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I thought this year was a strange one for cinema. Streaming sites such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video stepped up their game, while major theatrical releases rarely wowed me. In evaluating my top ten for the year against prior ones, it's a good list, but I wouldn't view it as the top half of the 2000s.

Only three movies gave me a real glow, a kind of happiness that persisted over time. One of those, Ready Player One, is an admittedly flawed movie with some genuinely moronic moments (I'm looking at you, Redhead Girl with Puzzle-Solving Face), but its celebration of pop culture is a refreshing shot of optimism in a cynical industry.
Out of the other two, Crazy Rich Asians was too slight to get serious awards consideration, although I’m thrilled that Constance Wu got a Golden Globe nod. She’s better than two of the women nominated for Best Actress as well, but that’s a side argument that will piss off the Little Monsters of the realm.

Out of the movies I loved this year, only one earned a Best Picture nod, which may be the smallest number in my adult life. I watched over 100 movies again this year, and only two of my top 10 entries managed a Best Picture nomination. Even if I stretch the list to top 25, I still only have four nominees. In other words, I’m not thrilled with the Best Picture race this year. Something thoroughly average is going to win, while the best of the bunch never had a chance.

8) Vice

I was all about The Big Short. I loved the book, and the film was my favorite in 2015. I thought it was the best scene, the best cast, and many of the best acting performances of the year as well. I say all of this as an indicator that I'm the target audience for Vice. I'm far enough left on the political spectrum that Bernie Sanders thinks I need to move to the right a bit.

Many of the critiques offered in Vice were ones that I discussed ad nauseam on the internet in real time as they happened. George W. Bush was obviously a figurehead who had little to do with the running of the country on a daily basis. Vice should have played out as a film I loved since I’m the choir to whom director Adam McKay wanted to preach. And I actively disliked the movie. It felt forced, erratic, and purposelessly mean.

Vice is a hatchet job done by a four-year-old rather than a professional. The cuts are all superficial and reckless. There's no cohesion or sense of drama. A group of storytellers who dislike Dick Cheney got back at him for years of incompetent governance, but the way that they did it was wholly ineffective. Cheney's 13% approval rating when he left office is a better lingering embarrassment to his legacy than this lazy, petty hit piece. I cannot believe that the same people who crafted The Big Short failed so entirely here.

7) A Star Is Born

When I first saw the trailer for A Star Is Born, I knew the film would be a blockbuster. Its incorporation of the song Shallow worked perfectly. The musical buildup segued beautifully with the story presented of a famous musician meeting an in-over-her-head singer. It was a perfect trailer, one for which someone deserves a tremendous salary bonus.

For the first hour of the film, I thought that A Star Is Born could become my favorite of the year. Then, the entire story collapsed in a strange combination of excess and humiliation. Bradley Cooper’s character is an alcoholic, one whom Lady GaGa’s character cannot save. That part’s simple.

Explaining why Ally sells out so completely as a musician after promising that she wouldn’t is a crippling mistake. It marginalizes the character, turning her into a spineless wannabe unwilling to stand up to criticism. And Cooper’s flameout just doesn’t work as presented, especially the scene where he joins his wife on stage for her acceptance speech. A Star Is Born has plenty of good ideas, but they get swallowed whole by miscalculations and a poor job in the editing booth. It needed 20 minutes less or 20 minutes more, and I’m honestly not sure which.

6) Green Book

We’ve all seen this story countless times over the years. Social opposites are forced together by circumstance and grow together over time. In this case, a white man experiences firsthand the racial injustices of a black man in the south. Specifically, a mafia associate takes a job as a driver for a talented musician and eventually becomes a sort of protector, too.

Green Book is around the 70th percentile of the films I saw last year. It’s a good movie, but it’s shamelessly derivative and lacking any new insights into such stories. I cannot help but compare it to Hidden Figures and The Help, both of which covered the same ground so much better.

Green Book is harmlessly mundane, but if it wins Best Picture, I’m gonna throw stuff at the television. The Academy has messed up two straight years with Moonlight and The Shape of Water. If it chooses Green Book as well, we need to accept that the voting process is irrevocably broken, with mediocrity getting championed over excellence.

5) The Favourite

Every year, we seem to have one of these films. I’m talking about the ones whose parts are greater than the sum. For whatever reason, some releases elevate acting at the expense of all else. The latest example is The Favourite, a four-person ensemble piece that probably would work better as a play.

The story is a struggle for revenues to pay for the War of Spanish Succession. The person in charge, if you can imagine, has little interest in governance and instead wants to spend time on hobbies (you know, like golf!) rather than winning the war or aiding her people. Fortunately, the Queen is in a lesbian affair with a competent, dutiful woman who manipulates her majesty to give England its best chance of survival.

Unfortunately, the Queen’s pretty easy for women to seduce, something that becomes clear when the competent, dutiful woman brings her cousin to court. This opportunist is in it for herself, and she does whatever it takes to gain power at court. In other words, The Favourite is what Vice should have been if Dick Cheney had slept with George W. Bush. Yes, I just skeeved myself out.

I loved the acting and the writing in The Favourite. However, I can’t say that I remember any specific part of the story involving political maneuvering. In other words, I don’t remember what the deal was with Nicholas Hoult…and I’m a huge fan of political intrigue. The Favourite just hasn’t stuck with me at all, always a sign that it didn’t strike a chord with me. I liked the film, but it’s no Elizabeth.

4) BlacKkKlansman

Okay, now we’ve moved into the 80th percentile of the movie I watched this year. I feel like my top 25 is pretty good, meaning that any release ranked in this range is somewhere between very good and excellent.

Describing BlackKkKlansman as a comedy feels trite and dismissive. It has countless hysterical moments, though. Director Spike Lee is in complete command here, possibly the most since his impeccable work on Inside Man. And John David Washington’s prowess as a lead actor is unmistakable. He’s the controlling presence as a driven searcher trying to do good in a world that hates him for the most arbitrary of reasons.

Adam Driver provides terrific support as the (white) face of Ron Stallworth, the infiltrator Trojan horse who somehow becomes a member despite his Jewish ethnicity. And the group of hatemongers delivers some bold acting performances, especially Ryan Eggold, Topher Grace, and Paul Walter Hauser. BOP’s always loved Grace, but Hauser is starting to take his place among the best character actors in the world.

What I love best about BlacKkKlansman is the ending. Without spoiling, Lee manages to tie together a disgusting time from our history with modern events. In doing so, he demonstrates how little we’ve changed as a people despite the communal nature of the social media era. The final few minutes of the film should cause everyone to take a few moments of introspection about society.

3) Roma

This movie just dominated The Calvins as much as anything has over the last decade. Despite its success, I actually view it as lesser Cuarón. It didn’t dazzle me the way that Gravity and Children of Men did. In truth, I liked Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban quite a bit more.

Then again, I'm unfairly comparing Roma to three legitimate A+/best of year movies simply due to their sharing the same director. As a standalone film, Roma is intimate, convivial, and bittersweet. I feel like a part of this family or at least a spying neighbor who pays too much attention to Cleo, the maid.

I previously described Roma as the most realistic Boston marriage yet filmed, and I believe that. Cleo and the woman of the house, Sofia, are life partners even though one is the other’s employer. The father/husband is absent throughout the story, leaving these two women to raise a family together.

Roma is sneaky-feminist in its presentation. The adult males are garbage people, threatening to hit or shoot women. Even the boy is a troublemaker. Only the women are reliable and sturdy throughout the story, something that should resonate with virtually everyone.

There’s a reason why toxic male culture has become a story. Many dudes know what they are and hate themselves/the world for it. In Roma, they’re effectively dismissed as irrelevant to the story of our heroines, and I applaud Cuarón for doing it so smoothly that it’s barely even acknowledged. Roma isn’t perfect, but it’s admirable.

2) Bohemian Rhapsody

Like many children of the 1980s, I’m a Queen guy mainly because of Princes of the Universe. As recently shown on an episode of The Goldbergs, Highlander mattered a disproportionate amount to middle-class boys of the era, and Queen provided the shout-along soundtrack.

As someone who watched Live Aid (and still has VHS tapes of it in a closet somewhere), I was curious about the story behind Queen’s performance. I don’t believe that Bohemian Rhapsody breaks any new ground as a biopic, and it apparently takes a great deal of creative license, too. Even so, whenever I see the members of Queen excitedly engage with Rami Malek, I understand that they believe the movie did the best job possible in showing their life as one of the top rock acts of the 1970s and 1980s.

To an extent, the movie is a one-person show. I don’t know the percentage of scenes without Freddie Mercury, but it cannot be a large number. Since he’s since an engaging person, however, the diminishing of other members of Queen doesn’t bother me. The film emphasizes the very reason why the band excelled. It had a true rock star as its lead singer.

The degree to which I like a biopic generally comes down to how much I care about the subject. With Freddie Mercury, I wanted to see what happened next throughout the film save for a bit of slog during his junkie/solo act days. Other than that modest misstep, Bohemian Rhapsody is a lively, timeless rock story.

1) Black Panther

Wakanda forever!

I bust on BOP’s Pete Kilmer a lot because the comic book store owner is a shameless homer for all comic book stories. He swears that Green Lantern is a good movie, as an example. I vividly recall the moment when Ava DuVernay quit this project. Black Panther was always a shaky proposition as a feature due to the lackluster popularity of the superhero. When an established director dropped out, this film seemed dead on arrival, and I said as much.

Ryan Coogler made a fool out of me. The director I already loved because of Fruitvale Station somehow leveled up with Black Panther. He crafted a fully realized, techno-centric society with Wakanda. Just as importantly, he danced with who brought him, casting his friend (and longstanding BOP fave) Michael B. Jordan as the villainous Killmonger. BOP voted Jordan Best Supporting Actor for his work here, and I agree with everyone (although Sam Elliott edged him on my ballot).

As the outsider who doesn’t understand Wakanda, Killmonger works perfectly as the way to draw viewers into this almost mystical realm where science has advanced many generations beyond the rest of the world. Superheroes are all the more impressive when they have appropriate adversaries, and Black Panther is actually given three, one of whom later becomes an ally.

Chadwick Boseman’s strength as an actor is that he can demonstrate complex, nuanced relationships with others after only a few words of conversation. His tortured relationship with Killmonger blends beautifully with his knowing respect for M’Baku, a similarly positioned leader of a different tribe. With one, he’s conflicted. With the other, he’s sometimes demanding, sometimes deferential, and always understanding. Boseman reminds me forcibly of Don Cheadle with his willingness to inhabit a character, and that’s the strongest compliment I can give anyone in the profession.

While watching Black Panther, I’ve marveled at the visuals, the storytelling, and the characters. I’ve also believed the story arc of the villain, a rarity for comic book movies. I’ve entered the hidden city of Wakanda, and I’ve believed in it. That’s the strongest compliment I can give a film. While Crazy Rich Asians was my favorite film of the year, Black Panther was a clear second, making it easily the best of the Best Picture nominees.