The movie business forecast for 2019 was dreary. However, the forecasters had called it all wrong. The industry had one of its most successful years in recent history. Critically and commercially, many movies from 2019 rose to the top of the charts. While Avengers: Endgame and Frozen 2 made record-breaking amounts of money, other films were extraordinarily profound, innovative, and beautiful. Here’s my list of the top five movies from this year based on cinematography, writing, acting, and overall enjoyment.
Harriet (#5)
The first-ever biopic of Harriet Tubman does not disappoint. Director Kasi Lemmons showcases an uncelebrated aspect of Tubman — Tubman as a human being and not just an historical figure. She is portrayed as the strong, smart, quick-thinking person she had to be. The movie tells Tubman’s story of freeing the enslaved and guiding them along the Underground Railroad, yet it is also full of unexpected twists and turns. Harriet Tubman’s life story is still shrouded in mystery, so the movie often uses Tubman’s personal accounts and imagines them expansively. For example, Tubman, who said she received messages from God about where she needed to go, is shown as having visions that warn her of the future. These scenes are gripping. The beauty of the film’s cinemaphotography and resonance of the score are memorable.
Cynthia Erivo gives a grounded and relatable performance as Tubman. The Grammy, Tony and Emmy-winning actor-singer embodies the two-hundred-year-old story. After the movie, I left the theater feeling many emotions — particularly gratitude for Tubman’s actions and shame for our country’s history.
Honey Boy (#4)
Honey Boy, directed by Alma Har’el, is an unusual film, to say the least. The movie, written by Labeouf, is about Shia Labeouf’s upbringing. In the movie, Labeouf plays a version of his own father.
Honey Boy follows a father, James Lort (played by Labeouf), and his young son Otis (played by Noah Jupe) as Otis breaks into the world of Hollywood as a child actor. Every interaction between Otis and his rapacious father weighs down on Otis, as his father forces him to enter an industry that is notoriously unforgiving, especially for a child. Labeouf wrote the movie in a rehabilitation center as a way of coming to terms with his own past. Director Alma Har’el, uses straightforward cinematography and editing, which makes Honey Boy like real life. Labeouf’s performance seems to channel his father rather than play him. As I left the theater I was thankful that the movie had been made and I wanted to go back and watch it again immediately.
The Farewell (#3)
The Farewell is about a Chinese-American woman, Billi (Awkwafina), who goes to China with her family to spend time with her grandma, Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen). Nai Nai’s family has learned she has stage four lung cancer, but Nai Nai is unaware she is dying. Billi, the Chinese American, learns it is a common practice in China to not tell a family member when they are going to die so that they can spend time with their family without thinking about their death. Billi and her family gather under the false pretenses that her cousin is getting married. Most of the movie follows Billi navigating the differences between American culture, from which she has learned to be an individual and express her feelings, and Chinese culture, which encourages her to put the good of the family over her own feelings. Awkwafina, in her first dramatic role, plays a girl who is torn between the country of her birth and the country in which she grew up. She manages to take a character, who is in a situation most of us will never have to face, and make her struggle seem universal. The believability of the characters comes from the fact that they are not manipulated to be relatable to a Western audience but are firmly situated in their own culture. Lick student Luna Jiang-Qin ‘21 agreed about the Chinese characters’ believability: “I saw people that I knew reflected in the characters.” The movie was injected with plenty of comedy to keep it lighthearted and wholesome, most of which came from Nai Nai, as well as Billi’s grand aunt (Hong Lu). Besides Awkwafina, the best performances were by the two grandmothers, who, by Jiang-Qin’s standards, were extremely realistic. “I liked her grand aunt because she reminded me of my own grandmother. She was a realistic portrayal of a grandmother,” Jiang-Qin said. Lulu Wang, the director, manages to balance drama with comedy effortlessly, handling a dark subject with humor.
Joker (#2)
The intense, powerful, and thought-provoking Joker lives up to all expectations. With the intensity of the plot and Joaquin Phoenix’s performance matched with stunning visuals, Joker presents the backstory of one of the most iconic villains of all time. Joker follows Arthur Fleck, a man with a mental condition that causes him to laugh hysterically whenever he feels intense emotions. Fleck makes his living as a clown by day but has a dream of becoming a stand-up comedian. Through a series of violent and traumatic events, Fleck starts to lose his grip on the world around him, and transforms into the villain everyone knows him as — The Joker. Joaquin Phoenix’s performance was intense, even alarming at times. However, there were also heartwarming moments and humor.
The movie, though captivating, had high points and lulls. “It’s definitely a bit slow,” said Meg Wiley ‘21, who saw the film, “I thought it was going to be an action movie.” Joker uses its platform to address the issue of mental health and how it is treated in America. Meg Wiley observes, “I think Joker addressed a real-world issue, mental health, that our country is struggling to deal with.” Fleck is consistently judged and publicly shunned for his condition. It is that merciless judgment that leads to him becomeing The Joker. The movie makes the point that had he had proper treatment and people who cared about his condition, The Joker, as we know him, would not exist. After the movie, I felt like I knew The Joker. Phoenix’s performance made me empathize with him, seeing The Joker less like the villain and more as the victim, with America being the real villain. Joker’s cinematography, script, and editing all deserve praise, but it’s Phoenix’s performance as a struggling and unstable man who is forced into unideal circumstances that brings the movie home.
Us (#1)
The second movie directed by Jordan Peele, the director of the box office hit Get Out, is mind-bending. Like Get Out, every aspect of Us has a deeper meaning than what meets the eye. The movie is about a woman named Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o) and her family, the Wilsons, who travel to Santa Cruz to spend the summer. Almost immediately, Adelaide, the protagonist of the movie, starts to notice that things seem to be off — she sees “coincidences,” as she calls them. Her suspicions are confirmed when on their first night, her son, Jason, whispers the menacing phrase, “there’s a family in our driveway.” When they check, they see that a mysterious family is standing outside their house, clad in red, all holding hands. Soon, the home invasion commences and the real Wilsons are now fighting for their lives. Lupita Nyong’o amazes with her portrayals of Adelaide, the desperate mother who will do anything for her family, and as Red, the evil version of Adelaide who has experienced nothing but suffering throughout her life.
The movie is gripping and intense; the theme of class struggle embedded into it relates the struggle of the doppelgängers, who are always watching their counterparts live the lives they want, to people who live without class privilege. Isa Castillo ‘21, a student at Lick, said that this theme resonated with her: “It made me think about how people with privilege don’t usually care about the experiences of people without it.” Peele uses beautiful lighting, scenery and dialogue to balance the horror aspect of the movie with its deeper metaphor about classism and struggle between the privileged and the under-privileged. The acting, the script, the dialogue, every aspect of the movie, is thoughtful and compelling. I will rewatch it several times. I can’t fathom anyone getting tired of watching it. The movie confronts its viewer with so many layers of ideas to unpack.
