It's that time again, right? The Year in Review, looking back at (depending on who you ask) the end of a wild decade of film that has seen superheroes reign at the box office, home streaming platforms leap headlong into awards-season hype, and, as everything else in the digital age, a change in the way we consume film as content (do people still buy blu rays?).
And what a year 2019 has been. For me, it's been a really strong if not all-time great kind of year. Officially I saw 60 2019 films last year, fewer than in years past (107 in 2018, 152 in 2017). That's been due to personal life changes. For 8 months of the year I had two jobs, a holdover from a 2018 that saw me lose a job and replace it with one that paid far less). In July I got a new, better job, scored some amazing freelance writing projects, and travelled to Canada for the first time. Early October saw the practical end of my marriage, and I find myself a bachelor (albeit one with 3 kids) for the first time in nearly 20 years.
But cinema, along with music (I discovered Lil Wayne, and his song "Mrs. Officer" kept me sane in an insane time in my life), kept life flowing with some sense of normality, and if nothing else, it has been a strong year for films. Of my list of 60 official (I didn't count "The Irishman," whose screening I had to bail on with about 20 minutes to go for personal reasons), I make it to nearly 50 before I list what I'd call a "bad" movie (the tepid and pointless "Lion King" faux-live-action flick), and this Top 10 is as strong top to bottom as any other year this decade.
But enough self-indulgence. Here is my Top 10 of 2019:
10. Greener Grass
Directors Jocelyn DeBoer and Dawn Luebbe tell one of the most surreal (yet on-the-nose) films of the year, a take on suburbia that is both utterly ridiculous and uncomfortably close to reality. "Greener Grass" starts with two suburban 30-something women watching their sons play soccer. The scene ends with one of them giving the other her baby.
Not to hold. TO KEEP. It only gets stranger from there. "Grass" is a comedically nightmarish vision of suburban 30-something life, with spouse-swapping, grown-ass women obsessed with having braces, and a general keeping-up-with-the-Joneses obsession that leads to personal ruin. Beck Bennett of "Saturday Night Live" brings a perfect too-perfect-for-words persona to the film, and DeBoer and Luebbe shine as the film's central characters.
There is no film funnier--or more frighteningly on-the-nose, than "Grass."
9. The Peanut Butter Falcon
A largely unheralded film about Zak (Zack Gottsagen), a young man with Down Syndrome, and his journey to become a professional wrestler. Zak is a young man without a family, victimized by a system that doesn't know what to do with him. He's dumped in a rural nursing home where he spends his days hobnobbing with septuagenarians and re-watching the same old pro-wrestling VHS tape, and dreaming of doing that himself.
When Zak escapes the home, he heads toward the rural North Carolina wrestling school Zak believes can make his dreams a reality. He encounters a fisherman (Shia LeBeouf), on the lam from men whom he stole from, who agrees to help Zak follow his dreams.
LeBeouf is at his best here, Gottsagen is the right mix of sweet and silly, and Dakota Johnson ("50 Shades of Grey") centers the film as Zak's caretaker, who reluctantly accompanies them on their quest. Full of earnestness and one of the most fun cameos of 2019, strong performances from its stars and a tremendous extended cast that includes Bruce Dern, John Hawkes, Jon Bernthal, and Thomas Haden Church, "Peanut Butter Falcon" is the movie you missed in 2019 that you shouldn't have.
8. Uncut Gems
Adam Sandler tosses aside his middle-aged manchild persona to play the role of his life as Howard Ratner, an underground New York jeweler constantly on the edge of personal and financial ruin. Howard is in deep with gamblers, gangsters, and assorted toughs who are constantly on the verge of hurting him, but he can't help himself: he has to chase that next big score. When he gains possession of a rare uncut opal, it catches the eye of basketball star Kevin Garnett (playing himself), who convinces Howard to lend it to him for luck against the Knicks. Howard insists on collateral: Garnett's championship ring, which he then pawns in order to place an ultimate-score kind of bet on Garnett and his team.
Sandler is the best he's ever been, feeling for the first time like an actor and not a movie star comedian, and the supporting cast is stellar--Garnett and The Weeknd particularly shine playing versions of themselves that feel authentic, even when they're less-than-complementary to their public personae. "Uncut Gems" is a stressful experience, watching a man in a seemingly endless downward spiral of excess and greed, unable to check the need for the adrenaline rush even when he already has seemingly everything.
7. Knives Out
A twisty, fun, even macabre murder mystery, "Knives Out" is Rian Johnson once again subverting a well-worn genre. On the heels of his controversial work on "The Last Jedi," where he let the two main antagonists fall in love, turned a science fiction icon into a pariah, and pretty much set the franchise on its head. He does the same here, with Brit Daniel Craig pulling off a highly questionable (but somehow brilliant) cajun-type accent investigating a batty group of rich sycophants. Then Johnson pulls the rug from under you, the viewer, showing you that whodunit is less important than the journey itself, and the film becomes a different animal entirely.
"Knives Out" has arguably the best cast of any film this year, with names like Christopher Plummer, Jamie Lee Curtis, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Don Johnson, Michael Shannon, Toni Collette, and Lakeith Stanfield, and each one is there for a purpose. Each is on their A game, and contributes mightily to one of the craziest rides of the year.
6. Us
Jordan Peele continues to make heady horror films with race at the center of his narrative. Much like his amazing "Get Out," Peele gives middle-class blacks societally-driven identity crisis. This time a family, headed by Adelade (Lupita N'yongo) and Gabe (Winston Duke) go on vacation to their posh, but somewhat secluded, vacation home when they are menaced by...themselves. Darker, more animalistic copies of themselves aim to kill them, then take over their lives.
N'yongo gives a transformative dual performance as both herself and her doppelgänger, and Duke plays Gabe as a "strong black man" who proves to be anything but, making poor decisions and proving an ineffective protector for his family. This is where Adelade shines, switching to Mama Bear mode but retaining the smarts and in-the-moment decision making she needs.
In a sense, "Us" is the first post-racial zombie film (though to call it that is admittedly something of a disservice to the film), where murderous versions of ourselves come to destroy us. It is fully on par with Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," in many ways just as culturally relevant as that film was in its day.
5. Ford v Ferrari
The true story of Carroll Shelby (played by Matt Damon) and Ken Miles (Christian Bale), and how they achieved the impossible: building a car for Ford to challenge the seemingly unbeatable Ferrari at the fabled 24 Hours of LeMans auto race. Battling ego-driven corporate interference from Ford executives looking out for themselves, Shelby and Miles pressed on, insisting on doing things their way, and conquering the Ford system to make it happen.
Bale and Damon both give Oscar-worthy performances, and a strong, stellar supporting cast includes Jon Bernthal as Lee Iacocca, Josh Lucas as the stalling Leo Beebe, and Tracy Letts in a terrific, layered performance as Henry Ford II. The spectacular script, spearheaded by (IFJA) Hoosier (Award winner) Jason Keller ("Mirror Mirror") makes the film about much more than high-tech race cars, and shows that navigating the political race track is just as important to success as the actual physical one.
4. The Lighthouse
A tense, claustrophobic, and often times hysterically disturbing meditation on solitude and paranoia, "The Lighthouse" is Robert Eggers' masterclass on building tension and dread. Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are two lighthouse keepers working together on a remote New England island, and find themselves at each others' throats.
Eggers films in stark black and white, and Pattinson and especially Dafoe shine, mastering period dialog. Eggers' vision is alternately comedic and horrific. Pattinson begins to hallucinate about mermaids, and soon they realize when a shipment doesn't show up that they will soon run out of food. The result is a batty, powerful work that feels fresh and new, even as it completely embraces its old-world sensibility.
3. Parasite
Bong Joon-Ho crafts a crazy story about social class in this story of the Kim family and their obsession with the affluent Park family. The Kims are a group of grifters, living on the edge of squalor. When one of them finds themselves in the employ of the Park family, the entire family weasels their way in, each getting jobs and finding success by simply doing well. Meanwhile, they find themselves in the midst of a class struggle when they clash with the family's housekeeper, and find the home has secrets of its own.
Bong crafts a stellar story that takes a series of unexpected turns, descending into almost farcical territory. Easily accessible to even curmudgeonly American audiences, the characters have very Western sensibilities, and their motivations are as universal as their struggles. With "The Host," "Snowpiercer," and "Okja" among others, Bong has an established track record, and this film is better than all of those. It's a spectacular comedy, a searing thriller, and a legitimate drama all in one.
2. In Fabric
A daffy horror flick about a killer dress probably doesn't sound like a great movie to you. I certainly was skeptical. Even as a darkly comic farce a la "Rubber" a few years back (about a killer car tire), "In Fabric" would seem to be a thin premise indeed.
And yet this flick is a tour de force, with yes, a lot of comedic moments (I mean, how else can you show a dress murdering someone in any other way), but it also makes a strong statement about consumer culture, corporate apathy, and obsession, telling two distinct, but linked stories.
And writer/director Peter Strickland gives zero fucks, telling his story how he wants, daring you to keep watching wide-eyed at the screen while he shows you images like an old man masturbating while he watches a middle-aged woman violate a menstruating mannequin, in a moment that, yes, perfectly serves his story. An while the transition between stories should be jarring, it somehow feels perfect given this film.
If you're still reading, you've probably guessed by now that "In Fabric" isn't a film for everyone, but if you appreciate the theater of the bizarre, and can wade through some pretty disturbing images to get where you're going, you might appreciate the absurd trip that is "In Fabric."
1. Avengers: Endgame
My Film Yap colleague Andy Carr called "Endgame" "the biggest film of all time," and man is he right. It's a virtually perfect film, unafraid to take a chance on taking its characters in unexpected directions (and some spoilers follow immediately if you're one of the two people who haven't seen "Endgame" yet). From killing off Thanos in the first act, to Bro Thor, Smart Hulk and a Tony Stark who pivots back to prioritizing his own interests, "Endgame" earns its big-flick feel with impressive characterization and doesn't just rely on the same old "bigger is better" heroics.
Of course, that's not to say those battles aren't epic, taking us down a memory-lane journey that literally walks us through previous films in a bold attempt to undo a universe-changing event in the boldest, most imaginative way possible, leading up to the ultimate in satisfying all-out throwdowns that is emotional enough that this reporter broke down in tears 3 times (and not just at the "sad" moments).
It was a tall order to raise the stakes from "Infinity War," and somehow Joe and Anthony Russo did it in grand style. They upped the stakes of the game, flipped the nature of the battle, and closed the arcs of Iron Man and Captain America in the most satisfying possible way, leading to the most satisfying ending of any movie this year.