How do you juggle a Best of the Decade List, a hectic awards season, having a life and a best of 2019 list? You do one of those things late. So yes, it’s 2020 now, but the year isn’t over until the Oscars, which happens thankfully a lot earlier this year.
These are the 10 movies I couldn’t stop thinking about in 2019 and want to see again as soon as possible.
1. Parasite
The first time I saw “Parasite,” I was struck by the meticulous construction of its devilish con game and the cynical bite of its commentary on class inequality. The story felt like Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “Shoplifters” if it was told by Bong Joon-ho, a Korean family drama with a far bleaker and negative outlook of the world. The mid-film twist was jaw-dropping, and the ending was hypnotic. It was clear then this was the best movie of the year. The second time I saw it, the dupe of the gullible family was just the set up, an amusing game as juicy as a peach. What stood out were the more human moments mixed in with Bong’s stylized set pieces, like the nightmare of watching the protagonists’ home flooding because they live literally below the poverty line. And instead of the violent, bloody conclusion, the more powerful, lingering moment was “Parasite’s” touching coda and family reunion. Bong’s film isn’t a masterpiece because it’s so “metaphorical.” It’s a sobering story about how having a plan for the future can make all the difference in the world.
2. Marriage Story
“If we start from a place of reasonable and they start from a place of crazy, then when we settle, we’ll be somewhere between reasonable and crazy.” That’s the advice a lawyer played by Ray Liotta says to Adam Driver in “Marriage Story.” He’s laying things out in black and white, but Noah Baumbach’s film is anything but. “Marriage Story” is a nuanced love story about divorce with no easy answers, no sides to take and hard and honest realities that grow out of everyday life. The story is small in scope but the performances from Driver and Scarlett Johansson are monumental. They feel so lived-in, natural and candid, even as it’s clear Baumbach’s story is very written and very cinematic. If it doesn’t take sides, you certainly establish a perspective for a different point of view and a deep empathy for anyone who’s ever had to go through this.
3. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Painterly, lush, ravishing and tempestuous, Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” literally ignites about midway through the movie. A period romance of forbidden love between two women that’s set in the 18th Century, there’s a magnificent scene around a bonfire on a beach where a group of women have formed an enchanting choir. Their ethereal, haunting chanting and percussive clapping climaxes just as we see one of the protagonist’s dresses catch on fire, her visage burning beautifully before she collapses in the flames. Sciamma’s film is about preserving that intense, burning passion even as the world and patriarchy threaten to snuff it out.
4. Queen and Slim
A lot of us know what it feels like to be thrust into the political moment, to feel obligated to speak out and be the face of something bigger, as well as the reluctance that often comes with doing so. “Queen & Slim” grapples with that modern dilemma beautifully, telling a romantic Americana odyssey of two young African Americans who are just trying to survive, while in the periphery, they’ve become the unwilling face of the racial divide in the country. Jodie Turner Smith is full of conviction and bravery and is the perfect foil to the sad, spiritual eyes from Daniel Kaluuya, and together they help elevate the sweeping, grand emotions director Melina Matsoukas and writer Lena Waithe strive for in every moment.
5. Ad Astra
I don’t think I’m alone in sometimes finding James Gray’s movies a little sleepy, so I was skeptical of his ruminative space adventure. “Ad Astra” manages to be a sobering, cynical and smart story of grief, loneliness, fatherhood and discovery. But it also has a high-speed shoot out with pirates on the moon and a surprise attack from a feral, mutant space baboon. While he flashes his laconic, movie star charisma in “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” Brad Pitt’s performance here mines the incredible depths of feeling inside his otherwise pristine façade.
6. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
On my first viewing of Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” it took me until the film’s very end to understand what the point of this nostalgia trip was. It felt like a filmed podcast to a person that never existed. But seeing it again was like an ode that gave new life and an extra chapter for Sharon Tate and actors like Rick Dalton, people who have now only existed as imperfect stereotypes in our memory. It was clear the tender love and care Tarantino put into every city street, neon sign, vintage car and movie marquee of ‘60s Los Angeles, going above and beyond his usual reference-heavy tendencies. “OUATIH” is a funny, immersive, dazzling film about memory, legacy and cherishing the past that might be among Tarantino’s best.
7. A Hidden Life
“A Hidden Life” feels like the best throwback yet to the weightless, spiritual love and universal emotion of his masterpiece from this decade “The Tree of Life,” but it also is easily the most Trumpian that Malick will ever get. The film is about a conscientious objector in WWII Austria, and he’s constantly locked in the moral dilemma of staying quiet, submissive and ultimately serving family, country and the church, or staying true to his own morals and principles. “Your sacrifice will benefit no one,” he’s told, but Malick’s gorgeous vistas and free-flowing cinematography elevate this fight against evil to a magnificent, emotional and heartbreaking scale.
8. I Lost My Body
Is it too obvious to say this movie grabs you? “I Lost My Body” isn’t the strangest film of the year, but the premise is the most peculiar and endlessly fascinating. It’s an animated movie about a severed hand trying to find its way back to its human body host. It moves like a little hermit crab, violently fighting rats and pigeons and scurrying through subway tracks in an effort to survive. And director Jeremy Clapin provides an opportunity to see the world from a remarkable point of view, mapping out entire lives through the things we felt for the first time, the cuts we’ve taken or even the boogers we’ve picked. But stitched in between that fantasy is a flashback to the romantic, beautiful and tragic story of a lonely teen that all builds to how he lost that hand in the first place. It’s a human story with a handmade quality about how the world grasps you by the lapel and always takes you by surprise.
9. Us
Jordan Peele’s “Us” didn’t have the lingering Obama-era resonance that “Get Out” did, but it still proved to be an inventive, creepy and genre-bending entertainment. Peele’s screenplay is packed with subtle ideas about the duality of human nature and questions about whether we have control over our own lives. But even separated from those larger themes, you can still enjoy those iconic red jump suits and brass scissors or Lupita Nyongo’s crazed and croaking dual performance.
10. Leaving Neverland
I know what you’re thinking. Why do I need to endure a depressing, 4-hour documentary about sexual assault accusations against Michael Jackson, one of the most beloved pop cultural figures in history? Oprah spelled it out in the first few seconds of a special she did with accusers Wade Robson and James Safechuck and director Dan Reed, which is also essential TV. She said that Reed managed to convey in four hours what she couldn’t in hundreds of episodes of her show, that sexual assault is a seduction. It’s never as black and white as it seems. “Leaving Neverland” is less about Jackson and more about the engrossing stories of Robson and Safechuck and the ripple effects of what it does to their families. It maps out what sexual assault looks like divorced from the bigger ideas of fame, celebrity and power or any larger cultural implications of that Jackson guy. It’s one of the most important movies of the year.
Special Jury Prize: “I Am Easy to Find,” dir. Mike Mills for The National, and “ANIMA,” dir. Paul Thomas Anderson for Thom Yorke
And here’s 11-35, ranked:
- A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
- Apollo 11
- Little Women
- 1917
- The Report
- The Lighthouse
- Toy Story 4
- Diego Maradona
- High Flying Bird
- Dolemite Is My Name
- Bombshell
- Frozen II
- Rocketman
- The Nightingale
- The Farewell
- The Irishman
- Knives Out
- Queen of Hearts
- The Two Popes
- Between Two Ferns: The Movie
- The Peanut Butter Falcon
- The Laundromat
- Hail Satan?
- Spider
- Ford v Ferrari
10 Movies I Still Need to See: “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” “Dark Waters,” “Pain and Glory,” “High Life,” “The Souvenir,” “Her Smell,” “Honey Boy,” “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” “Waves,” “Ready or Not”