And now, the last chapter. With all
awards, yes, even the (amazingly good this time!) Oscars accounted
for and my Top Score list out, here it is. My final take on the
films of 2019.
It was a year that, a few exceptions
aside, felt rather empty and slow until the very end, when a crush of
amazing films all came out at once. Still, this year it was a rather
easy and straightforward process for me to make this list. As
always, the ranking are my own and purely subjective, so absence from
this list in no way means I didn't like whatever movie you now hate
me for not granting a top spot to. Let's get to it!
Honorable Mentions:
Tell Me Who I Am (documentary), The Irishman, 1917,
I Lost My Body, Boy Soldiers: The Secret War in Okinawa
(documentary), A Hidden Life
10.
How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (Dean
DeBlois)
Last chance for me to get this
franchise on a Top Ten list, and I ain't wasting it. All things
considered, the first film probably remains the best on an individual
level, but the degree to which this final installment committed in
following through on not ending with easy solutions, or things
turning out the way the heroes hoped, can only be lauded. There is always new life and
new love, but growing up in this world involves risk, and risk can't
always be faced without losing something one holds dear, and can
never really have back again. Never before has the story of a boy
and his dragon been told so truly and honestly.
9.
Us (Jordan Peele)
Peele's follow-up to his Oscar-winning
debut Get Out might not be on quite the same epic level-
though to be honest, that's par for the course when directors try to
follow a career-defining masterpiece- but Us is still a
challenging, unique use of the horror genre to force the audience to
question the complicated interactions between race, class, and
personal trauma in American society. All while finding yet more ways
to make shots of nothing more than a person's eyes genuinely
horrifying. Lupita Nyong'o adds another masterful double-lead
performance to her resume, further establishing herself as one of the
most insanely capable actresses in the business today. I could watch
these two team up forever.
8.
John Wick 3- Parabellum (Chad Stahelski)
The John Wick franchise continues to
be an insanely fun, no-holds-barred reinvention of the 80's genre of
Unstoppable Action Demigods. Keanu Reeves and his crew have managed
to not only reestablish himself as a star presence in the world, but
to also provide some of the most gripping, astounding, and
influential action sequences in the game this side of the superhero
arena. Each film finds more ways to leave action fans like myself
gaping in awe and wondering, "Who the hell thought THAT up?"
It's silly, it's so over-the-top, and I am so here for it.
7.
Knives Out (Rian Johnson)
Rian Johnson not only did not let the
utterly depressing level of hate The Last Jedi received get to him,
he came right back out of the gate swinging with his next film.
Knives Out is a broad riff on classic sleuth films, right down to
gloriously pompous closing-in shots of the master detective readying
his next monologue, and yet it keeps finding new ways to twist things
just enough to go places you don't quite expect. The writing and
filmmaking are sharp as, well, knives, and the entire cast is game,
especially the lovely Ana de Armas, plus Chris Evans doing a far, far
better job of casting off his Avengers persona than Robert
Downey Jr.
6.
Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)
Noah Baumbach uses his own personal
history to help fuel arguably the best film he's yet made, headlined
by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson giving some of the best
performances they've yet achieved, and supported by a rock-solid
supporting cast, especially the Oscar-winning Laura Dern. Loaded
with filmmaking choices, writing, and nuanced bits of acting that
fill out the screen with a wealth of detail about two
mostly-sympathetic people utterly failing to bring their lives back
together- plus one of the year's best scores- you can't help but
get swept up by the emotions driving the story to its painful (though
not hopeless) end.
5.
Little Women (Greta Gerwig)
Greta Gerwig continues to amaze, and
Saoirse Ronan continues to refuse to give me my heart back. I've
still not read the original novel, nor have I seen any of the other
classic adaptations, so I came into this film entirely new, and it
swept me right off my feet, as if I, too, were dancing with Jo and
Laurie on a darkened porch in the middle of a party. This film is
imbibed with a love of the drive and passion that leads people to
create, and, most crucially, allows space for both the disappointment
and the elation that the process of creating and trying to find
success brings. It is a tender and loving story of people, trying to
live and thrive amidst disappointment and struggle, and I simply
adored it.
4.
The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers)
Hark, those who may enter here, for
toxic men we are, and toxic men we is! This most twisted and
deranged film of the year, featuring a dynamite duo of Pattinson and
Dafoe, can be interpreted on so many levels, a whole treatise could
be written on how the film manages to work in themes of mental
illness, repressed sexuality, restrictive and nonsensical social
mores, toxic masculinity, and even Greek mythology into one
incredible filmgoing experience. Brilliantly shot in a square frame,
using black-and-white imagery and featuring meticulously researched
dialogue, this film works as a period piece, as a blackbox character
drama, and as a Lovecraftian Fantasy/Horror mashup all at once. Let
no one dare question the quality of this film's lobster.
3.
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma)
This is one of those rare films that
is simply perfect- every piece of dialogue, every shot, the framing
of every scene, how lighting and music are used, how themes of fear,
longing, and loss are woven into every bit of the film's fabric- all
of it fits seamlessly together into the whole. Masterfully paced,
directed, and acted, this is a French lesbian love story that puts
male-gaze-oriented films like Blue Is The Warmest Color to
absolute shame. Not that the film is modest- not at all- but the
more downplayed way it paints the growing emotional (and eventually,
physical) passion of its heroines is all the more potently erotic as
a result. After seeing this, I knew I would never be able to listen
to Vivaldi the same way again.
2.
Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)
Ah what joy, when the top Oscars
actually go to one of the year's best and most ambitious films! For
one glorious year, justice reigned, for Parasite truly is one
of the year's absolute best, a cinematic tour de force that
swings wildly from genre to genre and tone to tone without ever
losing control of itself. Beyond its qualifications as an excellent
film, impeachable as they are, the movie also has an awful lot of
sociopolitical commentary packed into it, a direct challenge to
notions of capitalistic meritocracy that suffuse every frame,
especially in its bonkers second half.
1.
Jupiter's Moon (Kornel Mundruczo)
I still can't believe it, but somehow,
a Hungarian director following up a film about a literal dog uprising with one about a Syrian refugee ended up making possibly the
best Superman film yet made. Combining hard-core, ground-level
commentary on the plight of refugees and discrimination within modern
Europe with flights of visual fantasy, there is no other film that
uses the both the concept of flying and literal flight quite like
this. This film has only gotten extremely limited distribution and
so far, almost no one has seen it, which is a crying shame, because,
like Parasite, this is one of those gems everyone needs to
experience.
-Noah Franc
