OUR 2019 FAVORITES MOVIES
This year’s most memorable flicks range from ‘Parasite’ to ‘Rocketman’ to ‘Midsommar’
“Parasite”
I won’t say too much about this film, but here are the basics: It’s set in South Korea. It’s about a financially struggling family that insinuates itself in a wealthy household. And it’s the best film of the year. — Kristina Dorsey
“Jojo Rabbit”
Trust in Taika Waititi. The director-writer-actor helms this tale of a 10-year-old boy in WWII-era Germany who is thrilled to be a member of the Hitler Youth, so much so that the imaginary friend he creates for himself is Hitler (played by Waititi, who is half Jewish). The film starts out farcical, and it’s hilarious in a Mel Brooksian way. As the boy learns more about life — and discovers the Jewish girl his mother is hiding in their house from the Nazis — the movie becomes more serious. If “Parasite” is the best movie of the year, “Jojo Rabbit” runs a close second. — Kristina Dorsey
“Midsommar”
Damn it, you know what I like just fine? A two-plus hour opus about an isolated pagan society in far northern Sweden that’s celebrating a once-every-90-years festival that involves all manners of arcane rituals involving bears and dances around maypoles and flowers and communal potions and — what are those old people doing at the edge of that cliff?! I could have told the American grad students that attending this festival couldn’t possibly turn out well. I can’t say director Ari Aster’s “Midsommar” is wholly original — “The Wicker Man,” “Rosemary’s Baby” and Aster’s own “Hereditary” are touchstones — but at the same time, this is utterly brilliant and disturbing in a very distinctive way. — Rick Koster
“Rocketman”
This wildly creative take on Elton John’s life should have been a bigger hit than the staid, inferior Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody.” “Rocketman” sees things through Elton’s eyes, often with a fantastical twist, and Taron Egerton is simply perfect as Elton. — Kristina Dorsey
“Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood”
So many things to love about this movie: Quentin Tarantino’s idiosyncratic and always-entertaining dialogue, the detailed recreation of late-1960s L.A., the charismatic performances by Brad Pitt and Leonardo
DiCaprio as a stunt man and an in-decline actor who encounter the Manson family. I hated that the ending seemed like an outtake from a B horror flick (somehow, it felt disrespectful to the people died at the hands of the Manson followers), but the rest of it was amazing.
“Pet Sematary”
It wouldn’t work to rewrite Stephen King’s novel “Pet Sematary” since it’s virtually perfect and stands as arguably the scariest book ever published. But while the 1989 film version has its fans, it had plenty of flaws, too. So it was fun to see a new effort, directed by Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer and written by Jeff Buhler, hit the screen. For my money, it’s far superior to the original movie, despite an intriguing spin involving a major plot point. (For the record, King seems to be onboard with the decision.) At its dark heart, King’s novel is about grief — which Kölsch and Widmyer manage to capture within the horrifying and overarching possibilities of a bewitched graveyard.
“Yesterday”
The premise is irresistible: what if a frustrated, marginally talented songwriter is suddenly the only person in the world who knows about The Beatles? He can then pass off the Fab Four’s work as his own and become the greatest tunesmith of all time. The problem is how to reconcile this “gift” with reality and keep the tone light without letting the hero triumph as a complete fraud. Throw in a love story and plenty of music biz viciousness, and that helps. In the end, though, there IS no good way to wrap up this concept. At its best — for Beatles fans and for those too young to even remember them — “Yesterday’s” non-stop recital of the band’s songs serves as an incredible reminder of how, seemingly without effort, four fated Liverpudlian musicians changed the world through their uncanny mastery of pop songs.
Here’s another moving documentary from 2019. The three identical strangers of the title are triplets adopted by three different families in 1961. The families weren’t told that their sons were triplets and that this was part of a nature-versus-nurture study, done with the complicity of the adoption agency. Haunting.