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Standard caveats (really standard — same as 

!): I don't watch everything. I am behind on many things. That's just the way the world is. So if something you loved isn't here, it is not a rebuke.


And: These are cultural — mostly pop-cultural — things. These are not the best things in the world. Like yours, my actual list of wonderful things from the year, if I wrote it in a journal instead of for work, would be a list of people and moments spent with them, of days when it was unexpectedly sunny and of times when things suddenly felt better. But whatever journey you're on at any given moment, you can always use more good things. So here we go.

Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda's lively performance of "A Cover Is Not the Book,"

 a preposterously catchy dance-hall number in 

Miles Morales' father talking to him through his door

 is full of visually inventive sequences, but this emotional scene between father and son might be its most important moment. 
3.

 Yorgos Lanthimos' royal court comedy-drama 

isn't as fussy as it could have turned out, and it runs on the performances of Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz. Its absurdity is carefully apportioned, including when Harley (Nicholas Hoult), exasperated by a companion's feathered pal, wonders whether the room could be smaller by a couple of webbed feet.
4. 

 It's been hard to explain this difficult and thoughtful but also exhilarating 

 to audiences. But as it reaches its end and concludes as it must, Viola Davis stands in for many women who have simply had enough. 
5. 

 is a series of lush images, beginning with the breathtaking opening shots, in which Tish's (KiKi Layne) coat and Fonny's (Stephan James) shirt and the canopy of leaves in their neighborhood are all the same autumn gold. 
6. 

Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant's final scene in 

McCarthy, as a curmudgeonly forger, and Grant, as her lonely accomplice and only real friend, meet up at the end of 

 after a long estrangement. And while the scene is deeply felt, it doesn't betray the story's fundamental sense of isolation. 
7. 

 was uneven and overlong, but one part that was riveting throughout was Gugino's work as Olivia Crain, a mother slowly feeling her grip on reality slide. 
8.

 Directed by Paul Dano and written by Dano and Zoe Kazan, the 

showcased great work from Carey Mulligan, Jake Gyllenhaal and Ed Oxenbould. But it also stands out as a stunning example of color in visual storytelling. Watch the film when you can, and watch for where the blue is, where the neutrals are, and where unexpected colors are. It's a fully thought-out color story in a way that's immensely satisfying. 
9.

 For all the fuss that came and went over Bradley Cooper's reimagining of the oft-told show-business tragedy 

, the moment that stuck — for good reason — was Lady Gaga and Cooper performing the song "Shallow," which Gaga wrote with her collaborators. In that moment, it's utterly believable that Ally and Jackson are falling in love and finding that love in art, despite the fact that the literal telling of the tale, in which she warbles a bit of it in a parking lot and he completes a full arrangement with which she sings along flawlessly, doesn't make the least bit of sense. 
10.

is funny and tense and over-the-top all at once. One of its signatures is Blake Lively's gorgeous menswear-inspired wardrobe, which plays against Anna Kendrick's almost cartoonish femininity. Everyone in the film looks 

, and it continues Feig's history of working very effectively with actresses to showcase notes they haven't quite hit before.


Behind-the-scenes podcasts are difficult. They can easily collapse into a bunch of people talking about how great it is to work together which, without more, isn't much. 

, however, hosted by actor Marc Evan Jackson, makes the formula work. They interview not only actors and writers, but also folks who work in areas like effects, set design, props, music and stunts. Taken together, the podcast's run is a great way to learn how TV shows work and how many people put their full hearts into the ones that are good.  
12. 

 starred Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph as a couple whose marriage faced a very unexpected set of circumstances. And while not all of it worked, the opening sequence, showing how a couple can go from blissfully in love to contentedly in love to companionably cohabitating, was efficient and alarmingly plausible.
13. 

was a hit, not to mention a real boon to lovers of romantic comedy in general. And while its final scene is swoonworthy and its adorable flirtations are many, none stayed with me quite like Peter (Noah Centineo) 

 for Lara Jean (Lana Condor) to use as the background on her phone. Gently and confidently funny (only because you know it's supposed to be funny), it's one of the moments that make it believable that Peter is very, very excited about Lara Jean. 
14. 

 Look, there are so many things to love about 

. How do we choose? Well, I choose the moment in which Okoye (

) hurls her wig at one of the men attacking her, just long enough for it to distract him. Wigs detached from heads (and sometimes on heads) are inherently funny and that scene is inherently great, so it winds up being one of the film's OH BOY NO WAY moments that work especially well in a crowded theater. 
15. 

 If you haven't yet seen the penultimate installment in this set of Avengers films, just move right along. Skip this one. Don't 

. Okay, if you're still here, I assume you know that there were heavy losses at the end of the film (most of which, sure, will be undone in the next). Peter Parker (Tom Holland), in particular, was allowed to show fear as he began to vanish, and that fear and panic made his (come on, surely temporary) loss all the more emotional.  
16. 

is much, much better than it sounds like it would be, thanks in part to the cast. Jason Bateman, Kyle Chandler, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury ... everybody is good. But there is no performance in the film better than Rachel McAdams as Annie, a deadly serious competitor on game night with her friends who becomes a surprised participant in what film-lovers know as One Crazy Night. You can already know going into it that you will hear her say "Oh no, he died!" at one point and it will be one of the best line-readings of the year. It will still make you laugh. I can still watch it now and still laugh. Putting this together, I just did. 
17. 

The scene where Kayla's dad comes clean about his fears.

 There has been a ton of praise, all earned and all deserved, for Elsie Fisher's performance as young Kayla in 

. But the film also relies on Josh Hamilton as Kayla's father. In one scene, the focus briefly shifts to him as he tries to explain how much he loves her and how much he loves being her father. There isn't a false note. It's a beautiful scene. 
18. 

 Little bits of the fight scene in which Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill and Liang Yang bounce each other off walls and sinks and mirrors started to circulate well before the release of

. But in the end, the whole thing was as claustrophobic, exciting, stylish and sort of funny as you could have possibly hoped. 
19. 

 As depressing as it was to see Fox cancel the 

, that's how much fun it was to see NBC pick it right back up again for a sixth season that will start just after the new year. Where would we be without Jake Peralta having the guys in a police lineup sing 

 It was a good year for montages, actually, and like the one in 

that showed the drudgery and monotony of caring for an infant gave us something that only a sequence like that can do. It compressed time — faster and faster, in fact — to tell a story about a lot of moments, none of which are memorable.
22. 

 All the performances in the BBC America series are terrific. But 

, who has been one of our most indispensable actresses for many years, played the obsessed spy with an intensity and vulnerability that helped Jodie Comer's somewhat broader portrayal of the assassin Villanelle remain grounded. 
23. 

 is almost unbearably tense, since one key to survival is to stay silent even as danger mounts, passes or arrives. It becomes difficult to imagine what could be a satisfying conclusion — what could feel fair and consistent with the story and not, at some level, just nihilistic and awful. It's very smart that the story ends where it does — which I wouldn't dare to give away. 
24.

 John Mulaney and the horse in the hospital.

 has long sections devoted to stranger-danger training and 

. But the peak is an extended simile in which he compares politics to having a horse loose in a hospital. Even if nothing else in 

 worked, it would be an astounding document just for that. 
25. 

stars Bill Hader as a hit man trying to go straight, in part by taking acting classes. While it sounds like the setup for black comedy only, the first season builds to a final sequence in which the entire point of the story and the entire meaning of the character's experience up to this point come into focus in one jarring moment. 
26. 

 I wound up having mixed feelings about Wes Anderson's 

, but a sequence in which two packs of dogs scrap over discarded and rotting food, all the while calmly negotiating over how to proceed, turns into a delightful Looney-Tunes-ish moment. 
27. 

Arts and Culture

Linda Holmes

Author

A pop culture critic takes some time to run down not 10, not 20, but 50 wonderful things from movies, TV and more in 2018.

Pop culture: 50 wonderful things from 2018

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