Instead of my usual best of the year write-ups that I’m sure every single person reads in their entirety, I decided to do something visual instead this year. At this point, it’s 2020 and most of the films on my list have already been written about to death, so I can spare everybody another redundant list discussing the class warfare of “Parasite” and why “The Irishman” is one of Scorsese’s most self-reflective, tragic films. These things are all true, and have been written about by far better writers than myself. So enjoy a compilation of some of my very favorite films of the last year, set to an eclectic soundtrack of Ellie Goulding, Thom Yorke, Gigi D’Agostino, and other songs that made their way into 2019 film culture.
And for those that do want to read a little bit, here’s a separate list of my favorite scenes and moments from 2019, with accompanying video and of course, lots of spoilers!
In Alphabetical Order…
It’s hard to think of a more politically backwards, morally egregious film released this year than Michael Bay’s “6 Underground.” Bay’s first foray into streaming saw him operating on a “Transformers” size budget, but with the hard-R freedom of his 2013 satire “Pain & Gain” and his 2003 masterpiece of mayhem and carnage, “Bad Boys II.” But who wants to watch a Michael Bay movie for political correctness or you know, basic understanding of what a government coup is, when instead you get the most creative deaths seen on-screen since the “Final Destination” franchise. A bullet shooting perfectly through a man’s cigar before blowing his brains out all over his hotel wall is hands down, one of the most bonkers things I’ve ever witnessed in a mainstream action movie. The film is also stacked with classic Bay set pieces, including a 20 minute car chase through the streets of Florence and a base jumping foot chase on scaffolds, but it’s the films climactic gravity and logic defying sequence on board a billionaire’s ship that gives us Bay operating at peak Bayhem. If you’ve ever watched a Michael Bay movie and thought “this movie needs a giant fucking magnet that can attract all the nameless henchmen money can buy,” then this is your movie. In all seriousness, Bay is derided for his uninspired top 40’s music supervision and casual racism, but he’s also one of the best action directors alive. Michael Mann, John Woo, and Kathryn Bigelow might be able to shape an action set piece with masterful precision and balletic technical prowess, but nobody sees the world quite like Bay.
Even though “Ad Astra” suffered a poorly marketed release at the beginning of the fall, inevitably being lost in the shuffle of other awards friendly films, it’s still seen its fair share of praise for aspects like Brad Pitt’s haunting, remarkably subdued and emotionally raw performance, Hoyte von Hoytema’s gorgeous cinematography, and Max Richter’s dynamic score. One thing that seems to get left out a lot is the film’s secret weapon: Tommy Lee Jones. One of the most consistently reliable and effortlessly interesting actors around, Jones appears only in flickers of memory and photos throughout most of the film, until his father/son reunion in the last act. It’s a scene that could have been many things: too maudlin, too creepy, etc. But in the hands of James Gray, it’s a delicate tightrope of suspense and emotional catharsis. Pitt’s extraordinary in the scene, as he is for all the film, but there’s something so incredibly detailed about Jones throughout the scene. It’s the only true glimpse we’ll get of the unstable astronaut gone AWOL, and Jones gives us just enough to tell a lifetime’s worth of information. The shiftiness in his eyes keeps us guessing, and when we see where the scene is building to, it’s all the more devastating as we’re left with a man who’s really lived in isolation his whole life and is too far gone to ever rebuild the life he left behind.
Jia Zhangke’s heartbreaking, sprawling tale of loyalty and love lost set against the backdrop of China’s past and ever-changing present was one of the most criminally underrated films of 2019. There are countless scenes in the film that could be mentioned here, from the former lover’s hotel reunion to the bone-crunching street brawl that sets off the story’s events, but for me it’s the “YMCA” dance scene that really lingers. It’s a surprising moment of reprieve early on in the film that sees the film’s central lovers (Liao Fan and a sorely overlooked Zhao Tao) at their romantic peak, blissfully unaware of the downfall ahead of them. It’s a classic calm before the storm scene, except this time it’s set to one of the most globally recognizable, culturally significant songs of the 20th century. On the surface, it’s fun and brimming with life, but in hindsight, it’s one of the most devastating scenes in the film. The pure ecstasy of being in love and feeling untouchable becoming a memory of a person you once were and the love you once felt, now a numbness that’s turned you cold.
Two of the most difficult films to make are films about musicians, and films about addicts. They both can fall into any number of clichés, and even at their most authentic, often feel overly familiar. Alex Ross Perry decided to tackle both stories over the course of a sprawling runtime told through five intimate chapters that feel increasingly claustrophobic and emotionally devastating. While really all five of these sequences could constitute as a single long scene that would qualify for this list, it’s the films fourth chapter and one moment in particular that cemented the film as Perry’s finest film to date. If the first three chapters of the film showed us the self-destructive side of increasingly unstable rockstar Becky Something (a career defining performance by Elisabeth Moss), then the fourth chapter offered us and her a sigh of relief. No longer in the confines of a concert’s backstage halls or a particularly tumultuous studio session, we’re with Becky Something in the wake of her sobriety. We finally get to see the real Becky Something. We see her uncomfortable in her own skin, ashamed of herself, but still unwilling to fully accept responsibility. I’ve honestly never seen the painful discomfort of an addict sitting vulnerably with themselves for the first time in their adult lives, portrayed so authentically. Growing up with an alcoholic mother, I’ve witnessed those moments too many times to recall, but I had never seen it honestly embodied like this. A woman whose life was once defined by chaos and a ferocious, untameable energy has to start over. She has to open herself up to people without the aid of anything to make her feel more comfortable in her own skin. It’s a painful sequence, and this excerpt with her daughter at the piano, is one of the most moving moments of the year.
The first 45 minutes of Terrence Malick’s so-called “return to form” “A Hidden Life” plays out for the most part like classic Malick, or at least the Malick we’ve come to know so well this decade. That’s not a slight, as I think Malick is, even at his most tedious, one of our most innovative and important directors. But it’s really the film’s second half that reminds you how fucking great Malick can be. Maybe we took him for granted because we weren’t used to seeing him work at such a fast clip as we did these past few years. Maybe “The Tree of Life” was so influential — arguably the most influential film of the decade — that seeing his work repurposed and adapted by so many other filmmakers created an unearned resentment towards Malick himself. Whatever the case, “A Hidden Life” isn’t the return to form so many critics lazily labeled it as. Malick didn’t go off the rails for decades, making impersonal films for a check, he just discovered digital and realized he could shoot the way he always wanted to on a much smaller budget, resulting in a suddenly prolific stage in the notoriously unprolific director’s career. “A Hidden Life” is maybe his most personal film to date — a continuation of his own internal battle with faith and war — that saw him operating at the same level of epic mastery as “The Thin Red Line.” The scene isn’t available online — and honestly shouldn’t be, as it would be a major spoiler — but the ending is an absolute knockout. If you can see it in theaters, seek it out on the biggest screen possible.
When “High Life” premiered at TIFF in 2018, it provoked mass audience walkouts and a sharply divided critical response. There was also one part of the film you couldn’t avoid hearing about: The Fuck Box. Hearing that one of my favorite filmmakers, Claire Denis, was teaming with Robert Pattinson coming off the best performance of his career in “Good Time” was already enough to get me excited, but goddamn, a Fuck Box??? And then the numerous bad reviews talking about the excessive use of cum??? Then A24 bought the US rights, assuring it would not only get a theatrical release, but a well-marketed one at that. “High Life” quickly became my most anticipated of 2019. Denis can craft a deceptively upsetting and unshakeable scene like few directors right now, and “High Life” isn’t short on them. Her most violent and nihilistic film since “Trouble Every Day,” the film is also one of her most indescribably complex narratives to date. Acting as a mash-up of a space thriller and prison drama, the film continues her theme of modern colonialist stories, this time taking on a prison system that has no interest in actual rehabilitation. There are countless scenes in the film that have stayed with me, but at the end of the day, it all comes back to that special Fuck Box we all heard whispers about out of TIFF. Even knowing it was coming, I was still giddy with laughter and awe watching Juliette Binoche place a condom over a metallic dildo, before riding it for 3 of the most insane minutes I experienced all year.
I’ve gone to bat declaring Shia LaBeouf one of our best actors for over a decade now. I remember seeing him in “A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints” on the eve of his “Transformers” fueled rise to leading man fame, and not being able to take my eyes off of him. Even in films like “Disturbia” and Michael Bay’s billion dollar Hasbro franchise, LaBeouf is giving it his all. It’s not easy to run around a green screen pretending robots are chasing you and destroying civilization, but LaBeouf makes it look effortless. He’s just got it. The last few years of his career have seen him zig-zagging between battling his own public persona through self-financed art projects and working with directors like Lars Von Trier and Andrea Arnold. He’s given some of the most memorable performances of the decade, but his transformative, soul-bearing “Honey Boy” (a film he wrote and stars in as his own father) is his finest hour yet. Per usual, he’s simply magnetic in the role, but he’s also at his most giving in his scenes with Noah Jupe (portraying LaBeouf as a child actor.) Their final scene in particular, an emotional early morning confrontation with a severely hungover LaBeouf and exhausted Jupe, gives us not only one of the most perfectly acted scenes in years, but one that feels like a shared catharsis between LaBeouf and his audience. Anybody who’s grown up with a parent who’s an addict knows the uneasy sensation of never knowing what you’re going to get: is it going to be the loving, supportive cheerleader or the self-loathing bully? LaBeouf teeters the line of both in this scene and has the remarkably gifted Jupe to play off of, resulting in a moment that will break your heart and bring you that much closer to understanding LaBeouf, the performer, and LaBeouf, the human being.
I sat with a smile across my face for the entirety of Lorene Scafaria’s ultra fun caper, “Hustlers.” It’s one of the most entertaining, well made films of the year and offers a deceptively complex look at patriarchal capitalism in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. While there’s plenty of scenes that are both dramatically rich and broadly funny, it’s the moment early on in the film when Usher makes a surprise appearance at the central strip club, that had me in a state of absolute bliss.
Nothing took me on a ride quite like “In Fabric” this year. A film that can only be described as “Giallo Office Space” follows a killer red dress as it wreaks havoc on the lives of everybody it comes into contact with. British director Peter Strickland fetishizes his filmmaking inspirations more than Wes Anderson, yet here it feels like he’s come up with something wholly unique and both timely and timeless. A deliriously funny, downright horrific look at our obsession with appearance and consumerism, Strickland’s film culminates in a one of a kind, batshit crazy finale that feels not too far off from a typical Black Friday rush at Best Buy.
This was the hardest film to keep regulated to the “one film, one scene” rule because honestly, I could write about a dozen or more scenes in Martin Scorsese’s masterpiece “The Irishman.” Most Scorsese films are jam-packed with memorable scenes, but “The Irishman” is a spoil of riches. There’s Al Pacino in 70s, absolute GOAT mode calling a room full of employees “dumb mother fuckers” and seamlessly transitioning from exasperated rage to a sobering “I’m gonna go to jail.” A meeting between Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa and Stephen Graham’s Tony Pro that goes off the rails when Pro arrives 15 minutes late, wearing shorts. Then there’s the final scene of the film, an all-timer for Scorsese, and easily the most haunting ending of 2019. But I had to go with the “fish” scene. It’s a perfect example of Scorsese’s mastery of balancing comedy, tension, and chaos. It also shows the full benefits of making a film like this for Netflix. I was able to see the film in a theater and I wouldn’t recommend not seeing it for the first time in a theater (obviously if you can), but it’s hard to imagine a world where a major studio would allow Scorsese this much time to let a scene about what kind of fish was in the backseat of a car, play out this fucking long. Yes, the small talk and banter surrounding the subject is meant to add an underlying tension to one of the most suspenseful moments in the film, but the sheer amount of time Scorsese allows it to go on for infuses it with an unexpected dose of surrealist comedy.
Robert Eggers stages an acting class exercise from hell with two of the best actors of their respective generations, resulting in one of the most iconic lines in recent memory. “The Lighthouse” is the kind of movie that only gets better the more you sit with it, and this scene is proof of the enduring shelf life it will have for future audiences.
I’ve cooled on Noah Baumbach’s personal look at divorce, “Marriage Story” since seeing it at TIFF, but I would never deny that when the film works, it really works. Even at his most insular (and the film definitely struggles for it), Baumbach is still one of our best writers, and his confidence behind the camera only gets better with every film. Yes, the now memed-to-death third act argument between Adam Driver and Scarlet Johannson is the scene everybody remembers most from the film (and yes, it’s a good scene that watched out of context is of course, melodramatic), but I honestly think the film works best when it’s at its lightest. I’ve always preferred dramatic Baumbach to be a bit more acidic than he is here, but he also has an underrated gift for directing physical comedy. With the aid of his longtime editor Jennifer Lame, the scene in which a perfectly droll Martha Kelly arrives at Driver’s home as a court-appointed evaluator is one of the most uncomfortable, broadly funny sequences of Baumbach’s career.
Although I wasn’t a fan of Ari Aster’s follow-up to his incredibly funny and unnerving debut “Hereditary,” I can’t deny there are some truly insane moments in the film I won’t soon forget. In fact, that’s kind of the issue for me with “Midsommar.” Like “Hereditary,” it’s a film that alternates between genuinely horrific and darkly funny for most of its runtime, but it’s also just simply a film of moments, as opposed to the tightly edited and simmering dread of his debut. Far too baggy and unfocused, the films stronger moments (and there are a good amount) don’t ever fully connect because there’s a shocking amount of filler in between that doesn’t really add up to anything more than standard horror movie banter. But Aster’s a talented director who is able to conjure up some horrifying imagery in broad daylight, and he manages to stick the landing, delivering a third act on par with “Hereditary” and his earlier short work. Like “The Lighthouse,” the moment chosen here is one that could also feel like the most deeply uncomfortable acting exercise imaginable, seeing Florence Pugh (incredible as usual) in a hysterical crying fit with other women on the compound, which quickly morphs into an unorthodox therapy session.
I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that Quentin Tarantino’s films have suffered since the loss of his longtime editor, Sally Menke. Like the great Thelma Schoonmaker is to Scorsese, Menke was always Tarantino’s secret weapon. Since her tragic death earlier this decade, Tarantino has worked with Fred Raskin, who is undeniably talented, but clearly is more of a “yes man” than Menke ever was. Directors like Tarantino need a good editor to not only bring out the best in their brilliant work, but more importantly, to know when to put up a healthy fight for the film’s sake. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” is unquestionably the director’s best film of the 2010s, but it still suffers from an unevenness that has permeated through Tarantino’s recent string of films. It’s most noticeable in the sequences that attempt to string together the daily lives of its central characters, and for me personally, begged the question of the purpose of Sharon Tate as a character, and not just a means to an end. One elongated sequence at the midpoint of the film is undeniably brilliant though. Following Brad Pitt’s stuntman Cliff Booth to the infamous Spahn Ranch is one of the most well directed scenes of Tarantino’s career. It’s a prime example of Tarantino at his most focused and instinctual, honoring both his western influences and surprisingly, feeling like something out of a 70s horror movie. It’s suspenseful, funny and deeply lived in.
Carlos Reygadas made a personal, sprawling tale of love, jealousy and deception with “Our Time,” allowing for a leisure runtime to explore a complicated relationship with his own wife. I would argue the runtime isn’t totally warranted, but it does allow for a lot more post-reflection than most films I saw this year. For most of the film, Reygadas keeps things intimate and contained, until a stunningly unexpected flight over the city, narrated by a wife’s painful confession. It’s one of the most exhilarating, profoundly cinematic moments of the year.
As tempting as it was to include the heroin induced Q&A by speakerphone, it’s hard to deny the gut-punch of the reunion between Antonio Banderas (loosely portraying director Pedro Almodóvar) and the love of his life (Leonardo Sbaraglia). Like “Honey Boy,” you can feel the actor and director reaching a collective catharsis in the scene, playing out the scene with a delicate combination of longing, flirtation and a painful acceptance of the past.
If you haven’t seen Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece “Parasite,” stop reading and definitely don’t watch the video below. Instead, go out to a theater and see “Parasite.” It’s the most consistently surprising, well-engineered, timely movie of 2019, examining classicism in a capitalist society better than any film in recent memory. Even on repeat viewings, the third act is a mesmerizing feat of filmmaking and screenwriting.
A devastating ending that coincidentally sits alongside fellow queer cinema masterpiece “Call Me by Your Name” as one of the most gut-wrenching, unforgettable endings imaginable. It goes without saying, but… spoilers below.
“I think something very important is happening and it’s deeply connected to my purpose.” So says Robert Pattinson’s hustler/criminal Connie Nikas in the Josh & Benny Safdie’s breakthrough cult classic in the making “Good Time.” This is also how I felt watching the trailer for “Good Time” when it first debuted. Aesthetically, thematically, aurally… the work of the Safdie Brothers speaks to me on a deeper level than any contemporary American filmmakers. Another thing I connect with a deeper, indescribable level is the desperation and buried rage of Adam Sandler. I grew up on his comedies, adoring him as a kid, allowing his films to inform much of my sense of humor, and only grew fonder of him through his dramatic work in “Punch-Drunk Love” and “The Meyerowitz Stories.” As a self-described insecure, self-loathing white man who experiences unfiltered moments of rage and anxiety, I feel a connection to characters like Barry Egan. The idea of three of my favorite people in the world combining forces was a dream come true. It’s been four months since I first saw “Uncut Gems” and in that time, I’ve seen it four more times. I’m addicted to it. On the surface, it’s relentlessly thrilling and entertaining, insanely funny, and of course, features a God-tier performance from Sandler. But it’s also one of the most morally and spiritually complex films I’ve ever seen, layered with profound ideas about materialism, the endless cycle of violence perpetuated by capitalism and greed, and the intersection between black and Jewish culture. Every scene is pulsating with life and authenticity, populated by an ensemble of working actors like Sandler and Eric Bogosian and first-time performers like Julia Fox and the endless ensemble of incredible faces that enter the mix. “Gems” is the kind of film that opens with chaos in the Ethiopian Welo Mines and transitions through a colorful black opal into the asshole of its protagonist, and somehow manages to up the stakes and surprises for the next two hours. Picking a single is nearly impossible, but really if you consider the entire last act of the film one elongated scene of nerve-shredding, gloriously acted brilliance, then that would be my pick for the scene of the year.
I don’t ever want to shit on fellow filmmakers who are clearly shooting for the stars, and pouring all of their ideas into an ambitiously epic follow-up to their universally celebrated previous feature. It can pay off, case in point Paul Thomas Anderson cashing in on the goodwill of “Boogie Nights” with his 3 hour melodrama “Magnolia.” For David Robert Mitchell, it did not work out. Well, at least for me. I saw some of the worst films I’ve ever witnessed this year: “Serenity” and “Cats” were full throttle disasters with major studio cash at their disposal, and “Jojo Rabbit” is the very definition of a movie that is “not quite my tempo,” but nothing was egregiously smug and convinced of its own brilliance as “Under the Silver Lake.” It’s the kind of film that’s so deeply unlikeable and failed by its own ambitions, it could only come from the mind of a director who is genuinely talented enough to try something this misconceived. It’s an endurance test, but one that also packs a late scene that almost makes up for everything that came before it. A scene that hints at what could have been, or maybe what went over my head for most of its runtime. I don’t think I’d ever want to revisit “Under the Silver Lake,” but this scene is impossible to dismiss.
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