Aren's Top 10 Films of 2019

1. Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (dir. Quentin Tarantino)

At some point over the past decade, Quentin Tarantino grew up. Not that he has gotten over his provocations or abandoned his childish glee for B-movies of the past—he’ll never do such a thing. But he has learned to loosen the handle on his films, to allow the tempo and feel of a scene to take primacy over the colourful language or bold narrative gambits. Take the scene in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood where Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate goes to the cinema to watch a matinee of The Wrecking Crew, in which she herself stars. The scene doesn’t have much dialogue—aside from the dialogue from The Wrecking Crew itself—but the scene doesn’t miss it. It simply sits back and lets us watch Sharon watch herself in the theatre and delight at the other people delighting in her slapstick antics on screen. This scene is emblematic of the film as a whole.

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood never feels rushed and never feels like it needs to impress you, since it comes from a place of authorial confidence and affection. The film follows a washed-up TV cowboy, Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), and his stoic stuntman, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), as they get entangled with the Manson Family during the summer of the infamous killing of Sharon Tate and other entertainment industry hopefuls in the Hollywood Hills.

If you’ve seen the film or know Tarantino’s style, you’ll know that he alters history here. But instead of offering sheer provocation, as he does in Inglourious Basterds, or emotional catharsis through bloodshed, as in Django Unchained, Tarantino is doing something a bit softer, a bit less calculated, and a bit more sentimental. He allows the afterglow of Old Hollywood to burn a little past the night of August 9, 1969. The result is that the film feels like a mournful, melancholy dream—a fairy tale, if you wish. It offers a peek at what life could’ve been if the circumstances of reality were a bit less brutal and the optimism that was embodied by Tate was allowed to flourish and thrive in a world not made cynical by its absence. 

Tarantino has long been exceptional at scene construction and production details, from costuming to music choices to references to obscure pop-culture artifacts, and all of those elements are present in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood. But never before has Tarantino surprised me with exuberance and joy, melancholy and maturity, and something bordering on wisdom. This film is a hoot and a thill and a ribauld provocation, but it’s also an elegy and is more graceful than anything I could’ve expected coming from Tarantino.

2. Parasite (dir. Bong Joon-ho)

Every year has one movie that unites the audience that views it together. Last year had BlacKkKlansman, the year before had Get Out, and this year we got Parasite, Bong Joon-ho’s masterful exploration of class dynamics in the modern world. Bong has long been one of cinema’s most confident shapeshifters, changing genre and tone wildly within his films, sometimes even within scenes. No film better exemplifies this shapeshifting ability than Parasite, which plays as a class comedy, thriller, drama, and horror film. The opening is a rollicking sort of grifter comedy, in which the low-class Kims (Song Kang-ho, Chang Hyae-jin, Choi Woo-shik, Park So-dam) lie their way into the employ of the ultra-rich Parks (Lee Sun-kyun, Cho Yeo-jeong, Jeong Ji-so, Jung Hyeon-jun). But just when things seem to be going so well for both families (despite the lies), Bong flips the scenario and unearths some buried secrets (literally). The film shifts away from being merely exceptional entertainment (which is rare in itself) and starts to capture deeper truths about how late capitalism pits everyone against everyone, not just class against class. To dig into the details of how Bong pulls off such a magic trick would ruin half its fun. Just know that long after the thrills from the film’s twists and stunningly-composed set-pieces have faded, its profound insights into class and culture will remain.

3. The Irishman a.k.a. I Heard You Paint Houses (dir. Martin Scorsese)

You’ve seen all of this before, but never in quite this manner or with quite this tone. If Goodfellas is a rock ballad, The Irishman is an elegy. It charts a familiar tale of brotherhood, loyalty, and betrayal in the mob, but it plays it for sober reflection, not the tension and thrill of a rise and fall. It charts the story of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), a hitman for the mob from the late 1940s to the 1970s, and his friendships with Philadelphia mob boss, Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), and Teamsters Union President, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino). 

There’s a lot of pleasure watching De Niro, Pesci, and Pacino share the screen for the first time, but The Irishman is not about the fun of being a mobster. It’s about the cumulative effect of all the bad decisions a man can make in his life. It’s about the loneliness on the road to death, which comes for us all. There is visceral energy here—Scorsese’s camera is as clever as ever—and there is humour—especially in the form of Pacino’s Hoffa—but there is mostly dread and sadness. The three hours and 29 minutes forces us to experience the slow march of time along with Frank and witness how everything meaningful in his life—from his family relationships to his friendships to his very soul—is stripped away by his readiness to “follow orders.” The mob life has never looked as depressing—or less grand—than in what is likely Scorsese’s final statement on the genre.

4. Sunset (dir. László Nemes)

Sunset is about the nightmare of being swallowed in the maelstrom of history. It follows a young woman played by Juli Jakab who returns to Budapest in 1913, years after her parents died in a fire in their popular millinery. Her return brings back some ghosts of the past and reveals the existence of a brother she never knew she had. As she digs into these mysteries of her family, she gets closer to the rotting heart of empire and spies the demonic face of the evil that is about to suffocate Europe in World War I.

Nemes is doing things with his mise-en-scene in Sunset (and his previous film Son of Saul) that I’ve never seen done in cinema before. The film is about an individual who can only catch glimpses of the significance of what she’s witnessing. Nemes uses a visual style that perfectly matches the emotional experience of his protagonist. He pours millions of dollars into production design in order to recreate Austro-Hungarian Budapest in 1913, but he then films most of the movie in close-up and rarely cuts during scenes. All the spectacular details of the time period are left out of focus in the margins of the frame. One of the lessons of history is that it’s impossible to comprehend its meaning while you’re living in the midst of it. Sunset captures this truth better than any film I’ve ever seen.

5. A Hidden Life (dir. Terrence Malick)

Terrence Malick has always made films dealing with religious themes, but none as overtly religious as A Hidden Life, which charts the life of Austrian martyr Franz Jäggerstätter, played by August Deihl, who refused to swear allegiance to Hitler during World War II. A Hidden Life blends the elliptical style of Malick’s recent films (To the Wonder, Knight of Cups, Song to Song) with a more straightforward narrative reminiscent of his earlier work, especially The New World. The result is transcendent. The style emphasizes the Edenic life of Franz and his wife, Fani, played by Valerie Pachner, in the mountain village of Radegund before the war, while the narrative makes clear the film’s challenge to Christians in the here and now: will you stay idle while our political leaders blaspheme in the name of the Lord? But also buried within the challenging religious and political statement is a touching story about marriage and family, and how the bond between a married couple can recreate a bit of paradise lost.

6. Little Women (dir. Greta Gerwig)

I’ve never read Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, but I know that it’s beloved by many people. I also know that Greta Gerwig changed up the structure of the novel for her 2019 adaptation, which doesn’t play as a straight chronology but instead cuts back and forth between the past and the present of the four March sisters, Jo (Saoirse Ronin), Amy (Florence Pugh), Meg (Emma Watson), and Beth (Eliza Scanlen). I do not know how this changes the effect of the original novel, but I do know that the structural decision places every scene in conversation with the ones that precede it and follow it. This makes the film a poignant and truly cinematic depiction of how we are constantly reframing our understanding of the past in relation to our experiences in the present. 

The film is also a beautiful testament to many things near and dear to me, including the power of family, true love, artistic inspiration, and the desire to follow your ambitions even if they cannot be contained by the reality you face in your everyday life. It was impossible not to see my own story in the lives of these women, particularly in Jo’s and Amy’s stories and their struggle to pursue their artistic lives without sacrificing domestic happiness. I suspect that Gerwig has crafted a film that will speak to generations of artists and film admirers for years to come in much the same way Alcott’s novel has spoken to readers of the past 150 years.

7. Deadwood: The Movie (dir. Daniel Minahan)

Deadwood didn’t need a coda but the one it got is marvellous. In 2006, when we left the denizens of Deadwood, South Dakota, we thought that the image of Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) scrubbing the bloodstains off the wooden floorboards of The Gem was the last we’d see of these characters. But what is dead may never die in pop-culture in the late 2010s and these beloved characters were resurrected for a movie that wraps up their stories with a bit more closure 10 years after the events of the TV show. The distance between then and now adds an inescapable melancholy to the film. Characters pause to reflect on their past decisions only for the present to puncture the reverie, such as when Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and Alma Ellsworth (Molly Parker) share a dance during a wedding only for Seth’s daughter to interrupt them. The effect is that the film is always in conversation with the past, but marching onward into the future, much like we are in our own lives. It’s a precious thing to experience such an honest depiction of the course of time in a film that also offers some catharsis for a beloved television series.

8. The Lighthouse (dir. Robert Eggers)

Some films are unclassifiable and work on us beyond the plain of logic. The Lighthouse is such a film. On the surface, it mostly plays as a horror film, with Robert Pattinson’s inexperienced lighthouse keeper arriving on a remote island in the Atlantic to help Willem Dafoe’s crusty old “wickie,” (the term the characters use for lighthouse keeper). The film charts the tension between the two characters as well as their inevitable descent into madness as a storm batters the island. Director Robert Eggers, who previously made the Puritan horror film, The Witch, leverages his considerable formal skills to take us on this journey into madness, layering the film symbolism as he recreates the wet, dirty life of a wickie in the late 19th century. But where The Witch played the horror completely seriously, The Lighthouse revels in the vulgarity of its characters and plays many scenes for laughs. Instead of robbing the film of its potential terror, the humour deepens the effect and produces a more complete portrait of madness, where the terrors of the unknown and the depravity of human relations can make us laugh as easily as scream.

9. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (dir. J.J. Abrams)

No one can make up their mind about The Rise of Skywalker, the final entry in Disney’s Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, which makes me think the film is doing something special in Hollywood pop cinema. It’s a furiously-paced film, with bold visuals and narrative twists. Many people have been turned off by what they think is its retconning of The Last Jedi, but I cannot deny how much I was moved by its conclusion. Abrams’ film gives the characters of Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey (Daisy Ridley) some much-needed closure, and in the process offers a variation on the vision of redemption and heroism in Return of the Jedi (my favourite film ever). That The Rise of Skywalker has a bit of the magic of that cherished film is more than enough for me to overlook its occasionally-haphazard storytelling and blatant moments of fan service. I love the world of Star Wars and The Rise of Skywalker let me live in its grandeur for a few more hours.

10. Apollo 11 (dir. Todd Douglas Miller)

Sometimes, all you need to do as a filmmaker is to get out of the way of your footage. That’s what Todd Douglas Miller does with his documentary, Apollo 11, which charts the Moon Landing—the signature exploratory achievement of the 20th century—through 65mm NASA footage that was never released in the past. Unlike most documentaries, Apollo 11 foregoes expositional voiceover or historical reflection. It simply shows the launch, landing, and return of Apollo 11 through the archival footage and lets the voices of the men who worked to achieve this remarkable feat of exploration guide us along the way. The visual achievement is undeniable, as is the hope it filled me with.

Another 10

3 Faces (dir. Jafar Panahi)

American Factory (dir. Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar)

Ash Is Purest White (dir. Jia Zhangke)

Doctor Sleep (dir. Mike Flanagan)

Missing Link (dir. Chris Butler)

One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk (dir. Zacharias Kunuk)

Pain and Glory (dir. Pedro Almodóvar)

Rocketman (dir. Dexter Fletcher)

Uncut Gems (dir. Josh and Benny Safdie)

Under the Silver Lake (dir. David Robert Mitchell)

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