Friday Flicks: ‘Ready Player One’, ‘Love After Love’, ‘Best Friends’
Friday Flicks returns with a fresh look at the March 2018 slate, a weekend that delivered everything from blockbuster spectacle to intimate character studies. The lineup rewarded audiences who wanted big screens and small theaters alike.
Ready Player One led the pack with its Easter egg hunt through pop culture history. Love After Love offered a quieter, more grounded portrait of grief and renewal. Best Friends, better known by its full title Best F(r)iends: Volume One, arrived with its own peculiar brand of outsider cinema. These three titles continue to define that particular weekend in memory.
Ready Player One (Warner Bros. Pictures)
Released March 2018 on wide release. The film grossed $607.9 million worldwide and earned an Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects.
We’ve been waiting for this one for a while, folks. From filmmaker Steven Spielberg (Close Encounters of the Third Kind) comes the action adventure sci-fi flick Ready Player One, filled with enough pop culture Easter eggs to keep you hunting for days. Based on Ernest Cline’s bestseller of the same name, the film is set in 2045 in a world on the brink of chaos and collapse. However, the nation has found salvation in the Oasis – an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). When Halliday dies, he leaves his fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the Oasis, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. Stars Tye Sheridan (Mud), Olivia Cooke (Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), Ben Mendelsohn (Animal Kingdom), Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead), and Rylance (Bridge of Spies).
Ready Player One Legacy and Sequel Development
Worldwide gross of $607.9 million and Best Visual Effects Oscar nomination. Sequel film in early development with Spielberg as producer. Graphic novel adaptation of the book scheduled for late 2026.
The film’s commercial performance confirmed that nostalgia-driven spectacle still moved tickets in 2018. Spielberg’s willingness to hand the reins to producer status for a follow-up suggests the OASIS universe still holds franchise potential. A graphic novel slated for 2026 keeps the property alive even as live-action plans remain in early stages.
Gemini (Neon)
on limited theatrical release now
Aaron Katz (Land Ho!) is here with an atmospheric neo-noir that’ll make you realize why you should never meet your heroes. Centered around an awful crime that tests the complicated relationship between a personal assistant and her Hollywood starlet boss, chaos takes over when the assistant travels across LA trying to unravel the mystery while staying ahead of a determined policeman. Stars Lola Kirke (Gone Girl), Zoë Kravitz (Mad Max: Fury Road), and John Cho (Star Trek).
The Last Movie Star (A24 Films)
Released March 2018 on limited release. Reynolds passed away September 6, 2018.
Get ready for some warm fuzzies because this film brings all the feels. Vic Edwards (Burt Reynolds) was the biggest star in Hollywood, but now he’s in his eighties, he worries he’s a bit past it. Convinced by an old friend (Chevy Chase) to accept an invitation to receive a Lifetime Achievement award at a two-bit film festival in Nashville, he goes. Although it’s not quite what he expected, the trip launches him on both a hilarious fish-out-of-water adventure and an unexpectedly poignant journey into his past. Even the trailer will bring a heartfelt tear to your eye.
Burt Reynolds: Final Role and Passing
Reynolds died September 6, 2018, months after release. Film frequently described as his swan song in later coverage.
The timing of the release turned The Last Movie Star into an accidental valediction. Reynolds’ performance carries the weight of decades of screen charisma, and the film’s modest Nashville setting feels like a deliberate step away from the red carpets he once commanded. Later coverage consistently frames the project as his final bow.
Love After Love (IFC Films)
Released March 2018 on limited release. Earned 86% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Andie Macdowell (Sex, Lies, and Videotape) absolutely nails the role as a woman whose husband (Gareth Williams) passed away, providing an honest view of what happens after the death of a loved one. While her character Suzanne finds new beginnings, so do her two grown sons (Chris O’Dowd & James Adomian) who come to terms with their own pursuits of creating families.
After Louie (Freestyle Releasing)
on limited theatrical release now
Directed by Vincent Gagliostro, After Louie follows Sam (Alan Cumming) – an artist and activist from Act Up who lived through the early years of HIV / AIDS and subsequently struggles with survivor’s guilt. Still shrouded in a dark cloud from the past, he is perplexed by a younger generation of carefree gay men until he strikes up a relationship with the seductive young Braeden (Zachary Booth).
Best F(r)iends: Volume One (Summit Pictures)
Grossed approximately $290,000. Volume Two released June 2018.
Oh boy, folks. This is it! Tommy Wiseau & Greg Sestero (The Room) a.k.a. the filmmaking dream team are back with another jaw-droppingly bizarre feature titled Best F(r)iends: Volume One. The ironic thing is, this is exactly what Wiseau set out to do with Sestero – make big budget movies that filled up theater seats. While the path towards this goal wasn’t quite as straightforward as they’d thought, they’ve only gone and done it and you know we’re all going to go and check out this flick at the cinema.
The story itself follows a drifter (Sestero) who is taken in by a peculiar mortician (Wiseau) and the two hatch an underground enterprise off the back of the mortician’s old habits. But greed, hatred, and jealousy soon come in turn and their efforts unravel, causing the drifter to run off with the spoils and leave the mortician adrift. They’re tearing us apart with this storyline (and we can’t freaking wait).
Best F(r)iends Volumes and Cult Following
Volume One grossed $290k; Volume Two released June 2018 and grossed $141k. Received festival awards for buzz and cinematography despite mixed reviews.
The quick turnaround between volumes kept the Tommy-and-Greg show in circulation through the summer. Modest earnings did not stop festival programmers from celebrating the pair’s persistence and the films’ distinctive visual style. The duo’s willingness to keep releasing work on their own terms continues to fuel a dedicated following.
Critical Reception Roundup
Love After Love: 86% RT, 84 Metacritic. The Last Movie Star: 61% RT, 46 Metacritic. Gemini: 70% RT, 71 Metacritic. Ready Player One: 71% RT.
Aggregate numbers tell a clear story: Love After Love earned the strongest notices for its emotional clarity, while The Last Movie Star split critics between those who found it sentimental and those who valued Reynolds’ late-career turn. Gemini landed comfortably in the middle, praised for atmosphere but questioned on narrative momentum. Ready Player One’s 71 percent reflects the divide between viewers who embraced its nostalgia overload and those who found the references overwhelming.
Looking back, the weekend offered a snapshot of 2018 cinema’s range. Blockbuster scale sat beside modest indies, and a few of those smaller titles have aged into unexpected significance. Whether revisiting the OASIS or catching up with Wiseau’s latest oddity, the slate still rewards a second look.
