La Femme's Top Ten of 2018 (10-6)

10.  Cold War (Pavel Pawlikowski):  Pavel Pawlikowski's, Cold War is a haunting portrait of doomed love, or maybe more accurately, the notion that absence makes the heart grow fonder.  Because the only time our lovers Wiktor (Tomasz Kot, smoldering but depressed in that Euro way)  and Zula (Joanna Kulig, magnetic) seem to be in love is when they aren't together.  The only time they seem happy, is never.  But that doesn't mean they aren't intoxicating to watch.  Wiktor, a musician is working on a project for the Polish government shortly after World War II is traveling around the country recording folk singers.  We soon learn that the government is opening a school to promote folk music, and eventually Communist Propaganda.   Zula is a student at the academy, who oozes both sensuality and desperation.  Their chemistry is immediate, but maybe because of the world they live in, or maybe because of who they are, they can't find happiness.  Apart, they long desperately for each other, together, they can't seem to make it work.  This movie sounds like an epic, and in many ways it is, but it is only 90 minutes (yay!).  The amount of detail Pawlikowski crams into the running time, without disturbing the languid pace is incredible.  The movie is just as much about the history of Communist Poland as these two characters, but he never tells us, and only shows us.  The black and white cinematography is gorgeous and the haunting folk music brought tears to my eyes.

9.  First Man (Damien Chazelle):  Most of the movies in my top ten are movies I emotionally connected with.  This one (and another in the top five) is one I appreciated more than loved.  First Man is a stunning achievement in cinema.  Ryan Gosling is Neil Armstrong and Claire Foy is his wife.  He is training to hopefully journey to the moon, he is also grieving the death of his young daughter from cancer.  To be honest, the whole sad dad thing didn't really work for me in this case. Claire Foy is competent in the "great man's wife" role (but I'm so freaking sick of that role that I can't really get behind it) and completely sells her big moment.  The parts I thought I wouldn't find interesting:  the training, the work is what I loved about the movie.  The scenes on the moon are breathtaking and the score was one of the best of the year. 

8.  Hereditary (Ari Aster): Hereditary makes it on the list because I love audacity.  And Ari Aster's debut film is nothing if not audacious.  In fact, it's flat out cuckoo.  A movie about grief, but make it Satanic.  Cults, devils and the ilk are probably the one horror trope that still freaks me out (except for BOB from Twin Peaks, but let's not think about him right now).  Annie (Toni Collette) has recently lost her mother, a mother that she didn't seem to like much, but still, her mother.  As she tries to hold her family together, greater tragedy strikes and thats when things start to get weird.  Actually, that's not true.  The only person her mother liked was her young daughter, who has taken to making a popping sound with her tongue that is very disconcerting.  To tell you the places this movie goes it to spoil a lot of fun so I won't.  But Toni Collette leaves it all on the screen for us to marvel and grimace at.  

7.  Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski):  A movie about a group of women who work at a Hooters type establishment, doesn't exactly sound like the kind of movie that would be on my top ten.  Did I mention the director is king of mumblecore, Andrew Bujalski?  That doesn't really put it on my top ten either (no disrespect to mumblecore, I like some of it, mostly the Greta Gerwig parts).  But Support the Girls has the biggest heart of any movie I saw from 2018.  Lisa (Regina Hall) is the manager of Double Whammies, who is having a terrible day.  Her marriage is in shambles, her job is threatened because a rival restaurant is opening in town, her employees are a mess and the cable is on the fritz before a big fight.  So many movies are about the families we find and Support the Girls is no different.  With great supporting turns by Hayley Lou Richardson and rapper Junglepussy (she's credited as Shayna McHayle but how could I not?), Support the Girls is so much fun, so genuine and really what the heart of mumblecore was.  Showing regular people, their real, sometimes ugly lives.  

6.  Leave No Trace (Debra Granik): Boy, this one is a heartbreaker.  I didn't cry at the end of this movie, but I was left feeling a huge, gaping hole.  In many ways, it reminded me of 2016's Manchester by the Sea, only maybe less tragic (but also weirdly less funny).  Tom (Thomasin McKenzie) and her father Will (Ben Foster) live off the grid in a public park outside Portland, Oregon.  He is an Iraq war veteran, clearly suffering from PTSD.  Their idyllic life is interrupted when their camp is spotted by a jogger and they are apprehended.  They end up on a Christmas tree farm in a real house.  Tom quickly adjusts and embraces this new life.  Will cannot.  McKenzie and Foster give naturalistic and vulnerable performances as father and daughter.  Much like the aforementioned Manchester by the Sea, Tom can't "beat it" and no matter how much he wants to, and how much he loves his daughter, he can't give her the life she didn't know she was missing out on.