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Year in ReView: Vanyaland’s favorite films of 2018

2018 was a lot of things: A ceaseless reminder that the never-ending hellscape we've crafted for ourselves in the weeks following the 2016 election will not abate without a seemingly herculean effort, a great baseball season for Red Sox fans, and perhaps best of all, a pretty damn good year at the movies. What follows is a year-end list of accolades and the films that received them, not in any particular order, in which I've pulled review samples from our archives over the past year. Because, if the holidays are about reflection and whatnot, what better way to ring in the season than by looking at the work you've done over the past year? There are a few listed that I never got the chance to review, and those will be accompanied by some hastily-written blurbs telling you to Go See The Thing I Liked. And you should! Each of these movies -- including those on the honor roll -- are worth your time and effort. Thanks for reading.

Honor Roll: A Prayer Before Dawn, Border, Widows, Halloween, I Think We're Alone Now, The House That Jack Built, BlackkKlansman, The Death of Stalin, Black Panther, Cam, Leave No Trace, Wildlife, The Sisters Brothers, Mid90s, Thoroughbreds, A Quiet Place, Unfriended: Dark Web, The Legacy of Whitetail Deer Hunter, The Captain, Clara's Ghost, The Devil's Doorway, Nico 1988, Ready Player One, Cold War, Shoplifters, The Mule

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Best Paul Schrader-esque Movie About the Struggles of the Working Class

Support the Girls

From my review: “[T]here’s one terrible criticism I want to quickly grapple with: The dumbest complaint you’ll hear about this movie is that it isn’t funny, and it isn’t true for two key reasons. One, it’s absolutely funny as hell, to the point that I’m talking around a lot of the best material — Bujalski doesn’t spotlight his jokes in the same way that other directors might, and they often aren’t the specific locus of activity in a given scene — and I think it’ll reward people on repeat viewings, going back and seeing moments that you might have missed the first time around. Two, the drama and the characters you’ll find within in its tight 90-minute runtime more than make up for it: If it even is a bait-and-switch with its punny title and whatnot, it’s doing you a service by luring you in under these false pretenses. Support the Girls may not ultimately be what you expected or wanted, but it may just be what you need right now.”

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