2018: World Premieres 2018: U.S. Releases 2018: Cannes Festival 2018: Chicago Festival 2018: Reeling Festival 2018: Toronto Festival 2018: The Fifties Looking Back Moving Ahead Browse Films by Title / Year / Reviews Home / Blog / E-Mail The Fifties of 2018: U.S. Releases  My annual tribute to the best work in the first 50 U.S. releases I saw in a given year.  Here is a screenshot of the movies that were eligible for this feature. Your thoughts? Best Picture A Ciambra - Fiery peak in child-centered cinema that inexplicably got shrugged off Ava - First-timer Foroughi grasps her characters and their complex culture in detail Black Panther - Enlivens franchise cinema with energy, ideas, welcome paradoxes First Reformed - Homage to master auteurs still speaks potently to modern world Hereditary - Horrific, inventive, fully committed to a family's emotional free fall Isle of Dogs - Classic tale of heroic outcasts made odd and indelible via execution Lean on Pete - Emotions no less powerful for being conjured with such delicacy Tully - So many critics blew this one; audacious, crafty, and bracingly observant Western - Reprises a genre without enslaving itself to tropes; brilliant study of Europe Zama - Critique of imperial power doubles as gallery show of cutting-edge style Best Director Wes Anderson, Isle of Dogs - Brilliantly orchestrates his most challenging world yet Jonas Carpignano, A Ciambra - Infuses neo-realist techniques with timely urgency Valeska Grisebach, Western - Attains novelistic depth via ace on-the-fly instincts Andrew Haigh, Lean on Pete - Treats U.S. Northwest with soul of Japanese masters Lucrecia Martel, Zama - Puts idiosyncratic formal gifts to politically intricate tests Runners Up: Foroughi (Ava), Reitman (Tully), Coogler (Panther), Aster (Hereditary) Best Actress Toni Collette, Hereditary - From caustic speeches to mute terror, she nails it all Mahour Jabbari, Ava - Connects with Ava's core; immune to begging for sympathy Thomasin McKenzie, Leave No Trace - Trusts the power in her soft-spoken mien Charlotte Rampling, Hannah - Advances our grasp of Hannah one micron at a time Charlize Theron, Tully - Face, voice, body evoke shifting and complicated inner life Runners Up: Weisz (Disobedience), McAdams (Disobedience), Binoche (Sunshine) Best Actor Simon Russell Beale, The Death of Stalin - Light touch with sad, tricky character Ben Foster, Leave No Trace - Tender new spin on Foster's tightly-wound outsiders Meinhard Neumann, Western - That stare! Skillful at withhlolding and modulation Charlie Plummer, Lean on Pete - Candid, simple playing keeps sentiment at bay Joaquin Phoenix, You Were Never Really Here - A black hole shaped like a man Runners Up: Giménez Cacho (Zama), Hawke (Reformed), Amato (Ciambra) Best Supporting Actress Mackenzie Davis, Tully - Such shadings; Tully is never just a crutch or conceit Danai Gurira, Black Panther - Vocally and physically authoritative; sly humor Bahar Noohian, Ava - Convincing rifts with her daughter and, subtly, her husband Sara Sevigny, Rogers Park - Makes the case for her character even at low points Alexandra Shipp, Love, Simon - Palpably empathetic, so you resent her deception Runners Up: Seyfried (Reformed), Roberts (You Were Never...), Hawa (In Between) Best Supporting Actor Steve Buscemi, Lean on Pete - Irascible mentor without heart-of-gold clichés Philip Ettinger, First Reformed - Lays out the film's stakes in one bravura scene Alessandro Nivola, Disobedience - Layers and layers of ambivalence and dismay Koudous Seihon, A Ciambra - Ally? Threat? Easygoing charm keeps riddles alive Alex Wolff, Hereditary - Takes Peter's devastation seriously, amplifying its impact Runners Up: Jordan (Panther), Miller (Simon), Grant (Paddington), Tambor (Stalin), Plemons (Game Night), Wetrek (Western) Best Ensemble Cast Black Panther - Everyone's invested in character while keeping the pop saga popping Gemini - Central friendship duet is convincing, with sparkling gems in subsidiary roles Isle of Dogs - At last, a starry voice cast that doesn't feel immured in separate booths Leave No Trace - Deep, delicate two-hander enriched by wider, rotating communities Western - With few trained actors, the cast evokes a split, very contemporary township Runners Up: Lean on Pete, First Reformed, Game Night, Ava Best Original Screenplay A Ciambra (Jonas Carpignano) - Expands prior film's complex world, yet stands alone Ava (Sadaf Foroughi) - Flinty character study where nothing and nobody are simple Isle of Dogs (W. Anderson, et al.) - Funny; adventurous structure; sobering undertows On Body and Soul (I. Enyedi) - Expands an eccentric encounter into evocative allegory Tully (Diablo Cody) - Smart and sensitive with every theme; keeps revealing new folds Runners Up: First Reformed (Schrader), Hereditary (Aster), Gemini (Katz), Western (Grisebach) Best Adapted Screenplay Black Panther (R. Coogler, J.R. Cole) - Nervy ideas, compressed with folkloric clarity The Death of Stalin (A. Iannucci, et al.) - Ambitious in plot, history, tragicomic tone Disobedience (S. Lelio, R. Lenkiewicz) - Intimate distillation with artful alterations Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh) - Poignantly episodic; exquisitely gauges point of view Zama (Lucrecia Martel) - Preserves the novel's secrets, layers, and affected style Runners Up: Leave No Trace (Granik, Rosellini), Double Lover (Ozon, Piazzo), You Were Never... (Ramsay), Paddington 2 (King, Farnaby) Best Cinematography Ava (Sina Kermanizadeh) - Clever, unsettling framing; dramatic play with depth of field First Reformed (Alexander Dynan) - Cold austerity, embers of warmth in boxy frame November (Mart Taniel) - Eerie, lithogaphic precision with blacks, whites, silvery grays You Were Never Really Here (Thomas Townend) - Funereal, yet varied and vivid Zama (Rui Poças) - Light feels both natural and synthetic; frames never predictable Runners Up: 12 Days (Depardon), Good Luck (Russell), Leave No Trace (McDonough), Lean on Pete (Jønck), Hereditary (Pogorzelski), Hannah (Irvin), A Ciambra (Curtin) Best Film Editing A Ciambra (Affonso Gonçalves) - Strands forcefully entwined by a modern master Ava (Kiarash Anvari) - Gambles on in medias res starts and stops; taut escalation Sweet Country (Nick Meyers) - Inventive cuts make linear story feel cyclical, eternal Western (Bettina Böhler) - Grisebach barely scripts; Böhler achieves shape, control You Were Never Really Here (Joe Bini) - Jagged, confronting; risky hints and gaps Runners Up: Zama (Harley, Schwerdfinger), Tully (Grube), Lean on Pete (Alberts), Let the Sun Shine In (Lecorne), First Reformed (Rodriguez), Isle of Dogs (Weisblum, et al.), Hereditary (Johnston, Lame), Black Panther (Berman, Shawver), Game Night (Egan, et al.), The Green Fog (Johnson, Johnson), Disobedience (Nugent) Best Sound Mixing A Ciambra (Giuseppe Tripodi, et al.) - Rich, rumbling mix feeds the overall tensions Gemini (Z. Seivers, G. Pereyra, et al.) - Bold experiments, braided to nutty music Hereditary (Lewis Goldstein, et al.) - Ambient effects even creepier than big shocks You Were Never Really Here (Paul Davies, et al.) - Florid, semi-subjective creativity Zama (Guido Berenblum, et al.) - Defamiliarizing every shot with utterly unique mix Runners Up: Ready Player One (Mate, Hymns, et al.), Black Panther (Hughes, Burtt, et al.), Isle of Dogs (Lemmer, Scarabosio, et al.) Best Production Design Annihilation (Mark Digby) - Most of the unnerving set-pieces cast an impressive spell Black Panther (Hannah Beachler) - Excels at opulent ceremony, differentiated worlds Hereditary (Grace Yun) - Builds domestic spaces that also feel like ghoulish dioramas Isle of Dogs (A. Stockhausen, P. Harrod) - Retro-futurist faux-Japanese imaginarium Paddington 2 (Gary Williamson) - Children's-book templates brought to habitable life Runners Up: Zama (Pinheiro), Tully (Masaro), A Quiet Place (Beecroft) Best Costume Design Black Panther (Ruth Carter) - Seizes a big canvas to luxuriate in colors, patterns, cuts Disobedience (Odile Dicks-Mireaux) - Knows how many layers folks hide beneath Paddington 2 (Lindy Hemming) - Jaunty, creative storybook palettes and silhouettes The Seagull (Ann Roth) - Whatever went wrong here, Ann Roth is not (ever) to blame Zama (Julio Suárez) - Spikes historical realism with perverse and dreamlike touches Runners Up: Isle of Dogs (Staal) Best Original Score Annihilation (G. Barrow, B. Salisbury) - Reliably added uncanny textures to the film Disobedience (Matthew Herbert) - Eclectic, seductive; deploys instruments smartly Gemini (Keegan DeWitt) - Score is the film's key takeaway, but also serves its story Isle of Dogs (Alexandre Desplat) - Again approaches pastiche with rich, snazzy craft Ocean's Eight (Daniel Pemberton) - If only the whole film were as winningly strange Runners Up: Leave No Trace (Hinchliffe), Hereditary (Stetson), Black Panther (Göransson) Best Documentary Feature 12 Days (Raymond Depardon) - Moving use of Depardon's nuanced, unblinking gaze Good Luck (Ben Russell) - Immersive experience in lives both different and similar Grace Jones: Bloodlight and Bami (Sophie Fiennes) - Blissfully weirder as it goes The Judge (Erika Cohn) - Imagine RBG with even higher stakes and tougher questions RBG (Julie Cohen, Betsy West) - ...though I admit the real RBG has its moments Runners Up: Won't You Be My Neighbor?, though in general I'm eager for better options Worth a Second Try Annihilation - Garland's and Portman's talents have their limits, but this has lingered The Day After - Hong's disciples have got me questioning my mystified response November - Such a weird, wild ride that I might have missed more granular details On Body and Soul - The film on this list that suffered most from my festival fatigue Ready Player One - I veered from love to boredom and sense there may be more layers Runners Up: Let the Sun Shine In, The Rider, Paddington 2