The end of a decade always
feels like a changing of the guard, and 2019 is no exception. The 2010’s was a
decade of constant turmoil and uncertainty, and that was reflected in how much
film has changed in those years. (I’m currently working on a top 100 movies of
the decade list, which you can expect to see sometime around February.) Funnily
enough, the year for movies was lopsided, with most of the best films not
coming out until after September, with the first half being such a drought of
noteworthy content that for the first time, I forewent making a mid-year list. I
had to make a lot of painful cuts, and that’s not even accounting for the stuff
I missed like Ford v Ferrari, Doctor Sleep, The Last Black Man in San
Francisco, The Peanut Butter Falcon, Dolemite is My Name, Waves, A Hidden Life,
Richard Jewell, 1917, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, just to name a few. But
once Oscar season rolled in, I was graced with not just some of the best movies
of the year, but a few of my favorites this decade. Needless to say, this list is
built largely on movies that dropped within the last three months. With all
that said, these are the top 10 movies of 2019 (in my opinion).
10. Rocketman
When Bohemian
Rhapsody hit theaters back in 2018, it was boasted as
this glitzy, showstopping epic that celebrated the life and career of a beloved
rockstar and gay icon as he rose to fame while wrestling his personal demons,
coming to terms with his sexuality in an age where acceptance and tolerance was
in short supply, and burned out on the rock and roll lifestyle before coming
back stronger than ever, producing classic song after classic song in the
process and cementing his legacy as a one of the all-time greats. And then six
months later, Rocketman came along and did it all ten times better. I
guess that’s why they call it the blues.
9. Shazam!
Like I said before, the first
half of the year was a bit of a drought, so much so that Rocketman and Shazam!
held the top two spots all the way until September. And while I wouldn’t have
ruled out an Elton John biopic being on my list, I never would’ve imagined a
movie from the DC Extended Universe being there, let alone holding the #1 spot
for five months. Pot shots at dead horses aside, Shazam! is still a
wholly unique movie even within the confines of the superhero genre, the best
of its stripe since maybe The Incredibles. It’s a great family friendly
action comedy with a good balance of fun, heart, action and sincerity that
knows exactly what it is and doesn’t pretend to be anything else. In the year
of Captain
Marvel, Avengers:
Endgame and Joker, it
was easy for this movie to get overshadowed, but even against those odds, this
was the one that ultimately won me over. Also, this might be my new favorite
Christmas movie.
8. Knives Out
The Agatha Christie formula is
a tried and true method for making a compelling mystery thriller: Someone ends
up dead, there’s an eccentric lineup of suspects, and it’s up to a brilliant
detective with an unconventional method to solve the case. Put in the hands of
someone like Rian Johnson, it becomes something fresh. One of the most
compulsively watchable movies this year, half the fun is watching this murderer’s
row of Hollywood’s finest actors hamming it up as a viper’s pit of one-percenters,
all various flavors of vain, petty and ruthless, but it’s greatest hat trick is
making you forget you’re watching a murder mystery halfway through as it
becomes about so much more than that before circling right back to the murder
mystery. Everyone gives terrific performances all around, but the best would
have to be Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, and Ana de Armas, whose character brings
the whole thing down to Earth. And it all ends on what is probably my favorite
final shot of all time.
7. The Irishman
2019 was the year that Martin
Scorsese flexed his status as one of the elder statesmen of Hollywood. There
were at least two big blockbusters this year that were so indebted to his
directing style that he practically deserved producing credits, his word was
enough to spark a debate about what does and does not count as cinema, but his
biggest power move of the year was releasing a three-and-a-half hour opus to
Netflix that’s the culmination of everything he built his brand around, and
then sending it all off for one final dirt nap. The exploits of former mafia
hitman Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro) and his supposed involvement in the
disappearance of union leader Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) does to the gangster
flick what Clint Eastwood did to the Western in Unforgiven: strip away
all the glitz, glamor and sensationalism until all that’s left is a morally
hollow, broken old man who knows nothing but violence and destruction, a
lifestyle that left him with less than what he began with. It’s the kind of
movie that could only be made by a veteran auteur in his twilight years while
death and the passing of time are heavy on his mind, and one for the books,
whether it be on the big screen or the small screen, in intervals or in one
sitting.
6. Little Women
I was a bit lukewarm on Greta
Gerwig’s last directorial feature Lady Bird, but I think it finally
clicked when I watched her follow-up. Maybe it’s just because this was the last
movie I saw this year and the warm fuzzy feeling it left me with is still
there, but Little Women was the perfect movie to end what was a largely
an emotionally exhausting year. It pays respect to its source material while
also elevating it, creating living breathing characters you know like family by
the end, a setting that you become as familiar with as your own home, and scrambling
the narrative to show the growth of the March sisters through a whole new lens
and giving the emotional payoff more heft. It’s thoughtful, sophisticated and
expertly crafted, but also escapist, accessible and deeply felt, a work of art
that’s as bittersweet as life itself. If you’re looking for something sweet and
wholesome to cheer you up for the holidays, this should be the ticket.
5. Jojo Rabbit
By all accounts, Jojo Rabbit is a movie that just should not work. A whimsical comedy about a little boy in Nazi Germany whose imaginary friend is Hitler released in a time where fascism has made a huge comeback in the global political sphere? That's a pretty hard sell for any director, even for an irreverent comedian like Taika Waititi. But he makes it work by highlighting that absurd kitsch of the Nazi aesthetic, calling it out for the juvenile fantasy that it is, and most importantly, framing it all from Jojo's naive point of view. The most important line and the perfect summary of the film's ethos comes from the Jewish girl that Jojo's mother is hiding in their attic: "You're not a Nazi, you're just a boy who wears a silly uniform because you want to belong to a club." Nowhere is this more evident than in Hitler's steady transformation from quirky manchild to the raving, foaming-at-the-mouth espouser of hatred he is as Jojo's understanding of what the Nazis truly are changes. This is not a film about the Holocaust, nor is it about the atrocities committed by the Nazi party (until it is), it's a film about overcoming fanaticism, showcasing that monsters aren't born: they're made. And they can be unmade. And for that reason, it has value.
4. Booksmart
The next time you’re at a
party and some chauvinistic bore tells you that women can’t be funny, sit them
down and make them watch Booksmart from start to finish. The most
obvious point of comparison is probably Superbad, since it’s about two
high-school seniors getting whisked on a bunch of random misadventures on
their way to a party and because it stars Jonah Hill’s little sister, and while
that comparison is accurate, it’s a bit misleading. Booksmart has a lot
more on its mind when it comes to friendship, peer pressure, feminism, personal
and societal expectations, defying stereotypes and how prioritizing academics
doesn’t have to come at the cost of having fun. The fact that it’s also an uproariously
hilarious, brilliantly written, well-acted and wildly empathetic comedy to boot
doesn’t hurt either. And for those of you who still miss Carrie Fisher and
think there will never be another like her, I have three words for you: Billie.
Fucking. Lourd.
3. Parasite
Bong Joon-Ho delivers with his
first Korean film in ten years and possibly the best film of his entire career,
which is saying a lot considering this is the man who also gave us Memories
of Murder, The Host and Snowpiercer. This tightly crafted
story of a poor family conning a rich family into giving them all jobs incorporates
elements of black comedy, con-artist caper, satirical farce, family drama, psychological
thriller, and even horror, and you could make a solid case for it belonging to
any one of those genres. 2019 wasn’t short on movies that explored the
disparity of the haves and have nots (some
of which I
reviewed), and Parasite blows them out of the water with
clockwork precision. But its greatest sleight of hand is not making anyone as evil or
nasty as the audience may want them to be. The Kims aren’t the scheming cynical
conmen they present themselves as, and the Parks aren’t the coldly detached bluebloods
we’re led to believe they are. Half the fun of watching this movie is watching
it zig when you expect it to zag, trying to guess where it’s going and being
proven wrong at every single turn.
After The Babadook
became a sleeper hit (and unexpected gay icon), Jennifer Kent could’ve had her
pick of the litter of big name horror studios to work with. (Can you imagine
what she could do with the likes of A24 or Blumhouse?) Instead, she bided her time
and followed it up with something far more frightening: A starkly harrowing
rape-revenge thriller that sends its audience into anxiety overdrive by holding
a dirty mirror to the evils of colonialism, toxic masculinity, and the traumas they
inflict on the oppressed. When an Irish convict (Aisling Franciosi) stationed
in Tasmania hires an Aboriginal tracker (Baylaki Ganambarr) to help her find
and kill the British lieutenant that destroyed her life, we’re not just looking
at a Australian Western rendition of I Spit on Your Grave, we’re seeing
the aftermath of trauma at its most brutally unflinching, calcified into an
emotionally charged tale about solidarity among survivors. While there are
moments that are incredibly hard to watch, to the point that some screenings
even came with a trigger warning, it never slips into grindhouse gratuity,
although you’d be hard pressed to find a mindlessly violent bloodbath as brutal
as some of these scenes. But for those who can make it through, the end result
is well worth it.
What happens when you put Edward
Cullen and the Green Goblin on a stormy island on the edges of civilization for
a month of backbreaking labor, hire the director of The Witch to film the
whole thing with an antique camera, and give them nothing but booze to sustain
themselves on? You get the best movie of 2019, that’s what. Ostensibly about
two lighthouse keepers trapped on an island and going crazy from the isolation
and from each other’s company, The Lighthouse is up there with Parasite
in terms of genre blending. Is it a surrealist, allegorical arthouse picture?
Is it a dark comedy? Is it a horror film? Were these men driven insane by each
other? Were they already insane to begin with? Is there some supernatural element in
the water or the lighthouse itself that’s driving them mad? Is this island some
form of Purgatory? Hell, even? There really are no right answers. These questions
are all worms dangling on hooks, waiting to suck you in, and giving clear-cut
answers would be a disservice since this is a movie that deserves to be seen
with fresh eyes. If the promise of Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson giving over-the-top
performances as a volatile New England sea captain and his browbeaten subordinate
weathering a violent storm of insanity doesn’t draw you in, then the striking black
and white cinematography and pitch-black humor will. There are very few films
like it, in this year or any other.
Honorable Mentions:
How to
Train You Dragon: The Hidden World
Hustlers
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