be offended (admit it, it's fun); I was worried about the portrayal of something very dear to me. But then I told myself to get over it, because they've been making horror using nuns from here to eternity. Geese and Ganders and all that.

To the filmmaker's credit, I was happy to see that the heroines in this film endure their confrontation through their faith. Even as they stood in that basement surrounded by a hopeless situation, Sister Paxton looked around and said that she was there to help. And her courage was bolstered and echoed by her missionary companion, Sister Barnes, who helped her think of ways through the situation, and also encouraged her to act rather than to be acted upon. Sister Barnes, the obvious skeptic, seemed to find her faith in her response to the challenge, thinking through what she believed. Whereas Sister Paxton was a confident minister, but had always allowed herself to be led; this time she had to stand up and say for herself who she was and what she believed. Her testimony.

Oh, and Kudos to the producers for hiring an unknown to play the lead. I have no idea who that guy was, but he was brilliant. Sidenotes: I hope the magic underwear bit makes people stop using that phrase, and the classic shot of glasses caked in blood is always an effective one.

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DOUBLE FEATURE: Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story and Music By John Williams, HBO Documentary Films and Amblin Television, Directed by Ian Bonhôte, Peter Ettedgui, and Laurent Bouzereau

These two films remain intertwined in my head, and so I present them as a double feature entry.

The story of Christopher Reeve always seemed simpler than it was. He was Superman, he made an heroic show of it after his accident, and so on. Something I gleaned from watching this story of his tragedy, was that he wasn't so super in his personal life--until his wife Dana showed him what real love was. While playing Superman, Christopher basically abandoned his first relationship and his two kids for his career. I didn't see it when I was a kid, but there's a lot of cynicism in the way he expresses himself in those early press tours for the Salkind films. Then, after his body was broken, the relationship with his wife and his family changed for the better; blessed with a new perspective, he had ten years with his loved ones until his body just wouldn't let him stay any longer.

As for John Williams, composer of so many iconic films including "Superman: The Movie," it's hard to believe how much of American life, my life, is tied into the sounds that came from his head. The best part of the whole Williams documentary, was seeing a dad with kids stick with the daily slog of supporting his family, until he found his calling composing movies.

Yep. There's always more to every story than what you see with your eyes or hear with your ears.

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Okay, as Delmar says in "Oh Brother Where Art Thou?" That's all I got.

But if you'd really like something extra, how about one of mine?

Stay With Me, Panther Pictures, Directed by Graeme Finlayson

Stay With Me is a story of love, loss, and love lost. We all think we've gone too far; we all think there's no going back. But it's never too late to let love be your legacy.

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Eric C. Player is an independently poor filmmaker, and the president of Panther Pictures, LLC, in Fargo, North Dakota. He is a father, fan, storyteller, "Picker," Corvair driver, and Super8 camera fan. A graduate of BYU and Chapman University film schools, his films have played in theaters all across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and movies to which he was a contributing writer or producer are available on Netflix, Amazon, and Roku. He has written and produced film and video content for over thirty years, and has been writing chapter-fiction since the sixth grade. His 2007 production, Nothing But The Best, was an Official Selection of the 2010 Newport Beach Film Festival. His 2016 short, Moment of Anger, received multiple honors including Best Short and Best Director at the Road House International Short Film Festival in Santa Monica, California. His 2023 short film, Stay With Me was an Official Selection of the Boston Film Festival. He currently has two shorts in post-production, a feature in pre-production, and a half dozen feature scripts just waiting for him to finish them already. Eric Player on Imdb.

Panther Pictures' Ten Best Films of 2019

Ah, 2019. The Year of the Pig on the Chinese Zodiac, and the year Jeffrey Epstein didn’t kill himself. Things were a lot more exciting out there in the world than they were in my little town. Oh, Panther Pictures did things, but we were sure a boring corner of Hollywood Land. Nevertheless, it was a massively productive year in entertainment. I'm glad I only really try to keep up with actual feature films.

Speaking of that, coming back around to Awards Season has been sort of sudden. I mean, I just did this, right? I have more important things to attend to, like pre-production on the latest short film on the docket. But I still love the movies, and I still love the validation of strangers, so Eric Player the award-winning filmmaker is here again with his favorite flavors of ice cream. Read the 2016 disclaimer on these, if you must.

So--until the other guys say theirs longer and louder than Panther Pictures ever could--here are my pics for the #TenBest films of 2019. #PPLLCTenBest2019 #TenBest2019

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Ford vs. Ferrari

Conscious or not, much of how we react to others has to do with how we feel about our parents. “Don’t you talk about my mama!” … and so on. Ford vs. Ferrari is the story of a friendship between two very talented car guys, the relationship of one of those men to himself, his son, and his own demons, and—obviously—super cool race cars. Finally, the entire movie is pushed through based upon Henry Ford's relationship to his father and grandfather, both dead. When Ford makes a bid to buy Ferrari, Enzo Ferrari rejects him with comments about his cars, his employees, and a comparison of Henry Ford The 2nd to his father. Guess what bothered him the most? With that one insult, Ford authorized an entire “money is no object” program with car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles. The object? To make a better race car than Ferrari, and beat him at the Le Mans race in France. When Shelby takes Ford out in the GT 40 he has built, Ford breaks down and cries. At first the audience thinks he is crying because he’s been scared shirtless, but in fact he is crying because his father never lived to experience what he just did. It’s a profound, and moving, quiet moment. In a film full of fast cars, fantastic loud noises and very cool crashes, the nuts and bolts are the relationships.

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Toy Story 4

In 2016, I listed The Angry Birds Movie as one of my Ten Best Films of the year. It’s true. I must have been the only guy who did, because Jason Sudeikis retweeted the list. This year, I wanted to add Angry Birds Movie 2, I really did. Well, I watched it, and what is also true is that it was NOT as good a sequel as the Toy Story franchise makes. Toy Story 4 just might be the last film in the series (*snicker*), but—of the sequels—it is definitely the best. Every time a Toy Story film closes, it feels like all the plotlines have been strapped down and there is nothing more to say. And every time, the team at Pixar find something more. This time, it could be just as over as it ever was, and that is extremely okay. Woody’s journey about who he is as a toy—the through-line of each movie—feels complete now, and not a moment in all four of them was wasted space. Bravo Woody and Bo, Bravo Buzz and Jesse. Bravo Sporky. See you all next time.

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Dark Waters (2019)

Dark Waters shares its name with at least three horror movies, and a paperback about the Titanic. Honestly that was the first thing I noticed about it when watching the trailer, I really didn't think about the subject matter. But the more time went on the more I wanted to see it. However, since it was limited to a mostly arthouse run, I didn't think I'd get to. Then a little ritual known as Thanksgiving came around and I found myself in a city that was actually showing it. It establishes a point of view right away, engaging you on a personal level in the way this kind of story needs to, through the eyes of the main character. After living in the chemicals industry as sort of an abstraction, Robert Bilott starts caring when members of his family become involved. Through him we latch onto the story, and for the same reasons: this could happen any of us, and if the science behind the film is sound (appears to be), then in a way, it has.

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The Red Sea Diving Resort

Basically an Israeli Argo. Except this time it's Ethiopian Jewish refugees, and the agents sneaking them out are Israeli, not (just) the CIA. Captain America plays an Israeli agent. Roll that around in your tongue a few times. Considering our foreign policy it seems like the perfect fit. The movie tells the true story of the evacuation of native Jews during civil unrest in Ethiopia in 1979. Civil unrest is putting it mildly. These are real people and real suffering, faithfully told. I won't give the details here because it is intense and kind of disturbing, but it's a great film. Perhaps a few too many F words in it--honestly I can't believe that Israeli agents are that fluent in American cursing--but if the movie had any real problems, they were technical ones. Problems of the sort that a lot of low budget films have these days: Being shot on a digital camera, it basically looks like a car commercial. It's always frustrating seeing any film that could have looked 20 times better if the cinematographer had only applied a simple Adobe Camera Filter to the whole thing. But the distraction didn't last and I enjoyed rooting for the good guys. In large part because this all really happened. It's the kind of thing we should reflect on now and then: How good we have it, how bleak the world often is beyond us, and how maybe life would be a little bit better if the comfortable ones reached out to those in need.

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Knives Out

There's an old documentary from the 70s where they interview Alfred Hitchcock and cover his career. It's mostly him sitting in front of his desk and drawling about his films, and his inspirations for making them. It's a good movie. In it, he talks about his theory of suspense. He calls it the Bomb Theory. Essentially, it is that real suspense is achieved by knowing what's going on, rather than by not knowing. Nobody cares about a bomb threat they haven't heard. Knives Out understands this. Writer and Director Rian Johnson really internalized that theory, and came up with a cracking good yarn. This is a movie that interviews and squirms and flashes back with the best of them. However, we know exactly what happened within the first 20 minutes. Most of today's police detectives have the answer to who did what in the last 10, but this approach is way is better. And considering where the story is going, it is also more interesting. I love the performances in this. The actors that I knew, and there are a lot of them, but also and especially the few I didn't know. Particularly Ana de Arma, playing the nurse at the center of it all. It is nice to watch a guileless character that isn't stomped on. Also, mainly as a side note, I get the feeling that Daniel Craig has been doing these American movies in the last few years simply for the fun of exercising his accents. He's getting very good. Just ask Chris Evans.

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1917

It's been over a hundred years since The Great War, and many films are starting to reflect on it again. Yet while today's audience may expect (at best) a rehash of All Quiet on the Western Front, the movie to really compare it to is Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory. Both that and this film are vivid enough to make you smell the mud. 1917 is a story of trying to get a vital message from headquarters to the field. In doing so, it has an impressive ability to relate small stories and small deeds to the greater madness of World War I. In the straightforward story, Sam Mendez finds hope in a piece of history that was a crucible of despair. I'm sure it comes from his connection to this particular tale. The actions of one person make a difference, in ways that surprise no one as much as they do the person making the difference.

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The Last Black Man In San Francisco

"I should have told you the truth, but it just felt so good." Joe Talbot has made a film that is essentially about nostalgia for something that we never had in the first place. We are all familiar with the theme of looking back on our lives with roses coloring our eyes, and all of us do it. I'm pretty sure high school was not the way I remember it. For Jimmie Fails (played by a young actor named Jimmie Fails) that past is represented by a house he is restoring; a restoration taking place against the will of the current owners. But to paraphrase a character in the story, "Nobody ever owns anything." As Jimmie tells it, the house he is fixated on was built by his grandfather; taking care of it is just what he does. When the current residents catch him painting their window trims, he leaves, but tells them, "Water those plants in the backyard, or I'll do it myself." The image of an actor being booed off the stage with produce is terribly fitting, for Jimmie is living through a stage play of his own that he doesn't want to close. And when those current residents move out, his best friend Montgomery supports him in all his projects regarding the "family home." Eventually, they too collide over the history of the home, during an ACTUAL stage play, and Jimmie has to finally come to terms with why he does what he does. "People aren't only one thing," he says to Montgomery, and the past isn't either.

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Marriage Story

That was me up there. I've been through a divorce. I'm also happily married. The pain of Charlie in trying to salvage something of his child during a process he couldn't understand and couldn't control, was definitely the roughest moment for me. And all the platitudes he was told, the same ones I once heard, about "time is on your side" and "it will get better" and "your son will have his own opinions someday," only amounted to society getting him used to the idea of skipping his son's life between 8 and 18. That stung. All in all, it moved me in a way a movie hasn't in a long time. A couple of the true pieces were the lawyer working out her own issues through Nicole, and the milquetoast lawyer for Charlie who was really nice but ineffective. I cried four times, but probably not the same four times as you will.

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JoJo Rabbit

Nazis and comedy may not seem like the right combination unless you're Mel Brooks, but that's the genius of who Taika Waititi is. He takes a subject that hasn't been tackled like this in 20, possibly 50, years (or you know since the last Tarantino movie) and fills it with heart, humor, and just a pinch of serious drama. What else would you expect from the man who made Hunt For The Wilderpeople, which is about a foster child getting lost, and Thor Ragnarok, which took a property that was extremely self-serious (in its own pseudo-Shakespearean way, not a Nazi way) and found the fun in it. I'm more than tickled to put a movie directed by such a man on my 10 best list three years running. I'm sure a zillion critics and wannabe filmmakers feel this way, but he makes the kind of movies I'd like to think I would make if I had his canvas. He communicates the ideas in his stories so profoundly and universally and ridiculously. JoJo is a scared little boy who finds out the world he's in is not as simple as he thought it was. So JoJo is all of us.

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Apollo 11

I thought I'd seen everything there was to see, or at least understood everything there was to understand, about America's moon landing. I've seen all the Tom Hanks stuff, read most of the speculative fiction, seen all of the news reel documentaries. My dad had an old LaserDisc of archival footage from the final trip, Apollo 17. In those days you watched one show over and over, and I watched that one a lot. Heck, I even have an old 45rpm vinyl record with astronaut radio transmissions on it. So I wasn't expecting to be captivated by such an old subject. But of course I should have expected nothing less; the trip to the moon is the most spectacular thing human beings have done, ever. When it comes to technological achievements anyway. This was a full-scale movie, with special effects and gripping dialogue, only pieced together in documentary form. I've been sort of disenchanted or shall I say disinterested in space travel for a few years now. A bunch of robots are interesting but not emotionally captivating. I'm captivated again. We should go back to the moon as soon as we can, and I'd like to come.

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Honorable Mentions:

Avengers: Endgame

You gotta give props to the capper on a 20-something-movies franchise.

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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

It doesn't come out for three more weeks, but I mean, you gotta right? You just gotta. Besides, it will probably be good.

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And there they are. my pics for the best (American) movies of 2019. I'll probably change my mind, but what's done is done.

As always, Eric C. Player is an independently poor filmmaker, and the president of Panther Pictures, LLC, which he is shuttering in 2020 thanks to California's lovely new Uber laws. He is a father, fan, storyteller, "Picker," substitute teacher* and a graduate of BYU & Chapman University film schools. His films have played in theaters all across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and movies to which he was a contributing writer or producer are available on Netflix and Amazon. He has written and produced film and video content for nearly twenty-five years, and has been writing Chapter-Fiction since the sixth grade. His 2016 short, Moment of Anger, received multiple honors including Best Short and Best Director at the Road House International Short Film Festival 2016 in Santa Monica, California. his 2018 short UndercoverUp garnered a "Best Ensemble" nod from the Top Shorts Film Festival. Eric C. Player on Imdb.

*High School and Elementary School. No interest in Middle School.
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Ten Best Films of 2018

2018 was a busy year over here at Panther Pictures, LLC. There weren't many published posts (at least on this blog; feel free to scroll our Instagram), but our production company accomplished a lot in 2018. Two new Shorts were released and put into Post-Production, UndercoverUp and The Fruit. We're staying busy enough to stave off the "I wish I had an Oscar" malaise.

Speaking of, the Golden Globes are coming up soon, but I have deliberately stayed away from knowing the nominees as I finish this article. So--as long as we still have time until the Globes really make whatever Panther Pictures has to say irrelevant--here are my pics for the #TenBest films of 2018. #PPLLCTenBest2018 #TenBest2018

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I've had less Daddy Issues this year than last year. But this year I've been all about the whole Midlife Crisis thing. The American movies that get to me lately aren't so much about parenting as they are about life experiences. And, you know, cars.

"See The Standard Disclaimer about my choices that I make every year."

As always, my list is my own. As subjective as everything else in this business is. Like who's in and who is out, and where the hippest french fries are sold. (Portillos, BTW.)

2018 went by like a blur. Several projects distracted me more than usual. Because of that it seemed like the movies really piled up. But I was able to figure out exactly which movies I wanted to take time out for, cross referenced with which titles would make me seem most relevant. You know, like every other critic this time of year.

The movies you should tell your friends you liked are:

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The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs was, as always with the Coen brothers, both disturbing, a lot of fun, and soaked in meaning. I can't recall if they've ever made a straight out Western before, though many of their past offerings, Raising Arizona, No Country for Old Men, and Hail Caesar! for example, took place in the West. The vignettes presented here were unpredictable--when you consider the story of Buster Scruggs himself--and highly entertaining. The stories of The Girl Who Got Rattled and The Meal Ticket especially came across thus, in that we became very attached to the point of view of our leading actors before the end of their tales. It's a toss-up between which of those stories I found the most....subversive (I believe that word is the least spoilery) but considering my hopes for her I would say the title goes to The Girl Who Got Rattled. It was hands down the most emotionally resonant of the tales. All Gold Canyon, based as it was on an earlier story which the Coens did not write, clearly had the happiest ending. I don't think I'd want to be a player in any of the vignettes, but I would have liked to participate in the lively stagecoach conversation of The Mortal Remains.

The combination of the Coens and Netflix is something I would definitely like to see again.

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Won't You Be My Neighbor
As a child, I watched Mister Rogers' Neighborhood religiously. As an adult, I find the Fred Rogers of Won't You Be My Neighbor to be exactly the kind of man my young mind unconsciously expected was under that sweater. Not that this was only a gab session about how great and revolutionary in the field of children's programming he was (and he was), it was mainly an emotionally resonant plea for more people in the public eye to be like him. People who genuinely want for others to be their best selves, and who live their lives trying to give their best in return. Praise Be for Fred Rogers.

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BlacKkKlansman
A striking thing about BlackkkKlansman was that while most people in the world of the film were insensitive to the point of cluelessness, few of them were actively racist. There were a lot of passive racists--almost Trader Horn-level passive racism (think King Kong, but with more patronizing and infantalizing of women. And racism)--but few truly active ones. This was the simple world of a Colorado police department--some good people, some bad people, and a whole lot of neither hot nor cold ones.

Except for the KKK. That organization was lousy with overt racists. (Someone should do something about that.) Of course, that makes them even easier to skewer, and doing so becomes a lot more fun. And even though director Spike Lee re-used his opening hook from Malcolm X, he knew just how to set the tone for what was to come. I have never seen anyone else tow the line between serious, awful, and ridiculous the way he can. It's that swing between them that the laughs usually come from. Also, I was personally touched by the depiction of Adam Driver's Jewish Cop. His line, about never really thinking deeply concerning his heritage until the events of the film, really resonated with this Alaskan Mormon.

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Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
Out of all the movies made about genetically engineered dinosaurs, this was one of them. Bonus: If you like this film, you really stand out as an oddball.

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Lean on Pete
Usually when a coming-of-age story is built around an external support like an animal or event, you expect some sort of lesson or moral. Triumphant music, and a conclusion. Really good ones like The Black Stallion can do it without words or an awareness of the lessons learned. The first time I saw it, pretty much the only thing I learned from The Black Stallion was how effective luxurious photography of a horse can be. It is with subsequent viewings that the power of that film comes across. That seems to be the way most horse racing stories go actually.

And then there is Lean On Pete. The simplest way to describe it is as a coming of age story crossed with the depressing realism of what The Electric Horseman would be if the plot played out in real life. It is worth it.

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The Death of Stalin
There are certain events in history that make me believe that the only way to understand them is to see them through the lens of a cinematic eye. Just reading a history may get you inside the events, but seeing them gets you into their world. The Death of Stalin is horrible, foul, full of cursing, and makes light of an atrocity larger than the one perpetrated by Hitler. A line that Armando Iannucci, like Spike Lee, was able to walk deftly. I didn't find it funny, so much as strangely compelling. Pretty much as I imagine it was. And probably will be at the death of Putin.

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Isle of Dogs
A big belly-rub of a movie; full of red, gold, loyalty and Taiko drums. It even made me sympathetic to Yoko Ono, no small feat. Several of the dog arcs, including Duke's, were easy to predict (if I'm being honest, only in retrospect), but the characters themselves were so great that I didn't care. And I challenge any dog owner who enjoys a good scratch session with their canine to not get choked up during Young Master Atari's first introduction to his bodyguard Spots. Recommended.

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Mission Impossible: Fallout
Someday, Tom Cruise is going to kill himself making one of these films. But that is not this day. The wildly uneven MI series remains on my list because the photography and stunts are unabashedly and stubbornly and breathtakingly real, and in this day of digital superheroes that is as scarce as a Common-Sense-O-Matic in a spy movie.

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Black Panther
Marvel always seems to make its way into my list, and this year they had three offerings, but my definite favorite was Black Panther. Black Panther wasn't just a movie, It was a statement about what we want our movies to be. I have to admit, I stood in line for the first screening in my area, and you know what? It was okay. I thought it was a little slow in parts. But I was only the incidental audience. It arrived under a huge payload of expectation, and spoke to the community of viewers who where always there, but without a positive reflection of themselves in the movies. Give the people what they want, and they'll show up. It's one of those movies like 1950's No Way Out--more of a milestone for what it sets out to do as a film than for what it accomplishes as entertainment. And besides, there's nothing wrong with making a movie that reflects what people want to see, what people need to see, now and then.

It was awesome and I want to see it again and again.

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Adrift
I was all set to watch this film with a sneer. Yet another story of pretty people enduring massive hardship in a situation they pretty much caused themselves. (Nobody goes on a boat by accident, unless they are pillaged by pirates.) But in the end I was drawn in by the flashback-heavy (or was it flash-forward?) script and the theme: The people we are closest to can and do continue to affect the course of our lives, no matter where we are, or where they are. We are each other.

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Honorable Mentions:

Eighth Grade
I haven't seen it. I hear it's good. Most likely because everyone hates eighth grade.

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Bohemian Rhapsody
I haven't seen either of my Honorable Mentions. A man I trust said he liked this one. Plus, if I help raise its reputation we'll all get a bunch more Queen recordings remastered.

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And there they are. my pics for the best (American) movies of 2018.

Eric C. Player is an independently poor filmmaker, and the president of Panther Pictures, LLC. He is a father, fan, storyteller, "Picker," Car Guy* and a graduate of BYU & Chapman University film schools. His films have played in theaters all across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and movies to which he was a contributing writer or producer are available on Netflix and Amazon. He has written and produced film and video content for more than twenty years. His 2016 short, Moment of Anger, received multiple honors including Best Short and Best Director at the Road House International Short Film Festival 2016 in Santa Monica, California. Eric C. Player on Imdb.

*Meaning 1965-69 Chevrolet Corvairs. No interest in working on any others.
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