These are the 1982 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best in that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Rankings & Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .
1983 Endy Awards
These are the 1983 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best in that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Rankings & Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .
1985 Endy Awards
These are the 1985 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best in that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Rankings & Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .
1986 Endy Awards
These are the 1986 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best in that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Rankings & Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .
1987 Endy Awards
These are the 1987 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best in that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Rankings & Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .
This Week in Rankings
A lot of end of the year stuff since the last update: the nominees for the 2018 Endy Awards, the Best Books I Read in 2018, my favorite Film Discoveries of the Year, and the Seattle Film Critics Society Awards. I contributed to Frame.land’s Favorite Cinematic Moments of 2018 and Underseen and Unloved Films of 2018 (on Ash is Purest White and Liz and the Blue Bird, respectively), InReview’s Top 20 Films of 2018 (on Blackkklansman) and the Mubi Notebook’s annual Fantasy Double Features collection.
Also at the Notebook I had a column on the Best Chinese Films of the year and a retrospective on the work of the late Ringo Lam. Only one review over at Seattle Screen Scene, on Mojin: The Worm Valley, where we also have a round-up of our Favorite Things of 2018.
If you like what I do here or at Seattle Screen Scene, The Chinese Cinema, or anywhere else, please consider donating at my kofi page. Every little bit helps.
These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.
Something Good–Negro Kiss (William Selig) – 1, 1898
Street Angel (Yuan Muzhi) – 4, 1937
Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mu) – 3, 1948
A Charlie Brown Christmas (Bill Melendez) – 4, 1965
How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Chuck Jones) – 13, 1966
Three Sad Tigers (Raúl Ruiz) – 15, 1968
Chan is Missing (Wayne Wang) – 3, 1982
Yellow Earth (Chen Kaige) – 13, 1984
The Horse Thief (Tain Zhuangzhuang) – 17, 1986
City on Fire (Ringo Lam) – 2, 1987
Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou) – 5, 1987
School on Fire (Ringo Lam) – 2, 1988
Full Contact (Ringo Lam) – 11, 1992
Farewell, My Concubine (Chen Kaige) – 62, 1993
Ricky Jay and His 52 Assistants (David Mamet) – 29, 1996
Maximum Risk (Ringo Lam) – 53, 1996
Full Alert (Ringo Lam) – 17, 1997
X-Men (Bryan Singer) – 37, 2000
Replicant (Ringo Lam) – 39, 2001
Springtime in a Small Town (Tian Zhuangzhuang) – 21, 2002
Looking for Mr. Perfect (Ringo Lam) – 15, 2003
X2 (Bryan Singer) – 33, 2003
In Hell (Ringo Lam) – 44, 2003
Shaun of the Dead (Edgar Wright) – 18, 2004
X-Men: The Last Stand (Brett Ratner) – 68, 2006
Hot Fuzz (Edgar Wright) – 32, 2007
X-Men: First Class (Matthew Vaughn) – 65, 2011
Flowers of Taipei: Taiwan New Cinema (Chinlin Hsieh) – 48, 2014
X-Men: Days of Future Past (Bryan Singer) – 76, 2014
X-Men: Apocalypse (Bryan Singer) – 121, 2016
Deadpool (Tim Miller) – 137, 2016
Paddington 2 (Paul King) – 99, 2017
Blackkklansman (Spike Lee) – 4, 2018
If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins) – 6, 2018
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (Peter Ramsey, Robert Persichetti Jr. & Rodney Rothman) – 16, 2018
Blue (Apichatpong Weerasethakul) – 21, 2018
Us and Them (René Liu) – 41, 2018
Venom (Ruben Fleischer) – 47, 2018
Aquaman (James Wan) – 48, 2018
Animal World (Han Yan) – 54, 2018
Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher) – 58, 2018
Avengers: Infinity War (Anthony & Joe Russo) – 61, 2018
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler) – 69, 2018
The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard) – 72, 2018
A Quiet Place (John Krasinski) – 76, 2018
Deadpool 2 (David Leitch) – 78, 2018
At Eternity’s Gate (Julian Schnabel) – 79, 2018
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón) – 81, 2018
A Cool Fish (Rao Xiaozhi) – 85, 2018
Blockers (Kay Cannon) – 91, 2018
The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos) – 93, 2018
The Leakers (Herman Yau) – 98, 2018
Springsteen on Broadway (Thom Zimney) – 110, 2018
Mojin: The Worm Valley (Fei Xing) – 112, 2018
Destroyer (Karyn Kusama) – 113, 2018
Fat Buddies (Bao Beier) – 126, 2018
Green Book (Peter Farrelly) – 128, 2018
Vox Lux (Brady Corbett) – 134, 2018
Vice (Adam McKay) – 137, 2018
Books of 2018
Here is a ranked list of the books which I finished reading in 2018:
- Loitering with Intent, Muriel Spark
- Master and Commander, Patrick O’Brien
- Moons of Jupiter, Alice Munro
- The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Agatha Christie
- Outside Stories, Eliot Weinberger
- Preludes & Nocturnes (Sandman #1), Neil Gaiman
- Works on Paper, Eliot Weinberger
- Post Captain, Patrick O’Brien
- Empires of the Word, Nicholas Oster
- At the Existentialist Café, Sarah Bakewell
- HMS Surprise, Patrick O’Brien
- For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest hemingway
- Capitalist Realism, Mark Fisher
- Fixed Ideas, Joan Didion
- The Man in the Brown Suit, Agatha Christie
- Fables, Vol. 1, Bill Willingham
- The Mauritius Command, Patrick O’Brien
- The Reactionary Mind, Corey Robin
- Batman: The Killing Joke, Alan Moore
- Desolation Island, Patrick O’Brien
- The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Agatha Christie
- The Surgeon’s Mate, Patrick O’Brien
- The Chapo Guide to Revolution
- The Doll’s House (Sandman #2), Neil Gaiman
- The Fortune of War, Patrick O’Brien
- The Art of Smart Football, Chris Brown
- The Essential Smart Football, Chris Brown
- Big Game, Mark Leibovich
- The Secret of Chimneys, Agatha Christie
- The Murder on the Links, Agatha Christie
- The Secret Adversary, Agatha Christie
- It Crawled from the South, Marcus Gray
- The Big Four, Agatha Christie
- Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff
Currently reading, ranked in order of how close I am to finishing:
- The Ionian Mission, Patrick O’Brien
- The Power Broker, Robert Moses
- Middlemarch, George Eliot
- A World to Win: The Life and Work of Karl Marx, Sven-Eric Liedman
- Against the Day, Thomas Pynchon
- The Fourth World Omnibus, Jack Kirby
The Best Older Movies I Saw in 2018
An annual tradition here at The End, this is a look at my favorite film discoveries of the year, any movie more than a few years old that I saw for the first time in 2018. Previous years include: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, and 2006. I watched just over 350 films this year, about 60 of which qualified for this list, and these are 31 of my favorites.
Hana and Alice (Shunji Iwai, 2004)
Kamikaze Taxi (Masato Harada, 1995)
Wanda (Barbara Loden, 1970)
Bound for the Fields, the Mountains and the Seacoast (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1986)
Long Arm of the Law (Johnny Mak, 1984)
The Longest Summer (Fruit Chan, 1998)
Wooden Crosses (Raymond Bernard, 1932)
Final Victory (Patrick Tam, 1987)
Dream Lovers (Tony Au, 1986)
Love Letter (Shunji Iwai, 1995)
That Day, on the Beach (Edward Yang, 1983)
Love Unto Waste (Stanley Kwan, 1986)
List (Hong Sangsoo, 2011)
The Boxer’s Omen (Kuei Chih-hung, 1983)
Crime Story (Kirk Wong, 1993)
Tonight Nobody Goes Home (Sylvia Chang, 1996)
Detective Chinatown (Chen Sicheng, 2015)
Something Good – Negro Kiss (William Selig, 1898)
Cops and Robbers (Alex Cheung, 1979)
Siao Yu (Sylvia Chang, 1995)
Lost in the Mountains (Hong Sangsoo, 2009)
Princess D (Sylvia Chang, 2002)
Duel to the Death (Ching Siu-tung, 1983)
Nine to Five (Colin Higgins, 1980)
Mind Game (Masaaki Yuasa, 2004)
Little Forest: Winter/Spring/Summer/Autumn (Junichi Mori, 2014-15)
Bewitched (Kuei Chih-hung, 1981)
Women (Stanley Kwan, 1985)
Man of Steel (Zack Snyder, 2013)
Seeding of a Ghost (Chuan Yang, 1983)
Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom? (Shunji Iwai, 1993)
2018 Endy Awards
These are the 2018 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best movies, performances, etc of that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Rankings & Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. And the Endy goes to. . .
This Week in Rankings
Since the last rankings update I wrote about Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into Night over at The Chinese Cinema and Shunji Iwai’s Last Letter at Mubi. Over at Seattle Screen Scene I reviewed Frederick Wiseman’s Monrovia, Indiana, Naoko Yamada’s Liz and the Blue Bird, Kim Sunghoon’s Rampant, John Carpenter’s The Fog, and RaMell Ross’s Hale County This Morning, This Evening. Over at Frame.land I contributed a review of Raymond Bernard’s Wooden Crosses.
If you like what I do here or at Seattle Screen Scene, The Chinese Cinema, or anywhere else, please consider donating at my kofi page. Every little bit helps.
These are the movies I’ve watched or rewatched over the last few weeks, and where they place on my year-by-year rankings.
Wooden Crosses (Raymond Bernard) – 4, 1932
The Road to Glory (Howard Hawks) – 17, 1936
It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (Bill Melendez) – 4, 1966
A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (Bill Melendez & Phil Roman) – 37, 1973
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Tobe Hooper) – 7, 1974
Halloween (John Carpenter) – 7, 1978
The Fog (John Carpenter) – 11, 1980
Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom? (Shunji Iwai) – 27, 1993
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick) – 30, 1993
City Hunter (Wong Jing) – 56, 1993
Love Letter (Shunji Iwai) – 11, 1995
All About Lily Chou-chou (Shunji Iwai) – 10, 2001
Hana and Alice (Shunji Iwai) – 6, 2004
Little Forest: Summer/Autumn (Junichi Mori) – 36, 2014
Kaili Blues (Bi Gan) – 11, 2015
Little Forest: Winter/Spring (Junichi Mori) – 41, 2015
The Rider (Chloé Zhao) – 51, 2017
Let the Corpses Tan (Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani) – 75, 2017
First Reformed (Paul Schrader) – 85, 2017
You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) – 97, 2017
Liz and the Blue Bird (Naoko Yamada) – 6, 2018
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles) – 10, 2018
Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan) – 11, 2018
Last Letter (Shunji Iwai) – 12, 2018
Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman) – 15, 2018
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Joel & Ethan Coen) – 17, 2018
Hale County This Morning, This Evening (RaMell Ross) – 21, 2018
Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker) – 22, 2018
Minding the Gap (Bing Liu) – 23, 2018
Shirkers (Sandi Tan) – 24, 2018
A Star is Born (Bradley Cooper) – 25, 2018
Shoot the Moon Right Between the Eyes (Graham Carter) – 34, 2018
Burning (Lee Changdong) – 39, 2018
Destination Wedding (Victor Levin) – 50,2018
Hereditary (Ari Aster) – 51, 2018
The Gilligan Manifesto (Cekin Soling) – 53, 2018
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) – 54, 2018
Cam (Daniel Goldhaber) – 55, 2018
They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (Morgan Neville) – 57, 2018
Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino) – 65, 2018
To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (Susan Johnson) – 66, 2018
The Great Buster (Peter Bogdanovich) – 67, 2018
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Hunter) – 81, 2018
Widows (Steve McQueen) – 85, 2018
Won’t You be My Neighbor? (Morgan Neville) – 92, 2018
Illang: the Wolf Brigade (Kim Jiwoon) – 93, 2018
Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer) – 94, 2018
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (Lasse Hallström & Joe Johnston) – 100, 2018
Rampant (Kim Sunghoon) – 104, 2018
Crazy Rich Asians (Jon Chu) – 105, 2018
The End of Cinema 