The decade of the 2010s ended with a strong crop of movies in 2019. Creating a top ten list is always arbitrary as “best” and “favorite” are often two very different criteria. Still, it serves as a sort of fingerprint for the person creating the list as, despite some similarities, rarely are any two lists identical.
I do want to first pay respect to several movies that didn’t quite crack my top ten. In no particular order, there’s The Farewell about a Chinese family keeping a fatal diagnosis a secret from the grandmother who received it. Awkwafina won a Golden Globe for her performance as the granddaughter trying to make sense of it all. A solid show, but one that just faded from my memory too quickly.
Marriage Story is up for several Academy Awards and deservedly so. The acting and writing are top notch. It’s just a small story and nothing particularly groundbreaking for me.
The Peanut Butter Falcon shows the delightful friendship between a ne’er-do-well (Shia LaBeouf) on the run and a young man with Down syndrome who is obsessed with professional wrestling. Fun and heartwarming without getting too sappy.
Pain and Glory was the last film I watched before finalizing my list. It didn’t make the cut, but I’m glad I got around to seeing it. Antonio Banderas is nominated for an Oscar for his powerful yet understated performance as a film director past his prime reflecting back on his life.
I almost put Judy in my top ten, but as it’s similar enough to a movie that did make it, I decided to put it here instead. Renee Zellweger is the favorite to win the Oscar for her portrayal of Judy Garland near the end of her short life. It’s easy to forget that behind the tabloid version of a star is a real person who may have been exploited all her life.
Rocketman is okay, but has one of my favorite moments from any movie this year. Elton John has booked his first show in the U.S. at a club in Los Angeles. He begins playing “Crocodile Rock” which starts as a sort of ballad before exploding into the chorus. The crowd, who was mostly on board already, loses their collective mind and a star is born in an instant.
A French movie called I Lost My Body is available on Netflix and is nominated for best animated film at the Oscars this year. What seems absurd at first (a dismembered hand wanders around Paris) actually tells a touching tale of a young man trying to find a purpose in life. The story alternates between the hand by itself and the weeks leading up to the incident that separated the hand from the boy’s body. Not for everyone, but a really good film.
Finally, the film that was basically a coin toss away from swapping with my #10 choice is Dolemite is My Name, also available on Netflix. Eddie Murphy stars as Rudy Ray Moore, a record store employee coming to grips with the idea that he missed his chance to make it big in the entertainment industry. In an epiphany inspired by tales from the local homeless population, Rudy creates the alter-ego Dolemite and goes viral—at least the 1970s version of viral. Raunchy comedy albums turn into a road show and, eventually, a feature film. An impossible story which, I didn’t realize until after the fact, actually happened! I was peripherally aware of Dolemite films from the 70s, but had no idea this was in essence a biopic. The film serves as a great piece of cultural history.
Counting down my top ten of 2019:
10. Blinded by the Light
The premise of this one might seem a little silly—a Pakistani kid in 1980s Great Britain becomes obsessed with Bruce Springsteen—but the earnest performance by Viveik Kalra as Javed completely sells it. He feels like a British teen and is embarrassed by his Pakistani parents, but the white British kids view him as an outsider. He wants to write, but his parents don’t see a future in it. Torn in a million directions, it’s only when a Sikh friend introduces him to the music of Bruce Springsteen that he finally feels like he’s not alone, that someone understands what he’s going through. Directed by Gurinder Chadha who, most notably, made Bend It Like Beckham.
9. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
If I were a betting man, I’d tell you to put some money down on Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails, the respective director and star of The Last Black Man in San Francisco (who also collaborated on crafting the story). This is the first feature length film for both of them and the potential star power is there. Fails is mesmerizing as a young man obsessed with his childhood home in a now wealthy neighborhood of San Francisco. The film never comes right out and says it, but we learn it was a house inherited from his grandfather that the family was unable to afford after a certain point and forced to leave. Fails can’t stand to see how little the current occupants care for the house and he volunteers to paint it and take care of the garden—without the owners consent. That’s essentially the core of the story, but it calls to attention a problem occurring all across the United States—people (mostly minorities) getting priced out of neighborhoods they used to live in. The film is artistically shot without feeling too full of itself or heavy-handed with its themes. There are no real heroes or villains here and even Fails’s character is far from innocent in his idealism.
8. Honey Boy
This one caught me off guard. I hadn’t initially planned on seeing it, but the reviews were strong enough I had to give it a chance. Essentially, it’s an extremely personal performance art piece by Shia LaBeouf based on his own life. He wrote the script and plays the proxy for his own dad in the film. I’d largely dismissed LaBeouf as just another spoiled child star, but it’s hard not to both pity and respect him after seeing his version of his life. He was thrust into the spotlight by an abuse loser of a father who sees his son’s success as his own ticket to a better life. The story shows two parallel timelines: one with a 12-year-old Otis (the proxy for Shia) living in a sleazy hotel with his dad and working on a TV show, the other with Otis in his early 20s and entering rehab for alcohol abuse. Like Judy illustrates with Judy Garland, it’s a heartbreaking reminder of how children can be exploited by those who are trusted to have their bests interests in mind, but all too often fail them instead.
7. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
In lesser hands, this would have been little more than a sappy Lifetime movie, but director Marielle Heller (coming just a year after her success with last year’s Can You Ever Forgive Me?) keeps it nuanced and subtle enough to earn every tear. Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers is simply a supporting role in the life of the cynical journalist assigned to interview him. Based loosely on actual events, the film follows the journalist’s growth as he learns to forgive and see the good in people and himself… yeah, I know, it sounds cheesy, but it works. Great show.
6. 1917
Normally, I’m not won over by big spectacle movies with simplistic plots and characters. I had heard going in about this film being done as one continuous shot and have to say it worked fantastically. Obviously, it wasn’t one “take,” but stitched together with creative filming and editing to make it appear as one shot following our two protagonists as they race to get a message to the front lines in the first World War. Simple though the story is, the filmmaking is so immersive it’s hard not to get emotionally invested in the characters. So while some will roll their eyes if this “just another war movie” wins best picture at the Oscars, I’d find it hard to complain if that ends up being the outcome.
5. Little Women
More than any other movie this year, this one kept coming back into my mind. It started out as only an honorable mention, but kept creeping its way up the more I thought about it. I absolutely loved the world, the characters, and nearly everything about it. A five-hour film would have been just fine as I didn’t want to leave their world. My only hesitation in ranking it higher came from the disorientation I felt with the non-chronological story. While I love a good out-of-order story, the actors here all looked so similar, I struggled to tell when we were in the “present” and when we were seven years earlier. And, then, so much time passes in the past timeline, did it catch up to the present? I’m still confused. But, I decided that’s more my issue than the film’s. I have no doubt this will be one to enjoy rewatching for years to come.
4. Knives Out
This in-your-face murder mystery doesn’t shy away from all the cliches of the genre. In fact, it wears them like a badge of honor as it delivers something original. The audience discovers “who did it” relatively early on, though whether not a murder even took place continues to be subject to debate.
On the surface, an elderly mystery writer has committed suicide and his family awaits to see what his final will and testament has in store for them. An anonymous party, however, has hired a private investigator to look deeper into the matter, suspecting foul play. The cast of eccentric family members are each given a potential reason as to why they might have wanted to send their patriarch to an early grave. Lots of fun and I look forward to watching it a second time.
3. Parasite
This film is all about people who aren’t whom they seem to be. We, as the audience, think we’re in on it at first as we follow a down-on-their-luck family lying their way into various jobs working for a wealthy family, all while pretending not to know each other. Then, halfway through, we realize the movie itself isn’t what it appears to be. What began as a lighthearted tale of wondering whether or not our charming scamps would be discovered, turns on a dime into a tense thriller. The brilliance of it is that it works seamlessly. Thematically the film deals with (if perhaps a bit heavy-handedly) the dichotomy of rich vs poor, and whether or not people get what they deserve. There’s plenty of buzz that this could become the first ever foreign language film to win the Oscar for best picture. I could live with that.
2. JoJo Rabbit
I seriously considered putting this at my number one spot for the sheer emotional impact it had on me. Even in the parking lot afterward I was still alternating between laughing out loud and holding back tears. It’s audacious and original and in lesser hands might have fallen flat on its face. It does begin, essentially, as a comedy about Hitler youth after all. JoJo is a ten-year-old German boy who eagerly wants to contribute to the Nazi war effort. He knows nothing but the propaganda he’s been fed his whole life. Simplified through his childhood lens, the Germans are the good guys, led by the wonderful Adolph Hitler, and Jews are inhuman monsters like those one might find under his bed at night. We even see his imaginary friend—a kind version of Hitler whom JoJo has created from all the good things he’s heard about the fuehrer.
Despite his best his best efforts, JoJo finds he’s too kind hearted to fight against those he’s told are his enemies. He finds cruelty appalling and earns his nickname JoJo Rabbit when he refuses to kill a rabbit at a Hitler youth camp.
His worldview is challenged when he discovers a teenage Jewish girl hidden in the walls of his home. She doesn’t even have horns!
You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’s something you’ve never seen before. What’s not to love?
1. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
I’ve been a fan of Quentin Tarantino since watching Pulp Fiction in the theater during high school. I was confused, but I’d never seen anything like it. I wasn’t yet the self-styled movie expert I pretend to be today, but still recognized a bold new filmmaker. Since then he’s probably only had about a 50% hit rate with me, but even his misses aren’t true misses. It’s more like I love half of his films and the other half are just okay. Tarantino’s films have the reputation of stark violence laced with clever dialogue, all tinged with a healthy dose of adrenaline. His ability to build tension in a scene is unmatched.
I wasn’t sure what to expect with Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, but I’d argue it is both the most and least “Tarantino” movie to date. The dialogue is there from the beginning, but the tension builds far slower than anything he’s previously done. The characters get a chance to breathe and live in the beautiful world of 1969 Hollywood that Tarantino has recreated for us.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays a TV Western star who worries he is already past his prime as he struggles to keep his insecurities hidden from the pubic. Brad Pitt is his longtime stunt double, personal assistant, and best friend. The power dynamic is clear—Pitt’s character is essentially a servant, but he has no ego about it and just enjoys his life.
In the background of these two, we follow a young Sharon Tate, played by Margo Robbie. She’s an up-and-coming actress married to the hot shot director Roman Polanski. The film definitely plays with the audience’s expectations and knowledge of Tate’s real life murder at the hands of Charles Manson’s minions. The character of Manson even makes a brief appearance and Pitt winds up visiting the ranch where his minions are all staying.
I’ll dance around the spoilers here and address the criticism that Tarantino disrespects the pain of the real life figures at play here. The title of the film itself suggests that we’re in a fairy tale here and the version of Tate we are given is every bit the princess—kind and innocent. In his fairy tale, Tarantino gives us a glimpse at a world that might have been, with flawed heroes who fight to do the right thing and stand up to evil.
This was the most fun I had at the movies this year and Tarantino’s best film since Inglourious Basterds. Supposedly he only plans on making one more film. Regardless, he’s an all-time master and will be hard-pressed to go out on a higher note than this love letter to his beloved Hollywood.