Most Enjoyable & Most Disappointing Films of 2019

by Tony Medley

Here are my lists of the most enjoyable and least enjoyable/most disappointing/most overrated films I saw during 2019.

The negative category includes some films that, while not the worst, were disappointing or overrated, or, while enjoyable, had huge flaws. It is surprisingly short but that’s because I’ve wised up and stay away from superhero movies and others I know in advance to be junk.

The positive category is just how much I enjoyed them, not predictions for the Oscars® (which is why you don’t see the overly long, indeed fallacious and derivative, 1917 and The Irishman here). Don’t look for any of these in nominated films because I rate them on how well they are made and how entertaining they are. The Academy apparently now rates them on how politically correct they are and what sex and color are the director (the fact of the films that were nominated and Richard Jewell ignored lends credence this supposition). The "Most Disappointing" are listed by rank of how much I loathed them with #1 the most loathsome.

Most enjoyable:

1.   Richard Jewell: Clint Eastwood’s brilliant, captivating homage to a hero who was unjustly, brutally persecuted by the FBI and the media.

2.   Knives Out: A takeoff on Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot mysteries that is far better than any of the Christie movies themselves with an engaging Oscar®-quality performance by Daniel Craig. I hope there are more follow-ups akin to those with Inspector Clouseau.

3.   Echo in the Canyon: The story of folk rock that gestated in Laurel Canyon. The stories of The Mamas and the Papas, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, Buffalo Springfield, and many others; they are all here.

4.   Maiden: An enlightening documentary about an all-female crew tackling the men in an around the world sailboat race.

5.   Official Secrets: It’s chancy to believe history as told by motion pictures, but this film seems right on. More important, it is one of the most entertaining and fascinating films of the year directed by Gavin Hood who also did the outstanding “Eye in the Sky” (2015).

6.   Wild Rose: Highlighted by wonderful music, Jessie Buckley gives a boffo performance as Rose-Lynn Harlan, a Glasgow country singer who longs for Nashville, but it’s a far more complex and nuanced tale than just that. After only one minute, I turned to my assistant and said, “I love this movie!” And I never changed my opinion.

7.   Little Women: An engrossing tale well told, the best chick flick ever made.

8.   Linda Ronstadt: The Sound of My Voice: Everything you might want to know about Linda along with lots of beautiful songs.

9.   Yesterday: This film answers the question, “what if nobody had ever heard of The Beatles,” and it’s a treat with lots of Beatles music.

10.       The Aftermath: I wrote that “Keira Knightley gives a mesmerizing performance that will probably be forgotten when awards time comes around, but I can’t imagine anyone giving a better one in this post-WWII story set in 1945 Hamburg.” While she carries the movie, Jason Clarke and Alexander Skarsgård are not far behind her. Both have emotional roles and both carry them off with aplomb.

11.       The Good Liar: A good Helen Mirren thriller that methodically draws you in.

12.       Honeyland: This is an amazing film. It’s hard to believe that it’s really a documentary and all that is happening is actually happening and not being acted.

13.       Ford v. Ferrari: Despite gratuitously defaming the reputations of two of the main characters without any basis in fact, it’s still an entertaining film with good racing sequences, and it allowed me to resurrect my Cobra jacket that appears in the film.

14.       Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Brad Pitt and Leo DiCaprio give their best performances and the film has fine pace.

15.       Downton Abbey: I enjoyed it and never saw one episode of the TV series, so it must be good.

16.       Brian Banks: It is gut-wrenching to watch the unfairness Banks endured and Aldis Hodge’s performance is amazingly true to life. This is one of those films that will stay with you for a long time.

17.       Zombieland: Double Tap: This is here solely because of Zooey Deutch’s off the wall knockout performance which is a comedic masterpiece.

18.       Hotel Mumbai: There is not a second that passes that isn’t fraught with tension. The brutal Muslim fanatics attack with cold-blooded brutality. The automatic weapons they use to spray bullets at the guests might have been on half or quarter loads, but the noise of their shooting is frightening even if you are just sitting in a theater watching it.

19.       The White Crow: This is a pretty long movie to tell the story of Rudolph Nureyev’s defection, but it has fine pace and isn’t overburdened with a lot of ballet sequences.

20.       The Best of Enemies: A heartwarming true story about a black activist working with, and winning over, the head of the KKK to promote integration in the south.

21.       The Chaperone: An entirely fictional story about silent star Louise Brooks’ first trip to New York that works despite its silly politically correct ending that would have been antithetical to the ‘40s Midwest.

22.       Late Night: Writer Mindy Kaling co-stars with Emma Thompson in her biting, feel-good semi-autobiographical satire of diversity and late night TV. While it’s filmed like a TV show (where first time movie director Nisha Ganatra lives), it is funny, appealing and topical, despite its Hollywood Ending’s lack of connection with the real world.

23.       Love, Antosha: The touching story of Anton Yelchin and how he lived his short, meteoric life knowing he had Cystic Fibrosis, a fatal disease of the lungs.

24.       Greta: Even if, like me, you don’t like horror, this is worth seeing just to appreciate the outstanding filmmaking and the acting by Isabelle Hubbert and Chloë Grace Moretz (and it’s not freakishly scary).

25.       Frankie: A surprisingly involving exploration of relationships with Hubbert again, enriched by gorgeous cinematography of the location of Sintra, Portugal.

26.       Gloria Bell: A gripping, rather dark, but thoroughly enjoyable remake by the same director as the original, giving Julianne Moore ample opportunities to display her breasts in scene after scene, highlighted by terrific background music.

27.       A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood: Tom Hanks gives his finest performance in this biopic that adds strong supporting performances by Matthew Rhys and Chris Cooper, among others. Alas, it couldn’t have been more superficial, never scratching the surface of who Mr. Rogers was, what he thought or how he felt about anything.

28.       The Spy Behind Home Plate: The Real Story Of Moe Berg, Major League Baseball Player Turned WWII Spy: Intriguing story of good field-no hit, but super intellectual, major league catcher Moe Berg that overcomes a puerile self-indulgent politically correct statement at the end by the director that has nothing to do with the movie and has no place in a film like this.

29.       Marianne and Leonard: Words of Love: Maybe the many fans of singer/songwriter Leonard Cohen know what he was about, but there will be a lot in here that will interest fans and non-fans alike.

30.       Untouchable: This is a portrait of evil, fat slob Harvey Weinstein, who made lots of award-winning films but who abused his power by assaulting and exploiting women. It’s told mostly by his victims, and their stories are hair-raising. It is an emotional movie to sit through, but well worth the sit.

31.       Aladdin: Bollywood comes to Hollywood. A boffo performance by Will Smith as genie is bolstered by vivid Technicolor, colorful costumes, and wonderful music and dancing.

32.       Scandalous: The Story of the National Enquirer: Absorbing tale of the paper that published sensational gossip but also did the hard reporting on cases like OJ Simpson, upstaging the lethargic Mainstream Media.

Most Disappointing:

1.   CATS: It’s hard to believe that a movie could be made that is worse than this Broadway play and its unmelodic music, but this is much worse, due to a perfectly horrible rendition of the only good song in the play, “Memory,” by Jennifer Hudson.

2.   All is True: Everything in this film is totally made up, belying its title. If you believe as I do that Edward DeVere, the 17^th Earl of Oxford, was the true writer and William Shakespeare a sham, this movie is difficult to stomach. Even if you believe that William Shakespeare really did write all the plays attributed to him, its greatest fault as an entertainment is that it is unremittingly boring and uninvolving, but that’s what you generally get from director/star Kenneth Brannagh.

3.   Charlie’s Angels: I guess women want to prove they can do anything a man can do, including making totally idiotic “action” films that have no relationship with real life. Director Elizabeth Banks has done it in spades with this movie.

4.   The Kitchen: The premise is so counterfactual and the violence so pervasive that this is not a film to recommend unless you get off on brutal violence and silly plots.

5.   Midway: This plays like someone found a 1944 script for a WWII B movie on the cutting room floor and made a movie out of it. Its ignorant story is a disservice to the brave men who fought and died in the most important battle of World War II. It wasn’t enough for clueless director Roland Emmerich to make an inept movie, he compounds this felony by dedicating it to the Americans, ­and Japanese! who participated in the battle. Worse, it presents the Japanese, not as a vicious enemy, but with a soft, understanding, even admirable moral equilibrium that is false and maddening, but this epitomizes the kind of fool who populates Hollywood today.

6.   Red Joan: This is an astonishingly sympathetic roman à clef of the story of Melita Norwood who was a Russian agent in London for 40 years. While it is factual in what she did, it is 100% rubbish in her motives and history, altering facts because if the truth of her being a committed Communist from the mid-30s were known it would blow their fallacious homage out of the water.

7.   Stuber: There are bad movies…and then there is Stuber.

8.   Where’s my Roy Cohn?: This is yet another film masquerading as a "documentary" by a leftwing Democrat activist, this one named Matt Tyrnauer. While it is interesting, it is so terribly biased and clumsy (saying cruel things like his mother was the ugliest woman in New York) it should be taught in film school as an epitome of artless advocacy which has no place in a proper documentary. Cohn was a difficult guy with a lot to criticize (that’s an understatement). But even he deserves a more even-handed treatment than this one that obviously went into the project with its mind made up and its eye on the target in Washington.

9.   Hustlers: This is the chick flick to end all chick flicks. It's a twisted “revenge” movie intending to show the grit of the strip club business (it doesn’t). It has the typically hard to digest slice of life dialogue endemic to all these films. It’s excruciating to watch and listen to them talk among themselves. Not even Sarah Bernhardt or Bette Davis could make this dialogue palatable. Director/writer Lorene Scafaria also makes sure that all the men in the movie, including some who are not johns, are despicable.

10.               Captain Marvel: This thing, another chick flick, is hardly distinguishable from the other superhero films, except that the superhero is a woman and I guess that makes all the difference. This is a “statement” movie. Women are no different from men. OK, fine, if you want to believe that nonsense, this is still as stupid a movie as all the other Marvel junk with male superheroes foisted on the public.

11.               Cold Pursuit: This apparently annual Liam Neeson thriller is bunkum that is no different from the John Wick drivel that glorifies senseless violence. They minimize the tragic finality of death and desensitize viewers to violent murder. I repeat my advice to Liam from last year. Give these things up. They just keep getting worse.

12.               Fast & Furious Presents Hobbs & Shaw: I went into this seemingly endless insult to entertainment expecting one idiotic car chase after another, prolific violence, sophomoric humor, a plethora of special effects, ridiculous fights where the heroes take one killing blow after another yet come up smiling, uncounted numbers of fatalities, and a story that would be hard to swallow in a comic book. I was on the mark.

13.               Stockholm: This is sooo slow and full of talk for something that’s supposed to be a heist movie. Actually it’s slow and full of talk for any kind of movie.

14.               Vita and Virginia: The casting is dismal. If you look at pictures of them, Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf were two of the least physically attractive women of the era. Yet Gemma Arterton, playing Sackville-West, is gorgeous and Elizabeth Debicki, playing Woolf, is at least attractive, something that could not be said about Woolf. Maybe it makes for more of a visual feast, but it destroys verisimilitude. While the ambience of the period is outstanding, the film itself is slow and tedious, especially if you don’t give a fig about either of them.