Top Ten Movies of 2019
Er…better late than never, right?
I realize we’re almost two months into 2020. We’re even past the Oscars – the unofficial “end” of the film year – albeit the Oscars were significantly earlier than usual this year. This list has been delayed mainly because I really wanted to catch up with some movies from 2019 that I either missed or didn’t have an opportunity to see in theaters last year. While I’ll probably never completely catch up, and per usual have seen nowhere near enough foreign films or documentaries to make this even close to a comprehensive tally, here are the ten films from 2019 that most moved and/or delighted me (along with links to reviews or other pieces I've written about them).
1. PARASITE
Yes, it really is that good. It begins as a broad social satire about a poor Korean family conning their way into the household of a rich one, only to morph into something darker, stranger, and quite frankly brilliant. Bong Joon-Ho returns to his favorite themes and tropes, as well as his fondness for head-spinning genre and tonal shifts, but weaves them into something unprecedentedly taut, entertaining, and ultimately – surprisingly – poignant. In its razor-sharp treatment of class inequities, it’s a reminder that some of the best films about that subject in recent years have been coming not out of the West but from East Asia.
2. PAIN AND GLORY
Pedro Almodóvar brings his signature warmth to this semi-autobiographical tale of an aging filmmaker (beautifully played by Antonio Banderas) who makes unexpected discoveries while revisiting bittersweet memories of his youth. Lovely and understated, it’s the kind of film that’s only grown and burrowed deeper into my consciousness in the months since I first saw it. It also features what has to be the most perfect ending shot of 2019.
3. 1917
It will go down in history as the Oscars best picture frontrunner that everyone had resigned themselves to accepting as the inevitable winner, only to be shoved aside in a stunning upset by the zeitgeisty juggernaut that was Parasite. And yet Sam Mendes’ gripping WWI film about a pair of young British soldiers dispatched on a hail Mary mission to deliver urgent orders across enemy lines deserves to be remembered for more than its also-ran status, or even for Roger Deakins’ spectacular cinematography, which manages the incredible feat of looking like one long, continuous, real-time shot tracking the soldiers as they move through the trenches and fields. With its spare, economic, stripped-down narrative and the veddy British restraint of its principal actors, it somehow gains a greater resonance than a more amplified emotional display would have achieved.
4. MARRIAGE STORY
I admit I went into this one with both my back and my dukes up (figuratively speaking), partly because I haven’t really been a huge fan of Noah Baumbach’s previous work, partly because I’d heard the script was based on his own divorce from Jennifer Jason Leigh and figured it would inevitably stack the deck in favor of the man in the central divorcing couple. That preconception, however, was quickly overturned by the actual film, which is at once painfully raw, unexpectedly hilarious, and admirably even-handed. Sure, the viewer may feel bad for the seemingly blindsided, loving husband and father played by Adam Driver, but as the movie goes on it develops the perspective and very real grievances of his wife (Scarlett Johansson) with considerable nuance and compassion, balances out the sympathy quota (much more so than Kramer v. Kramer, one of its obvious spiritual forbears), and ends on an exquisitely tender, bittersweet note. Driver, ScarJo, and Laura Dern (as the wife’s take-no-prisoners lawyer) all turn in powerhouse performances, with Alan Alda playing a gentler but equally memorable counterpoint to the principals’ gloves-off brawling. This isn’t an easy film to watch, but once you start, you can’t look away.
5. ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
Quentin Tarantino is a director I can’t help loving despite myself. For years now, he’s vexed me as the perpetual adolescent who’s never outgrown his youthful fixations (cinematic and otherwise), even as his success has basically given him a blank check to indulge himself in meandering, borderline-onanistic filmmaking exercises with no apparent purpose other than to pay homage to said fixations. And yet…something about these exercises nearly always draws me in; he has the singular power to claim my attention and hold it firmly in his grip up to and through the inevitable climax of orgiastic violence. So it is with this languorous, lazily enjoyable paean to 1960s Hollywood, which also has the added benefit of looking beautiful and bathing its beautiful principal players in that nostalgic golden light. The sadism of the ending may bother some viewers, and yet, once again, there’s something gleefully cathartic about the way QT willfully rewrites a tragic chapter of history.
6. MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN
I seem to be the only one who really liked Ed Norton’s (literally) decades-in-the-making labor of love, notwithstanding its frigid reception both on the festival circuit and in wide release last fall. Norton does something quite daring in transplanting the plot of Jonathan Lethem’s 1990s detective novel into the 1950s and adding a fictionalized version of NY city planner Robert Moses (Alec Baldwin), and to my mind, at least, he pulled it off. The film undeniably borrows heavily from other, greater predecessors, playing like a New Yorker’s homage to Chinatown and L.A. Confidential - yet it’s grounded in a quietly affecting lead performance by Norton as the protagonist who battles a Tourette’s like disorder while searching for answers to his mentor’s murder, and themes of racism, gentrification, and the corrupting effect of power that are still all too timely today.
7. A HIDDEN LIFE
Based on the true story of an Austrian farmer conscripted during WWII who steadfastly refused to swear loyalty to Hitler and suffered the consequences, Terrence Malick’s latest raises knotty moral questions that have no easy answers but plenty of contemporary resonance. Sure, it could have been about 20-30 minutes shorter and a smidge less aestheticized, but Malick’s flourishes don’t detract or distract from the film’s quiet power. His best work since Tree of Life.
8. LITTLE WOMEN
If anyone could breathe new life into this much adapted classic, it would be Greta Gerwig, who tackles the challenge with a bold yet faithful take on Louisa May Alcott’s tale of four very different sisters in post-Civil War New England. While the constant time-shifting of Gerwig’s screenplay between “then” and “now” can sometimes be a little disorienting, it’s more than offset by the gorgeous cinematography and strong acting, especially from Saoirse Ronan as Jo and Florence Pugh as Amy, who in her hands actually becomes a compelling character for once. (That said...the 1994 Little Women with Winona Ryder still remains my favorite.)
9. THE FAREWELL
When was the last time a film so culturally, peculiarly specific managed to feel so universal? You don’t have to understand the reasons underpinning Lulu Wang’s funny-sad true story of her family’s elaborate ruse to keep her grandmother from knowing she had terminal cancer; hell, you don’t even have to be Asian or an immigrant to understand or empathize with the complicated family dynamics that pull at the main character (Awkwafina, showing she has serious dramatic as well as comic chops), though it certainly helps. The beauty of The Farewell lies in its understanding of all people who have at some point had to leave home or family and had to reassess that decision.
10. HUSTLERS
A welcome feminist riposte to all them bad-boy Wall Street flicks, from, well, Wall Street to Wolf of Wall Street, Lorene Scafaria’s adaptation of a New Yorker article about a cadre of female strippers who schemed to fleece the fleecers is by turns entertaining, infuriating, and sobering, but never anything less than engrossing. This is due in large measure to the terrific performance of Jennifer Lopez as the coolly self-possessed den mother and mastermind behind the scheme. She may play a stripper, but she’s just as magnetic with her clothes on, and will leave you wanting more.
Honorable Mentions:
Ad Astra
The Irishman
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Ash is Purest White
Knives Out
Captain Marvel
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Ford v. Ferrari
The Mustang
The Two Popes
I realize we’re almost two months into 2020. We’re even past the Oscars – the unofficial “end” of the film year – albeit the Oscars were significantly earlier than usual this year. This list has been delayed mainly because I really wanted to catch up with some movies from 2019 that I either missed or didn’t have an opportunity to see in theaters last year. While I’ll probably never completely catch up, and per usual have seen nowhere near enough foreign films or documentaries to make this even close to a comprehensive tally, here are the ten films from 2019 that most moved and/or delighted me (along with links to reviews or other pieces I've written about them).
1. PARASITE
Yes, it really is that good. It begins as a broad social satire about a poor Korean family conning their way into the household of a rich one, only to morph into something darker, stranger, and quite frankly brilliant. Bong Joon-Ho returns to his favorite themes and tropes, as well as his fondness for head-spinning genre and tonal shifts, but weaves them into something unprecedentedly taut, entertaining, and ultimately – surprisingly – poignant. In its razor-sharp treatment of class inequities, it’s a reminder that some of the best films about that subject in recent years have been coming not out of the West but from East Asia.
2. PAIN AND GLORY
Pedro Almodóvar brings his signature warmth to this semi-autobiographical tale of an aging filmmaker (beautifully played by Antonio Banderas) who makes unexpected discoveries while revisiting bittersweet memories of his youth. Lovely and understated, it’s the kind of film that’s only grown and burrowed deeper into my consciousness in the months since I first saw it. It also features what has to be the most perfect ending shot of 2019.
3. 1917
It will go down in history as the Oscars best picture frontrunner that everyone had resigned themselves to accepting as the inevitable winner, only to be shoved aside in a stunning upset by the zeitgeisty juggernaut that was Parasite. And yet Sam Mendes’ gripping WWI film about a pair of young British soldiers dispatched on a hail Mary mission to deliver urgent orders across enemy lines deserves to be remembered for more than its also-ran status, or even for Roger Deakins’ spectacular cinematography, which manages the incredible feat of looking like one long, continuous, real-time shot tracking the soldiers as they move through the trenches and fields. With its spare, economic, stripped-down narrative and the veddy British restraint of its principal actors, it somehow gains a greater resonance than a more amplified emotional display would have achieved.
4. MARRIAGE STORY
I admit I went into this one with both my back and my dukes up (figuratively speaking), partly because I haven’t really been a huge fan of Noah Baumbach’s previous work, partly because I’d heard the script was based on his own divorce from Jennifer Jason Leigh and figured it would inevitably stack the deck in favor of the man in the central divorcing couple. That preconception, however, was quickly overturned by the actual film, which is at once painfully raw, unexpectedly hilarious, and admirably even-handed. Sure, the viewer may feel bad for the seemingly blindsided, loving husband and father played by Adam Driver, but as the movie goes on it develops the perspective and very real grievances of his wife (Scarlett Johansson) with considerable nuance and compassion, balances out the sympathy quota (much more so than Kramer v. Kramer, one of its obvious spiritual forbears), and ends on an exquisitely tender, bittersweet note. Driver, ScarJo, and Laura Dern (as the wife’s take-no-prisoners lawyer) all turn in powerhouse performances, with Alan Alda playing a gentler but equally memorable counterpoint to the principals’ gloves-off brawling. This isn’t an easy film to watch, but once you start, you can’t look away.
5. ONCE UPON A TIME…IN HOLLYWOOD
Quentin Tarantino is a director I can’t help loving despite myself. For years now, he’s vexed me as the perpetual adolescent who’s never outgrown his youthful fixations (cinematic and otherwise), even as his success has basically given him a blank check to indulge himself in meandering, borderline-onanistic filmmaking exercises with no apparent purpose other than to pay homage to said fixations. And yet…something about these exercises nearly always draws me in; he has the singular power to claim my attention and hold it firmly in his grip up to and through the inevitable climax of orgiastic violence. So it is with this languorous, lazily enjoyable paean to 1960s Hollywood, which also has the added benefit of looking beautiful and bathing its beautiful principal players in that nostalgic golden light. The sadism of the ending may bother some viewers, and yet, once again, there’s something gleefully cathartic about the way QT willfully rewrites a tragic chapter of history.
6. MOTHERLESS BROOKLYN
I seem to be the only one who really liked Ed Norton’s (literally) decades-in-the-making labor of love, notwithstanding its frigid reception both on the festival circuit and in wide release last fall. Norton does something quite daring in transplanting the plot of Jonathan Lethem’s 1990s detective novel into the 1950s and adding a fictionalized version of NY city planner Robert Moses (Alec Baldwin), and to my mind, at least, he pulled it off. The film undeniably borrows heavily from other, greater predecessors, playing like a New Yorker’s homage to Chinatown and L.A. Confidential - yet it’s grounded in a quietly affecting lead performance by Norton as the protagonist who battles a Tourette’s like disorder while searching for answers to his mentor’s murder, and themes of racism, gentrification, and the corrupting effect of power that are still all too timely today.
7. A HIDDEN LIFE
Based on the true story of an Austrian farmer conscripted during WWII who steadfastly refused to swear loyalty to Hitler and suffered the consequences, Terrence Malick’s latest raises knotty moral questions that have no easy answers but plenty of contemporary resonance. Sure, it could have been about 20-30 minutes shorter and a smidge less aestheticized, but Malick’s flourishes don’t detract or distract from the film’s quiet power. His best work since Tree of Life.
8. LITTLE WOMEN
If anyone could breathe new life into this much adapted classic, it would be Greta Gerwig, who tackles the challenge with a bold yet faithful take on Louisa May Alcott’s tale of four very different sisters in post-Civil War New England. While the constant time-shifting of Gerwig’s screenplay between “then” and “now” can sometimes be a little disorienting, it’s more than offset by the gorgeous cinematography and strong acting, especially from Saoirse Ronan as Jo and Florence Pugh as Amy, who in her hands actually becomes a compelling character for once. (That said...the 1994 Little Women with Winona Ryder still remains my favorite.)
9. THE FAREWELL
When was the last time a film so culturally, peculiarly specific managed to feel so universal? You don’t have to understand the reasons underpinning Lulu Wang’s funny-sad true story of her family’s elaborate ruse to keep her grandmother from knowing she had terminal cancer; hell, you don’t even have to be Asian or an immigrant to understand or empathize with the complicated family dynamics that pull at the main character (Awkwafina, showing she has serious dramatic as well as comic chops), though it certainly helps. The beauty of The Farewell lies in its understanding of all people who have at some point had to leave home or family and had to reassess that decision.
10. HUSTLERS
A welcome feminist riposte to all them bad-boy Wall Street flicks, from, well, Wall Street to Wolf of Wall Street, Lorene Scafaria’s adaptation of a New Yorker article about a cadre of female strippers who schemed to fleece the fleecers is by turns entertaining, infuriating, and sobering, but never anything less than engrossing. This is due in large measure to the terrific performance of Jennifer Lopez as the coolly self-possessed den mother and mastermind behind the scheme. She may play a stripper, but she’s just as magnetic with her clothes on, and will leave you wanting more.
Honorable Mentions:
Ad Astra
The Irishman
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Ash is Purest White
Knives Out
Captain Marvel
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Ford v. Ferrari
The Mustang
The Two Popes
posted by lylee2 at 1:00 AM
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