Underappreciated Movies You Missed In 2018

Adapted from writer Joe Kelly and artist J. M. Ken Niimura's graphic novel I Kill Giants, Danish director Anders Walter's adaptation stars The Conjuring 2 actress Madison Wolfe as the pint-sized but plucky Barbara Thorson, an oddball outsider who constantly has her head in the clouds, a pair of bunny ears on top of her blonde mop, and a Norse war hammer in her bag. You see, Barbara fancies herself a killer of giants, and is convinced that a horde of them — along with a flurry of other fantasy creatures — are coming to Earth and that she's the only one who can vanquish them when they arrive. But Barbara's introversion, middle school ostracism, and obsession with Dungeons & Dragons aren't the only things that foster her overactive imagination. The young dreamer uses her world of fantasy as a means of escaping the difficulties she faces at home. 

Blending together an impactful coming-of-age tale, themes of grief and denial, gorgeous magical realism, solid CGI, and captivating performances from Wolfe and supporting actors Imogen Poots, Zoe Saldana, and Sydney Wade, I Kill Giants is a magnificent monster movie that's monstrously moving. Critics have applauded it as "never less than engrossing," and you'll agree.

If a "Certified Fresh" label on Rotten Tomatoes is hard to come by, a 100-percent approval rating is a near impossibility. The Endless snagged that coveted score after it opened in a limited run on April 6, but was buried by its box office competition, John Krasinski's A Quiet Place, which debuted to $50 million that same weekend.

The fourth collaboration between filmmakers Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who follow up their Lovecraftian cult classic Spring, The Endless is a perception-twisting thriller that takes one terrifying moment — brothers Justin (Benson) and Aaron (Moorhead) receiving a cryptic video from members of a UFO death cult they were once a part of — and springboards into the insane. 

Rather than burning the tape (a decision the dim-witted characters of The Ring would have benefitted from) and getting on with their lives, Justin and Aaron decide to head back to the exact place they narrowly escaped a decade earlier in hopes of finally getting the closure they couldn't in their youth. Upon arrival, the siblings are affronted with more than just the reminder of their past; as incomprehensible horrors start surrounding the camp, Justin and Aaron are forced to reconsider if the cult was actually preaching truth.

A slow-burning horror that shocks in its second half but frightens the whole way through, The Endless is Edge of Tomorrow meets Annihilation meets 10 Cloverfield Lane, and is an underappreciated movie you'll wish you had paid more attention to before learning about it here.

Take everything you've learned about Australia from Crocodile Dundee, internet jokes about riding (surprisingly hostile) kangaroos to school, and the throw-a-shrimp-on-the-barbie restaurant chain Outback Steakhouse and toss it in the bin. Goldstone, from multi-talented writer-director-composer-cinematographer Ivan Sen, presents the Australian Outback in an intimate, thrilling new manner.

Set in the titular town of Goldstone, the movie follows Indigenous Detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pederson) as he rocks up to the tiny mining outpost (all that seems to be there is a diner, a jail, and a brothel) to aid young policeman Josh (Alex Russell) and Goldstone's mayor (Jacki Weaver) in investigating the disappearance of a Chinese tourist who vanished from the bordello many believe she was being held at against her will. An already complex case turns tense when Jay's identities as an Aboriginal and as a law enforcement officer ruffle the feathers of both the racists of Goldstone and the town's Aboriginal residents, who resist officials of color. And when Jay discovers that Josh and the Mayor may not be as innocent as they'd like others to believe, the gripping noir narrative takes yet another unexpected turn.

Released to high praise but underwhelming box office Down Under in 2016, Goldstone made its theatrical debut in the United States in March of 2018, where it performed much the same: while critics adored it, the raw, sun-blasted pic didn't get as much attention as it deserved.

One part pulpy crime story, one part heart-grabbing drama, Bomb City is a brilliant little film that made a bang without the general public even noticing. The Jameson Brooks-directed film follows Brian (Dave Davis), a punk music-obsessed teen from Amarillo, Texas who sticks out like a mohawk-adorned thumb in his conservative town. Thankfully, there are a number of other punks out there, who view Brian as a sort of mouthpiece for the movement. Sadly, there are an equal number of jocks — preppy football players that basically moonlight as bullies — who regularly clash with the punks. Tensions bubble below the surface, then explode in a violent altercation that comes with a fatal consequence. 

A native of Amarillo, nicknamed "Bomb City" for having one of the United States' only weapons assembly and disassembly plants, director Brooks based Bomb City on the real-life story of 19-year-old Brian Deneke, a punk who was killed in a furious fracas with the Texas town's seemingly clean-cut jocks. Not only does the film present the tragedy of Brian's death in a truthful and harrowing light, it also serves as a reminder that the American justice system isn't always moral and that not everyone is as unassuming or as aggressive as their outward appearance may suggest. As Danielle White of The Austin Chronicle aptly puts it, "The film's message, which it wields like a war chain, is a timeless one: Don't be such a d*** to people because they look different from you."

Joaquin Phoenix is in top form in You Were Never Really Here, writer-director Lynne Ramsay's film adaptation of Jonathan Ames' novel of the same name. Phoenix gives a darkly fervid performance as Joe, a former law enforcement agent and combat veteran struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder but never shying away from violence. Joe lives out his post-FBI days as a hired gun, earning cash to support himself and his ailing mother (Judith Roberts) by locating missing and trafficked young girls. But he also experiences intense suicidal fantasies, one of which almost becomes reality before his boss (John Doman) snaps him back to the surface world and tasks him with finding 13-year-old Nina (Ekaterina Samsonov), the daughter of New York State Senator Albert Votto (Alex Manette), who offers Joe a sizable sum of cash to discreetly bring Nina home. 

Though Joe is properly equipped for the job — he's got a ball peen hammer in tow to help bust Nina out of the Manhattan brownstone she's held captive in and perhaps break the knees of the men holding her there — what he isn't prepared for is the triple-layer twist and searing horrors that await him. 

Touted as "stark, sinewy, [and] slashed-to-the-bone," You Were Never Really Here is a "masterclass in filmmaking" more than worthy of the type of global adulation its heavily-promoted cinematic counterparts have received this year.

Writer-director Chloé Zhao's The Rider is breaks the barriers of true-story tale boilerplate. It's an equal parts plaintive and profound docu-drama that centers on a rising rodeo star who suffers a tragic accident — and stars the man who lived through the trauma. Real-life South Dakota rodeo rider Brady Jandreau leads as Brady Blackburn of the Sioux Lakota Indian tribe, a faintly fictionalized version of himself, and recounts the horror of the moment a horse trampled him and the hardships he faces in the incident's aftermath. Though shaken and stripped of the very thing that gave him purpose, Brady refuses to succumb to sorrow and journeys across the badlands to find a new identity and to restructure both his notions of the outside world and the person inside himself.

Jandreau's performance comes across nuanced and naturalistic, gorgeously complemented by cinematographer Joshua James Richards' shots of the South Dakota sky, and transforms this softly stunning indie pic into something bolder than its limited theatrical release would suggest.

Hailed as "subtle, elemental, and powerfully beautiful," a "luminous film, and one of the year's best," The Rider is as much about the broken cowboy at the center of its story as it is the fractured parts of the States and the American myth most may not know of. On the whole, the film's ability to deliver its dizzying narrative in a sweeping, swelling package and its slip-under-the-radar move at the box office makes it critically acclaimed but unfortunately underseen. 

We all remember the "joys" of junior high: the terrible skin, the braces, the awkward romances that aren't really romances because, well, you're 14 and constantly sweaty. Working through the weirdness of adolescence is never easy, but for middle school student Edwin (Arman Darbo) in Vincent Grashaw's And Then I Go, it's a new brand of difficult, as he all but capsizes his proverbial boat when attempting to navigate the rocky waters of the world's social hierarchy.

Adapted from Jim Shepard's psychological fiction novel Project X, And Then I Go chronicles Edwin's mounting stress — at school and at home, with peacemaker mom Janice (Melanie Lynskey) and hard-headed dad Tim (Justin Long) — that snowballs into insomnia and anxiety, consequences he doesn't speak a word of to anyone, not even his best friend Flake (Sawyer Barth). Edwin's world changes after Flake suffers a particularly humiliating encounter with a bully and suggests that he and Edwin silence their tormenters. What unravels after Flake's flashbulb idea is an intimate look into the troughs of pain and peaks of violence Edwin rides through, and how the two boys' suppressed fury fuels their terrifying, life-or-death plan to finally be accepted.

And Then I Go came and went without making much of a commercial impact, but its haunting subject matter and twisty ending have critics on their feet. Applauded for its "essential and insightful perspective," the film is harrowing and humanizing, "a vital work of art, and a must-see movie for our time."

This isn't your mama's movie about parenthood. From director Jason Reitman (Thank You for Smoking, Up in the Air) and writer Diablo Cody (Juno, Jennifer's Body), Tully stars Charlize Theron as Marlo, a struggling mother of two who is pregnant with her third (unplanned) child. At Marlo's baby shower for the daughter she later names Mia, her wealthy brother Craig (Mark Duplass) offers to gift her a night nanny, a young woman named Tully (Mackenzie Davis) who can help remedy Marlo's exhaustion. Though reluctant at first, Marlo later agrees to Craig's proposition, and she, her husband Drew (Ron Livingston), and Tully embark on a meaningful, mind-bending journey that marries humor with surprising sincerity.

What Tully didn't stir up at the box office and with everyday moviegoers when it debuted on May 4 in the midst of Avengers: Infinity War madness, it more than made up for with critics who fell in love with it, harboring particular fondness for Theron's "masterful" performance, Reitman and Cody's groundbreaking portrayal of motherhood (and everything mothers wish they would have known about having children ahead of time), and the film's complex, "somewhat shocking" ending. 

Films that score a 100 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes don't always age well — let's not even talk about the problematic Normal or the eyebrow-raising Love and Death — but the universally loved drama Leave No Trace looks to avoid such an unfortunate fate. 

From Academy Award-nominated director and co-writer Debra Granik, Leave No Trace begins just before the boiling point: war veteran Will (Ben Foster) and his 13-year-old daughter Tom (Thomasin Harcourt McKenzie) have been living in an isolated section of a public park, but when the survivalist duo make one small misstep, social services come calling, taking them in for extensive evaluations and setting them up with everything they need to live a "normal" life: hot meals, clean clothes, stable shelter in the suburbs, school for Tom, a job for Will. Though confused as to why anyone would have previously considered her and her father homeless, Tom tries her hardest to adapt to her new environment and embrace her surroundings; her father, however, grows increasingly rigid until he decides to take Tom back into the wilderness — a move motivated by his post-traumatic stress disorder. 

Leave No Trace definitely made its mark on audiences who saw it during its limited release run, which began June 29. Of the more than 100 registered critics who spilled their feelings about the underappreciated film, San Diego Reader's Scott Marks had the most incisive point: "Oscar will remember this movie."

For anyone who doubted Nick Offerman's ability to play characters other than the mustachioed Ron Swanson on Parks and Recreation: checkmate. Offerman shines as Brooklyn-based widower and musician Frank Fisher in Hearts Beat Loud, the Brett Haley-directed drama that brings together the magic of music and the intricacies of a father-daughter relationship in the aftermath of semi-fame. 

When Frank and his daughter-slash-"jam sesh" partner Sam (Kiersey Clemons), who is about to attend college in California, find success after Frank uploads one of their songs — the titular "Hearts Beat Loud" — to Spotify, their lives shift in a new direction. Rather than explore what happens to a parent and a child who hit the road like real rock-and-rollers, Hearts Beat Loud pulls the story inward, documenting Frank's fears of his daughter leaving New York, Sam's blossoming sexual feelings for her girlfriend Rose (Sasha Lane), and the pair's dual acceptance that life may be scary, but that's what makes it beautiful. 

"So, if Hearts Beat Loud is this great, why didn't I hear about it?" one would rightfully ask. Well, it was released only in select theaters, and at the ones where it did screen, it was overshadowed by bigger films like the groundbreaking horror hit Hereditary and the record-setting Ocean's 8. The very essence of underappreciated movies is that they can't be over-loved — so add Hearts Beat Loud, a "compulsively (and increasingly) watchable piece of work," to your watch list and thank us later.

Taking a fantastic novel and translating it into a film that's just as good isn't an easy task. Need we remind you of what 20th Century Fox and Jack Black did to Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels in 2010, or the slipshod flop that was director Luc Besson's Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, his poorly written, underperforming take on Pierre Christin's beloved sci-fi comic Valérian and Laureline?

Recalling great books that were turned into awful movies is important when discussing the Desiree Akhavan-written and directed film The Miseducation of Cameron Post — this coming-of-age drama is a shining example of what happens when a silver screen adaptation actually does right by its source material.

Based on Emily M. Danforth's 2012 novel of the same name, Miseducation centers on Chloë Grace Moretz's Cameron Post, who is outed as a lesbian when she's caught in the back seat of a car with Coley Taylor (Quinn Shephard). Soon after, Cameron's conservative aunt (Kerry Butler) orders her to undergo conversion therapy at a center called God's Promise. There, Cameron forms friendships with a handful of other teens who, like her, put up a fight against being "re-educated."

A limited release that didn't register on most people's radar, The Miseducation of Cameron Post has been praised as "a love letter to the kids who needed it the most," "a powerful rejoinder to anyone who'd shame people into denying their authentic selves," and "one of the year's bravest films."

Writer-director Crystal Moselle (The Wolfpack) takes viewers to the concrete jungle, to the inner workings of a young woman's mind, and to the half-pipes, tramps, vert ramps, and grinding rails of New York's many skateparks in the down-to-earth drama Skate Kitchen. The film, an R-rated exercise in just how good movies can be when they're simplistic and realistic, follows introverted teenager Camille (Rachelle Vinberg), who joins the all-girl skateboarding group Skate Kitchen. (They're a real crew, and the members actually star in the film as well.) Camille's world cracks open wide thereafter: she leaves home, begins falling for her new roommate's Janay (Dede Lovelace) ex-boyfriend Devon (Jaden Smith), fosters confidence, fights misogyny, and learns how great life can be with a pack of like-minded ladies at your side.

Skate Kitchen, described by Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang as "a touching ode to the rewards and challenges of female friendship," skated into cinemas without making much fuss, opening in a limited release in mid-August. Since then, those with their fingers on the pulse of all things film-related have fallen in love with it — but most in the mainstream have yet to appreciate Skate Kitchen for all it has to offer: gorgeous visuals, stunning scenes of skateboards swerving along sun-sprayed pavement, and a coming-of-age tale that resonates in a really special way.

You've watched them as a mustachioed man in love with an artificial intelligence unit and a boisterous man-child with an affinity for rubbing certain body parts on certain musical instruments, but you've never seen Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly quite like this before.

The pair star as sibling gunslingers Charlie and Eli Sisters in director Jacques Audiard's witty and emotionally weighty Western The Sisters Brothers. Adapted from Patrick deWitt's novel of the same name, the 1851-set film follows the rebellious, liquor-loving Charlie (Phoenix) and the contemplative, normalcy-craving Eli (Reilly) as they travel through the northwest United States on the hunt for chemist Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed), who has created a formula for prospecting gold — and who is a target for the Sisters' boss Commodore (Rutger Hauer) and detective John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal). 

The further along the path they travel, however, the more Charlie and Eli begin to contemplate their place in the world, ponder their reputations as notorious assassins, question one another's beliefs and desires, and wonder what it truly means to be human and to be a Sisters brother.

Unpredictable and atmosphere, with a story made all the more enjoyable by Phoenix and Reilly's (and Ahmed's and Gyllenhaal's) brilliant performances, The Sisters Brothers effortlessly captured the hearts of film critics, who have called it "a throwback to the American revisionist Westerns of the 1970s" and a subversion that comes "by way of a dreamlike quietude." See this underappreciated pic ASAP.

No, it's not the opening track to Bruce Springsteen's classic album Born to Run — it's the critically adored but unfortunately underseen comedy-drama from writer-director-actor Jim Cummings. Adapted into a feature-length film from his short of the same name, which did actually take its title from the Springsteen tune, Thunder Road centers around Cummings' Jim Arnaud, a Texas cop with more worries in his mind than he has bullets in his government-issued gun. Jim's life comes to a screeching halt — and a mid-funeral nervous breakdown — when his mother passes away. Her death only compounds the nastiness of Jim's divorce from his wife Rosalind (Jocelyn DeBoer) and the complexities of his battle for custody of his beloved daughter, Crystal (Kendal Farr). The pain that paints each piece of Jim's reality forces him to confront a hard truth: things might not change unless he does. But can he?

Moving and memorable, raw and shockingly relatable, Thunder Road has all the makings of a movie you would never want to miss. Sadly, due to the film's limited release and the fact that it went up against the long-awaited Halloween sequel, most didn't see Thunder Road in theaters. Those who did absolutely adored it — particularly for all that Cummings did with the script, direction, and his "transfixingly vulnerable," tragicomic performance. Rolling Stone's David Fear said it best and most boldly when reviewing Thunder Road: "I have seen humanistic American filmmaking's future, and its name is Jim Cummings."

Not every cinema has room to show foreign-language films in multiple screenings, and the ones that do often don't market the movies to the masses well enough to give them the attention they deserve. The Swedish-language fantasy Border went underappreciated this year due to those very circumstances — a disappointment considering how fresh and fantastic the feature truly is.

Directed by Ali Abbasi and based on Let The Right One In creator John Ajvide Lindqvist's short story Gräns (which means "limit" in Swedish), Border follows ill-proportioned, odd-looking customs officer Tina (Eva Melander) as she meets a man who shares her unique facial features and superhuman sense of smell. His name is Vore (Eero Milonoff), and Tina can't quite understand what he's hiding or why she's so attracted to him — but he is keeping something a secret, and she just can't seem to stay away. When Vore reveals his true identity, her outlook on life and her sense of self is flipped inside out. 

Border blurs genres as it spirals out from Tina's stunning revelation, made even darker and sadder by the sex-crime case she tries to solve, the commentary on systems of abuse, and grimness of Nordic noir.

Unsurprisingly, people have been totally taken with Border, Sweden's Best Foreign Language Film entrant for the 2019 Academy Awards that is "not just unlikely to resemble any of its subtitled competition but also anything else you'll see this year."

The latest drama from writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda, Shoplifters substantiates the claim that the simplest films are the ones that can move us the most. The film stars Lily Franky and Sakura Ando as Osamu and Nobuyo Shibata, a couple living in poverty in Tokyo. Though they've managed to get by on Osamu's sporadic income, the little money Nobuyo brings in, and the pension Grandma Hatsue (the late Kirin Kiki) receives, the family regularly shoplifts to keep themselves afloat. After one grab-and-run session, Osamu and his son, Shota (Kairi Jō), discover 5-year-old Yuri (Miyu Sasaki) in the cold, locked outside her home. Osamu is in no financial position to take in young Yuri, whose scarred arms signal that she's been abused, but he's also not without a heart. And so Yuri becomes a member of the family, getting the new name Rin and earning her place as a key figure in their shoplifting escapades. But when a shocking incident takes the happy out of their happy-but-messy lives, the makeshift family begins to buckle as the bonds that hold them together rip apart.

That Shoplifters is a foreign-language film and one released in a limited engagement meant that most didn't see it while it was in theaters — and may not have even heard of it. If you're one of those people, see Shoplifters — a film critics have called "a soft-spoken, cinematic treasure" that will have you sobbing by the end — as quickly as you can.

A tender, wrenchingly beautiful drama, Roma is filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón at his rawest and most intimate. The Academy Award-winning director gave movie fans a coming-of-age story with Y Tu Mama Tambien, a dystopian tale with Children of Men, and sci-fi thrills with Gravity — but with Roma, he offers his heart. 

Shot completely in black and white, the Spanish-language film is loosely based on Cuarón's upbringing in Roma, a neighborhood of Mexico City, and acts a love letter dedicated to Cuarón's childhood nanny. At the center of Roma's story are two very different women living together in the same house: there's Sofia (Marina de Tavira), a mother with a doctor husband (Fernando Grediaga) and a taste for the finer things in life, and Cleo (preschool teacher Yalitza Aparicio in her first-ever role), the young woman who works thanklessly as the family's domestic servant.

Simple as Roma may be, the film — which has been tapped as the Mexican entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2019 Oscars — captured critics when it premiered in a limited run in November, and will move stay-at-home movie lovers just the same when it hits Netflix in December. Just hear what the critics have to say: "Netflix has a chance at making history with Roma." "Roma ... is [Cuarón's] masterwork, a heartfelt evocation of a time and place that celebrates the unsung and the unheard." "Roma will be tough to beat as the best film of 2018."

In 1992, Sandi Tan joined forced with her pals Jasmine Ng and Sophie Siddique and film teacher Georges Cardona to create Shirkers, the indie gem from Singapore that became a cult classic. At least, that was the hope — Shirkers never made it to the big screen as Tan, Ng, and Siddique planned, because Cardona stole the footage after they wrapped shooting, then disappeared from the trio's lives.

Fast forward more than 20 years later: Tan is working as a novelist in Los Angeles, but the itch to know what happened to Cardona and Shirkers still remains. When Cardona's wife reaches out, Tan decides to pick the camera back up and transform the could-have-been-movie into something completely new: a documentary about the making of Shirkers that winds up a "fascinating blend of autobiography, cinema history, and mystery."

Shirkers launched on Netflix on October 26, but you were probably too busy binge-watching the first season of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina to notice. Thankfully, the movie — which is perfectly rated on Rotten Tomatoes and has been applauded as "a one-of-a-kind story," "deeply personal, fabulously engrossing," and "one of those films that seems almost too good to be true" — is still available to stream. Get on it, gang!