Looking for a great film? These are the best films released in 2018, according to Metacritic, as of August 17.
If this year’s blockbusters have you yawning, the list also includes some independent films that have the critics raving. You’re bound to find something great.
Now, all you have to do is pop the popcorn.
Credit: David Lee/Focus Features
Two brothers revisit a death cult they escaped a decade earlier after receiving a cryptic message.
Credit: Well Go USA Entertainment
A school teacher, visiting France for the first time, helps a friend figure out why she was fired with the help of her possibly-magic camera.
Credit: Cinema Guild
A teen befriends a racehorse after moving to a new city with his single father.
Credit: A24 Films
Madeline’s theater director encourages her to intertwine her own personal experiences into her acting, but the lines between reality and theater begin to blur.
Credit: Oscilloscope Laboratories
A Brazilian football club struggles to rebuild after a plane crash kills all but three of their members.
Credit: Front Row Filmed Entertainment
Dad must play the “hero” of the household as mom is called out to save the day.
Credit: Pixar/Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
A police officer thinks a desk assignment is going to be a bore until he gets a call from a kidnapped woman and has to coordinate her rescue without leaving a police station.
Credit: Magnolia Pictures
In an alternate present-day Oakland, a company called WorryFree offers people free housing and food if they sign a lifelong work contract.
Credit: Annapurna Pictures
Women on a farm struggle to take care of the workload while their husbands are fighting in World War I.
Credit: Music Box Films
A 6-year-old has to adjust to a new way of life after she’s sent from Barcelona to the Catalan province to live with her aunt and uncle after her parents die.
Credit: Oscilloscope Laboratories
A woman is enjoying a vacation with her wealthy boyfriend when his friends arrive and cause a disruption. Tensions escalate quickly, and the woman is left for dead. But she survives, and looks for vengeance.
Credit: Neon
This documentary follows identical triplets who were separated at birth and discovered one another years later.
Credit: CNN Films
German construction workers labor in rural Bulgaria, where they grapple with their prejudice toward the locals.
Credit: Cinema Guild
In this coming-of-age story, based on a 1990 novel of the same name, a boy struggles with his parents’ breakup after his mother finds a new man.
Credit: June Pictures/Nine Stories Productions
This documentary, narrated by Willem Dafoe, follows mountaineers, ice climbers, free soloists, heliskiers, snowboarders, wingsuiters and parachuting mountain bikers to explore the human infatuation with mountains.
Credit: Greenwich Entertainment
After being banished to a garbage dump called Trash Island, the dogs of Megasaki City must find a way to return with the help of a human friend in this Wes Anderson film.
Credit: Fox Searchlight Pictures
A Brazilian teenager stumbles across a factory worker’s journal detailing the a quest for a better life over the course of a decade.
Credit: Grasshopper Film
A couple’s peaceful life is upended when a cult threatens their way of life.
Credit: RLJE Films
Three brothers are brought up by volatile but loving parents. Two older brothers emulate their carefree father, while the youngest is coddled by his mother.
Credit: Cinereach
A family must figure out a way to live in silence while their lives are threatened by creatures that hunt by sound.
Credit: Paramount Pictures
In this Spike Lee movie, based on a true story, a Colorado detective aims to infiltrate and take down the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s.
Credit: David Lee/Focus Features
A rebellious teen living in Tehran flouts social mores when she begins a relationship with a boy.
Credit: Sweet Delight Pictures and Grasshopper Film
An ex-con strives to get custody of her son as she embarks on a relationship with a traumatized former soldier.
Credit: Oriah Entertainment
A boy is pushed to the brink as his parents’ custody battle grows more and more heated.
Credit: Kino Lorber Theatrical
After the death of a husband and father, his family struggles to stay together.
Credit: IFC Films
A fearless veteran makes it his life’s mission to rescue missing girls. But one of his assignments could prove deadly.
Credit: Film4
This documentary celebrates the influence of the designer Alexander McQueen.
Credit: Bleecker Street Media
This documentary celebrates Fred Rogers, the man behind “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”
Credit: Tremolo Productions
The reverend of a small Dutch Reform church in upstate New York is forced to confront his past when a parishioner asks for help.
Credit: A24 Films
Debut filmmaker Bing Liu follows his two skateboarder friends for 12 years, exploring all that comes with growing up.
Credit: Magnolia Pictures
In the latest film in the Mission Impossible franchise, the IMF team races against time to reverse the consequences of a mission gone bad.
Credit: Paramount Pictures
After the matriarch of a family passes away, those left behind begin to uncover terrifying secrets about their ancestors.
Credit: A24 Films
A group of undocumented immigrants work six days a week, and then savor Sundays as a day to relax.
Credit: Cinema Guild
When an aboriginal man, living in the outback of Australia’s Northern Territory in the 1920s, kills a white man in self defense, he is forced to flee with his wife.
Credit: Samuel Goldwyn Films
When enemies conspire to destroy the advanced African nation of Wakanda, Black Panther must do all he can to prevent a war.
Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
A father and daughter live in a nature reserve in Portland, Oregon, and rarely make contact with the outside world. But they find themselves in social services after authorities track them down.
Credit: Courtesy of Sundance Institute
Paddington picks up a series of odd jobs to buy a gift for his aunt, but the gift gets stolen.
Credit: Warner Bros.
After tyrannical dictator Joseph Stalin dies, those around him vie to become the next Soviet leader.
Credit: IFC Films
Zama, an officer of the Spanish Crown born in South America, has been waiting for years for a letter from the king transferring him to a better place. But the letter never comes, forcing Zama to take matters into his own hands.
Credit: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
A young South Korean woman goes on a trip and returns with a man, but her childhood friend is suspicious of him.
Credit: Well Go USA Entertainment
This film explores the challenges faced by a 13-year-old girl as she experiences her last week of middle school.
Credit: A24 Films
When a woman rediscovers a short story she wrote during middle school, she is forced to reexamine her first sexual relationship, and the lies she’s told herself in order to cope.
Credit: Home Box Office (HBO)
A cowboy’s life is turned up side down when a horse crushes his skull, and makes riding impossible for him.
Credit: Sony Pictures Classics
