New top 10 best movies of 2019-20

The end is here, at least for the cinematic year, which has gifted us with a bounty of audacious dramas, documentaries, comedies, thrillers and action-adventures. From crowd-pleasing blockbusters to under-the-radar triumphs, eclectic imports to boundary-pushing epics (we’re looking at you, The Irishman), there’s been something for everyone at the theatre – and, also, on the various streaming services that now compete for cinephiles’ attention. The Oscar season may be just kicking into high gear, which is exactly what we’ve done here, in the final instalment of our rundown of the Best Films of 2019.

Top 10 best movies: - 

1. The Lighthouse

The allure of the light drives two men into pitch-black madness in Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse, a work of period-piece insanity that more than fulfills the promise of his 2015 debut The Witch. On a New England rock enshrouded in crashing-wave mist and bombarded with torrential rain, 19th-century lighthouse keepers Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) and Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) tend to their duties, with the former manning the illuminated tower and the latter maintaining their domicile and coal-burning furnace. Their laborious toil is compounded first by interpersonal tensions over Wake’s possessiveness regarding the lighthouse itself, and then by run-ins with squawking gulls (vessels for dead sailors’ spirits, says Wake) and visions of slimy tentacles and inviting mermaids. Shot in luminously grainy 4:3 black-and-white that gives the action the look of a weathered old photograph, scored to unholy bellowing and siren shrieks, and driven by ornate storybook dialogue fit for a nautical nightmare, it’s a film about guilt, shame and greed (and the psychosis it begets) that exudes cramped, soggy malevolence. Dafoe’s curse to the maritime gods is an all-timer, and a superb Pattinson matches his sloshed, wild-eyed lunacy step for floorboard-creaking step. Eggers eventually drowns his material in slithering sexualized imagery of a crazed sort, and caps things off in a manner that’s all the more cautionary-tale haunting for remaining so unforgettably oblique.

2. The Irishman

Reuniting him with his favourite stars (as well as Al Pacino), and clocking in at a whopping 209 minutes, The Irishman serves as Martin Scorsese’s grand closing statement on the gangster genre he helped elevate to greatness with 1990’s Goodfellas and 1995’s Casino. Using revolutionary (and largely effective) de-ageing CGI to make his cast appear decades younger, the director’s adaptation of Charles Brandt’s non-fiction book I Heard You Paint Houses recounts the criminal life of Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro), an enforcer for mafioso Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci) and close compatriot of Teamsters bigwig Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino), the latter of whom he reportedly executed in 1975. An era-spanning tale that charts the intersections of the mob and domestic politics (including the election and assassination of JFK), Scorsese’s film is also a flashback-layered drama about the passage of time, and the impact – or chilling lack thereof – that regret, treachery and immorality have on a man’s soul. Led by bravura turns from its leads (Pesci quiet and menacing; De Niro stoic and empty; Pacino fiery and charismatic), it’s an epic about American corruption and underworld dishonour.

3. A Hidden Life

In the masterful hands of Terrence Malick, fascism isn’t simply a socio-political threat, but a moral and spiritual one as well. The director’s A Hidden Life recounts the based-on-true-events tale of Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), a farmer in the rural Austrian enclave of Radegund whose world is forever altered by the 1939 appearance of the Nazis—and the requirement, once he’s forced to join the Third Reich’s army, that he swear allegiance to Hitler’s party. Franz’s refusal to do so is fraught with perilous consequences not only for himself, but also for his wife Franziska (Valerie Pachner), whose staunch loyalty to her husband in the face of communal ostracism is as courageous as is his ethical stand against tyranny. Malick’s tale couldn’t be timelier, nor lovelier, as his poetic aesthetics —defined by swirling, sweeping, intimate-and-epic handheld cinematography, James Newton Howard’s soaring orchestral score, and hushed internal-monologue narration—impart a sense of the alternately harmonious and dissonant relationship between the material and the celestial. Following three detours into more purely expressionistic terrain, Malick’s return to narrative-driven moviemaking form results in a rapturous film about responsibility—to country, God, clan and self.

4. Little Women

Greta Gerwig establishes herself as one of world cinema’s finest directors with Little Women, an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s novel that’s bursting with effervescent life. Led by a collection of outstanding performances thrumming with adolescent liveliness, longing, regret, resentment and resolve, the film revisits the diverse ups-and-downs of the March sisters. Independent writer Jo (Saoirse Ronan); conservative actress Meg (Emma Watson); prim painter Amy (Florence Pugh); and unwell pianist Beth (Eliza Scanlen). Alongside their doting mother (Laura Dern), unpleasant rich aunt (Meryl Streep) and dreamboat neighbor Laurie (Timothée Chalamet), the siblings attempt to make their way in a world where, per Amy and Jo, female sovereignty is only achieved with money, and marriage is both an economic transaction and a bond forged by love. Flip-flopping backward and forward in time to create all sorts of harmonious narrative (and formal) echoes, and set to Alexandre Desplat’s lush, vibrant score (the year’s finest), Gerwig infuses her celebrated story with a feminist spirit that flows naturally from its tender depiction of its heroines’ intertwined, universal plights. From euphoric in-motion beginning to pitch-perfect self-referential end, it’s a time-honored tale made new, and enchanting, once more.

5. Uncut Gems

Adam Sandler is a loser who can’t stop chasing that elusive victory in Uncut Gems, an anxiety-inducing crime film fueled by its protagonist’s addiction to the rush of risking it all. Harold Ratner (Sandler) is a Manhattan diamond district wheeler-dealer who thinks he’s hit it big with a rare opal smuggled out of Ethiopia thanks to some African Jews. His plan is to sell it at auction for a cool million, and thus settle his debts to brother-in-law Arno (Eric Bogosian) and his violent associates. That scheme, however, is mucked up by an encounter with Boston Celtics superstar Kevin Garnett (playing himself), a legitimate winner who takes a fancy to the valuable rock, as well as by conflicts with his business partner (Lakeith Stanfield), wife (Idina Menzel) and mistress (Julia Fox). Directors Josh and Benny Safdie’s material operates at a relentless fever pitch, their camera gliding and rotating with the jittery excitement and terror of Ratner, and zooming into characters’ eyes—and observing them at a crane-assisted remove on city streets—with gritty ‘70s-era stylishness. Newcomers Garnett and Fox are great, but the film is ultimately all Sandler, whose embodiment of sleazy, selfish, pleasure-seeking Long Island greed and desperation is outright exhilarating.

6. Monos

High in the mountains of an unidentified Latin American country, a band of child soldiers (with names like Rambo, Wolf and Boom Boom) partake in intense physical training and unique aggro rituals – such as lashing a member for their birthday – while guarding their hostage, an American doctor (Julianne Nicholson). A hazy fable that feels caught between Apocalypse Now and Lord of the Flies, Alejandro Landes’ Monos immerses itself in its haunting milieu via images of silhouetted figures set against enormous, encompassing clouds, and sequences of hostility, love and madness. Following a tragic turn of events involving a milk cow they had on loan from a local supporter, the young warriors flee with Nicholson’s physician into the lush forest, where unity and sanity slowly start to fray. Scored to disquieting electronic noises and plaintive orchestral tunes, Landes’ spellbinding feature assumes the quality of a drug trip, evoking issues of alienation, control, sex, fear and loyalty through its young male and female protagonists’ ordeal. In this saga about the self-destructiveness of war, the kids aren’t alright.

7. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Roiling passions lurk beneath the painterly facades of Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and director Céline Sciamma demands that one inspect her frame—and her characters’ faces—to locate them. It’s merely one of many respects in which this French period piece roots itself in the acts of seeing and being seen, as well as the relationship between action witnessed, inferred and remembered. At a remote late-18th century manor house, Marianna (Noémie Merlant) is commissioned by a countess (Valeria Golino) to paint her daughter Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), recently returned from a convent, engaged against her will to be married, and already defiant enough to have rejected one painter. Marianna and Héloïse’s blossoming relationship is one of slow-burn amour, which Sciamma stages with a meticulousness and quiet (sans any soundtrack) that only enhances the atmosphere of aching ardor. Haenel and Golino are both phenomenal, the latter particularly so as a Mona Lisa smile-flaunting beauty engaged in a process of uncharted self-definition. Whether on the crashing-waves shore, in bed, in Marianna’s makeshift studio, or in the home of a woman performing an abortion for Héloïse’s servant Sophie (Luana Bajrami), it’s a film that assumes—and is fundamentally about—the complex power of the female gaze.

8. The Souvenir

Young love is a vehicle for self-definition in Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir, the writer/director’s finely calibrated coming-of-of age drama. Aspiring London filmmaker Julie (Honor Swinton Byrne) falls for older, cultured Anthony (Tom Burke), who has a habit of making every compliment sound self-serving. Hogg depicts their affair with little concern for superfluous in-between stuff, cutting pointedly to the couple’s most crucial incidents together, and in the process she strikes an assured balance between realism and impressionism. A semi-clandestine drug habit eventually becomes a complicating factor for the duo, but the real heart of this enthralling film is Julie herself, whose interior state is brought to vivid life by the director’s intimate, aesthetically diverse approach. Awash in talk about movies and moviemaking, Hogg’s feature is elevated by Byrne’s star-making turn as a young woman caught between genuine love, her recognition that her relationship is perhaps doomed to fail, and her desire to find her voice – personally and artistically – on her own.

9. Parasite

Mixing the class commentary of Snowpiercer with the family dynamics of The Host, Bong Joon-ho takes a scalpel to inequity with Parasite, his scathing drama about a lower-class clan that endeavors to pull itself up from the figurative and literal basement. Preying upon the naiveté of corporate bigwig Mr. Park’s (Sun-kyun Lee) wife Yeon-kyo (Yeo-jeong Jo), teenage Ki-woo (Woo-sik Choi) cons his way into a job in their ritzy household as an English tutor for their daughter. Gigs soon follow for his sister Ki-jung (So-dam Park) as an art teacher, his dad Ki-taek (Kang-ho Song) as a driver, and his mom Chung-sook (Hye-jin Jang) as a housekeeper. Acquiring those positions, alas, necessitates ruining their predecessors, and holding onto them entails even nastier business – as well as enduring the petty cruelty, condescension and selfishness of their employers. Awash in action seen through glass, and compositions that descend from high to low positions, Bong’s aesthetics evoke the social and economic divisions governing modern South Korea, and enhance his snapshot of the kill-or-be-killed ruthlessness that many are driven to out of need, want and burning resentment.

 10. Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood

Quentin Tarantino goes back to the 1969 Tinseltown of his dreams with Once Upon a Time in…Hollywood, a reverie for that bygone moment when the culture and counterculture collided. On the downside of this equation is faded TV Western star Rick Dalton (Leonardo Dicaprio) and his loyal stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), whose navigation of this rapidly changing environment crisscrosses with the ascendency of Rick’s neighbor Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and her husband Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha) – all as the Manson Family assumes its soon-to-be destructive position on their horizon. Tarantino lavishes his period milieu, and the mainstream movies and television of the era, with sun-dappled neon-colored love. His is a conservative celebration of the old at the very moment that the new took over (not to mention a wish for a fusion of the two), and an air of wistfulness – and desire to fight obsolescence – permeates the action. Led by DiCaprio and Pitt’s superb turns as artists trying to stay afloat in a radically transforming industry (and America), it’s a revisionist-history fantasy drenched in nostalgia, ecstasy, yearning and blood.