Read Top 10 Films 2019 – Part 2
Spoiler Alert- Reviews may contain spoilers
I’m generally loathe to compile top 10 lists. There’s an inherent futility in comparing art and I’d be lying if I told you I’d have the same list in a month, a week or a day. That’s the problem with lists, they impose a sense of permanence on the fluid process that is opinion. But 2019 was an incredible year for film, one that compelled me to abandon my principles and jump on the proverbial bandwagon. But don’t think of this list as a fixed entity, but rather my current knee-jerk response to the self-imposed pressure of categorization. I love them all to some extent and feel far too possessive of my little list. This part will include numbers 10-6, with a special shout-out to my worst film of the year. I hope you enjoy.
Top Films (10-6)
10. US
The doppelganger trope allows Jordan Peele to confront American polarization from an ingenious angle. America is at war with itself (right and left), and Peele bluntly confronts this self-destructive reality with the most basic metaphor (we are our own worst enemies). By focalising US through an African-American prism, Peele also creates a striking commentary on the legacy of slavery and institutional racism. How deeply have African Americans internalized generational racism? Can these shadow selves ever be completely eradicated? The white family, conversely, have to struggle with mirror images that reflect their violent ancestry. Lupita Nyongo gives a sensational dual performance, embodying both the vocal and physical extremities of both personas. Perhaps the film is a victim of her virtuosity, with the other family members reduced to archetypes: the father is a lovable buffoon airlifted from a TV sitcom. But you can’t deny the audacity. There’s an absurdist dimension at play that perfectly encapsulates the American condition. Get Out, or ‘The Body Snatchers you Guessed were Coming to Dinner to be John Malkovich’, was perhaps a sleeker beast, but it lacked the true originality of US. US also features the score of the year, with Michael Abels reworking subliminal motifs, recalling the hypnotic base-notes of John Carpenter.
9. Doctor Sleep
The animosity that Stephen King felt towards Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining is the stuff of cinema myth. In adapting King’s sequel, Doctor Sleep, Mike Flanagan had to satisfy both Kubrick aficionados and fans of King’s novel. He wisely realised that the events of Kubrick’s film were too deeply embedded inside the collective cinematic consciousness to ignore. He shares a similar language to Kubrick, opting for deliberately paced scenes that quietly instil an atmosphere of dread. But this film introduces a sense of sentimentality that is quintessentially King, with Ewan McGregor’s soul-crushing turn as Danny Torrance a stark counterpoint to the otherness that made Jack Nicholson so compelling. It’s really a movie about generational addiction. Danny finds absolution in sobriety, while the True Knot represent unrepentant dependence. As such, the True Knot are rather sympathetically drawn as a tight familial unit, resigned to an insatiable need for steam. Rebecca Ferguson luxuriates in the role of Rose the Hat, no doubt inspiring a hoard of hippy imitations for future Halloweens. Well, Hi There.
8. The Irishman
Martin Scorsese’s elegiac ode to the gangster film is effectively his Unforgiven, a deconstruction of the very mythos that defined his career. It is also a withering critique on the toxic masculinity that has driven the American experiment. The Irishman is epic in scope but microscopic in study. Frank Sheeran’s divided loyalty between two surrogate father-figures is really at the heart of the film. Al Pacino is given free rein to indulge some of his more volatile impulses, though it is mediated by some wonderfully contemplative work. Joe Pesci is riveting, conveying a seemingly benign malevolence with serpentine skill: the image of Russell sitting around the Christmas tree, hat on head, is perhaps one of the most incongruous and terrifying images in Scorsese’s oeuvre. But it is Di Niro who astonishes as a man doomed by his enthrallment to power. Scorsese is seldom credited for his feats of innovation. He revolutionized the music documentary with The Last Waltz before pioneering the 21st century possibilities of 3D immersion in Hugo. And here he employs state-of-the-art de-ageing technology to honour the integrity of his lead performances. I find it interesting that the film reverses the historical flow of cinematic innovation, with high-tech computer wizardry making way for old-fashioned hair and makeup in the closing chapters. Scorsese’s reputation as both cinematic conservationist and radical innovator remains intact.
7. The Lighthouse
Robert and Max Eggers continue their obsession with the myths that propel New England folklore, abandoning the primal dread woods of The Witch for the maritime solitude of The Lighthouse. This is essentially a two-hander- malevolent mermaid aside- that looks at the psychological disintegration of two lighthouse keepers. Robert Pattinson is the ingénue with a past while Willem Dafoe is the entrenched sea-dog, prone to bellicose outbursts- both verbal and otherwise. What follows is a deeply poetic battle of wills, with Pattinson and Dafoe giving performances of elemental power. The sense of claustrophobic dread is heightened with the use of 1:19:1 aspect ratio, while the black-and-white photography recalls German Expressionistic motifs, with the fingerprints of Murnau and Dreyer lending a timeless quality to the film. Be thee warned, those who seek easy answers. The Eggers’ brothers use elements of Greek Myth as the framework for an opaque character study drenched in homoeroticism. Add some HP Lovecraft to the mix and you have a piece that rejects definitive conclusions. And it is all the more powerful for it.
6. Booksmart
Oliver Wilde’s directorial debut is perhaps the most beguiling movie on this list. It initially comes across as little more than a charming feminine update of Superbad. But there’s something lurking beneath all these conventional ‘one-crazy-night’ tropes, a bewitching knowingness that elevates the material. It’s a film about friendship and the fleeting nature of youth, less interested in isolated moments of vulgarity than the bittersweet feeling of now. Wilde also distinguishes herself with a mastery of cinematic technique that belies her inexperience. The wonderfully trippy, stop-motion animated sequence is a delight, gleefully confronting the unrealistic body expectations imposed on women. Beanie Feldstein’s imagined dance routine feels like a technicolour remake of The Artist. The film is most pointedly a platonic love story between two female friends, which is a depressingly rare commodity in contemporary cinema. In many ways the shenanigans of the evening are a thinly veiled attempt to delay the inevitable: their farewell.
Worst Film
Frozen 2
“Do you want to build a sequel….we are going to make some money”. There are two caveats I have to make here. Firstly, I never loved the original Frozen. It never had anywhere near the impact of, say, Inside Out. But it had some excellent songs and a positive message about sisterhood, bravely relegating the humdrum romantic arc to side-quest status. Secondly, I went to watch this film whilst nursing a heavy-duty hangover. So I’ve cleared the air. I was simply amazed at how uninvolving and listless this film was. There is a strangely mangled plot involving the need to right historical wrongs that left kids perplexed. But perhaps the most criminal offense is the music. The songs are bland, like a collection of Frozen B-sides assembled from deleted scenes. This has all the trappings of a maniacal push for Christmas release. Even Olaf’s vaguely amusing existential ponderings can’t save this from being instantly forgettable. In many ways it left me with a similar feeling of emptiness to Guardians of the Galaxy 2. I went to watch this with my extended family and felt like a hostage until the final reel.