A movie that is just filled to the brim with pure joy that’s somehow seamlessly intertwined with existential melancholy throughout the duration of its runtime. Hearing the director say that she took so much inspiration from horror films in order to tell this heartwarming family story only solidified what a badass achievement it is. The Farewell makes me happy to be alive.
The Lighthouse feels like it was beamed here from another planet--the kind of film I want to revisit again and again...but like, at 3am on a second wind of crazed insomnia. It’s deliriously funny and moody and creepy and achieves an infectious level of insanity that I could swim in for days. Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe are my favorite on-screen couple of 2019.
Speaking of insanity...Ma (2019). This movie had already become a hilarious meme that I was sure the film itself would not live up to before I could see it...boy was I wrong! Ma was the most fun I had in a theater in 2019, consistently surpassing my (already low) expectations and always satiating my endless appetite for camp. I kind of can’t believe this movie exists, and look forward to the endless times I will beg someone to let me introduce them to it over a bottle of wine.
7.) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Per usual, I loved Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, and I loved how much heart and good will was flowing through this one after the searing politics of The Hateful Eight. That man just knows how to deliver a payoff, and he knows that he knows how to deliver a payoff. So keep ya think-pieces to yourself--I think it’s nearly impossible for him to soil his own oeuvre at this point.
6.) Portrait of a Lady On Fire
This felt like the lesbian response to Call Me By Your Name, and I mean that in the best way possible. Similarly to that movie, this film captures a sense of time, place, and feeling in such a way that it washes over you like the nostalgia of revisiting a journal about your first kiss. It broke my heart in a way that made me thankful I had a heart to be broken. I’d place it right alongside CMBYN and Linklater’s Before Trilogy in the pantheon of definitive love stories.
Parasite is a damn blast and everyone knows it. Bong Joon-ho has never been a man of small scale but by confining his story to a single house, he creates uninhibited cinematic fireworks. A timely allegory wrapped up in a film that is part comedy, part drama, part thriller, part Home Alone, and part horror film? Yes, please!
I signed up for this movie for the throwback to campy Giallo horror films and was pleasantly surprised when I got not only that, but also a moving narrative about the maddening grief of heartbreak that seemed to exist within a utopian gay world where sex and queer-living were not only the norm, but an unapologetically fun norm. That was a long sentence...I don’t think there’s much more to say about Knife + Heart than that. ...Oh, it also has my favorite end credits of 2019!
The breakup movie of the year, if not the decade (sorry, Marriage Story)--I think I had more conversations about this film than any other all year. Even when considering other folk horror films, Midsommar stands on its own as wholly original and unique, with an ending that’s nothing short of sublime. After Hereditary, my pal and I expected to leave the theatre feeling like shit, so I think it’s a testament to the movie’s magic that we instead walked out eager to find a bar where we could dance.
No movie influenced my approach to filmmaking and my ideas about what I wanted to do with the format this year more so than Climax. Say what you will about Gaspar Noé’s provocative tendencies, but sometimes there’s something to be said for jumping off the subtlety-bandwagon and completely flooring the gas just because you can. Doing so has created his most accessible film to date, and I hadn’t been so thrilled by a viewing experience since Mad Max: Fury Road. There’s something beautifully tragic about seeing such a diverse and colorful cast of characters come together to make art that bangs as hard as the movie’s opening dance sequence, only to have them devolve and turn against each other when their party goes to hell. It’s easy to dismiss the film as “excessive,” but far from easy to match its ambition.
A lot of filmmakers in 2019 seemed to discover a winning formula by allowing more joy to seep into their typically dark and/or sardonic subject matter (e.g. The Lighthouse, Midsommar, Climax, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, etc.). Harmony Korine has built his career on making films that are infinitely more fucked up than those of these other filmmakers and never apologizing in favor of holding up a middle finger. What’s fascinating about The Beach Bum is that Korine somehow manages to pivot so far into the territory of unbridled joy that it seemingly still warrants an apology. Many people hated the film, sometimes citing it as hedonistic, rude, “gross,” or all three. A few people walked out of my screening when I saw it. This is probably because The Beach Bum is as unafraid of all the raunchy, shocking, seedy aspects of the human condition as any of Korine’s previous films. But the thing that makes The Beach Bum different is that rather than use those aspects to actually shock people, here it feels that Korine is simply trying to employ them to celebrate life. To celebrate that we all have assholes and elbows and that life’s imperfect and THAT’S OKAY! Whether Matthew McConaughey’s “Moondog” is having raucous sex covered in cooking oil in a burger joint, or comforting a loved one as they pass away, the movie’s delightful score (like something out of a Disney film) never lets up--it’s like the film equivalent of one of my favorite quotes: “Life is 10% what happens to you, 90% how you react to it.” And no matter the circumstances, Moondog always opts for the high road (on multiple levels). This movie comforts me to no end, and I frequently find myself repeating Moondog’s mantra: “This life gig’s a fuckin’ rodeo. I’m gonna suck the nectar out of it and fuck it raw-dog until the wheels come off.”
Lots of films in 2019 held a mirror to our society just to show us how ugly the reflection was. But The Beach Bum (and Moondog) gives us something to believe in.
