Furtive Little Feelings

The collected thoughts of Jake de Oude

What I Watched: 2018

Originally published in 2018.
Last updated on 16 April 2023.

After I stopped writing my yearly “Best Of” articles in 2014, I still wanted to update my friends on what I watched and give some comments and recommendations. First I did so on Google Plus, but those posts are unfortunately lost to the void. Since 2017 I’ve been giving quarterly updates on Facebook. This article is the second in a series gathering those posts by year. I didn’t change the language, nor did I adjust the recommendations with insights I gained after the fact. The only modifications I’ve made are corrections of grammar mistakes, and the additions of some markup and images.

As always, you can find the entire list of all the movies, series and documentaries I’ve seen here.

Starting in 2018 I gave every entry at least a separate mention, so the articles became longer and longer. As such, this article is almost thrice as long as its predecessor.

2018 Q1

So, four full seasons of various series (two of them Marvel Netflix shows, two historical series with varying degrees of historical accuracy), three American stand-up comedy, two animated movies, one middling scifi movie and one bad horror movie.


(3 October 2021 edit: apparently I forgot to enter Black Panther in this list originally.)

Black Sails is enormously satisfying. Splendid, colourful production design; compelling characters with believable motivations; almost stately dialogue amidst the lurid subject matter; politics and skullduggery and believable pirates. Only drawback is that by now everybody has betrayed each other so many times it’s sometimes hard to believe these people are still working together at all. I’m currently watching Season 4.

Turns out that American stand-up comedy is not my things, or at least Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock are not my thing.

The Punisher and Jessica Jones are very uneven but are buttressed by stellar main actors (respectively Jon Bernthal and Krysten Ritter) and themes. They have little to no cross-over with the other Marvel Netflix series, let alone the grander Marvel Cinematic Universe, so you don’t need any background to enjoy them. (Although of course I’d recommend to watch Season 1 of Jessica Jones before starting on the sophomore season.)

poster for “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman”
My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman (2018) on IMDb logo

The animated movies, Coco and Your Name., are both highly recommended. They represent very different styles and have different moods and themes, but both made me smile, laugh out loud, and shed tears. (Manly tears, of course.)

The strongest recommendation, however, is not even on the list. My Next Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman (awkward title) is only half-way through its six-episode season. In each episode, David Letterman talks with a famous guest. These are not necessarily sharp and deep interviews, but rather friendly conversations. If you only watch one thing, watch the first episode where Letterman talks with Barack Obama and weep... Inevitably you will compare Obama with Trump and you’ll sigh. As a friend of mine put it: “A good conversation and what a relief to hear the man speak: intelligent, clear, warm, humane.”

2018 Q2

poster for “Cowboy Bebop”
Cowboy Bebop (1998) on IMDb logo

Top billing goes to Cowboy Bebop, a one-season series that earns top spots in pretty much every anime recommendations list. I can now say that it’s well deserved. A speedy, sometimes downright trippy mix of stylish action and film noir sensibilities which shouldn’t be taken at face value. Well, you can, and you’d still get a cool anime. But dig deeper and there’s so much more. I highly recommend reading this series of lengthy essays alongside watching the anime: Overthinking Cowboy Bebop.

Was this the birth of Joss Whedon’s Firefly? It’s entirely possible!

(Shout-out to Pedro Serrano Camblor for recommending Cowboy Bebop to me last year.)


Loving Vincent is a technical marvel and on that strength alone its worth your time. Its plot, however sad and heartwarming, is a bit predictable, unfortunately.

Black Sails once again earns itself a mention, as its final season neatly wraps up the piratical politics, personal arcs and savagery that it started with in Season 1. A worthy exit!

I’m not sure why Lady Bird earned so much hype (and Oscar nominations). I mean, I liked it, and it was lovely, and Saoirse Ronan’s performance as the title character is stunning, but it feels as a very solid telling of a coming-of-age story we’ve seen many times before. Maybe I’m missing something?

Guilty Pleasure: Felicity. Time-travel back to the end of the Nineties, a more innocent time, to meet a group of misfits that starts university life in the Big Apple, and has to figure out how to deal with that and the messy human relationships that inevitably form. Perfect for watching while commuting. (I started watching episodes sporadically while travelling to/from Alicante last year.)

If you like cinematic history of the “what could have been” variant, I recommend watching Jodorowsky’s Dune, a documentary about, well, Jodorowsky’s visionary, over-ambitious trainwreck of a project to bring Frank Herbert’s classic scifi novel to the big screen. I’m pretty sure that if that had succeeded, the result wouldn’t resemble the book in any way, but it would’ve been stunning nonetheless. It still left its mark as many of its design people would go on to make their mark, like H.R. Giger (Alien!). And it’s not as if David Lynch’s version of Dune is an accurate adaptation either…

Mindhunter is the textbook definition of “slow-burning”. It tells us the story of the beginning of criminal psychology and criminal profiling at the FBI through the lens of two unlikely partners (the grizzled veteran, the over-confident rookie — why change a winning formula?). David Fincher is executive producer and directs 4 out of its 10 episodes and his fingerprints are all over it. Somehow he and the rest of the crew make a season that seems to be only about set-up and which gives very little resolution feel entirely enjoyable.

2018 Q3

It’s a short list this time around, with only 3 movies plus 6 seasons worth of series.


BlackKkKlansman is awesome: a condemnation of Trump’s policies and the American “alt-right” told as a history, wrapped up as a sometimes hilarious comedy.

I was not a fan at all of Throne of Blood, Kurosawa’s retelling of Macbeth in feudal Japan. I’m probably missing something here as it’s highly rated, but to me it was slow-moving and unnecessary.

I’ve sung my praises of Peaky Blinders before, and Season 4 rightfully brings the family back to being ruthless crime-bosses, instead of dallying in the upper crust of society.

Luke Cage’s second season was amusing, but I disliked the focus on Mariah Dillard as I despise the character. Fortunately we also got more Shades, so I guess it evened out?

poster for “The Expanse”
The Expanse (2015) on IMDb logo

While Luke Cage went down a bit, Iron Fist went up, a lot. Much more enjoyable this time around, fully embracing the mystical nonsense of the character. Danny Rand was less annoyingly goody-goody two-shoes, there is great chemistry between Misty Knight and Colleen Wing, good villains (Alice Eve as Mary Walker was chilling), even Ward improved enough that he was sympathetic!

However, the winner of this quarter, by a landslide, was the first season of The Expanse. It’s an intelligent scifi series with great visuals that takes its time to tell a mystery. That also gives us time to enjoy the stellar (pun intended) world-building and the character relationships. Thomas Jane is great as Joe Miller as he leans hard into the hard-boiled detective archetype.

2018 Q4

A large part of the list was research for our medieval-Japan themed, intrigue-heavy RPG campaign.

And losely connected are The Favourite and The Lion in Winter. The latter is a tremendous version of a play with stellar cast (Peter O’Toole, Katherine Hepburn, young Anthony Hopkins and Timothy Dalton), good courtly intrigue and a pessimistic view of humans.

The former is a luscious period drama / comedy. To quote Kenneth Hite:

“The high-handed Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz) finds her long-assured position as lover and favourite to the childish Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) under threat when her scheming cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) enters the fisheye-lensed picture. Lanthimos plays a little too fast and loose with tone (and history) for his tale of corrupt power to fully strike home, but even his near miss refreshes and stuns. All three stars rise to the occasion in an acting feast.”


poster for “Explained”
Explained (2018) on IMDb logo

Rounding out the list are: