Not a caped crusader in sight in my top films of the year
ANYONE who agrees with the great directors Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola that CGI-heavy superhero movies are destroying cinema can take heart from this list of English-language films I have loved most in 2019.
There’s not an Avenger nor a caped crusader in sight.
I think it’s been a terrific year for movies; and some of the best are foreign-language. So let me give an honourable mention to the stunning Parasite (South Korea) and Pedro Almodovar’s Pain And Glory (Spain). Here are some others that have moved, thrilled and delighted me…
JOKER
WHEN awards season gets under way, it will be impossible to overlook this dazzling film about the origins of Batman’s nemesis, stunningly played as a mentallyill man by Joaquin Phoenix.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD
QUENTIN TARANTINO’S masterpiece will always be Pulp Fiction, but this, set in 1969 in the run-up to the Manson Family murders, runs it close. leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie all excel.
WILD ROSE
THIS has been a vintage year for female protagonists, and here’s a memorable one — a feckless Glaswegian ex- convict (Jessie Buckley) trying to make it as a country singer.
MARRIAGE STORY
SCARLETT JOHANSSON and Adam Driver are both brilliant in noah Baumbach’s bittersweet story of a couple embarking on a painful divorce.
ROCKETMAN
NOT everyone agrees, but for me this biopic of Elton John (Taron Egerton) was streets ahead of 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody.
EIGHTH GRADE
THIS terrific coming-of-age story about an awkward teenage girl (Elsie Fisher, superb) pulsates with tragi-comedy and at times is almost too painful to watch.
FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY
STEPHEN MERCHANT wrote and directed this warm, funny, mostly true story of a norwich girl (Florence Pugh) who became a wrestling star in America.
THE IRISHMAN
ROBERT DE NIRO, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel. Directed by Martin Scorsese. What more could we want from a movie about a mob enforcer? One of several netflix films here.
LONG SHOT
CHARLIZE THERON and Seth Rogen are certainly nobody’s idea of a romantic alliance, which is part, but by no means all, of what makes this rom-com so engaging.