Sunday 5 January 2020

Top 20 Best Films Of 2019


I’ve gotten into some of the prevailing themes that tie a lot of 2019’s cinematic releases together over the course of these lists. The overwhelming sense of disappointment, the harbingers of what could be even worse movies to come out in the new decade, the inevitable efforts that manage to defy just how much of a letdown the year turned out; that kind of thing. But the main thing I got out of 2019 was that it was the end of the decade that made me the critic I am today.

It has been a wild ride these last ten years, and not only has this blog gone through some major changes in that time in regards to format and length (why I ever thought a 1000-word minimum for my reviews was a good idea is beyond me; I blame Principal Vernon), it has exposed me to films that have helped to shape and give form to my perspective of the entire world. And man, did 2019 give me a lot to think about in that regard, to the point where it might hold some of the most personally formative features of my entire ‘career’. So let’s close out our look at this bizarre year with a countdown of my top 20 favourite films of 2019.

Special Mention: Serenity


The winner of the coveted Best Worst Film Of The Year award, this was easily one of the giggliest sits I had over the last twelve months. I almost feel bad for just how expository my review for it turned out, as this really is the kind of film that’s best entered into as blind as possible. All I knew about it going in was that it was an early contender for worst film of 2019, it had a twist that broke sanity over its knee, and it gave Armond White another chance to condescend about how much the plebeians just didn’t ’get’ the genius of it all.

However, I still stand by my review for it because this film truly is that bonkers and consistently baffling that I needed to get it all down on paper, if only to convince myself that this was an actual movie and not just the product of a particularly cracked-out fever dream. I put the appropriate spoiler tags in the review proper, so hopefully it didn’t complete ruin the experience for anyone else, because I genuinely want more people to see this magnificent train wreck for themselves.




At a time where the larger conversation regarding comedy has shifted towards offence being the only thing that matters, every part of my humour-chasing brain commends this film for setting the record straight. Yet another example of why Mindy Kaling is one of the best comedic talents to break onto the cinematic landscape, her writing pokes at the modern state of stand-up comedy, late-night talk shows, and how mining the discomfort of reality can unearth some real gems as opposed to the prevailing talk-shit mantra. I’ve reached the point where I have no real issue with either approach on principle, but when everyone seems convinced that edgelord shit is the only form of comedy that even counts anymore, I genuinely appreciate films like this that show just how short-sighted that perspective is.

Also, Emma Thompson and John Lithgow made for two of the best performances of the year, and their additions of true-blue drama just made everything else warm that much closer to my heart of hearts.




As far as the atmospheric experience that cinema can offer, this one felt more unique than most. I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest kaiju afficionado out there, but based on just how hard-hitting this entry was, I’m definitely open to checking more of the canon. The latest feature from the Legendary Pictures revival of the classic giant monsters, this felt like the point where I got the appeal of bringing these iconic creatures to the big screen here and now.

Watching this film felt like being right there with the human characters, watching monsters beyond our comprehension wage a war beyond our understanding. The main thread behind kaiju cinema is the idea of how these are more than just monsters, but gods, and this is the film where that effect made itself wholly apparent to me. It’s an incredibly humbling experience, and considering how chaotic the forces of nature have been in my neck of the woods lately, its depiction of man at the mercy of nature really hits home for me.




For a filmmaker who has made an entire career out of a decidedly postmodern approach to horror, a production like this felt like the ultimate test of Mike Flanagan’s skills. And as what should rationally be the final example of why people need to stop sleeping on the man’s work, he managed to do something that not even Stephen King himself was able to pull off. He delivered with a nicely atmospheric piece of psycho-horror, with all kinds of emotional weight behind it to boot, that not only worked as a follow-up to one of the greatest horror flicks of all time, but even managed to reconcile its place as one of the most legendarily contested book adaptations of all time.

That is one hell of a hat trick, and for the film that I most looking forward to all year, I am immensely pleased that this turned out as well as it did. It’s moody, its visuals pay due service to Kubrick’s Shining in a way that does more than mere fanservice, and for a script that started out from hack extraordinaire Akiva Goldsman, Flanagan’s rewrite really nails down themes of addiction, family strain and personal power that show him hitting new heights for material he’s already shown tremendous understanding of. Undoubtedly, this is one worth checking out, and it wraps up a fantastic decade of work from one of my new favourite filmmakers.




Easily the best romance film I saw all year, the film’s key strength is in just how confident and subdued it is. It shows a breadth of artistic merit, emotional impact and subtextual depth, and yet because it’s all presented in such a smooth and tightly-layered fashion, it makes this level of finesse seem deceptively easy. And since the core romance is shown with so much natural build-up and refreshing lack of melodrama, it made for one of the most effective love stories of the entire decade, overall and in the annals of queer cinema. I honestly haven’t fallen this hard for a romance flick since Call Me By Your Name, and only time will tell if this proves to be as impactful on my own understanding of love as that one turned out to be.




Cinematic violence framed as its own sublime artform. Another satisfying addition to what is quickly becoming one of the genre’s finest series. A chance to really hammer home how long people have been unfairly clowning on Keanu Reeves’ chops as an actor, especially as an action lead. A film so on-point with its approach to action that it made for not only some of the hardest hits of the decade but also some of the funniest. Seriously, that horse stable sequence is fucking glorious.

This film is all of these things and more, but most importantly, it’s a sign that no matter what comes next, Chad Stahelski is keeping the flame alive.




Yes, even with all my bitching about how Disney has changed the industry for the worst, this film still made the list. That really is a testament to just how masterful this production truly is, as it manages to take what is already one of modern animation’s shining jewels and manage to carve even greater nuances out of it. It maintains a lot of what makes the original Frozen so much fun, from the spirited performances to the giddy soundtrack to the splendorous animation, while adding to it a level of thematic sophistication that feels like the culmination of just how daring ‘family films’ have become.

Its look at Nordic nationalism, its impact on the world and how difficult it can be to even come to terms with its place in our own history managed to visualise some incredibly difficult and abstract ideas, in a way that both kids and adults could digest. Its treatment of its own title made for one of the most striking thematic touches I’ve ever covered on this blog as well, treating cultural and personal memory like a river, one that we freeze in place to examine, analyse and, hopefully, come to grips with. For a sequel to a film that everyone on Earth seems to have memorised in its entirety, this is one hell of an impressive effort and one of Disney’s best efforts during their single most scattershot year in their company’s history.




The newest addition to one of horror’s quirkiest sub-genres, Ari Aster one-upped his work on Hereditary with a film that dived even further into the murkiness of the human psyche. And what a mesmerising dive it is, starting out as an uncommonly trippy slasher flick that, through its copious layers of Pagan thrills and Ugly American analyses usually reserved for amazon cannibal movies, turned into one of the most shockingly effective break-up movies I’ve ever witnessed. While the rest of the world has been losing their minds over Marriage Story, I can’t help but think that this film’s truest worth as a look at trauma and phenomenally fucked-up relationships could end up falling by the wayside. Then again, when its depiction of toxicity is this fucking heart-rending (Florence Pugh has officially made the shortlist of actors to keep a very attentive eye on), chances are that this will stick around to puncture the hearts of moviegoers for years to come.




2019 turned out to be a surprisingly good year for music-tinged biopics, and this was one hell of a powerful effort in that regard. A gorgeous melding of hardened reality and tempered artifice that only heightened how much that dichotomy played into the life of its subject, Judy might be one of the best biopics of all time through the sheer virtue that it doesn’t make the same mistake that so many others fell into. Namely, that it didn’t try and play off the suffering of its artist as if it was worth it for the sake of their art.

Instead, through Renee Zellweger’s high-point performance of Judy Garland, the film expands its scope further than her contributions to art for their own sake and brought in her place as one of queer cinema’s true icons, making an appeal that what she brought to the audience and the larger conversation is something we would gladly return in multitudes because it means that damn much to us. It’s an unrelenting display of empathy and compassion that, as it depicts the final year of the late Judy’s life, blends so many artistic disciplines together to not only highlight Judy’s own range of talents (and by extension, those of Renee herself) but to create a beautiful singularity of art, one that does as much justice to its many mediums as it does to the legacy of one of America’s most beloved artists.




Easily the most joyous jukebox musical in a year full of them, this is the kind of film that could come about through literally involved being on their A-game. Director Dexter Fletcher gave a look at just how good Bohemian Rhapsody could have turned out if he had been involved with it from the beginning instead of that other guy, writer Lee Hall burnt out so much of his aptitude for cinema-grade musicals that it helps make sense of how his efforts in Cats turned out as bewildering as they did, and Taron Egerton adds another notch to his growingly impressive repertoire with a sonically and dramatically fulfilling depiction of the life and times of a true pop music legend.

It didn’t pull a single punch, it left no corner of Elton John’s tumultuous story uncovered, and it left the audience without a single dry eye when all is said and done. As someone who absolutely loves seeing licensed music in the hands of capable filmmakers, this was an utter delight to behold.




Even with my pre-established weakness for comic book movies, nothing could have really prepared me for just how fucking hard I fell for this particular feature. As a conclusion to Marvel Studios’ strongest phase yet, with a myriad of great blockbusters and even a few genuine cultural gems in its composition, as the culmination of everything the studio had produced to date, and just as a great superhero caper in its own right, this film managed to stick the landing better than a hefty swathe of what came before it. I mean, looking back on Avengers: Age Of Ultron (and especially Justice League), managing to deliver a satisfying pay-off of this magnitude is insanely difficult, something that makes this film’s efficacy shine even brighter.

And now that I don’t have to worry nearly as much about spoilers as I did when writing my initial review, I can officially reveal the true extent to which I fucking love this movie. It’s a time travel heist movie featuring superheroes, gods and space mercenaries, one that’s built on tightly-constructed continuity and long-form character arcs. This film was basically made for me, and it serves as a shining example of why my love for this genre has existed long before the MCU came into being and will likely persist long after it.

And yet, even with all that said, it wasn’t even the best comic book-adjacent film I saw in 2019.




One of the most hotly-contested features of the entire 2010’s, I went into this with what I felt was a healthy degree of scepticism, wanting to serve as a solid middle ground between the frankly alarmist hostility towards it and the head-over-heels fanboy reactions on the other end. Fat lot of good that did, since not did I end up adoring this film to pieces, what I love about it goes beyond comic book genre trappings.

As someone with quite a few mental disorders that often stand in the way of me even being able to function on some days, this film’s depiction of the mental health industry, its effect on the affected, how hereditary conditions play into the larger condition, and just how fucking dire things can turn out when those same affected are left behind by the system, felt like a somewhat murky pat on the back that there are other people out there who get what this shit feels like. That shot about the worst thing about having a mental illness is still one of the most hard-hitting moments I’ve ever encountered over the course of writing for this blog. 

While so many others wound up taking away that this was an example of glorifying the mentally ill, I only saw an example of the worst case scenario, one that we should all be working towards preventing and yet only seem content with letting happen while we all lecture each other for not doing anything. But rather than fixate on the worst that someone could potentially get out of a film like this, I want to focus on the best that we could get from it, and if we spent more time walking the walk in regards to mental health, that best could be a lot closer than we think.




After the middling-to-all-out-dreadful year Australian cinema had in 2018, it certainly came back with a vengeance in 2019, resulting in some truly powerful pieces of cinema. And with this particular feature, its power proved so strong that it rubbed a few people the wrong way. Like, ‘you’re a whore and should be ashamed of yourself for making this’ kind of wrong way. The more things change, eh?

And admittedly, while not in any way deserving that kind of treatment, it is definitely a confronting work, as it holds no qualms in showing colonial-era Australia at its ugliest and vilest. It depicts the treatment of the early convicts and the native Aborigines with equal power, highlighted further by how it exposes the sadistic opportunism at the heart of the British colonialists at the heart of their shared pain. It’s an unrelenting look at humanity at its darkest, but that only goes to further show the importance of humanity at its brightest, kindest and most empathetic. Australian culture is codified by how the populace seems scared to even admit its own history, and with this feature, writer/director Jennifer Kent makes it crystal-clear that we need to acknowledge what happened so that we don’t make the same shitty mistakes in the future.




This film does for traditional animation what Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse did for computer animation: It tapped into the medium’s past incarnations to give a vibrant blueprint for its future. What Sergio Pablos managed to accomplish here is nothing short of brilliant, as the combination of traditional animation of old and environmental techniques that have pushed modern CGI into new levels of artistry is so fucking finely-tuned, it almost makes one question why every animated movie doesn’t look this good.

To compound on the film’s insane visual chops, it also accomplishes a minor miracle in its storytelling in that it managed to make me vibe with a narrative that is dripping in modern-day cynicism. Its approach to the story of the man who would become Santa Claus might be one of the finest examples of results>intent I’ve seen in any medium, using the arc of a perpetually self-centred postman to show that goodwill has the power to change the world, all while indulging in darker humour and slapstick along with genuinely impactful moments of pathos for Klaus. It’s already the embodiment of what Christmas means in the modern era, and the fact that it’s a genuine ground-breaker for its artistic medium only adds to just how marvellous this is.




Time to briefly step away from the feeling of euphoria the best of 2019 could offer and get into what I’m called the Existential Crisis Bracket, a trinity of films that affected me in such an unprecedented way, they basically made me rethink everything I thought I knew about myself, my society and the hobby that spend most of my time devoted to. And to kick things off, we have an incredibly strange and complex puzzle of a film that looks at Hollywood celebrity culture and basically tears down its self-ascribed feeling of importance, making the audience question just how ‘important’ any of this truly is. For someone who spends a lot of time writing about the deeper meaning behind pop culture, this one genuinely confronted me with the futility of my own lot in life.

And yet, I am absolutely in awe of David Robert Mitchell for getting that visceral of a reaction out of me, especially since the film itself is such a stunning work of art all on its own. The performances, the deeply-textured writing, the myriad of reference points that touch on practically every incarnation of popular art, not to mention the metatextual narrative of a man trying to sort through a grand-scale cultural conspiracy that puts the audience in the same position of trying to figure out the larger scheme of things. It’s a film devoted to exposing the darker underbelly of the industry it sits in, but in the process, it made me feel even happier about my chosen expertise as, without it, I wouldn’t have been able to experience one of the most intense artistic experiences of my life so far.




Now for the film that made me reconsider the society I live in, and indeed my own actions within it. Watching this puts a greater context to director Ken Loach’s statements about the current state of Hollywood, in particular how much MCU has changed the way films are made and marketed, as his depiction of a family at the throes of a larger capitalist system makes it hit home just how much treating individuals as product dehumanises our own species. It’s incredibly pointed in the statements it makes, but because it keeps everything in the perspective of a single family and their individual stakes and reactions to their situation, it holds back from being entirely didactic and instead results in a potently melancholic offering.

As for the personal effect it had on me, it finally got me to realise just how unhealthy my approach to my own work has been over the course of this blog’s lifetime. It got me to identify how many times I’ve willingly put my own wellbeing aside for the sake of writing these reviews, and how retroactively horrified I am at myself that I found doing that to be worth bragging about. In the face of people under the iron-clad heel of capitalism and putting their entire sense of individuality aside just to survive, I feel like a fool for thinking that same behaviour attached to a far-less-pressing line of work was worth glorifying. And yet, as I’ve been writing these lists, I and the rest of my household have been in the midst of a particularly nasty stomach bug. It’s gonna take a bit more time for my workaholic tendencies to smooth out completely, but I’m at least at the point where I can see them for what they are, and I have this film to thank for that.




And now for the truly personal shit, with a film that hit such a raw nerve with me, I actually scared myself a little with just how honest my write-up for it turned out. I had rarely if ever talked about my own history with dissociative episodes connected to my anger issues before this, and yet when confronted with one of the most Jungian psycho-thrillers I’d ever witnessed, I finally felt ready to admit to my own fractured psyche. It was a rough sit, and I definitely felt like something deep within my soul has been unlocked in response, but even beyond my own unique reaction to it, this is still a film worthy of something that truly psychedelic in response.

A phenomenal showing of just how much can be accomplished on a smaller budget, this mixture of Fight Club-style suppression, Lovecraftian body horror and a starkly challenging yet resonant depiction of mental illness serves as a terrific debut for writer/director Adam Egypt Mortimer, and another central pillar to Elijah Wood’s growing pedigree as a terrific film producer under SpectreVision. It outclasses even the likes of Joker for raw cerebral scar tissue, serving as the grimdark remake of Drop Dead Fred the world didn’t even realise it needed. Part of me wonders just how much of my inner edgelord this film ultimately appeals to, but with how scary-in-a-way-few-things-are this is, I honestly don’t even care. Or, at least, I don’t care enough to love this thing any less.




The pinnacle of what Australian cinema was able to achieve in 2019, this independent feature managed to get an even stronger reaction out of me than even the Existential Crisis Bracket did. I went and saw this on official detail for FilmInk, with a sizeable amount of the production crew in attendance, and I was so achingly moved by this film, I basically ran up to the director and asked if I could hug him. He thankfully obliged, and I made it a point to say that I would do all I can to make sure more people see this thing, so hopefully I can make a good case for it here.

As far as depictions of the social disability model at work, this has got to be one of the most powerful out there, with its central performance from Olympic gymnast and budding actor Chris Bunton serving as the nucleus for the film’s startling understanding of not just Down’s Syndrome but disability across the board. When it got to mentioning functional labels in regards to disability, easily one of the biggest headaches in the entire discourse, I honestly felt like I had just been seen.

It’s exceedingly warm in its characterisation and humour, with its story about an able-bodied man basically lying to everyone that a disabled person managed to knock him out telling so much truth about the reality of living with a condition that I am all kinds of thankful for this film’s sheer existence. Add to that its more dream-like touches, taking a fully abstract and impressionist view on the myriad of ways that a disability label can affect one’s sense of identity, and its existence as a healthy counterpoint to what the highest-grossing Aussie film did with its own Down’s Syndrome cast member, and you have a beautiful film that I think has the potential to do a lot of good for public perceptions regarding disability, Down’s Syndrome especially.




In a year where both Marvel and DC were working on some of their greatest works to date, this film still won out as my personal favourite superhero flick. The usual ‘mileage may vary’ caveat exists for this as it does for a lot of M. Night Shyamalan’s filmography, even his undisputed classics, but someone who has seen the man deliver some truly atrocious excuses for cinema and his recent comeback, this tickled my itch for comic book storytelling more than anything else in 2019.

Some may point at the film’s framing, which basically takes the main characters from Shyamalan’s Unbreakable and Split and puts them through an extended psychiatric session designed to make them believe that they have no superpowers, and question why this made more of an impact with me than the thrilling bombast of Endgame or the chilling confrontation of Joker. And honestly, it all comes down to what I love about superhero yarns. I like sideways takes like this, ones that play around with the typical formula to wax philosophical about the nature of superheroes and their greater impact on the human race; it’s basically the reason why Vertigo remains my favourite comic book brand, as their finest output got a lot of mileage out of examining the theological and psychological underpinnings of the lavishly ludicrous world of superheroes. Or, in more simple terms, I come from the Grant Morrison school of comic book appreciation.

As a follow-up to one of my all-time favourite superhero films with Unbreakable, and its own surprisingly effective follow-up Split, this years-in-the-making team-up warmed its way into my heart the easiest of any I saw over the course of the 2010’s… but in the face of the Disney monopoly, my appreciation for this film has taken on a whole new dimension. At a time when Marvel/Disney dominates the industry, and DC/Warner Bros. are starting to get their shit together and making their way into equal ubiquity, third-party alternatives to their respective universes are needed more than ever. Yes, this production has its own connections to Disney as well as Universal, but as an original superhero work not directly attached to a pre-existing comic book, it serves as a precedent for the current thirst for this genre to be fulfilled in ways outside of the Big Two’s output.




This is about as close to perfect as any film was able to get over the course of 2019, and a solid reminder that the shit that writer/director Rian Johnson has gotten over the last couple years has only served to make his creative fire burn even brighter. I mean, beyond how his experiences with Fandom Menace trolls became inspiration for one of the linchpin characters in this film’s larger examination of racism in America.

Everything that this production aims for, it manages to hit the bullseye with such grace as to make it look effortless. As a whodunit, it builds on the clichés of the genre to create one of the finest cinematic examples of the genre since the Clue movie. As a study of multiple characters, its measured writing and invigorating performances leaves everyone with an undeniably human fingerprint, from Ana de Armas’ central performance to Daniel Craig with yet another perplexingly effective American accent.

As a film tailored to be enjoyed with multiple viewings, it puts even Edgar Wright to shame in just how insanely thought-out every aspect of the story and production is, with everything down to the phonetics of the character names adding to the larger point. And as a satire of the American Dream, it managed to be so effective that it overrode my general apathy towards commentary like this, breathing new life into a subject that feels more relevant now than ever.

And as a film in its own right, it shows an understanding of the medium and its capabilities that could only manifest through the eyes of a true master of the craft, making for Rian Johnson’s greatest cinematic effort to date. In fact, this film is so freaking good that I’m almost nervous about what the man has in store for his next production, as the mere thought of him somehow improving on something this well-crafted might well give me a heart attack from all the excitement.

 


With every film I have ever and likely will ever look at in my reviews, my approach is always informed by my personal understanding of cinema as a form of art therapy. A form of fiction (or fact, in the case of documentaries and the like) that, through the capacity for emotional impact that few other mediums can grasp, has the ability to touch the human soul and heal it. And over the course of this list alone, I’ve given a number of examples of how the films I watch can have a profound effect on me, whether it’s reassurance of my understanding of the universe or even making me question whether I actually understand it in the first place. And this film, more so than possibly anything I’ve covered on here before, highlights the almost-shamanic power of cinema.

A metatextual depiction of an aging filmmaker reflecting on his life and past work, I went into this without knowing that much about writer/director Pedro Almodóvar, other than he and Antonio Banderas previously collaborated on The Skin I Live In and I kept seeing ads for it while watching Delicatessen for a podcast (yeah, among all the other things that have happened in the past year, I’ve finally stepped into the realm of movie podcasts). And because that, this film’s place in my heart might even have a chance to grow even further once I delve deeper into the man’s filmography, which itself is a great accomplishment because my reception of this film is already this high.

It’s a showing of how art, both for the artist and the audience, has the capacity to heal great wounds and make sense of the events in one’s life, something I always try and advocate for where I can because I believe that cinematic art truly is that powerful. In fact, in the face of just how confronting a lot of 2019’s better efforts got, this film stayed in the back of my mind as an anchor to pull me out of any existential dead-end I found myself in. Because every film on this list, even the ones that affected me in less-than-ideal ways, gave me a chance to learn something new about myself and my surroundings; I wouldn’t give that up for anything in the world, and knowing that there’s definitive proof that someone else out there gets the healing power of art only makes me even more certain that my work will continue.

Which itself is ironic because this film is such a great argument for cinema therapy that I almost feel like I need never brush on the subject again; it’s like Pedro walked in on me in front of a giant whiteboard, covered in mathematic equations, wiped all of it off the board and replaced it with a single equation that explained everything I had spent years trying to figure out. This is the Unified Field Theory of cinema, and makes for not just a truly brilliant film but also one of the most important works of art of the entire decade, if not the history of the cinematic medium. If I can convince my readers to check out only one film on this list… honestly, I’d still say to check out Kairos, but for a better understanding of how I personally view art in its many forms, this will likely be a reference point that I’ll keep well in mind from here on out.

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