My Top 10 Favorite Films of 2019

As the Oscars invite us, next weekend, to celebrate films of the last year, I present to you my list of favorite movies of 2019. I'll scatter in several honorable mentions that almost made my list here: everything hyperlinked to one of my reviews was in the final running for my list this year, and each counts as a personal favorite.

Note: Due to limited releases, I was unable to see Clemency, Lucy in the Sky, Depraved, and A Hidden Life before compiling this list. And I'm still livid that The Hunt was cancelled.

10. TIE: Rocketman and Frozen II 

Forget Bohemian Rhapsody and its severely problematic mess of messages. Rocketman is the queer musical biopic we needed to see on the big screen. A gorgeous tribute to Elton John and a fabulously fun exercise in jukebox musicals, the film features Taron Egerton in a transformative performance in which he sings and acts the pants off any other leading man this year. And speaking of queer musicals, Frozen II just gets better on repeat viewings. The first time I saw it, I found the convoluted plot and strange new mythology off-putting. Now I find it entrancing, profound, and utterly beautiful, to say nothing of the soundtrack which has been on repeat for the last three months. I might even like it more than the first.

9. Velvet Buzzsaw

This inclusion was a bit tough for me over High Life. But I think there's a "fun" factor I needed from cinema this year -- yes, even from horror and sci-fi -- and Velvet Buzzsaw fits that bill. Thanks to precise writing, focused direction, and stellar work from cast and crew, this film is a razor-sharp satire on the current state of art. You can never quite shake the feeling that its characters know their entire sense of identity is based on being unable to create anything; they merely feed off what others make, hoping to grab whatever social and financial power they can by cheating the artists and making what should be experiential consumptive. If It Follows and The Picture of Dorian Gray had a baby, it's Velvet Buzzsaw.

8. Judy

Rarely do I so laud a film based solely on a single performance. But Judy -- already a solid biopic in its own right -- will long be beloved due to its star. Renee Zellweger returns to the silver screen with her most accomplished performance yet as Garland. Unbelievably technical in execution, the calculation and physical work she put into becoming the celebrity is palpably exhausting. And yet it never once distracts, never once disappoints, and never once reveals the facade. The closest competitor for best actress this year was Cynthia Erivo in Harriet, making an American hero into a cinematic superhero with a killer new song in "Stand Up".

7. Parasite

The genre-bending master Bong Joon-ho is always conscious of social inequities and class structure in his films, but Parasite may be as close to a manifesto as anything he's made yet, and it is magnificent. What begins as a satirical comedy of manners becomes uncomfortably pointed as we see that the inequities of our world are at once hilarious and horrific, bizarre and dangerous, ludicrous and deadly. It's pure entertainment that has a lot to say but doesn't feel preachy, though life and death hang in the balance. Less comedic, more picturesque, and just as timely was Queen & Slim, a close contender here.

6. Knives Out

Much like the other best murdery movie this year, Ready or Not, this one combines laughs with shrieks in a deliciously thrilling murder mystery. Though not as brutal or devilish as the other, Knives Out packs in some incredibly timely social satire with its dark comedy in a mystery that would make Agatha Christie squirm. Ferociously original, it twists existing tropes without becoming a jaded meta commentary on the genre, most shocking me with its passionate emotional core. I personally expected more style than the film delivered, but I was pleasantly surprised that the substance far outpaced my expectations.

5. Bombshell

Social commentary was clearly the major movie trend in 2019, and Joker may have been the most brutally ballsy social commentary of the year. But I again feel that a certain "fun" factor helped me fashion my favorites list this year. And speaking of fashion, Bombshell was a stunning exercise in style, substance, timeliness, and killer performances, especially from an utterly chameleonic Charlize Theron. Funny, horrifying, tragic, and of course endlessly relevant, this movie depicts the "origin story" of sexual harassment whistleblowing before #MeToo: the Fox News Roger Ailes disaster. Its balancing act of humor and thrills looks easy, so well have the artists done their job, and within only a few minutes the movie made me laugh out loud, gasp in shock, and even leak a tear. This is intellectually and emotionally arresting filmmaking at every level, and even though you know the story it tells, every moment feels fresh and surprising.

4. Little Women

No. There is no way yet another version of Little freakin' Women is making it onto any "favorites" list this year. Right? Surely the best adaptation of (or work inspired by) classic literature this year goes to the zany new Terry Gilliam piece, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Right?
Well, wrong. Though Quixote is fun and wacky and surprisingly deep, nothing could have prepared me for the awesome reimagining of the structure and heart of Louisa May Alcott's timeless classic. Greta Gerwig's depth of knowledge about the source material allows her to do some truly amazing work here, cutting up the narrative and dividing it into parallel acts that run concurrently. Stunning costumes and uniformly solid performances make this movie great; but Gerwig's finale -- which cements her in my mind as the new feminist auteur to watch -- improves on Alcott's while honoring the author with her own desired ending for the first time in cinematic history.

3. The Report

This movie manages to do the near impossible, making the unfilmable cinematic gold. A 13-year political story about secret torture, a huge cast of characters, legal proceedings, and a 6700 page document have never before been so riveting, beautiful, challenging, and important. Though an unlikely movie, it captured my attention almost instantly and became so intense and thrilling that by the end I felt that no time had passed, while feeling physically and mentally exhausted. Moreover, this film embraces the gray area in which it lives while advocating for us all to hold our authorities accountable, a remarkably mature and hopeful message as we head into an election year. A close contender for this spot was Todd Haynes's equally thrilling legal/political drama Dark Water.

2. 1917

There are immersive movies, and then there is 1917. Edited and shot to appear as if it were filmed in two lengthy takes, the film follows two young soldiers across no-man's land in war-torn France. Its technically brilliant execution forces us into the action from overcast afternoon through a hellish night lit by flares and out again into sunlit morning. But this delivery is no mere gimmick; it reveals instead artistic and thematic integrity in a story that takes as its central conceit the deadliness of time. Along this vein, I also really loved Climax, for similar reasons, though its vague themes felt less urgent and tangible, and The Aeronauts goes visually where few films have gone before even if its narrative doesn't quite.

*Special Mention: The Vast of Night and Buoyancy*
I had the privilege of visiting my first film festival this year: the Chicago International Film Festival. Though I watched several films there, I haven't yet posted any of my usual reviews for them, but I'll post them all soon, even if they won't have wide releases in the U.S. However, one of my favorite flicks from that festival was picked up for distribution by Amazon, with a hopeful release in 2020. The other, I pray, will become widely available soon. I feel adding them here is suitable instead, in the almost #1 spot they both strongly deserve.

 The Vast of Night is a miracle of independent filmmaking. Depicting two outsiders in a small rural community who suspect something supernatural is going on, we follow their unique odyssey as night -- and something more sentient -- closes in on the town. It's a love letter to nostalgic science fiction even as its execution leaps into the future of cinematic technique. Unbelievable cinematography, brilliant production design, and two stunning leading performances of a breakneck screenplay make this movie utterly unforgettable.

Similarly, Buoyancy is a brilliant, searing, and transcendent work about the essential human crisis in a world that values money more than lives. The film dramatizes the plight of one boy as he is sold into slavery and fights to be free again. But because it is rooted so clearly in real stories and frames itself against the current humanitarian crisis that controls the lives of over 200,000 men in the Thai fishing industry, the film reaches a heightened level of reality and urgency. When the fourteen-year-old protagonist decides he is not a victim, the movie becomes a thrill-a-moment game-changer through the most important twist on the slavery subgenre ever on film. This isn't just an exposé on modern slavery. We're watching something we shouldn't be seeing, something we all desperately need to see.

1. TIE: Us and Midsommar and The Lighthouse

The triumvirate of horror auteurs reached a new milestone this year. Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Robert Eggers have each gifted us with brilliant, beautiful sophomore features that will permanently change the genre. Each of their first films was sophisticated, clever, and terrifying; their ballsy second directorial projects may best be described as abstract, ingenious, and unspeakably horrifying. 

If Get Out is a scalpel cutting through smug white liberalism in the U.S., Us simply lights the whole country on fire. If Hereditary is a cold-hearted assault on the nuclear family, Midsommar is nothing short of damning the filial traditions that force us into sacrificial codependency. If The Witch is a rousing feminist triumph against dogmatic patriarchy, The Lighthouse burns its beacon atop the hilarious tragedy of superficial masculinity finally crumbling.
In their own ways, these films challenge elements of the genre long left alone while also challenging their audience. Fiercely of their time, they are also timeless, reaching from the past into the future to reshape our art and our world.

What were YOUR favorite movies this year? Let me know and we'll chat about some stellar cinema!

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)

Score: 3 / 5

One of the strangest movies of the year has to be The Last Black Man in San Francisco, the debut of writer and director Joe Talbot. Semi-(auto)biographical, the film tries to capture the life of one Jimmie Fails, who plays himself, as he navigates a changing world while clinging to his own identity. He and his friend Mont (a mesmerizing Jonathan Majors) spend most of their time skating and busing around San Francisco as the city undergoes drastic change. Vague themes of racial and gender identity, integrity and truth, history and future, and hopes and fears swirl around this movie, but its essence is that of romance.

I don't say it's a romantic story, though, because there is almost no story. Jimmie is in love with a house. A beautiful Victorian house nestled in a Bay area neighborhood is his beloved, and it was apparently built by his grandfather in 1946 before being inherited by Jimmie's father. As his childhood house, it holds powerful sway over Jimmie's sense of identity and purpose, which is why he is unable to stay away. Often trespassing on the current owners (white folk, who are annoyed and tired of trying to fend him off), he paints the house and trims the plants and generally tries to upkeep the exterior to his own standards. When they leave after a tragedy, Jimmie and Mont seize the opportunity to squat.

But the movie's commentary on problematic housing legalities is only a passing fancy. Its themes of gentrification and of the invasion of outsiders similarly pass from conscious intellectual curiosity into a sort of aesthetic sensibility. These themes don't concern the story so much as the feel of this movie, and the movie only really makes sense with full understanding of these elements. If there is such a thing as themes being in the mise-en-scene, this is it. Similarly, we're subjected to a curious exploration of toxic Black masculinity and the violent ways young men cling to and relate to each other. Again, while this does influence what little story we have here, it's more impressionistic than anything, leading to a climax and denouement that you don't understand so much as feel.

Which is probably why I mostly didn't care for this movie. It's undeniably beautiful, and a clear introduction to an auteur in the making who controls odd visuals, offbeat pacing, uncanny humor, and sickly sentimentality to fascinating if inaccessible effect. Due to the film's intoxicating sense of place -- there isn't a moment I don't feel where I'm meant to be, though I've never been to California -- I nevertheless felt that much humor and sadness was lost on me due to the almost masturbatory insistence on "for these people, by these people." At one point, a naked man sits on a bench next to Jimmie and the two calmly discuss the changing city. Clearly there is a joke here (naked social philosophers must be a fixture in any major city) but it's so grounded in sadness that my half-choked gasp of laughter quickly died to an almost sickened awareness of my own privilege (of what? Perhaps mental health, a supportive job, healthy masculine bonding, enough money to possess clothes?) But why? There's nothing relatable for me to feel shamed for, and yet there I sat.

I prefer, generally, something a bit more streamlined in scope and accessible in, well, every other way. Perhaps it's just one of those movies I don't "get", like An American in Paris or A Christmas Story, and that's okay. I really wanted to get it, and maybe my earnestness made the film's most accessible elements dull. A movie about a man who loves his childhood house -- even though his connection to it is tenuous and may be built on untruths -- is just not something I'm terribly interested in. (Frankly, there are many other movies about "home" I'd rather watch again.) But I hope you are, because it's lovely to look at and feel, even for a passing fancy.

Just Mercy (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

The latest Black movie that caters (mostly) to a white audience, Just Mercy nonetheless manages to get several things very, very right. Dramatizing the true story of a wrongfully convicted black man, the film follows a young defense attorney and civil rights activist in his efforts to see justice carried out. While the film nominally fights police corruption, institutionalized racism in the criminal justice system, and the death penalty, it reigns in its righteous anger to keep the whole affair consistently and specifically about this case. The result, for better or worse, is a relatively straightforward courtroom drama with a lot on its mind and even more on its heart, though it leaves those matters largely implicit.

We begin with Walter "Johnny D" McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a black man in Alabama making his way home from work when he is suddenly stopped by an entire squad of police officers who arrest him on the spot. Then we're introduced to a parallel story of the man soon to partner with him: Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), a recent Harvard law graduate with pep still in his step as he travels to Alabama to change the world. Bryan treats his own culture shock from landing, suddenly, in Alabama and with inmates on death row by diving headfirst into his job at the Equal Justice Initiative. Having recently founded this organization with Eva Ansley (Brie Larson), he meets the inmates he will be defending from the death penalty: those poor souls, he repeats, who are most in need of quality help.

One of these men is indeed Johnny D and we learn his story along with Bryan, from court documents to eyewitness accounts. Johnny D, it is immediately apparent, is totally innocent of the murder he was convicted of perpetrating. He was framed by desperation -- corrupt police and ravenous media -- and coerced into delivering false testimony in exchange for a lighter sentence in his own pending trial, namely getting off death row. But, absurd as the whole ordeal may be, Johnny D's life hangs in the balance, and Bryan's work is more than cut out for him. People are too afraid to help him or too indifferent to care. And while indifference is a difficult villain to film, it nevertheless makes for a fascinating example here.

Director and co-writer Destin Daniel Cretton (Short Term 12, The Glass Castle, and the upcoming MCU feature Shang-Chi) is very careful here -- again, for better or worse -- at keeping the film very civil. Some will see this as watered-down and immaterial, if not downright insulting, much like the Green Book that won Best Picture at the Oscars last year. This movie staunchly refuses to allow its Black rage to boil, as it righteously should, instead apparently hoping to make it all accessible to moderate whites and even shallow racists. But there's nothing worthy or worthwhile in seeing cartoonish racist villains (specifically the sheriff and prosecuting attorney) only out to save their own hides. The film would have been better served to show these individuals as the agents of corrupt and violent institutions that are still entrenched today.

I wanted more dynamism from the plot, but the characters here are also woefully flat. The only interesting characters come from a PTSD-afflicted inmate (a tragic Rob Morgan) who is executed halfway through the movie, and the convict who lied under pressure to save his own skin (the always reliable Tim Blake Nelson). These characters demonstrate that even poor or sick people are victimized by law enforcement; injustice is, it could be argued, rather colorblind. Brie Larson and Jamie Foxx milk their slim and shallow roles for every second of screen time, along with Michael B. Jordan who only succeeds slightly more due to his physicality and burning intensity. If there is Black rage in this movie, it's in his eyes and gritted teeth in horrific if understated moments of unabashed racism.

Pain and Glory (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I'm not sure how many other films have so insightfully and compassionately championed art as a profession best achieved and maintained through personal pain. There's something incredibly powerful in seeing it in the realm of filmmaking through the medium of cinema, as we are effectively placed into the metafictional and reflexive nature of the art. We're subjected to a specific vision -- in this case, of an aging director still dealing with his lifelong pains -- of the world, and shown the ways in which his life and his art intertwine. And it features Antonio Banderas in his best role and performance in years.

Banderas, continuing his lengthy history of collaborations with writer-director Pedro Almodovar,  plays Salvador Mallo, a stand-in for Almodovar himself whose name contains all the letters of the real-life artist's mononym. The movie takes place later in the fictional director's career, and the inciting incident here is Mallo meeting with his former star, with whom he has some bad blood. Mallo thinks poorly of his star Alberto Crespo (and once-friend, seemingly) for his performance, which Mallo views as being negatively influenced by Crespo's heroin usage. But in order to deal with his own chronic pain and emotional/intellectual/professional uncertainty, Mallo decides to try heroin himself. It's the sort of consciously dangerous and irresponsible but hopefully fruitful sin that will allow him to create again. Or he will succumb. But this isn't a story about the dangers of artists using drugs, or of addicts unable to separate art from reality. If there is a difference.

Instead, it's a beautiful meditation on how art works in a life devoted to it. Though the film is structured in strict measure and sometimes feels a little forced, its deliberate moves are accessible and fairly easy to follow. Most notable in flashbacks that depict scenes from Mallo's childhood that include his mother (Penelope Cruz) and Eduardo, a young worker whom Mallo teaches to read and write and who probably sparked a sexual awakening in Mallo. These scenes are, in the end, revealed to be scenes from Mallo's newest film, one that embraces potentially painful memories and relishes in the art of personal experience. This isn't some Terrence Malick impressionistic arthouse experiment in biography that forces the audience to wonder if there are connections between scenes we see. It's a calculated, heartfelt, but stone-cold sober journey to artistic enlightenment with no small dose of heartfelt autobiography along the way.

Yet Almodovar and Banderas together stop the film from feeling overly sentimental or maudlin. Banderas is not doing an impression of his director. Mallo might be one of the most grounded, fully realized characters of an Almodovar feature: complex and utterly, impossibly believable. Despite the somewhat episodic narrative, the film's exuberant use of color and set decoration breathe a living, dynamic theatricality to the proceedings. And when, in the film's emotional climax, Mallo's past lover returns and we see that the seeds of drug dependency were planted in their relationship, things finally coalesce into an emotional toll. A question is raised as to whether the pain of troubled relationships ruined Mallo's art; Mallo's dismissive response reveals that without these pains, he would have never reached his own glory.

Gloria Bell (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

Apparently last year's Gloria Bell is a remake of writer-director Sebastian Lelio's 2013 film Gloria, to the point of large sections being almost shot-for-shot reproductions. While I can't speak to that -- since I haven't seen it -- it makes me wonder why he'd be so keen to reinvent such a basic story so soon afterward, especially since it was evidently well-received. But that question left my brain almost immediately once I started watching this movie. The story is what it is, but the glory here is in Lelio's leading actress.

Julianne Moore plays the title character, a middle-aged woman looking for some kind of life. A divorcee whose two adult children are contentedly living their own lives, she spends her time out of the office either visiting with family or going clubbing. She is a woman liberated, fearless and jubilant and fabulously alone, dancing and singing her heart out to empowering music from late classic rock. She loves her children, enjoys success in her insurance job, clearly takes good care of herself, and knows how to have a good time. Clearly not averse to finding love (or whatever), she meets with men while dancing; she's not desperate or lonely, but she does seem to want companionship and someone to share her joie de vivre with.

Her optimism and good humor make the movie move along briskly. It's a sort of "life goes on" narrative that avoids tragedy or even much sentimentality. If you don't take control of your life -- or at least consciously choose to enjoy the ride -- it will pass you by faster than you think. And Moore is pitch-perfect in a role seemingly tailored to her unique skill set. Nearly every other scene featuring Moore is an actor's workshop in technique, and we watch Moore go from laughter to tears (during a poetry reading) or from joy to fear to loneliness and back to joy. Because Gloria lives so incandescently in the present moment, Moore gives her all to each emotional and intellectual beat. It's a magnificent performance.

As in his previous features -- including last year's Disobedience and A Fantastic Woman the year before -- Lelio directs his performers well and his film even better. John Turturro here plays Arnold, an uncanny foil to Gloria in that he wants to take control of his life but cannot, due to his ex and dependent daughters. Arnold's awkward attitude, his sort of hounded and trapped role, give him freedom to act in unpleasant and thankless ways: Turturro, so often the funny man, here combines his eccentricities with genuine anxiety that feels lived-in and authentic, perhaps because they are mobilized by his romantic interests. It is, interestingly, with this character that Lelio seems least comfortable, and so his scenes carry a darker weight that I wasn't expecting from this movie. But Lelio blends them all into an inspiring slice of life that soars in leaps and bounds over melodramas of its ilk.

The Two Popes (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

I'm a sucker for non-evangelical religious drama, and The Two Popes is a chamber piece of intense didactic theology. Depicting the drama of Pope Benedict XVI resigning his position (the first resignation since the 15th century) and the rise of Pope Francis, the story makes ample use of two-person scenes of dialogue that plumb centuries of tradition and dogma. But the film also features surprising and fairly consistent humor that keeps the proceedings lively and accessible. After all, a staunchly conservative pope and a distinctly nontraditional Jesuit cardinal walking through a garden are bound to ruffle a few feathers when together -- especially each other's!

The central drama of this film takes place in 2012, as the church flounders amidst growing controversy. Vatican leaks is the scandal of the day, encompassing church blackmailing of gay priests and the international public outcry against clergy sexual abuse of children and cover-ups that stained the hands of even the highest orders, including Pope Benedict himself (Anthony Hopkins). Meanwhile, Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce) of Argentina is attempting to resign but being ignored by a besieged Vatican. Just as he prepares to personally resign to the Pope, Rome invites him for a meeting. When they meet, the pope distracts and redirects and blatantly ignores the cardinal's intentions, preferring instead to engage in all matters of personal history, beliefs, rites, and current events.

Of the film's numerous flashbacks, one in particular stands out: during a chance encounter in a Vatican bathroom, while the conclave decides the next pope after the death of John Paul II, Bergoglio and Ratzinger discuss ABBA in passing; not Abba, father, mind, but the Swedish pop musicians. It's this kind of unexpected, borderline irreverent spontaneity that makes Anthony McCarten's (The Theory of Everything, Darkest Hour, Bohemian Rhapsody) screenplay brilliant, along with his deep understanding of larger-than-life personalities and historical significance made fiercely relevant.

It helps, too, that the two lead performers have clearly come to play. Pryce takes the fore, as the film clearly is more interested in him, and by the end the picture is clearly that of a love letter to the current pope. Hopkins is delightfully droll, though I find myself wishing his character were not the "aged old man saying goodbye" and a bit more dynamic; there are psychological and, indeed, theological depths to be unearthed there, horrifying though they may be. But with kinetic performances, brisk editing, and sharp writing, the film skips right through its two-hour run time and feels far more invigorating than a movie about two old men has any right to. Plus, it's just a lot of fun.

In the Tall Grass (2019)

Score: 3.5 / 5

"Don't go into the long grass!" shouts Ajay as the group of mercenaries forge their way through the tropical plain of Isla Sorna, as we see the snake-like tails of velociraptors closing in. Oh wait, I'm sorry, that's the wrong movie. But I definitely quoted it aloud more than once while watching the latest Stephen King adaptation made for Netflix streaming, In the Tall Grass, based on King's novella of the same name.

In what can only be an idea that King wrote in the furious frenzy of a single sitting (with his son Joe), the story goes something like this: Two siblings stop their car on a long stretch of open field near an old church, hearing a boy calling for help. Becky is six months pregnant, and her brother Cal is perhaps a little too protective and attentive. The field appears to be made of tall grass, tall as sunflowers or full-grown corn, and the boy, Tobin, is nowhere in sight. Once they hear Tobin's mother, Natalie, calling out telling her son not to seek help, the siblings enter the grass, quickly becoming separated from each other and hopelessly lost. The four people seem able to hear each other, but their voices will be nearby and terribly distant in only a few seconds' time, even when nobody is moving.

The strangeness of the grass becomes terribly claustrophobic as day progresses toward night. It's hot until it's not, and the thick black mud underfoot makes moving quickly difficult. In one breathtakingly brilliant scene, Cal and Becky seem close enough to each other that they decide to jump in the air to locate each other: one jump reveals about ten or fifteen feet of separation, but the next -- almost immediately afterward -- sets them hundreds of feet apart. But this is no Goblet of Fire hedge maze; it's a sea of grass whose rip currents are swift and utterly undetectable.

Undetectable, that is, until Tobin's father Ross (Patrick Wilson) appears, suddenly, to Becky. He's charming and earnest and a little too creepy to follow, but he claims to know the way and poor Becky needs all the help she can get. Cal meets Tobin, who says over a dead bird that the grass doesn't move dead things. This is where the already weird but delightfully spooky movie takes a slight turn south, prioritizing half-baked pseudo-mythology over fleshing out the considerable present horror. It's fairly obvious, I think, even to those unfamiliar with the novella that this halfway point is where King's source material stops and the film's inventions begin.

I don't want to spoil it too much, but the film works best at its simplest. Director and writer Vincenzo Natali exercises some truly beautiful control over this story with his cinematographer Craig Wroblenski (television shows Fargo, Legion, and Zoo). The visual dynamic is such that I almost -- almost, mind -- wish there were no dialogue at all; the Hitchcockian prioritizing of visual storytelling here sometimes made me forget the characters were usually saying inane or annoying things. I made the mistake of first watching this movie on my phone while exercising, but I rectified it by watching on a larger screen a few days later. Natali directed some episodes of Hannibal and independent and obscure sci-fi/horror flicks that are really lovely, and his directorial abilities are perhaps at their best yet here. This movie demands to be seen on a larger scale. Too bad it won't prove quite narratively smart enough to garner more fans.

I think where the film falters is in the second half, when Natali clearly wanted to do more with the source material. He introduces issues of time loops and thematic concerns of fate and a cultish obsession with a large rock in the field that altogether start to make this movie feel as if it's meant to connect somehow with Children of the Corn. It gets a bit weird and hard to conceptualize, and I think that's because it becomes less relatable. We all understand the horror of being lost in an endless, sentient field, but when it becomes, literally, a sort of hellish chaos or malevolent limbo, we can't possibly feel as intimately connected. Natali might have served a more effective horror piece had he focused on the characters, their isolation, their fear responses, and the ways in which they succeed or fail to escape.

Little Monsters (2019)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Zombies, apparently, can be part of just about any genre, and this rom-com horror flick is proof that new ones can pop up just about anywhere. Little Monsters concerns an Australian kindergarten class on a field trip to a farm. While they are milking cows and taking wagon rides, zombies break out and overrun a nearby U.S. testing facility before slowly making their way across the fields. When they arrive, it's up to their teacher and chaperone to protect them and fight their way out.

As far as zombie movies go, this is slim fare. The beasts don't show up for almost half the movie and are less terrifying than on comparable Walking Dead-type works. Meandering and mumbling, though often dripping with gore, the zombies aren't terribly threatening; perhaps that's why their intended victims in this story are children. We might have wished for more hard-R zombie action and frights, but I think we're a bit zombied-out, culturally, and I'm more interested in what else zombies can do beyond shuffling and munching.

The joy of this film, though, lies in its inherent dark absurdity. We begin not with the horrors (meh) to come but with our unlikely hero. Washed-up heavy metal musician Dave (Alexander England) just broke up with his girlfriend, and after a twenty-something-minute introduction, is living with his sister and taking his nephew to school. Once he spots Miss Caroline, the teacher, he's smitten and looks for any excuse to be in her presence, even volunteering to chaperone the class's upcoming field trip. And rightfully so: Miss Caroline is played by none other than Lupita Nyong'o, whose ukulele-playing joie de vivre as a teacher is infectious and wickedly funny.

Add Josh Gad as the bonkers, foul-mouthed, MILF-sex addict kids' television personality, and you get a bizarre movie that will have you laughing almost as much as rolling your eyes. It's a delightful, fresh, and also oddly inert movie that showcases Lupita jumping headlong into a bloody fight with hungry corpses. I wish the film was as hard-R in its violent, genre content as it is with its humor: Gad's antics notwithstanding, the movie tends to look away right when there could be a really effective scare. But, since the move's major motif seems to be Lupita singing Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" while she plays her instrument, I don't think scares was ever the focus.

Marriage Story (2019)

Score: 2.5 / 5

In a beautiful opening sequence, each of the two main characters delivers a voice-over reading of letters they've written about their spouse. The things they're passionate about, how they parent their son, their work ethic, sense of humor, personal strength, endearing quirks: the things they love about each other. The recitation is dramatized in montage fashion, revealing writer-director Noah Baumbach's absolute control over these characters and his depth of understanding of who they are. Rarely are romantic dramas populated by such specific, realistic characters; much less ones that take on hot-topic issues like divorce and child custody.

Make no mistake, Marriage Story is about marriage; it's just not about the lead into one. Rather, it concerns the dissolution of marriage, something we commonly consider to be a failure or a culmination of failures. Baumbach would have us believe that ending a marriage is in fact not a failure in itself, and he's right. His carefully articulated screenplay allows for no villains, no great explosive "event" that led to this scenario. Helpful to this end are the lead actors-- Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver -- who are striking in performances that carry the film. It's a painstakingly plotted course through divorce proceedings that demonstrate the ways in which people naturally grow apart that ultimately says, "It's okay to step away."

That's not to say things don't get ugly. The legal part of this divorce exacerbates their already emotional decision to separate. Enter Alan Alda and Laura Dern as disillusioned divorce lawyers who help the couple scrape for everything they deserve but don't really want anymore, and the things they want but perhaps don't deserve. Dern is especially delicious, turning magnificently in her few scenes; one in particular features her ranting about the cruelty of gender inequality in divorce proceedings. And while the case is utterly brilliant, I just didn't much like the movie.

It's shockingly funny, emotionally brutal, and intellectually stimulating. It's also fiercely annoying. As a matter of pure personal taste, I don't much care for "slice of life" movies that so desperately try to recreate realism on screen. I had the same problem with Terms of Endearment, among others. I don't want to see a movie about normal people doing normal -- if awful -- things. That's when it stops being art to me. Even some sitcoms and soap operas are more artful than this sort of doldrums. Further, I couldn't help but feel constantly irritated at these people. Literally all of their problems could have been solved if they just communicated better. They are so incapable of being honest and open and decent with each other, I started to feel that they deserve everything that happens to them, even more than Oedipus deserved his mess of a life. Tragic flaws are only tragic when the things you do to overcome or rectify them fail; the characters in Marriage Story aren't tragic, they're pathetic.

1917 (2019)

Score: 5 / 5

My friend and I, after seeing 1917, were musing on comparable war films. I tend to inexplicably prefer the genre, and even I had trouble recalling other WWI movies. I guess there's War Horse, and of course All Quiet on the Western Front; later I remembered A Farewell to Arms and Kubrick's Paths of Glory. But there aren't a lot, especially when compared to the perennial WWII, Vietnam, and Iraq war movies. As we considered why, we came up with two solid answers: first, Americans weren't nearly as involved in that war (Wilson was determined to remain neutral until the Lusitania sank, and US troops were deployed in only the last year of the four-year conflict), and it was a particularly brutal fight.

The brutality and isolation of WWI take central focus in Sam Mendes's vision of trench warfare, which he and cinematographer Roger Deakins capture in two individual, almost unbroken shots. At least, so it's meant to appear, as Hitchcock and Inarritu have notably done before. Initially, I expected that this single-shot approach would prove the unbelievable technical achievements of these artists; it does. Then I suspected that this technique would pull us into the story with immersive and devastating results; it does. Finally, I realized that this feature was not so much a technical gimmick as it was a theatrical and artistic expression of integrity. This is one of the rare stories in which the expense of time is in fact deadly -- the tagline of some ads reads "Time is the enemy" -- and so as the bloody fighting increases in intensity, so does the thematic anxiety we feel as we watch.

The German army has withdrawn from a section of the Western Front. The British and French soldiers are on a watchful rest, but only just. Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman) and Schofield (George MacKay), two young soldiers, are woken and ordered to travel to another battalion, across enemy lines, to prevent their attack. The German retreat is a ruse, and the British attack will result in thousands of their own casualties, including Blake's brother (Richard Madden). Blake and Schofield embark, first exiting their own trench to immediately see, probably for the first time, the horrific hell on earth that is the recently deserted battlefield. Making their way through the muddy, bloody no-man's land and into the deserted German trenches is a nail-biting exercise in tension. And it's just the first step.

Because of the immediacy and immersion of the film, it often feels like a sort of arthouse video game, where you play a character picking his way across various battlefields, including tunnels, trenches, rivers, forests, fields, abandoned towns. The journey and action are punctuated by terrifying open-world dangers, especially gunfire that tends to erupt when least expected from shooters we never see. Occasional reprieves take the form of lengthy bits of exposition-heavy dialogue, either between the two young men or various commanding officers, including Colin Firth, Andrew Scott, Mark Strong, and Benedict Cumberbatch. The centerpiece, though, is a masterwork of light, sound, speed, and acting as Schofield sprints through a ruined town with Germans hunting him in the dark. Flares flying overhead turn the battlefront into a nightmarish ghost-town where shadows move and nothing is as it seems.

In what quickly becomes a sort of odyssey through war-torn northern France, the two young men are forced to deal with booby traps, enemy soldiers, friendly fire, dehydration, airplane attacks, rats, barbed wire, tunnel collapses, and hundreds of dead bodies. Not long after they initially enter no-man's land, Schofield cuts his hand on barbed wire and then, spooked and hiding, accidentally plunges his hand into a festering corpse's bowels. It's disgusting, and he'll probably lose that hand within a week, but it's just the beginning of the horrors to come. The action is relatively slow-paced, but so much detail and emotion is built into every minute that you still feel like things are flying along. In fact, lengthy sections feel not unlike Apocalypse Now in that, despite our protagonists' best efforts to find and deliver information, the battlefield is strewn with soldiers who have effectively lost their minds. Nobody knows where the command is, where the front is, who is a threat and who is a friend, or even how to function as a normal person. Madness is the cost these men pay to serve in war, if not their limbs or lives.

Little Women (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

The pleasant surprise of the year for me is Greta Gerwig's second directorial outing, a new adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. I liked Lady Bird, her debut film, well enough to recognize a rising auteur with wit, talent, and gumption. But her newest film demonstrates exceptional brilliance in both adapting the story and telling it -- yet again, as if we really needed it -- with stunning relevance and ingenuity. Even knowing the story and characters well won't stop you from enjoying this iteration as if it were all brand new.

Gerwig's depth of knowledge about the source material allows her to do some truly amazing work here, cutting up the narrative and dividing it into parallel acts that run concurrently. As we flip back and forth in time, brilliant new insights and ironies burst into bloom before us that were always there in the novel but never as clear. Gerwig's control informs the tone as well: her lived-in familiarity with the material allows her to play with strong senses of memory and nostalgia and hope and anxiety that are simply not as potent in the traditional linear narrative. Specifically, early sequences that juxtapose Laurie (Timothee Chalamet) and the sisters growing up with scenes of Laurie in his post-Jo European adventures showcase the dynamic ways these characters change over only seven (?) years. Later, in the film's climax, we get the two bouts of Beth's illness, bringing questions of fate into thematic discussion.

These kinds of moves make this Little Women feel rejuvenated while also keenly aware of its lasting, timeless impact as a core cultural work of art. It becomes at once accessible to newcomers while reviving interest and fascination in old fans. It helps, too, that the performers are all eminently likable and give stunning performances, perhaps nowhere more than in Florence Pugh's stunning delivery of Amy, whose dramatic shifts can sometimes appear shrewish but here feel grounded and powerful as a force of willful, profoundly human womanhood -- a force of nature, in fact. Saoirse Ronan brings her typical brilliance and fury to Jo but underscores it with potent unspoken desire. Laura Dern plays Marmee perhaps the best I've seen, though the film favors her character less than the four daughters. And then there's the costumes, which are uniformly breathtaking, works of pristine and visionary art.

The finale, though, is Gerwig's crowning glory in making this adaptation relevant and important. The ending here lies solely with Ronan's Jo, flustered and winded but absolutely triumphant as she watches her novel being printed. Once the finished copy is in her hands, I totally lost my composure. Having refused to compromise her worth -- though she does subtly compromise her artistic vision -- Jo is usually seen as a stand-in for Alcott herself, who was forced to change the ending of her novel into one that has its female protagonist married by the end. Throughout Gerwig's vision, we're never quite sure how in love Jo is with her intellectual equal and romantic gentleman caller, but by the end Jo is quite on her own. Sure, Friedrich is with her in the final scene, but they are not identified as partners in any way except as facilitators of Jo's new school, opened in Aunt March's house. It's an inspiring ending that smacks of artistic and historic integrity in ways we simply haven't seen yet from this story.

Skin (2019)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Rarely are we given a chance to see true evil change for the better. I don't mean just villainous characters in stories who "see the error of their ways" and are punished, and I don't mean the recent surge of antihero-centered films and shows. I can't think of many other films than last year's Skin that show more clearly that genuine, life-altering change is a tough choice to make, but one that can save lives. And in an era when Nazis and Klansmen are taking to the streets again, few stories are more timely or important than those that reveal the nature of this evil and how we can fight it.

Here we become witness to the real-life story of Bryon Widner (played by a brilliant Jamie Bell), an ex-white-power-skinhead. The main thrust of the story depicts Widner's life in Indiana as a backwoods, almost punk-goth member of a fringe organization devoted to worshipping whiteness. Early, we see his parents (Vera Farmiga and Bill Camp) leading a quasi-religious group of these neo-Nazis in praising their Norse gods and planning to claim a seat in government. They want, explicitly, to "just make them leave," referring to black people and Asians and other minorities they use different words for. It's a chilling scene, especially with the "send her back" chants we heard this year at Trump's rallies still ringing in our ears.

Widner becomes somewhat disillusioned with his gang, but this is where the film is especially interesting. The screenplay and direction never allow the story to enter familiar territory. It's shot mostly handheld with special attention to the grunge and grit of real life. Never sentimental, it churns on from disturbing scene to disturbing scene, not really even allowing us the opportunity to like Widner. Probably because he's just not a good person. We don't need to believe there is a nugget of humanity in there, because really there isn't at this point. When, however, he meets a nice ex-Nazi girl (Danielle Macdonald) and her kids, love for them begins to mobilize his desire to change. This could be a nasty, sickly sweet portrayal of the transformative power of love, but thankfully the film has too much on its mind for that.

American History X this is not. We aren't really allowed into Widner's head, to understand better how and why he changes, or even how and why he was a white supremacist in the first place. That seems to be largely rooted in his brainwashed upbringing, as Widner's parents are essentially cult leaders who emotionally manipulate their flock, inciting violence and paranoia and indignation. And while his desire to change becomes clear, it's never felt. Jamie Bell is almost unrecognizable here, and his performance is muscular and brutal, perhaps nowhere more so than in the shocking tenderness and affection he shows to the young girls who have entered his life.

And while the title may make you think of the film's anticipated morals regarding the colors of one's skin versus the color of one's soul, it most concretely concerns Widner's heavily tattooed skin, which flash-forwards show us he gets surgically removed in excruciatingly painful operations over the course of 18 months. It's a beautiful and agonizing play on the Romantic notion that inherent evil manifests itself in nature, and the pains to which we might go to alter that. It also reveals a fascinating irony in that someone who so loved his own white skin would cover so much of it with dark pigmentation and scarring. So while the film doesn't quite fully flesh out its characters and give us "answers", I'm not sure there really are any satisfactory answers as to why certain kinds of people can be so evil. Skin instead gives us a complex real-life story to consider from a refreshingly antisentimental perspective.

Uncut Gems (2019)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Easily the most unpleasant film of the year, Uncut Gems also manages to be aggressively annoying while telling a story that ultimately means nothing.

We begin with an Exorcist-like prologue of a rare black opal discovered in a collapsed mine in Ethiopia. Why? It's hard to say, other than to create a mythic feel for the opening of a movie titled after the shiny rock. The myth continues to build as the camera dives into the gem and we are taken on a roller coaster ride through ethereal color wheels and kaleidoscopic nebulae until we realize we are inside a human colon. Specifically, Adam Sandler's colon. It's a nasty way to start a movie, but it suggests lots of the nastiness to come. If the treasure is such an innate part of this character that it is figuratively inside his colon, the dragon-sickness born of greed soon becomes the defining characteristic of our protagonist.

Speaking of which, Adam Sandler plays Howard Ratner, a veritable rat obsessed with money and material things. He is a Jewish-American jeweler in Manhattan who spends his money gambling and his time jabbering about all kinds of things. In fact, the whole movie attempts to take us into his headspace, and so it is immediately apparent that his life is a cacophonous circus: chaos erupts every time he opens his mouth, both due to his ungodly squawking and his impressive tendency to curse and lie and flatter and plead all at the same time. He's an oily, overweight wreck of a man who thinks he's on top of the world, despite the sizable debts he's accrued due to his addictions. He's also a disgusting man who has a gorgeous wife (Idina Menzel) he ignores in favor of his employee (Julia Fox).

Ratner makes many mistakes in this movie, so much that the film could be trying to turn itself into a classic tragedy, but he is so endlessly unlikable that I found myself wishing for the worst to happen to him. And of course it does. the two-and-a-quarter hour runtime, then, is a deadly slow slog toward the gruesome inevitable, punctuated only by three or so delicious scenes with Menzel, who absolutely and articulately detests her lying, cheating husband. Apart from these comparatively quiet moments, the movie blurs into lengthy "chase" scenes of us chasing Howard around the city; he's constantly on the move, constantly blurting out obscenities and trivialities, and we get the feeling that the stress and panic are totally self-induced because his addiction is to danger and high-speed chaos, not just money itself.

Apart from Menzel, the only thing I liked about this movie is its cinematography from Darius Khondji. It's not terribly pleasant -- much like the story and characters -- but it heightens the seedy, grainy, and somewhat alluring sparkle of Ratner's world. It's a similarly sickly gleam to something in a hospital or cell phone store, with a greenish-blue hue that shines a little too much. It's a fascinating approach and Khondji is perfectly in sync with Sandler's kinetic frenzy. Too bad the screenplay, direction, and acting are so incredibly off-putting -- horrible people doing horrible things to each other, all for the love and misuse of money -- that I wanted to remove my face rather than finish watching.

The Grudge (2020)

Score: 3 / 5

If these walls could talk, they'd say all kinds of crazy stuff. That's the only message I've interpreted behind the Grudge franchise, which is the story of a haunted Japanese house. The iconic image of a pallid, skinny ghost with long, dripping black hair obscuring its face is chilling enough for some people, but its essence is what scares me. It's a vengeful spirit, created from a curse that spawns wherever someone dies badly, "in the grip of a powerful rage." The curse is, of course, the supernatural grudge of the title. Far from the divine justice of a Western deity, this curse metes out its cruel justice on those who stumble upon it: housed in its proximal location, it spiritually rots the house in question and manifests itself in various ways over time, resulting in a series of other bad deaths.

While I thought this newest installment of the franchise would be a sort of reboot or remake of the original Ju-On, it is in fact a sort of spin-off sequel. As it takes place in the US, I imagine the filmmakers conceptually see it as parallel to the regular sequels of the Grudge story. The curse of the house in Tokyo haunted by Kayako in the original is unwittingly transported to America by a live-in nurse who returns home. Disturbed by the horrors she witnessed, she is increasingly driven mad by the curse that has clung to her until she kills her family and herself. Then their ghosts haunt the next inhabitants of the house.

Here we don't see Kayako herself except at the beginning -- at least I don't think so, though some of the ghosts look similar enough and croak just like that bad bitch -- but that's okay because we get a host of new spooks to savor. After the nurse's family, we get John Cho and Betty Gilpin, sad because their baby is due to be born with a bad disease (ALD, which I had to Google during the film and still don't understand entirely). After John Cho visits the house and is attacked by its former inhabitants, he returns home to his pregnant wife and kills her and then himself; it seems he is possessed by the curse. Not long after, elderly couple Lin Shaye and Frankie Faison move in, dealing with dementia and terminal illness. Tryin to cope with his own emotional turmoil, Frankie calls Jacki Weaver in to help his wife commit suicide and end their suffering. And, as you might imagine, the ghosts attack them too.

I've never been much of a fan of the few J-Horror entries I've seen. It's mostly a matter of personal taste, as the vengeful ghost story just isn't something I find especially disturbing; at least, not when it involves a wet, gaunt specter or a zombified poltergeist. In this franchise specifically, while I really like the idea of dying badly causing a house curse, I've found the mythology a little to vague and the rules too flexible. This new installment, for example, exists purely as a result of some rules that bend its own premise: the curse of the Tokyo house haunted by Kayako in the original gets transported (or perhaps spreads?) to America, having used a live-in nurse as the unwitting courier. Later, as the stories of the new haunted house take form, we see that the ghosts follow their victims outside the house walls but only sometimes. The lack of consistency here is troubling, both in terms of innate plot holes and being unpredictably scary.

Its heavy reliance on jump-scares will no doubt earn it few fans, but I remained consistently disturbed by several elements of this Grudge that endeared me to it more than to any others in its franchise. It, like the original, works wonders with its nonlinear storytelling, but here it makes a strong case for a non-Western understanding of time and emotional intelligence. The dialogue itself, in one crucial scene, supports the narrative organization, which is brilliant. It also is the first Grudge I've seen to be truly, deeply ugly in its theme and character. Others have featured unhappy people, I suppose, but each new family in this film is dealing with staple hot-topic issues that are altogether unpleasant. Similarly, they all meet surprisingly violent and graphic deaths that we fully see on screen. We see bodies splatter multiple times, and frankly I just wasn't ready for it after all the ghost-faces popping out and gloomy, moody, slow camera machinations. After seeing these brief moments, I totally understood why these ghosts are upset.

But none more so than Andrea Riseborough and Demian Bichir, whose unlikely pairing here serves as a knockout audition for the next season of True Detective. They are both so miserable it's hard to entirely root for them, because we know they're past the point of no return. Paired together in the precinct, Andrea begins to investigate the house, perhaps to distract herself from her husband's recent death. Demian discourages this, as he lost his former partner to a manic obsession with the house and its curse that led to his near-suicide and insanity. And while no characters in this movie are around long enough for a dynamic arc, Andrea suitably carries the heart of the story right up to the end, when she's caught in a new haunted house and, I think, royally fucked by the curse she thought she destroyed.

Late Night (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

Often when we label something as a feel-good movie, we mean that it doesn't really matter in terms of art but manages to be calmly entertaining. Late Night is a true feel-good movie though, one that retains its artistic integrity while wearing its warm heart of gold on its sleeve. Its infectious good sense of purpose and humor works well with its surprisingly subversive social commentary, making the film critically important but in a pleasant sort of way. If every comedy were this earnest, I'd watch a lot more.

Emma Thompson stars as Katherine Newbury, the late night talk show queen. Right off the bat, the movie takes a swing at the male-dominated primetime lineup with her presence, and it just gets richer from here. Her show, we learn, is suffering in ratings and the network is planning to replace her. Desperate for help, she allows the hire of one Molly Patel (Mindy Kaling) who has almost no experience but is a rare Indian-American woman in a career of almost exclusively white men. Though her jokes themselves don't always work, her presence and perspective changes the environment and revamps the show.

It's not terribly complex as a narrative, nor is it terribly insightful. Instead, it streamlines itself and simplifies its story in an effort to -- I think successfully -- advocate for much-needed change of personnel in certain workplaces. Especially entertainment. While this movie seems to be coming on the decline of intense scrutiny on the ethnic and gender makeup of the AMPAS and other major entertainment clubs, it certainly showcases the incredible power of affirmative action in very real ways. In one particularly awesome scene, Molly tries to shame Katherine for employing her as a "diversity hire"; Katherine immediately confirms this. Of course she is a diversity hire. And now it's her time to shine in a realm she would otherwise have no access to.

And shine she does in several scenes with lazy, irritable, and egotistical white men she now can call coworkers. There's the head monologue writer who is a "legacy hire", the pretty but sleazy guy, the jealous and probably closeted gay guy, the overweight joke machine guy, and their disillusioned but wise and wisecracking boss Denis O'Hare. Their banter back and forth is a lot of fun, but nowhere near the wit and charm of the two leading ladies together. Thompson's dragon lady isn't as intense as Meryl Streep's Devil Wears Prada big bad, but she is firmly grounded and showcases her range in a series of detailed, poignant scenes that challenge our expectations of her brand.

Kaling is an unsung hero here, in a relatively thankless role meant to catalyze the story. But she brings a delightful wide-eyes naivety to the proceedings that works well with her character. Molly, a quality control specialist in a chemical plant, has no idea what she's getting into in the backstabbing world of late night entertainment. She brings cupcakes to work on her first day and recites Yeats poems as her mantra. Unlike other movies of its ilk, Late Night does not allow its lead character to be crushed before she is rebuilt; she maintains a course of growth and even some disillusionment, but she does not bow to the bullies around her and does not suffer unduly while in her out-of-place position. And thanks to screenwriter Kaling herself for that, who does not see a villain in this story. Instead, she empowers even the bullies (who are not really bullies, but rather products of a history of limited perspective) to become better people along with her protagonist. We could all use some of this infectious positivity.

Official Secrets (2019)

Score: 4 / 5

I'm a sucker for this kind of genre-inclusive thriller that fills space between politics, legality, courtrooms, history, war (or, really, any hot topic), and an all-star cast. Just this year we've had several, from the CIA Torture Report to the DuPont chemical poisoning, and though we don't really have a unique name for this genre, I'm always happy to dive in. Gavin Hood's addition to this genre, Official Secrets, isn't as dazzling as others this year, and feels more workmanly than cinematic, but manages to remain engaging, thrilling, and as entertaining as you could hope for.

This time, we jump across the pond to learn about -- if we don't already know -- Katharine Gun, the British whistleblower who leaked "official secrets" to the press. Though whistleblowing in the age of Edward Snowden and the much-publicized whistleblower who paved the way to President Trump's impeachment might seem glamorous and explicit, Gun's case is remarkably quiet. In the course of her job -- translating British intelligence memos from Mandarin to English -- she discovered an illegal attempt by US intelligence to spy on several UN officials in an attempt to predict and influence their decision to invade Iraq in 2003. She turned herself in rather shortly after her leak, and after some intense scrutiny leading up to her trial, the prosecution suddenly dropped the case with no explicit reason.

The reason, of course, was that the government was punishing someone for trying to stop an internationally illegal war of aggression and a trial would have uncovered highly embarrassing information from the US, Britain, and presumably other major powers. To save face, keep certain information secret, and ensure reputations were maintained, the prosecution no doubt bowed to pressures internal and external, choosing to hide behind a facade of "national security" as their defense. Infuriating as the story is, it's also a remarkably uncinematic one, because the buildup leads to an anti-climax, where Gun, on display during her defense, is suddenly and unexpectedly told she is free to leave after the prosecution fails to submit any evidence.

Much like The Report and Dark Waters this year, truth is strange but often deeply unjust, and therefore unsatisfying. Nothing big happens as a result of this mess. The main character spends so much time, effort, and anxiety to vindicate herself and bring the system to account for its criminality, and succeeds only to a small extent. The institution still stands, the systems remain in place, and we're left with the sinking feeling that all this will happen again. And while Official Secrets doesn't feature as intense or cohesive a story as others of its ilk this year, it features a stripped-down Keira Knightley doing her usual fabulous thing among a stellar cast and some sharp timely dialogue. At one point early on she screams at Tony Blair on the television, "Just because you're Prime Minister doesn't mean you get to make up your own facts!" I wasn't sure if I should laugh or cry.

The Report (2019)

Score: 4.5 / 5

One of the most riveting, scathing movies of 2019 came to us courtesy of Amazon Studios, and it has made its way up my favorites from the year. It's the sort of unlikely movie that captured my attention almost instantly and became so intense and thrilling that by the end I felt that no time had passed, while feeling physically and mentally exhausted.

Writer and director Scott Z. Burns (Pu-239 is his only other directorial credit, though he has written several paranoid thrillers including Contagion and Side Effects) here manages to do the near impossible. He has crafted a story that spans over 13 years that unearths countless secrets, involves a huge cast of characters based on real people, and concerns a 6700-page report. His main character, the primary writer of the titular report, is obsessive and apparently introverted, and in his introduction of himself refers to himself as being an outsider and not a good partner. The film takes place in lots of offices, governmental archives, and black sites, all of which induce claustrophobia and a loss of the sense of time passing. None of these are innately cinematic. In fact, a project like this seems nearly unfilmable. But Burns makes this not only cinematic but entertaining, challenging, and beautiful.

The report in question is sometimes crudely known as "the Torture Report," an enormous 2012 document meant to uncover the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program and specifically their use of torture on prisoners. We are subjected to occasional -- and intensely graphic -- flashbacks that dramatize many of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used on prisoners of war and suspected terrorists, notably Abu Zubaydah. These are jarring and difficult to watch, but as the film's more (and more extensive) didactic scenes grow more intense, we realize the calm ways people in business suits discuss torture are as brutal as those actually conducting waterboarding.

The screenplay is primarily one-sided in its focus on the Senate Intelligence Committee's investigators in the same way that All the President's Men is one-sided in its approach to Watergate or Spotlight is one-sided in its journalistic approach to the Catholic pedophile scandals. Which is to say, it's one-sided because there is only one side to this issue. While it does paint in broad strokes the Republicans who defend the use of torture and the CIA officials trying to save their own asses, its facts as to who knew what information at what time and supported what actions is all correct, as far as I can tell. It champions Senators Feinstein and McCain not because of any personal traits or their partisanship but because they chose to hold the CIA accountable for international criminality.

But the screenplay has other magnificent features, too, in the realm of entertainment. It's conscious of its place in the genre of...whatever this genre is? Legal thriller, historical crime drama, investigative journalism meets politics, courtroom of law? Its camera and editing sometimes recall The West Wing or House of Cards. Its characters feel ripped from C-SPAN in hyperdramatic moments that wouldn't be out of place in a courtroom drama. Its righteous sense of purpose stands in stark contrast to another film it directly references, Zero Dark Thirty, which boasts, I'd argue, thematic inscrutability. And it gives its incredible cast (including Ted Levine, Tim Blake Nelson, Corey Stoll, Maura Tierney, and Jon Hamm) a lot of juicy material that so easily could have been chokingly dry. Even Adam Driver, whose performances usually underwhelm me, here gives what may be his best work in a thankless, difficult leading role. But Annette Bening steals the show here, though her screen time is limited.

It's surprising to me, having viewed it now three times, how carefully the film straddles its own thematic ambiguity. I mean, obviously it's anti-torture, but it tries hard to come across as earnest and realistic. It doesn't sugarcoat the fact that no CIA officials have been reprimanded, disciplined, charged, or even fired as a result of their use of torture or their attempts to cover it up. But it doesn't tonally feel like an indictment of the agency, or of the government as a whole (an Eastwood film would have that feeling); instead, it turns its heroes into patriots. Near the end, Senator Feinstein praises the U.S. for being one of the few countries that would approve a document revealing such dark stains on national integrity. This film embraces the gray area in which it lives while advocating for us all to hold our authorities accountable, a remarkably mature and hopeful message as we head into an election year.