This year I watched 330-ish films.
I saw the abomination that was The Lion King, then the ever-bigger abomination that was Cats. I saw Hellboy and Men In Black: International and Aladdin, in what felt like a film critic’s nightmarish descent into Hollywood’s endless obsession with recycled content. I saw Green Book, which was fucking awful, yet won an Oscar. I saw the despicable Brexit propaganda Downton Abbey, the whinging pom nightmare Mrs Lowry & Son, and the Beatles-defiling Yesterday.
It’s been a long and winding road. But here we are, the year is over. And, rather than dwell on the suffering a freelance writer must endure to earn a buck, let us, instead, celebrate that which made it all worthwhile. The best of the best of the ’19. Thanks for being a time.
40. THE LONG SHOT (USA, JONATHAN LEVINE)
The best romantic comedy in living memory matches the movie star charisma of Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen with incredible comic turns from June Diane Raphael and O’Shea Jackson Jr, some sly contemporary media/politics satire, and a forcible redressing of the gender stereotypes of the rom-com.
39. FROZEN II (USA, JENNIFER LEE & CHRIS BUCK)
Throwing off the yoking burden of Let It Go, the second Frozen go around is a storybook parable about colonialism and climate change, in which — most radically— there’s no Disney villain. Here, our old pals deal only with forces greater than the self, its own radical notion in an era of neo-liberal individualism. Even the comic relief talking-snowman plunges deep into reeling existentialism.
38. VIOLENCE VOYAGER (JAPAN, UJICHA)
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A nightmarish vision of Cronenbergian body horror inflicted upon kids, animated with hand-painted cardboard cut outs that resemble a storybook. Filled with nightmarish visions and voiced like a Wonder Showzen sketch, it’s a clear work of provocation and subversion; its gleeful obnoxiousness and gloriously-flat 2D imagery a happy tonic for anyone who suffered through The Lion King.
37. VIVARIUM (USA/IRELAND/ETC, LORCAN FINNEGAN)
Lorcan Finnegan’s Black Mirror-like nightmare is a wild, dystopian, surrealist, satirical horror on adulthood — literally trapped in a suburban mortgage, enslaved to child-rearing, being a cog in the machine — in an age of late period/delivery box capitalism.
36. WALDEN (SWITZERLAND, DANIEL ZIMMERMAN)
A succession of slow panning, 360 degree rotating single takes, Walden stitches together its circling landscapes into one ribboning road movie, a travelogue charting the logistics of a global logging operation. It’s a striking, distinctive work of meditative minimalism that plays, ultimately, as a long, slow horror-show.
35. APOLLO 11 (USA, TODD DOUGLAS MILLER)
Assembled from footage shot on the mission to the moon — including that from cameras clearly held by its astronauts, thereby making moon landing conspiracy theorists look (even more) stupid — this is a glorious, big screen, iMAX worthy shrine to humanity’s technological ingenuity and the cinematic wonders of thorough coverage.
34. HIGH FLYING BIRD (USA, STEPHEN SODERBERGH)
Shooting eye popping widescreen/wide angle images via an iPhone, the hardest-working retiree in show biz hit a home run with the first of his two made-for-streaming 2019 movies. Though, that isn’t the right sports metaphor. Here, Moonlight scribe Tarell Alvin McCraney pens a sharp, brisk, very wordy drama set during a non-branded NBA lockout. What’s talked — and talked and talked — about is the ‘ownership’ of the game; Soderbergh using basketball as another forum to explore late-period capitalism.
33. ATLANTICS (SENEGAL/FRANCE, MATI DIOP)
Love story, ghost story, social-realism, magic-realism, portrait of feminist defiance and indictment of Senegalese society, Diop’s debut — beautifully shot, pleasingly paced, and gloriously scored by Fatima Al Qadiri — is one of the year’s most singular (small) screen experiences.
32. PAIN & GLORY (SPAIN, PEDRO ALMODOVAR)
Almodóvar’s 21st film —and eighth with Antonio Banderas — is typically, elegantly labyrinthine: past and present pressing together, hidden secrets and unspoken truths lingering, other media (both real and imagined movies, Rosalía folksingin’) given sacred space. Yet, there’s an added frisson, for filmmaker and audience: like an action movie cop investigating a close to home case, this time it’s personal.
31. THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF EURIDICE GUSMAO (BRAZIL, KARIM AINOUZ)
In early neon-lit, patterned-dress’d, artful swirl stretches of this sweeping Brazilian melodrama, there’s real Wong Kar-wai vibes: two fabulously dressed Rio sisters deep in their Days Of Being Wild. As the years roll out with a novel’s sprawl, and ill fate leads them to complete estrangement, this broken sororal bond plays out as classic tragic love.
30. DIVINE LOVE (BRAZIL/ETC, GABRIEL MASCARO)
This dystopian vision of an evangelical, theocratic, drive-thru religious society arrived right at the dawn of Bolsonaro’s Brazil. Here, wild pleasures — ecstatic raves, group orgies — are made religious devotionals, in service of the simultaneous higher patriarchal powers of state and God. Mascaro shoots this in neon shades whose washed out glow soon seems eerie, its blues and pinks symbolising mandated gender division.
29. MONOS (COLOMBIA/ETC, ALEJANDRO LANDES)
A troop of teen soldiers, tending to a Western prisoner, hole up high in the Colombian mountains, before plunging deep into the jungle, and a descent into primal madness. As micro-society study of deteriorating group psyche and/or kids-gone-wild, the explicit Lord Of The Flies references are no surprise.
28. THE NIGHTINGALE (AUSTRALIA, JENNIFER KENT)
An unblinking, unbroken portrait of our great national shame. It’s an overland journey into the dark heart of a stolen continent, a revenge movie whose horrors are, in both body and colonialist spirit, uniquely Australian.
27. ONLY YOU (UK, HARRY WOOTLIFF)/MAINE (USA, MATTHEW BROWN)
Two under-seen films forward one convincing case that Laia Costa is secretly one of our great screen actors. Each explores a relationship: Only You about a young couple whose once-charmed union gets real, and real dark, when they fail, again and again, to conceive a child; Maine about the ephemeral companionship of fellow travellers. In each, Costa is alive in every moment, riffing spontaneously whilst conveying complex emotion in subtle look and gesture. She’s the best.
26. SWALLOW (USA/FRANCE, CARLO MIRABELLA-DAVIS)
There’s shades of Todd Haynes’ classic banger Safe in this taut tale of a kept housewife whose pregnancy robs her of dominion over the only thing she’s had control over: her body. For all its poking at body politics and self harm, the tone of Swallow is tragicomic hi so social satire, Haley Bennett’s sterling lead turn speaking to both the tragedy and the comedy.
25. ROSIE (IRELAND, PADDY BREATHNACH)
Setting its titular mother a simple task — finding a room for the night, so her family of six doesn’t have to sleep in the car — this lean (86 min), sometimes mean, achingly empathetic drama feels like classic Dardennes: social-realism as scrapping for survival, every day its own ordeal.
24. RETROSPEKT (BELGIUM/NETHERLANDS, ESTHER ROTS)
For a film dealing with domestic violence, traumatic experiences, physical recovery, and attendant emotional fallout, what really leaves you shook with Retrospekt is the filmmaking: the ricocheting between past/present and pre/post trauma; the uncomfortable juxtapositions of physical intimacy and violence; and an unnerving score that mixes dissonant electronics and seemingly ironic original operatic lieder.
23. A WHITE, WHITE DAY (ICELAND, HLYNUR PALMASON)
The set-up — drunken, grief stricken cop on forced leave grows dangerously obsessed — sounds generic, but the presentation is immaculate: from its precisely-framed recurring compositions, to its odd lo-res video details, foggy existential air, and outright fetishisation of renovations.
22. COLD CASE HAMMARSKJOLD (DENMARK, MADS BRUGGER)
Brügger is less observationist documentarian, more performance art provocateur. But his latest flick proves his stagey shtick and satirical, meta movie hijinks don’t actually distract from true crime investigative journalism, but only add to such. This unexpectedly deep doc is about the sketchy deaths, secret societies, and dark truths of colonial Africa, but it’s really a broader portrait of human delusion/obsession, conspiracy theorising, and the framing of narratives.
21. BROS: AFTER THE SCREAMING STOPS (UK, JOE PEARLMAN & DAVID SOUTAR)
Fans of both ’80s bubblegum pop and mixed metaphors will find delight, hilarity and heartwarmery in this chronicle of a reunion for Bros, boy band titans turned squabbling, near-estranged twin siblings. There’s a ‘straight’ narrative exploring family relationships and rise/fall/return career arcs, but mostly there’s just a bunch of batshit proclamations, convoluted/quickly-abandoned analogies, and comic assaults on the English language.
20. VOX LUX (USA, BRADY CORBET)
Openly obnoxious, audacious, and provocative, Corbet’s daring second feature is a satirical portrait of the all-consuming contemporary ‘feed’: where celebrity gossip and ultraviolent tragedy are funnelled into the same yawning digital void; and where both pop starlets and terrorist cells are minting mythos by dint of hype videos.
19. WE ARE LITTLE ZOMBIES (JAPAN, MAKOTO NAGAHISA)
A wild po mo pile up of phone footage, 8 bit animation, mock genres, chiptune musical numbers, bonkers TV shows, faux pop cultural mythology, and general audiovisual cacophony, Nagahisa’s maximalist romp transcends reductive ‘crazy Japan’ stereotypes, delivering a secretly deep study of emotional repression, metropolitan alienation, and cold Japanese society.
18. THE DEATH OF DICK LONG (USA, DANIEL SCHEINERT)
One half of the Swiss Army Man Daniels delivers a film whose comic title and bonkers opening give way to something unexpectedly wise. It’s a tar black, razor sharp tale of two hopeless Deep South man boys — unable to tell the truth, yet horrible at lying — trying/failing to cover up a friend’s accidental death; at once a white trash Fargo and a wry, incisive look at masculinity and shame.
17. TITO (CANADA, GRACE GLOWICKI)
Glowicki’s no budget, crowdsourced debut — which she wrote, produced, directed, and starred in — lands somewhere between bonkers video art and being beamed into someone’s subconscious. Her quietly queer two hander is about perceived/actual predation, the paranoia of isolation, spiralling anxieties, nightmare logic, and, most of all, the passive-aggressive micro-aggressions of a personal space invading, line-stepping chill bro stoner.
16. IN FABRIC (UK, PETER STRICKLAND)
Haunting a Suspiria-ish department store where capitalism equals decadent occultism, Strickland’s ‘killer dress’ movie finds him doing what he does: fashioning an immaculately staged, absurdly funny, ‘but-fashion’ cannibalisation of vintage exploitation. Never has flying ejaculate looked so beautiful.
15. DEERSKIN (FRANCE, QUENTIN DUPIEUX)
Rather than a killer dress, Deerskin is about the ‘killer style’ of an implausibly expensive fringed jacket. Under its influence, Jean Dujardin sets out on a ridiculous, murderous crusade against anyone else who dares wear a jacket. It’s a wry, incisive takedown of male ego, obsession, possessiveness, and dangerous detachment. And the fact that its lead character is an aspiring filmmaker speaks thematic volumes.
14. HIGH LIFE (FRANCE/ETC, CLAIRE DENIS)
Denis’s long-awaited interstellar epic starts normally enough — a space vessel on a perilous journey, tensions between crew, establishing of the who-will-die-first hierarchy — before we’re introduced to a little thing called The Fuckbox. After that, it’s a depraved séance filled with bodily fluids and taboos, space the place to (symbolically) explore that other final frontier: incest.
13. THE HIDDEN CITY (SPAIN/ETC, VICTOR MORENO)
Shaking free of narrative and inhabiting a wholly visual, experiential realm, this sensory ethnography laboratory-styled documentary descends beneath the streets of Madrid, exploring its underground tunnels, sewers, subways, and construction projects. Occasionally there’s human figures — or rats, or even owls — in this vast, subterranean darkness, tiny figures in an alien (and, like, Alien) world.
12. RIDGE (SWEDEN, JOHN SKOOG)
Returning to his rural hometown, Skoog casts his family and friends in something that’d scan more as ‘hybrid’ movie if there were any real narrative. Instead, the star of the show is Ita Zbroniec-Zajt’s cinematography, which uses the arctic summer’s many magic hours to make every image — be it of teenage tedium, village tradition, or the collision between traditional/industrialised farming — strikingly beautiful.
11. LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT (CHINA, BI GAN)
Come for the central 59-minute put-on-your-3D-glasses single take tracking shot, stay for, well, all the other wild tracking shots. With Kaili Blues, Bi showed a willingness to take the one-shot to inventive, elaborate, verily travelling ends. Here, he ups the ambition, his camera sliding and gliding as we descend into a nocturnal, neo-noir, semi-surreal underworld part Black Coal, Thin Ice, part Murakami novel.
10. US (USA, JORDAN PEELE)
A (scissor) sharp horror of social stratification and subjugation — where there’s a literal underclass — Peele’s Get Out follow-up holds a mirror up to the contemporary US nightmare. Its doubled doppelgängers are reflections of a dark society’s repressed horrors, coming into the light to square the haves/have-nots ledger. Rather than being malevolent spirits, its evil antagonists are something far more terrifying: “We’re Americans”.
9. MIDSOMMAR (USA/SWEDEN, ARI ASTER)
In the cold, clear, blinding light of an arctic summer’s unrelenting perpetual daytime, Aster depicts unnerving terror not via spooky shadows, but in shades of over-exposed white and endless blue skies. Such a bright palette makes its unflattering (but grimly funny) depiction of human/male cruelties, horrors, perversions, superstitions, anxieties, and vanities all the more revelatory, and nakedly exposing. Flo Pugh also equals 2019 on-screen MVP.
8. LITTLE WOMEN (USA, GRETA GERWIG)
Speaking of: Pugh is the standout of a stacked cast in this brilliant take on an old standard. In giving new life, structure, contemporary resonance, and meta-movie telling to a much-told tale, Gerwig proves herself a cinematic force to be reckoned with. But what truly makes this Little Women such a delight isn’t just the intelligence and ingenuity of its adaptation, but its endless reserves of empathy and emotion.
7. MARRIAGE STORY (USA, NOAH BAUMBACH)
After dramatising divorce from his childhood perspective with 2005’s The Squid & The Whale, Baumbach looks again — very personally — at divorce, this time from the parent’s perspective. Marriage Story sinks its hooks in from its emotion ginning opening narration, the resulting film both reassuringly warm and painfully vicious.
6. THE DAYS TO COME (SPAIN, CARLOS MARQUES-MARCET)
One of cinema’s truest depictions of pregnancy, aided immeasurably by the fact that its leads, Maria Rodríguez Soto and David Verdaguer, are an off-screen couple really going through a pregnancy on camera. Lines between fiction and reality blur, but there’s nothing meta about it: this another empathetic, profound investigation of a relationship by Marques-Marcet (10.000km, Anchor & Hope).
5. ONCE UPON A TIME... IN HOLLYWOOD (USA, QUENTIN TARANTINO)
I was prepared to despise a Tarantino middle-aged-anxiety meta-movie about 1969 Hollywood. Which only made it an unexpected joy: a riot of glorious photography, world building, characterisation (from an eight-year-old method actor to a very good pitbull), fetishisation (of B movies, mid-century commercial art, and, of course, women’s feet), and driving-to-and-fro narrative. Even better: despite its Tate Murders backdrop, it’s uninterested in both Boomer nostalgia and true crime muckraking; its arrogant auteur, instead, again rewriting a dark historical chapter to give it a better ending.
4. ANIARA (SWEDEN/DENMARK, PELLA KAGERMAN & HUGO LILJA)
A space commuter vessel is knocked off course, and goes from high capitalist/escapist fantasia to dystopian horrorshow — and beyond — across endless centuries lost in the void. Loaded with micro/macro symbolism, climate apocalypse horrors, and a pandora’s box of existential contemplation, Aniara’s near-future vision feels all too timely and trenchant.
3. PARASITE (SOUTH KOREA, BONG JOON-HO
Director Bong’s economic inequality social satire spins the home invasion thriller on its head, inverting the morality of the heroic haves holding out against the interloping have nots. It’s brilliantly directed, incredibly paced, constantly funny, and full of inspired misdirections and turnarounds. Also: Jessica, only child, Illinois, Chicago.
2. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK (USA, BARRY JENKINS)
In his rapturously-beautiful Moonlight follow-up, Wong Kar-wai acolyte Barry Jenkins is clearly In The Mood For Love. Both in the Wong-esque sense: the film dressed in sumptuous colours, all vivid wallpapers and fabrics, and shot from obtuse angles with ultra shallow focus. And also in the most sincere sense: this isn’t just a love story, but a film about love, made with love.
1. PORTRAIT OF A LADY ON FIRE (FRANCE, CELINE SCIAMMA)
A masterpiece of the female gaze: in filmmaking, painting, and lingering looks between lovers. Sciamma beautifully frames (within frames within frames) the relationship between artist and subject, the act of observation going both ways. There’s folksong, fire, hotness, heartache; and an all time classic, tear-shedding closing shot.
