Half Time Top 10 List - 2019

So 2019 is half over – so it’s now time for my annual half time top ten list (which I actually do at the end of 6 months, not the end of five months like so many outlets seem to do). For my money, it’s been a pretty great year for movies – with several great films, and a lot of interesting ones. It’s not always easy to see everything so I will note below the films that may have made this list had I see them – mainly it’s because the films haven’t been released in Canada yet, but some are ones I just missed, but will catch up with soon.

 

So for the record, I have yet to see these films: The Biggest Little Farm (John Chester), Diamantino (Gabriel Abrantes & Daniel Schmidt), Diane (Kent Jones), Dogman (Matteo Garrone), Grass (Hong Sang-soo), Hail Satan? (Penny Lane), The Heiresses (Marcelo Martinessi), Hotel by the River (Hong Sang-soo), The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot), Little Woods (Nia DaCosta), Meeting Gorbachev (Werner Herzog & Andre Singer), Peterloo (Mike Leigh), Styx (Wolfgang Fischer), Wild Nights with Emily (Madeleine Olnek). I plan to catch up with all of these films, as long as I can, when they roll out either in theaters, or VOD in the coming weeks and months.

 

And now, just a quick rundown of the top five performances in each acting category so far (note, I start roughly with fifth place, and end in first place):

 

Best Supporting Actress: First up, two performances from the same movie - Agyness Deyn & Gayle Rankin in Her Smell who are both great as the lead’s long suffering bandmates, who both deal with her drama in very different ways – tough to pick which one is better. Evelin Dobos in Sunset is wonderful as an ambiguous character – you can quite tell what she is up to, what she wants from the lead, etc. – and it’s a great performance. Juliette Binoche in High Life proves once again why she is one of the best, most risk taking actresses in the world – playing a profoundly unsympathetic character, and diving headlong in, making it of the oddest, best performances of her brilliant career. But my favorite so far is Shahadi Wright Joseph in Us who I think has a very tricky duel role as the daughter in Jordan Peele’s horror film, and the newcomer is great in both roles – very unsettling in the role of the other, and sympathetic as the “real” daughter – a great performance from an emerging actress.

 

Best Supporting Actor: It’s odd that Vince Vaughn in Dragged Across Concrete says way more in this supporting role than he did for the same director – S. Craig Zahler – in the lead of his last film (Brawl in Cell Block 99 – but he does, and he handles the very weird, very stylized dialogue. Julianne Moore got a lot of (deserved) praise but I loved John Turturro in Gloria Bell even more – a tricky role as a man who wants to move on from his marriage, and his adult children, but can never quite do it – hurting the lead in the process in what is one of my favorite recent performances of his. Murat Cemcir in The Wild Pear Tree is great as the father of the lead – a teacher, whose son seems to be following in his footsteps, and the tricky love-hate relationship they have together. Vlad Ivanov in Sunset adds another villain to a career full of them – but this one is subtler, and more insidious than most – and more haunting as a result. Jeremy Bobb in Under the Silver Lake has just one extended scene – and it maybe the best scene of the year so far, and I don’t want to spoil it, but I will say it’s not a performance I am going to forget any time soon.

 

Best Actress: As has been the case for a few years now, the Best Actress field was more crowded for me than Best Actor. Olivia Wilde in A Vigilante has never been better than here, as a woman who has escaped an abusive marriage, but isn’t over it yet – and channels all that rage into helping other, in a film I wish more people saw. Juli Jakab in Sunset delivers a brilliant, controlled performance in the center of all the chaos – and anchors it brilliantly as a woman navigating this strange political landscape. Honor Swinton Bryne in The Souvenir delivers a wonderful performance, as a young woman in love, struggling with her self-destructive boyfriend, and her own desire to make her art. Elisabeth Moss in Her Smell delivered her best (film) performance so far, as a self-destructive rock star spiraling downwards, and then, perhaps saving herself – she risks alienating us completely, which makes the ending even better. Lupita Nyong’o in Us really took on a pair of difficult roles in Jordan Peele’s film – as the leader of the others, and the mother trying to save her family – it’s a performance for the ages, and like most horror performances, won’t get the attention it deserves.

 

Best Actor: The first one will generate controversy, but Mel Gibson in Dragged Across Concrete gives his best performance in years, playing off his own toxic image as a cop who is both sympathetic and awful, in a movie and role that is more complicated than some gave it credit for. Dogu Demirkol in The Wild Pear Tree is great as a young writer, just out of school, who is convinced of his own brilliance and has the world smack him down – and has to lick his own wounds, after nearly three hours. Robert Pattinson in High Life delivers another great, daring performance as a convict sent into space, and then has to become a father – it is deep, dark, subtle performance that shows just how good Pattinson can be. Tom Burke in The Souvenir is perfect as the self-destructive first love of the main character, who just cannot stop himself – and even if he is ass, you still feel sympathy for him. Andrew Garfield in Under the Silver Lake delivers his best performance to date as a portrait of white, male entitlement and toxic masculinity, that you gradually come to realize just how horrible he is in this strange, mixed up detective story, that needs Garfield to keep it altogether.

 

Runners-Up: There are quite a few films that could have made by top 10 of the year so far – including: Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollock & Alan Elliot) a miracle of a documentary about the legendary performance by Aretha Franklin, thought lost forever. Aniara (Pella Kagerman & Hugo Lilja) is a strange, complex film about a massive space ship of cruise line proportions, drifting in space for years, their destination out of reach which goes to really strange, really profound places. Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke) kind of plays like Zhangke’s greatest hits – combining elements from Still Life, A Touch of Sin, Mountains May Depart and others, but still manages to be a deep, thoughtful, wonderful film – and really makes me wonder what he does next. Avengers: Endgame (Joe & Anthony Russo) brings this massive 10 years, more than 20 films opus to a kind of end, in a way that is very satisfying. Birds of Passage (Ciro Guerra & Cristina Gallego) is a South American gangster epic that doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but is massively satisfying – and a look at a culture we don’t usually see. Booksmart (Olivia Wilde) is one of the best teen comedies in recent years – with a pair of great performances at its core, and shows a ton of style by debut director Olivia Wilde. Climax (Gaspar Noe) is a mad orgy of dancing, violence and sex through one crazed, drug fueled night that does exactly what you expect a Gaspar Noe film will do, but is a lot more fun than anything else he has done. The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch) is a hilarious dead-pan zombie comedy, until it very deliberately isn’t funny anymore. Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler) is a long (two hours, forty minutes) crime drama about corrupt cops, drug dealers, etc. – the kind of film that will stop for fifteen minutes to give you the backstory of a bank teller so when the robbery happens, you know who she is – it’s a film that is deliberately trolling Zahler’s critics, but is far more complex than some realized. Fyre (Chris Smith) is a great, wide ranging documentary on the Fyre festival, and everything that went wrong there (and it’s the one to see, instead of the Hulu one – even if both bring up some documentary ethics issues). Homecoming (Beyoncé) is one of the great concert films in recent times – showing all the talents of Beyoncé as a performer and as a director. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (Dean DeBlois) is about as good as Hollywood animation gets – a beautiful, exciting and quietly profound film that ends this saga on a great note. The Inventor (Alex Gibney) is another Alex Gibney documentary about financial scams, this time about Elizabeth Holmes and her Edison machine. Rolling Thunder Revue (Martin Scorsese) is a wonderful Bob Dylan whatsit – part doc, part concert film, part mythmaking and magic trick, all fascinating. Ruben Brandt: Collector (Milorad Krstic) is an innovative, strange visually stunning animated film that is light on story, but long on style. Shadow (Zhang Yimou) is his best films in years, a visually stunning martial arts epic, that contains some of the best scenes of its kind since his own Hero and House of Flying Daggers. Starfish (A.T. White) is a wonderful, intimate, apocalyptic film that combines elements of sci fi and horror, in a story about guilt and loss. The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylon) maybe weaker than most of Ceylon’s recent films, but this talky, three-hour epic about a young author who believes he is a genius – and is slowly disillusioned of the idea. The Wind (Emma Tammi) is a brilliant combination of Western and horror genres, with great performances and atmosphere that really gets under your skin.

 

And Now onto the Top 10 Films of 2019 So Far

 

10. Transit (Christian Petzold)

I don’t think Christian Petzold’s Transit is quite the film that his last film – the brilliant Phoenix, a kind of play on Vertigo with one hell of a ending – but like that film, Transit is one of those films that grows in your mind even as you get further away from it. Here, Petzold adapts a book from the 1940s about the refugee crisis from that time, and transplants it to the current day, changing nothing else except for that setting. It’s a fascinating experiment – done that at first is a little distancing, but that slowly does start to creep up on you. It is more of intellectual exercise more than an emotional one – but it’s one that you may find hard to shake. It’s haunted me since TIFF last fall.

 

9. John Wick Chapter 3 – Parabellum (Chad Stahelski)

As far as action filmmaking goes – it doesn’t get much better this decade than the John Wick films – in particular the first act of Chapter 3 – which is pretty much pure insanity from the jump – going from the library fight to the chase through the streets (including horses) and probably my single favorite sequence in these films – in that knife filled hallway. Of course, the plot of these movies is ridiculous – that’s kind of the fun of them – and perhaps this film is a touch too long, and you OD on all the action at a certain point, but this is just about as good as these films keep getting more insane, and push themselves further and further. I cannot wait for Chapter 4.

 

8. Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley)

Admittedly, we didn’t really need a Toy Story 4 – the series really came full circle with Toy Story 3 – and yet this film acts as a wonderful, bittersweet coda to the series – pushing Woody even further, and introducing us to Forky – which are two characters who really do bring the existential crisis in these films into stark focus. That probably sounds far too serious – because this film is still funny, smart, enjoyable and action packed – kids will love it, of course. But like all Toy Story films, it is uniquely qualified to wring tears from the parents in the audience. Not quite top tier Pixar – but close enough.

 

7. High Life (Claire Denis)

If you thought that getting her biggest budget to date would change Claire Denis – than you probably don’t know her films too well. Denis’ sci-fi epic, about a group of convicts set adrift in space, with no hope of return, all to perform experiments on them is a haunting, challenging film. Robert Pattinson has the lead role – who we see at the beginning with a baby, and no one well, and then we flash back to how we got there. The film is full of sex and violence, all of it disturbing in the extreme, and will push your buttons – and pushed some right out of the theaters. Denis has made a film that is uncompromising, disturbing and hugely ambitious – ending on a note of either hopelessness or pure hope. You decide. It’s another example of why Denis is one of the most interesting filmmakers in the world.

 

6. Long Day’s Journey Into Night (Bi Gan)

Bi Gan’s mesmerizing sophomore film looks and feels like a film noir – with a main character searching for a woman from out of his past for the first 75 minutes or so. And then come the amazing 59 minute, 3-D shot that ends the film – which is perhaps as close as any film has ever gotten to recreating what it feels like to dream on film. The storytelling here is complex and at times confusing – Bi Gan makes no delineation between what is past and present, fact or fiction. But like his first film – Kahli Blues – if you pay attention, it’s all there. The film looks amazing from the start – haunting environments, like a flooded basement, or a long shot of a man following a woman in the van. The film is as visually impressive as any film made this year – or really, any year.

 

5. Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry)

Alex Ross Perry’s best film to date is this incendiary film about a rock star in the vein of Courtney Love – played in a brilliant performance by Elisabeth Moss. Through five extended sequences – each at a different point in time, we see her descent into drug fueled ego trips – pushing everyone away, and alienating and annoying everyone – including, perhaps the audience. And then, remarkably, she starts her gradual come back – she is brought low, and then recovers. This is the best performance Moss has given to date in her career – and she is surrounded by a great supporting cast. This is really about art – and ego – and how now one can do it on their own, and the gradual process by which Moss’ character eventually realizes that. The film will push and prod you – it traps you with this toxic personality and dares you to look away. If you’re anything like me, you won’t be able to.

 

4. The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg)

Joanna Hogg’s best and most personal film to date is this – a devastating film about a doomed, toxic relationship based on one from Hogg’s past. Honor Swinton Byrne – Tilda’s daughter – gives a remarkable debut performance as a young film student in early 1980s London – someone from a privileged background, who doesn’t want to make films about those in her class. She meets someone even more posh (Tom Burke) – he works for the foreign office – and although it would be kind to call him a mansplainer, she falls for him anyway – and even when it becomes clear that he is self-destructive, she stays with him anyway. The film is a technical marvel – as all Hogg’s films are, including two of the very best shots of the year that end the film. But it hits a hard, emotional note as well – and gives you an idea of why she would stay, even when it becomes clear she shouldn’t. Hogg has quietly been making good films for a decade now – and this is her best work to date, and will hopefully bring Hogg the kind of recognition she deserves.

 

3. Sunset (Lazlo Nemes)

Easily the most underrated film of the year – it kind of came and went without much attention – is Hungarian director Lazlo Nemes’ follow-up to his brilliant Son of Saul – one of the few Holocaust films post Shoah and Schindler’s List that actually offered a unique perspective on the horrors. Sunset is a more complex, difficult film that Son of Saul. It takes place in Hungary, in the days leading up to WWI, and focuses on a young woman – whose parents once ran a fancy hat store, but died years ago. She has returned for the first time in decades – and discovers difficult family secrets, simmering resentments, and violence. The camera – as it did with Son of Saul – sticks with her the entire time, offering her perspective on the events. But she is an ambiguous character – one that is hard to pin down. The mounting action climaxes with a descent into chaos – and then continues on for another hour. Sunset is a brilliantly directed film – and an extremely troubling one. It hasn’t got the attention it deserves yet – but you should seek it out.

 

2. Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell)

Perhaps the year’s most divisive film – which is saying something, especially since its normally daring distributer A24 basically dumped it into a few theaters and VOD at the same time this spring. David Robert Mitchell’s follow-up to the brilliant It Follows is a big, sprawling neo-noir that would make a fine weekend of movie watching alongside with Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, the Coens Big Lebowski and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Inherent Vice. It’s a film about an unemployed writer of some kind – played by Andrew Garfield – who becomes obsessed with finding his neighbor, who he meets one day, and then vanishes. But the film is full of subplots, side roads and detours – some pay off, some deliberately do not. You cannot possibly guess where all this is going from its simple setup – but man, does it go it to crazy places. Part of what seems to anger people is either all those detours, and the rest is that Andrew Garfield’s character really is a horrible person. That’s kind of the point – he is a portrait of toxic masculinity and white privilege, and the fact that the normally likable Garfield goes there helps to make it his best performance to date. And yet, what he is searching for is relatable – but of course, that doesn’t mean he isn’t an asshole. David Robert Mitchell has pushed himself farther this time – and I absolutely loved it.

 

1. Us (Jordan Peele)

Jordan Peele’s debut film – Get Out – is one of the best horror films of the decade, because it’s a film about the very real horror that African Americans deal with every day. It works on the surface level of course – but the very clear subtext makes it even more horrifying. Following that up must have been hard – but Peele pulled it off with Us, a far more complex and ambiguous film, that goes to horrifying places. It starts, basically as a home invasion film – with the twist that those invading the home of this normal, upper-middle class black family, look exactly like them – but horrifying and deformed version of them – only one of whom can really speak. What follows is truly horrifying – on a sheer terror level, it certainly outdoes Get Out, with a few tremendous set pieces. On the allegorical level, Us is much harder to pin down than Get Out was – a film that is both intensely personal, and yet political as well – about the history of horrors in America. You could be one of those people who waste their time debating the sheer logistics of things in the film, but what’s the fun in that? Peele has directed another masterful horror film – after just two films, Peele has joined the very top ranks of American filmmakers.