24. Ford v Ferrari

James Mangold’s follow-up to Logan, which for our money might be the finest superhero movie of this decade, reunited him with his 3:10 to Yuma star, Christian Bale, plus Matt Damon. A true story two-hander, Ford v Ferrari jumps back to the 1966 when Henry Ford II decided to take on Ferrari by building one of the definitive American muscle cars, the Ford GT40, for the epic 24 Hours of Le Mans race. But perhaps real credit deserves to go to American engineer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and British driver Ken Miles (an again transformative Bale), who actually built the damn thing and then won the race despite corporate interference from Ford’s executives every step of the way. It’s a familiar tale given an old-fashioned Hollywood sheen. But in the age of blockbusters and endless sequels, there is something refreshing about this classic underdog story told with zeal and high-octane machismo. It’s a gorgeous production that flies by like the vehicles at Le Mans, which is all the more impressive since the movie is 152 minutes.

23. The Peanut Butter Falcon

There is something quintessentially optimistic about the rolling of a river and the drift of the sea. It represents endless possibility, which could be argued is a distinctly American trait. Author Samuel Clemens (under a certain nom de plume) tapped into that with his transcendentalist novel that reached for sunny aspirations, even while exposing the hypocritical rot beneath. I imagine he’d get a kick out of The Peanut Butter Falcon too, an infinitely sweet indie that wears its Mark Twain inspiration on its sleeve just as readily as it does the cardboard box that makes up its wrestling gear.

Read the full review here.

22. Hustlers

Hustlers is a classic crime parable where audiences are invited to cheer on the misdeeds of the “wrong” side of the law, which is made especially easy in Scafaria’s hands. There have been many Wall Street movies that include strippers and sex workers as background filler or punchlines; these can range from Martin Scorsese’s intentionally debauched The Wolf of Wall Street—where the line between documentation and exploitation is intentionally blurred—to even Hustlers producer Adam McKay’s own The Big Short, which might be the definitive cinematic tragi-comedy about the housing crisis. Rarely though are women treated as more than men’s playthings. So it is a delicious irony that Hustlers fits right alongside those other defining post-financial crisis movies when it’s told from the perspective of the “entertainment” taking the Visa card away.

Read the full review here.

21. Queen & Slim

Queen & Slim, directed by Matsoukas (Beyoncé’s “Formation” video) from a script by Waithe (The Chi, Boomerang), more than delivers on its killer logline. The duo previously collaborated on the “Thanksgiving” episode of Master of None, about queerness and family traditions, so it is a delight to see them take on such different material for their feature film debuts: a crime thriller, an on-the-road romance, and a meditation on immortality in an era of so many lives needlessly, violently cut short. Matching Waithe and Matsoukas at every step are the incredible performances of leads Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out, Widows), who continues to prove his incredible versatility, and newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith (Nightflyers). The latter brings dignity and grace to such an incredibly demanding role.

Read the full review here.

20. Spider-Man: Far From Home

The first Marvel movie since the studio “ended” its saga, as well as the sequel to 2017’s bubbly reboot, Far From Home has the unenviable task of justifying the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s continuation on top of maintaining the “low to the ground,” sideways-slouched aesthetic of its predecessor. And honestly, it has way more success when it’s being a Spider-Man movie than a post-Avengers MCU movie. Yet when it succeeds, it is nothing short of jubilant about the opportunity to put on a joyful show, stopping just short of actually buttering your popcorn mid-scene. Not that you’ll want it to stop.

Read the full review here.

19. Jojo Rabbit

Even with its robust cast, and Taika Waititi’s way with both verbal humor and sight gags, the movie as a whole seems oddly evanescent. Its message, of course, is both relevant and simple, yet when weighed against the horrors of its historical setting does not quite match the latter in gravitas and potency. Jojo Rabbit is both enjoyable to watch and yet weirdly unmoving, although its pleasurable attributes outweigh the latter enough to make the film largely successful with the risks it takes. He may not be Chaplin or Lubitsch (yet), but Waititi does no dishonor to the trail they blazed.

Read the full review here.

18. Honey Boy

Shia LaBeouf is aware that his off-screen reputation and media narrative is bigger than many of the films he plays in. This is perhaps one of the smaller reasons he sought creative reclamation in Honey Boy, an intimately personal film he writes and stars in, and which acts as a poignant self-portrait. It is also a wildly inventive film for both LaBeouf, the actor, and Alma Har’el, the director. Making her first narrative feature after several documentaries, she pulls from LaBeouf’s own truth to create a bittersweet fiction bathed in authenticity, which is all the more impressive since LaBeouf refuses to actually portray himself. A semi-autobiographical piece, Honey Boy is an open invitation to study LaBeouf’s childhood in which the actor embodies a version of his father. Technically the troubled child star at the heart of the film is named Otis Lort, played as a boy of 12-years-old by Noah Jupe and 22-years-old by Lucas Hedges at different points in the film. But Har’el and LaBeouf are not shy about us making the connection. The opening shot is Hedges’ budding movie star on the edge of a breakdown as he stands in a shot with a wire on his back, waiting to be ripped away into a hazy golden-hued sunset of carnage like a million Michael Bay paper heroes.

Read the full review here.

17. Dolemite is My Name

A true heir successor to Ed Wood, Dolemite is My Name is possibly the funniest movie of 2019 and certainly the most pure in its love for putting on a show. Even if that show involves questionable martial arts choreography and rubber intestines hanging from Eddie Murphy‘s hands. Such is the world of Dolemite, an affectionate and good natured account of Rudy Ray Moore (Murphy), a lifelong entertainer who finally hits it big by writing, producing, starring in, and arguably directing his verry own blaxploitation epic. The fact that the film is of questionable quality doesn’t matter when he is giving people of color a mirror on the big screen (a rarity in 1975) and a comedy that actually plays well. Director Craig Brewer chronicles this odyssey with a sweet warmth that provides Murphy his best role in years, if not decades. It’s fantastic.

16. Joker

Neither comedy or tragedy, Joker is an invitation to bear witness to a searing transformation by Joaquin Phoenix. Whether your first instinct is to revel in the performance or be repulsed by it is of no apparent consequence to writer-director Todd Phillips. No matter what you do, you’re compelled to respond. There is something faintly dishonest about trying to have it both ways, but there is also something admirable. As many a comedian might tell you, it’s all about leaving an impression, and Joker’s has been haunting me for days.

Read the full review here.

15. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

Do you love your city? This is a question Jimmie Fails asks two white city transplants on a bus during the third act of The Last Black Man in San Francisco. A dogged hero who is romantic to a fault, Jimmie is the eponymous African American who has seen one setback after another in achieving his dream of reclaiming his grandfather’s historic Frisco home on a hill. Disillusioned but not depressed, Jimmie cannot fathom why these two relatively affluent young women are complaining about how much they hate this overpriced town. You cannot hate a place unless you love it. It is for that reason there is nothing but love, even in its bitterest and most melancholic shadings, that comes through in The Last Black Man in San Francisco. A lyrical note of endearment to the Golden City, and one filled with words of anguish and betrayal too, the film is a revelation for director Joe Talbot and Jimmie Fails—both the real man and the character of the same name Fails portrays onscreen.

Read the full review here.

14. 1917

1917 might be the most intimately photographed war movie ever produced. Already renowned for filming in a way that suggests everything takes place in a single shot, director Sam Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins’ camera sticks to the backs of its soldiers like the lice in their hair and the gnawing trench rats in their beds. That is save for one masterful shot in which a soldier runs out of a building and into a burning French village. Following LCpl Schofield (George MacKay) through a window, the camera descends onto him as he enters the apparent mouth of hell. It’s utterly horrifying, yet inescapably beautiful—a snapshot of the end of the world as everyone knew it a hundred years ago.

Read the full review here.

13. Midsommar

As a community founded on an empathy as endless as their summer sun, these true-believers keep both feet firmly planted in the old ways, lacking a modern sense of perpetual springtime or perpetual self-interest. And during the height of their midsommar solstice, they’ll smother you in kindness. Yet what’s most unnerving about this oversaturated, leafy green hell is that if you spend enough time with them, their traditions are more than inviting to contemporary eyes; they’re intoxicating.

Read our full review here.

12. The Lighthouse

At its height, German Expressionism was celebrated (and in some circles derided) for its severe unreality. During a silent film era dominated by adventure or romance, here was a style bathed in madness and psychological perversions as stark as its shadows. Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse isn’t quite pure expressionism—the young auteur is too fascinated by naturalism for that—but it may as well be with its pitiless gray skies, often desolate black and white shores, and two stormy performances by Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson that are so touched by madness that the cracks in their unblinking stares and crusty whiskers cast an unreality all their own.

Read the full review here.

11. Little Women

Picking up where Lady Bird left off, with Ronan playing an artiste spreading her wings and reluctantly leaving the nest, Greta Gerwig’s Little Women adjusts this story for a 21st century, millennial gaze in the same way earlier adaptations reflected the values of their eras. To be sure, this most certainly remains Alcott’s March Family, whose domestic lives have been immortalized for over 150 years by each generation discovering the book. But Gerwig shoots and edits their childhood revelries with a liveliness and rapidity that more closely resembles a modern indie comedy than traditional period piece stateliness.

Read the full Little Women review here.

10. The Farewell

A film about culture clash, writer-director Lulu Wang pulled from her own life for this surprisingly funny, yet ever poignant, goodbye to a loved one. The film centers on Billi (Awkwafina), a young woman who is about to say goodbye to her grandmother Nai Nai (Shuzhen Zhao) for the last time. The problem is, however, that Nai Nai lives in China where the custom is that loved ones do not tell their elders when they’re sick. So Billi, who moved to the United States when she was a child, must return home while pretending she is there to celebrate a cousin’s wedding… one the whole family knows is a lie in order to spend time with Nai Nai. It seems like a sad premise, yet the life and humanity percolating from this east meets west concept is warm and enduring.

Read our review for The Farewell here.

9. Us

Whatever minor reservations there may be about the third act will fade away quickly over time, as Us is a magnificent achievement that will reward diligent rewatching and debate for years to come. A massive effort that far exceeds its humble home invasion conceit, Jordan Peele’s sophomore effort holds as many secrets as the families it follows on both sides of the looking glass. Like the radiance of a sunrise striking fire on a crummy boardwalk’s white sand, the glow of the film’s vision outshines any of the debris it leaves in its wake.

Read the full review here.

8. The Irishman

It turns out wiseguys really can grow old. This fact of life has been obscured by both the violent ends of murdered mafiosos and the filmmakers who told their stories. Still, it remains a poignant reality for the characters in The Irishman—and the talent portraying it. Comprised of some of the greatest screen legends of their generation in front of and behind the camera, including Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Al Pacino, what is almost certainly Scorsese’s final gangster picture is akin to an Irish wake for times gone by. Be it for the generation of filmmaking they inspired, or the sort of cinematic anti-hero this film methodically eviscerates.

Read the full review here.

7. Avengers: Endgame

After 11 years and 22 films, the ongoing saga of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has come to a turning point. Avengers: Endgame serves not just as the conclusion to the story started last April in Avengers: Infinity War, but it also works to wrap up character arcs and story threads that began seven, eight, or even 10 years ago. That it does so successfully, in a massive, incredibly entertaining epic that is as emotional as it is spectacular, is due to the craft, world-building, and devotion to character empathy and development that has marked the best efforts of this franchise.

Read the full review here.

6. Marriage Story

Reminiscent of the more sophisticated comedies of the ‘70s, there is a pervasive melancholy throughout Marriage Story that makes the laughs more ludicrous and the subsequent reality unbearable. Through it all Johansson and Driver offer peerless work. One special highlight is near the end of the film where Charlie, ever the showman, can finally find the words to express his anguish by singing (in full) a musical number by Stephen Sondheim. It’s a devastating crescendo of bottled up emotion. Finally, the workaholic artist who cannot find the words to direct his own life bares it all. It is a true high-note after the preceding two hours, which featured its own chorus of tears and smiles, and an acceptance that even after the final curtain. the feelings left behind will always linger. Including the love story that remains.

Read the full review here.

5. Booksmart

As a winning directorial debut for actress Olivia Wilde, Booksmart reinvents the youth-party movie with a deft hand. Exhibiting a raucous sense of humor that has no qualms with shifting gears from the gross-out to the surreal, the filmmaker hints we’ve only seen a fraction of her talent (or sense of humor). And by presenting the story of two high school seniors who attempt to have their first evening of debauchery on the last night of school, she’s zeroed in on a central relationship so intoxicating (even before they get to the alcohol) that it can anchor an entire sea of gags and potentially unwieldy ideas. Demented, but not desperate, clever, yet never quite crass, Booksmart is ahead of the curve as a modern R-rated comedy.

Read the full review here.

4. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Most importantly, Quentin Tarantino re-contextualizes Sharon Tate as more than just the victim; she was a woman full of life and at the beginning of taking control of her career. Before she became a tragic figure and a symbol for gross internet conspiracy theorists, she was largely considered an enchanting presence her whole life, which is one of many reasons why Tate’s real-life sister has been so taken with this movie and Robbie’s performance. It gives her back her life. It also gives her that dawning sense of control over her destiny, which is crystallized when she decides to watch herself on the screen at a matinee of The Wrecking Crew (1968), an admittedly dippy James Bond knockoff starring Dean Martin. In that meta-funhouse of a film within a film, Robbie’s Tate watches the real-life Sharon engage some Bruce Lee-taught martial arts moves and be the butt of Martin’s unfunny jokes. Even so, Margot Robbie’s Sharon is exhilarated by hearing the audience respond so well to the movie.

Read more of our spoiler-heavy thoughts here.

3. Uncut Gems

As shiny as one of the film’s titular stones, there is a cutting edge to Sandler’s depiction of Howie, a New York jewel dealer, gambler, and family man who lives his life with one hand always hovering just above the self-destruct button. It’s electric to watch, but it’s more satisfying still that the Safdies utilize it as just the centerpiece in their showroom: a brilliant distraction that will draw audiences in while the film crafted around it is more intricate than it appears. Indeed, I can safely say that while Uncut Gems is an exercise in seedy pressure cooker storytelling, I have never seen a movie quite like this rascally, weird, and ultimately addictive hybrid.

Read the full Uncut Gems review here.

2. Knives Out

The top standouts, however, in a cast full of them may be Ana de Armas and Daniel Craig. The former is appealing, enigmatic, and sympathetic as the woman who is sort of the moral center of this little universe, while the latter is having the time of his life as the suave, effortlessly cool “gentleman detective” who is the latest in a long line of literary and cinematic predecessors. Rian Johnson has said that he wouldn’t mind exploring further adventures with Blanc, and if Knives Out is a hit, and Craig is up for it as he begins the post-James Bond portion of his career, we’d like to see that happen too.

Read more about Knives Out here.

1. Parasite

While one family, the Kims, are introduced literally occupying space below sea level in a scuzzy apartment they insist is a “semi-basement,” another lives on a hill. Scratch that, the Park family lives above the hill, complete with a landscaped and walled off garden that acts like a mini-Eden above the unseen, urban riffraff. Such are the incongruous realities of living in the same Seoul. Within this juxtaposition Bong Joon-ho presents Parasite, which premieres this week at the New York Film Festival, as a “tragi-comedy” (his words) that’s funny until it’s not. Showcasing how one enterprising family is able to latch on to the wealthier one’s fortunes, with no one being the wiser, this is a darkly amusing masterwork about the never-ending tale of two cities. All in one.