My Top 16 of 2019

This is one of the latest Top 10 (or 16) lists I’ve posted in the 6 years (!) I’ve been doing this. Surprisingly it’s not the latest (that honor goes to 2014 for being posted on March 6, 2015). The main reason for the delay is there’s so much I’ve been wanting to catch up on, and which I’ve actually had the access to do so thanks to the abundance of streaming options (that were certainly not available in 2014). Even then, there’s a handful of movies I haven’t seen. And that’s okay! It’s especially okay because, good Lord, 2019 was a great year for cinema. Trying to narrow it down to 10 felt too painful. Then it became 15. Then I wondered if it should be 19 to fit the year and then I just gave up numbers altogether because, depending on the day and moment, that order will always change. Movies are not frozen in time. The best of them are like memories. Some days you’ll remember them and smile. Other days you’ll feel them deep in your chest, like someone’s been watching and following you, unwilling to give you reprieve (that could also be a stalker; it helps to know the difference). 2019 brought some of the biggest and greatest changes in my life; it also gave me more than enough movies to help me process all of these changes and to be given lens after lens with which to see the world. We will remember 2019 as a pretty great year for cinema, if not one of the best.

I’ve added the links to my previous list for: 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018. This is the first year in which I seriously toyed with not having any actual ranking. Movies are miracles that we often take for granted. We often don’t realize just how hard they are to make and just how many things had to go right for it to ever become something coherent and shareable, let alone transcendent and highly entertaining. I have less interest in punching down on movies (except for a couple, because it is what it is) and more on yanking up the ones worth celebrating. Because when there’s this much to celebrate, there’s no time for that bullshit.

Summer 2019 Ketchup: http://adammembrey.com/a-summer-of-ketchup-so-much-to-relish/

Best Superhero Movie: Fast Color 

This is such a simple, beautiful movie that got lodged pretty tight in my brain. It follows the journey of Ruth (Gugu Math-Raw) as she’s on the run, fleeing from scientists who want her for the supernatural abilities she’s discovered to have. But the only place Ruth has to go is the place she left long ago: home. The way Hart and Horowitz dole out the information, little by little is poetic in its spareness. It’s not weighed down by gobs of backstory. It’s its own special thing, trusting the audience to pay attention and make connections. I still am thinking, weeks after seeing it, how deeply clever it is the way Hart injects shots of Ruth’s memory throughout the film, only to give us the full context of it just as she discovers how she can grow past what ails her most. It’s such a beautiful representation of healing and just how empowering and inspiring it can be. Coming off the weight and excess of Avengers: Endgame and the many interconnected franchise superhero stories scattered throughout 2019, this was absolutely the palate-cleanser that showed what’s possible with a small budget, a heartfelt story, and empathetic, totally game actors.

It Ain’t For Me: Uncut Gems 

I don’t know there’s a film I anticipated more this past month. This is where Film Twitter will upset your life. You’ll hear about it from all these people with great taste. You’ll see the memes. The praise will seem deafening and unavoidable. The allure of a serious, Oscar-worthy Sandler performance the cherry on the top of all the reasons to bring you in. You’ll watch the Safdie Brother’s previous movie, Good Time, and think “well, not my favorite, but I can see the promise!” Reader, I was all in. So ready to be knocked out by the Safdie Brothers and Kevin Garnett. Even before the screening, the Alamo Drafthouse MC gave us the warning everyone on Film Twitter gave: it’s prone to give viewers anxiety because it’s that stressful of a movie. Be prepared!

And yet. It didn’t stress me out or make me anxious. It felt like the Safdie Brothers were confusing people yelling at each other at the same volume for conflict. I just never caught on to it or got too into the story. The ending is what people will talk about the most. And it’s certainly the most memorable part of the movie, if not the only memorable part. But that’s the beauty of movies. As much as Uncut Gems may not be for me, it was absolutely the jam for many, many people. And that’s a gem of a thing to behold.

More Promising than Satisfying: Us 

Jordan Peele’s follow-up to 2017’s classic Get Out was about as anticipated as anything that came out in 2019, at least in my household. What leaps out to me about this film is how much Peele has grown in terms of craft and control. Everything is a finely-tuned orchestra from the beginning to the end, with an electric Lupita Nyong’o performance centering it. The only reason this exists outside my list is because while Get Out was the cleaner, stronger metaphor, Us has much more ambition and messier ideas it hasn’t quite completely worked out. It’s a dangerous piece of work, but one which loses some of its power in the bowels of Reddit theories and asking the audience to put 2 and 2 together to create an infinity symbol. I love that Peele is pushing himself this hard. And I’m completely convinced he has several classics in him just waiting to be produced and seen.

Best Gateway Drug: Detective Pikachu

I will preface this with two facts: 1) I have never played Pokemon in my life in any way, shape, or form, and 2) I went to see this with my students. That being said, I have a deep respect for the appeal of Pokemon. I don’t fully understand it. But I respect it. It is a huge part of so many people’s lives, including very many cool people I know. So. I went in with an open, curious mind. Would this movie give me a peek into what makes this the phenomenon it is? And you know what? It’s entertaining and just nerdy enough to effectively work as a Pokemon gateway drug. These are well-rendered animals that get to show off their various powers in pretty fun ways. It didn’t make me go out and buy anything, but it did endear me to these creatures. It did create one of my favorite YouTube videos to show to people. And I did walk away with the only opinion that really matters: the MewTwo is pretty badass.

Most Unlikely Reminder of the Power of Animation: The Lion King 2019

When word of Lion King 2019 first made the rounds of the internet, many people – including film journalists who should know better! – referred to it as a live-action remake of the animated classic. Yes, Disney had remade Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, and Dumbo into live-action films with increasing amounts of CGI. But to call Lion King 2019 a live-action movie was either a) a gross mischaracterization by confused journalists or b) Disney’s not-so-subtle bet that people wouldn’t know or care about the difference. Yes, it does look pretty photorealistic. It does look real. But as the many, many animators who worked long, sweaty hours away from their family will tell you: it is definitely an animated film. To say any different is for Disney to be a bit blasphemous to a style of filmmaking that practically built their empire. If you want proof that Disney does not consider it an animated movie (except when it hilariously wants to court a Best Animated Film Oscar), look at this: Disney openly declaring Frozen 2 the Highest-Grossing Animated Movie of All Time when Lion King 2019 made a full $250 million dollars more. It’s all semantics in the name of making an ungodly amount of money.

The unfortunate thing about Lion King 2019 is how completely emotionally inert it is. I know just about every line and frame of this film, which it copies almost exactly from the original animated film. But it is so much less emotionally involving because, well, have you ever tried to have a deeply emotional conversation with a real lion before? Having real animals move like real animals drains all the life from this story. And all it does is make me love animation – real animation, animation that isn’t afraid to be animation – all the more. So thank you to Lion King 2019 for reminding everyone how much animation can do by being its big-budget antithesis.

Disruptor of the Year: High-Flying Bird 

Much was made about how Steven Soderbergh, ever the badass disruptor, shot this entire movie on an iPhone 8. He also edited in just over 2 hours on his laptop. The man is a machine, after all, with a totally hilarious Twitter handle (@thebitchuation). Written by Tarell Alvin McRaney (Moonlight), High-Flying Bird plays out like the best of stage plays: the ones limited in location but explosive and expanding in ideas. Soderbergh does a masterful job of framing his sets with quality lighting and composition to get the most out of his iPhone (the only clunky shot occurs at the very end in a low-light situation, and anyone who has an iPhone is just going to say, “Yeah, I know how that is.”) and make it feel like a full-feature production. It’s all so well-done and acted (with a great central performance from Andre Holland) that you almost miss how dangerous the ideas are until the ending arrives and you realize the movie has pulled one right over you.

This is a movie that gets at the idea of just how unfair a system the NBA is in bridging the divide between owners and players. As an NBA fan, this is nothing new to be confronted with. Of course a 50-50 split between owners and players (when there a lot more players than owners, and when we all know people don’t go to a game to watch the owners – unless they’re the Clippers). Here, a fictional lockout occurs, and the way Holland’s Ray Broke struggles, stumbles into a dream of a dangerous idea, and executes the best compromise he can is one of my favorite low-key magic tricks of 2019.

Most Delightful Costumes: Missing Link 

I love stop-motion animation. I made my own shorts in the late-night hours of college. I taught my first students how to make their own 10-second videos. I love everything about it – the process, the creative solutions, and the sheer magic of seeing it all come together as something inanimate becomes as animated as anything you’ve seen all week. It’s a medium with so much to admire.

While Aardman Studios has been making classics from across the pond, Portland’s Laika Studios has been America’s best response to their wizardry. And what’s been especially delightful to watch is how Laika has carefully, yet defiantly forged their own path and identity. I mentioned it before with The Boxtrolls, but one of my favorite things about Laika is how much they play with texture and color. Look at the faces of any of their characters. They do a beautiful job of caricaturing head shapes to keep them distinctive, but even more, they add the most human touch in giving each character various skin tones. Blotches, rashes, rosy cheeks. It’s an incredible attention to detail that makes each of their characters come alive in a way I’ve rarely seen.

Missing Link is a pretty delightful movie throughout. It’s got a mix of light and broad jokes, and the voices and performances perfectly suit the characters involved. The scenery and sets are stunning, with visible depth and complexity. But the clothes. Man, the clothes. Not only did they design costumes that are tasteful and playful at once, but they’ve clearly made them with real materials that absolutely pop on the screen. In a year full of period films (Little Women, 1917), digital fur (Lion King 2019 and Cats), and thick, Northeastern sweaters (Knives Out and The Lighthouse), the best costumes could be found on various soundstages in Laika Studios.

Most Unexpectedly Delightful Jaws Tribute: VelociPastor 

Writer/director Brendan Steere’s VelociPastor is one of the most delightful things I’ve seen. It’s what happens when a guy decides to shake off all the pretension and overthinking of the storytelling process and decides to just have some shallow fun with it all. It’s what happens when you find the perfect actor to center the whole movie around in Greg Cohan as Doug Jones, the depressed, searching priest who stumbles upon a pretty bizarre curse. It’s what happens when you take $35,000 to make this 70-minute movie and absolutely, lovingly commit to it. More than anything, VelociPastor is a tribute to remembering how fun and ridiculous the creative process can be.

I love the way Steere has the patience to space out his scenes with long bits of silence and minimal dialogue, letting the overtly serious staging give way to giggles and loud, cathartic laughs. This is a guy who, in tandem with Cohan, completely gets the tone he’s going for. But the biggest laugh this film got from me came from an unexpected bit of homage to Jaws. We all remember the oversized shark from Spielberg’s classic, but what makes its reveal so effective is how little Spielberg gives us until the very end (a happy accident from a torturous production process). We only see glimpses, suggestions of its size and ferociousness. But we don’t actually see the full, terrifying thing until the last 20 minutes or so, when the characters are stuck at sea with nowhere to go. Steere – either by design or necessity of budget – does something similar here, giving us fleeting glimpses of the actual VelociPastor in sudden, dark shots. We know it’s violent and quick. We know it’s killed a lot of people. And we also know, based on its eyes and stubby fingers alone, it’s pretty ridiculous looking. So when we finally get the full, complete glimpse of this VelociPastor fighting a group of ninjas in the film’s climactic battle, I could not stop laughing. I won’t spoil it for anyone curious to see. But if I had to inject only 24 frames of 2019 films into a time capsule, a shot of this oddly-shaped creature awkwardly kicking ninja ass is definitely among them.

And How Many More Lives, Bro? Award: Tom Hooper’s Cats

From the time the first Cats trailer blessed Twitter with its presence, we knew we had to see it. It wasn’t the delusion of a good movie that compelled us. It was morbid curiosity at just how bad the breath of this cinematic trashbeast would be. On a long drive to Mississippi with my wife, I read out loud my favorite tweets about said trailer – and there were many! Then for the five months after, we told all of our friends about this. I half-jokingly-but-really-not-jokingly said I was looking forward to Cats far more than Rise of the Skywalker. But a full month after that eventful viewing in a baffled Alamo Drafthouse theater, the only thing I can think about is snot. Specifically, the snot that runs down Jennifer Hudson’s face as she sings her heart and vocal cords out to “Memory”, a song meant to be the emotional climax of the entire film. You would think – if, in fact, the snot is genuine – they would CGI edit it out perhaps a bit more convincingly than the CGI fur they tried to edit onto her. But then I remembered poor Anne Hathaway singing just as hard with “I Dreamed A Dream” in Les Miserables and Hooper’s camera being so far up her face to make her snot take over a sizable chunk of the screen. And now all I can think about is how Tom Hooper has made a thing of “snot singing.” And when I try to explain this phenomenon – something no one should sneeze at, mind you – this is the resulting conversation that will take place:

Me: “Snot singing.”

Anyone: “No, it is singing.”

Me: “No, SNOT singing.”

Everyone: “I’m telling you, man. There is singing. It’s a musical!”

And on and on this tortuous, dumber version of “Who’s On First?” it goes. But for real. Tom Hooper has now wrestled two of the biggest Broadway shows of all time, Les Miserables and Cats, into confused movies that fundamentally misunderstand what make them so great. From what I gather from Twitter and the many articles I read (and yes, I did take time out of my day to read many articles on Cats – this is what you do when you feel like you’re losing your mind after seeing a movie and struggling to make sense of it all) few summed it up as well as Andrew Todd of Birth. Movies. Death, arguing that the peak attraction of Cats has always been the spectacle, something that Hooper undercuts at every moment with his baffling camera choices and weird CGI experiment. My wife and I freely admit we went to see Cats ironically, to see if it reached So Bad, It’s Great territory, but perhaps the Movie Gods caught onto our act and wanted to punish us. “This is what you get for having dishonest motives!” they shouted, from atop Reel Mountain in the Great Clouds of Cinematic Light. “You shall be punished! Learn soon, ye misbegotten filmgoer!” It may have been the most convincing lesson we could possibly learn at the tail end of 2019. See? I can’t stop making these puns.

AND NOW, the Top 16 of 2019 (because phonetically and visually that looks and sounds just about right, like so many movies on this list).

16. and 15.  Booksmart – directed by Olivia Wilde, written by Sarah Haskins, Emily Halpern, Susanna Fogel, and Katie Silberman and Hustlers – directed and written by Lorene Scarfaria

Both of these films, released less than three months apart, showed highly entertaining looks at the complexity of female friendships. Booksmart follows Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) and Molly (Beanie Feldstein), two best friends who’ve realized just before graduation that they spent all their time with their noses in their books and not enough having fun. In one of the film’s first great jokes, they’re shocked to find how the presumed stoners and washouts they always talked around are going to actual Ivy League schools. It leads them to try and make up for the four years of hijinks they missed out on, all in one night. It’s refreshing to see what’s normally a pretty dude-dominated genre played out with such strong female characters – and, importantly, written and directed by women as well! For all the crazy shit these Amy and Molly get themselves into, the thing I always come back to is how the biggest conflict in the whole story is their friendship being threatened. It’s not the Queen Bee. It’s not the Hot Jock. It’s their own struggles to figure out how to be who they want to be while also being the friends they’ve always been. It’s a resistance to the change that may come.

That same theme runs through Hustlers, which is centered around the friendship between new strip clubber Destiny (Constance Wu) and the club’s longtime star, Ramona (Jennifer Lopez). Yes, there’s a whole crime situation that happens throughout. Money is handed around, over and under tables, through jackets and out of envelopes. It’s a classic tale of people getting a little too high off their supply and then the law finally catching up to them. But Scarfaria knows what matters most and it’s the bond between Destiny and Ramona. Every emotional beat is a note from their duet. And when the record scratches the most, it’s when Destiny finally gives them up and Ramona, as hurt and angry as she is, almost forgives her completely in the moment because she understands Destiny and what it’s like to do everything for your kids. It completely caught me off guard, just as it caught me off guard when Amy and Molly nearly break up their friendship because using their secret code at a party is in serious danger of not being obeyed.

2019 saw such a great group of movies about female friendship and bonds, and in such a variety of colors: Little Women, Fast Color, even The Spy Who Dumped Me. While the awards circuit unfairly seems to have brushed over Hustlers and Booksmart, I suspect time will be much kinder to these new voices and their worthwhile stories.

14. The Farewell – written and directed by Lulu Wang

Late in the The Farewell, Billi (Awkwafina)’s Uncle tells her that the desire to tell someone their bad news is to avoid the burden of the truth. We want to be done with it and have it off our minds. But when we hold it in? We take on the burden. We hold it and carry it for them so they can be free of pain. It’s a confounding concept for us Americans. The West is a society of individualism, whereas the East is of collectivism. In America, doing something terrible or embarrassing is bringing shame on yourself. In the East, it’s bringing shame on your family.

What makes this film so brilliant and heartfelt in its execution is how it invites the audience into the collectivist mindset. We know very, very early on – within the first few scenes – that something is very wrong with Billi’s grandmother. But because her Aunt received the news from the doctor, she conferred with the family and they all decided to, in the spirit of collectivism, keep it a secret. As the Chinese saying goes, it’s not the cancer that kills you; it’s the fear.

Awkwafina’s performance here reminds me a lot of Casey Affleck’s award-winning performance in Manchester by the Sea. Both roles require a character to hold on to a secret they can’t quite release or explain. Both require them to never quite say what they want to say. They don’t get a big moment. They don’t get to explode. They have to hold it all in and face the world, even as the heartbreaking truth stares them in the face. You can see how hard Billi is trying to keep it together and how she barely succeeds. It’s such a masterful, carefully calibrated performance by Awkwafina that should easily land her an Oscar nomination come February (spoiler alert: this did not happen, but she did win a Golden Globe!)

Twice in the film, Wang uses a slow-motion dolly shot, where a character is walking towards the camera, the steady thrum of the city behind them. The first time she uses the shot, it’s just Awkafina, appropriately solemn and confused, but steadfast in her walking. It feels jarring at first to see it – beautifully photographed, yes, but jarring. But the second time Wang uses this shot is much later in the movie, when Billi has finally come around (at least a little more) to the collectivist thinking her family supports. In fact, she had just run across town to prevent another family member from possibly spoiling her grandmother’s test results. The next shot, Billi is walking with her whole family towards the camera, steadfast as the city stirs behind them.

I was a bit baffled by both shots as I left the theater. They seemed a bit out of place in such a careful, assured movie. But the beauty is in the memory. The first time, the film – and Wang – sides with Billi. She starts out embracing the more American individualistic aspect of her identity, sure they’re doing a disservice to her grandmother. The second time, the side is with the family and the Chinese culture, and it’s a beautiful, heartfelt transition to behold. It’s that moment of acceptance and respect, when we realize we’re part of a much bigger, more beautiful thing than ourselves.

13. Marriage Story – written and directed by Noah Baumbach

For a chunk of the movie, I wasn’t always sure where Baumbach was going with this. The mood would change from serious and contemplative to wry and witty and back to near-slapstick. But the reality of movies is that for them to stick with people, you only need to nail a few things. And Baumbach nails them as hard as a hammer from the Gods of Cinematic Emotion. We’ve all seen the memes of the big climactic fight that occurs (like in the picture above) after both Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) finally break away from the technicalities of their divorce and bump into the raw emotion of it all. But what still hasn’t left me is the ending.

The way he comes back to the letters Charlie and Nicole wrote for each other in therapy but (and this is important!) never agreed to read to each other, beautifully sums up the mess they’ve waded through in the most heartbreaking fashion: these are two people who know each other exceedingly well and yet couldn’t look to each other long enough to make it work. As Charlie reads the letter out loud, you keep hearing these beautiful, incisive words written by Nicole – the kind that lets us know she may be the only person who truly gets Charlie and what he needs – to the son who’s been in the middle of this movie-long divorce battle. And while Driver wrestles with each of the last words, overcome with emotion, you keep thinking, “God, IF ONLY they read this to each other in the beginning.” And that’s it. That’s what will stick for much longer than the Sondheim songs or Charlie accidentally cutting his wrist in front of a social worker. It’s the most real thing – so many relationships and marriages that break down come back to the IF ONLY – if only these people talked about what they needed, if only this, if only that. And if only these people did these things, they’d save everyone – including themselves – an awful lot of pain. But that’s not what happens. And that’s the realest thing Marriage Story has to offer.

The scenes that follow paint a far more hopeful picture. Yes, Nicole and her new family dress as the Beatles Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart Band for Halloween while Charlie gets to be a ghost, an actual ghost. But the thing about ghosts people always forget is that they’re only real if you believe in them. And Nicole, even after everything, believes in Charlie. They both believe they can make this co-parenting thing work. She literally comes to him in the middle of the street – the first time in the movie they met each other halfway – and ties his shoe while he holds their son. And then they’re off. It’s simple. It’s subtle. But it’s as beautiful a final touch as any I’ve seen this year.

12. Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood – written and directed by Quentin Tarantino

I’m not sure there’s anyone who enjoys making his own movies quite like Quentin Tarantino does. Within every frame you can imagine him cackling as he punches his next script out on a typewriter, or scribbles through his legal notepad, scurrying to keep up with his feverish brain. Very few people understand Hollywood history quite like Tarantino, and very few have such a knack for deconstructing the structure of things in such meaningful ways. In preparation of this film, I went back and watched a handful of Tarantino films I had never quite got to: Pulp Fiction (I know, I know), Reservoir Dogs, and The Hateful Eight. It’s clear from the beginning why Hollywood was so taken with him. And it’s clear by the final reel of Hateful Eight why he has such a complicated, uneasy relationship with some of his audience.

For the first two hours or so of his latest, there’s a melancholy and sense of fun that runs throughout, from the crackling lines to the hilarious anxiety of Rick Dalton (a perfect Leo DiCaprio) to the as-always-groovy needle drops. Tarantino gives us such an intoxicating peek into the era of 1969 that you can totally understand why he chose the year to be the Year the Music Died. You can see what he feels we lost. A moment in time we’d never get back. And that last 20-30 minutes of the movie is ultimately going to decide how you feel about this movie, just like it will ultimately decide how you feel about Tarantino’s career. It’s so violent, so over-the-top nasty in places that I laughed as much as I sat in shock. It’s pretty hard to credibly have a scene where Leo DiCaprio pulls out a FLAMETHROWER from a shed, but sure enough he does. By the time Dalton silences the shrieking body in his pool, it feels like a cathartic burning of the evils that ruined the era. It may be wishful alternative history, just like Tarantino played with in Inglorious Bastereds, but when you do it this well and this entertainingly, you can sometimes get away with it.

11. 1917 – directed by Sam Mendes, written by Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns

Much has been made about how this WW1 film is a filmed like one long shot (with a – spoiler alert! powerful, necessary cut to black right in the middle) and the danger with these kinds of endeavors is always the same: will the complexity of the filmmaking distract you from the movie at hand? Alfonso Cuaron may be most responsible for bringing back the right kind of one-shots with Children of Men, Gravity, and Roma. But it’s one thing doing shots in six and seven-minute spurts. It’s another thing when it’s an entire 115-minute runtime.

The smart thing about this filmic endeavor is how Mendes and Wilson-Cairns have crafted a story where Schofield’s journey is almost as difficult and chaotic as the filmmaking itself. I was blown away the entire time at what they had accomplished, yes, but I also found myself drawn to Schofield’s mission and his survival. The best way to get an audience on the edge of their seat is to make them believe their protagonist could die at any moment. And the amount of obstacles Schofield has to endure make this particularly powerful, especially with the way Mendes and Deakins keep the frame wide and you’re constantly, constantly searching for the next threat to sneak up on Schofield, and by extension, us.

I read once that we never walk faster than we can process. The beauty of following Schofield is how the camera never goes faster than he can move. We are with him the entire time, the absolute horrors of WW1 moving in and out of the frame with heartbreaking flow. It gives us time as an audience to process how fucked Schofield’s situation is – both for himself and for the participants in the war – and how exhausting it is to deliver a simple message. We’ve had phones in our pockets for 20 years; it’s pretty incredible to see a movie about the struggles of delivering a simple message the old-fashioned human way, with the degree of difficulty ratcheted up several bloody notches.

Anyone who knows me knows I refer to cinematographer Roger Deakins as My Boy. I will see anything he has anything to do with. But while I often say with every film that he’s outdone himself and set a new high mark, he’s really outdone himself with this one. It’s not even just about the fluid one-shots (carefully and smartly stitched together in editing by Lee Smith) but it’s how Deakins manages to find beauty in these shots that tell a story all on their own. There are silhouettes galore in this film, powerfully etched by burning buildings and flares streaking across the sky. It’s an insane level of difficulty from a craftsmanship perspective. Anyway, you can and will read countless articles and videos about the actual filmmaking process. It’s quite the miracle they were able to pull off what they did and how hard they worked together to make it happen. And through it all, I sincerely hope it doesn’t overlook the job Mendes and Wilson-Cairns did to give this incredible writing challenge their best, most heartfelt shot.

10. Toy Story 4 – directed by Josh Cooley, written by Stephany Folsom & Andrew Stanton

When Pixar announced Toy Story 4 was coming, I was one of those people, raging against the light of sequelitis, convinced they had wrapped their story up in Toy Story 3 and were just searching for money they didn’t even need. But then, as often is the case with Pixar, the bad ideas start to become buoyed by great reviews. And especially from trusted film critics who, like me, were baffled at the appearance of a fourth installment. But like them, I gave it a chance. And like many of them, I saw just how vital this installment is.

In fact, I don’t think you can tell the story of Toy Story without Toy Story 4. Its relevance is just so.

Deep in the film, after a well-orchestrated action set piece in which the characters we’re rooting for barely make it out in one piece, Woody gets up and is determined to go back down the path of survival. They still have left someone behind. The mission isn’t over until everyone is back. Bo Peep, tired of Woody once again not listening to her, pushes and pushes her longtime, stubborn friend, trying to get to the truth of the matter. Why does Woody have to repeat a suicide mission?

“Because it’s all I have left to do!” he shouts.

And with that, the weight swung as hard as anything in this entire series. At the beginning of the film, it’s clear Woody has served his purpose. He’s obsolete. He spends more time in the closet than being played with. And all the work he does for Bonnie to be reunited with Forky is never going to be recognized. So he doesn’t listen. He puts the lives of all the toys in danger. It’s the only thing he can do because it’s the only thing he has left.

“It’s called loyalty. Something a lost toy wouldn’t understand,” he says to Bo.

“I’m not the one who’s lost,” she answers.

Bo Peep, sidetracked since the original Toy Story, is beautifully realized this time. Her entrance into the film shows just enough detail to suggest an entire, adventurous life lived beyond Andy and Bonnie’s closets. But Bo isn’t just a badass who is constantly saving Woody from his own worst impulses. She’s an empathetic and kind leader. It’s a small joy throughout to see how she’s able to build insecure characters up, to empower them by speaking to them in their own language. She’s the leader Woody imagines himself to be but is often too stubborn and myopic to become. It all comes back around full circle when the toys point out how reckless and unrelenting Woody can be and Bo, ever the adapter, answers, “And that’s why we love him.” She seems the necessity and double-edged sword of a personality like Woody’s, and her rubbing off on him throughout the film is a special kind of alchemy.

I still get goosebumps thinking about the give and take between those two. I saw the original film in theaters waaaaay back in 1995. I’ve always been a fan of the series, and because it’s Pixar and their evil emotional geniuses at work, it’s always had a small part of my film heart. But I was shocked at how much this film moved me. Wrapping up the Toy Story franchise necessitates wrapping up Woody, the toy that started it all. By the end, we see him open to a life of possibilities, with a partner in Bo Peep who challenges him and loves him for his flaws in equal measure. “He’s not lost,” Buzz says. “Not anymore. To infinity and beyond.”

9. Little Women – written and directed by Greta Gerwig

The last time I visited Spokane, my wife asked me how old I felt whenever I came home. It was an excellent question. I thought about it awhile and realized I always felt about 25, the same age as when I moved away. Coming home isn’t just about nostalgia. It’s about returning to a time when things were simpler, when we are all in the same place. When we had less responsibilities and fewer expectations. When you could touch on family all in one day with one mode of transportation.

I haven’t seen any of the previous Little Women renditions nor have I read the book, but I was aware enough that Greta Gerwig did something unique with this adaptation in that she has two parallel timelines working next to each other: the past, when the girls were all younger and living under the same roof, and the present, when they’re older and living their own lives. Going back and forth allows us to see just how much the separation has affected the family. Meg stresses over money and class with her new husband. Amy is still figuring out her life in Paris. Jo is told in New York that her stories are no good. There’s that tinge of disappointment and stress that comes after you move on from a moment frozen in time. The first of these is childhood. The second of these is sometimes college, where everyone is pursuing the same goal – a college degree – and then the top is ripped off and everything is possible after. But by dramatizing the past, Gerwig not only allows us to see how difficult it was at times, but how full of chaos and joy and laughter as well. There’s a reason they’re in no hurry to marry and move on to the next part of their lives. There’s a reason they mourn what they have lost and briefly cower under the possibilities of the future.

Everyone in this movie brings their A-game, from Gerwig to all the actresses and actors to the cinematographers, editors, costume designers, everyone. This is a film told with love and honesty. It’s as good as movies get. And it makes me even more excited for whatever Gerwig involves herself with next.

8. Knives Out – written and directed by Rian Johnson

In a bit of fortuitous timing, Rian’s latest came out a month before the Rian-less, too-JJ Rise of the Skywalker arrived. This allowed me to enjoy at least one Rian Johnson movie in 2019, even if it wasn’t wrapping the bow on a franchise he wrote and directed the best installment for. Rian has always been a proponent of making movies about the things he enjoys the most in a particular genre. We saw it with the film noir aspects of Brick, the Russian novel and trickster references in Brothers Bloom, the time travel implications of Looper, and the many, many toys, both thematic and physical, he played with in The Last Jedi. Here, the murder mystery is his new sandbox and damn, does he have quite the fun with it. Every actor here seems particularly charged knowing they’re working with a great, air-tight script with a wallop of heart and social commentary. It’s hilarious, ballsy, and incisive all at once. It’s the perfect kind of movie for our modern capitalism-with-a-side-of-white-supremacy moment. And the way Johnson weds his first and last shots together is just the most beautiful, mind-blowing thing.

7. The New One – written and performed by Mike Birbiglia, directed by Seth Barrish

I preface this by saying I’m a massive Mike Birbiglia fan. When my brother first introduced him to me with What I Should Have Said Was Nothing, I wasn’t quite ready because, hard as it is to believe, there was a time when not all Netflix standup specials had subtitles. I didn’t quite get it as much as I didn’t quite understand him. Then I saw his Sleepwalk with Me at the Violet Crown Theater in 2012. Without subtitles. It was only through the power of lots of Birbiglia interviews that I was able to engage with it as much as I would like. So in 2013, I went with my buddy Greg to see his My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend show at the Paramount. This time, I had an interpreter. And this time, I started to get the hilarity and, more importantly, the naked heart of it. Then I saw him again in 2018 with my future wife as he had just starting touring The New One.

Mike’s cadence and his language are so specific to the story, even if it sounds like he’s improvising it at times (I can assure you it’s rarely ever). He workshops his jokes, his lines, and his sequencing over and over and over. That’s how you can see his new show in April 2018 and then see it on Netflix in December 2019 – over 18 months later! – and see just how much more polished and powerful it is. I love Mike’s storytelling because he’s such a blend of empathy and humor, with a dorky delivery that belies just how smart and attuned he is. My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend saw him grappling with marriage in the face of a mistaken-identity car crash, all of which beautifully wraps up with him putting a ring on his supportive, perfect-for-him wife. The New One has Mike grappling with another milestone – having a child. The way he is able to make his deeply personal, deeply specific thoughts feel universal is the gift of his storytelling. And while the story ends up, just like his previous shows, in a happy, content place, it’s as honest as anything he’s ever told. Seek it out.

6. The Irishman – directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Steve Zaillian

It’s a testament to the direction of Martin Scorsese, the editing of Thelma Schoonmaker, and the screenwriting of Steve Zaillian that this 3-and-a-half hour movie just absolutely flies by. It’s a testament to the acting of everyone involved – Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, especially – that it sticks with you for hours after. I don’t even quite know where to start with this superlative film other than I’m grateful Netflix took the chance on bankrolling this expensive, yet so very worthwhile endeavor. ILM’s incredible CGI makeup, helping the actors age over a 50 year period, blend so seamlessly with the story that I stopped ever thinking about it and immersed into the tale further. When Joe Pesci repeats to a stubborn, unaccepting DeNiro, “it’s what it is”, my chest sank. Over two hours of following Frank, I saw just how much history he touched and how many friendships he made. The weird thing you realize in seeing this breadth of an operation over time and place is how you only realize they’re criminals when they’re caught or when they kill somebody. But Scorsese, Schoonmaker, and Zaillian keep the acts of violence short and stunning. They luxuriate in the conversations between all these characters. The way the find family in each other, far more than they find in their own nuclear families. But in the last hour, when the bill of years of illegal activity must be paid, the weight of it all comes crashing down on Frank and the audience alike. Scorsese leaves us with a final shot – a simple cracked open door – that you could write entire essays about. It’s god-level filmmaking all in one swift symphony.

5. Ad Astra – directed by James Gray, written by James Grey & Ethan Gross

“I’ve been trained to compartmentalize. It seems to me that’s how I approach my life.”

After Brad Pitt has gone billions of miles away from Earth and returned, a voiceover carries over the last images of this heartfelt, brutally honest film: “I will rely on those closest to me, and I will share their burdens, as they share mine. I will live and I will love.” It’s the first time Pitt has acknowledged everyone – specifically the women in his life – who have made his dead-eyed focus on missions possible. It’s the people in the background that make everything at the forefront doable. I grew up surrounded by strong women, in family, in college, in the educational workplace. They made me who I am. They made the person I enjoy being possible. When I saw this movie, it was right smack-dab in one of the most stressful times of my life – when I was about to get married, buy a house, and had basically started a new job all at once. I insisted I was fine. I would not relent, but persevere. But it came at a cost. It made me withdrawn. It made me invent problems that didn’t exist. It made me an unkind and uncommunicative partner. To anyone on the outside it may have looked impressive; look at this guy handle all this newness with such calm! But it wasn’t as pleasant being alongside me. It was only when I allowed myself to ask for help, when I opened a door and let my anxieties flood out, that I realized how much I had been holding in. And how painfully, refreshingly normal it all was. I was only able to get through all of this because I was about to marry a woman who understood how to give me the space to process when I needed it, who could catch my rumination and indecision and help me make sense of it. All of what I have now only exists because someone had the patience and love to pull us through while I was lost in space. And when I came back to Earth? The gratitude hit me in the chest. And now, like Pitt, that’s all I want to do – to figure out how I can ease the burden of others who have eased mine. To reach out instead of withdraw. To be the first instead of the follower. I don’t have to succumb to the culture of toxic masculinity that Ad Astra skillfully warns of. There are far greater joys to orbit.

4. Jojo Rabbit – written and directed by Taika Waititi

There are several entry points into the genius of Taika Waititi. Few filmmakers working today that can ambitiously and artfully blend the silly, horrifying, and uplifting all in the same movie. What We Do in the Shadows has an absolutely deadly sense of dry humor, but it also manages to find some pathos in the characters and their struggles. Hunt for the Wilderpeople was another step up for Waititi, a lively mix of silly and heartfelt that nearly makes me cry every single time with its final haiku. Even Thor: Ragnorak, with its giant, galactic set pieces and incredible message of “Asgard is not a place, it’s a people”, is another step up the artistic ladder, the first time he’d worked with a major studio (Marvel) and came out with his voice mostly intact. If you look at Taika’s filmography as a whole, Jojo Rabbit will feel like the most natural progression. And yet.

Courageous. That’s the word I think of when I think of Jojo Rabbit. I can tell you that each time my wife and I were asked about good movies we had seen lately and we tried to spurn people to see Jojo Rabbit, we had to preface our sales pitch every time with, “We know this sounds terrible but..” and then even as we finished our pitch and everyone still looked at us in a leery, unsure way, we had to admit, “It does sound terrible, doesn’t it?”

For the first fifteen minutes or so of Jojo Rabbit, I was unsure of what we were in for. It’s quite a silly introduction, almost daringly waving its “look how controversial this could be!” stick in front of our faces. It does not see boundaries nor does it tiptoe around them. But it’s all setting the table. It leaps and skips through the Forest of Problematic Ideas before finally settling down with the grounding presence of JoJo’s mother, Elsa (a powerful, empathetic Scarlett Johansson). From there, the movie settles into such a courageous blend of fear, sadness, deadpan lines, and cathartic laughs that I could only feel like standing up and applauding by the end. Watching Jojo Rabbit is watching a high-wire act where the performer is juggling throughout before you realize he’s made you cry by the end and you’re just as thankful as you are stunned by all of it.

3. The Lighthouse – directed by Robert Eggers, written by Robert Eggers & Max Eggers

This may be the most “Your Mileage May Vary” movie of 2019. Fortunately, I got quite the journey out of it. Robert Eggers’ follow-up to The Witch appears to be almost aggressively original: square frames, black and white film, a story shrouded in darkness and mystery. But it’s actually something far more beautiful: a film guided by curiosity, nerdery, and having some delightful goddamn fun. You don’t write in a script that Willem Dafoe’s character’s farts are a “majestic display of power” if you’re not there to enjoy yourself a little bit. Robert and his brother Max did a ton of research about the language of the time, and using a lighthouse keeper’s code-of-conduct manual as a guide, injected their own fun mix of mythology, horror, and good-old-fashioned claustrophobic partner irritations. The black-and-white film brings some of the most gorgeous frames of 2019, often shots of Dafoe or Pattinson’s faces, enshrouded by darkness and dirt, their eyes peeking out, somewhere above, below, or right deep into our soul. The square framing only heightens the claustrophobia of being stuck in a lighthouse (during a storm, no less!). We can totally understand Pattinson’s growing frustration with his flatulent, demeaning boss. Perhaps my favorite part about this entire movie – beyond how joyously rich with mythology and farts it is – is the dialogue. The Eggers’ brothers clearly did their research in providing Dafoe with 19th-century sailor’s jargon, and Pattinson more of the 19th-century farmer’s variety. The colorful language that bounces between the two of them is just incredibly delightful in its archaicness and specificity. Just be sure to have the subtitles on to get the full experience.

2. Last Black Man in San Fransisco – directed by Joe Talbot, written by Joe Talbot and Rob Richert

“People aren’t one thing.”

Montgomery Allen (Jonathan Majors) is my favorite character of 2019. From the first frame, he stands out. He’s wearing an unnecessarily formal tweed jacket and always, always running alongside his best friend Jimmie Fails – who glides by on his skateboard – as if he can never quite catch up with the world without giving it the whole of his being. Each day he comes home – never on a bus, because the bus never arrives on time on their side of town – and walks by a group of men who talk a loud, posturing game. They drop all kinds of furious, blush-worthy language. They bump into each other and call each other out. It’s the kind of scene that many walking by would find threatening. Something to avoid. But to Montgomery? He recognizes it’s part of the world he lives in and does his damnedest to get inside their heads and truly inhabit their voices. He has to play a part. There’s no other way. The way the film flows, you keep expecting that one day he’s gonna hop over and try and overpower these men, getting louder and louder and louder. But when he does finally cross the street and intervene? It’s a delightful surprise. Here, Montgomery decides to act like the person he wants to be: a director of a play meant to save lives. The men are so completely befuddled – flabbergasted! – by this quiet man’s intervention, his insistence that they’re all actors and that he sees something special and worthwhile in the one who’s getting chewed out and demeaned the most.

We spend so much of our time thinking the story is about Jimmie Fails IV that we almost don’t notice how much Montgomery does for him. Not only does he put on a delightful, hilarious, heartfelt, absolutely thought-provoking play inside Jimmies’ dream house (I still think about “people are not just one thing” and how to break the boxes they’re often stuck in), but he tells Jimmie what he absolutely needs to hear when no one else is willing to do so. And he does this knowing how far his friend has fallen – how he’s lost his house AND broken his skateboard (his only reliable transportation) – and how further crushing his words will be. But they have to be done. Even at the risk of losing his friendship.

The final shots of this gorgeous movie may be confusing, but they make so much sense from the logic of friendship. Montgomery loved Jimmie so much he had to let him go. He had to tell him what he needed to hear. And he had to provide his best friend that final kick he needed to once again try and do something that would allow him to feel free. Free to create his own narrative. Free to be anyone other than the guy the vicious cycle of gentrification seems to want him to be. We don’t know where Jimmie is actually going and it truly doesn’t matter. It takes an incredibly mature, thoughtful filmmaker to realize that; that the best endings aren’t necessarily the ones that make the most sense in our view but make the most sense in the character’s view.

Someone on Twitter described this movie as Wes Anderson meets Spike Lee and it’s a pretty concise way to sell this movie. I’d also add a giant pouring of Barry Jenkins in this. The ache. The longing. The beautiful, heartbreaking and heart-lifting (sometimes both at once) score. This is a movie that leaves a lot of negative space for us to put our thoughts on. Which is why, for some, this movie may feel too slight. But I truly believe it’s just smart enough to give you a chance. To let you ride your own skateboard down your own San Fransisco hills, looking for that home of understanding you can inhabit and – at least temporarily – call your own.

1. Parasite – directed by Bong Joon Ho, written by Bong Joon Ho and Jin Won Han

“If I had all this, I would be kinder.”

There isn’t much to say about this incredible movie that hasn’t been said many times before, all over the internet, social media, and various awards handed out. I remember Parasite for being one of the purest cinema experiences of 2019. From the time the trailer first played over summer films, it had my interest. I had no idea what it was about, but then the pull quotes and the reviews started streaming in. All of them said the same thing: go see this movie and go in as cold as possible. So I saved the articles and didn’t read them. I kept my mind as blank as possible. And thing of it all was that it was very, very easy to do so. Why? Because, for once, it seemed like people truly wanted to respect the surprise for others. That is such a rare thing in 2019. How often do you hear about a movie that everyone says not to spoil and people still do not go out of their way to spoil it on Twitter or otherwise? It gave me – if only for a brief couple weeks – a much stronger belief in humanity. Maybe we weren’t so hopeless after all. Maybe we could avoid ruining things for others!

We saw the movie in a packed theater. Everyone was all-in. And my god, while I spent most of the movie both entertained and completely transfixed by the way Bong unfurls his story, I remember feeling like the entire theater collectively sat mouth agape at the final act. Sweet Jesus. None of us saw it coming. That’s when you know it’s something special. When it can still surprise a whole theater and hold them completely enraptured. Even now, I still feel weird about writing about anything that actually happens in this movie lest I ruin the surprise from anyone else. But the beauty of this film is in its richness. It’s not just about the surprise. It’s as layered as any dish 2019 had to offer, an incredibly incisive look at class and the perils of capitalism. It’s no mistake that the people we relate to the most – the poor family looking to live a little bit more like rich family – see things go seriously sour when they emulate that which they aspire to be.

Finding out afterward that the house at the centerpiece of this film is entirely a man-made construction of production design wizardry is an apt metaphor for this film. There was no house that fit their needs. No genre to neatly fold their film into. No ease of marketing to rely on. So they had to build their own thing from scratch. And they had to sell it without showing much. And then they made it something we’ll never forget.