The Best Movies of 2019

Check out our Top 10 films of the year.

Class warfare. Australian history. Extreme vomiting.

The best films of 2019 had some strangely specific recurring themes. Indeed, two of my top five movies were about families of doppelgangers fighting for supremacy, with the losers condemned to an underground prison. That is one hell of a coincidence, but you shouldn’t accuse Jordan Peele, director of Us, and Bong Joon-ho, director of Parasite, of copying one another. The only thing their films really have in common is that they’re brilliant, each commenting in their own, weird way on this particular moment in time, when our cultural divisions are vaguely defined but deeply felt.

Now, not all films have to be 'of their time' to be considered good, but every film becomes a time capsule. Think of The Irishman, Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited gangster elegy, largely set in the ‘60s. Much of its emotional heft comes from the fact it arrives at this point in Scorsese’s career, with its actors at their age. Technologically speaking—given all the CGI de-aging—this thing couldn’t have even been made 10 years ago. If it had, it may not have meant as much. And so, Marty’s reflective The Irishman is an extremely 2019 movie too.

Hustlers, Dolemite Is My Name, The Australian Dream, Booksmart, The Nightingale and Marriage Story were all about characters—or filmmakers—reclaiming their stories, telling their unheard sides. I was happy to see more voices privileged in 2019.

And then there was all the vomit. By my count, at least nineteen major releases featured yakking: Hustlers, Knives Out, Booksmart, Midsommar, Parasite, Ready or Not, Rocketman, Child’s Play, Doctor Sleep, It Chapter 2, Bird Box, Wounds, The Perfection and Zombieland: Double Tap. It’s twenty if you count the bit in Joker where he coughs up blood. This year, seemingly every character was so disgusted with reality they couldn’t keep from hurling on screen. And what’s more 2019 then that?

Check out my ten favourite films of 2019 below, followed by some honourable mentions.

10. Booksmart

Somewhere along the line, what used to be our most misogynistic and homophobic genre became our most inclusive. I’m talking about gross-out teen comedies, and for that you can probably thank Superbad, Bad Neighbours 2 and Blockers, which all walked so Booksmart could run. First-time filmmaker Olivia Wilde keeps things moving in this hilarious comedy, but its Beanie Feldstein and Kaitlyn Dever (as two studious high schoolers who want at least one wild night before graduating) that make this special. It was a delight to watch them validate the hell out of one another. Read review.

9. The Farewell

Awkwafina and an incredible supporting cast—especially Zhao Shuzhen and the Chinese-Australian Diana Lin—bring to life writer-director Lulu Wang’s true experience of having to keep her grandmother’s terminal illness a secret… from her actual grandmother. What seemed like it would be a goofy culture-clash comedy (with Awkwafina’s New York-based Billie returning to China) was actually a soft and sorrowful drama that took its cues from European cinema and the works of Wong Kar-wai.

8. The Nightingale

The Nightingale was a cinema experience I’ll never forget. The woman who ran out in tears at my screening may also feel the same way. There’s no denying that director Jennifer Kent, following The Babadook, successfully made a visceral revenge flick here. Aisling Franciosi is excellent as the young woman on a warpath, as is Baykali Ganambarr as the Aboriginal tracker who helps her hunt down her abusers. It’s not for everyone, but this is an important and powerful exploration of Australia’s past. Just because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Read review.

7. Marriage Story

Noah Baumbach’s maybe-autobiographical both-sides-of-a-divorce drama Marriage Story has the year’s best quote ("I can’t believe I have to know you forever!", delivered by Scarlett Johansson) and potentially the year’s best scene (Adam Driver singing Stephen Sondheim’s "Being Alive"). It also stars Laura Dern. Noah, when you’ve made the sale, stop selling. Read review.

6. Dolemite is My Name

A few years ago, we got The Disaster Artist, a very funny retelling of how infamous bad movie The Room got made. Dolemite is My Name trumps it, thanks to a revelatory Eddie Murphy performance, and a more meaningful, joyful finale. Murphy plays real-life wannabe Rudy Ray Moore, who finds, in his fifties, a successful stand-up persona in the rhyming, swearing, big-egoed Dolemite. Director Craig Brewer has fun restaging Rudy’s attempts to make a Dolemite movie (bringing to mind Bowfinger), but it’s Rudy channelling his difficult past as he rehearses, and learning about the difference in filming black faces from flamboyant director D’Urville Martin (Wesley Snipes), that lingers longest.

5. Hustlers

If Hustlers had been a three-minute short film in which Jennifer Lopez’s dominant Ramona Vegas strutted onto a stage, performed a strip tease to Fiona Apple’s "Criminal", and then chilled on a rooftop in an enveloping fur coat, it still probably would have warranted a top five finish here. But writer-director Lorene Scafaria (who, never forget, placed here in 2016 with The Meddler!) went and built a cracking and complex neon-tinged caper around that centrepiece and J-Lo’s dazzling turn.

4. Us

No, it’s not as good as Get Out. But the fact that Jordan Peele’s could follow up that film-of-the-decade contender with a marvellously deranged and profound horror film proves he is a talent with no equal. Same goes for Lupita Nyong’o, who played opposite herself as a family woman with a secret past and the raspy-voiced 'twin' trying to take her place. Bonkers and occasionally very funny, with something to say about the United States (or, ahem, the US), it didn’t matter that the internal logic was a bit off. You certainly didn’t care when watching the balletic final fight scene between the Lupitas. Read review.

3. The Australian Dream

No other 2019 film had a larger scope than The Australian Dream. On the surface, it examined the racially motivated booing that plagued AFL great Adam Goodes in his final years of the game. But it slowly pulled back to look at the 230 years leading up to that moment—as writer Stan Grant put it at the AACTAs—asking the audience to confront the injustices experienced by Indigenous Australians throughout our history. Director Daniel Gordon perfectly balances the tick-tock of Goodes’ exit from Aussie Rules, assisted by interviews with Goodes, with the historical context provided by Grant and others. It’s an enthralling, emotionally shattering movie. It shatters the myth of Australia too, and necessarily so. From The Australian Dream onward, we can start having a real conversation about this country. Read review.

2. The Irishman

No movie should be more than 90 minutes long. Okay, a couple hundred can be two hours. A few dozen can justify three hours. But the list of movies even allowed near the three-and-a-half-hour mark can be counted on one hand, and one of those fingers will be used on Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman. That is about as high as praise from me—and my notoriously small bladder—gets. Read review.

1. Parasite

In Bong Joon-ho’s searing Parasite, the members of a poor South Korean family worm their way into an upper-crust household by pretending to be unrelated and taking on jobs as housekeepers, drivers and tutors. But who are the real parasites? The more we learn of the richer family, the less they seem to offer. It’s no surprise a power struggle burbles, however there’s no anticipating its incredible late-in-the-film twist. Parasite is an expertly made and performed con-artist thriller and class comedy. Why does it take the number one spot, over these other five-star features? The devastating finale sealed the deal for me. Read review.

Honourable Mentions (in alphabetical order): Apollo 11, Between Two Ferns: The Movie, Diego Maradona, Knives Out, Long Shot, Midsommar, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Ready or Not, Thunder Road.

Now over to you! What were your fave films of 2019? Sound off in the comments below.

Header Image: Madman Entertainment/Roadshow/Transmission Films/Universal Pictures/Netflix