Movies for Music Lovers: 2019 Edition

Aisling Franciosi in The Nightingale / IFC

Click here for the 2018 edition.

2019 was a good year for film. In most other respects--personally, politically, professionally--it wasn't the best. But it wasn't all bad. There were plenty of bright spots; it's just that the lows were so low, I've had trouble appreciating the highs. I'm working on it. The movies helped. They always do.

Links lead to my reviews for Seattle Film Blog, The Stranger, and City Pages. My reviews for Video Librarian live behind a paywall. Sadly, Video Librarian's founder retired this year and put the magazine to bed. Then, at the last minute, he found a buyer for the website, so I'll continue to contribute in 2020. Grateful for the 11 years of work he sent my way--timely payment, too. With the advent of streaming, video-reviewing gigs aren't as plentiful as they once were, but the need for reviews of non- and post-theatrical films remains.

Top 10
1. The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent)
2. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)
3. The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg)
4. Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach)
5. Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safdie)
6. Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino)
7. Parasite (Bong Joon-ho)
8. Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar)
9. Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria)
10. First Love (Miike Takashi)

Note: Happy to see my piece about women + music in Tarantino's films in City Pages' roundup of the year's best music stories. ICYMI, I reviewed the new QT documentary here.   

Strickland does it again / A24

Runners-up
11. In Fabric (Peter Strickland)
12. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma)
13. Synonyms (Nadav Lapid)
14. Asako I & 2 (Ryûsuke Hamaguchi)
15. A Bread Factory (Patrick Wang)
16. Transit (Christian Petzold)
17. Fighting With My Family (Stephen Merchant)
18. Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)
19. Little Women (Greta Gerwig)
20. Charlie Says (Mary Harron)

Note: Fighting With My Family was the best Florence Pugh film of the year. 

21. Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher)
23. Destroyer (Karyn Kusama)
24. Diane (Kent Jones)
25. Atlantics (Mati Diop)
26. Us (Jordan Peele)
27. Gloria Bell (Sebastián Lelio)
28. Knives Out (Rian Johnson)
29. The Report (Scott Z. Burns)
30. Clemency (Chinonye Chukwu)
31. Dark Waters (Todd Haynes)
32. The Farewell (Lulu Wang)
33. Koko-Di, Koko-Da (Johannes Nyholm)
34. Booksmart (Olivia Wilde)
35. The Dead Don't Die (Jim Jarmusch)
36. Capernaum (Nadine Labaki)
37. Driveways (Andrew Ahn)
38. Dolemite Is My Name (Craig Brewer)
39. Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry)
40. Monos (Alejandro Landes)

Also worthy of note: Birth on the Border, Bombshell, Burning Cane, Carmen y Lola, Cold War (2018), Crystal Swan, Depraved, High Flying Bird, High Life, Invest in Failure (2018), Invisible Life, Joker, Jojo Rabbit, Just Mercy, Knife+Heart, Knives and Skin, La Flor, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Les Misérables, Let the Corpses Tan (2018), Luce, Nailed It: Vietnamese & the Nail Industry, Marceline. A Woman. A Century, Non-Fiction, Olancho, Richard Jewell, Sex Weather, Sollers Point, The Sound of Silence, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018), Swinging Safari, A Thousand Girls Like Me, Tomorrow Never Knows, Waves, and Wild Rose.

American Factory worker / Higher Ground-Netflix

Top Documentaries
1. American Factory (Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar)
2. Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller)
3. The Apollo (Robert Ross Williams)
4. Amazing Grace (Sydney Pollack and Alan Elliot)
5. Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool (Stanley Nelson)
6. Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story (Martin Scorsese)
7. Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love (Nick Broomfield)
8. Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground (Chuck Smith)
9. You Don't Nomi (Jeffrey McHale)
10. Honeyland (Tamara Kotevska and Ljubo Stefanov)

Note: Of all the films I reviewed in 2019, Barbara Rubin and the Exploding NY Underground is the only one with a 100% T-Meter score. Also, Birth of the Cool will be coming to American Masters in 2020. I wrote a blurb about it for KCTS 9's e-newsletter. 

Doc Runners-up
11. The Edge of Democracy (Petra Costa)
12. Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman)
13. Roll Red Roll (Nancy Schwartzman)
14. Memory: The Origins of Alien (Alexandre O. Philippe)
15. Storm in My Heart (Mark Cousins)
16. Making Waves: The Art of Cinematic Sound (Midge Costin)
17. On Her Shoulders (Alexandria Bombach)
18. The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman (Rosine Mbakam)
19. To Die in the Desert (Marta Ferrer)
20. Fyre: The Party That Never Was (Chris Smith)

Matt Baume introduces You Don't Nomi at NWFF

Missed or haven't seen yet: The Beach Bum, By the Grace of God, Cats, The Case of Hana and Alice, The Cave, David Crosby: Remember My Name, An Elephant Sitting Still, I Lost My Body, Leaving Neverland, Little Woods, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Love, Antosha, Lynch: A History, Maiden, Missing Link, The Mustang, One Child Nation, Peterloo, Raise Hell: The Life & Times of Molly Ivins, Sword of Trust, Tell Me Who I Am, The Third Wife, Toy Story 4, Weathering With You, What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire, and Wrestle.

Yes, I did see: A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, Greta, Honey Boy, Judy, The Lighthouse, Midsommar, and Under the Silver Lake.



Endnote: I continue to watch less TV than I once did. Last year, I said I looked forward to catching up with Atlanta, Barry, Better Call Saul, Sharp Objects, and the final seasons of Breaking Bad and Justified. I only caught up with Sharp Objects and Breaking Bad, not counting the made-for-Netflix movie El Camino, though I did catch up with Ken Burns' Country Music, The Durrells in Corfu, Fleabag, GLOW, Grantchester, Mindhunter, Press, Succession, Unbelievable, and When They See Us. Plus, I just started The Good Place--and I'm always caught up with Law & Order: SVU. Priorities!