Hindsight: A 2019 Cinematic Retrospective

If you'll excuse the inevitably rapid senescence of this contextual gag, back when you could go to the cinema I went and saw a bunch of films. Many, if not most, if not all of them, are your usual Hollywood fare. But let's begin at the beginning, shall we?

Films I didn't see in 2019

The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part

This didn't half bomb, did it? I only saw the first one shortly before the trailer for this one came out, and it looked reasonably amusing, I suppose. But then it came out and no one cared. I'm kind of curious as to why this did so badly at the box office, but all the articles I've read on the subject are rather wishy-washy. My gut instinct is that it was a combination of poor marketing and too great a distance of time between the first instalment and this. Market saturation has been blamed but I don't think anyone cared about Lego Batman or the Ninjago (?) movie. I think they just waited too long and didn't push hard enough. They probably didn't give the public enough of a reason to be interested in seeing the continuing adventures of Emmet, Wyldstyle and friends.

The Curse of La Llorona

I think I've given up on the spinoff parts of the Conjuring franchise after The Nun. Heard it was bad, didn't even bother. It's always directors with absolutely no experience doing these things, isn't it? Writers/script editors who are just dumped in the director's chair because James Wan and now David Sandberg are too busy making expensive films.

Dark Phoenix

Heard this was bad too, but admittedly I've never bothered to watch any of them at the cinema since either First Class or Origins: Wolverine, whichever came last. Might check it out one day if I'm really desperate for some X-Men. Wasn't this directed by the same guy who wrote X-Men 3, which was also about the Dark Phoenix storyline and was also bad? God knows what Fox were thinking there. "Give him another chance, eh?"

Annabelle Comes Home

See my remarks re La Llorona above. Even the presence of Wilson and Farmiga (which I assume was brief) couldn't entice me back. Plus they recast the role of Judy, yet the original actress is going to be in Conjuring 3, I believe. Hard to make it feel like an effective side story.

Zombieland: Double Tap

It's been obvious for years that a sequel to the original Zombieland was on the cards because the Facebook page has been maintaining a steady if low rumble of marketing for a long time. But in 2009 when the original came out I was 19 and the revived zombie apocalypse craze was at its height with the Left 4 Dead games and the like. Ten years later, my interest is just not really there.
Update: Yet I watched this a few days later. It's pointless, the cast surely all have better things to do, it has none of the freshness of the original, the plot is sloppy and lacking in structure, and virtually none of the alleged emotional moments are afforded any weight, yet I laughed and had a good time watching it. Perhaps it could have made more of the significance of the "evolved" zombies, of the relationships between the main characters, and the dramatic potential of the new characters, but evidently that wasn't really the point. Completely inessential, but surprisingly fun.

Films I wouldn't mind seeing

Ophelia (maybe)

I don't think this is actually meant to be that good, but it'd be nice to see Daisy Ridley in a more serious role.

The Lodge

The trailers looked a bit silly but it got good reviews. And even "okayish" horror films are often more engaging or at least more atmospheric than "okayish" films in bigger-budget genres. I hope to check this out at some point.

Update in 2020: Having now watched The Lodge, I can confirm that it was an entertaining watch overall, engaging in an interesting navigation of predictable and unpredictable genre elements and leaving you, as the viewer, simultaneously sympathetic for and horrified by the actions of both parties in the film's central conflict. It feels like they were going for a Hereditary-esque vibe while also intersecting different types of horror tropes with each other. In this way, appropriately enough given the comparability to Hereditary, it shares some qualities with Midsommar (see below) in terms of creating a constant sense of unease and disquiet through the use of disparate horror elements. Worth a watch.

Films I did see

The Favourite

Technically a 2018 film, but I saw it in 2019. Everyone knows it was good. I just want to point out what an odd rarity it is to watch a contemporary film in which the historical background is the War of the Spanish Succession. Not my favourite Lanthimos, that's probably The Killing of a Sacred Deer (although I haven't watched Dogtooth yet), but it lived up to the hype.

Captain Marvel

It was decent, like most of the Marvel superhero films. See my review here.

Us

Like a number of people who saw Us, I fall into the "I wish he hadn't revealed what was going on with the doubles" camp. Other than that I thought it was pretty thrilling, maybe even better than Get Out, although they're both very much cut from that quasi-Twilight Zone mould. Plus this one had Tim Heidecker in it.

Shazam!

More fun than Captain Marvel, if a bit sloppy. Full review here.

The Wind

This originally came out on the festival scene in 2018 but didn't get a cinematic release in the States until 2019 and only got a DVD release here. It's a sort of dual narrative, with a present storyline interspersed by flashbacks, and this structure is laboured somewhat excessively in my view, but the present narrative is a great highlight with a terrible, crushing feeling of isolation and paranoia. This was brought to my attention by the tie-in game by Airdorf, maker of the excellent FAITH series of horror games, and I'm glad to have seen it.

Avengers: Endgame

Meh. Full review here.

Tolkien

It's a tepid biopic without much focus or direction. Is it about Tolkien's romance with Edith, his friendship with G.B. Smith, his writing inspiration, or his experiences in the war? The film doesn't seem to be entirely sure, and doesn't deliver much insight about the man. A particularly obvious issue is the fact that the film leads up to him starting The Hobbit, which is to say the work of his with which general audiences are familiar, and completely omits the decades of narrative writing he did, admittedly mostly for his private interest at the time, beforehand. If anything, the story of The Fall of Gondolin is the most immediately relevant tale of Middle-earth for his early life because it's the one he wrote first, but the film either can't mention this because of copyright issues or won't because it's scared of alienating the general audiences who probably wouldn't have gone and seen this film anyway. His life simply wasn't that interesting, and the film avoids real issues, such as much of the influence of Catholicism on his life and how that affected his writing and relationships. I know lots of people have said that, but a lot of people who have said that are, I suspect, Catholics who want to indulge in conspiracy theories about why the Church would be passé in a light biopic (as if any of us need more reasons). But I'm not religious and am certainly not a Catholic, yet it still stood out to me. It's just not much of a film.

2040

This is my local item, a nice little documentary about how already-existing technologies, if implemented more effectively and widely, could drastically improve the Earth's environmental conditions right now. I do feel like it was a bit soft, putting too much onus on the community and not enough on governments and industry or business, but it also implies that that is an additional benefit, i.e. that community environmentalism might foster the, ahem, withering away of such things. I appreciated that.

Toy Story 4

I was intrigued about this being a story reuniting Woody with Bo Peep, but I didn't feel like this added anything new to Toy Story, which more or less wrapped itself up neatly in the near-perfect third film.

Spider-Man: Far From Home

This was pretty good, confirming Tom Holland as most likely the best cinematic Spider-Man and presenting an effective continuation of the "cinematic universe" after Endgame. Mysterio was handled appealingly and his illusions made for some engaging set pieces, and the balance between the Peter Parker stuff and the superhero stuff was funny and reasonably heartwarming. Probably better than Homecoming and almost certainly the best of the three cinematic universe pieces of the year.

Midsommar

It's good! But so was Hereditary, and while Hereditary felt in many ways like a moodier, classier take on the classic familial deal-with-the-Devil tale, Midsommar was a little too familiar having seen the original The Wicker Man not too many years ago. That being said, it's visually striking and the representation of passive-aggressive mind games and gaslighting does give it unique qualities. Probably the best stuff, however, is the opening and the occasional flashbacks to the horrific family annihilation sequence that starts the film.

Once Upon A Time in Hollywood

It's okay? Yeah, it's cool that Tarantino still has enough clout to do his own thing, and parts of this, such as the cowboy show scene, were fun, but I found chunks of it a little too slow for its own good, and in my head it's completely melting into the Coen Brothers' Hail, Caesar! from 2016. But I get that the film is good (and also bittersweet) simply because it exists, even if it didn't blow my mind.

Joker

Taxi Driver with clowns. See my full review here.

Jojo Rabbit

Taikia Watiti takes what sounds like an incredibly disturbing novel about the Holocaust and turns it into a relatively light-hearted and life-affirming comedy. This was a fun watch, but it suffers from, in my opinion, the general issue with Watiti's films, which is that they become unfocused. The first act, with Jojo at the camp, is strong and clear, but after he goes back home things become rather more fragmentary just as the narrative actually gets going, with Jojo negotiating between his Nazi brainwashing and the presence of a Jewish girl in the house. As I say, it's quite funny, and Stephen Merchant's scene is great. It just feels a bit sloppy, Scarlett Johansson is hardly giving her all, and the young lead feels a touch out of his depth.

The Lighthouse

Much like Midsommar to Hereditary, The Lighthouse is perhaps not quite as good as The Witch, although it's still very tense and stylish. It just perhaps plays its "the characters are insane" concept a little too heavy-handedly. Dafoe and Pattinson play off each other very well, and the depiction of isolation, drudgery, sordidness and "cabin fever" are well realised. Visually it's also very tight and suffocating, in almost a square aspect ratio and entirely in black and white. A touch overplayed, but gripping nonetheless. 

Marriage Story

"Being aliiiive! Beeing aliiiiive! Be-ing a-liiiiiiive!" Anyway, this is quite an engrossing character piece, although it's slow and, once again, I wasn't super impressed with Scarlett Johansson, but it was certainly the Adam Driver performance I preferred of the two I saw in 2019. In fact, Driver is the highlight in my view, although Laura Dern and Alan Alda both give memorable performances too. Not being either a divorcee or a child of divorce, I'm not sure this had the impact for me that some people have described, but it's still both moving and funny; however I think my attitude towards Joker might be applicable to this if you've seen Kramer vs. Kramer.

Knives Out

Whaddya know, Rian Johnson continues to be a good writer-director. Full review here.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

It's dumb and squandered the best parts of The Last Jedi to make what is basically a DC fiasco in a galaxy far, far away. My extended thoughts are here.

1917

Watch out for those wicked Jerries! It's like watching someone play a video game, the Germans are cartoonishly evil, and the characters are pretty thinly-written, but it's visually engaging, fairly historically accurate in terms of costumes, props and the like, and you do feel the men's desperation. Definitely one of the stronger war films of recent years, and good to see the First getting some attention rather than the Second.

So that brings us to...

Worst 2019 film I saw

Easy. The Rise of Skywalker. And not because I think "Disney ruined Star Wars" or something; I mean I overall like... half... of The Last Jedi, for goodness' sake. No, it's because Rise of Skywalker was sloppy, lazy and dramatically inert.

Best 2019 film I saw

Maybe Knives Out? Nothing stands out as a particular highlight; a number of strong items such as Midsommar and The Lighthouse, plus some better-than-average Hollywood fare such as Spider-Man and Shazam! are at least worth mentioning. I guess more good ones are better than a bunch of crap and only a single highlight, maybe. Maybe I just need to watch a wider variety of films.

 

Update: I might be that guy and award "best of 2019" to Under the Silver Lake for its engaging portrayal of paranoid conspiracy theorising on the part of an understimulated layabout, although I thought it was a little too long.

The Rise of Skywalker: Initial (manic) reactions

SPOILER WARNING

Pictures to follow.

I changed my mind about both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi upon rewatch, the latter admittedly to a greater extent, so I can't necessarily trust my reaction to the latest instalment of Star Wars, but I also can't deny it when one of my reactions, unlike those previous two, is "I'm not sure whether I even want to see it again."

On the simplest level, my reaction to The Rise of Skywalker is that I was bored and bewildered simultaneously. The film is paced utterly frenetically, with almost no room for character development, and it's hugely plot driven to an embarrassing extent, with little real sense of natural conflict. As a result, it doesn't feel much like a Star Wars film at all, which both of its predecessors, in my view, did in their best moments, especially The Last Jedi.

It's been argued that the Sequel Trilogy had nowhere to go after Episode VIII, but to me it was fairly obvious: how will Rey fulfill her role as leader and inheritor of a great legacy? How will Kylo Ren be redeemed? What's noteworthy about this is that in this structure the conflict between the Resistance and the First Order is not particularly important; it's just dressing for the story of two young people who find themselves in positions in which their decisions will affect the fate of many: not a bad place for a narrative, in my view.

The Rise of Skywalker, however, either doesn't recognise this or doesn't want to, because while the film touches upon these points amid its relentless Macguffin-driven plotting, it pays them so little attention and breathing room amid the endless journeying and changing of location that they are practically lost, and in this regard the film, in contrast to, to make an obvious comparison, Return of the Jedi, cannot deliver a clear and satisfying resolution for its primary hero and villain.

The film has a handful of good moments, mostly centred around the bond between Rey and Kylo, and Kylo's moment of redemption, but these are soon over. In its inability to construct a character-driven drama, the film lurches from place to place in an exhausting fashion, struggling to give Poe and Finn some depth by giving them single conversations with irrelevant secondary characters who contribute nothing to the story. The film also suffers in its use of the legacy characters, with the exception of Han. The presence of Leia, achieved using old footage of Carrie Fisher, is unnecessary and encumbers the writing, and Luke's scene has absolutely no presence or gravitas, especially in contrast to Yoda's appearance in The Last Jedi.

The film is also frustrating in its cowardice and laziness, undermining the previous film by presenting Rey as Palpatine's inexplicable long lost granddaughter and using Palpatine as its villain rather than driving its narrative through meaningful conflict between Rey and Kylo. Instead of taking a mature approach in continuing the previous film's narrative it tries to create a new and arbitrary threat which also undermines the previous trilogy. The story structure and writing feel "off", out of kilter with the other films in their heavy focus on exposition, and consequently lack emotional impact.

I shouldn't be surprised that a film cowritten by Chris Terrio, who worked on some of DC's worst recent offerings, felt this way, but it's frustrating to see this writing inflicted on characters who may have had some potential for a satisfying resolution in more subtle hands. I feel particularly sorry for Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver, who are given roles with none of the relative meatiness of the previous film outside of a couple of scenes still compromised by the grotesque focus on Star-Wars-mythology-based exposition. Their characters are not allowed to reach satisfying dramatic conclusions, only endings produced by the inertia of the plot; Rey wielding two lightsabers to disintegrate Palpatine with his own lightning means nothing when it's not clear what character journey is being completed in that moment.

The film wants to do something interesting with showing Rey's temptation by the dark side, and a noteworthy highlight is when Rey, in her desperation to save Chewie (she thinks) uses Force Lightning and seemingly kills him. However, this is lumbered with the unnecessary associations of Rey being a descendant of Palpatine rather than the situation symbolising an ordinary human desire for control in difficult circumstances. As a result the film pointlessly rehashes the thesis presented in The Last Jedi that lineage is not important, but in a rushed, clumsy and unsatisfying way.  Rey's temptation by Palpatine to assume the leadership of the dead Sith Order is a complete reprisal of his temptation of Luke in Return of the Jedi but without the tension and drama which that film possessed due to Luke's relationship with Vader; by eliminating Kylo from the scene by that point no relationship exists to inform Rey's decisions apart from her distant affection for Finn and Poe, which this film fails to provide with much chemistry despite trying to cram a madcap adventure for the three of them into the film's middle act. There's simply not enough motivation for Rey to want to join or lead the Sith, and thus the climax is weightless and lacking wholly in tension.

Similarly, the redemption of Ben Solo, born of Rey's kindness and his mother's sacrifice, is somewhat effective, largely due to the conversation with Han, but this is just a brief moment in a film too lacking in clear character arcs for the development to be wholly effective. I criticised The Last Jedi for not giving its critical character moments enough structural focus; in The Rise of Skywalker they don't receive enough composition at all. The film has the seeds of interesting ideas within itself, but they are completely drowned by the mindless obsession with plot and excessive action.

As irritating and frustrating as the other two films in the Sequel Trilogy could be, when I was watching them I always at least felt that I was watching a film with some degree of structure and vision. With The Rise of Skywalker I felt more like I was viewing a studio-mandated mess in the manner of Suicide Squad or Justice League. The Star Wars film it reminded me of the most, sadly in my case as I consider it the worst of the Disney-era projects  (perhaps until now) is Rogue One: characterisation dumped in favour of plot-driven setting-hopping and fanservice. Despite, say, Canto Bight, I dearly wish Rian Johnson had accepted the writer/director job after Colin Trevorrow was let go; even if what we'd received was flawed, even annoying at times, it probably at least would have been measured and thoughtful. Maybe I'll change my mind if I can face watching this again, but Lucasfilm and Abrams let down not fans or audiences but their cast and themselves in this stupendously botched finale.