Five Years Later: 2019 Movies
- Peter Talbot
- Mar 10
- 7 min read
Updated: Mar 11
This has become more than just a habit. Every year I take on the exercise to take a look back at the movies from five years prior to see what held up, what movies have grown on me, what has gone stale and what slipped through the cracks over the years. Some of the movies that were nominated and did pretty well in Oscar voting had already fallen out of favor within days of the award show in early February 2020. That was perhaps the last time everyone in attendance went outside for a long time. Parasite was the first Best Picture winner to be a Korean film. The Joker had the most nominations with 11, and became a movie to pretty quickly fall into favor with the people that it was taking jabs at. The sequel fell out of public favor with much more immediacy. Little did we know that the next year would be mostly a lost year for cinema, 2019 went down as one of the great years of film releases. I have made my own awards for the movies of five years ago, my Hindsight Awards, with standard awards, plus stunts and special effects, two outstanding actors and two outstanding actresses as well as a best ensemble cast. Here is a list of my top 25 movies, and over on Letterboxd I have every movie from 2019 that I have logged in a master ranking.
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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
- Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Directing for Quentin Tarantino, Best Actor Leonardo DiCaprio
I think this has only solidified itself as my favorite movie of 2019 over time. This has so much story to it that it is almost like a miniseries packed into a feature length. There are flashes of the hyperstylized Tarantino movies of the ‘90’s in the dialogue, but overall, it is more of a grand statement film that feels more grounded into a specific time and place in history rather than his own universe, despite altering the history from our own timeline. I feel like I live in this movie every time I see it, and that is a feeling that stays with me for days.
FXNow
Jojo Rabbit
There hasn’t been another World War II movie that really straddles absolutely absurd comedy and a very real dread of real life tragedy anything like this. This is genuinely funny and incredibly heartbreaking and uplifting. Taika Waititi’s style of filmmaking is perfectly spotlighted in this film.
FXNow
Hulu
Avengers Endgame
I love Marvel and this really nailed the ending of The Infinity Saga. We finally see consequences and tragedy for our Marvel heroes, raising the stakes of the film and future films. We see all of the potential of the main Avengers members packed into one movie to satisfying results.
Disney+
1917
- Best stunts/Special Effects
I'm a sucker for World War I stories, when I was a kid a found an old book based on the diary of WWI pilot and I fell in love with the era. This is beautifully shot and the stories connect quite well
Netflix
Parasite
- Best Foreign Film (tie), Best Ensemble Cast
This might be one of the greatest examples of setpiece storytelling in film. Somehow I have rewatched this a number of times despite a reluctance based on the intensity of it, yet, I always come out of it in awe.
Netflix
Hulu
Portrait of a Lady on Fire
- Best Foreign Film (tie), Best Actresses Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel
This movie is a stunner. Every character is flawless and the cinematography could hang in a museum. It belongs in a museum! I’ll admit that this list is very dude-heavy, and yet this lesbian love story set in 1800’s France is easy to place toward the top of this list.
Hulu
Chernobyl
This HBO miniseries is so damn well made, such an amazing piece of storytelling, that it really is a film with a long runtime. The scenes about clearing the roof from debris is so incredibly intense.
Max
Ford v Ferrari
I'm a sucker for racing movies, and this is just pure fun. This cast is incredible and this is one of those film I am most likely to pull off the shelf for a fun movie night.
FXNow
Beach Bum
- Best Actor Matthew McConnaughy
I'm not sure how I feel about Harmony Korine, he seems to be a very ‘90’s mix of obsessed and exploitative. This creates a very 2020’s version of Ernest Hemingway, and is an insane satire on the excesses of the megarich.
Tubi
Spider-Man Far From Home
I love Spider-Man and love a road movie with superheroes so this is pure fun. I love that this travels to several European cities, and that Spider-Man has to be a hero without giving up that his alter ego happen to be in the same place in the world at the same time.
FXNow
Disney+
The Farewell
This story of visiting a dying grandmother that is the only member of the family not to know she is dying is so touching and hilarious. China is shot very well, creating a beautiful pre-dawn world.
Available for Rent
Knives Out
I really enjoyed this, but probably wasn't as crazy about it as super fans out there. This does present the mystery genre in a convoluted yet perfectly executed manner.
Prime
Midsommar
- Best Actress Florence Pugh
Somehow this movie about a nightmare trip to Northern Europe with nightmare travel companions, too much drugs, and gruesome violence is so unforgettable and fascinating that it stays on my mind for days.
Available for Rent
Aniara
Now this is the kind of science fiction movie that I live for, a large luxury space ship that accidently goes off course drifting into infinity, has so many unexpected twists and turns The concept is so great that Avenue 5 took the concept and changed it into a crude satire that is fantastic.
Hulu
Terminator Dark Fate
Finally, a perfect reset to the Terminator franchise. I love the characters and the action lives up to the first two movies.
Available for Rent
Long Shot
Perhaps the greatest RomCom of the last ten years. Great world building, perfect casting and top notch jokes that drive this story of the scruffy writer and beautiful yet awkward Secretary of State.
Hulu
Doctor Sleep
The Shining is one of my favorite movies of all time and this lives up to that legacy. This is so creepy, and builds up on the mythology of shining that Stephen King has in so many of his stories. Great performances and another visit to the Overlook Hotel make this something special.
Available for Rent
Away
- Best Animated Film
From the director of Flow, this is another otherworldly journey. The embodiment of evil is genuinely menacing. These two movies are incredible as silent films, and yet the sound design is very good.
Prime
Tubi
Paddleton
I'm not the biggest fan of the Duplass Brothers, and yet I am often quite moved by their films. This movie is an incredible window into a long goodbye between friends as one reaches the end of his life due to illness.
Netflix
Booksmart
The is one of two Superbad clones and this female version is wildly funny. Great jokes.
Available for Rent
A Hidden Life
- Best Cinematography Jörg Widmer
This Terrence Mallick film about a man refusing to fight for the Nazis in World War II has sweepingly beautiful cinematography, shot at what seems to be a grassy mountain top above the clouds.
FXNow
Good Boys
The other Superbad clones, and I love the comedy of both. I'm not sure how the hell so many hilarious rather young kids were cast in such a well written comedy.
Available for Rent
Brittany Runs a Marathon
A story about a rather difficult woman deciding to run a marathon is so touching, funny, and the storytelling is so unexpected. This really was a hidden gem of an absolutely stacked year of movies.
Prime
Samurai Marathon
I love samurai movies, and this does something very different than the dozens and dozens of classic samurai movies. And somehow it's an untapped (for me) historical story of samurais in a footrace for a reward so precious that these supposedly honorable warriors cheat in every way possible to try to win.
Tubi
Pluto TV
Uncut Gems
When people say a piece of art is a “fever dream," it usually means that it is anxiously surreal. This is probably more of a traditional anxiety dream. A philandering jeweler gets himself into trouble, seemingly gets things figured out until the bad ess catches up to him. It's a verys stressful film, and yet very watchable.
Available for Rent
Best Documentary: Rolling Thunder Revue (43)
Scorsese’s rock doc on Bob Dylan gives a fun look back. This was not an especially stand out year for documentaries, but this was the better of Marty’s two movies of the year
Honorable Mentions
I had gone back and forth with putting Alita Battle Angel into the 25th slot. It's definitely a flawed movie, but I love it. There's an odd relationship with this and the Avatar movies, even if it's just from synched up posters and James Cameron as a producer. Richard Linkletter’s Where'd You Go Bernadette is similarly flawed as a film, but oddly satisfying in the end. Togo is a fantastic family movie about the origin of the Iditerod race, that unfortunately has been pulled from Disney+ in the last couple of years. Under The Silver Lake is a trippy film that seems to be about a young man's decent into mental instability and his ultimate homelessness. This wa sa year where maybe fifteen or more of the movies outside of my top 25 are movies that I genuinely enjoyed, many that I revisit often.
Worst Movie: Velvet Buzzsaw
It's an interesting idea about cursed works of art, but holy shit are the characters all awful and inconsistent.
Final Thoughts
I stand by this being one of the great years in cinema. I have no problem placing any one of my top six movies as my number one of the year and they all ended up very high on my end of decade list. Not only were the movies I watched at the time some of my favorites, but so many of the first viewing films that I saw this past year were instant favorites.
Links
Letterboxd Review of Jojo Rabbit
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