5. “The Lighthouse”
You’ve never seen a two-hander quite like Robert Eggers’ batshit-brilliant “The Lighthouse,” which is, among other things, one of the greatest movies ever made about living with someone you can’t stand. In an increasingly homogenized and sanitized cinematic landscape, we should all be grateful that a film this demonic, daffy and uncompromising – a clear passion project for its director, one that is simultaneously a lunatic black comedy about debilitating isolation, a nightmarish black-and-white tone poem in the visual vein of “Nosferatu,” an opportunity to see Robert Pattinson to masturbate furiously to a wooden mermaid figurine, a symphony of flatulence, misanthropy, and salty pirate jargon, and one of the most unforgettable moviegoing experiences of 2019 – can still manage to court the attention of a studio like A24 and find U.S. distribution. You’re unlikely to forget the haunted, incorrigible male duo at the center of this frothing-mad nuthouse of a motion picture, even if “The Lighthouse” is every bit as scrupulously art-directed and stylistically extraordinary as “The Witch,” and often more so. The film’s dialogue sings with an old-timey lyrical grandeur (“I’m a wickie, and a wickie I is!”), largely thanks to the slow-burning, aberrantly hilarious screenplay by Eggers and his brother Max (although it must be said that Pattinson and co-star Willem Dafoe are certainly no slouches in this regard, with Dafoe in particular giving one of his all-time great performances). Eggers’ second feature is an unholy, faultlessly rendered testament to the maxim that “hell is other people”: a show-stopping vision that you do not so much experience as surrender to. For anyone who has ever wished to hear Dafoe tear into a righteously indignant monologue where he all but summons the mighty powers of the sea god Neptune, or those who wish to hear Pattinson describe the ways in which he’d fornicate with a bloody steak, “The Lighthouse” is nothing less than the movie event of the year.
4. “Ad Astra”
In a sense, James Gray has always made movies about fathers and sons: both the legacy of paternal guilt and its trickle-down effects remain enduringly fertile motifs for this propitiously skilled and unfortunately undervalued director. “Ad Astra,” Gray’s spectral, austere, effortlessly awe-inspiring science-fiction odyssey about duty, male vulnerability and the paradox of an unknowable God, is the most upfront cinematic manifestation yet of this director’s most cherished ongoing theme. This magnificent and transportive big-screen journey tells the story of astronaut adventurer Roy McBride (Brad Pitt, who has rarely been more emotionally exposed onscreen, and is having one of the best years of his career between this and “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood”), who ventures to the far reaches of the galaxy in search of his long-missing father (seen mostly in ghostly, disconcerting flashes, and played with a chilling, borderline-sociopathic remove by the great Tommy Lee Jones). Like all of Gray’s films, “Ad Astra” is handsome, arresting, and brazenly old-fashioned: a repast of tried-and-true, classically minded cinematic craft. It is also a contemplative, unapologetically grown-up continuation of what the director was exploring in “The Lost City of Z,” which is the compulsion to search for meaning in the unknown. For most of its runtime, Gray’s film offers viewers a rich, beautiful, cosmically dense variation on Daddy-Issues sci-fi blueprint. And yet, this movie’s true power lingers in hindsight. “Ad Astra” is a welcome reminder (in case any was needed) of Gray’s status as one of our premier filmmakers, and yes, it’s also one of the year’s most exultant displays of sheer filmmaking prowess (sorry “1917”). When all’s said and done, though, “Ad Astra” is a meditative sojourn taken to the edge of an abyss: a voyage into the chasm of our species’ vast celestial void, undertaken with the hopes that whatever is unearthed there will reveal the secrets of what truly makes us human.
3. “Parasite”
So much has been written about Bong Joon-ho’s ability to bend the rules of genre to his very idiosyncratic whim that we tend to overlook the fact that most of the director’s work revolves around the issue of class. “Parasite,” Bong’s latest and inarguably greatest work, is the definitive word from the legendary filmmaker on this particular subject. This is the breathless and cunningly imaginative tale of two families pitted against each other on a moral battleground: in one corner, a clan of penniless con artists scraping by on the margins of poverty; in the other corner, a lineage of affluent oddballs whose ornately-designed abode houses some rather appalling secrets. Like all of Bong’s films, “Parasite” skillfully plays with various tones and styles like a cat idly striking at a ball of yarn. Sometimes the film feels like the scalpel-sharp peak of 21st-century sociopolitical satire. Other times, “Parasite” has a manic, unhinged energy that is almost farcical. It caps its depraved, hand-over-your-mouth final stretch with a ruefully dreamlike and ambiguous epilogue. And yet, in spite of “Parasite’s” breathtakingly nimble ability to dance across the rigid parameters of form, Bong’s screenplay fastidiously avoids the high-minded film-bro pastiche frequently employed by many of the director’s contemporaries. What’s most remarkable about “Parasite” is how its perversity, mischief, and immaculate cinematic classicism – Bong often lets the camera glide down the hallways of the movie’s chief location, a spectacular modernist home, home-like he’s paying homage to Stanley Kubrick at the Overlook motel – eventually gives way to something shattering. The result is simultaneously a barbed, bitter allegory that’s impossible to dislodge from your mind, a scathingly funny high-wire act, and a cinematic house of cards that threatens to come tumbling down at any moment, but somehow, never does. In other words, “Parasite” is a work of unassailable cinematic art that no one but Bong Joon-ho could have made. Eat the rich, sure, but don’t be surprised if gorging on their entrails makes you feel funny.
2. “The Irishman”
Death: it comes for us all in the end. And indeed, a lot of people have died in Martin Scorsese films, particularly in unimpeachable, blood-and-spaghetti-sauce mob classics like “Goodfellas” and “Casino.” Our greatest living director has frequently depicted a world where life is nasty, brutish and short: he’s our most expert observer of the routines of hard men who live not to be lamented, but to be feared during their short and volatile reigns and then ultimately forgotten by their enemies and remaining loved ones. In past films, Scorsese has treated death as both a borderline-religious act of sacrifice, and also as a nasty gallows punchline (it really depends on what kind of film he happens to be making). The specter of mortal loss hangs like a dark rain cloud over every frame of “The Irishman,” Scorsese’s sorrowful, damn near flawless return to the gangland milieu he’s most well known for. There is a sense of grave, impending doom in this picture’s handsome but dread-soaked frames, and the film’s mordant, insistent humor makes it both of a piece with Scorsese’s filmography and also a dazzlingly virtuosic maturation from his earlier, still-formidable lowlife operas. The scenes in “The Irishman” that explore the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa and union tough guy Frank Sheeran’s alleged role in it are among the film’s most affecting – even Joe Pesci, with all the famous meltdowns he’s performed for Scorsese, has never seemed so terrifyingly authoritative as when he’s holding a man’s fate in his hands while calmly mixing a salad (an entirely separate review could be written about the lunatic hambone majesty of Al Pacino’s work as an ice cream-obsessed Hoffa). The last hour of “The Irishman” is a sustained chill, a grim cautionary tale that warns against “just following orders,” and a bleak bemoaning for lives wasted and men too savage and pitiful to mourn. In this regard, the film almost seems like a sincere act of atonement for some of the director’s earlier, more exuberant portraits of illegal living. The intense power of “The Irishman” feels utterly definitive, as if to imply that even if this isn’t Scorsese’s last film (and let’s really hope it isn’t), it may be remembered as his last career-defining masterpiece.
1. “Uncut Gems”
There are a few prominent thematic threads that run throughout the filmography of Josh and Benny Safdie: among them, the inherently fractious nature of family, a deep skepticism towards bureaucratic infrastructures and social conformity, and a sympathetic, propulsive perspective of modern America’s bottom social rung. Perhaps the foremost motif in the Safdie oeuvre is that all of their characters, be they ex-cons, homeless junkies, or penny-ante hustlers, are chasing a high of some kind. Howard Ratner – the shameless and magnetic protagonist of the brothers’ latest, the unruly and unforgettable Diamond District caper “Uncut Gems” – is a man relentlessly chasing the high of success. Howard is the kind of anti-ubermensch who could talk the wedding ring off your finger because he’s just that damned persistent. He’s also, as played by Adam Sandler in what is undoubtedly the defining dramatic performance of his career, a wealth of contradictions: a philanderer who also happens to be a family man, a basketball fanatic who is addicted to making spectacularly ill-conceived sports bets, and a living, breathing manifestation of self-made success who is nevertheless monomaniacally committed to wreaking havoc on his own life. What makes “Uncut Gems” the Safdie’s the most towering and extraordinary work is how it broadens the scope of their demandingly subjective, often harrowing early films while still managing to maintain the indelible, assaultive, panic-attack energy that they’ve made their trademark. Sandler is simply perfect as an unabashed capitalist whose daily routine largely revolves around obtaining, spending, losing, or flaunting money. The erstwhile Waterboy has played a veritable lifetime’s worth of hair-trigger schmucks, but none who possess the twisted gumption or reckless aspirational streak of Howard Ratner. Simply put, “Uncut Gems” was THE movie of 2019, at least for me. It’s a hypnotically warped and surprisingly spiritual tale of one man’s spiral into all-out implosion: a masterful, exalted symphony of chaos that begins on a note of blissed-out euphoria and ends, appropriately, with the audience’s stomachs tied up in knots. To those who didn’t think the brothers could top “Good Time,” I will quote none other than “Gems” co-star Kevin Garnett himself: “anything is possible.”
RUNNER UPS:
“Pain and Glory” was one of the year’s most colorful, robust, and resplendent dramas, and also one of Pedro Almodovar’s defining works: a masterful act of authorial self-reflection that will make viewers feel more human and alive through the simple act of submitting to its vision. Celine Sciamma’s “Portrait of a Lady on Fire” was an exquisite stylistic leap forward for the “Girlhood” director that also acted as a deft and poignant interrogation of the idea of desire as a creative fuel. The adoring “Love, Antosha,” my favorite documentary of 2019, restored the one-of-a-kind spirit of the great Anton Yelchin to endure on after his tragic and untimely death.
“Birds of Passage” was a radical subversion of the modern cartel-gangster movie blueprint, while “Booksmart” was one of 2019’s most ebullient and inclusive studio comedies, and a heck of a debut for director Olivia Wilde. “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood” was, for all its much-discussed controversies and abundant narrative indulgences, Quentin Tarantino’s most soulful movie since the days of “Jackie Brown.” “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” meanwhile, would be worth including in the Runner-Ups category for its gloriously trippy final thirty minutes alone.
The hellacious “Climax” was the first Gaspar Noe movie in years that felt inventive and liberating in addition to being invasively disturbing. “Atlantics” was one of 2019’s most hypnotic and enticingly seductive Mood Movies, while Abel Ferrara’s characteristically intimate “Pasolini” biopic was a lovely kind of creative olive branch extended from one outlaw artist to another. “The Mountain” was a mannered and masterful midcentury fever dream (one that curdled into a nightmare near the end of its runtime), as well as a kind of pained, bone-dry rumination on a vanished way of American life. “High-Flying Bird” was one of Stephen Soderbergh’s smartest and most enjoyable works since the days of “The Limey” and “Out of Sight,” and certainly far more enthralling and with it, so to speak, than his superficially enjoyable but glib and bloodless Panama Papers dramedy “The Laundromat.”
“High Life” somehow managed to translate the elliptical, one-of-a-kind cinematic poetry of Claire Denis to the sinister furthermost reaches of outer space, while “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” was a warm, restorative hug of a movie: one buoyed by a gentle and thoughtful lead performance from the great Tom Hanks. Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir” staked its claim halfway through 2019 as one of the most iconic Bad Boyfriend movies of all time, while “The Last Black Man in San Francisco” was a winning, tender, appealingly earnest love letter to a changing American city, as well as the unofficial arrival of two major talents in the form of director Joe Talbot and lead actor Jimmie Fails.
