One hundred and fifty. That’s the final tally for new release movies I’ve seen this year as of writing this here article. The shot clock is up. The endpoint to officially putting my selection for the top ten films of 2019 is kaput. The decision is written into stone. Out into the ether. That means I had to give the old Thanos snap to 140 movies in the process and this year’s selection sumo-wrestling was just as painstaking and awful as any other. The things I do for clicks. ‘Twas a fine year for film with a smattering of highlights, from magic rock dramas to alligator horror, anime blockbusters to feminist comedy, with critical darlings and box office hits often coming from the least expected of corners. Oh and Disney cleaning up at the bank per usual.

Before we launch into the crème de la crème, I always like to take a paragraph or two to acknowledge all the outstanding films that could have had a place on this list were it another day or my mood was just the slightest bit different. Creating lists like this is a fickle thing and I’m more than willing to acknowledge that my tastes change often and unexpectedly so I do reserve the right for future me to totally disagree with the me who is penning this top ten list now. My apologies future me for any mistakes made herein. I know not what I do.

Running down the list of honorable mentions, it’s worth starting with The Last Black Man in San Francisco, a film that emanated a homelike warmth and bevy of soulful character, though it didn’t quite hold up on a second viewing; Ford v Ferrari proved a crowdpleaser of the highest order, working off standout performances from Bale and Damon; Noah Baumbach’s emotionally raw Marriage Story provided a platform for honest romantic reflection and career best turns from Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson; the partnership of Sam Mendes and Roger Deakins made 1917 a pulse-pounding war epic not to be missed; the Macedonian beekeeper doc Honeyland was as cinematic and narratively fulfilling as any feature film; Joaquin Phoenix was the male performance to beat as the titular Batman baddie in Joker, one of the finest and most subversive “super” movies to date; and Monos gave a youthful surge of attention to its armed band of teenage Colombian rebels to great effect.

Other films of note that could fight their way into my favorites with the passage of time include The Death of Dick Long,  Jojo Rabbit, The Beach Bum, American Factory, The Art of Self-Defense, Hustlers, Little Women, The Perfection, Honey Boy, Queen & Slim, Under the Silver Lake, First Love, Greener Grass and The Nightingale. Hell, even Avengers: Endgame was pretty great. But enough about the on-the-cuspers, it’s time to quiet the preamble and get down to the goods.

10. UNCUT GEMS

I’ve spent the better part of the century avoiding Adam Sandler movies like the plague but am never one to resist when he puts his big boy shoes on and man oh man has he done so here, the Safdie brothers squeezing the choicest of nectars from the dependably unreliable Sandman here. Uncut Gems is a screaming fight of a film, dialed into the frenetic exploits of diamond-dealer and gambling addict Howie. No one writes tornado characters quite like the Safdies, who make Howie a punch-drunk schlub of a husband and father teetering on the edge of civil society. Gems is a tightrope walk of high tension; edgy and unnerving and cringey in the best way possible, and Sandler damn well earns all the awards talk heading his way. [Full review]

9. CLIMAX

Climax wears its unconventionality like a badge in Gaspar Noé’s disorienting and distressing vision of a French dance troop dosed with a bad batch of psychedelics. One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star, so says Nietzsche, and no film better embodies this ideal than Climax. Noé’s signature camera whirling and swirling is both stomach-churning and brilliantly choreographed as the audience too is put through the ringer, locked into the hedonistic pandemonium and blaring drone of Aphex Twin, Cerrone, and Dopplereffekt. A adult-only Lord of the Flies meets Step Up on blotter paper, Climax is an infernal dance party you won’t soon forget. [Full review]

8. WAVES

A towering panic attack of a movie, told in two dissonant chapters and a wide variance of aspect ratios, Waves dissects an African-American family in turmoil in such a bold and unique way it’s hard to even define what the movie is. This is obvious visiting its IMDB page, which (falsely) classifies the film as Drama, Romance, and Sport. But writer-director Trey Edward Shults (Krisha, It Comes at Night) films the drama like a horror movie, creating a subjectively discomforting experience that’s certain to illicit a powerful emotional response from all who see it. The A24 feature went wildly ignored by audiences, who missed out on not only one of the best ensembles of the year – Kelvin Harrison Jr., Taylor Russell, Sterling K. Brown and Lucas Hedges are all outstanding – but one of the most urgent depictions of toxic masculinity and the unpredictable fragility of teens. [Full review]

7. THE LIGHTHOUSE 

The Lighthouse will make a landlubber out of ye, Robert Eggers’ mythic vision of two wickies slowly but surely going insane on a small outcrop of rock off the coast of Maine enough to make the most sober man in AA reach for the bottle. Eggers has a ball playing with film convention (shooting in black and white at Academy aspect ratio with modified old school equipment) and the result feels like the import of a bygone time, a message in a bottle from a world as alien as Mars or Europa. His script is as explosively of-a-time-and-place as The Witch’s was before it and is wielded to masterful effect by stars Willem Dafoe, in a role he was born to play, and Robert Pattinson, further honing his risky and eccentric post-Twilight/pre-Batman filmography. A maddening chamber-piece that shares DNA with The Shining and Ben Wheatley’s oeuvre, The Lighthouse is a perverse, black-out-drunk and decadent symphony of horned-up keepers of the light quickly losing touch with sanity and it’s a batty joy to behold. [Full review]

6. IN FABRIC

Yes, Peter Strickland’s arthouse horror movie sees a malevolent Red Dress wreak havoc on its unsuspecting wearers and yes, that Red Dress won Best Villain of the Year at the Seattle Film Critics Society. Not since Requiem for a Dream has a piece of clothing taken on such a sinister, sexual and mind-rotting quality and Strickland binds the far-out, highly sexualized campiness of the premise to an alluring and forbidden examination of consumer culture and female sexuality. The film is lurid and strange – and features one of the most memorable and unparalleled scenes of all of 2019 – defying audience expectations and traditional act structure to create an electrifying ensemble piece that refuses classification. 

5. US

Where once Jordan Peele smuggled a social thriller inside the confines of a horror movie, with Us, he does the opposite. Much more in line with the offerings of a traditional horror movie than its Oscar-nominated predecessor, Us remains a smartly-written and characteristically funny piece of satire that speaks not so much to race but the sociopolitical division of America. Add Lupita Nyong’o’s stunning dual performances as protagonist and antagonist, one of the best soundtracks of the year, and a handful of well-placed twists and you have a sophomore film that definitively proves that Get Out was no fluke. [Full review]

4. MIDSOMMAR

Horror films have long lurked in the shadows but not so in Ari Aster’s sunlight-drenched Midsommar. A disorienting daytime mind-fuck, Aster’s follow-up to Hereditary is a hallucinogen-soaked dark comedy that boasts standout performances from newcomer Florence Pugh, Jack Reynor and Will Poulter. Partially a painful meditation on grief and finding the strength to pick yourself up after a loss, Midsommar balances the turmoil of Pugh’s Dani amidst abject romantic dysfunction. Explosions of jaw-dropping skull-crushing gore are offset by the maniacally weird humor as communities join in unison to celebrate life, death, reproduction, and new beginnings in this one-of-a-kind horror joint. 

3. HER SMELL

Supercharged by a career-defining performance from Elizabeth Moss, Her Smell charts a cacophonous inner-battle as briefly-famous punk rocker on a perpetual bender Becky (Moss) must come to terms with her implosive habits. Told in five distinct scenes, we follow Becky through the highs and lows of minor fame and Alex Ross Perry’s in-your-face directorial style is brought to a fever pitch in the hellish cavities of green rooms and afterparties. Moss gives the best performance of the whole damn year, which makes her almost inevitable overlooking at the Oscars ever more a pity, bringing a chaotic and unruly soulfulness and complexity to this well-written and extremely difficult character. [Full review] [Interview with director Alex Ross Perry]

2. AD ASTRA

Space is a vacuum for sound and soul in James Gray’s sublime Ad Astra, a trippy and consummately-constructed space odyssey that explores the great reaches of the galaxy and the inner turmoil of the human heart. More tonally consistent with Tarkovsky’s Solaris than Kubrick’s 2001, Ad Astra also finds splashes of George Miller, particularly in its supremely staged moon pirate sequence, combining a number of different influences that coalesce into a soul-searching and visual stunning epic about a father and son’s broken relationship. Brad Pitt is jettisoned on an epic emotional journey and has rarely been better (Tommy Lee Jones is equally superb) exploring ideas of inherited male fragility, his saga of going to deep space to finally find his place back on Earth hitting this viewer in ways I had never anticipated. 

1. PARASITE

Bong Joon-Ho’s class warfare social thriller is a masterclass of filmmaking prowess, a best-of-decade showstopper that’s nimble and balletic enough to change tones at the bat of an eye while always holding steadfast to the underlying themes of financial desperation and socioeconomic rigidity. The performances across the board are fantastic, particularly from Kim family patriarch Kang-ho Song and daughter So-dam Park, and fastened to a searing script and world-class directorial skill. Electrifying, exciting, unpredictable and as relevant to American culture as it is Korean, Parasite drills into a globalized zeitgeist with the off-kilter darkness and sparkling black humor that only Bong can produce, making it far and away the movie of the year. [Full review]

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