In which arguably the greatest living practitioner of interior spaces forces himself outside, all the more perversely in a country he’s never filmed. To the Ends of the Earth (Kiyoshi Kurosawa) Why should a documentary be satisfied with being an indifferent eye when it can perfectly become a beating heart? – Jose S.Ĥ6. Their camera captures daily life in her household, where she’s being looked after by her adult grandsons, with the delicateness of a caress, reminding us that objectivity in nonfiction is a lie. América (Erick Stoll, Chase Whiteside)Īs the United States goes through one of its darkest eras, filmmakers Erick Stoll and Chase Whiteside found the grace, compassion, and kindness lacking in their country through a different América: a 93-year-old Mexican woman with advanced dementia nearing the end of her life. At its center is a canon-worthy performance from Lupita Nyong’o as a woman (and her doppelgänger) trying to outrun her past. Us is so weighty that one might feel the need to immediately start it over once the credits roll.
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Peele fills the movie with symbols and emblems, be they Michael Jackson or mysterious white rabbits. The plot, which centers on a black family’s summer vacation being invaded by a group of doppelgängers, turns into a sprawling look at class dynamics set against the backdrop of Reagan-era America. Jordan Peele’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning cultural touchstone Get Out is not as neatly packaged as its predecessor. As an intense sociopolitical lesson, Monos certainly sheds vivid light on the costs of war in present-day Colombia, particularly when it comes to taking advantage of minds not yet fully formed. Intentionally suffocating in its aesthetic, cinematographer Jasper Wolf’s camera moves with a fierceness as the characters’ unpredictable movements dictate what our eyes follow.
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With information patiently, sparingly doled out–even up until the final moments–we learn this tight-knit clan is, in fact, a rebel group in the mountains of Latin America, sporadically visited by a commander but mostly given orders through a radio. As if we’re floating through clouds at the edge of the world, we witness a group of children, blindfolded, playing soccer, the fear instilled that a misaimed kick could send the ball hurling into the unknown oblivion below. There’s a preternatural feel to the opening sequences of Monos, the brutal, unflinching third film from Colombian-Ecuadorian filmmaker Alejandro Landes.
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distributor, so if you have to travel across the sea, it’s worth the trip. Thematically speaking, Mark Jenkins’ Bait–a punky, hilarious, playfully surreal, and beautifully honest reaction to the onslaught of gentrification in the idyllic fishing villages of his native Cornwall-might have seemed a million miles away from Eggers’ similarly brilliant Lighthouse, but its harnessing of outdated equipment and filmmaking techniques was no less astonishing, and perhaps more beautiful. With all the talk of mermaids, wickies and wanks you might have been led to believe Robert Eggers was the only director in 2019 to have honed a salt flecked, wind-whipped, early-20th-century aesthetic–the likes of Robert Flaherty–and applied it for their own contemporary needs. It should be noted that, unlike our other year-end features, we placed no requirement on a selection being a U.S theatrical release, so you may see some repeats from last year and a few we’ll certainly discuss more over the next twelve months. So, without further ado, check out our rundown of 2019 below, our ongoing year-end coverage here (including where to stream many of the below picks), and return in the coming weeks as we look towards 2020. We’ve asked our contributors to compile ten-best lists with five honorable mentions–a selection of those personal lists will be shared in the coming days–and, after tallying the votes, a top 50 has been assembled. For our most comprehensive year-end feature, we’re providing a cumulative look at The Film Stage’s favorite films of 2019.