Movies of 2019

2019 and the Movies.

 Hard to draw any conclusion from the movies I saw (for the first time) in 2019. The appearance of TV series episodes is a new development and Streaming is asserting. The most striking - and welcome - pattern is diversity, a range of sources and subject matter which the local scene is falling behind.

 

Pitt, De Caprio & Tarantino : Once Upon a Time...

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD may be the best thing we get from Quentin Tarantino. Conflating the decline of Studio Hollywood with the Manson murders was a brilliant idea and the performances and production are remarkable. This one still seems to be the big picture everywhere in the world. 

MARRIAGE STORY was Netflix giving Noah Baumbach room to lay out his view of a destructive American society at the length he needed, not too far away from SORRY WE MISSED YOU, maybe Ken Loach's best work. His Cathy Come Home formula of piling all the real life horrors into one story still grabs attention. 

 PARIS SONG (Amre Jeff Vespa) has its 1930s Kazakh lead meeting GeorgeGershwin & Irving Berlin in Paris with Abbie Cornish near stealing the show doing Flaming Youth. LAZZARO FELICE (My Bitter Land, Happy as Lazzaro) is Alice Rohrwacher mixing grim reality and fantasy in the best Miracle in Milan tradition. PETERLOO's historical reconstruction is an impressive change of pace for Mike Leigh.  Jonathan Levine's LONG SHOT shows the old Hollywood feel good mix of rom com and topical can still be a grabber - go Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen. 

ARTICLE 15 (Anubhav Sinha) gets into corruption and the caste system in India with extraordinary force. How many more like this are out there?

FLASKEPOST FRA P (A Conspiracy of Faith) shows the impact  Hans Petter  Moland  can squeeze out of a Department Q feature episode.

 

 

Rainy Day in NY : Chalamet, Gomez & Allen.

 A RAINY DAY IN NEW YORK is Woody Allen rising above it all back on his Manhattan home ground. WERK OHNE AUTOR (Never Look Away) has Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck giving the Nazi's another Art Movie serve. NARARERU (Flowing 1956) is possibly Mikio Naruse's best film finally catching up with me while The NARROW TRAIL (Lambert Hillyer, William S. Hart 1916) has the same function for Hart. LA TORTUE ROUGE  (The Red Turtle Michael Dudok de Wit) makes a quite hallucinatory entry in the animation stakes. PROMISE ME gets Oz onto the chart with Rachel Perkins' Redfern Now feature episode.

 UNDER THE SILVER LAKE (David Robert Mitchell) gives La La Land noir a welcome innings. JOJO RABBIT (Taika Waititi) defies all rules and socks it to fundamentalists. ANAGA APARA JOL  (The Road to Mother Akan Satayev) is the Kazakhs back again with a historical epic.  UND DER ZUKUNFT ZUGERWANT (Sealed Lips  Bernd Böhlich) blows the Evil Empire another raspberry.  COME DIO COMANDA (As God Commands Gabriele Salvatores 2008) reverses our expectations of its racist dad. For BACURAU (Nighthawk Juliano Dornelles, Kleber Mendonça Filho), think a Brazilian Hounds of Zaroff. BOOKSMART (Olivia Wilde) American Graffiti on speed. GISAENGCHUNG (Parasite)  Joon-ho Bong's flavor of the month, jokey re-work of Les Felines. WHAT SHE SAID - Gary Garver's Pauline Kael doc.

A Conspiracy of Faith - Fares & Kass