The key to enjoying the films of 2019 was weathering the nonstop bludgeoning by Disney Corporation (whose portfolio includes Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilms with more to come soon). Our corporate overlord did over 40 percent of the total box office in America and generated very mediocre film products this year. Streaming services like Amazon Prime and Netflix, themselves fighting for market dominance, picked up some of the slack by distributing many excellent films. In spite of Hollywood’s overall lack of bravery, a bumper crop of ethnically and geographically diverse directors did outstanding work outside the realm of boardroom consensus.
Best Supporting Actor
Some would say Little Women or The Irishman but what if the best ensemble cast of the year was in Beach Bum? Snoop Dogg, Jimmy Buffet, Martin Lawrence, Jonah Hill and, especially Zac Efron and Zac Efron's beard made me laugh as hardest in 2019...until Uncut Gems and Kevin Garnett's smooth turn as himself. My favorite part of Midsommar is the bickering about grad school theses between the useless men, so William Jackson Harper gets a nod. While I was not 100% persuaded by Knives Out, I do declare that I enjoyed Daniel Craig doing Michael Scott's "I do declare" Southern accent for the entire film. The finest performance, particularly when considering the element of surprise of a retired actor returning to screens, is by Joe Pesci in The Irishman. He really knew how to move through a HoJo's kitchen and I appreciated his clarity of mind even immediately after waking up from a nap.
While her character was short-lived and quite blood-soaked, it was magical to watch Elisabeth Moss flip to her tethered self in Us. WTT Best Supporting Actress 2018 winner Awkwafina gracefully passes the torch to Zhao Shuzhen, her Nai Nai in The Farewell. Park So-dam gives the funniest and ultimately most affecting performance in the Parasite and we'll long remember the catechism, "Jessica, only child, Illinois Chicago." But the WTT award goes to the mother we all needed—Penelope Cruz in Pain and Glory. Pedro Almodóvar has given us many great matriarchs but Cruz's appearances are as spectacular as discovering a Renaissance Madonna and Child in a museum of contemporary art.
It's well to remember that Brad Pitt isn't and has never been bad, as he reminded us in both Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood and Ad Astra. Robert Pattinson excels in isolation in High Life (it's possible I'm also still charmed by the Q&A I saw with Pattinson and Claire Denis, in which he clearly adored his director). In Uncut Gems, Adam Sandler gives his once-a-decade reminder of what he can do as an actor (before making four or five straight films with David Spade). Bless Clint Eastwood for finding Paul Walter Hauser to play his Richard Jewell, a wheezing American heart attack waiting to happen. Given the buzz around this film in early 2019, I though we'd see Tom Burke on more year-end lists for The Souvenir—but he's clearly a step forward in the portrayal of devastatingly addicts on screen.
Best Actress
It was pleasing to see the steely Florence Pugh get a nom for Little Women, but she was even better ensconced in flowers and depression in Midsommar. In my annual nod to a non-professional actress doing better work that 99% of the professionals, there's the quietly electric Mame Bineta Sane in Atlantique. I adored our new Orpheus and Eurydice on flying ointment, Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Cynthia Erivo's nomination for the lifeless Harriet reveals the Academy's bottomless taste for boredom. The nom is particularly stupid this year, when Lupita N'yongo was right there in Us. She poured unbelievable amounts of herself into her role and she even did a funny voice—that sort of thing ought to have easily secured her Oscar glory.
Before rolling into the Top Ten, some other fiction to see: Carlos Reygadas’ Our Time, Bi Gan’s Long Day’s Journey into the Night, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite, Ari Aster’s Midsommar, Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, and Oliver Assayas’ Non-Fiction. And the hottest docs were: Feras Fayyad’s The Cave, Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar’s American Factory, Brett Story’s The Hottest August, Nanfu Wang’s One Child Nation, and Tamara Kotevska and Ljubo Stefanov's Honeyland.
10. Us - If you remember just one sound from a 2019 movie, it is probably the unforgettable snip snip of scissors from Jordan Peele’s thriller. The snippet is trimmed from the “tethered” remix of hip-hop classic “I Got 5 on It,” one of the best deployed songs in recent cinema. The superb music cues, Peele’s stellar story concept and astonishing acting by both Lupita Nyong’o and Elisabeth Moss made Us a great start to the year in film.
9. Atlantique - This assured debut by filmmaker Mati Diop employs non-actors to present a hypnotic vision of languorous ghosts on the coast of Senegal. At once casually depicted and deeply rigorous, the film offers both insights into the lives of impoverished workers in Dakar and a fantastical vision of reincarnation. Diop’s career will be fascinating to track as she explores little seen places and states of mind.
8. The Beach Bum - Harmony Korine’s follow-up to the inimitable Spring Breakers heads way down South to the Florida Keys and a mad poet, Moondog, played by Matthew McConaughey as only he can. The supporting cast is as colorful as the lead, with delicious roles for Snoop Dogg, Martin Lawrence, Jimmy Buffett(!), and a panini-bearded Zac Efron. With some help from real-life poet Richard Brautigan, Moondog delivers one especially fine poem then mic drops on the line, “That’s great poetry.” Damn straight.
7. Ad Astra - It’s wonderful to see James Gray making better and bolder films as he ages. Between this role here and his deeply charming turn in Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, Brad Pitt spent 2019 reminding us of his excellence. Yes, Ad Astra is another lonesome outer space film, but Pitt offers more than Ryan Gosling’s nearly strangled terseness in First Man or Matt Damon’s uber-chipper performance in The Martian. As he presses on from the Moon to Mars to the unfathomable frontier of Neptune, Gray dares to deliver that rarest commodity in contemporary cinema—earnestness.
6. High Life - Another of 2019 auteurs in space is Claire Denis, who brought Juliet Binoche and Robert Pattinson with her. For the director, this film is both a leap forward and return to a familiar form. Denis’ first English-language film still has a soundtrack by the Tindersticks but now they’re scoring the journey of prisoners compelled to undertake experiments in deep space. Their spacecraft, designed by artist Olafur Eliasson, is at once prison-like and Edenic. The heroes are shipping out to a black hole, destined to see things those who condemned them are too frightened to contemplate.
5. Uncut Gems - The Safdie Brothers’ previous adventure Good Time brought relentless and headlong nihilism to the screen and with Uncut Gems they’ve somehow one upped themselves for sheer you-better-breathe-into-a-paper-bag madness. Adam Sandler’s Diamond District hustler is just smart enough to get himself into bigger and bigger trouble with dangerous people—the insanity of his jewel-selling schemes is exceeded only by his pulse pounding proclivity for implausible parlay bets on NBA games. The directors get not only a career-best performance from Sandler but also generate a remarkably good turn from NBA Hall of Famer Kevin Garnett. Plus they seamlessly interweave the real events of 2012 NBA Eastern Conference Finals with the rest of their bonkers story.
4. Dolor y gloria - Pedro Almodóvar’s films are often a triumph of design but Pain and Glory, in which the master again collaborates with longtime production designer Antxon Gómez, has his most wondrous interiors ever. Antonio Banderas plays a stand-in for Almodóvar himself and his home is furnished with the director’s own belongings. Flashbacks to his youth reveal a whitewashed cave setting that’s filled with a mythical power. Banderas impresses and, in her limited screen time, Penelope Cruz has never been better, nor more beautiful. When the Almodóvar character is asked what he will do after retiring from writing and directing films he replies, “Live, I suppose.” Oh the gorgeous resignation of it all!
3. The Souvenir - Joanna Hogg, an English director too little known stateside before producing this masterwork, will not fly under the radar again. The film’s smart and stylish love story gives Honor Swinton Byrne a marvelous debut and showcases Tom Burke’s addictive, irresistible performance as her erudite yet heroin-addicted beau (his character stole steals the heart quickly with his praise for the films of Powell and Pressburger). The film has an incredibly fresh feel, thanks to the extraordinary quality of light, costume, and setting. Not to mention Hogg’s flawless deployment of songs as disparate as Joe Jackson’s “Is She Really Going Out with Him” and Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade.”
2. Asako I & II - A thought-provoking film that, amongst other things, has the most delightful variation on the “Going out for a pack of smokes” disappearance in any recent film. Three quiet, subtle but still tremendous acting performances make the piece: Masahiro Higashide and Erika Karata are remarkable as the confused and crisscrossed central couple and Jintan the cat proves that pet acting has really gotten stronger in recent years. Director Ryūsuke Hamaguchi infuses the film’s two-part structure with just enough essence of mystery from Hitchcock’s Vertigo while making something totally his own, featuring doppelgangers, recurrences, rhymes, and echoes.
1. Portrait of a Lady on Fire - The most indelible, burned-into-your-memory film of 2019 is Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire. This film, about the creation of a painting, boasts dozens of breathtaking shots, carefully composed and brilliantly lit against the gorgeous backdrop of Brittany, France in the late 18th century. The story is simple—a female painter meets and must paint her reluctant subject, who knows the commissioned work will be sent to a fiancée she’s never met and never wishes to meet. So she hides—her hair, her face, her smile—for as long as possible. Each revelation aches with significance and, as the pair’s relationship crescendos, the film becomes a fresh, reimagined twist on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is, wonderfully, almost entirely without men. But its success rests on the incredible chemistry between the lead actors—we feel the thunder in their hearts.
