My top eight films of 2019
No top 10 from me for 2019.
Mary Poppins Returns - wonderful fantasy sequences and production design, strong singing with Emily Blunt maybe turning Mary Poppins into James Bond (you know what I mean) in a lovely, warm-hearted film.
Vice - this biopic uses agit-prop and entertainment techniques to present its take on recent US politics (and left me wanting to see Bale and Adams doing Shakespeare together for real)
Can You Ever Forgive Me? - this very well-done two-hander recreates a drab literary demi-monde (wait, come back). It’ll make you laugh and understand, but not condone what it’s anti-heroine did.
The Lego Movie 2 - I seem to be in a minority, but it was the funniest film I saw in 2019 (subtitled dinos! The ‘Gotham Dudes’ song and the song over the final credits!). The weirdness appealed to me, and I found it heartfelt.
Avengers: Endgame gave me many feels, best encapsulated as ‘satisfied but verklempt’ (I think I’m angrier as a woman the more I’ve thought about it.) I loved how the use of SPOILER the time heist END SPOILER helped them interrogate and interact with the journey that had got us - characters, audience and Marvel studios - here.
Eighth Grade tackles growing pains in such a delicate way, some of it excruciating out of empathy for its heroine, some of it funny. It’s probably the best film I’ve seen about how social media/digital affects lives.
Photograph - forced intimacy leads to the birth of something genuine in a mostly social-realist film set in modern India that reminded me of nineteenth-century novels
The Farewell - ‘Based on an actual lie’ - this film has universal themes of family love and grief in a super-specific cultural context as seen through a more outside than insider point of view.
Nearly made the list: The Souvenir.
I also like to tip my hat to DVDs of films I didn't get to see in the cinema, and this year it's Leave No Trace a well-crafted story about a father and daughter living offgrid in America and the physical and emotional journey the daughter Tom goes on.
As I've seen so many Top 10 films of 2010-19 lists, I'm hoping to get round to doing my own.
Past lists can be found here: at Dreamwidth from 2012 on and at Livejournal for a more comprehensive list.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/412854.html.
Mary Poppins Returns - wonderful fantasy sequences and production design, strong singing with Emily Blunt maybe turning Mary Poppins into James Bond (you know what I mean) in a lovely, warm-hearted film.
Vice - this biopic uses agit-prop and entertainment techniques to present its take on recent US politics (and left me wanting to see Bale and Adams doing Shakespeare together for real)
Can You Ever Forgive Me? - this very well-done two-hander recreates a drab literary demi-monde (wait, come back). It’ll make you laugh and understand, but not condone what it’s anti-heroine did.
The Lego Movie 2 - I seem to be in a minority, but it was the funniest film I saw in 2019 (subtitled dinos! The ‘Gotham Dudes’ song and the song over the final credits!). The weirdness appealed to me, and I found it heartfelt.
Avengers: Endgame gave me many feels, best encapsulated as ‘satisfied but verklempt’ (I think I’m angrier as a woman the more I’ve thought about it.) I loved how the use of SPOILER the time heist END SPOILER helped them interrogate and interact with the journey that had got us - characters, audience and Marvel studios - here.
Eighth Grade tackles growing pains in such a delicate way, some of it excruciating out of empathy for its heroine, some of it funny. It’s probably the best film I’ve seen about how social media/digital affects lives.
Photograph - forced intimacy leads to the birth of something genuine in a mostly social-realist film set in modern India that reminded me of nineteenth-century novels
The Farewell - ‘Based on an actual lie’ - this film has universal themes of family love and grief in a super-specific cultural context as seen through a more outside than insider point of view.
Nearly made the list: The Souvenir.
I also like to tip my hat to DVDs of films I didn't get to see in the cinema, and this year it's Leave No Trace a well-crafted story about a father and daughter living offgrid in America and the physical and emotional journey the daughter Tom goes on.
As I've seen so many Top 10 films of 2010-19 lists, I'm hoping to get round to doing my own.
Past lists can be found here: at Dreamwidth from 2012 on and at Livejournal for a more comprehensive list.
This entry was originally posted at https://shallowness.dreamwidth.org/412854.html.