Top 20 Films Of 2019: Part 1
Another year, another top 20 list coming out way too late, we’re already into the new decade and I’m still looking back. No matter though, 2019 might have started slow for me but over the last few months it’s picked up dramatically and seen a few surprises pop up here and there, none more so than Netflix who have a number of films on this list.
First up of course, the Honourable Mentions;
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood – What it lacked in narrative focus it made up for in Tarantino’s love letter to the Golden Age of Hollywood and his examination of has-been actors with Rick Dalton and Cliff Booth. Plus the funniest scene involving a dog food tin all year.
The King – Bringing in one of the year’s best performances, Chalamet’s role as the reluctant king, slowly corrupted by the whims and wars that surround him was a morality tale that stuck with me longer than I thought it would.
Spider-Man: Far From Home – Lacking the shock factor of Homecoming’s Vulture reveal, this post-Endgame outing made up for it with a European Vacation style superhero flick giving Peter a new mantle to figure out and making Mysterio work in the MCU canon with very impressive results.
Hail Satan? – A documentary I’ve had my eye on for a while, this examination of the Satanic Temple and it’s rise for rebellious activists to full-on political movement had a lot to say about hypocrisy in the American Government, whilst also looking into whether the Temple has lost something in itself by embracing the politics it’s standing against.
How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World – This was a hard one to drop off the list given my love of the trilogy. This final chapter of Hiccup and Toothless didn’t have the emotional weight of the 2nd film but gave them their best villain and closed off their story with a pitch-perfect ending, easily putting it into the best animated trilogy since Toy Story.
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20: Marriage Story
Arguably the best acted film of the year, this semi-autobiographical story of Charlie and Nicole going through a divorce which gets uglier and uglier the more time passes is a hard watch but necessary to understand just how two people who once loved each other can turn to such venomous hatred. From blaming each other to blaming themselves and back again, this anti-love story manages to make you grieve for a relationship you’ve only caught the end of and leaves you bittersweet and saddened by its closing moments. Dern might have gotten all the awards attention for her role as the slyly evil lawyer but in truth it’s Driver and Johansson as the couple who deserve the praise for carrying this heavy of a film without resorting to melodrama.
19: Knives Out
As so eloquently described by it’s Kentucky Fried lead, the story of Knives Out appearing to be a donut with a hole in the middle, but the closer you look at the hoe you realise it’s another donut with yet another hole. Turning the murder mystery film on its head with an early reveal, Knives Out allows itself to be re-established as an entirely new film, finding comedy within it’s attempts to cover up the crime, all while the pletheora of rich assholes in the Thromby family blame each other trying to out-asshole the other. It’s a fresh take on the genre and gives me hope on what they’ll do next.
18: Parasite
Having already made history being the first non-English film to win Best Picture, I went into Parasite with high hopes. I think I might need to see it again to get past the language barrier but I liked what I saw. Part comedy, part heist film, part thiller, Bon Joon Ho’s examination of the wealth gap in South Korea carried a lot of layers and a lot of surprises, a world where something as minuet as the weather can be a nuisance to one family but devastating for another. I can’t say much without treading on the film’s big surprises but understand that while not the year’s best film, it does deserve the high-praise for juggling so many balls in the air.
17: Uncut Gems
The ‘Adam Sandler Can Act’ movie as it might come to be known, Uncut Gems gives Sandler arguably his most deplorable character to date, being a gambling addicted deadbeat cheating on his wife, and yet somehow manages to make you root for him. The high-energy direction from the Safdie Brothers coupled with Sandler’s performances nails the destructive power of gambling addiction and sets it all up to give you an anxiety attack waiting to see if Sandler can walk away with a win. It’s frantic and unnerving but it’s powerful.
16: Rocketman
The movie I wanted Bohemian Rhapsody to be, Rocketman charts the life of Elton John with all the drugs, sex, swearing and musical numbers you can handle, this is a fantasy life and it plays out as one, always with an undercurrent of desperation and pain even in its most colourful moments. And of course all the praise in the world to Taron Egerton for completing his Elton Trilogy, playing him as both the charismatic stage performer and the suicidal musician and giving a warts and all performance that sells the film as a genuinely great biopic.
15: The Nightingale
Jennifer’s Kent’s follow-up to The Babadook is a film I’ve wanted to see for months, and now that I have I’ll happily never see it again. Kent expertely captures the brutality of the British colonozisation of Australia, filling the film with rape, murder and racism as every character is fuelled by a seething anger that blinds them to others. This is an ugly fucking world with any little piece of kindness can break you because it’s so unexpected, but Kent finds that power to hold onto any little piece of hope because there’s little else to be seen. Easily one of the most brutal films I’ve ever seen and one I will not be forgetting about anytime soon.
14: Dolemite Is My Name
It has been far too long since we’ve had a good Eddie Murphy vehicle, but damn did we get it in spades here, the true story of how Ruby Ray Moore became a comedy sensation and made his first movie without actually having the talent or knowledge to actually make a movie. It’s a poignant and hilarious look at what happens when people put their hearts and souls into something that might not be any good but they love it all the same and Murphy’s lead role is exactly the type of bravado and charisma needed to make a character like Dolemite work as well as he does.
13: Ready Or Not
I went into Ready Or Not expecting a bloody good time, what I got was a surprisingly well-written horror film, focussing on a family of murderers and their hunt for their newest bride. At times the film is hilarious with how insanely bloody it can get, at others its building on the characters so as to give them another depth to not just be mindless killers. And at the centre of it all, Samara Weaving as the White Wedding Bad-Ass, being put through the ringer and wondering just how fucked-up these rich folks are. I had an absolute blast with this one and can’t wait to add it to my Halloween roster.
12: Crawl
Crawl is the type of movie that works as well as it does because it takes a simple concept an executes it brilliantly. On the surface you have a dad and daughter trapped in their home during a hurricane with Gators surrounding them, but beneath that you have something great, the relationship with Dave and Haley (played with great chemistry between Barry Pepper and an amazing Kaya Scodelario) is sarcastic and distant but loving and understanding, the Gators are used very well and give a lot of tension as well as one really good jump-scare early on and the whole thing has this seriousness about it that never falls into the realm of cheesiness, this is a genuine horror movie and it plays out like one.
11: Godzilla: King Of The Monsters
Out of all the films on this first list, Godzilla was the one I wanted to keep in my top 10 the most. Yes it’s got a sub-par human story, yes the characters are all clichéd and yes it’s a CGI headache. And do I care? Do I fuck, I wanted to see as much Godzilla action as I could get and I got that, this is so much fucking fun and Ghidora is easily up there as one of my favourite CGI creations to date with his brutality and immense size making him a sight to behold. It’s dumb, it’s silly and it’s fucking great.