Top 10 Films of 2019
Mark my words, 2019 will go down as one of the best film years of all-time. Instead of simply ranking my annual top ten favorite films of the year, I will spotlight twenty films and documentaries, categorized within seven genres: Early-Year Gems, Blockbusters, Streaming Greats, Indie-Darlings, Underrated, Documentaries, and Pleasant Surprises.
Note: At the end, you will find a more traditional top 10 ranking.
The Early-Year Gems
Stan & Ollie
“Written with compassion and worshipful wit by Jeff Pope, “Stan & Ollie” pays tribute to a bygone era when a little song, a little dance, a dollop of slapstick and some clever stage patter counted as enormously successful pop entertainment. By dint of sheer self-preservation and professionalism, Stan and Ollie manage to turn their final tour together into a triumph, not knowing that it’s a curtain call, not just for their nearly 30-year partnership but for an entire culture.” (Washington Post)
Rocketman
“But here’s the thing about biopics: Rocketman really isn’t one – says so right on the tin. The film is a musical "based on a true fantasy,” according to the tag line. Directed by Dexter Fletcher, scripted by Billy Elliot screenwriter and playwright Lee Hall and starring Kingsman actor Taron Egerton, Rocketman is Broadway razzle-dazzle of the best kind. It’s sentimental here and big-tuned there – grim and glamorous at turns, offering two hours of earworms and eye candy. Is it exactly true? No. Do we care? Not at all.” (The Globe and Mail)
The Blockbusters
Ford v. Ferrari
“It is, all in all, a pleasant surprise. Partly because Christian Bale and Matt Damon, the lead actors, are really good, and are supported by a fine cast that includes Tracy Letts in one of the best and least-expected crying scenes of the year. And partly because the car stuff — in the garage and on the track — is crisply filmed and edited, offering a reminder that movies and automobiles have a natural affinity and a lot of shared history.” (The New York Times)
Hustlers
“Examining the prosaic, workaday nature of crime has long been the provenance of the mob drama, perhaps never so memorably as in Martin Scorsese’s 1990 classic Goodfellas. Hustlers asks what a movie like Goodfellas looks like with women at the center of the story (up to and including a very funny cooking montage where Destiny and Ramona try to perfect the drug that will let them knock out fatcats so they can rip those fatcats off). But it also never loses sight of how the schemes these women undertake are just that. They may be desperate, but that doesn’t make anything they do admirable.” (Vox)
The Streaming Greats
Dolemite Is My Name
“What makes this one special isn’t just Eddie Murphy in the best role he’s had in decades, as ’70s comedian Rudy Ray Moore. It’s the furious determination with which Moore aches to be a star — to be seen — and the way he became a new thing in black pop culture by reaching back to the oldest traditions of all…“Dolemite Is My Name” is a straightforward, extremely entertaining account of how Moore bootstrapped his way onto the recorded-comedy charts and then into the movie business with “Dolemite” (1975), an endearingly terrible blaxploitation/kung fu action film that became both a camp joke and a word-of-mouth hit.” (Boston Globe)
The Irishman
“Scorsese has often regarded his gangster characters with a mixture of fascination and repulsion, and they’ve never looked less glamorous than they do here, particularly in the movie’s devastating final stretch. The major players of The Irishman weave in and out of ’60s and ’70s American history. Yet most of them, particularly Frank, seem to be living for their pointless, petty work, fighting a losing battle against the clock. That theme renders the movie’s technological fight against real-life aging more poignant, as the digital fountain of youth gives way to decrepitude. In many ways, this is an Old Man movie — a slower late-period work by a filmmaker ruminating on his advancing age, and on the beloved classics he made as a younger guy. But it’s Scorsese’s version: pulsing with more life than most younger filmmakers, before giving way to stark, chilling regret.” (The Verge)
Marriage Story
“With up-close cinematography and long, patient scenes in which characters pour out their hearts, “Marriage Story” feels startlingly intimate; we’re right there in this marriage, witnessing its dying embers. Baumbach makes it tough for us to take sides; both Nicole and Charlie are flawed characters who make missteps — they’re competitive, and they both want to win — but they adore their son and want to do right by him. “I want to stay friends,” says Nicole hesitantly, and she means it, but friendship on a battlefield is hard to sustain.” (The Seattle Times)
The Indie-Darlings
The Lighthouse
““The Lighthouse” keeps coming back to the two men, the smarmy veteran and his despondent underling, as they engage in an abstract power play that can only end in doom and gloom. As a storm careens over the lighthouse and sits there, their limbo becomes a private hell. Efraim begins to question the reality of their surroundings, and Eggers certainly drops hints about that possibility, even as Thomas mocks it with nefarious glee.” (Indie Wire)
Uncut Gems
““Uncut Gems” is part psychological thriller, part black comedy, part thriller and part dysfunctional extended family drama — and it clicks on all those cylinders… It is the story of a man who is in a constant state of high anxiety. Lurking around every corner of his life is the very real possibility he’ll be caught having an affair, get beaten up by a bookie’s thugs or mess up a business deal — or maybe he’ll just collapse on the spot, with the cause of death being Overall Degenerate Lifestyle.” (Chicago Sun- Times)
Midsommar
The Farewell
“These are, of course, white lies, the type anyone would say to allay another person’s fears and make them feel better. But what The Farewell has on its mind is whether it’s really okay to keep secrets from people, even if it’s seemingly in their own interest. Because soon the film’s big dramatic hook is established: Nai Nai has terminal lung cancer, with maybe three weeks to live, and her family decide not to tell her. Instead, Billi and her parents fly to China to join the rest of the clan, with the cover story of attending a wedding that’s been hastily organised, but actually to share Nai Nai’s final days, without ever letting on that they’re grieving. Can they keep their rictus smiles fixed to their faces? Or will someone break under the pressure?” (Empire)
Parasite
“What sort of movie is this? It’s not a home-intrusion thriller, like “Unlawful Entry” (1992) or “Panic Room” (2002), though it’s often spikily tense. It’s not a comedy of social upheaval, like “Boudu Saved from Drowning” (1932), though it does have wit to spare. (Ki-woo praises one of Da-song’s hideous paintings, saying, “It’s a chimpanzee, right?” “A self-portrait,” his doting mother replies.) And it’s not a horror flick, despite a passing resemblance to Jordan Peele’s “Us,” released this year. Like Peele, Bong makes the eerie suggestion that the underclass might literally exist below the feet of the bourgeoisie. Both directors are at pains to explore what lies beneath, in cellars and basements, though Bong goes one better with a sublimely choreographed sequence in which three of the Kims, needing to hide in a hurry, seek refuge under a low table in the living room—lying there and listening while the master of the house and his wife, in matching gray silk pajamas, make out on the couch. “Buy me drugs,” she suddenly moans, at passion’s peak. That explains a lot.” (The New Yorker)
The Underrated
Harriet
“Lemmons’ greatest asset here is undoubtedly the tough-as-nails performance at the heart of her film. Erivo captures Tubman’s shining spirit and courage with compassion, beautifully reflecting her bravery on a toughened face she wears with pride. It’s thanks to her reflective commitment that the occasional wooden dialogue of “Harriet” flows with grace and the sporadic visual misfortunes don’t linger in one’s mind for too long. This might not be the optimal film to tribute an American hero who’s long been neglected on our screens, but Erivo’s performance might very well become a definitive one, synonymous with Tubman. And that’s not a bad place to start by any measure.” (Rogerebert.com)
The Report
“All the geopolitical intrigue forces [Daniel] Jones into the role of whistleblower — yes, that word again. With new CIA chief John Brennan (Ted Levine) on his back, the investigator enlists hot-shot lawyer Cyrus Clifford (Corey Stoll) to protect him from criminal charges that come from leaking a classified document. Said document, nearly 7,000 pages long, was released in 2014 in a severely redacted version. Burns redacts nothing here, and in lesser hands, the exposition data dump that the movie lays on audiences would be indigestible. But the writer-director, following in the steps of the best in investigative cinema (All the President’s Men, Spotlight), makes this search for a truth a thrilling detective story with real-world repercussions. Guided by the fierce, fully committed performances of Driver and Bening,The Report is a bristling reminder that truth still matters. Naïve? Maybe. But, damn, do we need it now.” (Rolling Stone)
Ready or Not
“Ready or Not can be read as a trenchant (figurative) evisceration of how wealth and power corrupt through generations, and the way in which the siren song of wealth and comfort can lead one to (figuratively or literally) sell one’s soul. It can also function equally as well as an irreverent and gory bit of mean-spirited fun. The fact that these two reads can elevate one another when taken together without suffering when broken apart is a minor miracle. Then again, “minor miracle” can describe almost any small, original film that rises above the franchise rabble, and so applying the term to Ready or Not isn’t just logical, it is downright mandatory.” (The Film Stage)
The Pleasant Surprises
Booksmart
“What makes Booksmart land so delightfully is Wilde’s handle on exactly how seriously to take her neurotic heroines. Molly and Amy are essentially good, uncool girls, but they are so invested in their identity as good, uncool girls that they’re blind to how condescending they can be to the people they assume are looking down at them. (Kelly Fremon Craig’s The Edge of Seventeen also touched on this dynamic to more dramatic effect.) The film doesn’t punish them for this so much as poke well-intentioned fun at them, as well as every other goofball, doofus, and oblivious rich kid peer of theirs. Wilde builds out a fantastically colorful high-school ensemble, with nearly every individual getting a memorable mini-arc within the cacophony — from the intensely self-serious drama gays (Noah Galvin and Austin Crute) to the desperate-to-be-liked billionaire’s son (Skyler Gisondo) to the hot girl bully (Diana Silvers). It’s a raunchy but ultimately empathetic Greek chorus of teenage idiocy.” (Vulture)
Yesterday
“Yesterday” has an irresistible premise: A struggling singer-songwriter wakes up in an alternate world in which the Beatles never existed. He’s the only one who remembers the songs. So now he has a blank check. He can work his way through the entire catalog, presenting the songs as his own. That’s a great idea for a movie. But where does it go from there? That was always going to be the challenge, and the good news is that “Yesterday” is more than a clever “what if.” Without ever being obvious, this Danny Boyle film has interesting things to say about the nature of stardom and the consequences of fame.” (The San Francisco Chronicle)
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
“Of course, everything would fall apart without the audience truly believing that they are seeing the heart of Fred Rogers: and, of course, it would be easy to write off Hanks' performance as the ever-kind, ever compassionate Rogers as a nice guy playing a nice guy. True, it would be hard to imagine anyone slipping into those comfortable tennis shoes and warm red sweater with quite the same vibrancy, but there's nothing easy about the Rogers he creates. The gaps before he says anything – initially frustrating to Lloyd – are a mind and a heart at work. But that's what Mr. Rogers was. He wasn't a simple pile of good intentions and magical best results. He knew life was hard, and he worked at it, and he worked at being Mr. Rogers. Being him was an act of will, not an accident of birth or genetics. “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” brings that essential essence of Fred Rogers to life. That sense of wonder, of kindness, and most importantly of letting kids – and adults – know that it's OK to have been hurt. Heller and Hanks remember that Rogers was not about being perfect or pretending that bad things don't happen. It's about liking people just the way they are.” (The Austin Chronicle)
ReMastered: The Lion's Share
“Ever since the first time someone realized they could make a buck selling a recording of someone else playing music, one of them’s been getting screwed. I think you know who (HINT: it rhymes with shmusician). This is true regardless of genre or ethnicity and for the most part is still the case. Record labels, music publishers and producers line up to get their cut, while the artist usually gets a small percentage of the profits, and then, only after the label has earned back their expenses. The case of “Mbube,” written and recorded in 1939 by South African singer Solomon Linda, which through a combination of chicanery and misunderstanding became the international hit song, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” is one of the more complex tales of artist exploitation, though only its circumstances make it out of the ordinary.” (Decider)
Raise Hell: The Life & Times Of Molly Ivins
“Engel’s subjects reminisce frankly about Ivins — this is a celebration but never a hagiography — and the requisite big names contribute interesting analysis regarding the writer as a Texan (Cecile Richards), a media powerhouse (Rachel Maddow) and both (Dan Rather). Formally speaking, the film isn’t breaking much new ground; the period-setting pop music and montage-friendly stock footage appear pretty much exactly where you’d expect. But Ivins herself was such a great raconteur, engaging speaker and drily witty interviewee that the plethora of old TV clips are themselves reason enough for the film to exist. As even web outlets find themselves bleeding staff, and journalism becomes an increasingly precarious commodity, “Raise Hell” reminds us of the never-ending importance of those skilled observers with the ability to speak truth to power. And if, like Ivins, they can make us laugh while doing so, then they’re all the more essential.” (The Wrap)
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Top 10 Films of 2019
10. Hustlers
9. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
8. Midsommar
7. The Lighthouse
6. Booksmart
5. Dolemite Is My Name
4. The Farewell
3. Uncut Gems
2. Parasite
1. The Irishman
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