The 10 Best Movies of 2019

1) The Irishman (Martin Scorsese) [Review]

”It all ends with a stunning final shot, as Scorsese brings it all full circle, with Sheeran as lonely as ever, nearing death and filled with regret for the decisions he’s made in life. It feels like some kind of final hurrah for the 76-year-old director and his star actor, an adieu to the passage of time that feels like the finiteness of something major. It’s no coincidence then that Scorsese decided to include in the film a brief shot with the background of a cinema playing John Wayne’s own final hurrah, “The Shootist” — a film in which Wayne portrayed a dying and disabled cowboy nearing the end of his life and haunted by the violence he committed on people. Sheerhan would surely relate.”

2) Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safdie) [Review]

“Credit must, of course, go to Sandler, in the performance of his career as a man addicted to business, money, gambling, women and sports. But, much like Paul Thomas Anderson did for the actor in “Punch-Drunk Love,” the Safdies have managed to create a fascinating, lived-in world etched in varied backgrounds and Darius Khondji’s cinema-verité cinematography. The gutter poetry, as I liked to call it, of their 2017 thriller “Good Time” is again on display, but the adrenaline is cranked up to 11.  Their gift for creating atmospheric tension, not to mention a crime world that feels all-too-realistic, is enhanced ten-fold with this latest endeavor on the mean streets of New York City.”

2) Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino) [Review]

“Also, unlike ‘Django’ ‘Basterds,’ and, really, any of Tararntino’s movies post-Jackie Brown, the film takes its time to build up atmosphere and character. This may very well irk some of his newer fans, but for all of us who fell for QT’s cinema back in the 1990s, it is an absolutely welcome, back-to-the-basics structure, juggling a mosaic of characters and story-lines and eventually stringing them together for a relentlessly playful and touching finale.”

4) Pain & Glory (Pedro Almodovar) [Review]

“The film interspersed with touchingly rendered sequences of Mallo as a child living impoverished with his mother (a fabulous Penelope Cruz) and never-there father. However, it’s Banderas’ performance that matters most; he is wonderful, exuding the same warmth he brought to every Almodovar he’s starred in over the last three decades. This is a meditative contemplation from an artist that went through depression and incredibly debilitating chronic pain in his life. A film in which its director asks himself if he has anything left to say on celluloid. “Pain & Glory” is proof that he does.”

5) Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler) [Review]

“It all amounts to a spectacularly timed chess-game, aided by the surreal set design, that also turns the film into a fascinating and legitimate conversation starter about American race relations, whether its detractors would like to admit it or not.The film not only works as an idiosyncratic pulp-opera, but also as a slow-burning drama that makes watching these cops, slowly but surely disintegrate into a world of underground of violence, absolutely fascinating.”

6) Luce (Julius Onah) [Review]

“Luce” is a dangerous minefield and simply crackles with the kind of distressing pressure that is beginning to define America in every conversation we have about race, marginalization, social strata, woke politics and even marriage. It posits itself to tell a story about four characters, all flawed, which, in turn, makes for an exceptionally unsettling exposé on the current bitter state of race, class, gender, and threatening this country. If America is as frail, divided, and fragile as it’s ever been, “Luce” leans its current helplessness and cuts deep.”

7) Dogman (Matteo Garrone) [Review]

“Based on true-life events that set off Italy’s sensationalist media into near frenzy, “Dogman” turns out to be a kind of David vs. Goliath story. Described as an urban western, while the drama does possess traces of Eastwood’s early no-frills gut-punches, it’s also very much a B-movie soaked in horror and revenge. “Dogman” finds Garrone back in fine form and mostly, at the height of his game; the allure of his monstrous Simoncino character is undeniable and he earns extra credit for creating one of the most reprehensible movie villains in recent memory. “Dogman” is a malicious breed that features both bark and bite, and a nasty snarl you won’t soon forget.”

8) Joker (Todd Philips) [Review]

“Although “Joker,” directed with passionate fury by Todd Phillips, is an entirely gripping movie, one cannot imagine it being as gripping without Phoenix’s performance, because this is, in essence, a character-driven story. Having just won the Golden Lion at Venice, and the acting award for Phoenix, the film comes out at a time when the country feels at a crossroads between civility and chaos. It’s understandable that many critics are calling the film dangerous in its, supposed, call to arms and revolution (Fleck starts a movement when he kills three wall-street idiots pushing him around), but the fact that this movie is actually sparking panic in people must mean that it has hit a societal nerve, which renders it an indelible statement of current-day socio-political anxieties”

9) Parasite (Bong Joon-ho) [Review]

“South Korean auteur Bong Joon-ho is more known for genre fare such as “The Host,” “Snowpiercer,” “Memories of A Murder,” and “Okja,” but—and don’t be fooled by its title—in his latest film, “Parasite,” the monsters are all human and even scarier at that. It is rather strange how thematically similar this latest exercise in shock-genre is to last year’s Palme d’Or winner, “Shoplifters,” but without the subtleties of Hirokazu Kore-Eda‘s film. The heavy-handed social commentary on display in Bong’s film may not necessarily deliver masterful licks, but entertainment-wise, it’s a total blast.”

10) Ford v Ferrari (James Mangold) [Review]

“Credit must go to the chemistry between Damon and Bale; every interaction and relationship is precisely on-point here. Mangold handles it all with the real care and feel of a filmmaking pro — the race car driving scenes here, especially at the climax, are some of the very best and most thrilling ever put on film. The script by brothers Jez and John Henry Butterworth has both tragedy and triumph, and may have not needed its unnecessary coda, but this is the kind of film that is all-too-rare these days, a Hollywood epic about flawed men, the paths in life that they decide to take and the ultimate fate they cannot prevent.”