Every year, I keep a running list of the best movies I’ve seen this year. I usually end up with a Top Ten and another 5-15 mentions. Here’s last year’s list.
To get on my year-end list, a movie has to be one that thrills me while I’m watching it and one that I’m still thinking about a couple of days later.
I’ll be adding films as I see them. This year, I’m still waiting to see Little Women.
THE BEST OF THE YEAR
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood: masterpiece. Quentin Tarantino’s exquisite filmmaking skills blend together verisimilitude of time and place, vivid performances and a rock ’em, sock ’em story to make Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood an instant classic. Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Leonardo DiCaprio and a host of others create tremendous performances, and Tarantino delivers the most startling ending in recent cinema. And it’s a love letter to a Hollywood that six-year-old Quentin Tarantino lived near to, but was not a part of. This is a Tarantino masterpiece, right up there with his best, Jackie Brown and Pulp Fiction. As of November 26, it’s available to stream on Amazon and the other major platforms.
Parasite: social inequity – what’s really at stake. Master filmmaker Bong Joo Ho explores social inequity by taking us through a series of genres. Parasite opens as a hilarious comedy, then evolves halfway through into a suspense thriller and ends with a shocker and a moment of contemplative heartbreak. This is one of the decade’s best films.
Marriage Story: the comedy helps us watch the tragedy. Noah Baumbach’s family dramedy traces two good people who care for each other at the end of their marriage. It’s a heartfelt film about a personal tragedy that has some of the funniest moments on screen this year.
The Irishman: gangsters – an epic reflection. Martin Scorsese’s historical gangland epic is an insightful reflection on the criminal life. Brilliant performances by Joe Pesci and Al Pacino.
The Last Black Man in San Francisco: the most stark reality, only dream-like. This uncommonly clear-eyed love letter to San Francisco is an absorbing exploration of the inner lives of two friends as they react to their changing city. The brilliantly original filmmaking by director and co-writer Joe Talbot portrays the starkly real as dreamlike. It’s available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Ash Is Purest White: a survivor’s journey. Actress Tao Zhao’s tour de force performance powers this portrait of an unforgettable woman surviving betrayal, the crime world and the tidal waves of change in modern China, all embedded in writer-director Zhangke Jia’s gangster neo-noir.
Jojo Rabbit: a joyous and hilarious movie about the inculcation of hatred. Filmmaker Taika Waititi’s often outrageous satire takes on hatred by exposing the absurdity of demonizing “the other”.
Uncut Gems: neo-noir in a pressure cooker. Adam Sandler channels a guy racing through a gambling addiction and the resultant financial desperation. It’s the most wire-to-wire movie tension in years.
Long Day’s Journey into Night: obsession and a vivid darkness. This brilliantly original film explores memory – a man obsessed with a doomed romance from twenty years ago plunges into a neo-noir underworld. After a slow burn beginning, his search reaches its climax in a spectacular ONE-HOUR single shot. It can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
They Shall Not Grow Old: a generation finally understood. Lord of the Rings filmmaker Peter Jackson has, for the first time, layered humanity over our understanding of World War I. By slowing down the speed of the jerky WWI film footage and adding sound and color, Jackson has allowed us to relate to the real people in the Great War. This film is a generational achievement. Now you can stream it from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
63 Up: a generation faces mortality. 63 Up is the latest chapter in the greatest documentary series in cinema history (and on my list of Greatest Movies of All Time). Starting with Seven Up! in 1964, director Michael Apted has followed the same fourteen British children, filming snapshots of their lives at ages 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49. and 56 – and now at age 63.
Amazing Grace : pure, sanctified Aretha. This Aretha Franklin concert film is, at once, the recovery of a lost film, the document of an extraordinary live recording and an immersive, spiritual experience. Amazing Grace can be streamed on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play; the DVD can be rented from Redbox.
Knives Out: born on third base and thought they hit a triple. Writer-director Rian Johnson explodes the genre of the drawing room murder mystery. The gloriously entertaining Knives Out works as a darkly funny murder mystery and as a pointed social satire. It’s one of the year’s smartest and funniest films.
Booksmart: smart, fresh and hilarious. This wildly successful comedy is an entirely fresh take on the coming of age film, and a high school graduation party romp like you’ve never seen. Directed and written by women, BTW. It’s available to stream from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.
Midnight Family: an all-night race for pesos. This gripping documentary follows an all-night Mexico City ambulance crew.
OTHER NOTES
This is the first year in a while when I’m not putting either a Cinequest film on my list. I would strongly recommend two films from Cinequest – the Mexican dystopian parable Buy Me a Gun (available to stream on Amazon) and the mine rescue thriller Mine 9.
Here’s a movie that’s NOT on my list, but could and should have been good enough. For the first hour-and-a-half of Sunset, I was convinced that I was watching the best movie of the year. Sunset is a visual masterpiece but the story’s coherence and pacing slips away in the final act. Alas.
