Sunday, December 29, 2019

My Top Ten Movies of 2019

Usual rules apply: stuff from 2018 that I saw in cinemas in 2019 may have snuck on, stuff from 2019 that I haven't seen yet may end up on next year's list.


10. Colette (dir. Wash Westmoreland)

A true story about a trailblazing author denied her rightful place in history?  And it’s a period piece with lots of sex?  Quick, send up the Knightley-Signal!  Yes, of course this turn-of-the-century (last century, erk) Paris tale stars Keira Knightley.  And of course she’s excellent.  As is the film as a whole.
   She’s playing Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, who is married to a famed author known simply as Willy.  It’s something of an open secret that Willy is a sort of one-man publishing house, doing some writing himself but for the most part hiring talented ghostwriters who are happy to be paid to be published under his name.  Seeing  a gap in the market, he suggests that Colette give it a whirl, and she complies with a story drawn from her life at a girl’s school that becomes one of the first examples of what we’d see as a modern publishing sensation – sold-out print runs, cheap merchandise, the works.  But she gets increasingly restless that her Claudine novels aren’t being published under her name, and trouble brews.
   The film is admittedly a bit piecemeal in places, partially the result of having to cover several years in two hours.  But it always delivers thanks to its cast.  Knightley is dependably excellent in what’s become her default sort of role, but Dominic West matches her in what is arguably the harder part – making this man charming and likeable, but still an obstacle.  The lovingly recreated early 1900s France is a pleasure, and the movie subtly but cleverly makes its call for equality in a rather delightful way – a couple of the supporting roles are filled by transgender actors playing cisgender parts, something I only found out about when reading up on the movie a few days after seeing it.  And it also achieved what is surely its ultimate goal – I now want to read the Claudine books.


9. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (dirs. Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman)

This is the fourth, count ‘em, individual take on Spidey in seventeen years.  In those seventeen years we have had 3 Tobey Maguires, 2 Andrew Garfields, 2 Tom Hollands (or five if you count the Avengers movies and Captain America 3), and a partridge in a pear tree.  And Venom.  And now this.  So how does Spider-Verse justify its existence?  How did it win the Best Animated Feature Oscar?  More importantly, how did it end up on my top ten list?
   Spider-Verse kicks off with Peter Parker (here voiced by Chris Pine) about ten years into his superheroing duties.  He’s got very good at it, and he’s in the midst of stopping the Kingpin’s latest plot to rip a dimensional hole open under New York.  Then – spoiler alert! – he fails, and Kingpin kills him.  Oh.
   The actual Spider-Man we’re following here is Miles Morales, an Afro-Latino kid voiced by Shameik Moore.  He’s also received a spider bite and also been granted powers (albeit with a couple of twists, like the ability to turn invisible).  And as he witnesses Classic Spidey’s demise, he takes up the mantle and attempts to stop the Kingpin himself.  With some training from another Peter Parker (Jake Johnson) who was spat out by that dimensional hole.  Admittedly this Peter is bellyflopping into middle-age, overweight and depressed, but it’ll be fine, probably.
   Spider-Verse works for multiple reasons.  First, by choosing a different lead, it immediately feels fresher.  An important part of the story is that anyone can be a hero, and in making the hero a minority twice over the point is made that much more effectively.  (And it’s interesting to see a Spidey who has not just a father figure but an actual father, one that’s alive and everything.)  Second, by making it animated instead of live-action it allows the filmmakers to lean into something that’s often lost in superhero movies – that comics in general, and Spider-Man comics in particular, are often really, really weird.  Third, it’s frequently hilarious (anything Nicolas Cage says, the bit with the bagel...).  But fourth, and most importantly, it does new things with animation.  I love all varieties of animation, but CGI has become increasingly staid in the last few years, as the technology gets to the point where photorealism is possible.  Spider-Verse says nuts to that and embraces its comic roots with a remarkable visual style – panels and lettering, deliberately jerky movement (technical term “animating on twos”, look it up, it’s interesting if you’re a nerd like me) and more.  It doesn’t always work – the weird effect where out-of-focus background stuff is made to look like the “ink” isn’t quite aligned just comes off like you’ve forgotten to put your 3D glasses on – but it does most of the time.  And it does it in a movie with heart, wit and originality.  Oh, and a great soundtrack.

8. Stan & Ollie (dir. Jon S. Baird)

One of those films that you can tell is going to be a safe bet from a brief prĂ©cis, Stan & Ollie doesn’t wow with invention but it’s a delight.  Focusing in on Laurel (Steve Coogan) and Hardy (John C. Reilly) towards the end of their careers, as they tour theatres in provincial England, it offers a gentle, loving look at one of the greatest double-acts.  Bar a quietly impressive one-take prologue in the ‘30s, following them from their trailers to the set of Way Out West, it resists directorial grandstanding in favour of foregrounding the performances.  And what performances – while Coogan’s great, it is frankly baffling how Reilly didn’t end up with a wheelbarrow’s worth of awards.  And, much like Colette, I went away wanting to watch all of Stan and Ollie’s back catalogue.

7. Zombieland: Double Tap (dir. Ruben Fleischer)

This is a neat example of how low expectations can help.  I went into Double Tap not really planning to be wowed.  I loved the first Zombieland, but a ten-year gap between movies is pushing it, surely?  (All to do with multiple failed attempts to turn it into a TV show, as I understand.)  Then the first trailer looked pretty terrible, but the second looked a little better.  So I gave it a go, and loved it. 
   There’s barely a plot, just an excuse for the returning cast (two of whom have become full-on A-listers in the past decade) to goof about and splat zombies creatively.  Its freewheeling feel papers over cracks – there’s a hilariously half-arsed throwaway line about ten minutes in addressing how some places still have electric power x number of years after the zombie apocalypse – and while there is some reasonably well-rounded character stuff in there, it knows it’s a turn-your-brain-off-and-enjoy movie and doesn’t try to be anything else.  There’s a very nice oner hidden in the middle, which I always appreciate, and Rosario Dawson’s in it so that’s an automatic extra five points.  Sometimes low expectations pay high dividends.

6. Toy Story 4 (dir. Josh Cooley)

The Toy Story trilogy is The Thing That Should Not Be.  Three films, made separately at random intervals, all cast-iron classics?  And a reasonable argument to be made that they improve as they go on?  (I’ve been trying to decide if 1 or 2 is the better film for twenty years, I’ll never make my mind up.)  So making a fourth is surely a fool’s errand.  There have been several short films following 3, from five to thirty minutes, and they’ve all been great.  But a full fourth feature?
   Well, Toy Story 4 is the worst Toy Story movie.  But as I said to a friend shortly after seeing it, that’s like saying “a lesser Da Vinci”.  It’s still incredible.  The core idea of Woody not knowing what to do with himself after his new kid, Bonnie, just isn’t that interested in playing with him, is simple but perfect, and the idea that she creates a new toy by gluing googly eyes on a spork that gains sentience is weird as all hell.  But all the characters find it just as weird, so it works.
   As I said in my Spider-Verse review above, CG animation tends to be a little unimaginative these days, but that doesn’t mean it can’t wow.  Toy Story 4 looks incredible, and there are a couple of establishing shots where for a moment my brain went, “Well, that’s a live-action shot.”  The script’s great, the new additions to the cast are excellent (especially Key and Peele as a pair of sewn-together cheap carnival prizes with ideas above their station) and while it doesn’t get as lump-in-the-throat as 3 it remains a worthy coda to the series.  Just...leave it now, Pixar, yeah?  You’ve got away with it again somehow, let’s call it good.

5. Rocketman (dir. Dexter Fletcher)

Well, it’s hard not to draw parallels here.  Dexter Fletcher, infamously, took over uncredited on Bohemian Rhapsody after original director Bryan Singer was given the push.  A biopic of a flamboyant singer and pianist who simultaneously managed to be very rock-and-roll and very English is a description of both that movie and Rocketman.  But the latter seems almost like a riposte.  Bohemian Rhapsody was a safe, sanitised movie that lived and died on Rami Malek’s fantastic performance, but was otherwise very timid.  Rocketman, on the other hand, starts with Elton John (Taron Egerton, excellent) arriving at rehab in full stage costume.  When introducing himself, he imagines his childhood self (Matthew Illesley) watching him.  But then he gets into an argument with said imagining.  And then they start duetting “The Bitch is Back”.  And then Kid Elton drags the rest of the rehab group into 1950s suburbia, where the neighbours are in the midst of an elaborate dance sequence.
   It’s the music biopic as music video, and it’s exhilarating.  While there are a few moments that I may have wished for a more conservative approach (mainly because most of the story was unknown to me, and I wanted to know when certain songs were actually written as opposed to when it makes sense for the narrative to use them for dramatic emphasis), it’s hard to argue with a film that chooses to dramatise the glorious “Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)” in a seeming one-shot take that sees teen Elton start the song in a pub, sneak out, grow into adult Elton, lead a bunch of Teddy boys on a dance round a funfair that disintegrates into a punch-up, then barrel back into the pub to finish the song.  And after Bohemian Rhapsody’s primly turning away from Freddie’s life in favour of a 12A certificate, Rocketman’s headfirst dive into piles of drugs and sex (sometimes literally) is refreshing.

4. Avengers: Endgame (dirs. Joe and Antony Russo)

Indeed.  As I said last year, my major issue with the MCU’s generally excellent output is that the cross-pollination is to a point that each individual film feels homogenous, like an episode of a TV show rather than a film in its own right.  (Which I think is the point Scorsese was making, but he phrased it spectacularly badly.)  Infinity War somehow avoided that, and Endgame somehow continues by being a sequel to twenty-one other movies and working.
   The fact that the film’s an actual end to several plots and characters works very much in its favour, giving a proper finality to events.  The time-travel aspect is an act of genius, making it a sort of victory lap of a decade’s worth of movies that works differently depending on the movie.  So Avengers Assemble is improved by giving us a glimpse as to what the team were up to inbetween other scenes, Guardians of the Galaxy squeezes one more laugh by showing that the classic opening sequence of Peter Quill dancing about to “Come and Get Your Love” looks really stupid without the background music, and most impressively, Thor: the Dark World provides the movie’s most heartfelt moment, as Thor gets a chance for one last conversation with his mother before she’s destined to die.
   And the sheer amount of stuff going on means that a three-hour movie somehow whizzes by.  The lack of half the cast is a bonus, allowing for more character-driven stuff: somehow, Thor and Nebula, the lunkheaded god and the generic bad girl, come out of this as the most well-rounded characters.  There are stirring moments; silly moments; one of the comics’ most controversial recent plotlines referenced in a way that’s hilarious, clever and satisfying; Paul Rudd complimenting Chris Evans’ backside; Chris Evans complimenting Chris Evans’ backside; the MCU acknowledging the many TV series for the first time ever via a cameo for James D’Arcy...there’s a bit of everything, really.  The problem is that it did it too well and now I’m not that bothered about the MCU in the future because this was such a satisfying conclusion.

3. Us (dir. Jordan Peele)

Jordan Peele is a man who is going to provide a lot of material for future dissertations.  His first film, the wickedly funny satire-horror Get Out, examined blackness in the United States in the last days of Obama’s presidency, be it feared or fetishised.  And now his second offering examines...well, a lot, but mainly class.  And it does it through the medium of the home invasion movie.
   Lupita N’yongo is Adelaide, who reluctantly goes on holiday with her husband and two children.  Reluctantly because the holiday house is round the corner from a beach  where she had a traumatic experience as a child, one that left her temporarily mute.  And indeed, spooky stuff occurs, and a quartet of people break into the house one night.  Except they’re doppelgangers of Adelaide and her family, dressed in red boilersuits and carrying huge golden shears.  Then it gets weird.
   Whereas Get Out was frequently icily funny, Us plays it largely straighter and stranger (it frequently feels like a feature-length Twilight Zone episode, probably not a coincidence since Peele is the host of that venerable series’ latest incarnation).  The bizarre concept doesn’t always stick together, but it’s done with enough conviction and atmosphere to sell it.  N’yongo must surely be award-laden for her remarkable double-turn as Adelaide and her murderous counterpart Red, and there are sufficient ideas and indelible images to power three lesser movies.   Us is a movie I’ve been turning round in my head since I saw it, and I suspect I and many others will be doing it for a long time yet.

2. All is True (dir. Kenneth Branagh)

Given how little is known about most of Shakespeare’s life, it’s odd there aren’t more dramatisations of his last years.  In the theatre, there’s Edward Bond’s play Bingo and Peter Whelan’s The Herbal Bed, and he doesn’t even appear in the latter.  Still, to this small pool we can now add this excellent film.
    Working loosely off true events, most notably his daughter Susanna being accused of adultery (which forms the backbone of The Herbal Bed), this excellent movie focuses on Shakespeare (Branagh) as he returns to Stratford from London, his life’s work in the theatre done and his last few years to wind down.  A frayed relationship with his wife Anne (Judi Dench) – frayed because she hardly ever sees him and doesn’t know what to do with him now he’s hanging round the house – needs mending, his garden needs tending, and his daughter needs defending from scurrilous rumour.  It naturally follows that the result is an elegiac film, and it’s one that’s beautifully shot, excellently acted and largely well-written (a slightly unnecessary and unfocused scene with his former patron/possible lover the Earl of Southampton, seemingly tacked on so they could put Ian McKellen’s name on the poster, aside).  I’d argue that those wanting a meaty dramatic telling of the Bard’s last days seek out a production of Bingo instead, but this remains a wonderful ode to the greatest writer of all.

1.       Alita: Battle Angel (dir. Robert Rodriguez)

Ah, subjectivity.  I know full well this wasn’t the best film of 2019, but nothing made my heart sing while sitting in the cinema more than this cheerfully daft sci-fi piece of earnest hokum. 
   The story of Alita’s birth is actually more interesting than the plot.  Starting out as a manga by Yukito Kishiro with the unwieldy name of Gunnm, the tale of an amnesiac cyborg was animated in the early ‘90s in the form of an OVA (Original Video Animation – a Japanese halfway house between TV and film) given the catchier title of Battle Angel Alita.  Guillermo del Toro fell in love with the video and passed it to James Cameron, who optioned it after finishing Titanic.  While working on Avatar, Cameron also made copious notes and multiple screenplays for a live-action Alita and eventually, realising he’d never get round to making it himself because he’d become convinced that what the world wanted was four Avatar sequels, passed the project on to Robert Rodriguez, who actually made the thing.  Phew. 
   Alita’s lengthy development process lends the finished product something of a charmingly old-fashioned feel.  It feels a little like a lost ‘90s blockbuster, down to the fact that it actually has a tie-in single.  Now, I love ‘90s blockbusters, so the film’s already off to a good start.
   Of course, being a 2019 production means that the effects are a little more impressive.  The whole world is a joy to look at, from the nifty monocycles to Alita’s intricately carved porcelain exoskeleton.  And that exoskeleton is the most impressive and most remarked-on bit of work.  In a brilliant visual touch, Alita’s outsize eyes both pay homage to the graphic traditions of manga and make sense in-universe – if real-life humanoid robots existed, an excellent way to skip round the uncanny valley would be to purposely exaggerate some part of facial anatomy.  The resulting effect is initially startling, but quickly becomes so natural it’s unnoticeable.  (The casting of relative unknown Rosa Salazar – who’s excellent in quite a hard role to pull off – may have helped here.  The fact I wasn’t already familiar with her sold me on the effect to the point that when I saw an interview with her a day or two after watching the movie, she looked wrong to me with regular human-size eyes.)
   The fact that Rodriguez eventually ended up in the director’s chair is a bonus, too.  He, of course, is better known for work up the higher end of the BBFC ratings, and the fact that most of the cast are largely robot parts means he can get away with some scenes that push the limits of a 12 certificate.  His ever-abundant energy thrums through the piece, most obviously in the hilariously stupid sport of choice in Alita’s world, motorball – a sort of rugby-meets-roller-derby-meets-basketball-meets-Speedball 2 on the Amiga.  Although the bar fight comes a close second there.  And the cast are game for everything, be it Christoph Waltz waving a rocket-powered sledgehammer about, Mahershala Ali wearing sunglasses at all times because he’s a baddy, or Jeff Fahey cameoing as a bounty hunter with a pack of robot dogs and a cowboy hat just because.
   Not the best movie of the year.  But my favourite movie of the year.

No comments: