Best of the big screen in 2019
The Listener’s film reviewers pick their favourite films of the past year – complete with directions to where you can see them now.
The Listener’s film reviewers pick their favourite films of the past year – complete with directions to where you can see them now.
1. PARASITE directed by Bong Joon-ho
This gripping Cannes-winning film from the South Korean master is a tragi-comic, twisty thriller and social commentary in which two Seoul families collide after the destitute and desperate Kims plot to become the hired help to the fabulously wealthy Parks. (NS; DVD February)
2. IF BEALE STREET COULD TALK directed by Barry Jenkins
Adapting one of James Baldwin’s most beloved novels into a gorgeous, swooning tale of love and unjust incarceration, visionary Barry Jenkins (an Oscar-winner for
Moonlight) proved that a director can make two masterpieces in a row. (SVOD, DVD)
3. BELLBIRD directed by Hamish Bennett
An assured debut feature by Bennett, this low-key, beautifully observed local drama sang its own song of the country in its story of a father and son, both hurting from a tragedy, at loggerheads about the future of the family farm. (NS)
4. ONCE UPON A TIME IN … HOLLYWOOD directed by Quentin Tarantino
A Tarantino film that doesn’t feel like a Tarantino film: US cinema’s enfant terrible tackled the notorious Manson murders via a breezy, nostalgic cruise through the waning days of Hollywood’s golden era, with Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio’s star power in the driving seat. (DVD, SVOD)
5. BACURAU directed by Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho
Almost impossible to talk about without spoiling its greatest qualities, this exhilarating and shocking award-winning Brazilian drama took an uninspiring premise – of a woman returning to her native village – and twisted it into something that turned audience expectations on their head.
6. CAPHARNAÜM directed by Nadine Labaki
Seething with indignant rage and desperation, this frantic gutter-level view of Beirut was
an urgently confronting and essential portrait of “unpeople” who exist at the far edges of society. (SVOD, DVD)
7. MARRIAGE STORY directed by Noah Baumbach
Surprisingly uplifting for a film about divorce, while also devastating in its believability, Marriage Story boasted superlative performances by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver as a power couple of New York theatre whose diverging paths lead to heartbreak. (NS, NF)
8. AD ASTRA directed by James Gray
This stunningly shot journey into an intergalactic heart of darkness blended sci-fi adventure with introspective ruminations on belonging. Brad Pitt and Tommy Lee Jones excelled as a son and father separated by a solar system. (SVOD, DVD)
9. LES MISÉRABLES directed by Ladj Ly
About as far from the stage musical as it gets, this nailbiting and explosive French crime-drama pitched warring gangs against corrupt cops and beleaguered immigrant communities in a suburban Paris battleground.
10. JOKER directed by Todd Phillips
The director of The Hangover teamed up with one of the greatest actors of our time to deliver a disturbingly compelling and brilliantly realised supervillain origin story, as Joaquin Phoenix morphed from deeply troubled Arthur Fleck into Batman’s future nemesis. (NS; DVD & SVOD from January)
11. THE FAREWELL directed by Lulu Wang
This affecting true story of familial deception and impending grief saw rapper
Awkwafina flex her considerable acting muscle as an Asian-American woman who returns to China for a last hurrah with her terminally ill grandmother. (SVOD, DVD)
12. VAI directed by various
From the producers of the groundbreaking Waru, Vai was an expression of pan-Pacific solidarity: eight scenes portraying stages in the life of one kuia, directed by nine Pacific Island women, set in seven island nations – all making for a heartfelt whole. (RVOD, DVD)
13. MIDSOMMAR directed by Ari Aster
From the auteur who shocked us with last year’s Hereditary came a morbidly engrossing, grotesquely enchanting folkhorror starring Florence Pugh as a grieving woman thrown into a strange pagan festival in the Swedish wilds. (RVOD, DVD)
14. SOMETIMES ALWAYS NEVER directed by Carl Hunter
Starring the ever-charming Bill Nighy, this Scrabble-themed film may appear quirky and offbeat on the surface, but beneath the strange exterior was a weighty story of loss
and longing. (RVOD, DVD)
15. SORRY WE MISSED YOU Directed by Ken Loach
A companion piece to his Cannes-winning I, Daniel Blake, veteran social-realist film-maker Ken Loach once again hit a raw nerve with his depiction of a Newcastle family driven to despair with the parents both working zerohour contracts in a modern gig economy. (NS from December 26)
16. MARY POPPINS RETURNS directed by Rob Marshall
Mary (a stunning Emily Blunt) and her brolly descended through those clouds to sort out the Banks family’s problems once again in a fresh sequel virtually extinguishing memories of her original 1964 screen incarnation with wonderful new musical numbers. (RVOD, DVD, Nn)
17. US directed by Jordan Peele
Driven by Lupita Nyong’o’s outstanding performance and stuffed with shrewd tricks and clever conceits, Jordan Peele’s follow-up to his horror hit Get Out probed the unchained id haunting the soul of America. (RVOD, DVD, Nn)
18. TOY STORY 4 directed by Josh Cooley
Pixar’s greatest film series might have risked undercutting the tidy perfection of the original trilogy with a fourth instalment, but the further adventures of Woody and co was a clever, enjoyable and oddly tangential epilogue to its predecessors. (RVOD, DVD)
19. WILD ROSE directed by Tom Harper
This drama about aspiring Scottish country singer and troubled soul Rose-Lynn Harlan hoping to make it big in Nashville may sound like another follow-your-dreams showbiz story, but it neatly upended the formula with its Glasgow grittiness and a terrific lead performance by Jessie Buckley. (DVD, RSVOD,
20. WOMAN AT WAR directed by Benedikt Erlingsson
The prize for avenging action hero of the year goes to the star of this quirky Icelandic dramedy – Halla (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir), a mild-mannered, middle-aged Reykjavik choir mistress with a sideline in sabotaging power pylons to cut electricity to a local aluminium smelter owned by Rio Tinto. (DVD, RVOD)