This week I’ll count down my favorite movies of 2018, two per day, from #10 down to #1.

This was the hardest top ten movie list I’ve made in years. I saw 70 films this year and enjoyed the great majority of them. It isn’t until you reach the bottom ten or so that I really disliked anything I saw (unlike actual movie critics, I have no obligation to see something I don’t think I’ll like).

Any of the films in my 11-20 slots could have easily found their way into this top ten, and might do just that if you ask me to revisit the list over time.

Because I had such a bounty of good films to choose from, I tried to make this list as representative as possible of the different kinds of movies I loved in 2018. Different genres, different budgets, different perspectives, different voices. None of these ten films are remotely alike, except that they all moved me in one way or another.

#10 – First Reformed
Writer-director Paul Schrader literally wrote the book on transcendental style in cinema, and in First Reformed he delivered a powerful, thought-provoking example of the style. The film is both a fascinating formal exercise and a searing portrait of a man in spiritual decline.

Schrader gave us the original “God’s lonely man” in Taxi Driver‘s Travis Bickle, and here he takes the concept even further, centering his movie on a priest suffering a crisis of faith. Ethan Hawke delivers one of the best performances of his career, repressing his usual loquacious charm behind the hard lines of his furrowed brow. This is a very personal film but it’s also quite political. It tackles the commoditization of spirituality by juxtaposing a popular mega-church against the historic Dutch Reformed Church of which Hawke’s Ernst Toller is the pastor. And it’s a damning treatise on how humans are destroying the Earth. First Reformed is breathtaking, exasperating and confounding. It’s also a true work of art.

#9 – Black Panther
This tale of T’Challa, king of Wakanda, the richest and most technologically advanced country on Earth, starts in Oakland, California. It ends there, too. Writer-director Ryan Coogler chose to focus his Black Panther on the dichotomy between godlike African royalty and generations of African-Americans growing up under the thumb of institutional racism, and in doing so he crafted the greatest superhero movie of our time. Black Panther delivers the thrills and humor of any good Marvel title, but in telling such a painful and personal story it works as grand drama as well.

Michael B. Jordan’s villainous Killmonger wants to take his place on Wakanda’s throne so he can use the country’s advanced weaponry to liberate Black people all over the world. A not-small part of me wanted him to succeed, and I’m a white guy. I can only imagine the complex emotions this film stirred in people of color. Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa is the film’s moral center, appropriately horrified by Killmonger’s plans but also hurt and angry at how his ancestors have turned a blind eye to the suffering of people who look like them.

All of this gripping socio-political intrigue takes place in a sleek action film that blends the sensibilities of James Bond and Kendrick Lamar. What a glorious movie!