My Top Films (and Books) of 2018

Saw and read more than usual this year, so the lists below are a little longer.

In all, I had a great year for watching & reading, both old and new – so I'll keep my comments short and get straight to the lists. 

As always, directors' names will take you to their IMDb pages, and I've limited myself to one film per director/one book per author – though, as with last year, I've cheated by including a series in the number one spot of my book list.

My Top Films of 2018

01) Cold War (dir. Pawel Pawlikowski)

02) Last Flag Flying (dir. Richard Linklater)

03) An Elephant Sitting Still (dir. Bo Hu)

04) Birds of Passage (dirs. Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra)

05) I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (dir. Radu Jude)

06) You Were Never Really Here (dir. Lynne Ramsay)

07) If Beale Street Could Talk (dir. Barry Jenkins)

08) Zama (dir. Lucrecia Martel)

09) The Shape of Water (dir. Guillermo del Toro)

10) Fake Tattoos (dir. Pascal Plante)

11) Aquarela (dir. Viktor Kossakovsky)

12) Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig)

13) Several Conversations about a Very Tall Girl (dir. Bogdan Theodor Olteanu)

14) Bisbee '17 (dir. Robert Greene)

15) BlacKkKlansman (dir. Spike Lee)

16) The Green Fog (dirs. Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson and Guy Maddin)

17) Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (dirs. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman)

18) Thunder Road (dir. Jim Cummings)

19) Non-Fiction (dir. Olivier Assayas)

20) Dovlatov (dir. Aleksey German)

The Best Films from Previous Years that I Saw for the First Time in 2018

01) Private Confessions (1996, dir. Liv Ullmann)

02) The Girls (1968, dir. Mai Zetterling)

03) Silence is Golden (1947, dir. René Clair)

04) In the Presence of a Clown (1997, dir. Ingmar Bergman)

05) Outrage (1950, dir. Ida Lupino)

06) Qâf (1985, dir. Jamil Dehlavi)

07) Il Bidone (1955, dir. Federico Fellini)

08) Sugar Cane Alley (1983, dir. Euzhan Palcy)

09) Les Parents Terribles (1948, dir. Jean Cocteau)

10) L'amore (1948, dir. Roberto Rossellini)

11) Forbidden Games (1952, dir. René Clément)

12) Partition (1987, dir. Ken McMullen)

13) Sunday's Children (1992, dir. Daniel Bergman)

14) None Shall Escape (1944, dir. André De Toth)

15) When Harry Met Sally… (1989, dir. Rob Reiner)

16) Last Couple Out (1956, dir. Alf Sjöberg)

17) La Main du diable (1943, dir. Maurice Tourneur)

18) Fragment of an Empire (1929, dir. Fridrikh Ermler)

19) Tunes of Glory (1960, dir. Ronald Neame)

20) The Unloved (2009, dir. Samantha Morton)

The Best Books I Read for the First Time in 2018

01) The Sibyl, The Death of Ahasuerus, Pilgrim at Sea and The Holy Land – Pär Lagerkvist

02) A Project for the Theatre – Ingmar Bergman

03) Animal Farm – George Orwell

04) Darkness at Noon – Arthur Koestler

05) Liv Ullmann Interviews – Robert Emmet Long (ed.)

06) Behold the Man – Michael Moorcock

07) The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg

08) The Dialogue of Two Snails – Federico García Lorca

09) Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

10) Mr. Palomar – Italo Calvino