Items25The creator’s order
  1. 1Parasite (2019)Parasite (2019) 8.5/10 on IMDbReleased 30 May 2019Bong Joon Ho turns the architecture of a wealthy household into a working model of class relations, then keeps changing the rules of the film around it. The comic precision matters as much as the shocks. At the top of this year because its argument is inseparable from the pleasure and dread of…0
  2. 2Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) 8.0/10 on IMDbReleased 6 Sept 2019Céline Sciamma makes looking an action with consequences: a painter studies a reluctant subject, and the balance between them gradually changes. Restrained performances, the island setting and carefully withheld music make small gestures carry extraordinary pressure. Its love story is also a…0
  3. 3The Irishman (2019)The Irishman (2019) 7.8/10 on IMDbReleased 1 Nov 2019Martin Scorsese drains the gangster epic of its usual promise of lasting importance. The long running time lets favours, betrayals and professional habits accumulate before the devastating quiet of old age. Some digital de-ageing is distracting, but Robert De Niro's final passages give the film a…0
  4. 4Uncut Gems (2019)Uncut Gems (2019) 7.4/10 on IMDbReleased 13 Dec 2019The Safdie brothers trap a New York jeweller inside a chain of bets, debts and promises that he insists will come good. Adam Sandler makes him exhausting company and impossible to ignore. Overlapping voices and relentless forward motion turn financial self-delusion into one of the year's most…0
  5. 5Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019)Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) 7.6/10 on IMDbReleased 24 Jul 2019Quentin Tarantino's Los Angeles hangout film finds its strongest feeling in the insecure friendship between an actor and his stunt double. Period detail and leisurely detours let a lost entertainment world breathe. Its violent historical fantasy remains contentious, but the melancholy beneath the…0
  6. 6Marriage Story (2019)Marriage Story (2019) 7.9/10 on IMDbReleased 28 Sept 2019Noah Baumbach allows a separating couple to be funny, loving, unreasonable and cruel without assigning either a permanent moral advantage. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson make legal negotiations feel painfully personal. Choose it for the contradiction between knowing someone intimately and…0
  7. 7Pain and Glory (2019)Pain and Glory (2019) 7.5/10 on IMDbReleased 22 Mar 2019Pedro Almodóvar lets a filmmaker's memories, physical pain and hesitant reconnections form an unusually tender self-portrait. Antonio Banderas does wonderfully quiet work as a man whose earlier intensity has turned inward. The vivid childhood passages and precise shifts of colour keep introspection…0
  8. 8Little Women (2019)Little Women (2019) 7.7/10 on IMDbReleased 25 Dec 2019Greta Gerwig rearranges the familiar March sisters' story so that childhood abundance and adult separation answer each other. Saoirse Ronan's Jo and Florence Pugh's Amy make competing ideas of independence equally persuasive. Its structure gives the financial realities of writing and marriage a…0
  9. 9The Lighthouse (2019)The Lighthouse (2019) 7.3/10 on IMDbReleased 18 Oct 2019Robert Eggers puts two lighthouse keepers inside a square black-and-white frame and lets routine curdle into hostility and maritime delirium. Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson embrace the film's foul language and bodily indignities. A marvellously abrasive companion to the year's more genteel…0
  10. 10Jojo Rabbit (2019)Jojo Rabbit (2019) 7.9/10 on IMDbReleased 18 Oct 2019Taika Waititi's story of a boy in Nazi Germany uses childish fantasy to expose the absurdity and danger of indoctrination. The cartoonish Hitler imaginary friend will not work for every viewer. The film earns its place through the moments when the comedy gives way to a child's limited understanding…0