Movies worth talking about

Top 18 Movies of 2018

Kat Impossible37 Comments

Yesterday, I shared my favourite reads of 2018 and today I will continue with this theme of “best of”-posts by talking a little bit about my favourite movies. I think it is pretty well known that I am more of a TV person than a movie-goer, but last year was filled with a lot of both. It also included quite a lot of German movies and I debated for while whether I should include them now or not. Ultimately, I figured it won’t hurt to add them, even if only very few of you will understand the trailers. I’ll try my best to explain what they were about.

This list is completely 100% subjective! Not all movies I mention were released in 2018 and I completely understand if you disagree with me on one or more occasions. Having said that, I just want to point out that a film can have a different impact depending on when it finds you in your life. A lot of those films just had really great timing!

(my memory actually failed me big time on this topic, so I puzzled this list together from my diary on letterboxd. Feel free to check out my profile here)

18. Woman in Gold

I watched this movie when I was already living in Berlin and I felt a little nostalgic for home. I wouldn’t call it homesickness exactly, because then that movie wouldn’t have helped much. But it was nice to see something that represented my home (even if it is in a rather unflattering light) with such a star-studded cast. It may not be for everyone, but it meant a lot to me.

17. Mission: Impossible – Fallout

I usually don’t even like any of the Mission: Impossible sequels (I was quite into the first one), but I went to the movies with my dad – and believe me, this hasn’t happened in years – and I came out of the movie really entertained! That’s what you go to the cinema for, right?

16. Extinction

There are not many films that can claim to really have surprised me, but this movie sure did! There were twists I definitely did not see coming and I was rather impressed with the turn the story took. I could definitely see this being the start of a series even, but I don’t want to get ahead of anything.

15. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

I cried for a CGI dinosaur – enough said! (Also, I adore Dallas Bryce Howard beyond anything and am always happy to see her as a lead)

14. Das schönste Mädchen der Welt

As you can see, we have our first German movie candidate. The translation of the title means “The most beautiful girl in the world” and I don’t think the trailer does the movie any justice (it’s far less dumb in real life). Where Sierra Burgess masterfully failed to do the whole Cyrano tale in a new fashion, this one was really fun. I neither like rap very much nor some of the crass humour German movies often include, but this movie surprised me in all the best ways. It was sweet and fun!

13. Whatever Happens

This was a beautiful deconstruction of what went wrong in a relationship. It tells the whole story in reverse and Fahri Yardim is definitely one of my actor crushes … so, there’s that.

12. Nappily Ever After

A lot of Netflix movies got so much buzz this past year and I feel like Nappily Ever After deserved way more attention. The story goes so deep and really touched me. I also low-key loved how the movie was divided in chapters based on her hair.

11. 100 Dinge

This is one of those movies that came to me at a certain time in my life and although I don’t want to go into detail, it just felt right (barring some stupid small stuff I have decided to just ignore and overlook). 100 Things (which would be the translation) is a movie about two friends who developed an app together and are about to come into some serious money. They are quite competitive and getting drunk, they go into a bet, going 100 days without any of their stuff and only being able to retrieve one thing at midnight every day. It’s about consumerism but also different relationships and I liked it a lot more in the end than I thought I would, because this is the most mainstream German movie stuff you could imagine. (then again, I am super mainstream in general)

10. Ocean’s Eight

These badass ladies were just a feast to watch! Also, I love me a good heist movie.

9. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

I loved the book, I also loved the movie. The casting was serious perfection!

8. Love, Simon

It felt like a small eternity waiting for this movie to be released in most parts of Europe! But believe me when I say, once I was in the movie theater I just loved it beyond anything in that very moment. There was a giddiness inside me and I cried and laughed and felt like it connected everyone in the room a little bit. I adore when movies can do something like that!

7. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald

I feel like the content of the movie could have been better, but I was beyond impressed with the visuals. Granted, I watched it in IMAX 3D, which is something I usually never treat myself to. There were frame-break-effects and I felt like I was about to die with the characters more than once just because the images were so overwhelming. For that alone, I had to put it this high on the list.

6. I Kill Giants

This movie destroyed me in the same way the A Monster Call book destroyed me. I didn’t know what to expect at all and this was a movie filled with tears.

5. To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

No lie, I have watched this movie more times in 2018 than anything else. It was just so cute and sweet and pretty and a really great adaptation. What it lacked to include from the book, it made up in improving in other aspects. I was so happy with this movie!

4. Black Panther

When I saw Wakanda for the first time on the screen, I got chills! This movie is a phenomenon and rightly so!

3. Avengers: Infinity War

I went into this not knowing what was about to happen. I wasn’t spoilered by countless memes on the internet yet. I just wanted to see some action, all my faves colliding and a bit of good fun but I did not sign up for my heart to get ripped out and jumped on like a million times. This movie was 10 years in the making and the result hurt! It hurt in all the right ways.

2. Set It Up

Yes, I am going to be so extra and put a Netflix romcom on the 2nd place. I HAVE MISSED (GOOD!!!!!!) ROMCOMS SO MUCH! And I know To All the Boys is even cuter, but Set It Up hit all the right marks with me. There is even a writer main character. I am forever going to love this movie and you cannot tell me otherwise. I even ended up in a Twitter moment with my live tweets about the movie. It’s one of my biggest accomplishments of 2018.

1. A Star Is Born

I went into this film thinking that I would know exactly what was going to happen, but I was not prepared for the emotional duress I went through. Watching this alone was hard and I was simply heartbroken in the end. Bradley Cooper did a banging job for his directorial debut and the songs were beautiful and the acting was really deep and … yeah, that’s it! A Star is Born was amazing.

Have you watched some of the movies I mentioned? Which ones? Are you disappointed not to see a certain film on my list? Let’s chat!

37 thoughts on “Top 18 Movies of 2018”

  1. Set It Up has definitely escalated to be one of my favorite rom-coms of all times. Netflix’s romance doesn’t always work for me; they’re either way too over-the-top or underwhelming, but Set it Up had everything I could ask for. The dialogue at the end is certainly one of my ultimate favorite movie dialogues.
    My favorite movie of the year certainly was Black Panther. I feel like I’m typically harsh on Marvel movies, because they’re always so hyped (the absurd lines for Infinity War lasted for about a month in my country), but Black Panther deserves all the hype that it gets!
    An underrated release of the year for me was Eighth Grade. It was only a teenage movie, but it packed a punch. I recommend if you haven’t watched it yet! It was even in Obama’s favorites-of-the-year list, lol.
    Hope you get to watch amazing movies in 2019 too!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I hear you! Netflix is hit or miss with a lot of things. Sometimes I don’t understand how something like Ibiza and Set It Up can release on the same platform haha but I am glad you agree. The whole “you are not hard to get at all, you are hard to earn and that’s so much better” stuck with me big time!
      And I have heard of Eigth Grade and really wanted to watch it, but I haven’t found it in cinemas near me anywhere. I think I will watch it online once available because the release of movies in the places I live is seriously subpar.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  2. I loved reading this because I was actually planning my top 10 movies of 2018 post last night and we have such different lists! A Star Is Born and To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before will definitely be on mine though! You’ve listed so many here that I haven’t actually seen so I’ll have to add some to my watch list!

    Jess // foundationsandfairytales.wordpress.com
    xx

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  3. This is such a great list, Kat and thank you for sharing so many recommendations as well! I loved Love, Simon and To All The Boys, they did such a great job with the adaptations of these overall and Set It Up ahhhhhhh that movie was adorable and I am forever grateful you recommended it. I can’t wait to watch A Star Is Born, though I fear I’m not ready for the emotional hit that will bring. It still sounds so good… well, I’ll watch it sometime haha 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  4. Omg Kat I watched Avengers Infinity War the other day for the first time and MY HEART. I can’t deal, I need part 2 now. Love your list and that to all the boys is on it too, still in love with that movie so so much x

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. I loved Set it Up and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before too ❤️ I still need to watch a lot of these, I’m so bad at keeping up with movies. I’m so excited to see A Star is Born, Guernsey and Ocean’s Eight though. The cast for Ocean’s Eight is so amazing, I know I’ll love it!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  7. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society is on my to-read and to-watch list and since I’m in charge of the books for my library’s reading group, I’ve been thinking about featuring that one in the Summer, got to plan ahead. 😉

    Avengers destroyed me. I was so happy I managed to avoid spoilers, and I knew it was going to hurt, but I was not expecting everything to kill me!!!! Black Panther and Avengers really set the bar high for the next wave of Marvel films.

    Set It Up is still on my list on Netflix and I’m thinking it’ll be a good one for my mam and me to watch next week on our day off.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • While the summer is still pretty far away, I am 100% in favour of the book becoming your reading group topic!

      Oh, the Marvel bar is SO high right now. I hope Endgame or whatever the next Avengers is called will be able to fill those shoes. But I am pretty positive about Captain Marvel.

      WATCH SET IT UP!

      Like

      Reply

  9. I loved Love, Simon and Ocean’s Eight as well. Glad to see a lot of lovely recommendations such as Whatever Happens and Extinction in the list as well, I’ll definitely watch it this year 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  10. I finally watched Set it Up a while ago because of you haha. I loved that the girl (I have terrible memory so I don’t remember her name) was a journalist. That scene where she’s like ‘I’m gonna write the shittiest article ever written’ I sent to my best friend captioned ‘us’ because that’s definitely us going through college haha. Also yes to Love, Simon, TATBILB, Black Panther and Ocean’s 8! I haven’t seen the others, though Woman in Gold is on my Netflix list, so I might watch it soon (I’m a mood watcher so it takes me forever to watch things and mostly I just rewatch B99 and John Mulaney sdnj)

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Yaaaay! I … currently also don’t remember her name. Harper? Something with H?? I don’t even know. I ADORED that she was a journalist and had troubles writing. It felt so relatable. I wanted to crawl into a onesie and just write garbage too.
      B99 and John Mulaney are AWESOME! I just watch tons and tons of James Acaster, Joe Lycett and most of all Daniel Sloss to be honest. And a lot of clips from Would I Lie To You and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown …. cause I have a thing for Brits and their panel shows.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  12. I loved Black Panther, easily my top movie of 2018. That and The Hate U Give. Infinity War was sooo good! And To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before was adorable, I actually ended up liking the movie more than the book. I’ve been wanting to watch Nappily Ever After all year, but I wanted to get the book first… I’ll probably just end up watching the movie. I saw Set It Up on my recommendations list but I haven’t seen it. I guess it’s worth the time since you liked it so much, that may be my first movie of the new year 😀

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  13. For about the first ten picks of your list I was reading through like “I haven’t seen any of these, where was I this year?!” but then I got to Love, Simon and I started seeing some of my favourite films of 2018 as well! 😀
    I did enjoy The Crimes of Grindelwald but yeah I felt like the content could have been better and actually I preferred the first Fantastic Beasts film. Marvel had some great films out this year too, and it looks like they have even better films out next year. I am pretty much counting down the days until the release of Captain Marvel and Endgame.
    Great post, and hopefully there’ll be plenty more amazing films for you to pick from for 2019! 🙂 ❤

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • To be fair, not all my movies were from last year haha and in addition to that, I have an obscure taste. I like random things that others haven’t heard much about for a lot of the time.
      I am really excited for Captain Marvel too and I just hope that Endgame can deliver after Infinity War. It’s going to be tough to follow up on.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • That makes me feel slightly better. I’m not as up to date on movie releases as I am book releases so it’s very possible I’ve just missed out on a lot of popular films. 🙂
        Fingers crossed. To be honest I hadn’t really thought about it like that, I mean I’ve had sequels to books that have’t delivered. Just gotta hope that’s not the case with Endgame.

        Liked by 1 person

  15. I heard mission impossible was good. I definitely want to see woman in gold- it looks good. Gosh I got emotional watching the nappily ever after trailer- I need to see it. I *adored* love simon! One of my favourites of the year too! I’m excited to see crimes of grindlewald as well- I’m glad the visuals were stellar. Glad visuals were so good. I like the look of I kill giants. I LOVED to all the boys as well! I’d happily watch it again and again. Black panther was sensational and one of my fave films from last year too- personally it edged out infinity war for me- I know, shocker 😉 I thoroughly enjoyed set it up too- YES to the return of rom coms! And I’ve heard amazing things about a star is born! Wonderful list!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  16. So many amazing movies, so many movies I haven’t seen yet.
    I also really, really loved To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before, Set It Up,The Crimes of Grindewald and Love, Simon. I thought they were all really good movies in their own way. Love, Simon and All The Boys I’ve Loved Before made me feel so warm and fuzzy. I defintely have to agree with Crimes of Grindewald – The visuals were really stunning.

    Movies that I haven’t watched yet but that I’m planning on watching this year includes Ocean’s 8 (I’m so happy you loved this one), A Star is Born and Mission Impossible.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.