Ranking the Movies of 2018: Week 10
The Role of Nostalgia in Movie Criticism and Appreciation
On the latest Everyone’s a Critic Movie Podcast myself and co-hosts Bob Zerull and Josh Adams tackled nostalgia. We were discussing this week’s classic, Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark, one of mine and Josh’s favorite movies. Watching Indiana Jones raises so many emotions for me but the main one is nostalgia and nostalgia is kind of funny. When you come to associate something with a time in your life, happy or sad, nostalgia tends to gloss over portions of actual history.
I have feelings about Indiana Jones and theRaiders of the Lost Ark that go way beyond it being a movie. It’s a movie I watched for the first time with my mother who has passed away. I watched Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark on a laser disc in the living room of my childhood home when my family was whole, before divorce and division and getting older scattered us all.
It’s hard to view Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark without nostalgia for a time in my life that was unquestionably, blissfully, ignorantly happy. And yet, I am a critic and with those memories so far in the past I found myself looking at Indiana Jones in a slightly different light. I still love it, it’s a very good popcorn adventure and it will always have a place in my heart.
But, is Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark a great movie? Objectively, legendarily, a great movie? I am genuinely torn on that question. Watching it again for the first time in a while I found myself poking holes in the plot and questioning things about the movie that I had never questioned before. In asking those questions I realized that as much as I will always cherish this movie for what it meant to me as a child and the association it still carries with me today, it’s not a movie that I can hold above so many other movies that I have seen in 20 years as a film critic.
This came further to light when we closed this week’s Everyone’s a Critic with a round of Flickchart. For the uninitiated, Flickchart.com is a site where you are asked to choose between two random movies and decide which movie you prefer. At the end of each podcast we like to take the week’s classic and see how high that move can go on our Flickchart, a running, not all that accurate yet enlightening, tally of our favorite movies.
Flickchart can be very revealing. When forced to choose between two movies that have otherwise nothing in common you realize what you value about movies, whether it’s artistic quality or nostalgia. I realized that there are a lot of movies that I would choose on Flickchart ahead of choosing Indiana Jones and that revelation surprised me. As I get older the nostalgia for something I loved as a kid has waned and the more tempered and critical adult side of myself eschews nostalgia for something just as subjective but hopefully more educated and rigorous.
This is a long way to go to say that Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark ranks high on this list but may not stay that high all year. It will likely be surpassed and regularly. It already been surpassed by the five movies on this list which, if I were Flickchart-ing, I would unquestionably choose over Raiders. Black Panther and Phantom Thread just came out, Black Swan, His Girl Friday and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington are, like Indiana Jones, recent rewatches and each came to mind as movies I preferred to Indiana Jones when I was forced to consider it.
I may even move Annihilation ahead of Indiana Jones if it holds up on a rewatch later this year. It will be interesting to see how this unfolds. Do we all become less nostalgic as we get older or do some of us grow more nostalgic as we age? I am getting less nostalgic and living more in the now and because of that I am seeing things from my childhood in a different light and that is something I will explore further as this column continues this year.
New to this list this week are Tomb Raider, Love-Simon, 7 Days in Entebbe, and Los Angeles Overnight. Joining the list next week will be Pacific Rim 2, Sherlock Gnomes, Midnight Sun, and Unsane, among new movies in theaters. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is our classic on the next Everyone’s a Critic Movie Podcast and I expect it to challenge for the top of this list as it already in my memory ranks higher than even Black Swan. The rewatch will determine the rank. Week 11 will be quite something to see.
New movies are in Bold Type.
1. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
2. Black Swan
5. His Girl Friday
6. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
7. Annihilation
8. Just Charlie
9. Columbus
10. Hostiles
12. Boogie Nights
13. Foxy Brown
14. Becks
15. Game Night
16. Are We Not Cats
18. 12 Strong
19. Red Sparrow
20. Act & Punishment
22. Switching Channels
23. Actors of Sound: A Foley Artist Documentary
24. Tomb Raider
26. Sheik Jackson
27. Gringo
28. Love, Simon
29. Hurricane Heist
30. Samson & Delilah
31. Heat
32. Hell’s House
33. Early Man
34. Almost Paris
35. Bloodsport
36. Reds
37. Play Misty for Me
38. Frantic
39. 7 Days in Entebbe
40. Taffin
41. Samson
42. Last House on the Left
43. Burnt Offerings
44. Paddington 2
45. Cloverfield Paradox
46.Peter Rabbit
47. Proud Mary
48. Den of Thieves
49. Death Wish 1974
50. Death Wish 2018
51. The Commuter
53. Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built
54. Forever My Girl
55. Every Day
57. 15:17 to Paris
58. The Greasy Strangler
About the Creator
Sean Patrick
Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.
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