Ranking the Movies of 2018 Week 4

Another week and another new number one movie of the year for my list of every movie I have seen in 2018. I wasn’t surprised this time, however, as Phantom Thread was among the most anticipated movies of the Oscar season. As much as I was deeply moved by last week’s number one movie, Just Charlie, Phantom Thread is a surpassing work of art from one of the finest filmmakers working today.

Phantom Thread tells the story of an obsessive genius fashion designer, Reynolds Woodcock, played by Daniel Day Lewis. Woodcock is fastidious and deeply set in his ways, to the great detriment of his relationships. Despite his obsessive behavior, however, he’s incredibly charming when he wants to be and that draws a new woman into his life, a waitress named Alma (Vicky Krieps).

If there is a plot to Phantom Thread, which is more of a character study than it is a typical narrative film, it’s whether Alma will be able to withstand Reynolds’ moody and obsessive nature, not to mention his flights of unexpected rage. Vicky Krieps finds unexpected levels in Alma that I won’t go into here and it is a marvel to watch. Daniel Day Lewis can tend to overshadow a lesser co-star but thankfully Krieps is every bit his equal in Phantom Thread.

The week’s other new movie shows that while on occasion we can get a genre busting character piece from a true film artist, we will more often get yet another jump-scare based piece of horror movie nonsense. Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built is yet another movie where ghosts of convenient powers fail to kill frail old women and children despite being able to destroy buildings.

It boggles my mind that Hollywood is still making this same ghost movie again. Jump scares are not a terrible thing and when they are done right, they can be a genuine thrill. It seems, however, that somewhere Hollywood producers got it in their heads that all a horror movie needs are silly jump scares that mean nothing to the plot. Winchester’s jump scares involve roller skates for… reasons.

What makes Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built even more offensive than other jump scare-based horror movies is that it wastes a pretty great idea for a movie. Sarah Winchester was a real person who really did inherit the Winchester gun fortune and really did build a home in California that remained under 24 hour a day construction for 38 years.

The real Winchester house is a marvel of the bizarre as Sarah Winchester had no plan in mind; just money to spend. Rooms were built and then boarded up, staircases to rooms were built and covered up, and windows were built into walls that were eventually covered up by walls for new rooms and other such architectural nonsense. Weirder still, no one knows why Sarah Winchester did all of this.

The theory was that she was under the spell of a spiritualist who convinced her that she was being haunted by the spirits who were killed by the Winchester rifle but there is no actual evidence of this. Sarah Winchester died without telling anyone why she was continuously building and rebuilding the house; a house she rarely ever lived in. The spiritualist story gained traction because there were no other theories that made any sense.

That’s a pretty great setup for a movie and the makers of Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built completely wasted it. The Spierig Brothers directed Winchester and seemed to be playing a game of horror cliché bingo while they made it. The film ticks off simpleminded horror movie tropes from the first time we meet Jason Clarke’s protagonist with a tragic background to the haunted little boy and the ghost who can destroy buildings but can’t kill an old lady. I hope that the directors had fun with that, because I didn’t.

This week’s Everyone is a Critic Movie Review podcast classics were another mixed bag. This week we had two classics to fill the empty space of only two wide release movies. In honor of Phantom Thread director Paul Thomas Anderson we took a look back at Boogie Nights and in honor of the 1988 release of Wes Craven’s Serpent and the Rainbow 30 years ago this weekend, and the fact that Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built had the word ‘house’ in it, we watched Last House on the Left.

Boogie Nights remains a classic that does not age. Paul Thomas Anderson’s direction is lively and vibrant even as the story begins to turn dark and perilous. The early scenes of Mark Wahlberg’s wide-eyed innocent being seduced by Burt Reynolds’s snaky yet grandfatherly porn producer are a marvel of storytelling and great character work. There is an innocent comedy to the early scenes of Boogie Nights that is a perfect setup for the dark twists and turns the story takes and you really can’t take your eyes off of it.

Boogie Nights isn’t nearly as accomplished as Phantom Thread but they are two very different movies. Anderson has matured as a director and Phantom Thread, while it is as exciting and fascinating as anything Anderson has directed previously, has a polish, a style and a daring that his previous films do not have. Maturity has given Anderson an unshakable confidence that elevates Phantom Thread above his previous work, even There Will Be Blood.

Last House on the Left is much more of mixed bag. The film became a legend for being banned in many theaters across the U.S. The gore remains striking even as the film has aged. Modern horror has moved away from gore and viscera and that certainly helped keep Last House on the Left notable. That said, the low budget production and low budget actors do not hold up well over time.

Craven, of course, would develop into an excellent director but his Last House on the Left is not a great piece of direction. The film’s tone is wildly erratic with comical music, bizarre staging and little tension. I know that some have argued that the odd comic tone of the film is an intentional part of the aesthetic, and my response is, how could it not be? If it weren’t intentional, Craven would be considered a lunatic.

Of course the comic tone is intentional, but the question is, does it work? My answer to that is no, it doesn’t work. The film may be shocking and off-putting, but what else is it? Does it have something to say or is it shock for the sake of shock? If it doesn’t mean anything then why was it made at all? Last House on the Left remains notably gruesome but otherwise unremarkable.

One final movie on the list came out of nowhere on Super Bowl Sunday. I had no intention of watching Cloverfield Paradox but my podcast co-hosts made me watch it and I wish I hadn’t. Though I am a fan of Cloverfield and 10 Cloverfield Lane, Cloverfield Paradox is merely a rehash of every space movie cliché dressed up with a terrific and completely wasted cast.

Here are this week’s rankings of every movie I have seen so far in 2018.

1. Phantom Thread
2. Just Charlie
3. Hostiles
4. Boogie Nights
5. Foxy Brown
6. 12 Strong
7. Act & Punishment
8. Insidious: The Last Key
9. Sheik Jackson
10. Heat
11. Almost Paris
12. Last House on the Left
13. Burnt Offerings
14. Paddington 2
15. Cloverfield Paradox
16. Proud Mary
17. Den of Thieves
18. The Commuter
19. Winchester: The House That Ghosts Built
20. Forever My Girl
21. Maze Runner: The Death Cure