Left to my own devices

The Oscars are this Sunday, so of course it's time for the 22nd Annual Matt Awards! I love going to the movies. It still holds the same excitement as when I was a kid. Of course, I have opinions about the films I see (check out the podcast here ), and so, in the late 1990s, I began my own little exercise to satiate my ego by having my own awards, wherein I selected the best in film, as a sort of counter to disappointment with the Academy Awards. All told, I saw 80-plus 2018 movies, and so many of them were above average. It is therefore difficult to winnow them down to just one winner in each category, but I have done so. Here, then, are the 2019 Matt Awards , honoring what yours truly believes to be the best in film from 2018.... Best Horror Film:  Hereditary The horror genre was strong in 2018. And, in my opinion, its definition expanded a bit last year (in a good way), Films like our winner, and A Quiet Place, Bird Box, Unsane , the Suspiria remake, and even Ann...

We're halfway through 2018, and I wanted to compile a list of my Top 20 favorite movies of the year (so far). I've seen about 40 2018 films, so this is roughly half of them, ranked. I've enjoyed all of them, for varying reasons. Right, here we go... 1. Lean on Pete 2. Won't You Be My Neighbor? 3. Ready Player One 4. Black Panther 5. Annihilation 6. First Reformed 7. Book Club 8. Love, Simon 9. Paddington 2 10. Oh Lucy! 11. Game Night 12. Beast 13. The Party 14. Hereditary 15. Unsane 16. Hotel Artemis 17. Tully 18. Avengers: Infinity War 19. Ocean's 8 20. Deadpool 2 It should be interesting to see what the rest of 2018 has in store at the box office.