The Oscars are tonight, which means it’s time for me to put together my list of the best movies I saw in 2018. Below are my top 10, and at the bottom I have a lit of everything I saw this year and what I still want to see.

1. Annihilation

Annihilation is an exploration of depression and loss in the guise of science fiction. This movie feels similar to 2017’s Mother (which I also loved) in that it starts relatively normal and slowly devolves into madness. It’s a completely different movie by the end, and I love that about it.

Natalie Portman gives another excellent performance that reveals layers of emotion without a big, showy performance, and the entire supporting cast does fantastic work to flesh out the world. The script is tight, and managed to speak to me in a very specific way that connected with me hard.

And finally, I can’t talk about this movie without talking about the cinematography. This movie had more memorable visuals than the other 9 movies on this list combined. The movie was shot by Rob Hardy, who doesn’t have many feature film credits, but did Mission: Impossible - Fallout this year as well. This guy has a bright future.

#2-9

Below are one sentence teasers for the rest of the films on my top 10 and why they beat out the competition.

2. BlacKkKlansman was a roaring good time that comments on the current political and racial climate without directly talking about the current day…until it does.

3. Won't You Be My Neighbor hit me in all the ways I prayed this film would, and made me appreciate Fred Rodgers’ contribution to the world more than I did already.

4. Black Panther is a Marvel superhero film with tons of style and substance that broke me out of the superhero movie slump I’d been in for the last several years.

5. Susperia is a weird-ass movie and I can absolutely see why some people would make it their worst movie of 2018, but this isn’t their list, it’s mine :)

6. A Star is Born is an achievement for any director, let alone first time director Bradley Cooper, who made me feel invested in a story about musicians more than maybe any music-based movie ever.

7. Avengers: Infinity War is the second Marvel movie on this list, which again is not something I would have expected a year ago, and now “I don’t feel so good.”

8. The Favourite is another weird ass movie and it comes together better than it has any right to.

9. Game Night is flat out the funniest movie I saw all year and is good fun for basically everyone.

10. Crazy Rich Asians got its hooks in me somehow and never let me go…those are indeed some very, very, crazy rich Asians.

Everything Else I Saw in 2018

• A Wrinkle in Time
• Isle of Dogs
• Ready Player One
• Blockers
• Solo: A Star Wars Story
• Ocean's 8
• Incredibles 2
• Mission Impossible Fallout
• Juliet, Naked
• A Simple Favor
• Searching
• The Girl in the Spider's Web
• Vice

What I Missed but Want to See

• You Were Never Really Here
• First Reformed
• Ant Man and the Wasp
• Bad Times at the El Royale
• Halloween
• Widows
• Ralph Breaks the Internet
• Roma
• Shoplifters
• Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse