Best of the Year/Decade

For some crazy reason I spend a couple of hours compiling these lists.

Here’s my ranking of all the movies I saw last year, with the rating I gave them.

Best of 2019

1. Blinded by the Light – 10
2. Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood – 9
3. Parasite - 9
4. Richard Jewell – 9
5. Wild Rose - 9
6. Bombshell - 9
7. Dark Waters – 9
8. Ford v Ferrari – 9
9. A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood – 9
10. Her Smell – 9

Western Stars – 9

Terminator:  Dark Fate – 8

Black and Blue - 8

Long Shot - 8

Marriage Story – 8

Late Night – 8

Joker – 8

Eighth Grade - 8

Yesterday - 7

Rocketman - 7

Us – 7

The Irishman – 7

Ad Astra - 7

Knives Out – 7

Queen and Slim - 6

Uncut Gems - 6

Booksmart – 6

John Wick 3 – Parabellum – 1

Documentaries

Don’t F**k with Cats-10
Free Solo – 10
Leaving Neverland - 10
Hitsville:  The Making of Motown - 10
Linda Ronstadt:  The Sound of My Voice – 10
Inventor:  Theranos – 10
Apollo 11 - 10
The Soundtrack of Our Life:  Clive Davis – 10
The Many Lives of Nick Buoniconti - 10
Satan and Adam – 10
Bathtubs over Broadway – 10
Knock Down the House – 9
The Apollo – 8

The Ozzies

Best Picture – Blinded by the Light

Best Actor – Paul Walter Hauser in Richard Jewell

Best Actress – Charlize Theron in Bombshell

Best Supporting Actor – Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time …in Hollywood

Best Supporting Actress – Kathy Bates in Richard Jewell

Best Director – Quentin Tarantino – Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood

Best Documentary – Don’t F**k with Cats (Netflix)

The Lizzies

Best TV Show – The OA

Best Actor – Mahershala Ali in True Detective

Best Actress – Jodie Comer in Killing Eve

Best Supporting Actor – Tony Shaloub in the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Best Supporting Actress – Nina Arianda in Goliath

Bonus Feature

Here’s my friend David Jones’ 2019 favorites. 

He is the only one I know who loves this shit as much as I do:

1. Don’t F**k with Cats
2. Parasite
3. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
4. Marriage Story
5. Ford v. Ferrari
6. Toy Story 4
7. Gloria Bell
8. Uncut Gems
9. My Name is Dolemite 
10. Blinded by the Light

Which brings me to my purely personal best of the decade, in only approximate order.  These are the ones that stuck with me the most.  

The Best of the Decade

Movies:

1. Mad Max:  Fury Road
2. Mission Impossible:  Fallout
3. Arrival
4. The Social Network
5. I, Tonya
6. Inception
7. Blinded by the Light
8. Spotlight
9. The Imitation Game
10. Whiplash
11. The Wolf of Wall Street
12. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
13. The Dark Knight Rises
14. Get Out
15. Zero Dark Thirty

Bonus Feature – The David Jones Top 10

1. Gravity
2. The Social Network
3. Roma
4. Her
5. The Revenant
6. Don’t F**k with Cats
7. The Shape of Water
8. Winter’s Bone
9. Manchester By the Sea
10. Mad Max:  Fury Road

My Favorite Performances of the Decade:

Lead:

Leonardo Di Caprio in The Wolf of Wall Street

Amy Adams In Arrival

Supporting:

Paul Walter Hauser In I,Tonya

Rebecca Ferguson in 2 Mission Impossible’s.

Favorite Documentaries

1. Stories We Tell
2. Three Identical Strangers
3. Tim’s Vermeer
4. Hot Coffee
5. George Harrison – Living in the Material World
6. Mea Maxima Culpa – Silence in the House of God
7. Searching for Sugar Man
8. Requiem For the Dead:  American Spring 2014
9. Don’t F**k with Cats
10. Going Clear:  Scientology and the Prison of Belief
11. Free Solo

My top 20 Favorite TV Shows

1. Rectify
2. Fargo
3. The Good Wife
4. The OA
5. Catastrophe
6. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
7. True Detective
8. The Sinner
9. The Newsroom
10. Veep
11. Glee
12. Billions
13. The Good Place
14. Late Night with Seth Meyers
15. Silicon Valley
16. Real Time with Bill Maher
17. Treme
18. Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel
19. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
20. You're the Worst

My Favorite TV Performances:

Lead:

Jodie Comer in Killing Eve

Billy Bob Thornton in Fargo

Supporting:

Tony Shaloub in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Maggie Siff in Billions

As Gene and Roger used to say, “See you at the Movies.”

At the Cinema - October 2019

Western Stars – 9

Bruce Springsteen just turned 70.  At an age when most are slumped in a lounge chair watching Netflix, waiting for their next doctor’s appointment, he is producing new projects.  Take rock stars.  If they are still active, it’s on the Rock N Roll seniors tour, playing songs that were hits 40 or even 50 years ago.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  I myself am a sucker for that stuff.

But here’s the Boss.  In the last few years, he’s written an autobiography and had a one-man Broadway show.  A movie about his influence on a young man, “Blinded by the Light” was terrific.  And he recorded a new album.  Then instead of just releasing the record, he produces a performance film where he plays the whole album.  That’s Western Stars.  I’m in awe. 

He introduces each song with a story of how he wrote it, and why.  He talks about his love of the old westerns of his youth, and even his love of Jimmy Webb’s melodies and their timelessness.  Then he performs each song in a huge barn, with an audience and a 30 piece orchestra.  I wish I had been there.

The sound is stunning.  No, every song isn’t a classic, and his intros seem to be tinged with the melancholy of his life.  I wished I had been more familiar with each song and I suspect in the years to come this film will be loved, as each song becomes more known.  It’s not getting much box office love right now, but I doubt that Bruce is worried about that.  He said he’s done rock n roll, and he wanted to do something else.  He’s making art, while most people his age are just making appointments.  You’ve got to give him his due.  He says he is about to get the E Street Band together, record another album, and tour.  After seeing this, I hope he adds an orchestra to his tour.  I don’t know where he gets the energy.

 

Joker – 8

Joker is the umpteenth portrayal of the renown Batman nemesis, and one that I would argue was unnecessary except for capitalistic motivations, as is often the case in America the Corporate.    In other words, make it dark, make it R-rated, and make some money.

And, I would argue, make it not half bad.  Joaquin Phoenix, who looks like he hasn’t eaten during the Trump administration, plays the Joker to the hilt.  Phoenix is not known for playing pleasant characters, so this one is right in his wheelhouse, and he doesn’t miss.  What’s surprising is that this is a rather slow moving character study, that accelerates into its bloody payoff in the second half.  This is the story of a man who plays a clown for a living, and while that right there would be enough to drive most people crazy, it’s just the beginning for him, as he unravels his unraveling life.  He begins to discover why he is the way he is, and starts to let his demons out.  This transformation is not for the squeamish.  

I’m not a big Phoenix fan, but he nails this transition into the Joker and somehow I see mo’ money makers in the future.  I can honestly say I would not recommend this movie to anyone, as you probably already know if it’s something you would like or not. 

Black and Blue – 8

Alicia West (played by Naomie Harris) is rookie cop who has come back to New Orleans after 10 years in the military.  She wants to make a difference in her old community, but how things have changed!  She barely recognizes her old friends, and it doesn’t take her long to realize her empathy for her old friends is going to be tested.  She is told she can’t help them, that her loyalties are now “blue,” not black.  She is tested when she catches cops conducting a drug related execution on her body cam.  She is soon being chased by what seems like every cop in the city.  It doesn’t help that the executed dealer is the nephew of one of the cities drug lords, so a gang is chasing her too. 

This is a B movie, like they used to make.  Sure, distrust of the police is a theme, but there’s good action, a good story, and good acting.  New Orleans comes off as the wild, wild west, and there’s not a lot of wasted time here.  I like movies that are just trying to tell a story and pull it off.  Good movie.  It won’t win any Oscars, but it will suck you in and entertain you.

Parasite – 9

I can count the subtitled foreign films I’ve seen in a theater on one hand.  It has to be acclaimed, and this is the highest rated film of the year so far.  It’s as good as advertised.

The setting is Korea, and two families interact.  The rich occupants of an architect-designed house in Seoul begin to unknowingly hire, in a variety of positions, the members of a family of slum-residents, who brilliantly move the old staff out.  The house itself becomes a character when the recently replaced housekeeper shows up with some secrets to share.  Famed director Bong Joon-Ho jolts the plot around in unpredictable, often stunning fashion.  The actors are uniformly terrific. I have to admit they had me at hello, and lost me a little at goodbye, as I thought the rather shocking ending was unnecessary.  I would have preferred the wit and satire of the previous two hours.  Guess you can’t have everything.

Terminator:  Dark Fate – 8

I often say that our government has no respect for the tax-payer.  I can now also say that sometimes filmmakers have no respect for the ticket-buying public.  I’m not thrilled that this installment of the Terminator franchise essentially wipes out three of the previous sequels.

But having said that, this is a better movie than those now-irrelevant ones.  There’s a stunning development as the movie begins, but there is a new relentless terminator, trying to get to a new threat to the “Legion” (Skynet has been successfully dealt with.)  The action is fantastic, especially in the first half hour, as we meet the new savior of civilization, the new threat, and the new protector.  Sarah Conner is back in the person of Linda Hamilton, so that wipes out a tv series too.  (The Sarah Conner Chronicles – which was terrific – better than the erased movies.)  Linda has a lot of mileage on her, but she can still kick butt.  There’s a great in-air fight in an airplane where the only thing missing is Tom Cruise, and all the actors playing the various new roles have as much charisma as Tom.

Scanning the Satellite

Free Solo – 10

I finally got around to catching the movie that won the Oscar last year for Best Documentary, and is it spectacular.  This is the story of the first person, Alex Honnod, to scale El Capitan in Yosemite free solo.

El Capitan is essentially a big granite rock that requires a level of rehearsal and preparation that us mortals are not familiar with.  The filmmakers detail the preparation and the danger involved in making a climb like this with no ropes – free solo.

The film making is breath taking, as is the scenery.  But it is the feat itself that had me gasping out loud at least 20 times.  I don’t like heights, and I can tell you I had to look away numerous times.  This is a stunning film of a stunning physical accomplishment.  If you haven’t seen this, check it out, currently on Hulu.  Wow.

The Kelly Clarkson Show – Incomplete

I just have to confess that I DVR the new talk show ever day and watch the first 5 minutes where she does Kellyoke – singing a usually great version of a popular song.  Kelly has a terrific voice, great range, and she is a national treasure.  The rest of the show – not so much.  I haven’t made it through the rest of a show yet, but I’ve always thought with all the many talk shows we’ve had over the years, why didn’t one of them start with a musical act instead of leaving them to the last 5 minutes?  Well, Kelly is doing it, and it's usually amazing.