Another year of film is gone. This year of 2019 was, in my opinion, the better year for film in general. We actually had more films from people that were more willing to take risks and make the films they wanted to make in general. We did have a couple big corporation films, not all of them paid off for me, but some did pay off in some of the best ways possible, payoffs that I haven’t seen in many years. As usual, I’m counting down my top films for 2019 and this time, it’s going to be 12. Just a heads up, if I haven’t reviewed any of the films on the list, I will post a brief summary of the plot beforehand. Hope you enjoy the list and thanks for reading and here’s to a Happy New Year.
Before I get started, here are my honorable mentions:
- Rocketman– This was a really solid movie that had a solid portrayal of Sir Elton John by Taron Egerton. It was a good jukebox film with a really good singing performance by Egerton as well and good musical sequences overall. I also love the editing some of the visuals in the film. I’m not the biggest Elton John fan, but I really enjoyed this movie for what it was trying to be, peek into Sir Elton John’s career and the hardships he had to go through to get through it all.
- Doctor Sleep– Given to us by Mike Flannagan, this sequel to Stephen King and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining was a worthy sequel in my opinion. I think it had charming visuals and was a pretty solid tribute to both King and Kubrick. Rebecca Ferguson was excellent as Rose the Hat and I enjoyed Ewan McGregor as a grown up Danny Torrence. It’s definitely my favorite King adaptation of the year, better than IT: Chapter Two. I think a handful of fans of both the book and the film will enjoy Doctor Sleep, it had really solid moments and makes me want to see more from Mike Flannagan.,
- Booksmart– One of the funniest films that I saw this year, Booksmart was a clever comedy that had me laughing through most of the second act. It’s not an original story, in fact most people compare it to Superbad, but for what it was, I had a pretty good time.
- Toy Story 4– Though an unnecessary sequel and more of an epilogue, I had fun through most of this film, mainly with Woody and Bo. The animation was so beautiful to look at. It’s worth mentioning for both of those reason.
12. Uncut Gems
I guess I’m going to be one of the few people who really liked this movie. Uncut Gems was something that I was anticipating as I was a fan of Good Time and I really wanted to see Adam Sandler be in a serious role, the last one being Punch Drunk Love. Having already reviewed it, I thought it was worth it. I really enjoyed Adam Sandler in this movie as he plays the role of a Diamond Hustler/Gambling Degenerate and he is an incredibly unlikeable character that I loved watching from start to finish. This character makes so many dumb decisions that it made me have anxiety and huge amounts of rage. Though I do like Good Time more, I still think this film succeeded for my tastes. It’s divided the audience and won over the critics, it’s one of the films I’ve seen to where I liked but other people hated.
11. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Quentin Tarantino’s 9th film, this film tells the story of Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth, an actor/stuntman duo that are working their way through the end of the Golden Age of Hollywood in the late 60’s as Rick tries to make a huge impact on his career it all fades away into memory. Well portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, the two characters have various dealings with the troubles of Hollywood and it all eventually leads to an encounter with the evil Manson Family, on the night they are supposed to brutally kill actress Sharon Tate and others as it occurred in real history. Quentin Tarantino brings his signature filmmaking to this story and this time he takes a slow burn approach to telling the story. When I first saw the film, I thought that most of the scenes were pointless, but now that I think about it, it was all a huge buildup to the finale, which is where Tarantino goes over the top, as usual, in a good way. At first, I wasn’t a fan of how it ended, because like Inglorious Bastards, Tarantino changes history and makes it to where the perpetrators of the Tate-LaBianca are brutally murdered/hospitalized by Cliff Booth’s Dog and a flamethrower that Rick Dalton kept from a previous film, but after thinking about it, the story of Rick Dalton/Cliff Booth all builds up to their shining moment and I was then excited to think about how much that finale was earned and the film’s title alludes to it being an alternate history, “Once upon a Time….in Hollywood.” It’s Tarantino’s love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood and he does a damn good job of recreating that era through the production, cinematography, and costume design. From the all-star cast, to the epic finale, I felt this was a good start to the amount of films we got later on this year.
10. The Farewell
This was a great film this year about dealing with family and having to keep a secret that is too devastating to tell the family member involved. The whole film revolves around Billi, a Chinese-American woman (Awkwafina) who is informed by her parents that her paternal grandmother, Nai Nai, is dying of lung cancer. The parents travel to Changchun to be with Nai Nai and ask Billi to stay in the U.S., for the sole reason that Nai Nai has never been told by her family or her doctors that she only has a few months to live and that Billi could accidentally reveal the secret to Nai Nai. Billi goes against their wishes and travels over to Changchun to be with her grandmother even though she cannot reveal any sort of information about Nai Nai’s terminal illness. The whole family keeps the secret about Nai Nai’s illness by having one of their members get married and letting Nai Nai do all of the planning, it’s all so that they can be with her one last time and properly say goodbye. The whole concept of having to keep information from a family member is something that I relate to the most and watching Billi having to deceive her Nai Nai about certain things is heartbreaking and emotionally moving at the same time. What the film does best is being able to keep my attention with casual conversations throughout the film about certain topics, actually, almost all the movie is a series of casual conversations and all of it brings good performances from Awkwafina and the other cast members, especially the actress who plays Nai Nai. You can tell that the director, Lulu Wang, was committed to telling a wonderful story that has a lot of family drama and heart as it is very hard to deal with in real life, I’ve lived through this myself so I really do mean it when I say that I know what i’m talking about. Hopefully, you can too.
9. Knives Out
After The Last Jedi, Rian Johnson returned to his roots of writing/directing films that have very interesting concepts or twists on a certain film genre. With Knives Out, he takes the Whodunnit-genre to a whole new level. With an all-star cast of Daniel Craig, Christopher Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Ana De Armas, and Chris Evans, Knives Out is a very clever film that is really funny and has great levels of suspense and mystery. Ana De Armas is easily the most enjoyable character as the whole movie is told mostly through her point of view and it keeps you guessing on what’s really going on. I love that Rian Johnson isn’t afraid of doing what he does best even after the backlash he got after The Last Jedi. I can’t talk about this film without spoiling it so all I will say is that Knives Out was a good spin on the whodunnit genre that does what it’s supposed to do, keep you guessing throughout the entire film.
8. Avengers: Endgame
This was my anticipated event film of the year. After Infinity War, I was so excited to see what Endgame would conclude for this 26-film Infinity Saga, and I was happy to say that it exceeded all of my expectations. It brought the original Avengers back for one last mission of bringing those who were snapped away by Thanos at the end of Infinity War and for the first act, you see how much the snap affected the entire Avengers. By the second act, it becomes a huge ray of hope as the Avengers are given a chance to save everybody by using the Quantum Realm (Ant-Man series) to go back in time and obtain all of the Infinity Stones(They were destroyed by Thanos after he used them in Infinity War) to bring everyone back. The third and final act is one of the best showdowns that I’ve ever seen in such a long time, right up there with Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Endgame was exactly what it was, a climax to the 26-film Infinity Saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Does all of it work, no, but the stakes and climax were so epic that it exceeded my expectations in so many ways and it makes me glad to be a huge MCU fan. Infinity War was the better made film, but this film had so many epic moments that it was going to be in my top list no matter what criticisms arose afterwards from others. To summarize my thoughts, it was simply epic.
7. The Irishman
Returning to his roots of Mob films, Martin Scorsese brings back Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci into the Mob genre and adds one of the best mobster actors ever, Al Pacino, into a film that was clearly thought out well and was very well directed, as usual. The Irishman tells the story of Frank Sheeran(De Niro), a hitman for mobster Russell Bufalino(Pesci), and chief bodyguard for Jimmy Hoffa(Pacino) who gets involved with various power struggles between Hoffa and the mob and is witness to many of Hoffa’s dealings with various unions. Hoffa eventually becomes a huge problem for Bufalino and the mob as his ego and behavior rises to the point to where the mobster gives the order to make him disappear as he does in real life. What Scorsese does best is directing scenes that involve so much camerawork and snappy dialogue, that’s how Goodfellas and Casino are what they are as great films. Scorsese’s return to the mob genre is a huge welcome to 2019 as he is one of the best-known directors that knows how to make a mob film really good. All of the performances were really good, and it was great to see De Niro, Pesci, and Pacino act in a film together at last. Joe Pesci’s return to film was great decision and I am so glad to see him in this movie. Pesci’s performance is unique as he’s not playing the usual role of a loud gangster who is usually the tough guy, he’s actually calm and collected throughout the entire film and this might be my favorite performance of his, I especially love the scene where him and Pacino argue at the celebration party for Frank and it’s Pacino who’s the loud character and not Pesci. Pacino’s performance as Jimmy Hoffa was great as well, I don’t know the real history of Hoffa but after seeing Pacino’s performance, I’m going to definitely remember who Jimmy Hoffa was besides the fact that he was never found. The Irishman is film for all Scorsese fans and is somewhat a great reunion for the actors that knew Scorsese best, it’s that good.
6. Marriage Story
Marriage Story was one of the most powerful films of this year and it showed me a taste of how the divorce process can be for couples in a broken relationship. Starring Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, this film tells the story of a couple who get a divorce due to the wife having conflicting thoughts of being a small as her husband is a critically acclaimed theater director who thinks only about himself and his son, with the wife having starred in several of his own plays. Wanting a life of her own as an actress, she temporarily moves herself and their son over to Los Angeles and gets selected to be in a television pilot that is ordered to series, while the husband stays behind to continue work at his Theatre Company. When the husband travels over to LA to see his family, he is served his divorce papers and discovers that his soon to be former wife has elected to use a lawyer for their divorce even though they recently agreed to split peacefully and forgo lawyers. The film focuses on Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson as they both work hard to make this divorce work out and you see it go from bad to worse throughout the film. Adam Drivers’ character cares only about himself and likes to do things his own way, so when he is legally forced to be in L.A. and forced to change certain elements in his life, he is extremely pressured into making changes that he does not want to make at all. It all leads to uncomfortable moments that I could barely watch, and it was incredibly powerful in its story and representation of breaking off relationships and its painful truths. Both Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson give some of their best performances of their career and it is a film I really enjoyed for its drama and moments of conflicting thoughts. Like The Irishman, this film is available on Netflix, so I highly recommend seeing this film at least once.
5. Ford V Ferrari
I’ve never been a huge fan of racing movies but after seeing Ford V Ferrari, I’m starting to appreciate them more. Starring Matt Damon and Christian Bale, this film tells the story of Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles and their involvement in one of the biggest car brand battles between Henry Ford II and Enzo Ferrari along with their respective companies. In the film, which based on actual events. Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles are tasked by Ford to modify the Ford GT-40 MKII in order to do battle with Ferrari’s 330 P3 at the historic 24 Hours of Le Mans in France. Throughout the film, Shelby and Miles constantly bust heads with Ford executives as they do not see Miles as their ideal driver and refuse to let him drive it at Le Mans. Shelby is able to fend off the executives and eventually convince Henry Ford II to let Miles drive the GT-40 MK-II during the 1966 Le Mans after Miles wins the 1966 24 hours of Daytona. It’s an intense battle of mechanics and politics and it was one of the most entertaining films of this year. What I love most about the film is that they make the chemistry between Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby believable through Matt Damon and Christian Bale’s fantastic performances. James Mangold has proven to be a great director with how he directs action, drama, and suspense, and the way he handles the racing scenes make for some intense action. This is probably one of my favorite films that Mangold has directed and I look forward to seeing more from him.
4. Jojo Rabbit
Taika Watiti won me over with Thor: Ragnarok, Jojo Rabbit proved to me that he can make really good films that are not Marvel or Star Wars. Jojo Betzler is a young German boy who fantasizes about serving Adolf Hitler under Hitler Youth and has an imaginary friend in the form of Hitler, Taika Watiti. Although Jojo successfully joins the Hitler Youth in training, he is not very bright and is taken out of the army after he throws a German gernade and it bounces back at his feet and explodes, giving Jojo a facial scar and making him a huge joke in front of everyone, including his commanding officer, played by Sam Rockwell. With only imaginary Hitler and his mother, played by Scarlett Johannson, Jojo tries to constantly prove he can be a good Nazi soldier, especially when he finds that his Mother has been hiding a Jewish girl refugee in the walls of their house. From that point on, Jojo is tested and has to make adult decisions, mainly with what to do with the Jewish girl in his house even though he knows his Mother is responsible for keeping her hidden. This film is hilarious and also has a lot of heart. All of the performances in the film are really good, especially Roman Griffin Davis as Jojo, along with Scarlett Johannson as his mother, who is very supportive of him and tries to teach him right from wrong even though he is wanting to be a Nazi soldier. Taika Watiti knows how to balance comedy and drama, and though there are some silly moments, like with how the Nazis are portrayed, even though I think it is intentional since it’s a comedy film that satirizes the Nazi party. Really, how I best describe this film is a nice balance of comedy and drama. Again, this film has a lot of heart and I think most people will like this film.
3. Joker
Having already reviewed this, Joker is my favorite comic book film of 2019 as Todd Phillips reigns an origin story that takes a look at how a disturbed person could become the Clown Prince of Crime, The Joker. Through Joaquin Phoenix’s awesome portrayal of Arthur Fleck, Joker is a film that I think will be remembered for the huge amount of disturbing scenes and for how psychotic a person can become. It was criticized for being too violent and a wrongful portrayal of insanity, but I think it only made the audience want to see the film more. The amount of memorable scenes in this film are too many to count and they all involve Joaquin Phoenix and his absolute commitment to the role. By the end, I was both smiling and disturbed by what I saw, and I absolutely love it. Todd Phillips did a fantastic job with directing the cinematography and timing of this film, from the very beginning to the famous Joker stairs, this film is already being remembered for what it accomplished, a study of how a person could become the Joker.
2. The Lighthouse
This was my favorite art film of the year. The anticipation for this film was insane and it payed off for me in so many ways. From the performances of both Willem Defoe and Robert Pattinson, to the direction/commitment of Robert Eggers. The Lighthouse is a film that has to be viewed at least once. I already reviewed this, but again, almost everything that I want in a film was done correctly in The Lighthouse. See my review for more details, it’s a really good film.
1. Parasite
Thank you for sharing your insights. I look forward to your film reviews and value your input!