Hey everyone. Unlike last year, I didn’t attend any film festivals, so I didn’t get a chance to see quite as many movies this year. Still, saw some great ones!

Lots of films and TV shows with a strong “rich people suck” theme this year, which I love to see although some of you might consider it socialist propaganda. I feel like Chris Cooper in Little Women was the only rich person in a 2019 film who wasn’t a total dick.

I’ll link here the annual box office and give my usual exhortation – everyone, please go see a few movies next year that weren’t made by the Walt Disney Corporation. You can give them your money too – I saw all the Marvel films this year and I’ll probably get around to seeing the new Star Wars. But everyone who is not Disney needs your support, because we’re heading for a future where the Mouse completely owns the multiplex and everything else just gets dropped unceremoniously on streaming.

1. Midsommar. It’s strange, I didn’t walk out of the theater thinking Midsommar would be my best loved movie of the year. I thought it was a well-constructed horror film but short of greatness. However, after several months of thinking about it at odd times, I watched it a second time and am now convinced it’s a stone cold classic with a lot to say about our need for community in our lives to help us through hard times. Also the bear gets me every time.
2. Parasite. Lots of 2019 movies commented on economic equality but none so incisively as Parasite. It’s funny, it’s thrilling, it’ll keep you on the edge of your seat and then get you fired up to vote in the next election.
3. Knives Out. I know it’s irritating when people brag that they were “into X before it was cool” but I just want to say I’ve been hyping Rian Johnson since Brick came out in 2005. Like Parasite, Knives Out manages to sneak in some clever observations on class in with the fun parts. It’s the best murder “whodunnit” of all time.
4. Booksmart. Hilarious teen comedy, perhaps my favorite since Ten Things I Hate About You. The box office on this one was really disappointing – don’t people like funny movies anymore?
5. Little Women. Adaptation is difficult – how do you create a new take on a book that’s been adapted several times in the past, while still remaining faithful to the spirit of the original? Apparently the answer is to hand the project to Greta Gerwig.
6. The Farewell. Like Midsommar, an interesting contrast between the isolating nature of American individualism and the community/family first ethos of other cultures.
7. A Hidden Life. It’s a three hour Terrence Malick film so I wouldn’t recommend it to non-cinephiles, but Malick’s dreamy scenery and long takes of people farming puts me in a perfect state of zen that holds steady even when the movie shifts to Nazi prisons.
8. JoJo Rabbit. Definitely the least critically acclaimed film on my list. Critics found it tonally inconsistent and schmaltzy. I thought it was hilarious and moving. It lacks subtlety but makes up for it in punch.
9. Under the Silver Lake. Another one with polarized reviews, no one seemed sure to what extent the movie sides with its asshole of a protagonist. I thought it was an intelligent satire of disaffected young men who spend too much time looking for messages encoded in the world. A Foucault’s Pendulum for the modern era.
10. High Flying Bird. Steven Soderbergh always makes movies look great even when he’s shooting on an iPhone, but what I really want to highlight is the Sorkin-esque screenplay from Moonlight author Tarrell Alvin McCraney. This bird really flew under the radar (the Netflix release never helps).

I also enjoyed, in rough order: Ruben Brandt Collector, The Lighthouse, Wild Rose, Uncut Gems, The Irishman, Hustlers, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Pain and Glory, Us, Alita: Battle Angel, Cold Pursuit, Avengers Endgame, Driven, El Camino, Ad Astra, Greta, The Nightingale, Fast Color, Velvet Buzzsaw, The Souvenir, Ford vs Ferrari, Diane, Triple Frontier, and the Deadwood movie.

Best Action of the Year: Bad year for action movies. I liked Alita: Battle Angel, Cold Pursuit and John Wick 3, but I have to give the nod to the last ten minutes of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Best Rom-Com of the Year: Some passable entries with Long Shot and Always be my Maybe, but this genre continues to sadly fade away. For example, look at all the movies on this list that aren’t actually rom-coms!

Still want to see: Portrait of a Lady on Fire, 1917, Ash is Purest White, Her Smell, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Toy Story 4, Shadow, Atlantics, Synonyms, Honeyland, Transit, The Last Black Man in San Francisco.