As 2018 winds down, like most cinephiles, we’re looking to get our hands on the titles that may have slipped under the radar or simply gone unseen. With the proliferation of streaming options, it’s thankfully easier than ever to play catch-up for those films you missed in a theater (or never came to your town), and to assist with the process, we’re bringing you a rundown of the best titles of the year available to watch.
Curated from the Best Films of 2018 So Far list we published for the first half of the year, it also includes films we’ve enjoyed the past few months and some we’ve recently caught up on. This is far from a be-all, end-all year-end feature (that will come at the end of the year), but rather something that will hopefully be a helpful tool for readers to have a chance to seek out notable, perhaps underseen, titles from the year.
Note that we’re going by U.S. theatrical releases and the streaming services are limited solely to the territory as well. If you want to stay up-to-date with new titles being made available, check out our weekly column. In the meantime, see our rundown below, which will be updated as new titles hit streaming services, so make sure to bookmark. One can also click titles to see our official reviews or additional coverage.
3/4 (Ilian Metev) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Annihilation (Alex Garland) | Amazon Prime – Hulu – iTunes – Google
Araby (Affonso Uchoa and João Duma) | iTunes
Before We Vanish (Kiyoshi Kurosawa) | Hulu
The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (Coens) | Netflix
BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Black Panther (Ryan Coogler) | Netflix
Blockers (Kay Cannon) | HBO Go – Amazon – iTunes – Google
Border (Ali Abbasi) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Burning (Lee Chang-dong) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Claire’s Camera (Hong Sangsoo) | iTunes
Cocote (Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias) | iTunes
The Commuter (Jaume Collet-Serra) | Amazon Prime – Hulu – iTunes – Google
Custody (Xavier Legrand) | Amazon Prime – iTunes
Damsel (David and Nathan Zellner) | Hulu – Amazon – iTunes – Google
The Day After (Hong Sangsoo) | Amazon Prime
The Death of Stalin (Armando Iannucci) | Amazon – iTunes
Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? (Travis Wilkerson) | Amazon – iTunes
Double Lover (François Ozon) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham) | Amazon Prime – iTunes – Google
The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
First Man (Damien Chazelle) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
First Reformed (Paul Schrader) | Amazon Prime – iTunes – Google
Free Solo (Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Game Night (John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein) | HBO Go
Gemini (Aaron Katz) | Hulu
Golden Exits (Alex Ross Perry) | Amazon – iTunes
The Guilty (Gustav Möller) | iTunes – Google
The Great Buddha+ (Huang Hsin-yao) | Amazon – iTunes
Hale County This Morning, This Evening (RaMell Ross) | PBS – iTunes
Happy as Lazzaro (Alice Rohrwacher) | Netflix
Hereditary (Ari Aster) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
The House That Jack Built (Lars von Trier) | Amazon – iTunes
Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson) | HBO Go – Amazon – iTunes – Google
Ismael’s Ghosts (Arnaud Desplechin) | Hulu
Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (Bruno Dumont) | Amazon Prime – iTunes
John McEnroe: In the Realm of Perfection (Julien Faraut) | Amazon Prime – iTunes – Google
Lean on Pete (Andrew Haigh) | Amazon Prime
Leave No Trace (Debra Granik) | Amazon Prime – iTunes – Google
Let the Sunshine In (Claire Denis) | Hulu – Amazon – iTunes – Google
Lover for a Day (Philippe Garrel) | Amazon – iTunes
Madeline’s Madeline (Josephine Decker) | Amazon Prime – iTunes – Google
Mandy (Panos Cosmatos) | Shudder – Amazon – iTunes – Google
Milla (Valérie Massadian) | Amazon – iTunes
Minding the Gap (Bing Liu) | Hulu
Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
NANCY (Christina Choe) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
The Old Man & the Gun (David Lowery) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
The Other Side of the Wind (Orson Welles) | Netflix
Paddington 2 (Paul King) | HBO Go – Amazon – iTunes – Google
Private Life (Tamara Jenkins) | Netflix
Roma (Alfonso Cuarón) | Netflix
Revenge (Coralie Fargeat) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
The Rider (Chloé Zhao) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Shirkers (Sandi Tan) | Netflix
Shoplifters (Hirokazu Kore-eda) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
The Sisters Brothers (Jacques Audiard) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Skate Kitchen (Crystal Moselle) | Hulu – Amazon – iTunes – Google
Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley) | Hulu – Amazon – iTunes – Google
A Star Is Born (Bradley Cooper) | iTunes – Google
Summer 1993 (Carla Simón) | Amazon Prime – iTunes – Google
Support the Girls (Andrew Bujalski) | Hulu – Amazon – iTunes – Google
The Tale (Jennifer Fox) | HBO Go
Thoroughbreds (Cory Finley) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Tully (Jason Reitman) | HBO Go – Amazon – iTunes – Google
Unsane (Steven Soderbergh) | Amazon Prime
Upgrade (Leigh Whannell) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Western (Valeska Grisebach) | Amazon Prime – iTunes – Google
Where is Kyra? (Andrew Dosunmu) | Amazon – iTunes – Google
Wildlife (Paul Dano) | Amazon – iTunes
You Were Never Really Here (Lynne Ramsay) | Amazon Prime – iTunes – Google
Zama (Lucrecia Martel) | Amazon Prime – iTunes – Google
Have any suggestions? Comment below or tweet @TheFilmStage to submit titles for consideration. See all new streaming options here.