According to my record, I had written 180 movie reviews this year (up from 147 last year). 70 of these are Filipino films, the rest are foreign films.
Potential Oscar-winning films of the year 2018 which will only be shown locally 2019 are also not included here. There had been filmfest screenings for films like "Burning" (from Korea) and "Cold War" (from Poland) but I was not able to see them. It was fortunate that foreign language film frontrunner "Roma" was made available on Netflix.
Honorable Mentions:
25. Overlord (My Full Review) by Julius Avery
24. Unsane (My Full Review) by Steven Soderbergh
23. Rampant (My Full Review) by Kim Sung-hoon
22. Teen Titans Go! To the Movies (My Full Review) by Aaron Horvath, Peter Rida Michail
21. Along with the Gods: The Last 49 Days (My Full Review) by Yong-hwa Kim
20. Christopher Robin (My Full Review) by Marc Forster
19. Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! (My Full Review) by Ol Parker
18. Crazy Rich Asians (My Full Review) by Jon M. Chu
17. Shoplifters (My Full Review) by Hirokazu Kore-eda
16. A Star is Born (My Full Review) by Bradley Cooper
15. A Quiet Place (My Full Review) by John Krasinski
14. Incredibles 2 (My Full Review) by Brad Bird
13. Deadpool 2 (My Full Review) by David Leitch
12. Searching (My Full Review) by Aneesh Chaganty
11. Roma (My Full Review) by Alfonso Cuaron
The Top 10 Best Foreign Films I had seen and written about in 2018 are:
One day several months later, a little pilot landed on barren Trash Island (where the Mayor of Megasaki City exiled all dogs) on a plane he had hijacked. He was Atari Kobayashi, the mayor's 12 year old nephew, who had come in search of his bodyguard dog Spots. A pack of alpha-dogs (King, Rex, Boss, Duke and their tough, macho black-haired leader Chief) decided to help the boy with his mission, and embarked on a danger-filled quest for Spots all over Trash Island.
Following the assassination of his father T'Chaka, T'Challa returned to his home in Wakanda to be crowned king in the presence of his family, significant other Nakia and the rest of his country. However, when a serious threat to the throne was posed by Eric "Killmonger" Stevens, a cocky American challenger with royal Wakandan blood in his veins, a long-kept secret about the former king is revealed, and the call for sharing Wakanda's secret wealth and technology with the world is renewed.
8. Ant-Man and the Wasp (My Full Review) by Peyton Reed
Hank Pym and Hope van Dyne (now already The Wasp) sought Scott's help to re-enter the subatomic quantum realm to search for long-lost Janet van Dyne, who was Hank's wife, Hope's mother and the original Wasp. Meanwhile, the Ghost wanted to hijack Pym's quantum technology to cure her of her ability to phase through objects, an affliction she accidentally gained as a child. Bill Foster, Hank Pym's former assistant, wanted revenge. Gangster Sonny Burch was also after this quantum tech for its potential for big bucks in the black market. Federal agent Jimmy Woo wanted to make sure Scott remained strictly under house arrest.
7. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (My Full Review) by Peter Ramsey, Robert Persichetti Jr., Rodney RothmanMiles Morales), another high-school kid, of mixed African-American and Puerto Rican parentage, got bitten by a radioactive spider and suddenly acquired spider powers he cannot control at all -- the typical story we know. Soon after, Miles encountered the real Spider-Man, Peter Parker, while he was fighting the humongous villain Kingpin and his nefarious plot to open up the space-time continuum with a nuclear collider. It was this collider that allowed Spider-folk from various other dimensions to crash into Miles' dimension to join Miles in his adventure and help him in his mission.
King Orm of Atlantis was plotting with fellow royal King Nereus about uniting the seven undersea kingdoms and declaring war on the surface. Meanwhile, Mera, a spirited red-haired Atlantean princess, went on the surface to find Arthur, son of Queen Atlanna and human lighthouse keeper Tom Curry, to tell him about this threat and to help him to claim his rightful birthright as King of Atlantis. King Orm hired human pirate David Kane and supplied him with Atlantean weapons to carry out his power scheme.
5. Mission Impossible: Fallout (My Full Review) by Christopher McQuarrieIn his effort to rescue his colleague from certain death, Ethan Hunt lost possession of three plutonium cores to terrorists. The new CIA director Erica Sloane assigned agent August Walker to watch over Hunt as he got them back. Upon instruction from a liaison code-named White Widow, Hunt needed to extricate Solomon Lane, the same man Hunt sent to prison in the last film, from a police convoy in Paris and surrender him to her in exchange for the plutonium.
In 1970, lead guitarist Brian May and drummer Roger Taylor accepted Farrokh Bulsara as their new vocalist and John Deacon as new bassist to form the band Queen. Farrokh eventually changed his name to Freddie Mercury. The band was then signed by EMI Records and toured the US and later the world. Meanwhile, trouble brewed behind the scenes for Freddie as he faced various issues about his girlfriend Mary Austin, his career managers, his creative freedom, and his relationship with the band. Freddie's series of bad decisions, both personal and professional, as well as his overlapping vices eventually take their toll on him and on the band.
Phineas Barnum was a very poor boy growing up. Despite all odds, he was able to marry Charity Hallett, the daughter of one of his tailor father's rich clients. Even if his wife and two daughters seemed to be contented with the modest life they had, Phineas himself was obsessed with his dream of transcending his station in life. Phineas began with a wax museum of the strange and the macabre, but his idea really hit its stride when he developed a show that featured "freaks" as the main stars. But even then, Phineas wanted much more, and that was when success began to unravel.
It is 2045. Wade Watt was an orphaned young man who lived in the "Stacks," a dystopian slum neighborhood in Columbus, Ohio. Like everyone else at that time, Wade spent his days going inside the OASIS, a virtual world where people can do anything they desire. As his avatar Parzival, Wade wanted to win the game challenge left by the late OASIS inventor James Halliday -- where anyone who can win three keys leading to an Easter Egg hidden somewhere in the OASIS will inherit full ownership of the Halliday's invention.
And my #1 movie of 2018 is ...
Thanos is a megalomaniac tyrant from the extinct planet of Titan, who thought that intergalactic genocide is the only way to go in order for the whole universe to survive. He firmly believed that his act of mass extermination was actually an act of mercy. He was intent on collecting the six "infinity stones" (power, space, reality, soul, time and mind) on his gauntlet to give him all the fantastic abilities he needed to achieve his supposedly magnanimous goal. The divided Avengers, along with the Guardians of the Galaxy and Dr. Strange, have to band themselves together to beat Thanos' massive threat.
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