- Parasite
- Uncut Gems
- Midsommar
- Marriage Story
- The Irishman
- Avengers: Endgame
- Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
- Knives Out
- Booksmart
- ???
Honorable Mentions: Always Be My Maybe, Shazam!, The King, Deadwood: The Movie, The Report
Still need to see: Joker, Jojo Rabbit, The Lighthouse, Little Women, Honey Boy, The Last Black Man In San Francisco and plenty more I’m sure I missed
It was a pretty fantastic year for movies and there’s still a good amount I need to see. I watched a lot of these towards the end of the year, so some recency bias might be at play, but I really, really loved the top 6 movies, as wildly different as they are from each other. The rest were great too, but no other movies blew me away like those first 6. Each one felt like a powerhouse in it’s own way. Parasite is weird and funny, yet feels classic in it’s themes and cinematography. Every shot was perfect. It seamlessly blends straight up drama with off-kilter satire and moments of horror with slapstick comedy. Somehow it felt Shakespearean with the conflict between two families from very different circumstances. Uncut Gems is an uncomfortable thrill ride in the best possible way. There’s so much to unpack because so many great moments are jammed in at a breakneck pace. One highlight and example of the deep world the Safdie’s created: While Howard is being pursued for his hundred thousand dollar debt by serious, leg breaking collectors, another shrimpy, weaker bookie constantly pops up looking for the 32 grand Howard owes him, only to be told to fuck off, swatted away like a fly because Howard is too worried about the greater, scarier consequences closing in on him. It’s hilarious, as many parts of the movie somehow are, as we watch this guy dig his hole deeper and deeper. Also, I absolutely loved Julia Fox (and KG!). Midsommar just blew me away. Very disturbing, eerily beautiful, batshit crazy. I loved it and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since I saw it. Florence Pugh rightfully stole the show but Jack Reynor and Will Poulter play their roles perfectly as well. A friend said it’s a tough movie to recommend to someone, and I agree, but if you like fucked up disturbing movies, you’ll love it. Marriage Story is another brutal movie in it’s own way, but not being married probably helped me enjoy it. I loved how real it was, shifting from blame and anger to moments of tenderness trying to survive the soul crushing process of a divorce. Each scene had something interesting or unique going on it and connected to something deeper as the movie went on.
I love when movies perfectly execute their specific tone, while still managing to weave in moments of humor, compassion, wrath, and reality. All of these movies somehow managed to do that.
The next two could be interchangeable for me, weirdly considering the ‘beef’ between Scorsese and Marvel. First of all, Scorsese is probably my favorite director of all time, and I am a die heard Marvel fanboy, loving the MCU from the beginning. Both of these films are grand caps to momentous movie making. The Irishman is the coda to Scorsese’s meticulous mafia studies, somber and epic. It’s beautiful because it’s a Scorsese movie, but it’s also morbid and depressing. In this world you either die prematurely, murdered by a knife or a gun, or you simply continue living, enduring the unending march towards death that we all face. It’s a very long movie, which matches this march, and one I’ll definitely revisit in the future. A very different type of ending (though still with plenty of deaths) happened in Avengers: Endgame, the culmination of over a decade of movies, creating for the first time an entire cinematic universe across them all. As I said, I love the MCU movies and this was a bittersweet, cathartic end. With some time, I do think Infinity War may be the better movie, but Cap wielding Mjlonir to bitch slap Thanos around, plus the ensuing reunion/battle, was probably my favorite theater experience this year.
The next two movies were somewhat perplexing, in mostly great, surprising ways because both constantly subvert audience expectations. I laughed as Once Upon a Time in Hollywood ended and the credits started rolling at the audacity of this weird, strange movie. I liked it, but it felt like nothing really happened. And upon reflection, not much did. It was a hang out movie, and we got to hang out with two fucked up men of Tarantino, played by two of the best actors we have. The whole movie felt anti-Tarantino in a way. When Pitt goes to check on the old man at the ranch, it’s nothing but suspense and tension building. We think for sure we’re going to find a corpse with flies hovering above it but instead…he’s fine. He was just napping. It was anti-climatic. So was the whole movie in a way. The hype and worry over a movie featuring Charles Manson, Sharon Tate, and Roman Polanski barely featured them at all. We got to watch DiCaprio go apeshit, agonizing over his career, and Pitt play basically himself, a cool, devastatingly good looking dude (who could also beat Bruce Lee in a fight and might have killed his wife). While Hollywood was nearly plotless, Knives Out was almost overstuffed with plot. Rian Johnson crafts a great murder mystery that also subverts typical mystery tropes throughout the whole movie. I was so thrown at one reveal in the middle of it, I thought they gave the whole movie away. Then the final twist came and it made sense. And god damn was the cast fantastic, top to bottom, but Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas shine the brightest. Original work from Tarantino and Rian Johnson is always more than welcome. Both movies have their small flaws, and could be viewed as “tied” in my rankings, but I want more movies like both of these! I’m looking forward to rewatching both, to hang out in Tarantino’s 1969 Hollywood, and to further grasp the mechanics and intricacies of Johnson’s unique murder mystery.
Then there’s Booksmart, which could easily be brushed off as an inverted Superbad remake, but instead it leaps forward with heart and empathy as it’s themes. And it’s funny as fuck.
Finally, I leave my #10 spot open. I’m fairly certain one of the movies I missed will become at least #10, over the Honorable Mentions I listed. I just need to see them first. having said that, I did really like the Honorable Mention movies a lot too. Shazam! was the last movie I watched that came out in 2019, and it was a goofy, funny, kind-hearted throwback. If I had to fill the #10 spot right now, it’d be that or The King, which is another fairly formulaic story enlivened by zigging where you least expect it. It had one of the best endings to a movie I’ve seen in awhile.
Favorite non-2019 movies I saw for the first time: A Star is Born, All That Jazz, Paterson, Wonder Boys, While We’re Young
I watched 5 Adam Driver movies this year (Star Wars was not one of them) and he may be my current favorite actor now. His acting made what could have been a few “boring” movies really exciting and interesting. Paterson is a movie where almost nothing happens, as Adam Driver’s bus driver/poet character just goes about his daily routine for a week, and yet it’s soothing in a way that illustrates a peaceful, zen approach to life. The Report, a pretty standard investigative political drama, is energized by his relentless, manic pursuit of the truth and justice as his character uncovers step by step how the U.S. came to use torture following 9/11. He also played a sort of scummy but likable aspiring filmmaker in While We’re Young, which, along with Marriage Story and the Meyerowitz Stories last year, cemented me as a Noah Baumbach fan.
Finally, I absolutely loved two very different (or are they?) musical movies, A Star Is Born and All That Jazz. Both featured drug addicted stars doing what they loved: doing drugs, chasing women, and singing and dancing. What’s not to love? For real though, these were right up there with the best movies I watched this year. I’m excited to catch up on all that I missed, and maybe tweak this list in the future. I hope next year brings as much diverse and powerful movies as this year did.