Okay, it’s April. It’s ******* April. Let’s bring this thing home. Best 2019 movies I saw in 2019. Let’s do this.
Best 2019 Films I Saw in 2019
Honorable Mentions
It goes down very familiar paths, but the smartness of the writing and the performances make the emotions hit home anyway.
John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
Well, carnage, non-stop carnage actually for most of the running time of this film, though the film has plenty of artistry to go around and plenty of great performances.
Thoughtful, surprising and great entertainment; it wants the uncertainty of a psychological thriller and the integrity of an issue movie and somehow manages to pull them both off to near perfection.
Shazam delivers entertainment in a classic style formula: two or three chuckles to every tear; a belly laugh for every shiver. It’s good, old-fashioned fun.
One of the smartest movies the MCU has given us to date and one of the few that comments in a really powerful way on the pertinent issues of the time. And it doesn’t skimp on the entertainment either.
Top Ten
A genuine masterpiece, a movie with the soul of an indie and the trappings of a blockbuster, a character study and exploration of isolation with some stunning visuals and a cosmic backdrop.
This movie feels as epic as it should and that’s really saying something. And I expect it to unfold more and more, get better and better with each rewatch. Name a better twenty-second film in a franchise.
This feels like what it is, a genuine passion project where everyone was having a good time making a very particular, and pretty risky, movie. And it paid off.
Eggers is a true visionary and he has the courage to go wherever that vision takes him to dazzling and breath-taking effect. The Lighthouse is cinema right out there on the edge of the world.
It requires a cast that is game for anything and it puts them through the paces in a really brutal way . . . a rough, harrowing film that makes you really feel the characters’ exhaustion and mental imbalance.
Much of the movie has been spent in reflection . . . we see the power of memory to inspire as well as to haunt, to refresh as well as cripple and while this is a very sad movie, it isn’t hopeless.
Has a lot of really serious social points to make and it does so with, quite often, the force of a stinging slap to the face, but it doesn’t feel overdone or preachy, just forceful and incisive.
It delivers a lot of dark comedy, a lot of shocking violence, a lot of suspense and, ultimately, it’s both a satire on, and an explosion of rage toward, the ultra-rich and the cloistered worlds they live in.
Gripping and consistently compelling film that never really pauses for breath, filmmaking on a tightrope. It’s not what one traditionally calls an “epic,” but it’s a spectacle for sure.
Us isn’t a movie you should let anyone explain to you. It’s all there on the screen in Peele’s messy, weird-ass screenplay . . . the power of metaphor and emotional symbolism paper over plot-holes.