Tentative Top Tens for 2018

These lists will inevitably change by the time I release the official Bummys next September (fingers crossed!). But many of these movies and albums will remain near the tops of my lists. Here are my initial impressions of what the best movies and albums of this year were, along with a couple extras at the bottom:

Movies

1. Paddington 2: I get the sense that people scoff at my love for this movie, just because we have a dog named Paddington, but I promise you this movie transcends its children’s movie status and achieves the sort of transcendence I crave in films.
2. Annihilation: This is as good as science fiction gets, putting masterful special effects in the service of a beautiful story with rich themes, and taking a bold risk in the last few scenes that risked alienating its audiences.
3. First Reformed: This one hit me deeply, getting at the challenge of maintaining faith in your Creator while the world falls apart around you.
4. Black Panther: This is the one action movie of the year that got to a higher level of significance while still putting on a cracking good show.
5. Mission: Impossible – Fallout: I thought this would be higher, because it truly is a masterpiece of an action movie, but it turns out to have just missed a certain bar for me that the four above it cleared.
6. Sorry to Bother You: Unlike any movie I’ve ever seen. Seriously, I’m not sure I can say much more if I don’t want to ruin it for you.
7. Hereditary: This is a horror movie, but it also turns all of your expectations of what a horror movie should be on their heads.
8. BlacKkKlansman: As visionary as Spike Lee movies come, in the guise of a comedy.
9. Avengers: Infinity War: This could be higher on level of difficulty alone, but the kind of movie it is eschews depth of any kind- which is fine! Just means there’s a cap on how high it can get on a list like this.
10. A Star Is Born: What an achievement, instead of what could have been just a melodrama, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga deliver a great melodrama.

Albums

1. Brandi Carlile, By the Way, I Forgive You: I’d be worried about Carlile’s recent Album of the Year nomination making this album uncool, but it was already about as uncool as you get. Earnest, simple, melodramatic folk music abounds on this album, and it’s everything I could want.
2. The Carters, EVERYTHING IS LOVE: It’s just effortless for Beyoncé and JAY-Z now. Everything they touch turns to gold.
3. Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer: No album gave me more fun than this one from Monáe, who has found her sweet spot of Prince-style eccentricity and funk.
4. Robyn, Honey: The Swedish songstress had leaned darker as her career progressed, but she’s perfected melancholy pop you can dance to on her comeback album.
5. Sandra McCracken, Songs from the Valley: She’s long been one of my favorite singer-songwriters, but Songs from the Valley was McCracken dealing with the grief and suffering following her divorce, and it’s cathartic.
6. Courtney Marie Andrews, May Your Kindness Remain: I can’t get enough of the alt-country ballads from this former Jimmy Eat World stalwart. Her voice is unparalleled in Americana.
7. Ariana Grande, Sweetener: Far be it from me to expect the Grammys to get anything right, but it is outrageous that Ariana Grande’s best album yet, which really is a perfect pop album, didn’t get nominated for Album of the Year, considering its quality and the fact that it’s one of the biggest hits of the year.
8. Cardi B, Invasion of Privacy: I didn’t think I’d like Cardi’s album, chalking “Bodak Yellow” up to catching lightning in a bottle, but she proves to be a singular talent on every song. No one-hit wonder here.
9. The Gray Havens, She Waits: I liked the Gray Havens, a husband-and-wife folk duo from Illinois, after their first two albums, but they’ve reached a new level on their most recent album, pushing them into the upper echelon of Christian artists working today.
10. Various Artists, Black Panther: The Album: I’m glad no one told Kendrick Lamar that these sorts of movie marketing gimmick albums are supposed to be terrible, because he curated a real winner from front to back.

Best Book I Read

The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz: The modern American church culture emphasizes non-fiction more than fiction, which needs remedying. A good place to start: this novel following three pastors in three different time periods in the same little Swedish parish. The nature of showing the same parish spanning different periods of time means the book has a lot to say about faith and congregations sustaining through tragedy and the grinding away of time.

Best Comic I Read

Silver Surfer by Dan Slott: The Silver Surfer is a hard character to take seriously, and not just because he rides a surfboard through space (the ’60s were crazy, y’all). But somehow Slott (who also wrote the Spider-Verse storyline that’s been adapted into the new Spider-Man animated movie that is apparently a big hit) makes it work. He gives the Surfer a human love interest to travel through space with and takes full advantage of serial comics’ episodic nature by telling literally any story he wants about the different planets they visit. The diversity of aliens and civilizations they encounter and the free reign Marvel gave Slott to do whatever the hell he wanted result in one of the most poignant comic books I’ve read so far.