IT'S A WRAP: MOVIES of 2019

For whatever reason, I fell behind on my movie viewing in 2019. I missed a lot of the most lauded mainstream movies, and I'm still too cranky to settle for watching big movies that barely appear in theaters at all on a home screen.


However, among the often small, weird and/or esoteric movies I did see, I have a few favorites. I wasn't quite able to stretch my list into the traditional Top Ten, and I certainly can't claim that these were in any way the Best of 2019. But if you're looking for something to stream on a cold winter's night, here are a few suggestions!


(FUN FACT: Five out of my eight favorites were directed by women! Wouldn't it be nice to see any of them appear among this year's Oscar nominees when they're announced tomorrow? If only. . . )



PAIN AND GLORY Pedro Almodovar directs this wonderful, semi-autobiographical movie about a Spanish filmmaker, looking back on his own life and career, and the people and events that shaped and inspired him. It's my favorite movie of the year! It may not look like much plot-wise, but the experience of watching this movie unfold onscreen is rapturous. And star Antonio Banderas is riveting in every single frame — you can’t take your eyes off him!

 
YESTERDAY In Danny Boyle's audacious what-if movie, The Beatles have disappeared from the collective memory of everyone except a struggling singer-songwriter named Jack (an engaging Himesh Patel) who finds himself poised to plunder their entire song catalogue. Detractors complain the movie misunderstands what made the Beatles popular, claiming as false “meritocracy” the notion that the songwriting would be hugely successful on its own, separated from the context of the band’s individual personalities and their era.

But here's why I (still) believe in Yesterday: It's not that the songs themselves are supposed to be the best ever written (although you could certainly make a case for some of them), but that there are so many of them, in so many diverse styles, that Jack is able to produce on the spot. The movie creates its own context for Jack’s popularity, a modest young person of color who produces song after song after song, seemingly out of the blue. That’s how he captures the public imagination — in much the same way the working-class lads from industrial Liverpool did with their cheeky attitude and funny haircuts, once upon a time. Boyle turns it into a sly morality play about fame, honor, and sacrifice, with a 4/4 beat and a larky sense of fun.

HARRIET Maybe the times have finally caught up to the amazing life of Harriet Tubman, a real-life superhero who fought for justice and won major victories in her lifelong battle to end slavery in the American South. An escaped slave herself, she led many others to freedom in the North, via the Underground Railroad, armed with little more than raw courage, and a flintlock pistol. Filmmaker Kasi Lemmons explores the woman behind the historical footnote, played with bristly moral conviction by Cynthia Erivo.

SWORD OF TRUST An aging hipster confronts the dark heart of extreme Southern yahooism in Lynn Shelton's very funny culture-clash comedy. Marc Maron is all dry wit and scruffy sarcasm as a pawn shop owner tasked to sell a Civil War sword that supposedly "proves" the Confederacy won the war. The twisty little surprises of the plot are delicious to discover along the way, and the sharp, funny conversations (largely improvised) had me laughing out loud.

THE MUSTANG Director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre spins a tale of wild horses, regret, and redemption set in a high-security prison complex out in the middle of the Nevada desert. As part of their rehab, certain inmates are chosen to break and train wild mustangs for auction, and Matthias Schoenaerts delivers a towering, if taciturn performance (it's all in his eyes) as a prisoner who learns tenderness by bonding with his animal.

RAISE HELL: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF MOLLY IVINS Unusual enough as a progressive in Texas, smart, savagely funny political journalist Molly Ivins stood six feet tall. Not gifted with conventional proportions, she felt entitled to hold outsized opinions expressed with outsized gusto. There's plenty to laugh at — and get riled up over — in this Janice Engel documentary, celebrating all the hell Ivins raised as a pioneering woman in a world and profession run by good ole boys. Through documentary footage, Ivins tells much of her own story in her own words, and it's the particular zing of her voice that makes this movie so irresistible.

WAVES This gripping domestic drama from Trey Edward Shults encompasses euphoria, tragedy, and every conceivable emotion in between depicting a middle-class black family in South Florida sliding in and out of crisis. Some incidents seem torn from screaming headlines, yet Shults humanizes everything with careful attention to the personal relationships that guide our lives — between parents and children, between siblings, and between couples, both young and long-established.

LITTLE WOMEN In her entertaining, feminist update of the beloved novel, filmmaker Greta Gerwig combines the adventures of Louisa May Alcott's fictional March sisters with the journey of Alcott herself in getting her story published. Through Alcott's surrogate, Jo (Saoirse Ronan, who is absolutely wonderful), Gerwig inserts the author's early writing career and her tribulations with her patronizing male publisher. Timothée Chalamet is coltish, handsome, and mischievous as Laurie, and if the elliptical time frame becomes confusing toward the end, the movie exudes exuberant and heartfelt goodwill, building to a satisfying girl-power crescendo that surely would have pleased Alcott herself.

REALLY TRUE GRIT

American anti-slavery heroine gets her due in Harriet

She didn't wear spandex tights or bullet-repelling bracelets. But Harriet Tubman was a real-life superhero in every sense, fighting for justice and winning major victories against impossible odds in her lifelong battle to end slavery in the American South.

An escaped slave herself, she made many perilous trips back below the Mason-Dixon Line to lead other enslaved people to freedom in the North, via the Underground Railroad, armed with little more than raw courage, relentless determination, and the occasional flintlock pistol.

Although her name has become a footnote in American History books, it seems incredible that such an inspirational story has never been made into a movie — until now. In Harriet, filmmaker Kasi Lemmons (Eve's Bayou; Talk To Me) examines the woman behind the footnote, exploring the outrage, grit, and fervor that shaped her, in a tribute that feels long overdue.

Maybe now that we're all so woke, the times have finally caught up to the amazing life of Harriet Tubman.

Erivo as Harriet: Perilous crossing

The story, co-written by Lemmons and Gregory Allen Howard, begins in 1849 with the slave woman, Minty (Cynthia Erivo), who lives with her parents and siblings on the Ross family farm in Maryland.

After their master tears up their legal petition to free the family in honor of his late mother's will, Minty prays for his death, overheard by the master's odious son, Gideon (Joe Alwyn). When he plans to sell her off, she runs away; pursued by men and dogs and nearly drowned, she makes it all the way to Philadelphia.

There, she's taken in by William Still (Leslie Odom Jr.), a dapper abolitionist, and Marie (Janelle Monáe), who runs a refuge for single women and finds her paid employment working in a hotel. Marie teaches Minty to shoot a pistol. William encourages her to give up her slave name; she chooses her mother's given name with the surname of the husband she's had to leave behind — Harriet Tubman.

Erivo and Odom: Conductors

Her new friends are horrified when Harriet risks recapture to return south and bring back her family. But once she's made the journey a couple of times, bringing out strangers as well as family, William introduces her to the Undeground Railroad, a covert network of operators and vehicles by which runaway slaves are spirited north to freedom — of which the fearless Harriet becomes one of the most intrepid "conductors."

Ervio as Tubman: Reel life

Erivo plays Harriet with bristly moral conviction; it's unthinkable to sit idly by, protecting her own freedom, when others are still enslaved.

The real-life Tubman was prone to seizures, which she claimed were visions from God guiding her on her journeys, and which Lemmons recreates in sepia glimpses.

These, along with the fact that she never loses one of her "passengers"— despite fierce pursuit — adds to her mythos among slaves, abolitionists, and slaveowners.

Harriet Tubman; Real life

Evocative music also plays a key role. Spirituals underline the slaves' fervent faith in a better life ahead, but when sung by slaves in the field, they also allow them to communicate with each other in a kind of code, under the overseer's notice. Many are delivered with wistful, calibrated emotion by Erivo, a Tony-winning musical theater actress.

Erivo also sings the powerful anthem, "Stand Up," over the closing credits, a song she wrote with Joshuah Campbell that sends the viewer off on a stirring note.

And a brief glimpse of foot-stompin' revival music in the slaves' little church on the farm is delivered by a boisterous Vondie Curtis-Hall as the preacher. If my grandfather, the Methodist minister, had held services like that, maybe I would have become a churchgoer.

Lemmons' melodramatic flourishes can be overdone. Gideon is written as dastardly, insinuating evil incarnate, without any shading, and the orchestral soundtrack tends to swell and crest to emphasize emotion. But Harriet's story is so important, it rises in triumph over all obstacles — like the woman herself.