25. Ready or Not
Since their installment in the VHS series 10/31/98, I knew the filmmaking collective Radio Silence were uniquely visionary even in that segment’s brief runtime. And while their feature debut Devil’s Due is a fun and ferocious riff on Rosemary’s Baby, they really came into their own with Ready or Not, a critical and commercial smash about a family ritualistically hunting their new daughter-in-law. You could ascribe any number of underlying meanings about class and privilege in the 21st century to the film, but Ready or Not is less concerned with metaphors and more with relentless bloody fun. While pop horror in the last half of the 2010s has been generally thought-provoking and serious, in 2019 it’s a breath of fresh air for a horror film to let us turn our minds off and bask in the glory that is Samara Weaving killing the shit out of a bunch of one-percenters. (Jacob Trussell)
24. Little Women
Greta Gerwig’s narrative structure of her Little Women adaptation is the most notable deviation from the original text. By telling half of the story through flashbacks, her film crescendos with a series of parallels that’ll knock the wind out of you. It’s a testament to her airtight script and Nick Houy’s precise editing, but this structure isn’t just a clever flourish, it’s an artistic choice that imbues the entire film with an exceptional perspective on memory. What Little Women understands so well — and what Saoirse Ronan’s performance as Jo is especially attuned to — is the feeling that everything is happening all the time. It’s an urgency likely reserved for teen girlhood, a sensation too easily disregarded as melodrama by many. The past isn’t something that happened, it’s something still happening; all the emotions are still as real as they were when first experienced. To feel seven years’ worth of feelings at once is incredible and terrifying and beautiful. It’s something that can’t quite be put into words, but somehow Gerwig put it onto the screen. (Anna Swanson)
23. The Cave
There is probably no braver filmmaker on this list than Feras Fayyad. While receiving tons of accolades, including an Oscar nomination, for his previous feature, Last Men in Aleppo (co-directed by Steen Johannessen), he remained in Syria to continue documenting stories of heroes in one of the most perilous places on Earth. He epitomizes the concept of the endangered gaze in nonfiction cinema as he this time follows women doctors working in an underground hospital in Ghouta, with one particular figure, managing physician Dr. Amani Ballor, standing out as a primary subject. As bombs fall directly above, she is depicted still having to deal with sexism from untrusting patients regardless of her being their only hope. The Cave features a commanding score (by Matthew Herbert) that emphasizes the urgency of what we’re watching in the claustrophobic facility, and the photography couldn’t be more vivid. This is an astonishingly cinematic work considering how obviously spontaneous the situations are. Fayyad is a filmmaker who meets the demands of such unpredictable work with utmost professional craftsmanship, fittingly for a documentary about doctors who must always be ready for anything. (Christopher Campbell)
22. Under the Silver Lake
The greatest cinematic tragedy of 2019 was undoubtedly the rise and fall, and fall further, and then even further than that, of A24’s enigmatic Under the Silver Lake, a movie whose bad Cannes buzz a year prior seemed to doom it in the eyes of its esteemed independent production company. After premiering at the French festival in May of 2018 to middling reviews, the sophomore feature from It Follows’ David Robert Mitchell had a planned release for that summer – until it was pushed to December, and then yet again to its final resting place of April 2019, where it saw extremely limited theater time (if any?) and went straight to VOD. It would appear as though A24 (a company which has championed weird, smaller films since its very inception) got cold feet, and pushed Under the Silver Lake to the back of its mind like a bad dream, but it’s only made its ardent fans more angry that it was never given its theatrical due.
Watching the film is like wading through an endless night. It’s an overlong, self-indulgent, perplexing behemoth of a movie – not a small feat wholeheartedly love, but it’s gained a small following of vocal, passionate fans (myself extremely included) who champion the film’s underrated quality, and even its potential for cult status one day. The film follows a down-on-his-luck, LA-based loner named Sam (a constantly sweaty-looking Andrew Garfield) who meets the girl of his dreams (Riley Keough), only to have her disappear the day after meeting her. His endless quest to track her down throws him into what appears to be a secret wormhole of endless codes and connections amongst LA’s elite, as he tries to figure out “what it all really means”. It’s a tricky film in the way it attempts to present its women as idealized objects while using the filmmaking to simultaneously denounce the way women have been portrayed and treated by Hollywood. I, personally, give it a pass, because I believe the film is entirely a “fuck you” to Hollywood and to the rich bastards that control our world. It understands the ways we try to make meaning out of the unknowable, and also of how we try to cope with our own meaninglessness. Also, the movie is just really, really horny. Everyone in this movie wants to fuck — and maybe that’s what it all really means when you think about it. (Brianna Zigler)
21. Hustlers
Jennifer Lopez didn’t need to prove she’s a star, but in Hustlers, she gives a movie star performance that is perfect for the film she’s in: equal parts thrilling, empowering and emotional. She can charm the greedy men of Wall Street with a sultry look that spells their doom. With the women she’s taken under her wing, she uses a motherly gaze that melts your heart. She lounges in a luxurious fur as if it’s a spa robe, makes a denim swimsuit somehow sound appealing and, most importantly, can put on a show that effortlessly catches all eyeballs in the room. Rounded out by impeccable performances from Constance Wu, Keke Palmer, and Lili Reinhart, Lorene Scafaria’s heist drama has it all: the wonderful female gaze, Cardi B giving JLo a lap dance and, under it all, walloping emotional depth. The triumph of this narrative isn’t in how it absolves or condemns its leading ladies, but in how it gives us a window into their intimate bond. Ramona insists that motherhood is a mental illness; Scafaria, Lopez, and Wu show us that this glorious fact is true. So, one last time everybody, let’s hear it for our girls. (Aliya Jones)
Related Topics: 2019 Rewind
