Top 9 Movies of 2019
It's time to start that oh so important retrospective of 2019. To begin with, I thought I would start with movies. The main reason to start here is, first: movies are probably the only one of these lists that I am going to completely confine to things that came out in 2019. And second: I just didn't see as many movies as usual this last year. Making a list was kind of easy.
2019 was definitely the year of movies falling off my radar. As I went through lists to remind myself what was actually released this year (did you know a Spider-Man movie came out in 2019?), I realized there were a lot of movies I was very excited to see, but if I hadn't rushed out to the theater on opening weekend, they suddenly didn't exist, (did you know a Star Wars movie came out last week?...or was it the week before...see what I mean). So movies I was really amped for like The Kitchen and The Lighthouse, seemed to suddenly disappear from theaters only to have screens filled with stuff I just wasn't into spending money on.
This was also a year where the genre of movies I am probably most associated with in people's minds, superhero movies, were mostly a big bag of meh. Aside from two exceptions, the adaptations of my beloved superheroes were boring, underwhelming, or just too generic. Yeah, you can put together two or three incredible scenes, or even have a great character performance, but that definitely doesn't make a movie. Thank goodness 2020 is giving me the gift of more Wonder Woman and a Joker free Birds of Prey.
But without further preamble, my top 9 movies of 2019. As usual with these lists, I'm not ranking them in order, these are just the 9 I loved the most:
1 - Parasite The buzz about this movie started pretty early. Once I heard that the movie turned on you hard, I did everything I could to avoid any sort of spoilers about it. And as a service to you all, I'm also going to keep this spoiler free. The thing is, I will always be drawn back to stories about Korea. Though it has almost been 20 years since I was last there, Parasite shook me in a way that I was not expecting. While pieces of it felt so similar to the streets and alleys I walked in Seoul, it added a context to those streets and neighborhoods that I was just too ignorant to understand back then. The divide between the classes, the bitter, sometimes bloody, struggle to hustle and make it mixed with the weird expectation that we need to respect or be thankful for just a taste of their sun and big picture windows that Parasite forces us to see has added a strange new tint to places I visited, houses I spent time in, and pictures I still have from my two years there. At a certain point my stomach turned in the realization that, despite being purposely bad at what I had been sent to Korea to do, I was still part of a machine that was working to colonize and take 10% from people in basements to pad billions of dollars of already existing money in high, lavish places in Utah, not that different from Mr. Park's fine home.
2 - Booksmart I have said it before, I will say it again, and I will say it ad nauseam, I need more movies that center on women and POC. I have seen so many high school buddy movies, I kind of want to die. Well before I should have, I was getting a constant diet of Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Molly Ringwald starring movies about dudes trying to get laid; often in creepy, date rape feeling schemes. And as many people will tell you, I do not have a fond nostalgic view of my own high school years. Seriously, KHS can burn. All that meant sitting down for Booksmart, I already had some biases. Within the first few minutes I was already grinning and I don't think I stopped for the full running time. Amanda and I were also definitely the only two people laughing in that theater at times, but you can't always pick your audience. It is so refreshing to see female friendships, women with sexual lives and proclivities that don't exist narratively for a bunch of dudes. If this is what happens when Olivia Wilde gets on the other side of the camera, put her there more.
3 - Hustlers Am I the only one who thinks it's weird that the line, "Come on, climb in my fur" is from Hustlers and not Cats? Anyway, that line and the scene it comes from does a lot of narrative work, and it absolutely pays off right to the end. Go see Hustlers for Constance Wu, go see it for the Cardi B and Lizzo cameo, go for Usher playing the most 90s version of himself, but above all else, see it for J. Lo's introduction to Criminal by Fiona Apple. For a scene in a strip club, and on the main stage pole, that should be all about the male gaze, the level of control, physicality, and pure skill that J. Lo brings to that performance is the metaphor of how power structures work in that environment and how her and Constance are going to leverage what power they have as effectively as they can. What starts out as an interpretation of a heist movie eventually becomes much deeper, more complex, and a surprising reflection on neo-libralism's need to consume everything and make us machines of consumption, all to the detriment of the things that we truly want and need in our lives. And that is a lot for a movie ostensibly "about strippers"
4 - Midsommar Ari Aster's Midsommar was interesting viewing for me. Midsommar like The Witch are both touted as these very revolutionary and deeply horrific films. And without a doubt, they are both horror movies; absolutely unique and interesting ones at that. But I often wonder if the penultimate scenes of these films are intended to be horrific, or the way I see them, really refreshing and satisfying? At the end of The Witch, when Black Philip asks Thomasin if she wants to live deliciously, my automatic reaction was: yes, live deliciously, you deserve it! Similarly, when Dani is required to make her choice of who will get sown into a bear and killed as the final sacrifice, I was relieved she chose so wisely. Whatever Ari's intention of that final scene is, Midsommar is an absolutely amazing film. The cinematography and mise en scene incredibly turn sunlit and open planes into dark and claustrophobic spaces. The pacing is also incredible. So few horror movies can propel you so comfortably yet inescapably from one horror to the next inevitable pain or trauma.
5 - Knives Out Technically, we have all seen this before. Big name director, star studded cast, murder mystery. So why was 2017's Murder on the Orient Express so terrible and Knives Out so incredible? Beside Johnny Depp being trash and Chris Evans in cable knit sweaters is delightful? A lot of it is execution. Johnson knows what he is making. He has already shown his ability to work and play with genre in Looper, so when he gets to play with the murder mystery, he shows up to play. And what is great, is that the whole cast is playing just as hard. The instant Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc speaks and that Foghorn Leghorn drawl hits the floor, everyone in the house and the theater has the same reaction. When Chris Evan's Ransom asks, "What is this CSI: KFC?" we all go yeah, and that is what we have signed up for. For a film that is about murder, family intrigue, and a healthy discussion of immigration, (the moment the family asks Marta to come into the room and discuss coming to America "the right way", you just cringe knowing that the "Nazi masturbator" isn't the worst member of this family) the joke density is high. If you aren't paying attention, you may miss some of the better quips and jabs. The great thing is, that even if you see the twists of the film coming, the trip we take to get there means it doesn't matter how much you know, the getting there was too much fun.
6 - The Last Black Man in San Francisco A lot of the media and pop culture I consumed has had two distinct undercurrents. First: the widening chasm between the wealthy and the poor, and second: the impact on us of absence. The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a film directly in the middle of that particular venn diagram. Gentrification is obviously at the core of the film, the way cities and places are constantly shifting and piece by piece changing and the forces that work in opposition to that, often, inevitable change. But it is also a film about friendship, perception, and the importance of "home"; however we define that. It is also about the way that our personal landscapes change, taking people in and out of the spaces and places we inhabit and even moving us completely from one home to a new place where we may be asked to painfully, solitarily, start home from scratch.
7 - Captain Marvel We probably should have known that a superhero movie would end up on this list. Even in a year that was one of the weakest for superhero films, there were a couple of solid ones. Shazam! didn't make my list, but I do want to give it a shoutout as being a wonderfully fun and just enjoyable film. It is kind of crazy to think that both Wonder Woman and Shazam! are from the same studio as the absolutely dour streak of DC movies that have come out in the last decade. (Sorry Aquaman, I hate to lump you in there, you were definitely better than most.) Captain Marvel was an absolute blast though. It came out at a time I could hype it up to my Comics as Lit students and when I really needed a Marvel pick me up. We went from the high water marks of Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther to the dull-drums of Avengers: Infinity War. Talk about whip lash. But hey, Carol was there, "Higher, Further, Faster, More" to give us exactly what we needed. The action was great, but not the only reason for the films existence, it gave me all the early 90s grunge nostalgia I wanted, and a great reinterpretation of the Skrulls. But really, what sealed the deal was the cameo by Kelly Sue DeConnick. The work she did, along with the visual redesign by Jamie McKelvie (a design that made it to the official uniforms of the US Women's Ski Team), to make Carol Danvers Ms. Marvel into Captain Marvel, the undisputed Princess Sparkle Fist, is a huge feat. No matter what you may think of the character, DeConnick's work and promotion of that character gained the book a loyal group of fans and put the character on Disney's map for adaptation.
8 - The Dead Don't Die There isn't much more to say about this than Jim Jarmusch, Bill Murray, Adam Driver. Tilda Swinton and Chloe Sevigny are just the icing on this cake. And yeah, zombies are kind of over. The Walking Dead comic series is finished, it's television counter part is almost incomprehensible (at least to me. What is going on in that show. Wait, don't tell me. I don't actually care.), iZombie has wrapped, and most zombie stuff that comes out now just feels...old, outdated. But that is probably what makes The Dead Don't Die work so well. Everyone in the movie knows it's done. It is so aware of where it is, and what it is suppose to do, it can just get on with it. The film is crazy, and definitely not for everyone. If you have seen any other Jarmusch films, you'll understand almost immediately. Though this is something that has always fascinated me, taking genres through a unique auteur's lens and point of view to see what comes out the other side. As much as the last part of this year has been dominated by if Scorsese likes Marvel movies, I now want to see him write and direct a Gotham Central or Catwoman movie. Do it you cowards!
9 - The Beach Bum This film is classified as a comedy. And there is that here, but I also feel like this is balancing things out after Korine's last film, Spring Breakers (a film I highly recommend, though at the end you will feel uneasy and wonder what Florida hot tub they pulled James Franco's character out of). The thing you need to realize about The Beach Bum and Spring Breakers is as crazy as they seem, as, at times, completely over the top, they actually aren't quite insane as the reality of South Florida. Some people may watch McConaughy's Moondog stumble and lurch from one adventure to the next and think, "what were they on making this?" But if you have spent any solid chunk of time in South Florida, you look at it and go, yeah, that's Miami. Almost every character that shows up in this movie, I swear I've seen somewhere during my time in Miami. And that is where this film is at it's best, while a lot of films work to show this beautiful, glitzy, perfect, sun kissed, with a slight shimmer of sweat Miami and South Florida, The Beach Bum is more than happy to revel in the purely insane, leathery, sunburnt, pit stained, always just this side of gross reality of the place. And not only does it revel in it, it does it's best to drunk drive a boat with it before passing out on a gator infested inlet while listening to The Thong Song.
2019 was definitely the year of movies falling off my radar. As I went through lists to remind myself what was actually released this year (did you know a Spider-Man movie came out in 2019?), I realized there were a lot of movies I was very excited to see, but if I hadn't rushed out to the theater on opening weekend, they suddenly didn't exist, (did you know a Star Wars movie came out last week?...or was it the week before...see what I mean). So movies I was really amped for like The Kitchen and The Lighthouse, seemed to suddenly disappear from theaters only to have screens filled with stuff I just wasn't into spending money on.
This was also a year where the genre of movies I am probably most associated with in people's minds, superhero movies, were mostly a big bag of meh. Aside from two exceptions, the adaptations of my beloved superheroes were boring, underwhelming, or just too generic. Yeah, you can put together two or three incredible scenes, or even have a great character performance, but that definitely doesn't make a movie. Thank goodness 2020 is giving me the gift of more Wonder Woman and a Joker free Birds of Prey.
But without further preamble, my top 9 movies of 2019. As usual with these lists, I'm not ranking them in order, these are just the 9 I loved the most:
1 - Parasite The buzz about this movie started pretty early. Once I heard that the movie turned on you hard, I did everything I could to avoid any sort of spoilers about it. And as a service to you all, I'm also going to keep this spoiler free. The thing is, I will always be drawn back to stories about Korea. Though it has almost been 20 years since I was last there, Parasite shook me in a way that I was not expecting. While pieces of it felt so similar to the streets and alleys I walked in Seoul, it added a context to those streets and neighborhoods that I was just too ignorant to understand back then. The divide between the classes, the bitter, sometimes bloody, struggle to hustle and make it mixed with the weird expectation that we need to respect or be thankful for just a taste of their sun and big picture windows that Parasite forces us to see has added a strange new tint to places I visited, houses I spent time in, and pictures I still have from my two years there. At a certain point my stomach turned in the realization that, despite being purposely bad at what I had been sent to Korea to do, I was still part of a machine that was working to colonize and take 10% from people in basements to pad billions of dollars of already existing money in high, lavish places in Utah, not that different from Mr. Park's fine home.
2 - Booksmart I have said it before, I will say it again, and I will say it ad nauseam, I need more movies that center on women and POC. I have seen so many high school buddy movies, I kind of want to die. Well before I should have, I was getting a constant diet of Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, Molly Ringwald starring movies about dudes trying to get laid; often in creepy, date rape feeling schemes. And as many people will tell you, I do not have a fond nostalgic view of my own high school years. Seriously, KHS can burn. All that meant sitting down for Booksmart, I already had some biases. Within the first few minutes I was already grinning and I don't think I stopped for the full running time. Amanda and I were also definitely the only two people laughing in that theater at times, but you can't always pick your audience. It is so refreshing to see female friendships, women with sexual lives and proclivities that don't exist narratively for a bunch of dudes. If this is what happens when Olivia Wilde gets on the other side of the camera, put her there more.
3 - Hustlers Am I the only one who thinks it's weird that the line, "Come on, climb in my fur" is from Hustlers and not Cats? Anyway, that line and the scene it comes from does a lot of narrative work, and it absolutely pays off right to the end. Go see Hustlers for Constance Wu, go see it for the Cardi B and Lizzo cameo, go for Usher playing the most 90s version of himself, but above all else, see it for J. Lo's introduction to Criminal by Fiona Apple. For a scene in a strip club, and on the main stage pole, that should be all about the male gaze, the level of control, physicality, and pure skill that J. Lo brings to that performance is the metaphor of how power structures work in that environment and how her and Constance are going to leverage what power they have as effectively as they can. What starts out as an interpretation of a heist movie eventually becomes much deeper, more complex, and a surprising reflection on neo-libralism's need to consume everything and make us machines of consumption, all to the detriment of the things that we truly want and need in our lives. And that is a lot for a movie ostensibly "about strippers"
4 - Midsommar Ari Aster's Midsommar was interesting viewing for me. Midsommar like The Witch are both touted as these very revolutionary and deeply horrific films. And without a doubt, they are both horror movies; absolutely unique and interesting ones at that. But I often wonder if the penultimate scenes of these films are intended to be horrific, or the way I see them, really refreshing and satisfying? At the end of The Witch, when Black Philip asks Thomasin if she wants to live deliciously, my automatic reaction was: yes, live deliciously, you deserve it! Similarly, when Dani is required to make her choice of who will get sown into a bear and killed as the final sacrifice, I was relieved she chose so wisely. Whatever Ari's intention of that final scene is, Midsommar is an absolutely amazing film. The cinematography and mise en scene incredibly turn sunlit and open planes into dark and claustrophobic spaces. The pacing is also incredible. So few horror movies can propel you so comfortably yet inescapably from one horror to the next inevitable pain or trauma.
5 - Knives Out Technically, we have all seen this before. Big name director, star studded cast, murder mystery. So why was 2017's Murder on the Orient Express so terrible and Knives Out so incredible? Beside Johnny Depp being trash and Chris Evans in cable knit sweaters is delightful? A lot of it is execution. Johnson knows what he is making. He has already shown his ability to work and play with genre in Looper, so when he gets to play with the murder mystery, he shows up to play. And what is great, is that the whole cast is playing just as hard. The instant Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc speaks and that Foghorn Leghorn drawl hits the floor, everyone in the house and the theater has the same reaction. When Chris Evan's Ransom asks, "What is this CSI: KFC?" we all go yeah, and that is what we have signed up for. For a film that is about murder, family intrigue, and a healthy discussion of immigration, (the moment the family asks Marta to come into the room and discuss coming to America "the right way", you just cringe knowing that the "Nazi masturbator" isn't the worst member of this family) the joke density is high. If you aren't paying attention, you may miss some of the better quips and jabs. The great thing is, that even if you see the twists of the film coming, the trip we take to get there means it doesn't matter how much you know, the getting there was too much fun.
6 - The Last Black Man in San Francisco A lot of the media and pop culture I consumed has had two distinct undercurrents. First: the widening chasm between the wealthy and the poor, and second: the impact on us of absence. The Last Black Man in San Francisco is a film directly in the middle of that particular venn diagram. Gentrification is obviously at the core of the film, the way cities and places are constantly shifting and piece by piece changing and the forces that work in opposition to that, often, inevitable change. But it is also a film about friendship, perception, and the importance of "home"; however we define that. It is also about the way that our personal landscapes change, taking people in and out of the spaces and places we inhabit and even moving us completely from one home to a new place where we may be asked to painfully, solitarily, start home from scratch.
7 - Captain Marvel We probably should have known that a superhero movie would end up on this list. Even in a year that was one of the weakest for superhero films, there were a couple of solid ones. Shazam! didn't make my list, but I do want to give it a shoutout as being a wonderfully fun and just enjoyable film. It is kind of crazy to think that both Wonder Woman and Shazam! are from the same studio as the absolutely dour streak of DC movies that have come out in the last decade. (Sorry Aquaman, I hate to lump you in there, you were definitely better than most.) Captain Marvel was an absolute blast though. It came out at a time I could hype it up to my Comics as Lit students and when I really needed a Marvel pick me up. We went from the high water marks of Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther to the dull-drums of Avengers: Infinity War. Talk about whip lash. But hey, Carol was there, "Higher, Further, Faster, More" to give us exactly what we needed. The action was great, but not the only reason for the films existence, it gave me all the early 90s grunge nostalgia I wanted, and a great reinterpretation of the Skrulls. But really, what sealed the deal was the cameo by Kelly Sue DeConnick. The work she did, along with the visual redesign by Jamie McKelvie (a design that made it to the official uniforms of the US Women's Ski Team), to make Carol Danvers Ms. Marvel into Captain Marvel, the undisputed Princess Sparkle Fist, is a huge feat. No matter what you may think of the character, DeConnick's work and promotion of that character gained the book a loyal group of fans and put the character on Disney's map for adaptation.
8 - The Dead Don't Die There isn't much more to say about this than Jim Jarmusch, Bill Murray, Adam Driver. Tilda Swinton and Chloe Sevigny are just the icing on this cake. And yeah, zombies are kind of over. The Walking Dead comic series is finished, it's television counter part is almost incomprehensible (at least to me. What is going on in that show. Wait, don't tell me. I don't actually care.), iZombie has wrapped, and most zombie stuff that comes out now just feels...old, outdated. But that is probably what makes The Dead Don't Die work so well. Everyone in the movie knows it's done. It is so aware of where it is, and what it is suppose to do, it can just get on with it. The film is crazy, and definitely not for everyone. If you have seen any other Jarmusch films, you'll understand almost immediately. Though this is something that has always fascinated me, taking genres through a unique auteur's lens and point of view to see what comes out the other side. As much as the last part of this year has been dominated by if Scorsese likes Marvel movies, I now want to see him write and direct a Gotham Central or Catwoman movie. Do it you cowards!
9 - The Beach Bum This film is classified as a comedy. And there is that here, but I also feel like this is balancing things out after Korine's last film, Spring Breakers (a film I highly recommend, though at the end you will feel uneasy and wonder what Florida hot tub they pulled James Franco's character out of). The thing you need to realize about The Beach Bum and Spring Breakers is as crazy as they seem, as, at times, completely over the top, they actually aren't quite insane as the reality of South Florida. Some people may watch McConaughy's Moondog stumble and lurch from one adventure to the next and think, "what were they on making this?" But if you have spent any solid chunk of time in South Florida, you look at it and go, yeah, that's Miami. Almost every character that shows up in this movie, I swear I've seen somewhere during my time in Miami. And that is where this film is at it's best, while a lot of films work to show this beautiful, glitzy, perfect, sun kissed, with a slight shimmer of sweat Miami and South Florida, The Beach Bum is more than happy to revel in the purely insane, leathery, sunburnt, pit stained, always just this side of gross reality of the place. And not only does it revel in it, it does it's best to drunk drive a boat with it before passing out on a gator infested inlet while listening to The Thong Song.
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