10. “Ant-Man and the Wasp” – The San Francisco Chase Scene
The shrinking and growing size-fu of Peyton Reed’s “Ant-Man” is entertaining, but for the sequel “Ant-Man & The Wasp,” most of the size changes are cleverly leveraged for great thrills and laughs. There’s no better example than the movie’s side-splittingly funny, rollicking chase sequence through the streets of San Francisco, the film’s action centerpiece (the film’s nods to Steve McQueen’s iconic“Bullitt” are witty). In it, Ant-Man, the Wasp, and Luis (Michael Pena) are trying to escape with “the lab,” a shrunken down building that contains all the technology needed to save a critical missing character, but two sets of baddies have other plans; Walton Goggins’ slick, genteel gangster and his thugs and the phase-shifting Ghost. It’s essentially a three-pronged chase that splits in two when the good guys lose their prize and have to split-up to retrieve it. And its wryly inventive and hilariously creative driven seemingly by its sense of humor—Luis shrinking in his hot wheels car and freaking out, Ant-Man growing giant and using a skid truck as a skate apparatus and Wasp using harmless, cute Hello Kitty Pez dispensers as deadly weapons. Oh, and the undercarriage is indeed filthy. – RP
9. “Deadpool 2” – X-Force Eats It
Audiences are deeply savvy these days, so surprises and subversions that not only catch viewers off guard, but leave them in stitches laughing, it’s all the more rewarding. This is the genius of “Deadpool 2” and its seemingly heroic X-Force introduction. Invoking the idea of pre-game hoorah and confidence, “Deadpool 2” misdirects, compelling the audience to believe they’re about to witness the classic, “here comes the heroes!” scene. Instead, moments after the obligatory hero pose before skydiving, everything goes, horribly, hilariously wrong. Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds) helplessly watching the experience turn sour and ghastly while commenting on it in expletive disbelief is also a riotously funny touch. The swift, merciless brutality of it all is relentlessly comical. Bedlam slams into a bus and dies, the obnoxious and arrogant Shatterstar is shredded by helicopter propellers, the Vanisher reveal is brilliant and the rest of the team all die grisly deaths—Zeitgeist spewing acid on Peter after he actually survived the jump without injury is also a gut-busting twist. X-Force is a big X-Fail, and the audience, expecting a movie that sets up a new superhero team is left in stitches and in for a loop. The writers of “Deadpool” have always been clever, but this upending twist was a perversely brilliant take on superhero tropes. – JI
8. “Hold The Dark” – The Shootout
Jeremy Saulnier’s “Hold The Dark” was one of the more divisive films of this year — to some, a pretentious, portentous mess, to others a uniquely alienating experience that spoke to the utter bafflement that most of us find at the world we’re in today and the evil that takes place in it. Even those that hate it, and especially those who love it, can appreciate the film’s centerpiece action sequence, a harrowing shoot-out sequence as James Badge Dale’s police chief and his men attempt to arrest Cheeon (Julian Black Antelope), a suspect in the murder of police officers. But Cheeon is not coming quietly — he has an M60 machine gun, and a nerve-wracking scene follows that deliberately evokes the chaos of warfare (and perhaps real-life mass shootings) more than it does a Western, with Jeffrey Wright’s hero left cowering under a car. While Saulnier normally draws comparisons to John Carpenter, this feels closer to Michael Mann — the immaculate sense of geography, the Metallica-loud sound mix, the real sense of what happens what a bullet enters a body. It’s a queasy, uncomfortable sequence for sure, but one that fits perfectly into Saulnier’s icy vision. – Oliver Lyttelton
7. “Overlord” – Opening Airplane Scene
We all remember “Saving Private Ryan,” and its iconic beaches of Normandy scene. That scene is famous for putting audiences right in the middle of the chaos that is World War II. And while Julius Avery’s “Overlord” might not possess the proficiency of Steven Spielberg or the acting chops of Tom Hanks, the sci-fi/horror/war film does invoke ‘Private Ryan’ and attempt the same things that made that film such a classic. “Overlord” begins with a group of unknown soldiers on a plane flying over hostile territory. Through the clever (if not a tad obvious) dialogue, characters are given personalities, rivalries are set, and the audience immediately cares for this group of soldiers. Then the hellstorm begins as bombs explode outside of the plane, bullets tear apart the metal cylinder in the sky, and the soldiers have to press on and skydive into enemy territory. Tense, brutal, and emotional, this scene immediately points to the wild ride to come. Give special commendation to the sound design for the scene, adding to the chaos, and placing the audience in the shoes of the terrified young men living in that hell. “Overlord” is no Spielberg war movie, but it’s an action-packed, gonzo film that hits the ground running at full speed thanks to this pivotal scene. – CB
6. “Game Night” – The Fabergé Egg Chase
2018’s most pleasant surprise was arguably “Game Night.” From a distance, the comedy looked like a sub-par “Hangover” knock-off that followed in its wake. But in practice, it was one of the best studio comedies in eons, and certainly the first in a long time to take that tricky comedy/action/thriller crossover and make it really work. It didn’t hurt that directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein gave it a visual flair that’s rare to find in comedies not directed by people with surnames ‘Wright,’ ‘Lord’ or ‘Miller,’ cleverly riffing on David Fincher without throwing off the gags. One of the film’s highlights comes late, as Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams and their gang of pals (Billy Magnussen, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury and Sharon Horgan) break into a mansion to steal a priceless Fabergé egg (for reasons we won’t spoil here). There then follows a terrifically executed sequence with the impression of being shot in one-take (it wasn’t, but it’s well hidden), thrillingly choreographed and scored by Cliff Martinez’s Atticus-and-Ross-riffing soundtrack, as the gang flee security and throw the egg between themselves like a football. It’s like if “Panic Room” had gags in it, and you suspect that Fincher himself would be impressed. – OL