My 2019 in Movies

2019 was my second year of seriously tracking my movie watching and writing something about each movie I see, centered around my Letterboxd account. It was also the year of the Criterion Channel's debut, which has filled the Filmstruck-shaped hole in the hearts of cinephiles in the United States and Canada. So: would I be able to maintain the breakneck pace of viewing I had in 2018 (120), or collapse under the weight of the endeavor (so tired...)?

FRED'S 2019 YEAR IN REVIEW, VIA LETTERBOXD

I watched 17 short films, 5 comedy specials, 6 "other", and 130 feature films in 2019, and unless it was something I'd already written about on the site, I wrote a little bit about each of them. Early in the year, author and critic Gretchen Felker-Martin tweeted something that resonated with me, and that has become a touchstone when I try to think about my response to a movie:

Being a critic isn't about toeing a line, or picking a brand to stan for, or pointing out loudly what's problematic and what's Pure. It's about communicating what art makes you feel and then dissecting why it did.

It's a simple idea, but one that this amateur writer thinks about a lot.

Breakdown of my viewing:

• 26 rewatches of movies I'd seen before
• 104 movies new to me
• 32 2019 releases
• 20 theatrical viewings
• 10 new-to-me Criterion Collection features
• 19 horror movies
• 16 animated films, 7 of them in the main Disney animated line
• 12 films distributed by A24
• 7 documentaries
• Setting aside multiple voice/Star Wars/Marvel performers, I saw 4 films each featuring Keanu Reeves, Michael Keaton, or Tilda Swinton
• 2 films from around WWII that I hadn't seen in about 30 years and liked much better than I remembered (The Wizard of Oz and It's a Wonderful Life)
• Ridley Scott's best film (Alien) and one of his worst (Alien Covenant)
• A little cycle of Charles-Manson-adjacent movies: first, Bad Times at the El Royale, which features fictional characters based on the Family; then Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, which directly covers Sharon Tate and the night of the murders on Cielo Dr.; and after that I listened to the season of "You Must Remember This" about Manson, which introduced me to Joan Didion, and in turn led me to watch Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold. (Edit 1/19 late night: I realized there’s a fourth! In Her Smell, Becky Something sings Charles Manson’s song “Garbage Dump” during one of her drunken episodes.)
• One ridiculous 80s action movie that a critic I enjoy wrote 365 essays about, one per day, throughout the year.

And some of my favorites:

• My favorite new film I saw this year was Safety Last!, a silent Harold Lloyd comedy from 1923. You're likely familiar with the image of him hanging off the face of a clock on the side of a building; I know I was. What surprised me was how modern the filmmaking techniques were, and how sophisticated the special effects. I was blown away, and I recommend the superb Criterion Collection transfer of the movie to anyone. The 4 and 8 year olds even got into it a bit.
• My favorite film of 2019 was Parasite, which is a masterful class satire with many of the pleasures of a con or heist film before things take a darker turn in the back half. The less said before you see it, the better, but I highly recommend it.
• Other older movies that I loved were 25th Hour and Frances Ha. Two very different movies about very different groups of people in NYC in the opening decades of the 21st Century, one melancholy, one charming.
• Saw two movies that overtook Isle of Dogs as favorites of 2018: The Favourite, and Into the Spider-Verse. The latter was just so joyful and clever about what a comic book movie COULD be, and did some really thoughtful and creative things with the animated medium.
• Other movies that have really stuck with me: Moonlight, The Clouds of Sils Maria, The Babadook (the terror here is, as a parent, what if I don't have enough for my child?), Under the Silver Lake, Midsommar, Margaret, and Us.