Welcome to ResetEra's official MOTY for 2019!
(for rules jump at the end of this post)
Tick tock. Tick tock. I know, it sounds like one of those (now consecutive and unskippable) commercials for that new social network crammed into your face as you're being tied in front of your computer, eyelids peeled, eyes bulging out forced to watch as somewhere down the corridor music seems to play. You hope it's not Ludwig van Beethoven's 9th symphony (after all he did no harm to anyone. Beethoven just wrote music). But that just tells you what kind of year this was, if so many commercials just mockingly reminded you of the constant passing of time while watching ads, trapped inside this revolving door. Tick Tock. Time waits for no one. 2019 came and 2019 passed. So let's have a little recap.
It has been a generally strange year, I think even more so for mainstream cinema. Just like Gregor Samsa, US mainstream cinema woke up one morning and realised it had transformed into a kafkaesque monster or a Toy Story meme. Seriously, looking at the box office is like seeing the real life adaptation of Buzz raising its hand and saying "Disney. Disney Everywhere." 7 out of the top 10 highest grossing films of 2019 are Disney productions (should be 8 given that one of the other 3 is "Spider-Man: Far From Home"). That's insane. And out of those 7, the number of original films is… *drumroll* … one. I wanted to say zero, but (even if I really don't want to) I will count "Captain Marvel" as "original". The rest, sequels and remakes. But that doesn't matter because unlike the metamorphosed Gregor, Disney was loved by sooo many, many, many people this year.
The number of records broken in box office is staggering. 2019 is the first year to ever have 8 films cross the one billion $ milestone and pretty much every Disney film on the highest grossing list has broken some kind of record. The big one is obviously held by the grand finale to MCU's Infinity Saga, "Avengers: Endgame" becoming the highest-grossing film of all time and propelling the MCU to be the first film franchise to gross over $20 billion. People also decided that the fever induced nightmares known as the live-action remakes of old animated Disney films were still worth watching (not you "Dumbo", not you…) and so the animated not-really-live-action live-action remake of the animated 1994 musical "The Lion King" broke the record becoming the highest-grossing animated film of all time. It also had the biggest opening for an animated and musical film, but that title was taken away in November by another Disney animation, "Frozen 2".
At the opposite side of the bombastic nature of "Avengers: Endgame", sits the modestly budgeted "Joker" directed by Hangover auteur Todd Philips and endorsed by strand auteur Hideo Kojima as a "movie to change the history of cinema". Winner of the prestigious Golden Lion Award and finding itself on the same list of Venice Film Festival winners as masterpieces like "Rashomon", "Last Year at Marienbad", "Three Colours: Blue" and… "The Shape of Water", this feared by many as an insanely dangerous film to exist and be seen became the highest grossing R-rated film in history and the very first one to surpass $1 billion. My bet is on a proper David and Goliath fight between "Joker" and "Avengers" here this year (but there's a reason I'm not a betting man).
Speaking of jokers, Olivia Wilde made her directorial debut with the witty coming of age comedy-a-la-Superbad, "Booksmart", while Quentin Tarantino made another terribly uneven alternative history dramedy (?) based on the hilarious idea of what would happen if the Sharon Tate murder was actually stopped by a drugged Brad Pitt in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (Sally Menke, you're so terribly missed). And if we're at the chapter of comedies based on somehow hilarious history, one cannot not mention Taika Waititi's "Jojo Rabbit" which upon seeing it almost grabbed the crown for my least favourite film of the year. That lasted about a second as I remembered I did see Dan Gilroy's Netflix produced "Velvet Buzzsaw" and wow, what a disaster.
Yes, Netflix had quite the year: from the "Fyre" documentary to the really unnecessary Breaking Bad film "El Camino", though probably the most notable 2019 release of the media giant was Scorsese's fantastic "The Irishman". Outside of his role in this autumn's reality tv show hit "The Real Auteurs of Beverly Hills" in which he disputes alongside Francis Ford Coppola and.. Ken Loach (?) if Marvel films are cinema or not, Martin Scorsese took the time and delivered a good old fashioned masterpiece. They don't make them like this anymore was sort of a proud badge of honour and metacommentary of the film. The stupendous performances showing you don't have to get a hernia to make people aware of how well you're acting (though I guess the film also has Al Pacino) created a nice contrast when put together with the performances from another Netflix production, Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story. One film showed great insight about love, friendship, loss, regrets and the other had Scarlett Johansson yell at Adam Driver about his Criterion Collection.
Rian Johnson showcased once again his great talents with the amazingly entertaining crime caper "Knives Out". Speaking of showcasing talents, Robert Egges's stylistic exercise and possible film student dissertation "The Lighthouse" also came out this year. Sam Mendes came back seeing that no one wants to fill the obvious-film-before-the-Oscars spot and released "1917". Joe Talbot won the Sundance Directing Award for the great "The Last Black Man in San Francisco". Bong Joon-ho's Palme d'Or winner "Parasite" delivered big time and I believe will have a high spot in this top. Celine Sciamma's "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" is *chef kiss*, but unfortunately for many it will have a late wide release this year.
There are obviously many many other films that have released and I haven't mentioned them. I'm sure it's at least pointless if not painful to mention "Star Wars" so I won't bother. But there's one more film that needs the spotlight. A film that's operating on a completely different plane from mortal cinema. You already know which one I'm talking about. "Cats" is in cinemas right now and this.. this is an experience one must have in a theatre. There are visual effects in there that make the characters in Antz look human. I guess in many ways, looking back, this whole year was the year of CGI given the abundance of computer generated kitsch everywhere. From realistic pokemons to Will Smith's genie and cat Idris Elba. Not even "The Irishman" escaped. But as Kundera once wrote… "in the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme"
Before we jump to the rules, I would like to share last year's ResetEra Top 10 films list:
01. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
(373 points and 46 votes)
02. The Favourite
03. Avengers: Infinity War
04. Mission: Impossible - Fallout
05. First Reformed
06. Annihilation
07. Hereditary
08. Roma
09. Black Panther
10. BlacKkKlansman
Now let's move on to
The Rules:
You can of course add special mentions to your lists, but those won't be counted towards scoring. So keep that in mind. Please don't do the lists over ten… just write them as special mentions with thoughts and recommendations, etc.
* Films must be released in 2019
As always, this is tricky because the community is from all over the world and release windows can vary quite a lot. You can add a movie if it released in your area in 2019 or if it shows online as released in the year. Because of this problem there will always be a few films that will get some points next year as well as some that already were voted last year. Especially foreign releases.
* Films need to be numbered from best to worst (1 being best, 10 being the least best)
10 points goes to the #1 choice, 9 points goes to #2, 8 to #3, and so on and so forth.
Lists that are not numbered will not be added to the final tally.
* Clear film names only. Also your thoughts should be visibly separated from the title.
Please use full titles for films (not abbreviations). Also, format wise, try to clearly separate your thoughts from the title of the film (preferably as a new paragraph under the title of the film). While it won't cancel your vote, the only use of ":", "-" or "/" to separate the films from your thoughts are not preferable as those sometimes are also used in the actual titles.
* You're free to edit them as you wish until the voting ends.
Again, I'll repeat... UNTIL THE VOTING ENDS. I'll make sure to update and double check every list manually when the vote closes. Any edits made after the deadline will not be counted.
* One list only.
Pretty self-explanatory.
* Write some thoughts about the films.
While not obligatory, it is highly recommended to share a few thoughts about the films along with your list. I will choose some of those thoughts and use them as quotes reasoning the best films in the results thread. Plus, just like last years, I'll have a gift (usually an UHD/Blu-Ray/DVD of the best film in our top) for a random voter. After we get our results, I will draw a random user to receive this year's gift. To be eligible you have to vote in this thread and your list must contain thoughts about the films – it can't be just a numbered list (think of this gift as an incentive).
Any questions, don't hesitate to ask me.
Hope I didn't miss anything and sorry if there are any mistakes in here.
We have a lot more time this year (about 7 weeks), so hopefully we can get plenty of individual lists this year.
Previous result threads: 2017 | 2018
Happy listing everyone!
VOTING CLOSES February 24th, 2020 at 00:00 GMT.
February 23rd is last time for voting.
VOTING CLOSES February 24th, 2020 at 00:00 GMT.
February 23rd is last time for voting.
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