Every Movie I Saw in 2019

I have a confession this year: As a list obsessive film buff, I feel like a bit of a failure. First off, there’s the whole thing about me not getting this 2019 list out until a full two months into 2020. In my mind, that’s inexcusably late (though I absolutely do have excuses, mainly being that I had this post fully constructed, saved and ready to post weeks ago, but then Squarespace somehow trashed it - but again, inexcusable). But more than that, I only got around to 72 movies last year, which is a dozen off my usual pace. In an age where many of the most high profile releases are available to instantly stream on my TV at home, that number, too, feels inexcusable (though yet again, I definitely have very very good excuses in that I spent a sizable chunk of 2019 accomplishing the rather significant life events of buying a house and getting married).

That said, I do take some solace in 2019 being an absolutely fantastic year for film, and I think I still managed to enjoy the vast majority of its highlights. Of those 72 movies, I can say I enjoyed at least 50, which is a pretty solid percentage. And I’d honestly put my top 20 this year up against any year in the history of film. Now, the fact that my top 3 happened to involve films about the trauma of divorce, a man who may or may not have murdered his wife, and a woman unable to reconcile a fulfilling romantic life with her artistic ambitions wound up being slightly awkward as a newly married person. But hey, this was also a year when the wealthy of Hollywood came to embrace a Korean film about the evils of capitalism, so if nothing else film has shown itself to be a great way to embrace our contradictions.

And without further ado, the list:

1. Marriage Story

2. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

3. Little Women

4. The Farewell

5. Knives Out

6. The Art of Self Defense

7. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

8. Wild Rose

9. Uncut Gems

10. I Lost My Body

11. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

12. The Irishman

13. American Factory

14. Meeting Gorbachev

15. Avengers: Endgame

16. Booksmart

17. Jojo Rabbit

18. Parasite

19. Queen & Slim

20. The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley

21. Hustlers

22. Us

23. One Child Nation

24. The Nightingale

25. Brittany Runs a Marathon

26. Ford v. Ferrari

27. Under the Silver Lake

28. Yesterday

29. 1917

30. Captain Marvel

31. Velvet Buzzsaw

32. Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw

33. The Lighthouse

34. Between Two Ferns: The Movie

35. John Wick Chapter 3 - Parabellum

36. High Life

37. Triple Frontier

38. Crawl

39. Rocketman

40. Hellboy

41. The Dead Don’t Die

42. Midsommar

43. Hail Satan?

44. Ready or Not

45. Pain and Glory

46. The Laundromat

47. The Two Popes

48. Shazam 

49. Godzilla: King of the Monsters

50. Fyre

51. Toy Story 4

52. Unicorn Store

53. Spider-Man: Far From Home

54. Terminator: Dark Fate

55. Late Night

56. Joker

57. Dolemite Is My Name

58. Glass

59. Always Be My Maybe

60. 21 Bridges

61. Harriet

62. Aladdin

63. Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker

64. 6 Underground

65. Wine Country

66. Detective Pikachu

67. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile

68. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

69. The Lion King

70. Dark Phoenix

71. Cats

72. Tolkien

And some individual awards, just for the fun of it:

Best Actress: Florence Pugh, Midsommar (Runner-up: Zhao Shuzhen, The Farewell)

Best Actor: Song Kang Ho, Parasite (Runner-up: Andrew Garfield, Under the Silver Lake)

Best Director: Noah Baumbach, Marriage Story (Runner-up: Greta Gerwig, Little Women)

Best Scene: Jumping into the Pool, Booksmart (Runner-up: The Songwriter, Under the Silver Lake)

Best Dog: Brandy, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Runner-up: There are no runners-up this year. 2019 belongs to Brandy and Brandy alone.)

Best Seemingly Random Use of Sondheim: Being Alive, Marriage Story (Runner-up: Losing My Mind, Knives Out) (Runner-up If Only Television Counted: Original Cast Album: Co-Op)

Worst Performance: Tiny Fey, Wine Country - and yes, that felt really miserable to type (Runner-up: Zac Efron, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile)

Best Performance in a Bad Movie: James McAvoy, Glass (Runner-up: Jim Parsons, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile)

And finally, all the movies I regrettably couldn’t get to last year:

Judy, Honeyland, Ash Is the Purest White, Rolling Thunder Review, Her Smell, Homecoming, Rafiki, Atlantics, Waves, The Peanut Butter Falcon, Richard Jewell, It: Chapter Two, A Hidden Life, Dumbo, Good Boys, Just Mercy, Honey Boy, The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, Apollo 11, Clemency, Ad Astra, Downton Abbey, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, The King, Zombieland: Double Tap, The Aeronauts