Goodbye to 2018!

As we head into the final weekend of 2018, I wanted to take a few minutes to reflect back on the year in movies. There will be plenty of countdowns online and recaps of all the films this year, but I wanted to highlight just a few, some I've seen, others I have yet to watch.

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Focus on Diversity

This has been a topic of conversation for several years in Hollywood complete with people complaining about the lack of representation of minority actors in the nominations for the Oscars a few years ago. But I think there has been some progress made this year and I hope the nominations bear that out.

The fact that we have several strong African American candidates for several of the acting categories goes to show that it's not the same landscape as it was back when Sidney Poitier won in the 1960s or even when Cuba Gooding Jr. won two decades ago. While there may be ebbs and flows to the number of nominations for black actors, the fact that it's no longer "the first time since..." whenever one does win speaks to the progress we've made.

Similarly with the rise of the "Me Too" movement in the last 18 months, women seem to have found a voice and I enjoy seeing films made by women, about women, and discussing things that are important to women. We need more of these stories because as a man, I don't understand women as well as I should. All voices need to be heard and I am so happy that more and more voices rise to the top each and every year.

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Expanding Franchises

This year saw many new additions to both classic and new film franchises. There were three new entries into the Marvel Cinematic Universe (Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and Ant-Man and the Wasp), a non MCU Marvel film (Deadpool 2) as well as one DC Extended Universe film (Aquaman). Bumblebee just joined the Transformers universe and Solo: A Star Wars Story gave us a glimpse into the backstory of some of the most loved Star Wars characters.

In other areas, the dinosaurs continued to roam the earth in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and we got to see a young Albus Dumbledore in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Jamie Lee Curtis returned to finish what she started 40 years ago in Halloween, while Tom Cruise continued his mission in Mission: Impossible - Fallout. Musical fans were sure to be happy with Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again while science fiction fans got treated to The Predator.

Even the kids got plenty of sequels with the likes of Incredibles 2, Mary Poppins Returns, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation, and Paddington 2.

​Now, I haven't even touched on all of them, but it seems like most years, sequels flood the box office and continue to bring us the familiar names we know and love.

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History and Current Events

I can't remember seeing more feature films being released about current events than what I've seen in the last year. It's true there are plenty of people angry about the current state of our country and our world, and people have been making films to express this anger for longer than I've been alive, but the heat just seems to be turned up a little more this year than normal.

As I went through and did weekly preview of the films coming out, I noticed so many documentaries about things that are current in the news including the fallout from the last presidential election, the probe into Russian interference in the election, the general attitudes towards the winner of the presidential election...the list goes on and on.

But beyond just the president, there are plenty of atrocities going on around the world and it was good to see those getting film coverage as well, bringing attention to things people might not otherwise give a second thought to.

Additionally, there were so many documentaries about famous (and not-so-famous) people from around the world. From Won't You Be My Neighbor? about Fred Rogers to RBG and Three Identical Strangers, the list of great documentaries about people is too long to even scratch the surface here.

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What about 2019?

I truly believe this has been a great year for movies. There have been some great ones and some that were absolute junk, but in general we keep seeing new approaches to cinema and new ways of telling stories on the big screen, even if some of them are stories we've heard before.

I am looking forward to what 2019 will bring and hope you will continue on this journey with me.