Alright, we’re far enough into 2020 at this point that I can finally make this list with some level of confidence that it will take months for me to change my mind as opposed to mere days. 2019 was a weird year for movies, in that I really thought about halfway through the year that nothing was really going to floor me this year. It wasn’t that I hadn’t enjoyed any movies, but I was becoming disheartened because I hadn’t yet had a revelatory, knock me to the floor movie experience. It turns out the year was just saving those for the back half, which was full to the brim with exactly those experiences. In all, it was a pretty good (if a bit unbalanced) year for movies, continuing the apparent trend of terrible times in the world leading to amazing art in its theaters. So, without further ado, let’s get started running down the objectively correct list of this years winners and losers.

Notable Absences

As always, despite my best efforts, there are movies this year that slipped through the cracks (or just didn’t play in my area for long enough). I try always to include a list of these movies so that people can know up front what a poser I am and how unqualified I am to even make a best of list. The movies (that might legitimately have made this list) I missed in 2019 were: The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg), Atlantics (Mati Diop), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma), Honeyland (Ljubomir Stefanov & Tamara Kotevska), and An Elephant Sitting Still (Hu Bo), for which I simply have not found time to spare four hours. Realistically speaking, there are probably a bunch of others as well, but I’m not aware of them so they don’t count. If anyone is interested in the full list of movies I saw this year, you can see it here.

Deliberate Snubs

This is my annual spot for movies that are definitely getting awards consideration and may even be big winners in some of the competitions, but that I am intentionally excluding (not just leaving off) for some critical reason or another. These aren’t necessarily terrible movies (some of them rise to the level of ‘good,’ even), but they are movies that I feel either have an inflated sense of importance or are not as good as some seem to think they are. I try to include movies here that people might ask about if they weren’t included.

• Ad Astra – probably my biggest snub of the year, this one is making lists left and right, and not just for awards contention, but among real cinemaphiles as well. It just fell totally flat for me, which is incredibly disappointing because I absolutely loved James Gray’s previous work, especially Lost City of Z. This movie is beautifully shot, and a technical masterpiece, but to me it’s entirely hollow. I was bored by its middle-aged white guy angst (a trend that is going to be continued on this list of snubs) and was infuriated by its addition of voice-over narration to constantly explain itself as if the audience were too stupid to understand what the movie was doing.
• Joker – Like the previous entry, this movie isn’t bad, and actually has a lot of technically impressive elements (the set design, costuming, and the central performance are all pretty impressive, actually), but this is another movie whose import has been blown so far out of proportion that it beggars belief. For this to be nominated for so many awards (especially for the direction, which can best be described as ‘getting out of the way of Joaquin Phoenix’) is really too bad in such a great year of film. Like David O. Russell before him, Todd Phillips has decided that the quickest way to the Oscars is to nakedly steal from Scorsese without doing a single original thing in his film. It’s just as frustrating here as it was in American Hustle.
• Ford v Ferrari – Another movie from a director I love that fell unfortunately flat for me. While I would have to be a madman to say that the last 40 minutes wasn’t some of the most amazing filmmaking of the year, I simply don’t believe that it justifies the preceding full-length film’s worth of content that is just boring meetings and (again) middle-aged white guy angst. I’m a middle-aged white guy! I should be the target audience for this stuff, but I just find it so tedious. It’s clear that they’re attempting to channel the brilliance of Mad Men with fast cars added, but they forgot that Mad Men had, you know, actually interesting and three-dimensional female characters to balance out all the testosterone.
• Toy Story 4 – I love animation, and I make sure that there’s something animated on here pretty much every year, but this was a pretty big disappointment. After the home run of the third entry, and such a long wait between films, I assumed along with many others that they had a really impressive story they wanted to tell. Unfortunately this is mostly an inoffensive little time-waster that is acceptably cute and will keep most children quiet for roughly an hour and a half. I’ve just come to expect more from Pixar, so this was a bit of a let down.

Honorable Mentions

These are movies that almost made the top ten. There are another ten movies here, but there could easily have been twenty. Like I said, it ended up being a surprisingly good year for movies. All of them are excellent in their own right, and each of them is worthy for inclusion for a number of reasons. I chose films that I really wanted to talk about for this section, so these aren’t necessarily numbers eleven through twenty or anything like that, just movies that barely missed the list that have some noteworthy feature that I thought worth highlighting.

• The Art of Self-Defense (Riley Stearns)- A bitingly effective, pitch-black satire of modern masculinity with a Jesse Eisenberg who is perfectly (type)cast as an ineffectual, effete, terrified young man who decides to pursue self-defense. The greatest compliment I can give this film is that it absolutely should have failed, and would have in the hands of most directors, but every time you think it’s going off the rails, it takes a brilliant turn and goes somewhere new. It also gave me my most mean-spirited laughs of the year from deep within the black pit of my soul. Highly recommended.

• Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan)- This makes the list for being perhaps the most surprising success of the year. An adaptation of a generally not-well-regarded sequel whose predecessor was made into arguably one of the greatest movies of all time definitely had the cards stacked against it, but it manages to actually improve upon its source material in about every way and actually serve as a not just acceptable, but damn good sequel to The Shining, although I wouldn’t really describe it as a horror movie despite some shocking imagery. This movie serves as proof that middle-aged white dude angst can actually be done well when it doesn’t condescend to its audience or disappear too far up its own…imagery. A truly emotional examination of trauma and an all too literal look at the idea of ‘the sins of the father,’ this one is absolutely worth the time.

• The Farewell (Lulu Wang) – Simultaneously serving as a crowd-pleasing family drama and a sincere examination of the philosophy of death, this one was much talked-about throughout the year, but I feel like it hasn’t really made many end-of-the-year lists. The plot is simplicity itself: the aging matriarch of a Chinese-American family (still living in China) has terminal cancer and her family decides not to tell her about it (which is not only legal but actually encouraged in China). The movie primarily deals with how the woman’s 30-something, U.S.-raised granddaughter (played expertly by rising star Awkwafina) deals with being forced to keep the secret. It is perhaps included here due to a recent rewatch with my wife which made me further appreciate how deftly it merges emotionality with a keen-eyed observation about differences between Chinese and American culture. The film is like a crash course on the complex motivations and perspectives of Chinese-Americans, but without ever feeling sententious or didactic.

• Furie (Le-Van Kiet) – My obligatory actioner of the year, this Vietnamese face-melter is basically just Taken with a mom, but boy howdy what a mom. Van Veronica Ngo is astonishingly kinetic and also manages to imbue her character with more humanity than is often allowed in characters who “have a very particular set of skills,” as it were. This movie is my concession for not really having any action movies in my top ten this year (a rarity for me). The action itself is top-notch, filmed well without cutaways or cheats, and as a special bonus it’s available right now streaming on Netflix.

• Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Michael Dougherty) – This movie was so criminally slept on that I have lost all faith in humanity. While it was burdened with a lackluster human-oriented plot bolted on to the big monster action I crave, I really don’t care. It delivered what actually mattered in spades: visually spectacular creatures that were imbued with life and character despite having no spoken lines whatsoever, a dramatic and powerful performance from Ken Watanabe (who is always at the top of his game regardless of the quality of the material), and one of the most jaw-dropping, city-exploding finales that any kaiju fan could ever ask for. I don’t care that its eco-terrorism nonsense was completely forgettable because I have forgotten it. What matters is that I will never forget Mothra (a gigantic bug with no dialogue) for the rest of my natural life.

• Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry) – Elisabeth Moss gives the performance of the year in my annual ‘God I barely got through this it’s so rough’ movie. The story is about a brilliant but self-destructive musical performer, and although that trope is so threadbare you can see through it, this movie manages to revitalize it through craft and the explosive, volatile madness of Becky Something, its central character. It’s maybe a lifetime best among a series of powerhouse performances for the actress, and it constantly makes you question how things could possibly sink any deeper and then surprises you by finding a way. Absolutely not for the faint of heart, but if you can stand the harrowing journey it’s absolutely worth the ride.

• The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers) – This is the movie I am most likely to regret leaving off of my top 10 list this year. I’ve only had a single chance to see it and I think it’s the kind of movie for which my appreciation will increase the more times I view it. It’s a jarring and confident departure from Eggers’ debut The VVitch, but it’s also a deliberately opaque and difficult film. The plot is just ‘two guys go to work at a lighthouse and at least one of them slowly goes crazy,’ but there’s obviously a lot more going on than that. It’s destined to go on to be one of those films that has endless theories and interpretations, but my initial reaction to it was definitely of respect, not necessarily enjoyment. It is filled with salty seadog-speeches and a surprising amount of flatulence, but if you’re in the mood for something far off the beaten path it absolutely will not disappoint. The central performances are powerful and compelling, but the point (for now) eludes me. We’ll see what I think about it in a couple of years.

• Long Shot (Jonathan Levine) – Another criminally slept-on movie, this gender-swapped Pretty Woman riff was so much more heartful and funny than I could have imagined. No more complicated than a powerful political candidate falling in love with her speech writer while on the campaign trail, the plot’s simplicity belies a sincere and thoughtful take on modern politics and gender roles. Like last year’s Game Night, this is the rare Hollywood formula comedy that seems like someone actually wrote and directed it, as opposed to merely letting it happen in front of a camera. Its politics are refreshing (and I don’t just mean ‘liberal,’ I mean actually refreshing), and it somehow manages to avoid all of the traditional tropes that surround the ‘talented, beautiful woman somehow falls for schlubby, pathetic guy’ genre of rom-coms. Astonishingly better than it had any right to be, if you can get over the cognitive dissonance of Charlize Theron being in a relationship with Seth Rogen, you should give this one a shot.

• Midsommar (Ari Aster) – It looks like Aster is doomed to always be the bridesmaid and never the bride on my lists. Like last year’s Hereditary, this one falls just short of my list for the year. Like Eggers above, I’m glad Aster’s second feature is so different from his first. The washed out, hyper-lit cinematography here is excellent, and Florence Pugh turns in her second best performance of the year (#1 is further up) as Dani, a victim of tragedy surrounded by the manifestation of every negative stereotype about millennials and academics on a trip both literal and metaphorical through rural Sweden for a folk festival. Already a few trends are becoming evident in Aster’s filmography (psychodrama, wild tonal shifts, and violent head trauma to name a few), but this film still cements his reputation as a horror filmmaker to watch, and I really do look forward to the day he finally makes one that hits the top 10.

• Ready or Not ( Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett) – Perhaps the movie that made me smile the most this year, this one is just fun from start to finish (which is perhaps strange to say about a movie this gory, but I’m a strange person). Grace (a delightful Samara Weaving) is marrying the man of her dreams, and he’s rich to boot. There’s only one catch: an old family tradition that can turn rather deadly. To say any more would spoil the fun, but if you like horror comedy at all, this is one of the best in recent memory. It’s yet another example of how class consciousness has oozed into film in the past couple of years. Kill the rich, indeed.

The 10 Best Movies of 2019

10. Avengers: Endgame (Anthony and Joe Russo): I know that many critics would consider this film’s inclusion here a travesty, but I probably didn’t have a more joyful time in a cinema this year. I’m a comic fan from way before the Marvel juggernaut got going, and this movie is a realization of so many things that I never would have dreamed possible as a child. It’s absolutely not a better movie than some of the movies that aren’t on this list, but I can only speak my heart on this subject. Probably the truest criticism that can be leveled against it is that so much of its greatness lies outside of itself, in the surrounding Marvel paraphernalia that has developed over the course of the last decade. This is entirely true, but it does nothing to change the fact that I laughed and cried and cheered more at this movie than at any other I can ever remember attending. I’ve seen it four times, and it hasn’t yet failed to inspire the same joy in me as the first night I saw it. It’s a triumph (perhaps a triumph of evil with Disney’s increasingly monopolistic ambitions), but I can’t in good conscience exclude it from a list of my top movie experiences of the year.

9. Knives Out (Rian Johnson): The best straight-up murder mystery of the past decade, I’d say. Sure it might not be the most popular genre out there, but that’s still quite the accomplishment. This movie is notable for the way in which it both reinforces and subverts the tropes of the genre, like all of the best homages. The movie plays with the viewer’s loyalties throughout, constantly making you question not just what happened but why and where your sympathies ultimately lie. Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc is delightfully cheesy, a Southern-fried Poirot for the modern age, and Ana de Armas, a relative newcomer, manages to hold her own against a veritable murderer’s row of acting talent that Johnson got together for the film. The film’s themes, while not exactly subtle, are handled deftly, and culminate in probably my favorite closing shot of the entire year, which left me with a huge grin plastered across my face that returns every time I recall the ending.

8. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese): I’m as surprised as the next person that this movie isn’t at the top of the list, but here we are. A powerhouse, epic-length film about a mob hitman made by a whole bunch of people who are excellent at what they do, this movie is a brilliant throwback to the auteur age of cinema. A prestige picture in every way, this movie cements Netflix as an important patron of cinematic art like few other films have before. Far more melancholy than even Scorsese’s other gangster films, this movie (as many have noted) brilliantly merges the director’s twin obsessions of American crime and crises of faith into a thoughtful reflection on meaning and purpose that also serves as a beautiful reflection on his own body of work over the past 45 years. Everyone is at the top of their game here, and their games are very high indeed. While the movie is a little overlong, and Scorsese might be a bit too hesitant to kill some of his darlings, the ultimate effect is powerful and beautiful and quietly heartbreaking. If you can find three and a half hours to sit with it, it won’t disappoint.

7. Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke): If you’d told me I would put a crime movie higher than The Irishman this year, I would never have believed you. Until I saw this. Jia has been an artist on the rise in China for years, and 2013’s A Touch of Sin remains one of my favorite films of the decade, but this is him operating on a whole other level. Possibly his best film yet, this story of a crimelord’s girlfriend and her struggles captivates throughout. Much more about the emotional violence that people do to each other than simply about bodily destruction, this movie paints a devastating portrait of desolation both industrial and personal. Zhao Tao, a Jia regular, turns in another amazing performance, giving her character inner depths that slowly reveal themselves over the course of the film. The way she effortlessly disappears into her persona reminds me of Gong Li’s amazing performances throughout the 1990s, and she similarly anchors the entire film. Like most work by Jia Zhangke, this is a bleak look at the grim realities of decaying industrial China, but if you’re in the mood for a downer, you can’t do much better.

6. Funan (Denis Do): Speaking of totally downer movies, this is the saddest film I saw this year. This biographical story of the filmmaker’s parents and their struggles to survive the Khmer Rouge’s takeover of Cambodia literally makes me tear up just thinking about it to write this brief summary. A heartrending portrait of the lengths to which a parent will go for the sake of their child, this movie absolutely deserves its comparisons to Grave of the Fireflies, another of the greatest animated chronicles of the horror of war. The animation is beautiful throughout, and really seems like the perfect medium for the story. The impressionistic way that it presents a child’s view of the world is particularly notable. Absolutely not for the faint of heart or the emotionally vulnerable, this movie has simple feats of film editing that are as sad as some entire movies. Critics might call it maudlin, but the fundamental truth of the story kept it from ever tipping over into that territory for me. An elegiac tribute to love in the face of hopelessness, this movie put faces and names to an abstract international tragedy for me, and I will never forget it.

5. One Cut of the Dead (Shinichirou Ueda): Best viewed with absolutely no discussion of the film beforehand whatsoever, this was probably the most inventive movie I saw all year. It’s expertly constructed and some of its greatest joys and funniest jokes actually come from its structure as opposed to its script. The most basic spoiler-free version I can give is that the filming of a zombie movie is interrupted by the presence of zombies, but that doesn’t even begin to describe the insanity of this movie. It is working from frame one on a number of metatextual levels that will keep you guessing throughout the film. I guarantee that you will never know where this movie is going next. Every new revelation is somehow more fun and more endearing than the last, and the movie is not simply a big film joke. It has both amazing characters who are warmly acted and joyful reflections on the nature of film as both art and commerce. To say too much more would be to give away the game, but everyone should see this movie. Don’t avoid if zombies or horror aren’t your thing. This one should be enjoyed by anyone who simply likes movies.

4. Little Women (Greta Gerwig): This is the kind of filmmaking that so often goes unsung: simply and quietly brilliant. There is nothing ostentatious or self-important about Gerwig’s presentation here of the classic novel. Even her brilliant idea of rearranging the events of the book for thematic relevance isn’t lingered on or pointed out in a self-congratulatory way. This is a director disappearing into her film. The recollection of the movie is not of a movie, but of an actual experience. Every performance is basically perfect. Laura Dern does more with a tiny movement of her hands than some actors do with entire movies. Every one of the young performers here (even the usually rough Emma Watson) is excellent. Saoirse Ronan, probably my favorite young actress, is wonderful as always, but the real standout is Florence Pugh as Amy. She turns what might have been an insufferable character into a real person with motivations, hopes, and desires, and makes it absolutely impossible to hate her. This is a story of love and decency and kindness and sisterhood, and there are too few of those that are this expertly made. Anyone who has ever had a sister (biological or otherwise) should see this movie without delay. It is a wonder.

3. Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi): I think this is one of the most underrated movies of the year. It is timely, joyful, tearful, and everything in between. It’s a meditation on how people learn to hate and a message of hope that they can perhaps one day stop. It’s a reflection on the fate of marginalized people from the past through to the modern day, and a timeless story of growing up and leaving childhood behind. It also has its director dressed up in whiteface as Hitler, so there’s that, too. Seriously though, built around the gimmick of ‘Nazi youth has Hitler for an imaginary friend’ is a movie that is universal in its examination of youth and the long and painful process of growing out of it. Playing fake Hitler requires much more nuance than you would think, with Waititi slowly revealing the menace that the audience assumes but little Jojo is ignorant of. The supporting cast is amazing as well. This is Scarlett Johansson’s performance of the year, Marriage Story notwithstanding. Sam Rockwell and Rebel Wilson are hilarious as buffoonish leaders of the Hitler Youth Brigade, and Thomasin McKenzie is excellent as a Jewish child who (for obvious reasons) has had to grow up very quickly. And, perhaps most importantly, the movie is hilarious. It’s laugh-out-loud funny throughout, and the jokes come so quickly you’ll want to see it again just to catch the ones you missed. That humor turns on a dime though, and results in some of the most gut-punch moments you’ll see in a 2019 movie. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll maybe leave with a little bit of hope for the world restored, and I can’t give a better recommendation than that.

2. Uncut Gems (Josh & Benny Safdie): This movie is a two-hour long panic attack. You may have heard that in other reviews, but let me reiterate: this movie gave me some small idea of what people with social anxiety must suffer because for its entire duration I actually felt physically ill at the horrible situations playing out on screen. Adam Sandler gives a career best performance as Howard Ratner, an absolute trainwreck of a human being trying to get rich any way he can and with his eye on one last big payday. A gambling addict who is lying to or cheating nearly every human being in his life, there seems to be no situation that he can’t make worse for himself. Even though it’s this high on my list, I legitimately can’t in good conscience recommend this film to everyone. It is a genuinely unpleasant time at the movies, asking the question: is it possible to sympathize, or even empathize with a character this self-destructive and terrible? For me, the answer is a resounding yes, and it’s a tribute to the quality of the writing and filmmaking that it achieves its goals as well as it does. The movie also serves as a primer on the ins and outs of underworld sports gambling and international gemstone trading, clearly written from a deep understanding of the seedy underbelly of New York. The dialogue crackles in every scene, sounding like some kind of contemporary gutter Shakespeare (and is just as lurid and profane). Even if it’s nihilistic, brutish, and cruel, this is one of the most powerful, edge-of-your-seat, kinetic films to hit theaters in a long while. If you can bear up under the pressure, there’s nothing else quite like it.

1. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho): This isn’t just the best movie of 2019, I am already ready to categorically state that it is easily one of the 10 best movies of the decade (top 5?). This is Bong’s best movie yet in a career of brilliant, genre-defying masterpieces (and also Okja). The story takes a ludicrous number of sharp turns in its tale of two families, one rich and one poor, but none of its increasingly mad twists ever feels either artificial or telegraphed. Bong constructs the movie with the care and precision of a surgeon with a scalpel: not a single shot or line of dialogue is wasted in his examination and excoriation of society in general and class in particular. Every single performer is doing amazing work in this as well. Song Kang-ho is brilliant as the poor family patriarch, doing probably his best work since Memories of Murder. Jo Yeo-jong is also delightful as the rich mom, providing much of the humor of the film as a clueless but very human trophy wife whose gullibility might inspire laughter but who never becomes a one-dimensional fool. But the real revelation here, as anyone who’s seen the movie will tell you, is Park So-dam as the ingenious and resourceful daughter of the have-not family. She hasn’t been in much since breaking out of Korean television, but she is a talent to watch. She absolutely owns this entire movie despite never really taking the central position in it. Ultimately, though, what elevates this movie to the first spot on this list isn’t just its actors but its thematic complexity. The movie feels like a puzzle box of ideas, waiting to be teased out by the patient viewer. It doesn’t frustrate or obfuscate, it just has so much going on that you feel that more viewings will only add to your appreciation. Bong’s trademark absurdity is used very sparingly, but just enough to ignite the imagination. This is a movie that defies easy classification or explication. It is a cinematic treasure that I already want to revisit despite having seen it three times. I can’t wait to see what new facet reveals itself on each subsequent watch. A perfect film.

And that’s it! The objective list of the greatest movies of 2019 (and also a bunch of others that you should probably check out). Agree? Disagree?Either way I hope that you had as much fun at the movies in 2019 as I did, and that next year is just as good (if not better!). Thanks for reading this crazy wall of words. If it introduced you to even one movie you weren’t previously aware of, I’m very happy. Roll on 2020!