Here’s my annual picks of the best Streaming/ Blu-Ray/DVD releases of the past year in order of their home release date. Documentaries and foreign films are less dominant, and I have succumbed with two comic book movies on the list as this non-stop genre finally stopped remaking Spiderman movies (or have they?). Overall, I have been watching less films as volumes of bland ones continue to be cranked out each year at an alarming rate which leaves me joyless. If there are good movies not on this- there is a good chance I just missed them. A lot of the art films that critics loved also didn’t make it here either.(Sorry fishman and peach lover!) I even have two family films with Paddington 2 being one of the most entertaining movies of the year! (Am I growing sentimental with age? What’s happening? ) Half of my picks deal with parenthood in some way showing a trend where the scariest horror in films is often parental guilt and anxiety. Again, these are only theatrical films here rather than TV series releases. Binge worthy TV series seems to be where a lot of the top talent has gone these days.
Ten years ago in 2008 I began blogging home video reviews at the suggestion of my friend Jessi Badami. After about a year she stopped, and I moved the solo blog to the Seattle PI. By 2010 I had grown too distracted to do reviews and have only published the annual best of list since. As anyone who has attempted a blog knows, you love it at first, then it becomes a drag resulting in thousands of abandoned blogs out there. Yet I do now have a decade of best of film picks on record as well as a list of my favorite films of all time. Since these lists are always by home release date rather than the date of the film itself I always wanted to back track and reorder them to provide a list of the films by actual release year. Again, I haven’t found time to do this yet nor do I think anyone cares if I do. 🙂
With so many people out there providing their opinions I am just one of seemingly hundreds voicing my opinions on the state of the art of film today. It is the best of times, it is the worst of times. More films, technically brilliant, more ways to see them but also just mediocre ones that keep rolling out like homogenized copies. Just sit through the coming attraction trailers at your theater and you grow a little numb with the shitty films being made. Like clockwork Hollywood then puts out articles questioning why film attendance is declining. In any case, let’s just keep gleaning out the good ones amid this rubble. I hope you’ll like these. Don’t judge me on Blockers- I laughed. Have a great Holiday and a Happy New Year!
| 1. Dunkirk **
December 19, 2017 |
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| 2. Lucky
January 2, 2018 |
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| 3. Wonder
February 13, 2018 |
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| 4. Coco
February 27, 2018 |
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| 5. Darkest Hour
February 27, 2018 |
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| 6. Faces Places*+
March 6, 2018 |
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| 7. Lady Bird
March 6, 2018 |
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| 8. Thor: Ragnarok
March 6, 2018 |
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| 9. I, Tonya
March 13, 2018 |
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| 10. Paddington 2
April 24, 2018 |
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| 11. Black Panther
May 15, 2018 |
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| 12. Graduation+
May 22, 2018 |
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| 13. Blockers
July 3, 2018 |
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| 14. Tully
July 31, 2018 |
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| 15. Won’t You Be my Neighbor? *
September 4, 2018 |
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| 16. Summer 1993+
September 18, 2018 |
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| 17. Three Identical Strangers*
October 2, 2018 |
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| 18. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot
October 9, 2018 |
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| 19. Eighth Grade
October 9, 2018 |
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| 20. Crazy Rich Asians
November 20, 2018 |
*=documentary
+=foreign
**= This missed my list last year since I posted early
Rain Film 