In an era defined by rich bastards and the rich bastards who enable them, there were a surprising number of sympathetic elites on display in the best pop culture creations of 2018. From the billionaire investor chuckling his way through the great art documentary, to the trust-fund kids of the year's three best TV series, it was hard not to like these occasionally fictional, occasionally fictionalized, depictions of the quote-unquote "elect". Elsewhere, proper escapism was in order, with audiences treated to flights of fancy - some beautiful (the world's greatest video game), some joyous (thank you Stan Lee), some thrilling (this year's best film) - that provided momentary respite from this darkest of timelines. And then, after all that excess and escapism, there was also the year's best, and most incisive, depiction of "America", through that most honourable medium of the protest song. Though you'd be hard-pressed to find one unifying theme across this year's great art, I can offer this: even as things fall apart, our artists will never fail us.
FILM
I wasn't the biggest fan of Alex Garland's previous film, Ex Machina, which I thought embraced a lot of the misogyny and male-gaze it was ostensibly meant to criticize. I wasn't alone in this sentiment, and whether by happy accident or by design, Garland's masterful follow-up, ANNIHILATION, is just about the polar opposite: a film about five brilliant and strong women - all soldiers and scientists - sent to investigate a mysterious energy bubble enveloping an unidentified and thickly forested area of the United States. Within, our heroes - Jennifer Jason Leigh, Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson lead a stellar cast - find an eerie, alien landscape where flora and fauna have mutated into strange hybrids (and where to say more would constitute spoilers). Intelligent and unusual, Annihilation is a lucid, feverish, dream - often beautiful, mostly terrifying - that proves just as unsettling for audiences as it does for the characters on screen.
SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE takes a gloriously absurd idea - what if there were an infinite number of Spider-Mans (Spider-Men?), and at least one of them sounded like Nicolas Cage? - and turns it into a thrilling, hilarious, and surprisingly affecting animated film. In fact, this cartoon(!) may well be the greatest Spider-film to date, a worthy tribute to its two creators - Stan Lee and Steve Ditko - who both passed away this year. On the one hand, its many variants on the Spider-theme only serve to remind us what made their creation so brilliant in the first place. On the other hand, the film's greatest feat is that, among all the wacky Spider-alternates (the standout of which is Peter Porker, Spider-Ham), its best character is the one least connected to the "classic" Spider-mythos. I'm referring to the film's true star, Afro-Latino teenager Miles Morales, who manages to find time, amongst all the psychedelic and fourth-wall-breaking mayhem, for his own, very touching, origin story as the Ultimate Spider-Man. More so than any Spider to date, by the time Morales finally dons his own version of the costume, and goes for that exhilarating first swing across the New York City skyline, you get the feeling that he's damn well earned it.
The great documentaries are those that tell a very specific story - say, about bible salesmen, or aspiring basketball players - that also illustrates something broader about the world in which we live. The wonderfully titled THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING is just that: a "niche" film about the hyper-inflated contemporary art market that also features enough fascinating shades of humanity to be of interest to any, general, audience. What's particularly impressive is this film's refusal to dwell on the obvious - that wealthy investors are dangerously distorting the market - instead offering up a host of complex perspectives (and personalities) that challenge viewers' expectations and prejudices. These include: the (unavoidably likeable) collector with deep pockets, tacky taste, and an earnest love of art; the semi-forgotten Warhol contemporary, Larry Poons, whose decades-long refusal to commercialize makes for an uneasy relationship with a white-hot market that has suddenly "rediscovered" him; and the brash, opinionated Sotheby's auctioneer who speaks dismissively of museums, yet also gets genuinely choked up while reflecting on her first love: a painting at her local public gallery.
TELEVISION
You've never heard of him, but Jesse Armstrong was an integral part of the team that turned the TV series "The Thick of It", and its film spinoff In the Loop, into two of the funniest British comedies of all time. SUCCESSION, Armstrong's New York-set HBO series following the trials and tribulations of a Rupert Murdoch-like family of one-percenters, is hilarious, offensive, gratuitous, and - ever-so-rarely - actually kind of charming. Mostly, though, it's an opportunity for a fantastic cast - Kieran Culkin and Matthew Macfadyen are standouts - to unleash the kind of profanity-laden tirades that would make Malcolm Tucker proud. That said, the ending is pretty dumb, setting up a rather silly plotline for Season 2.
Speaking of selfish, insensitive, billionaires: the infamous John Paul Getty III kidnapping - the one that inspired that part of The Big Lebowski - gets a non-exploitative and exceedingly well-crafted miniseries adaptation in TRUST. Donald Sutherland stars as the elder Getty, a right-bastard of an oilman who refuses to pay ransom on his own kidnapped grandson (that would be Getty III), a ne'er-do-well who's gotten mixed up with sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, and some brutal Italian gangsters. Harris Dickinson is very good as the angel-like Getty III, and he's joined by acting stalwarts including Hilary Swank, the always-terrific Anna Chancellor, and - in the role of a lifetime - Canada's own Brendan Fraser.
This year's other trust-fund fuck-up was probably the most likeable: PATRICK MELROSE, as portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch, in one of the best short-form miniseries in ages. A series that, sadly, not many people watched, though given the subject matter - a survivor of child sexual abuse spirals downwards into drug and alcohol addiction, only to slowly crawl his way back out - it's perhaps not that surprising. Content warning aside, it's an insightful and truthful account of a man's despair, and also his remarkable ability to, if not overcome it, at least learn to live with it. Deeply affecting, and of course brilliantly acted, it's also at times quite funny, with intelligent writing (it's adapted from a series of novels by Edward St. Aubyn) that's acerbic in the best possible way. This is the kind of series where, even while Cumberbatch is stumbling around a grime-laden bathroom with a rusty and comically oversized syringe bleeding out of his arm, he's still got a quip or two for the occasion.
GAMING
This is an easier category, insomuch as the best game of the year also happens to be the best game of all time. A reissue of it, anyway. As I wrote in my review of SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS, the PS4 remake of this wanderer-vs.-giants tale is the definitive version of a game of astonishing scope, sophisticated narrative, and utter beauty. It is the answer to the (annoying) question “are video games art?” and it is absolutely essential. It is the reason to own a PS4, or if you can't afford it, a PS3, which is home to an equally beautiful HD remaster.
Remakes aside, this year's best game is RETURN OF THE OBRA DINN, Lucas Pope’s hotly anticipated, and yet totally surprising, follow-up to Papers, Please. I wrote about Papers, Please in this blog before, where I called it a "subtle but highly sophisticated rumination on dehumanisation." Obra Dinn is not those things, but rather a murder mystery game with shades of sci-fi/fantasy and an incredible retro art style. Per my review, the fact that Obra Dinn is so different from its predecessor is both a letdown and also its best feature. Violent, mysterious, and compelling, it is quite unlike, and therefore about 99 times better than, any other game in this (very bloated) market.
MUSIC
Blogspot inexplicably prevents me from embedding it here, so just go watch THIS IS AMERICA, again, as a reminder of why Childish Gambino's era-defining music video is easily one of the great artistic achievements of 2018. It's also one of the great protest songs of all time, managing to be both painfully explicit in its condemnation of anti-Black violence and racism, and also tantalizingly enigmatic in just about every other way. A year after Bob Dylan won a Nobel Prize, and in the same year that Kendrick Lamar won a Pulitzer, it was Gambino, aka Donald Glover, who provided the best argument for the vital role of music during these (and any other) turbulent times.
