The Best Movies of 2019

The time has come for my year-end review in movies and I’m writing that review at the end of March…in 2020…for 2019 films.  Every December, my schedule increases at the exact time when all the best films are released, so I figured the extra time would allow me to see more of them.  I was wrong.  Despite catching up on many forgotten films from the past year, there’s never enough time in the winter to accomplish everything.  This list will be missing a few movies that based on their subject matter and publicized artistry, I suspect could have weaseled their way into the top ten.  Films like Scorsese’s Netflix marathon The Irishman and Sciamma’s intimate character portrayal in Portrait of a Lady on Fire.  Perhaps they will be on my 2020 list, but I know they won’t be - why?  Because for some reason I continue to be stuck in the mold of trying to calculate movies by year.  

The Academy Awards has completely indoctrinated me.  I’ve been brainwashed into reviewing films based on an arbitrary year designation.  This cultural phenomenon to make year-end review lists makes sense considering its a time honored tradition created when writers ran out of ideas on how to craft Christmas articles.  Instead, we review and rank things.  This tradition has become extremely toxic.  The biggest problem with the Academy Awards, other than the fact that it’s more political than an American election cycle, is that it creates binary arguments.  We tear down movies that would otherwise be favorites because we think there are films that should be deemed as “the best.”  In the process, we lose sight of a lot of the artistry that goes into the making of the films.  The Shape of Water isn’t a bad film - in fact, I considered it a worthy nominee - but will it stand the test of time the same way as something like Dunkirk?  Shakespeare in Love is actually a really well-crafted tale, but it’s no Saving Private Ryan, so as the history of cinema evolves we tear down Shakespeare in Love when really we should celebrate it.  This year, 1917 received a lot of criticism, when really it deserves a tremendous amount of praise (you’ll find it on my list).  Can’t we celebrate films without denigrating other ones?  I used to be a much more pessimistic movie goer, always looking for a film’s faults.  Now, I try to appreciate all the work that went into crafting it and only truly criticize a film if it felt like its artistic authors didn’t care.  With all of that in mind, let’s celebrate some films!

A few honorable mentions:

15.  The Art of Self-Defense: A wonderful little dark comedy - thankful that my best friend, Braden, made me celebrate my birthday.  

14.  Long Shot:  Smart comedies are hard to find - especially comedies that play with gender stereotypical tropes.  Charlize Theron is insanely funny.  

13.  Uncut Gems:  While intensely disturbing and disruptive, this chaotic film proves that the Safdie brothers will be working for a very long time in the business.  

12.  Blinded by the Light: Such a delightful film.  It carries both weight and soul as it weaves its way in and out of two of my favorite things: Coming of Age stories based in desire and The Boss, Bruce Springsteen.  No film in any year will ever beat out the importance of The Boss in my life.  

11.  Knives Out: A really great take on modernizing the Agatha Christie model.  I look forward to rewatching this film without the pretext of looking for the twist.  

10.  Booksmart 

Many have compared Booksmart to Superbad in calling the film the modern, female version of the latter.  I think this takes a reductive view on the movie.  While Superbad is a funny film, Booksmart, much like the title implies, is a very smart film.  It interweaves exposition with character development; it connects metaphor and theme with smart storytelling.  Booksmart is an excellent inductee into the coming of age Hall of Fame.  In recent years previous inductees have included, Lady Bird, Moonlight, An Education, and Juno.  In much the same way Juno charmed audiences with its slangy language, Booksmart articulates how teenagers think and how they feel when they think.  Booksmart is a fun joyride through the heartbreak at the end of adolescence.  

9.  Jojo Rabbit 

Jojo Rabbit, a film marketed as a satire against hate, came along at an important moment in both cinema and American politics.  It took a different approach in trying to answer the questions of our times by infusing humor into a darkened climate and culture.  I think the movie best succeeds when it dives head long into either the main character arcs or the dark comedy.  A lot of the surface level humor is funny, but doesn’t leave a lasting impression.  However, scenes like Stephen Merchant as a Gestapo head officer, understand both the gravitas and the injection of humor inside of an extremely darkly comedic scene. 

8.  Avengers: Endgame 

Endgame was just a good time at the movie theatre.  In a time and age, when so many cultural cinematic events fail to live up to their high expectations (Game of Thrones, Star Wars, The Hobbit), Endgame delivers a suitable end to ten years worth of stories.  It completed the story arcs of both Captain America and Iron Man in ways that lived up to the grandeur of their characters.  

7.  American Factory  

American Factory was my final movie watching experience for this list and it was a great way to end.  This award-winning documentary tells the story of a Chinese company coming to save the day - until the day actually arrives.  After a shuttered General Motors plant in Moraine, just outside of Dayton, Ohio stops production following the recession, the former employees are struggling to survive. In steps Fuyao to create a new space for jobs and an improved economy - but it comes at a price.  It’s the Chinese way or the highway.  What follows is an introspective look at the differences between Chinese factory workers and American factory workers.  This isn’t a film with villains, but rather a culture clash between people failing to communicate.  In our current environment, American Factory is a must-watch film and one of the most important documentaries around. 

6.  Toy Story 4   

When they announced a fourth installment of Toy Story, I figured it was a cash-grab and was hesitant to watch it.  I’m very thankful I got over that preconceived notion.  I can count on two hands the number of films that have legitimately made me openly cry - Toy Story 4 is one of those movies.  In a touching send-off to a twenty-five year character arc, Woody ‘finds’ himself and in doing so,  helped the audience feel a little less lost.  This movie helped me make up my mind about switching career paths and going to get a second masters.  Years later, I will get to tell my kids that I became a High School Counselor in part because of an animated toy cowboy in search of a home.  

5.  The Peanut Butter Falcon 

Shia Labeouf and Dakota Johnson might be eccentric people to say the least, but they sure are fascinating to watch on screen.  The Peanut Butter Falcon is a feel-good, warm apple pie movie with an extra dash of brutality.  A simple story that matches a down-syndrome boy from an assisted-living home with a fisherman on the run and a social worker all in search of a backwoods version of a WWE wrestler.  Audiences will notice connections to films like 2012’s Mud, but where that veers into noir, Falcon veers into the heartstrings.  LaBeouf is the perfect actor to pair with Zach Gottsagen, the Down-Syndrome actor who plays the lead.  If you’re looking for a heartwarming film with a little bit of an edge, Falcon is the movie for you.  

4.  Official Secrets 

The best movie on this list that I bet almost no one else has seen.  Official Secrets is director Gavin Hood’s second consecutive film where he tackles systematic issues within the British political system.  The first film, Eye in the Sky made my top ten movies of the decade list and Official Secrets is an excellent vehicle to showcase Hood’s abilities.  The film is a straightforward docudrama about Whistleblower Katharine Gun, who tried to warn the British public about the illegal actions of members of the UN in the Invasion of Iraq.  The film takes a linear path from the initial action taken by Gun, to the Press, to the blowback and trial.  This isn’t a film that’s in anyway inventive in terms of production - it’s just a really good story, a really important story, and one that’s well-acted especially by Matt Smith, Ralph Fiennes, and Kiera Knightley as Katharine Gun.  

3.  1917  

There’s very little I can say that will add to the discourse surrounding 1917.  There are plenty of people who think the central conceit of a “one-shot” or a cut together to look like “one-shot” concept makes the film a flash in the pan.  I’m not one of those people.  One shot movies like 2015’s Victoria or the opening of the Bond film, Spectre are catnip for me.  I thought 1917 was a feat of technical genius and one of the most beautifully captured films of my lifetime.  Cinematographer Roger Deakins is one of the greatest to ever hold that title and he expertly executes this heart-pounding race.  One of the lost elements in the conversation surrounding 1917’s technical achievement is the great work done by George MacKay in the lead role.  MacKay does wonderful body acting paired with very little dialogue; his face is captivating like watching a lost child in a sea of faces.  

2.  Little Women 

Little Women was one of the best times I’ve ever had at the movie theatre.  Greta Gerwig, in just two films, has cemented herself as one of the best directors working today.  No matter what she makes going forward, I will be there on opening night.  Gerwig’s Little Women is like watching a Aaron Sorkin script inside of a period dramedy.  It’s engrossing and impeccably well-acted.  The chemistry built between Laurie and Jo (Chalamet and Ronan) is electrifying, but is outdone by the chemistry built between all four sisters.  Ronan continues to make her claim as the new Meryl Streep, but the best performance of the film and of the year goes to the amazing Florence Pugh.  I first saw Pugh in 2016’s Lady Macbeth and sang her praises at the time.  However, she outdoes that performance by leaps and bounds in Little Women by making one of the novel’s least interesting characters and turning Amy into one of the film’s most captivating characters.  Amy’s scene with Laurie, better known as the Marriage is an Economic Proposition scene is the best of the film.  Little Women is one of the most delightfully original takes on a classic to ever arrive in the cinema.  

1.  Parasite     

I sat in an empty theater for ten minutes until I called my best friend.  I said,  “It feels like a bomb just went off in my head,” and then I exited out of the theater into a very different world than the one I was in previously.  Far too many films get bogged down in theme and allegory and in trying to prove their message, they forget to tell a complete story.  Parasite weaves in between these two paths to provide the best film (perhaps) ever made on income inequality and simultaneously a brilliant thriller.  Once the comedy of errors beginning takes a turn, you won’t know what hit you.  Bong Joon Ho is a master and he perfectly cast an ensemble that knows how to exact every ounce of his artistic palette.  I’ve never seen a film quite as uniquely captivating as Parasite.  The film is culturally urgent while also connecting Karl Marx with Alfred Hitchcock.  Bravo, Parasite, bravo.  

The Four Most Important Films of the Decade

“A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.  And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless.  We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”  When John Steinbeck penned those words in the early 1960’s, he was constructing an introduction for his own understanding of the trip that took a small dog and his friend around the country.  As the years go by, those words continue to ring true and have been penned in multiple stories, in multiple languages, for multiple reasons.  For me, they represent a good mantra: Planning is not useless, but when your plans fall apart, go with the flow and pick yourself back up.  This has been a great lesson for my life.  If you told me back in 2010 where I would end up at the end of the decade, I would’ve admitted you into an asylum.  Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would return to Iowa, let alone five times.  Never did I imagine myself in a classroom, let alone at the head of it.

The bulk of my big life experiences have lived inside of this past decade.  Graduating from college, Gabby Giffords, coaching speech, moving, attending grad school, graduating, teaching, coaching speech again, realizing I was an addict, accepting that disease, applying for grad school again, directing over sixty shows, confronting the most difficult experiences of my life, and finding true hope in ordinary moments.  So much has fit into just ten years that it’s hard to encapsulate them on paper.  They were lived in, experienced and now they flit away like dust in the wind, memories of an escaped life.  But some memories last longer than others.  

Art and cinema have served me as lenses into my creative and professional life; this decade allowed me to focus them, to wield my creativity in ways previously only thought before as dreams.  I make art and I watch film.  Both are essential in my creative journey.  Art allows me to watch more film and the ideas of film allow me to make more art.  They exist in a perfect symbiotic relationship.  I’m blessed to have both of them.  As the decade drew to a close, most of my favorite writers released their favorite films of the decade and while you can see my list (pictured right), it occurred to me that writing about my list wasn’t what I wanted to do.  Instead, I wanted to combine all those life experiences and all those fantastic films to talk about the four most important films I saw this decade - then I realized it wasn’t the films that made the memories important.  

After the Gabby Giffords shooting in 2011, I was a shell of a man.  The event rocked me to my core sending never-ending ripples across my soul.  But a miracle came out of that despair.  A group of local kids were struggling with their choral reading for a speech competition and I came into help.  There I met my family.  Half a year later, when I took over as coach, they were multiplied and solidified.  One of our greatest connections is our love for movies and while our tastes have always varied, we all have a clear idea of what is important to us.  Without further ado, the four most important films of the decade through the lenses of four friends from Mount Vernon, Iowa. 

1.  2011’s Hugo 

Dear god, I hate this movie.  This might be one of the rare times where a truly beloved film causes me to convulse with rage that is was even made.  For some, Hugo is a cute family picture about the beauty in movies.  For me, it’s a soul-sucking disaster from which only over-dramatic acting and convoluted plot construction emanate.  So why does it make the list?  Early on in our friendship, the boys all worked at the local Bijou movie theatre in Mount Vernon.  I, as the local resident, with far too much time on his hands spent many a night hanging out with them at the Bijou.  Most of the time we would talk or play inane word games while we waited for the movie to get out and then I would help them clean up.  In many ways, this solidified my role as the town loiterer, a moniker I take with great pride (there are plenty worse things to be known for).  Eventually, I was invited to the midnight show: a time-honored tradition where workers would screen the films for their friends.  That’s where Hugo came into play.  And while it remains a terrible film and my memories include physically rolling my eyes into the back of my skull - the times spent in that theatre were some of the best of my life.  Whether it was the time someone lost a slap bet or the time I fell asleep watching Tron Legacy, woke up long enough to sing the theme music, and fell back asleep, each moment was special.  

2.  2012’s Prometheus 

Among us, Zak is someone who takes great pride in silence in the theatre - but even he couldn’t keep his mouth shut during the atrocious Prometheus.  Without a doubt, watching this movie was the greatest theatrical going experience of my lifetime.  We all sat in the back row and enjoyed perhaps the strangest “comedy” film of the decade that went off the rails within the first fifteen minutes.  Never has a movie infuriated me the same way that Prometheus did.  Charlize Theron, just run sideways!  Why are you running straight?  And Rickon Stark, didn’t you ever watch Prometheus?  Zig-zag little man, zig-zag.  For more problems with Prometheus, look here: 

3.  2013’s This is the End 

After a tumultuous ending to a difficult first year of graduate school at VCU, I drove back to Iowa to pick up boxes for my thesis project.  I didn’t have very long, so we set up a quick double-bill movie night.  Man of Steel and This is the End.  A year earlier, Zak, Stephen, and I sat in a theatre and remarked how Man of Steel looked like it was going to be a masterpiece.  Well, Zack Snyder certainly knows how to cut a trailer together, but not how to make a movie and our first film wasn’t exactly to all of our liking.  But in the evening, after switching theaters, This is the End brought about one hell of a good time.  I remember having a tremendous headache, but fought through the pain because I was with my family and I was laughing so hard.  In many ways, the four of us are like the main characters in This is the End - accept no one is James Franco - there’s just two Seth Rogen’s.  

4.  2016’s Arrival 

Taken from a review I wrote back in 2016: “It takes a lot of me to cry in a movie theatre; it takes a lot for me to cry in general. In fact, I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve cried in five years.  By the time the film was over, I couldn’t see because my eyes were filled with tears.  This movie was a religious experience for me.  I cannot tell you why; I can’t even explain it.  It was like I was no longer in control of my emotions or my body.  For a minute, it felt like I had swapped senses.  Like I felt language and I spoke feelings.  Almost like I was inhabited by a language that transcends the ways in which we conceive that language.  As I walked out of the theatre, after nearly ten minutes of silence, I turned to my friend and said, “that’s the best movie I’ve ever seen.”  That friend was Stephen and I’m so blessed that I got to share that transported moment with him.  Stephen and I have seen many movies together.  We were touched by Spotlight, we rolled our eyes at Suicide Squad, we raced through the galaxy in The Force Awakens, he woke me up when I fell asleep during Hail, Caesar, and we shared mutual love for one of my favorites, Hell or High Water.  Some of the best creative ventures of my life have been with Stephen by my side.  From Brutus to Tony Kirby, from Twelfth Night to The Frogs.  In many ways, our friendship is a lot like Arrival.  We communicate on a level greater than normal language.  It’s love - the type of love that only friends know and understand.  

All four of us share this love.  Over the past decade, we’ve grown apart in distance but never in friendship.  Stephen lives in Des Moines as a reporter for the Des Moines Register, Brandon is the vocal music director for Central Community School District in Elkader, Zak is bartending and writing while following his dreams in New York City, and me, well I keep coaching, teaching, and living, each day a foot in front of the last.  “We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.”  Never would I have imagined to be in the place that I am today with this family by my side - but I am, and everyday of my life is better because they are with me.  I love the cinema and while I’ll keep making lists and I’ll keep over-critiquing Superman movies - these four films represent the highlights of my decade all because of the four people involved in making those experiences extraordinary.