The Last “Best Movies of 2019” List You’ll Ever Read

It’s exactly one year since I released my best of 2018 list, so points for consistency if not timeliness? Here’s this year’s edition.

1. Parasite

My number 1 is the world’s #1: the Cannes Palme d’Or winner is also the first foreign language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars. I don’t have much to add to the discourse other than that I don’t envy Bong Joon-Ho having to try to top it with his next project — or Adam McKay having to make an English language version for HBO.

2. Uncut Gems

A panic attack of a movie, in the best possible way. As far as I can tell, this is Adam Sandler’s second movie, following a 17-year hiatus after the remarkable Punch Drunk Love. (Don’t try to convince me otherwise, I’m not listening.) I expect big things from this promising newcomer.

3. Midsommar

Ari Aster makes exactly the kind of horror movies I love: stylish, smart and deeply unsettling. I’m there for his next one on opening day, no questions asked. Just Ari, do me a favor: maybe go a little lighter on the head trauma next time? It’s kinda becoming a thing.

4. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

We’ve reached maximum Tarantino. Everything he does well, he does exceptionally well here. Almost everything he’s ever been knocked for, he does all that here, too, and in a way that seems fully intentional, from his somewhat reactionary views of race, gender and age to his shameless fetishistic gaze. For me, a fellow Gen X straight white guy cinephile, the highs more than make up for the occasional lows. Your mileage may vary. (More of my OUATIH thoughts can be found in this Twitter thread.)

5. Little Women

Costume dramas based on beloved 19th Century novels almost never work for me. This one did, trading in any hint of starchiness for characters recognizable as fully human in any era. It’s hard to go too far wrong when you can point your camera at Saoirse Ronan, Florence Pugh, Laura Dern, Chris Cooper and Meryl Streep (among others), but Gerwig gets everything else right, starting with a screenplay that soars like an arrow — and pierces like one, too.

6. 1917

On paper, this shouldn’t work. It’s a gimmick, right? But it’s a gimmick that’s actually in service of a story. The one-take conceit keeps us tied to Blake and Schofield, unable to hide behind the distancing effects of classical editing. Yes, the last third gets a little video-game-y. I would even say “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”-y, especially the river sequence. But boy does it stick the landing.

7. Us

Get Out, my #1 of 2017, was a Swiss watch of a script, tightly constructed and perfectly efficient. Us is both more sprawling and more ambitious, taking bigger swings though not always connecting. I love it for its big ideas, scary AF execution and bold performances, even if they don’t all work outside the level of allegory. More please, Mr. Peele.

8. Knives Out

Speaking of clockwork construction, this is it: a throwback Agatha Christie style murder mystery with a subtext that couldn’t be more relevent. Word is that Rian Johnson is working on more Detective Blanc stories. Here’s hoping there’s a franchise in the making.

9. Atlantics

This was a revelation, blending ghost story with love story, with things to say about gender and class, set in a country about which I know almost nothing. I loved it all.

10. Booksmart

What if you decided to make high school comedy like John Hughes used to make, but instead of leaning into stereotypes (jocks, nerds, stoners, rich kids) for jokes, you undermined those tired cliches instead, finding even greater humor in everyone’s shared humanity? If you’re Olivia Wilde, you get one of the year’s best comedies.

So Many Honorable Mentions:

• Three incredible films that definitely would have made my top 10, except I’m paid to promote them so I can’t be objective: the heartbreaking magical realist horror Tigers Are Not Afraid, the heartwarming zombie film One Cut of the Dead (whose single-take trick is better than 1917’s) and the essential, eye-opening doc Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror.
• Films I loved as much as the ones in my top 10 — and on another day might have made it: Her Smell, The Farewell, Jojo Rabbit, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Marriage Story, The Art of Self-Defense.
• Films that had me in the palm of their hand until the third act (but are still well worth seeing): Ad Astra, The Last Black Man in San Francisco
• Favorite documentaries: Hail Satan?, One Child Nation, The Inventor: Out for Blood, Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice
• More great horror: Bliss, Depraved, Doctor Sleep, Knife+Heart, The Lighthouse, Luz, Ready or Not (which almost made my top 10)
• Movies I saw on the festival circuit and adored, so keep an eye out for them, out now or soon: Black Circle, Deerskin, Color Out of Space, Jallikattu, The Long Walk, Swallow, The Vast of Night
• TV! 2019 was an amazing year for TV. Watchmen, Chernobyl, When They See Us, Russian Doll, Fleabag and Barry (especially that one episode) are among the best things I saw on any screen this year.