Old & New: Veronica's Top Ten for 2019
So you like listicles, eh? Well, have all the listicles in the world!
Sadly, I missed a lot this year in regards to new releases but I aim to amend that in the upcoming year. I couldn’t fully put together a Best Of 2019 article like last year’s, so I will be resorting to 2017’s format of new to me viewings. Some things never change. For right now, these are the films I saw in 2019 that wouldn’t let me forget them, and I hope 2020 gives me more of the same.
If you’re reading through this and wondering to yourself, “she seems like the kind of freak who wants to see Robert Pattinson in homerotic situations but for some reason The Lighthouse isn’t on her list,” that’s because I didn’t get a chance to see it. Thanks for bringing it up.
My favorite films I saw this year are:
10) Parasite (2019, dir. Bong Joon Ho)
A great dissection of classism and opportunity in South Korea that speaks to fairly universal issues. While I think Parasite suffered from overhype (a continuous problem in this, our world of hyperbole), it still remains a wild ride through economic inequality that quickly spirals out of control into paranoia. There’s no clear answers as to whom is feeding off whom as everyone in the movie is seen as parasite and host equally.
9) Gloria Bell (2019, dir. Sebastián Lelio)
From the director of last year’s spectacular A Fantastic Woman, Gloria Bell is a pretty straightforward movie about a woman searching for her own version of happiness in a world that doesn’t care about her at all and yet demands she be happy. Julianne Moore plays the eponymous Gloria with a naturalistic ease and enough good humor that make her decisions (even the kind of ill-advised ones) seem rational. I can’t not love a movie that has an abandoned woman shooting paintballs at John Turturro in front of his own house.
8) Crawl (2019, dir. Alexandre Aja)
Whilst deciding if I was going to see Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood, the nearly three hour long movie from a director whose later work hasn’t quite landed for me, or Crawl, a giant alligator flick, I went with the 87 minutes long option that promised only cheap, B-movie thrills. I regret nothing. Maybe it’s just a product of getting older but give me less than 90 minutes of underwater shots, rain, swimming, and Barry Pepper, and you have got my attention. Crawl is exactly what it sounds like, and I adored it.
7) Arctic (2019, dir. Joe Penna)
Speaking of being straightforward, Arctic was an adventure movie that featured one of the best performances Mads Mikkelsen has ever given. In it, he plays the solitary survivor of a plane wreck managing to stay alive in a frozen tundra. When a helicopter crashes near him he is suddenly joined by another survivor, though she is badly injured and in critical condition. This is one of those “old fashioned” adventure type movies that pits humans against nature with a 21st century upgrade. The effects and stunts are impeccable, and both the cast and director do well with very little. It’s a movie that comments of the social nature of humanity along with our will to survive, and does all this with about seven lines of dialogue. Truly a masterclass in less is more.
6) Midsommar (2019, dir. Ari Aster)
No one is as shocked as I am that I really enjoyed this film. Most people who know me are tired of hearing how disappointed I was in Hereditary, so believe me when I say that I didn’t expect much going into this one. Admittedly, I thought some parts of Midsommar were dumb (really, Chidi? You knew it was going to be a ritualistic suicide and didn’t mention anything to the chick who just lost her whole family to suicide? You’d never get into The Good Place), but horror movies should be given a bit of wiggle room when it comes to dumb stuff. Overall, I enjoyed it and found it creepy enough to warrant a spot on this list. Was it as good as the films that inspired it? Heavens no. But it did leave me looking forward to Ari Aster’s next feature, whatever that may be.
5) The Mustang (2019, dir. Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre)
The film that knocked Captain Fantastic off the list. (My apologies to Viggo Mortensen and his beautiful package.) I couldn’t very well not include this one because it carried with it a message that is very important to me concerning the state of the penal system in this country. The Mustang revolves around prisoners who are taking part in an experimental rehabilitation program that teaches them how to ride and care for horses as well as competing with them. It’s a moving and realistic portrait of men behind bars that are actually trying to be better, and a system that can’t bring itself to do anything about them. Like Captain Fantastic, this is an even-handed look at a difficult subject–one that doesn’t bleed its heart dry for violent criminals but also proposes a better way forward.
4) I Am Not A Witch (2017, dir. Rugano Nyoni)
This quiet, almost anticlimactic offering from Rugano Nyoni (her first feature film) takes place in an African village in Zimbabwe where a little girl name Shula (Maggie Mulubwa) who doesn’t speak or smile much is declared a witch at the drop of a hat. It is almost surreal in nature with the witches bound with a white ribbon that drags behind them everywhere they go, limiting their movements, and often having conversations that cover impossible topics (like Shula very seriously expressing her regret in not turning into a goat). Yet with everything played so close to the bone, it’s hard to pin that label on it. I Am Not A Witch ends on an ambiguously heartbreaking and hopeful note where we, as the audience, are not sure if Shula is dead or alive but witness the other witches untethering themselves from their ribbons as they mourn for her. When people say dumb shit like “modern movies are all crap,” point them in the direction of this one. It’s simple and powerful in an understated way.
3) Goat (2016, dir. Andrew Neel)
Look, I don’t know too much about the Jonas brothers. I couldn’t pick out one of their songs if they were performing it in front of me, and if you told me in the beginning of 2019 that by the end of the year, I’d be telling everyone how much I loved Nick Jonas as an actor, I’d...ok, I’d entertain the possibility but be skeptical. Goat is about fraternity hazing at a fictional college, and the grotesque performance that is traditional masculinity. If your idea of a good time is blindfolding college freshmen and tricking them into thinking they’re sucking your dick (then you make them mud wrestle), you should probably just get around to admitting you’re gay. Actually, I take that back. Gay men would be like, “bit too homoerotic for us, thanks.” Goat draws some excellent parallels between a culture of silence that allows for abuses of power and violence and the slowly dying version of masculinity with performances that alternate between pathetic and chilling.
2) The Greasy Strangler (2016, dir. Jim Hosking)
I’ve written a whole article about this one because I loved it so much. I’m sure our lovely editor-in-chief Lil Ipcar [Ed Note: sideeye…] is going to link that article here so I suggest you go read that then go find the movie then come back and finish this listicle. There’s not much else to say about it except that it’s so weird and pretty gross, and I loved every second of it.
1) Climax (2019, dir. Gaspar Noe)
Upon my seeing this movie for the second time, my friend who came with me simply said, “Gaspar Noe is a troll.” He is not wrong but also, I love his trolly ways. Climax a.k.a. The Real Remake of Suspiria features a lot of people freaking out on acid, dancing around an empty school, and some mild getting lit on fire. It’s told in disjointed segments but it doesn’t matter because it’s so wild you can’t tell what happened when anyway. I view this movie the same way I view spiking sangria with LSD: it might not be the most ethical idea but it sure makes for an interesting night.
There are a variety of interpretations of what this film means and what it’s trying to say. As with most trolls, I don’t think Noe actually has a point outside of rustling jimmies. Visually, it’s great to watch, in part because of the dancing, and it made me have fantasies for weeks about tripping my face off in a kind of creepy, empty school. Sans lighting anyone on fire, of course.
