In 2019, the box-office behemoths of Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel and Spider-Man: Far From Home hit paydirt for Marvel, but brought disdain from director Martin Scorsese who denied their relevance as “real cinema.” And yet: the year’s best movies stand as living, breathing definitions of what film can do when creative energy is let off the leash. From old masters like Scorsese (The Irishman) to young firebrands like the Safdie brothers (Uncut Gems), the year fairly burst with energy. Netflix followed its success last year with Roma with two more artistic triumphs (The Irishman and Marriage Story). Two dynamite women directors, Greta Gerwig (Little Women) and Lulu Wang (The Farewell), served notice to the film industry’s old boys’ club. Quentin Tarantino took on Tinseltown itself with Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood. South Korean powerhouse Bong Joon Ho reminded us that talent knows no borders with his masterpiece Parasite. And then there was a little movie called Joker. Here are 10 movies that did cinema proud.
10. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Marielle Heller’s beautifully made film isn’t a biopic of celebrated children’s TV host Fred Rogers. Instead, it shows his ideas in practice, telling the story of an unlikely friendship between Mr. Rogers (Tom Hanks) and a sour journalist (Matthew Rhys) riven with anger issues. Rogers was all about kindness, but Heller’s movie highlights another of his tenets: we have to give ourselves permission to feel everything in order to make peace with the things that threaten to tear us apart.
9. Jojo Rabbit
New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi is a wild man (see What We Do in the Shadows, Thor: Ragnarok), who doesn’t scare off easily. And the polarizing Jojo Rabbit is his biggest swing yet, a comedy tangled in tragedy, in which Waititi plays Hitler for laughs. What happens when 10-year-old Jojo (a terrific Roman Griffin Davis) tries to reconcile his membership in the Hitler Youth with the Jewish girl (Leave No Trace‘s Thomasin McKenzie) his mother (Scarlett Johansson) is hiding at home? Waititi trusts that his young hero’s journey to empathy will also be ours. And in a world still consumed by divisiveness and hate crimes, let’s hope he’s right.
8. Knives Out
Writer-director Rian Johnson’s ensemble whodunit—about a family fighting over the will of an eccentric mystery writer—is so beautifully made that it skims by in a flash. Ana de Armas gives a wonderful performance as the young woman, a nurse who also happens to be an immigrant, at the heart of the intrigue. This gorgeously layered film is great fun to watch, but it’s also perfectly placed in our era. We’re killing one another, but with something that’s the opposite of kindness.
7. Little Women
It’s a thrill to watch writer-director Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), partner to Marriage Story‘s Noah Baumbach, tackle the prospect of holy wedlock as an unholy burden. It sure is for Jo (Saoirse Ronan), the firebrand and fledgling author among the four March sisters, who occupy the plot of Louisa May Alcott’s 1860s novel. Sisters Meg (Emma Watson) and Beth (Eliza Scanlen) bear witness as Amy (the marvelous Florence Pugh) challenges Jo at her own game. Of the eight film versions of Little Women to date, this is by far the best, and the filmmaker brings Alcott’s own life and rebellious streak into the mix. The result creates an exhilarating gift of a movie that honors female independence at any age.
6. Parasite
Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s black comedy–thriller, about an impoverished family who scheme their way into an upper-crust household, artfully explores resentment between the haves and the have-nots. Even more striking is its deep humanity: both the scammers and the scammed earn our sympathy. Parasite is today’s answer to filmmaker Jean Renoir’s famous line, “The awful thing about life is this: everyone has their reasons.”
5. Marriage Story
Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson, both astonishing, star as a married couple in the midst of breaking up: To their horror, and ours, their at-first amicable split grows into a monster they had no idea they were capable of creating. This is Noah Baumbach’s most emotionally ragged movie, an acknowledgment that compromises aren’t nuisances that detract from life; they’re the stuff it’s built on.
4. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Quentin Tarantino’s mad love for Hollywood on the fringes permeates every frame of this richly detailed, ravishingly told fable. The time is 1969, and something sinister is creeping into Tinseltown. Who else but Tarantino would dare make a buddy comedy with the murderous Manson family lurking in the background? Leonardo DiCaprio works wonders as a boozing, fading star reduced to playing TV villains and leaning hard for support on his stunt-double buddy (Brad Pitt, heading for his first Oscar). And, yes, living next door is actress Sharon Tate, a personification of innocence as played by Margot Robbie. As is his habit, the virtuoso who had Hitler killed in Inglourious Basterds adjusts history to suit his own moral compass. To paraphrase a line from the script: He’s Quentin fucking Tarantino and don’t you forget it.
3. 1917
A potent and prodigious achievement on every level. Director Sam Mendes and camera visionary Roger Deakins — both their talents shining on their highest beams — have set out to tell a World War I story that propels itself forward in one continuous take (or at least it looks like that way.) Two young British soldiers — Schofield (George MacKay) and Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) — take on the impossible mission of crossing enemy lines to deliver a message that the Germans are setting a trap that could cost the British army more than 1,600 lives. There’s nothing gimmicky about the approach of Mendes and Deakins, who perform technical miracles that are surpassed only by their deep emotional investment (MacKay’s turn is a heartbreaker) in a high-tension war film that succeeds in pinning you to your seat.
2. The Irishman
Martin Scorsese, 77, and still America’s greatest living filmmaker, shook up the year by claiming Marvel movies aren’t cinema. “What’s not there is revelation, mystery, or genuine emotional danger,” claimed the director, who supplies all that and more in what is not just the best film of 2019 but also an incendiary, indelible summation of a landmark career. The film reunites Scorsese with his peerless acting muses Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci nearly 25 years after they made Casino. It also brings in a live-wire Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters leader who De Niro’s hit man, Frank Sheeran, is ordered to kill. A digital de-aging process allows the actors to play younger as the film spans decades of American history. But it’s not violence that brings them down — it’s debilitating age. That searing note of poetic justice makes The Irishman unique among Scorsese’s Mob films, from Goodfellas to The Departed, and earns a place in the cinematic canon.
- ‘Joker’
In a performance that will be dissected for years, Joaquin Phoenix astounds as Arthur Fleck, a street clown and wanna-be-stand-up who morphs into a brutal avenger. Creating their own stand-alone Joker origin story, Phoenix and director Todd Phillips hit a mother lode of controversy about the violence in a film that became the most successful R-rated movie in history. For inspiration, the filmmakers looked to Martin Scorsese, the legend at the top of this list. And in Fleck, you can see tormented traces of Travis Bickle in Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, and Rupert Pupkin in The King of Comedy. The Irishman and Joker bookend a year in which the best movies showed characters struggling to put on a happy face. Talk about art imitating life.
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