1. Parasite
directed by Bong Joon-Ho
I started hearing buzz about this film early on, but had to wait until it rolled into theaters in my area. I had a dim idea of what the story was about, but man! My mind was blown. I love films that give me something I have never seen before, and Parasite delivered on every level. Beginning as a kind of dark comedy about class differences in South Korea, the film offers sly commentary on Eastern and Western culture, technology, privilege, economic survival and family relationships through truly impeccable acting, gorgeous set designs, and brilliant cinematography. Four members of the impoverished, live-by-their-wits Kim family slowly con and trick their way into service jobs within the household of the wealthy Parks. But their machinations have unforeseen consequences. The story contains an edge of suspense that steadily increases until the third act plot twist that catapults the film into a whole other level of jaw-dropping events. I really enjoyed the work of actor Song Kang-Ho, who plays the Kims' patriarch, Ki-taek; Song was also featured in director Bong's English-language thriller Snowpiercer. Parasite has to be seen to be believed, and then seen again. My favorite of the year.
2. Queen & Slim
directed by Malina Matsoukas
starring Jodie Turner-Smith, Daniel Kaluuya
This film has been controversial for its subject matter and its brutal ending. But I totally loved the journey of these two characters, out on a first date that isn't going well and then forced by circumstance to go on the run together. We know it's foolhardy of them to think they can outrun the law, but we root for them anyway. Along their journey, we see the layers of their personalities peel away as the characters -- who are not named Queen and Slim but whose real names are only revealed at the end -- learn not only to work together but to love together. The film is also a visual feast, a mid-American road trip that highlights the beauty of the landscape, the humanity of its citizens, and the ugliness of our culture. I loved the performances by newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith as a prosecutor weary of seeing justice distorted, and Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya as a warm-hearted, conscious brother shocked to find himself on the wrong side of the law. Bokeem Woodbine also stands out with another bravura performance, and I loved seeing transgender performer Indya Moore in a movie role. One film critic described Queen & Slim as one of the most honest portrayals of black life, and that may be so. Intricate family relationships, levels of education, the politicization of black lives, how acts of terror and defiance against the powers that be can be commodified and raised to legend.
3. The Last Black Man in San Francisco
directed by Joe Talbot, written by and starring Jimmie Fails
This is a beautiful, elegiac, often surrealist story of a young man clinging to his past to stave off his fear of an empty future. The cinematic imagery and pacing of this brokenhearted valentine to San Francisco is nothing short of stunning. As the film opens a young girl skips along in a childhood game, passing men in HazMat suits picking up trash while a roadside preacher delivers a blistering sermon against the city's neglect and decline. The film comments upon a once vibrant black community inexorably being altered by gentrification and greed as seen through the eyes of Jimmie, who clings to a myth that glorifies and elevates the city's distant golden age and his own fractured family history. It's also about the power of friendship and what it means to be a black man. Raised in foster care because his parents struggled with drug addition, Jimmie is crashing with his best friend Mont and Mont's blind grandfather (SF native Danny Glover). Jimmie is obsessed with the gorgeous and crumbling Victorian house he once shared with his parents before things went radically wrong. Though a white couple occupies it, Jimmie can't stay away, continuing to work on its upkeep even as the couple shoo him away and threaten to call the police. When the couple have to vacate, Jimmie and Mont become squatters, with Jimmie reclaiming what he feels is his birthright. But his world is shattered when the truth about the house's history is revealed. This film feels like a fever dream, a tone poem, a comic tragedy of Shakespearean proportions. Fails' performance tugs at the heart.
4. The Farewell
directed by Lulu Wang, starring Awkwafina
I was moved by this story of a Chinese-American woman with an uncertain future who joins her family on a trip back to China that is ostensibly about attending a wedding, but is really undertaken as a final visit with her ailing grandmother. Per tradition, everyone in the family knows that Grandma has cancer except Grandma herself. Star Awkwafina, who has shown herself to be an adeptly comic scene stealer in Ocean's 8 and Crazy Rich Asians, turns in a quiet, thoughtful performance that pulls the viewer into her deep sadness at losing her beloved grandmother, as well as her confusion over her identity and her future, Equally sad and funny, The Farewell examines also how immigrants are forced to straddle to very different cultures.
5. Rocketman
directed by Dexter Fletcher, starring Taron Edgerton
Though the Freddie Mercury paint-by-numbers biopic Bohemian Rhapsody seemed to get the lion's share of accolades earlier this year, I was more captivated by the imaginative structure of this biographical jukebox musical fantasy about Elton John (I confess, he was one of my favorite artists growing up). The film follows the benchmarks of his story, from chubby wannabe to piano wiz to his momentous partnership with composer Bernie Taupin, through his exploding fame, struggle with drug addiction and recovery, using his distinct discography as a springboard to flights of fantasy, as when the power of his performance causes Elton and the audience at Hollywood's Troubadour to levitate, and full-on musical theater-style production numbers, as with "Saturday Night's All Right." The songs were as often used to convey character and mood as they were to recreate pivotal concert performances. Taron Edgerton does his own singing, and he is truly amazing. The movie is as imaginative, whimsical, and dramatic as John himself, and I loved every minute.
6. Bolden
directed by Dan Pritzker, starring Gary Carr
A portrait of tortured genius during a tortured time in American racial history, the early 1900s, Bolden attempts to tell the story of legendary New Orleans trumpeter Buddy Bolden, who was credited as the father of American jazz. Unfortunately, there are few records of Bolden's existence and fewer recordings of his musical genius. Thus, as a film cobbled together from legend, a few recordings, and faint memories, the film is often dreamlike and foreboding, alternately joyous when Bolden's music is played, and hopeless as when Bolden is exploited and victimized by business partners, white racists, and hubris, and falls into alcoholism and ultimately mental illness. The film begins with a middle-aged Bolden confined to a sanitarium; when he catches the sound of the radio playing his music, he goes into a reverie in which he relives memories of his beginnings on the trumpet through his years astonishing audiences with his syncopated improvisations, then through his decline. As played by the marvelously expressive Gary Carr (a Brit who so deliciously played pimp C.C. in HBO's The Deuce), Buddy Bolden doesn't actually speak until 20 minutes into the film, but through the film's expressive imagery -- including a dreamlike sequence where we see how he learned complex rhythms as a child in the garment factory where his mother works -- give us a window in which to glimpse his spirit.
7. Harriet
directed by Kasi Lemmons, starring Cynthia Erivo
Cynthia Erivo is a riveting screen presence, no matter how you slice it. Here, she makes us understand the pure spinal steel of religious conviction and survival instinct that made real-life she-ro Harriet Tubman an indomitable leader and abolitionist crusader. A movie needed to be made about this singular personality, a woman born into slavery who defied all fugitive slave laws of the land, not to mention braving the elements and risking her life to find freedom not only for herself but dozens of other enslaved people. Still, the film feels slick and contemporized in a movie-of-the-week way. This is not to take away from the achievement of bringing this to the screen, and I enjoyed the performances of Janelle Monae, veteran actors Clarke Peters and Vondie Curtis-Hall, and Hamilton alum Leslie Odum Jr. in supporting roles. I was expecting a bit more from the story, but as a cinema primer for those who were not familiar or had forgotten the legend of Tubman, this is just fine.
8. Once Upon A Time in Hollywood
directed by Quentin Tarantino, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie
Not among my favorite Tarantino works, but still a fascinating meditation on a more innocent era of Hollywood, and how the prospect of war, television, politics, and violence wrought havoc on those ideals. DiCaprio gives a layered performance, showing the insecurities of a complicated persona caught at a crossroads in his career, while Brad Pitt plays it laconic as his longtime friend and factotum. I found the Sharon Tate storyline confusing, as Tarantino reimagines history, but this film leaves a lot to chew on and has plenty of great acting moments.
9. The Good Liar
directed by Bill Condon
starring Ian McKellen, Helen Mirren
The Brits have a way of using the English language with whip-cracking accuracy and archness, something that only a handful of American actors can do with the same fluency. In Ian McKellen you have one of the masters of British acting, and Helen Mirren is no slouch. Far from being a geezer flick (like the dreadful Poms with Diane Keaton), The Good Liar is a twisted tale of an aging English con man deciding to do one last job, swindling a rich widow out of her holdings. But since that widow is Helen Mirren, we know that things will not go according to plan. Adapted from a book that I haven't read, the plot featured this elaborate WWII-era back story from Nazi occupied Austria involving teen rape, espionage, swapped identities, and thwarted love that seemed both way too complicated and way too convenient. Mirren gets her revenge, but her machinations leave you wondering how she kept focus after so many decades and got so much information at just the right time. And of course, any sort of battle scene between seniors is bound to give the audience visions of broken hips, lost dentures, and heart attack. Still, it's a sly film and worth it to see McKellen slip, slide, and give great line readings.
10. Us
written and directed by Jordan Peele
Starring Lupita N'yongo, Winston Duke
Jordan Peele's unique sensibilities -- infusing the horror genre with social commentary, existential paranoia, and racial fears -- has struck a chord with the viewing public. But, while I'm not a fan of psychological thrillers or horror, I nevertheless appreciate the achievement represented by this film, which reveals more of its unique brilliance upon repeated viewings. US is more of a psychological thriller that a straight horror film, especially once you get over the visual shocks of hollow-eyed, mechanical doppelgangers threatening to kill their mirror images. And yes, there is an element of the slasher film, in which the body count multiplies as victims fall prey to stabbings, bludgeonings, deliberate car attacks, immolation, and more. US provides constant dread, anxiety, tension, and small shocks as the killers keep popping up and doing their worst. When the elaborate explanation for all these goings-on is finally revealed, I really had to suspend all belief in a rational reality. So is it scary? It depends on your perspective. The best films are able to have you, the viewer, identify so closely with the protagonist, that you feel personally menaced by any physical threat to them. And we definitely root for plucky Lupita to get to the bottom of this and survive. A rollercoaster thrill ride.
Honorable Mentions for the actors:
"Gloria Bell" by Julianne Moore; "Judy" by Renee Zellweger; "Uncut Gems" by Adam Sandler; and "Hustlers" by Jennifer Lopez; and "Miss Bala" for Gina Rodriguez.
Great Documentary: "Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am"
Thanks for supporting Words On Flicks and I will see you in 2020. - Janine
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