10 Movies That Blew Us Away In 2019

5) Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Every critic gets asked, “What is it that makes you like movies so much?” This year the answer was simple: I told them to go see Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. A joyride through 60’s Los Angeles seen through the eyes of a has-been actor (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stuntman (Brad Pitt looking really, really cool), Tarantino transports us to a time when the leaves were brown and the skies were anything but grey – when hippies asked for rides, neon signs lit up the streets and psychedelic trips were all the rage. Oh, and Margot Robbie plays Sharon Tate. Kicking her feet up while watching a movie at the theater, she laughs without a care in the world. Tarantino invites us to do the same.

4) The Nightingale

There’s never been a movie this brutal in the 122 years of motion pictures. Jennifer Kent’s follow up to The Babadook shows us what our history books won’t: Unbearable images of rape, misogyny and a scene involving a baby that is so cruel that, for the first time in all my years of watching films, I had to close my eyes. If you stick with it, though, this macabre nightmare has a cathartic ending that cuts straight to the heart. To see this heroine break out of her shell is to not only understand the power of women, but to understand, as never before, the power of art.

3) Marriage Story

Divorce is never pretty. But the divorce in Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story is piercingly beautiful, miraculously moving and richly detailed. Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson turn in decade-defining performances as parents dueling for their child’s custody. Well, it’s really the lawyers who are the ones dueling. These two are just trying to get by the only way they know how. That means singing, trick or treating, or yelling at each other in scenes that are so honest that they remind you of your own divorce, or the divorce of someone you know. If that sounds too depressing to be entertaining, it isn’t. Baumbach has made a re-watchable tearjerker, one that will go down with The Imitation of Life as one of the best.

2) Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Another candidate for most re-watchable tearjerker is the latest from Celine Sciamma. Working with light and texture the same way a painter would, her subjects recall the silkiness of a portrait by Rapheal, while the empty countryside has an airy tenderness that reminded me of Pierre Renoir. Still, this is a movie, and it does things only a movie can do. A queer love story that builds like a swell, the more the sexual tension grows, the grander the images, performances and historical metaphors become. Once Sciamma gives us a chance to step back and see the bigger picture, in a final shot that will go down in history, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. I just decided to do both.

1) A Hidden Life

Picking a number one movie is usually a hard thing to do. Not this year, though. This three hour parable about a man being ostracized for his Catholic faith during World War II might not sound like everyone’s idea of a good time out. Have faith in Terrance Malick, though: His images have the power to move mountains and the story has a spiritual grandiosity that pours over you like a waterfall.  It’s the director’s best work since The Thin Red Line, and it’s a work of art that will be discussed – among film circles at least – for decades to come.

15 Honorable mentions: 1917, Atlantics, Dolemite is my Name, Ford V Ferrari, Honeyboy, Honeyland, Hustlers, I Lost My Body, Jojo Rabbit, Long Days Journey Into Night, Midsommar, Pain and Glory, Toy Story 4, Transit, Us.