So, now
let’s officially start my ridiculously long year end recap – starting with the
best films of the years, 30 -21 (noting that if it’s animated or a doc, and
isn’t in the top 10, I let them rest of their own list).
Runners-up: Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhang-ke) is a kind of greatest hits
package for one of China’s best filmmakers – not his best work, but excellent
nonetheless. Booksmart (Olivia Wilde) is
a hilarious high school comedy, and a poignant look at female friendship. Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler) isn’t
as good as his first two films, but continues his streak of controversial, slow
moving, violent films in a unique voice.
John Wick Chapter 3 – Parabellum is perhaps the best pure action film
Hollywood produced this year with one great set piece after another. Richard Jewell (Clint Eastwood) would
have easily been somewhere above – what works is as good as anything in late
Eastwood – but the depiction of Kathy Scruggs mars the film badly. Shadow (Zhang Yimou) may not have been
quite the film that Hero or House of Flying Daggers was – but it mainly a
return to form for Yimou. For the second year in a row (since it opened in
Toronto in late 2018, but in America in early 2019) I’ll add The Wild Pear Tree (Nuri Bilge Ceylon) which
doesn’t reach the top levels of the Turkish master’s films, but occasionally
still haunt me a year later.
30. Luce (Julius Onah)
Luce is a complex look at race and class in America that offers no easy
answers, just troubling questions. The film stars Kelvin Harrison Jr. in the
title role – a former African child soldier, adopted by an upper class white,
liberal American couple (Naomi Watts and Tim Roth) – and has become an American
success story. He is going to be valedictorian; he is a great athlete –
everyone loves him. With one exception – his teacher (Octavia Spencer) who
believes she can see through him, and maybe she can. The film is very well
acted by the trio of leads (Harrison Jr., Watts and Spencer) – and the film
plays with you, as you start to question Luce, and then question why you’re
questioning him. The film seems to be designed to make white audiences
uncomfortable – and never let us settle done. Based on the stage play, the film
has opened things up a little – but does what great theatre can do – inspire
conversation, and disturb you to the core.
29. Monos (Alejandro
Landes)
Monos is a very odd film – a movie set in Columbia, for the first half
on a beautiful, muddy mountaintop, the second half deep the jungle – about a
group of child soldiers who work for some sort of “organization” whose job is
to watch over an American hostage (Julianne Nicholson). Landes’ film has an odd
tone – a great, very strange score by the wonderful Micah Levi helps set the
stage from how weird it will be. The film is about these kids, trapped in a
world of adult conflicts, which they don’t really understand and will only lead
to more and more violence. The film is about group dynamics – how this group of
kids would probably be okay by themselves, but in this group only bad things
are going to happen. This film didn’t quite get the attention it deserved this
year – but it’s a quiet stunner, whose reputation will grow.
28. Ad Astra (James
Gray)
James Gray’s Ad Astra is a sci-fi film and it has all the trappings of a
space film – but it touches on much deeper themes than many other films of its
kind do. It does have all the trappings of a space adventure – as Brad Pitt’s
character goes from Earth to the moon, and then off to Mars and beyond in
search of his absent father. There are exciting sequences – the moon pirates
for example. But what it’s really about is about men’s inability to connect –
to be closed off emotionally, and the complicated relationships they have with
their often absent fathers. It can read on that very personal level – but it
can also been read as something larger – and Ingmar Bergman film in space about
the silence of God. The film is very quiet and slow – not an adventure all the
way through – but a quiet and introspective one – and one I think will likely
continue to grow in my mind over the years.
27. Transit (Christian
Petzold)
I have been thinking about Christian Petzold’s Transit since seeing it
at TIFF back in 2018. It is a modern film, set in France in 2018 during the
ongoing refugee crisis, but adapted from a book written during Nazi occupation
during WWII – and changes almost nothing about it. The effect is strange – a
film that is both timely, and out of time, at the same moment. It’s a film
about how the more things change, the more they stay the same. The plot is
based on coincidences and contrivances – the main character who is pretending
to be a dead writer in order to escape, who ends up falling for the dead writer’s
wife, who refuses to leave until he arrives, etc. The film is classic melodrama
in its way – it may remind you of Casablanca to a certain extent – but it
arrives at a place of true emotional weight. I don’t think it’s quite the film
Phoenix was for Petzold – but it’s closer than I thought when I first saw it.
All this time later, I’m still thinking about it.
26. Diane (Kent Jones)
I know there are some who think of Kent Jones’ Diane is more of a
performance piece for Mary Kay Pace than anything else. To be fair, Pace’s
performance is truly remarkable – the career best work of one of the great
character actresses in recent years. And yet, Jones’ film is deep and wise in
many ways – the ways that even apparently selfless acting can be selfish in its
own way – those secrets we don’t really want to talk about, and how they shaped
our lives. And how, right down to the end, our minds are working on things that
don’t really matter. On the surface, Diane certainly is a performance piece for
Pace – but it really is a deep and profound film in its own right as well.
25. Genesis (Philippe
Lesage)
Now that Xavier Dolan has kind of lost his footing, my vote for best
young voice from Quebec cinema easily goes to Phillippe Lesage. His sophomore
film isn’t quite as good as his debut (the remarkable The Demons, which I also
caught up with this year) – Genesis is a strange coming of age story about
three kids in very different circumstances. There is Guillaume (Theodore Pellerin)
a gay teenager in a boarding school who is struggling with that reality, and
his older half-sister Charlotte (Noee Abita) in college, drifting from one
disappointing boyfriend to the next. After a shocking incident three quarters
of the way through, the film changes gears completely – becomes a quasi-sequel
to The Demons, concentrating on a rather sweet story of a younger kid and his
crush at summer camp – before all the messiness that has befallen the older
characters. Lesage has a unique view on coming-of-age movies – The Demons is
almost horror film, this one a little calmer. But Lesage deserves all the
attention that is going to Dolan right now – and this film kind of disappeared
when it came out in America briefly this year. Track it down.
24. High Life (Claire
Denis)
The strangest sci-fi film of the year is clearly Claire Denis’ space
journey to nowhere. It is a film about a group of criminals, whose sentence is
to be research subjects on a space journey – they assume they’re coming back to
earth at some point, but they aren’t. Instead, they are drifting forever. The
film flashes back and forth in time – starting with Robert Pattison and a baby,
and then flashing back to the rest of the prisoners, and how they ended up in
the haunting shots of them floating into space. The movie is another example of
just how daring and good Robert Pattinson can be as an actor. But the entire
ensemble goes for broke as well – particularly Juliette Binoche as a doctor who
crosses many lines, and that doesn’t even include her trips to the room known
as the Fuck Box. Denis is one of the most interesting, daring filmmakers in the
world – and High Life is one of her strangest, best films to date.
23. The Farewell (Lulu
Wang)
Lulu Wang’s deeply humane The Farewell is one of the best movies I have
ever seen in depicting an extended family. The movie, about a Chinese family,
all returning back to China to say goodbye to their beloved mother/grandmother
who they believe is dying – even though they won’t tell her that – The Farewell
is filtered through the character based on Wang, played wonderfully by Awkafina
in a sensitive performance, trying to merge her American culture experience
with the Chinese one. But what makes The Farewell so special is the depiction
of this large extended family – coming from all over the world, back. It is
about those petty disagreements and squabbles that exist in every family, and
that people can never quite get over. The film is deeply emotional – the final
shot of Nai is a heartbreaker – and funny and deeply personal. I don’t like the
final scene in the movie – but other than that, this is a wonderful film.
22. Knives Out (Rian
Johnson)
Rian Johnson’s murder mystery – which is only a throwback on the
surface, as it has very contemporary issues on its mind – is one of the year’s
great entertainments. A very rich family gathers for the patriarch’s 85th
birthday – which ends in the middle of the night with his apparent suicide,
even though they all may have had a motive to kill him. Enter a brilliant P.I.
of great renown – played wonderfully by Daniel Craig – and you have the
ingredients you need for a closed box murder mystery. Johnson and his amazing
cast have a blast with the material – the film is fun and funny throughout, and
navigates all its twists and turns with intelligence and wit – but the film has
more on its mind than just that, which is why Ana de Armas’ performance and
character is the key to the entire film. The film may be a blunt instrument –
but dammit if it isn’t a lot of fun.
21. A Beautiful Day in
the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller)
It would have been much easier to make a standard issue biopic about Mr.
Rogers that audiences could have wrapped themselves in like a warm blanket.
Inside what Marielle Heller and company did was something far trickier – it’s
not really a biopic at all, but rather a story in which Mr. Rogers plays a
supporting role – and sometimes a frustrating one. It is the Mr. Rogers film
made for people like its real main character – a cynical journalist played by
Mathew Rhys – whose first reaction when he meets Mr. Rogers is to wonder if the
guy can possibly be for real. As Rogers, Tom Hanks was the only logical choice
for the role, and he ends up giving one his best, most complex performances.
His Rogers can be sometimes a little creepy, sometimes frustrating – as he
clearly just doesn’t answer questions he doesn’t want to answer. It is a
portrait of a man with tremendous self- control – someone who has the feelings
the rest of us do, but is able to control them. You can see them seep out in
interesting ways however. On top of that, Heller makes some daring choices in
her direction – which brings the film into some strange, weird places. If you
thought this film may be too saccharine for you, you’d be wrong.
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