My 10 favorite movies of 2019
Looks back on what his year-end intro was last year and the previous year:
Well, 2018 was a pretty terrible year in the world, and, as Top 10 lists go, I can't say I feel as strongly about the following batch as those of previous years.
But 1. At this point let’s praise anything that makes us feel better and 2. In the grand scheme, whether or not this year’s movies were quite as good as any other year’s movies isn’t anywhere near the top of the list of things people should care about right now.
Actually, while both of those points remain true in 2019, I feel much stronger about this batch than the last couple years. Things are looking up! Let’s dive in:
Annapurna
10. “Booksmart”
I suppose you can’t really cast Jonah Hill’s sister in a lead role and then complain about being dubbed a female version of “Superbad.” Yet “Booksmart” both earns the comparison (which is a compliment) and breaks free on its own with phenomenal lead performances from Beanie Feldstein and Katilyn Dever, killer music cues (Jurassic 5!) and a moving, modern view of teenage life that’s both very funny and draped in kindness and vulnerability. It’s deceptively hard to deliver a movie about the end of high school that so winningly captures people as multifaceted and flawed, to say nothing of an always-valuable consideration of priorities and how serious academics and fun can co-exist pre-college. In fact, Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut has so much personality you almost wish it took a second to recognize a couple plot elements and jokes that don’t land. Otherwise: Consider high expectations met and joy offered in a sizable dose.
Handout
9. "Love, Antosha"
Movie stars call their moms. They can get diseases. They can die in tragic accidents. Not that "Love, Antosha" feels like a documentary about a movie star. It's about a person who happened to be a natural acting talent and spent most of his devastatingly short 27 years showing how much curiosity and creativity he had to give. Director Garret Price never includes, say, an entertainment reporter who talks about what Anton Yelchin's career might have become. The movie is not framed by his death at all -- for most of "Love, Antosha," we see Yelchin as a kid who loved making and learning about movies, then as a young professional who Anthony Hopkins and Frank Langella saw as a respected colleague and later as a rising star who seemed to maximize his output at least partially because of the life expectancy that came with his cystic fibrosis diagnosis. Interviews with Yelchin's parents, friends and co-stars create a portrait of an incredibly generous and attentive person. Not perfect, but undeniably a loving son and friend and uniformly admired scene partner and star. His 2016 death after his Jeep Grand Cherokee pinned him against a fence at his home would almost feel like a shocking twist if you didn't know about it already, the movie treating the incident as unexpected and shocking as it actually was. In his too-short career, Yelchin starred in several big movies (the "Star Trek" franchise, a "Terminator" sequel) and several daring movies not enough people have seen ("The Beaver," "Green Room," "Alpha Dog"). Everyone should see this wonderful, heartbreaking tribute to him.
A24
8. “Uncut Gems”
There isn’t an actor who has upset me more than Adam Sandler. Such a high percentage of his work is inexcusable, insulting garbage, and yet every decade he shows unexpected dramatic chops so we still have to take him seriously. Of course I’m a big fan of “Punch-Drunk Love,” “The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)” is terrific and “Funny People” has its moments. But I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that comedy’s lowest common denominator achieves something very high in “Uncut Gems,” a 130-minute anxiety attack of a character study of a descent into self-induced destruction. This is hardly the first depiction of a gambling addict or a person who might be kind of OK if not for his inability to get out of his own way. But directors/co-writers Josh and Benny Safdie elevate the continuous chase of “Good Time” into a menacing essay on plunging value, with wins adding up to little when the person playing observes only chaos around them. Julia Fox is extraordinary in her debut role as Howard’s (Sandler) mistress, Kevin Garnett is really good as himself (seriously) and the entire film gets a strange, contagious pulse from Daniel Lopatin’s score. Not sure how eager I’ll be to watch it again, but consider me hooked.
Music Box
7. “Give Me Liberty”
In case you weren’t already stressed enough (from “Uncut Gems” or the world at large), “Give Me Liberty” can help with that. Vic (Chris Galust) works as a van driver transporting people with disabilities to appointments and does a rather terrible job on an incredibly hectic day as he also has to escort his family members to a funeral. An original, offbeat work of exhilarating chaos, “Give Me Liberty” simultaneously functions as excellent visibility for people with disabilities and recognition of the daily challenges that poke holes in the American dream. Vic’s family came over from Russia and appreciate the freedoms provided in the U.S., but that does not mean there is automatically a ton of opportunity or stability. “Give Me Liberty” cross-references strength and dignity with powerlessness, with perpetual uncertainty and a really big heart on the side. Imagine if director/co-writer Kirill Mikhanovsky did anything to address current relations between the two countries as well. Oy.
IFC
6. “Greener Grass”
Hypnotically bizarre, "Greener Grass" is "Pleasantville" bent at the angle of a sports injury you almost can't bear to watch. What begins as a satire of politeness cracks and cracks until it's splintered into a society undermined by selfishness and hidden behind the facade of parenthood as status symbol. This is an exercise in tonal daring from co-stars/co-writers/co-directors Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe, who refuse to make their dissections safe or easy. A murdered yoga teacher is fondly remembered for being an ex-girlfriend; Jill (DeBoer) shines about the horse skeleton found buried in her yard; a teacher named Miss Human (D'Arcy Carden of "The Good Place") teaches kids about the level-up aspirations of explorers to the West and asks them to imagine how their loved ones would die while migrating cross-country. This movie is delicious discomfort for anyone who sees fake smiles and small talk as candy-colored torture.
Columbia
5. "Little Women"
Full disclosure: I've previously never seen or read this. I know, I know. So add whatever grains of salt you will as I say that writer-director Greta Gerwig's adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel (so I've heard) is sharp, smart, timely and incredibly easy to recommend. As the March sisters (played marvelously by Saoirse Ronan and Florence Pugh, well by Emma Watson and hold on I have to look up who played Beth because the performance and character are nothing) find their places in the world as kids and young adults, "Little Women" still has plenty to say about men and women, youth and age, choices and norms, love and ambition and anger and time. Gerwig's script crackles and her direction astonishes (far more than "Lady Bird," which I thought was merely good); if you think this sort of thing is stuffy or slow, you're just wrong. Nods to Laura Dern (as Marmee) and Timothee Chalamet (as Laurie) too. Old book, old costumes, whatever. Passionate, funny and distinctive, this could be a new feminist classic.
NEON
4. “Honeyland”
You may not think a documentary about what it takes to successfully gather honey from bees in Macedonia could be described as breathtaking or unforgettable. Give this stunner, the feature debut from filmmakers Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov, just a few minutes and I’d be more surprised if you didn’t marvel at the footage than if you couldn’t wait to see what came next. Not that this thing, uh, flies quickly; with remarkable presence and observation, the gorgeously shot “Honeyland” exists in the reality of Hatidze Muratova, a woman in her mid-50s who cares for her ailing, 85-year-old mother, gathers honey to sell at the market and not a whole lot else. Late-night activities include watching a fire and eating a banana. Yet only when a family moves nearby and threatens to harm her bees with their own reckless honey-gathering techniques does the predicament seem troubling to Hatidze, who befriends one of the family’s sons and teaches him the proper methods she tried to pass along to the boy’s father. If you want a documentary to bring you into a place you’d never otherwise see and tell a story that’s incredibly specific but also universal about humanity and nature, here you go.
NEON
3. “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”
How powerful our moments, how lingering our memories. A tremendously intimate, gradual burn of forbidden love, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” manages to be restrained yet efficient, breathless and never boring. Marianne (Noemie Merlant, assumedly Emma Watson in a hypothetical remake) is a painter hired to secretly capture Eloise (Adele Haenel, or Amber Heard maybe) before Eloise participates in an arranged marriage for which she definitely was not consulted. Set in 1760, this French drama from writer-director Celine Sciamma (the fantastic “Girlhood”) is far less graphic than “Blue is the Warmest Color” but likewise articulates the spark of something surprising between two women, even if this relationship’s fate is more comparable to “Call Me By Your Name” than “Blue.” There’s also plenty to discuss regarding details about the patriarchy and abortion and how blatantly not exclusive to the period they are. Some of the year’s most stunning imagery accompanies performances that move in tandem toward something undeniably palpable and complicated, which seems easy to achieve and really isn’t. There’s so much possibility and built-in sadness here, and the movie’s a beautiful sting.
Sony
2. “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood”
I’m extremely not a Quentin Tarantino person -- I often find his self-indulgence exhausting, and his command of language hardly enough to compensate for a redundant and queasy fixation on revenge served extra gruesome. So no one’s more surprised than I am to say that “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” might be the filmmaker’s most precise examination of the relationship between art and reality, and the violence each likes to blame on the other. This is Tarantino at his most confident yet also ruminative, the elongated-yet-never-boring cinematic flair as casual as Cliff Booth’s (an exceptional Brad Pitt) Hawaiian shirt, the notions of permanence funny, thought-provoking and bittersweet. The shot of Booth pointing his fake-gun fingers at an intruder holding a real gun says it all. Yet it’s just one of countless moments to savor, as Tarantino is typically entranced by the past but this time seems newly attuned to the alienation of macho myths (through the lens of actor Rick Dalton’s dwindling star, captured wink-free by a great Leonardo DiCaprio). At a time when America has been overtaken by vulnerable men desperately fighting against obsolescence at any cost, “OUATIH” is slyly cutting entertainment, breezy and fun and a sharp critique of how humans grasp at relevance, one social interaction or trigger-pull at a time.
Netflix
1. “Marriage Story”
It would have been so easy for writer-director Noah Baumbach to lean on flashbacks. To think that we need to see the former, happier days of Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) to fully grasp their collapsing relationship. But he doesn’t, not even once. These characters are so well-drawn, and the performances are so extraordinary (Driver’s is legit, capital-C Classic), that the entire movie balances on the full reality of people as they exist now as individuals and in their loving, crumbling couplehood. While the two attempt to execute an amicable divorce and fall into a hole of legal input (Laura Dern, Ray Liotta and Alan Alda are all great as lawyers of varying priorities) and battle over their 8-year-old son, Baumbach, replacing the acidity of “The Squid and the Whale” with overwhelming generosity and perceptiveness, achieves the extremely rare feat of a movie that both tickles and destroys. Go in knowing as little as possible and be blown away by a few sequences in particular and the entire, shattering thing, which crystallizes all the ways Charlie and Nicole work and don’t and presents lives on a spectrum of time, priority, unity and misunderstanding. At times it seems like the pair has something they could save; at others the nerves practically leap through their clothes. Put “Marriage Story” on that short list of movies that contain plenty of agony yet maintain hope and make you want to see it again the second it ends. Essential.
Order “Zack Morris Lied 329 Times! Reassessing every ridiculous episode of ‘Saved by the Bell’ … with stats” (featuring interviews with 22 cast members, plus the co-founder of Saved by the Max and the creator of “Zack Morris is Trash”)