FAVE FLICKS
Brandy McDonnell shares her Top 10 movies of 2019
The film industry closed out the 2010s with female filmmakers, international auteurs and moviemakers of color having achieved significant commercial and critical successes. Although this week's Oscar nominations illustrated that the Academy is more comfortably coping with the reality of streaming movies than with wholeheartedly embracing a cinematic landscape populated with more diverse storytellers, the future still looks bright for the creators of these films.
1. “Jojo Rabbit”: With his hilarious and heart-shattering World War II satire, New Zealander Taika Waititi triumphantly balances comedy and tragedy, history and fantasy, on a metaphorical knife-edge as sharp and thin as the Nazi-issued dagger carried by his titular young protagonist (Roman Griffin Davis). The helmer's unhinged performance as Jojo's imaginary bestfriend version of Hitler is just one weird but wonderful aspect of this tale of a Hitler Youth recruit who discovers that his mother (Oscar nominee Scarlett Johansson) is hiding a Jewish teenager (Thomasin McKenzie) in their attic.
2. “The Farewell”: Lula Wang's autobiographical drama “The Farewell” delves into family dynamics, cultural differences and terminal illness with elegant simplicity. It also heralds another new phase in the career of Awkwafina, the rapper who broke out as a comedic actor and earned a Golden Globe for her nuanced turn as a Chinese-American woman struggling to deal with her grandmother's (Zhao Shuzhen) cancer diagnosis and her family's traditional Chinese choices in how to handle it.
3. “Us”: Ten months after I first saw it, writer-director Jordan Peele's terrifying and thought-provoking horror tale still gives me the chills. Deftly delivering sharp social commentary on the blades of gore-stained golden scissors, it features not one but two mesmerizing performances from past Academy Award victor Lupita Nyong'o.
4. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”:
Following in the bloody footsteps of “Inglourious Basterds” and “Django Unchained,” Oscar winner Quentin Taratino creates a violent, vengeful revisionist history trilogy with his sun-kissed ode to the golden age of Tinseltown. Leonardo DiCaprio garnered another Academy Award nomination for best actor as fading TV star Rick Dalton, while Shawnee-born Brad Pitt earned a best supporting actor nod for playing Cliff Booth, Rick's stuntman pal, who fatefully crosses paths with the Manson family and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie).
5. “Parasite”: The art-house hit has become the first South Korean movie to be nominated for best picture as well as in the newly renamed best international film category. It received six welldeserved Oscar nods, including best director, original screenplay, production design and editing. A twisty tale of the haves and have-nots, the winner of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or keeps its audiences pondering social ills even as they try to unravel the shockingly tangled thriller.
6. “Little Women”: Writer-director Greta Gerwig opted to create a deconstructed, nonlinear adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's often-adapted novel. Remarkably, Gerwig's soul-stirring adaptation remains faithful to Alcott's semiautobiographical Civil War-era tale while also imbuing the classic with new verve and 21st-century relevance.
7. “The Last Black Man in San Francisco”: To say that this beautiful cinematic requiem is based on a true story does quite do it justice: Jimmie Fails, the film's star and co-writer basically plays a version of himself in a story based on his own experience directed and co-written by his best friend, Joe Talbot. The haunting drama about a young man's obsession with his stately Victorian childhood home profoundly addresses gentrification, drug addiction and gun violence without ever talking about them directly.
8. “Knives Out”: Rian Johnson's delicious Oscarnominated screenplay mixes the twisty puzzles of Agatha Christie's books, the sharp-edged humor of Mike Nichols' films and a subtle smattering of relevant commentary on family affairs, class strife and immigration policy. Plus, he recruits an all-star cast eager to veritably feast on the scenery of his cinematic game of “Clue.”
9. “The Nightingale”: Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent mines the real horrors of her country's colonial past for her haunting and harrowing historical drama set in 1825 on the Australian island of Tasmanian, then a British penal colony known as Van Diemen's Land. Aisling Franciosi gives one of the bravest performances of 2019 as a former convict who sets out on a dangerous journey to wreak revenge on the British Army officer (Sam Claflin) who brutally destroyed her life.
10. “A Hidden Life”: Terrence Malick, who grew up in Bartlesville, crafts a poetic biopic of martyr Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian peasant farmer who refused to take an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler. The enigmatic auteur's beautiful World War II drama explores themes of faith, love and sacrifice.
Runners-up: “Toy Story 4,” “1917,” “Captain Marvel,” “The Irishman” and “Avengers: Endgame.”