December 31, 2019–The final year of the latest decade was a wildly mixed-bag cinematically, and yet I found myself more drawn to stories of self-improvement and personal growth than ever-before, perhaps owing to my love for a certain network sitcom championing kindness and enlightenment over the last four years of a volatile decade which saw racism, sexism, homophobia and self-involvement, ahem, trump basic human decency at virtually every single turn. Maybe that’s the enduring power of art, to attempt to illluminate and imagine a world better than the one we’ve found, and inspire steps toward the right direction. Whether dueling tales of BFF’s facing down uncertain futures both together and (somewhat) apart, or foul-mouthed Western communities seeking a scintilla of peace after several years of bloodshed, astronauts seeking to outrun their father’s self-destructive and aloof tendencies, or racecar drivers trying to better themselves while serving the bruised ego self-interest of business magnates, hard-living indie rockers, cold-blooded assassins and gangsters seeking late-career redemption or a wounded bird on the run helping a kindred spirit achieve his dreams against all odds, the films in this top 10 list, as well as my “Special Jury Prize” (Runners-up) entries, by and large showed even further the arc of human experience trending toward being better tomorrow than we were today – truly making for a beautiful day in the neighborhood for us all.
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The Top 10: |
1. Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood / Booksmart |
The two best films of the year (for me at least) were both (in some sense, in the broadest terms possible) buddy comedies after a fashion which saw their intrepid duos (two aging men at the turning point of an era and two young, fresh-faced and bright young women at their own crossroads prior to adulthood, respectively) walking headlong into an uncertain future without completely losing their senses of humor.
Quentin Tarantino’s 9th film, a long-in-development magnum opus and penultimate masterwork for the man who has threatened to retire after his 10th directorial effort for some time now, sought no less than to recreate 1969 Hollywood from the ground up and did so with astonishing production design, gorgeous widescreen cinematography and a wall-to-wall needle drop soundtrack which would make Phil Spector blush with recognition. Leonardo DiCaprio is given his first role since winning his Oscar (finally!) for 2015’s The Revenant in the form of Rick Dalton, a 50s TV Western star with a career on the skids after getting his generic weekly program Bounty Law canceled thanks to drunken antics and a David Caruso-esque desire for a movie career. Recent lows to counter his earlier career highs find him playing “the heavy” on a week-by-week basis, making the rounds of every action drama on the small screen and “getting his ass kicked,” as a potential agent (Al Pacino) wryly observes early on before fortuitously recommending he “go to Rome and star in Westerns…and win fuckin’ fights.” His partner in crime is onetime stunt man and driver/ride or die best buddy Cliff Booth (a career-best Brad Pitt), a similarly downhill-sliding Western “star” relegated to the sidelines by bad personal demons (did he kill his wife in a drunken argument on a small boat?) and worse financial straits (living in a small trailer on the edge of a drive-in in Van Nuys with only his loyal dog Brandy to keep him company). To make matters…worse (?), these two are just barely eking out a living on the periphery of Rick’s new next-door neighbors Sharon Tate (a luminous Margot Robbie) and her new husband and father of her (soon-to-be?) child Roman Polanski (cast with a dead ringer), hot off the trail from worldwide cinematic success Rosemary’s Baby (1968). The film is more or less chronological, and at a sprawling 161 minutes, makes room for asides, jokey cutaways, and a luxurious structure which weaves and winds its way through three days and nights (two in February with mostly light and occasionally chilling implications, and one fateful one in early August which would change the lives of characters both fictional and reality-based forever) toward and all but inexorable grand guignol conclusion which, thanks to Tarantino’s recent brand of Hollywood cinephiliac-infused historical wish-fullfillment (ala’ 2009’s Inglorious Basterds and his previous effort, 2015’s The Hateful Eight), becomes a beautiful and touching coda to this ever so gradually maturing filmmaker’s hyperviolent career. If Tarantino’s two leading men are looking at the downhill slide just after youth, actress Olivia Wilde’s whip-smart, razor-sharp directorial debut finds its heart in the wildly unpredictable possibilities of one night out with two young heroines, ever so-devoted to each other, whose worlds are turned upside down by the revelation the day before graduation that they didn’t have to spend all their time studying and being each other’s everything through four years of high school in order to get into prestigious colleges; their party-happy classmates all did just fine themselves, thank you very much. Beanie Feldstein (a best friend breakout in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, soon playing Monica Lewinsky in FX’s limited series about the Clinton impeachment) makes the transition from second fiddle to top banana as the hilariously tightly-wound and intense bully-in-the-making who pines uncharacteristically for a dumb but pretty jock while her awkward, lesbian wallflower best-friend (Kaitlyn Dever, so great in a sporadically recurring role on TV’s Justified this past decade) follows her lead at every turn while finding herself drawn to a cute tomboy-ish skateboarder. The always funny turns of fate these two endure over one long day’s journey into night are scarcely less life-altering than anything encountered by Tarantino’s men of violence, and because it’s high school, it all feels very make-or-break in the grand scheme of things. Wilde is a director to watch. |
2. Parasite |
Korean master Bong Joon-Ho takes a deep dive into stylish genre machinations at the service of deeper class concerns and culture clash with this mile a minute, ever shifting tale of a poor family living or (basically) squatting in a cramped dilapidated basement where “free” (stolen) wi-fi signals warrant thanking the Lord above, side hustles include folding pizza boxes freelance for a local delivery service, and “free fumigation” comes in the form of bug extermination coming through the open window from the scuzzy outer alleyways.
The title is very apt. When the youngest teenager’s school friend tips him to a new side hustle as a tutor for the younger daughter of a rich local family, he sees the potential come up for his struggling brood. Soon, his elder sister, father and mother are also employed, doing whatever they can to insinuate themselves into the established order of an architecturally impressive home…getting more than they bargained for. To reveal more would almost certainly ruin most of the delight of the movie – the consistency of surprise and ever-shifting genre styles and tones which Bong employs throughout his 133 minute running time. The film is funny, horrific, heart-stopping and, ultimately startlingly moving, sometimes within the same instances. You’ve never exactly seen anything like it. |
3. Deadwood: The Movie |
At long last, the single greatest TV show ever made (yes, all three seasons of it!) finds vindication and not a mere scintilla of closure in a scant 110 minutes of runtime after 13 years off the air with this HBO film (yes, it played exclusively on television and streaming platforms of your choosing, eschewing the big screen treatment it deserved). The whole cast of writer David Milch’s prize creation (or, those who didn’t get killed off or die themselves in reality; RIP Powers Boothe and Ricky Jay) returns for director Daniel Minahan’s nostalgia-infused, age-withered but no less blunt-force-traumatic reunion.
Rather poignantly bombshell-dropped right before air, Milch himself was battling the onset of Alzheimer’s and personal demons from his past as he penned this ultimate denoument for his beloved magnum opus, which sees the small, once-lawless mining town in the Dakota Territory formally preparing for statehood a decade hence from the life-altering events of the twelfth episode of the show’s third and final season. Old enemies return for the festivities, largely represented by business magnate, ruthless thug in nice clothing and barely glorified bully turned California state senator George Hearst, played with relish by TV veteran Gerald McRaney. Alliances long-since forged in the name of bloodshed, the appearance of civility and the bonds of community-in-the-making finally take a stand against the evils perpetrated when we last saw foul-mouthed saloon operator and all-around OG Al Swearengen (Ian McShane, tempered by time and illness, and finding new shades to a lovable rake of an all-time villain turned improbable hero), his oft-contentious yet mutual respect-laden relationship to former US Marshal from Montana turned Sheriff Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant, similarly weathered by time and felled by a certain sense of conscience and duty, tinged with pains of loss) and Deputy Sol Starr (John Hawkes), and the complex romantic machinations involving Bullock’s long-lost love, the rich widow Alma Garrett (Molly Parker), and Sol’s lovestruck desire for making a home with whore-with-a-heart-of-gold Trixie, played by Paula Malcolmson. Oh, perpetually drunk former associate of Wild Bill Hickock, Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) and former whorehouse employee turned operator Joannie Stubbs (the ever-great Kim Dickens) are here too, along with all the rest of this profanity-drenched, quasi-Shakespearean rogue’s gallery of human detritis. Welcome the fuck back! |
4. The Farewell |
Writer/director Lulu Wang makes an astonishing debut with this beautiful, quietly charming and very moving familial comedy-drama about a traditional Chinese family whose grandmother may be sick and dying. On the occasion of a wedding-in-the making, the entire family resolves to make “a good lie” to the uber-matriarch, a high-spirited old dame who won’t let anything get her down. This doesn’t exactly sit well with the American ex-patriot cousin and daughter (Awkwafina in a stunning and well-rounded breakthrough) who tags along for the ride, with all its fraught implications in tow. A lovely tribute to what we ultimately owe to each other.
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5. Ford v. Ferrari |
Far exceeding expectations, James Mangold’s epic tale of the sports car salesman-turned-engineer and his brilliant and reckless driver buddy travelling straight into the belly of the beast which is swell-headed American egotism and cutthroat opportunism all in the name of “business” is a riveting, razor-sharp ride moving like lightning speed right to the heart of the matter.
Matt Damon and Christian Bale may more or less look and sound like themselves as Texan racecar driver turned designer Carroll Shelby and sometimes contentious Brit buddy Ken Miles, respectively, but who fully embody their roles while finding themselves clever outsiders who get folded in, chewed up and spat back out by the heavyweight Ford Motor Company whose quasi-Quixote esque leader Henry II (a hilarious and frightening Tracy Letts) is surrounded by siccophantic yes-men on one side and Machiavellian-sleaze-personified like Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) on the other, trapping would-be visionary fence-straddlers and peace-makers like Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) in the middle, bringing to his attention the idea to employ Shelby and Miles to either purchase Ferrari or create a competing line of race cars for the 24 Hours of Le Mans to defeat the old Italian auto magnate; if you can’t beat em, join em! Mangold is the man who is quickly becoming nearly the American response to Alan Parker, oscillating in recent decades between corrupt police drama Cop Land and psych-ward observation drama Girl, Interrupted, magical romantic comedy Kate & Leopold and twisty Ten Little Indians-influenced horror thriller Identity, musical bio Walk the Line and Western remake 3:10 to Yuma, as well as two very different generically-influenced comic book action dramas based on X-Men’s Wolverine – a futuristic samurai-esque jaunt in 2013 and 2017’s somber elegiac quasi-Western road movie Logan, ever zigging when you expect him to zag. The film has been lauded for the classical, “meat-and-potatoes” filmmaking approach, but don’t underestimate the Butterworth brothers’ screenplay, Phedon Papamichael’s stylishly ever-roving camerawork, an insistent but well-composed musical score and vintage pop song choices, and the dual editors who pace the thing within an inch of its life so the 152 minute running time never feels even a second as long as it is. |
6. Her Smell |
Writer/director Alex Ross Perry and star/kindred spirit Elisabeth Moss have teamed up for portraits of descending spirals of madness and self-destruction previously with Queen of Earth (2015), a stark raving mad meeting at a crossroads somewhere in the Twilight Zone between the verge of schizophrenia and the very depths of whatever mumblecore became. Their latest effort ups the ante, delving deep into the fractured psyche of a broken down 90s femme rock star (think Courtney Love’s temperament grafted to BIkini Kill frontwoman Kathleen Hanna’s talent). As Becky Something of the perfectly named Something Her, Moss runs roughshod over long-suffering bandmates, an ex-husband (Dan Stevens) with whom she shares a nigh-on-estranged, neglected and resented daughter, a manager (Eric Stoltz) whom she seems perpetually indebted to, a recovering stage mother (Virginia Madsen) and rivals both old (Amber Heard) and even in-the-making in the form of a trio of proteges-cum-competition (led by Cara Delevigne). Shifting in style and tone from sequence to sequence, becoming quite tender and even moving by the powerful musical denouement, Perry’s film takes its cues from its star and the music by the lead singer of Bully to paint a fierce, hypnotic portrait of an ugly soul and makes something beautiful in the process.
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7. The Irishman |
No less a cinematic master and sometime blockbuster critic than Martin Scorsese had to transition from the old-school Hollywood studio system to the seemingly bottomless wallet of streaming giant Netflix for his $100 million plus budget to bring to vivid life his long-in-development adaptation of Charles Brandt’s memoir-turned-expose I Heard You Paint Houses. Robert De Niro (via cutting edge de-aging and advance aging technology) stars as Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a mob assassin who came up in the 50s and 60s and earned quite the reputation before befriending and then (allegedly) murdering corrupt Teamsters union legend Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) on behalf of the powerful Buffalino crime family (led here by a long-in-retirement Joe Pesci). Scorsese uses the wrinkled faces and fractured souls of his longtime collaborators to paint a portrait of regret, loss and belated would-be redemption in the eyes of God, culminating in one of his great (albeit longest) mob masterworks.
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8. The Peanut Butter Falcon |
Tyler Nilson’s and Michael Schwartz’s film is a warm-hearted wish-fulfillment fantasy taking its cues from the road movies and darkly-tinged improbable connection buddy comedies of the 1970s (Harold & Maude, Easy Rider, The Last Detail, etc.).
Shia LaBeouf gives career-best work as a crab-fisherman off the North Carolina coast who wrongs the wrong competition (a fearsome John Hawkes) and goes on the run. Almost inevitably, his path crosses that of a big-hearted Down Syndrome-afflicted professional wrestling fanatic (the film was written for the filmmaker’s friend, Zack Gottsagen, who studied acting his whole life) trying to make his way to the wrestling clinic run by his favorite 80s hero the Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church). Bruce Dern also appears early as Zack’s roomate at the old-folks home he’s been in the charge of, and Dakota Johnson sheds her 50 Shades persona to play a warm, caring if by-the-book case worker hot on the tail of the makeshift outlaws. The filmmakers even find room for some real professional wrestlers, namely Mick Foley as a backyard wrestling show referee and Jake the Snake Roberts (my personal all-time fave) as a broken down, old heel with a grudge against the Salt Water Redneck. The film rides a tightrope between warmth, caring and empathy for its characters (LaBeouf playing his own haunted, guilt-ridden notes opposite the innocent dreamer he encounters), and a great sense of humor which borders on the absurd and threatens to make you feel bad for laughing at the plight of its characters throughout, without ever quite crossing that line. This was one of the most moving and startlingly entertaining films of the year. |
9. Ready or Not / Knives Out |
Making for an interesting potential triple feature alongside Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite are these immensely entertaining takes on genre and class consciousness for our modern age.
Firstly, the team of Radio Silence under the masterful direction of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin (Southbound) takes on the darkly comic tale of a working class bride’s wedding culminating in a night-long game of hide & seek with her well-to-do new groom and weirdo in-laws, founders of an immensely profitable board game dynasty, around their palatial estate. She too gets more than she, ahem, bargained for, when she finds they’re hunting her, intending upon killing her by sun up to make good on some ancient pact. They also find her more than, ahem, game for the task. The results are bloody, gory, hyperviolent, darkly hilarious and Samara Weaving makes a droll and badass star turn in the lead role. The final portion of this would-be Us against the 1% triple feature finds writer-director Rian Johnson (Looper, The Brothers Bloom) recovering from his blockbuster success (Star Wars: The Last Jedi, a controversial entry in the beloved new trilogy) by returning to his medium-size genre roots (his debut was the high school based neo-noir Brick in 2006), telling the tale of the grand-patriarch of a crime novel empire who is seemingly murdered, leaving his money-grubbing, seething nest of vipers of a family grieving and plotting in virtually equal measure. Daniel Craig gives a droll Southern-fried Sherlock Holmes-esque turn as Benoit Blanc, the Louisiana-accented private detective attempting to tumble to the truth. Ana de Armas gives a warm-hearted star turn as the vaguely South American (?) nurse who knows more than she’s letting on. And Johnson stacks his cast with star power and character actors to burn in the form of a wicked and hilarious Chris Evans, a crotchety old Jamie Lee Curtis, an eye-rollingly “pure” Toni Colette, an amusingly henpecked-cum-scheming Michael Shannon, a pathetic Don Johnson, an extremely skeptical LaKeith Stanfield as Blanc’s local detective liaison, and Christopher Plummer as the doomed victim. The humor is mile-a-minute, the plot turns keep you guessing, and the payoff is killer. |
10. Uncut Gems |
Josh and Benny Safdie have been working the past decade toward this ultra-personal black comic thriller and psychological X-ray of a rotting soul’s attempts to dig itself out of a deep and ever deepening chasm in the big bad city.
The film, which winds up its hero for over two hours spanning a handful of days and then spits him back out, chewed up and eviscerated, concerns one Howard Ratner (a revelatory Adam Sandler), embodying perfectly the ego, brashness of spirit, self-loathing and self-destructive streak of a jeweler turned gambling addict drawn to one crazy risk after another all in the name of getting his head above water, as it were. A Sisyphus-esque tale of this magnitude would be nothing without representatives of the flawed hero’s metaphorical boulder rolling back down for all eternity, rendering his efforts moot, and the Safdies cast impeccably with LaKeith Stanfield, Idina Menzel, the Weeknd, newcomer Julia Fox, NBA star Kevin Garnett (as himself!) and an especially frightening and ultimately startlingly tender and moving Eric Bogosian as Howard’s connected bookmaker turned antagonist (and, I guess, in-law?), who sics a Golem-esque pair of goons losing patience by the second onto Howard to return his money. Add to this Darius Khondji’s jittery, kinetic neon-drenched and glossy cinematography, a sci-fi noir original score by Daniel Lopatin, and the paranoid air of a great New York loser’s tale in the vein of executive producer Martin Scorsese’s After Hours or Bringing Out the Dead, mixed with the uniquely Jewish heritage infusion of something vaguely akin to the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, all anchored by the most balls-to-the-wall hero Sandler has played since Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love nearly two decades ago, channeling both his kid-in-a-candy store glee at going after what he wants with no concept of the consequences, and his inner anger and self-loathing which fuel his sense of humor, and quite the stressful and unnerving albeit heady brew it is. |
Runners-up |
This was such a strong year that here are a dozen or so titles which are close enough to top 10-worthy that the arbitrary nature of lists of this sort (which, let’s be honest, are really just meant as rental suggestions anyway) is all that stands in their way. |