SAVAGE SCORECARD 2019: MY TOP TEN FAVORITE FILMS OF 2019
Here they are, all in descending order all the way to my favorite film of 2019. Please enjoy!!!
The one and only finale of 2019 that completed its journey with equal parts triumph, tragedy and tremendous presentation and execution. Anthony & Joe Russo's sprawling, lavish, wonderfully ambitious and downright rapturous three hour "Avengers: Endgame," the conclusion to not only their sensationally devastating "Avengers: Infinity War" (2018) but the entire 22 film cycle of the Marvel Cinematic Universe thus far, essentially performed the impossible with inventive, impassioned storytelling that demonstrated that the over-stuffed and exhausting superhero film genre can indeed extend itself far beyond being theme parks rides and become breathtaking cinema to behold.
(Originally reviewed April 2019)
Breezy and profound, Gurinder Chadha's "Blinded By The Light" light-footed, life affirming triumph. Set during the late 1980's England under Margaret Thatcher's reign, Gurinder Chadha deftly executes a coming of age and generational comedy/drama, a sharp cultural critique, an empathetic exploration of racial self-identity, a tender and tense Father/son dynamic, and most of all, an earnest ode to the power of the written word, our intense and individualistic connection to art and a tribute to the music and lyrics of Bruce Springsteen as experienced by the film's main protagonist, a teenage Pakistani-British young man and aspiring writer.
While Springsteen's music plays rapturously throughout the film, Chadha firmly ensures that her film is no mere "jukebox musical," for as Springsteen's music is the catalyst that propels the film forwards, without our teenaged hero (so well played by Viveik Kaira), there would be no movie at all. To that end, Chadha has delivered a multi-layered experience that looks and feels like a teen film from the 1980's while using its socio/political backdrop as a mirror to our current turbulent political landscape. And even further, the film is an absolute joy!!
This is the film that Danny Boyle's "Yesterday" wished it had been and frankly, should have been.
(Originally reviewed September 2019)
Enormously entertaining and unquestionably essential in our continuing exploration into the peerless, inimitable and timeless artistic complexity and combustible life of Miles Davis, Stanley Nelson's superlative documentary works seamlessly as both primer to novices and enhancement to lifelong devotees.
Meticulously and lovingly researched and then, beautifully contextualized into a richly flowing and briskly paced narrative always feels full, complete and revealing. No small feat as the life and music we regard throughout this film could have easily stuffed three documentaries as it feels that Miles Davis lived a series of lives within his 65 years. Beyond even this success, Nelson allows his film to transcend the music bio-pic" genre by also exploring themes of child abuse, depression, addiction, toxic masculinity, female subjugation and empowerment, Black masculinity and Black excellence while all set to a soundtrack starring one of the most untouchable bodies of work.
Cool, sophisticated, angry and clean, Stanley Nelson's "Miles Davis: Birth Of The Cool" is resplendent, raw and remarkable.
(Originally reviewed November 2019)
My estimation of this film has only grown since the two times I have seen it and I am already looking forward to experiencing it again. Taika Waititi's self described "anti-hate satire" is like something akin to a Wes Anderson movie as the surroundings feel to be of a completely different universe but the emotions, motivations and sentiments are 100% real.
In "Jojo Rabbit," we have the tale of a lonely 10 year old aspiring member of the Hitler youth seen entirely through his eyes, giving the proceedings a disturbingly hallucinogenic quality, especially since a vision, albeit ridiculous, of Adolf Hitler himself (as played by Waititi) serves as the boy's imaginary friend. Throughout the film, our titular protagonist finds his worldview forever altered upon the discovery of a teenage Jewish girl hiding within the attic of his home and hidden there by his own Mother (Scarlett Johansson in one of her warmest, most playful performances). His ensuing relationship with the girl instigates a moral quandary of severe complexities and consequences and Waititi handles all of the comedy and sacrifice with a steady directorial hand, a gentle blend of satire and silliness and a sobering moral fortitude making for one of the most unique and singular films of the year.
(Originally reviewed December 2019)
Lulu Wang's tenderly melancholic film about an aspiring Chinese-American writer (richly played by Awkwafina) living in New York City, struggling with impending grief over the news of a terminal illness diagnosis for her beloved China based Grandmother (the superbly warm Zhao Shuzen), is further compounded by her family's collective and culturally bound wishes to shield the news from the Grandmother is absolutely beautiful.
Pure of heart and intent, smartly matter-of-fact and without any shred of prefabricated emotions and situations, Wang has delivered a slice-of-life film that allows every single moment to live and breathe as if we were watching a documentary and through Awkwafina's character, it is also a film about physical and emotional displacement as we regard China and Chinese culture through her Americanized eyes. Superbly individualist to the Chinese/Chinese-American experience yet simultaneously universal to the heart and soul that exists within ALL families, Lulu Wang's "The Farewell" is exquisitely perfect.
(Originally reviewed August 2019)
Appropriately and uncompromisingly horrifying while also surprisingly empathetic, Todd Phillips' "Joker," his origin story of the figure who would become Batman's arch nemesis is the anti-comic book movie by existing within a real world populated by real psychological and societal trauma.
A towering Joaquin Phoenix stars as the miserable Arthur Fleck, whose downfall (or ascension) is chronicled not through special effects and all manner of escapist pyrotechnics but through the lens of a cinematic world clearly inspired by Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" (1976), "The King Of Comedy" (1983) and "Bringing Out The Dead" (1999), where societal and psychological decay run hand-in-hand. Phillips' film, while set in a world that appears as the late 1970's/early 1980's, holds its cinematic finger upon the precarious pulse of the rancorous 21st century with all of its mounting fear, anxiety, and rage and entirely housed within the film's titular character study that displays how the chaos of the mind explodes into chaos in the streets.
(Originally reviewed October 2019)
First things first, it is a complete awards season crime that Lupita N'yongo's searing performance(s) were entirely ignored! Beyond that, Jordan Peele demonstrated that he is no flash in the pan that he brilliantly evaded a sophomore slump, with an even darker nightmare than his outstanding juggernaut of a debut feature with "Get Out" (2017). This time, Peele's story of an affluent African-American family being terrorized by a quartet of red jumpsuit wearing, scissor wielding dopplegangers served as a chilling societal warning about our own individualistic and collective sense of duality and how our darkest natures may be conspiring against us or inversely how our better natures are fighting for survival. With a broader visual palate and a concluding image that shuddered me into silence from the theater, all the way home and with every subsequent viewing, Jordan Peele's "Us" is horror film of great humanity yet filtered through relentless doom.
(Originally reviewed March 2019)
Filmed in 1972 yet shelved for 47 years due to a filmmaking error, "Amazing Grace," the live performance which was recorded for what remains the highest selling gospel album ever made is a documentary of riches and revelations, as well as a posthumous celebration of the life and artistry of one of the world's greatest voices in the late Aretha Franklin.
And what an artist she was as her untouchable voice and superlative skills certainly did seemed to be blissfully influenced by something not of the material world. Franklin, who, for this project, and already at the height of her fame, returned to her gospel roots with a power that did indeed feel designed of her spirit for the sole purpose of directly touching the spirits of any and all who listened. Her collaboration with the iconic Reverend James Cleveland, the Southern California Community Choir and her own band was stunning in its seamlessness, agility and ability, after all of these years to being able to elicit physical responses (goose pimples, chills, tears, etc...) signifying a greater force at work, thus making this performance a treasure, a gift and a jewel that we are able to see in 2019.
Beyond the performances themselves, the film also works as a powerful document of the 1970's Civil Rights Era, with Franklin's song choices serving as personal messages to the Black community and the soundtrack and soul of the movement as a whole and to, again, have this document right here and now in 2019, with its visual messages of Black excellence upon display, we hold something that can be utilized to keep ourselves marching forwards in these even darker times.
(Originally reviewed May 2019)
For the purposes of t hose of you who still may not have seen this film, I will keep my remarks to a minimum and in doing so, I have given you quite a mammoth of a reason as to why Bong Joon-ho's Parasite" is an absolute masterpiece of a film that reminds us miraculously of what it means to go to the movies.
This story of two families, one wealthy, one poor and what occurs when they intersect gave me a feeling that has been of such rarity and kind of unlike anything I have seen since Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" (1994). The level of storytelling, direction, performances and especially the set design, as this specific element exists as much of a character in the film as the characters themselves, is unquestionably masterful. From its cultural satire to its Hitchcock-ian level of suspense and surprise as the way the film begins does not in any way prepare you for how it unfolds, reveal and concludes...and yet, as I think of it now (and without spoiling) it truly feels like the culmination of shared themes from Jordan Peele's "Us" and Rian Johnson's "Knives Out."
Foreign and familiar, intimate and universal, claustrophobic and cavernous, hilarious and horrifying, Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" is cinematic storytelling at its most feverishly original.
(Originally reviewed November 2019)
As I wrote in my original review, Sam Mendes' "1917," his World War I epic presented to appear as if filmed in one of two single take sequences, is also a masterpiece. It is the best motion picture in his filmography and for me, it is one of the finest films of the decade of 2010-2019.
The story of two young British soldiers given a mission to hand deliver a message that would save 1600 troops from a massacre, including one of the soldier's older brother is deceptively simple as it is the framework for the cinematic grandeur upon display that merges the intimate with the epic. It is a revelatory piece of art as this film contains multi-layers of juxtapositions, from the story,itself to the nature of the film as a whole, that we are fully engaged with the journey fraught with the random violence and carnage of war while also being superbly awed with the meticulous, soaring filmmaking of the sort that inspires us to shout out loud, "How dd they do that??????" No small feat in an age when special effects are no longer special and cinematic spectacle is commonplace to the point of being boring.
Sam Mendes' "1917" is artful, graceful, mammoth, and often just flabbergasting making it a movie that again reminds of why we go to the movies.
(Originally reviewed January 2020)
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