EWB's Top 31 Movies of 2019: The Results

[GoGo Yubari]

here's some movies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

31. The Farewell (10 points, appeared on two ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

29 (tie). Hobbs and Shaw (11 points, appeared on two ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

29 (tie). Honey Boy (11 points, appeared on two ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

28. Frozen II (11 points, appeared on three ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

27. Her Smell (13 points, appeared on two ballots)

Next Time, on EWB's Top 31 Movies of 2019:  ♫ Who wants to play a game? It's time for hide and seek! ♫

[livid]

#JusticeforHobbsandShaw 

[Jimmy]

The Farewell is such a beautiful film. LuLu Wang is a special talent, I can't wait to see what she does next. I'd totally recommend checking it out if you haven't seen it, it's a special film, one of the most accomplished debuts I've seen in a long time. 

Also loved Her Smell. 

I actually wanted, and I can't believe I'm going to say this, Hobbs and Shaw to be even more ridiculous. 

[Monkey D. Lars]

27 minutes ago, Jimmy said:

The Farewell is such a beautiful film. LuLu Wang is a special talent, I can't wait to see what she does next. I'd totally recommend checking it out if you haven't seen it, it's a special film, one of the most accomplished debuts I've seen in a long time. 

Also loved Her Smell. 

I actually wanted, and I can't believe I'm going to say this, Hobbs and Shaw to be even more ridiculous. 

I can't believe you said that James.

[Benjamin]

1 hour ago, Jimmy said:

The Farewell is such a beautiful film. LuLu Wang is a special talent, I can't wait to see what she does next. I'd totally recommend checking it out if you haven't seen it, it's a special film, one of the most accomplished debuts I've seen in a long time. 

Also loved Her Smell. 

I actually wanted, and I can't believe I'm going to say this, Hobbs and Shaw to be even more ridiculous. 

Wang also directed Posthumous, which has one of the best acting performances I've ever. 

[GoGo Yubari]

The Farewell is, indeed, wonderful. If you've not watched it, watch it.

And now, bring on the franchise films!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

25 (tie). Zombieland 2: Double Tap (13 points, appeared on four ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

25 (tie). It: Chapter 2 (13 points, appeared on four ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

24. Detective Pikachu (13 points, appeared on five ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

23. Ready or Not (14 points, appeared on three ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

22. Toy Story 4 (18 points, appeared on three ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

21. Shazam (18 points, appeared on five ballots)

Next Time, on EWB's Top 31 Movies of 2019: You will be bored of him in two years and we will be interesting forever.

[Benjamin]

All the good movies coming in too early 

For real, though, movies like Shazam! & Detective Pikachu surprised me in just how fun they were. Same with how Sonic did this year.

What I expected to be fun but was just a shadow of its predecessor was Double Tap, unfortunately. 

[GoGo Yubari]

Of that last batch, Ready or Not is my favorite. I wish I could have found a spot for it on my ten, maybe I should have expanded this year's to 15.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

20. Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker (19 points, appeared on three ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

19. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (20 points, appeared on four ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

18. 1917 (22 points, appeared on four ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

17. Captain Marvel (24 points, appeared on six ballots)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

16. Little Women (28 points, appeared on four ballots)

Next Time, on EWB's Top 31 Movies of 2019: You're really lucky, you know that? You didn't have to wait your whole life to do something special.

[MalaCloudy Black]

Captain Marvel wears a NIN shirt? Now I have to see this movie!

[Your Mom]

Captain Marvel and Little Women were way too low  I don't even want to know what Cap would have finished if I hadn't put it number 2 on my list

[Gabriel]

19 minutes ago, Your Mom said:

Captain Marvel and Little Women were way too low  I don't even want to know what Cap would have finished if I hadn't put it number 2 on my list

I really enjoyed Captain Marvel, and I love the MCU, but it's really tough for those movies to crack my top ten lists personally. While I enjoy them to the absolute max (I'm almost done re-watching the entire MCU for what feels like the tenth time) they are a lot like Star Wars for me, in that I know I'm forgiving them quite a bit because of my fanaticism. Rise of Skywalker didn't even crack my top ten (I don't believe).

It's especially tough for those movies when there are so many great films coming out that break the mold or resonate with viewers on a much more intimate scale. I can't wait to see where Midsommar placed. That movie changed me. It had to be my number one because of the lasting effect it had on me.

[LittleDaniel]

Det Pikachu was fun and probably would have made my list if I didn't haaaaaaaaaaaaate the last five minutes so very, very much. So far its just that, Frozen II, and Captain Marvel that I've seen. I was really underwhelmed by Frozen, and Captain Marvel was good but basically just below that MCU threshold of "good enough action movie for me to actually like it and want to rewatch it" like Thor: Ragnarok.

I gotta check out The Farewell, Little Women, and Lady of a Portrait on Fire -- Portrait especially was on my list of things I wanted to watch before finishing my list after Jimmy's recommendation in the voting thread but I never got around to it in time.

[gunnar hendershow]

Captain Marvel was in that slew of comic book movies that could have cracked my list. In fact the thing that hurt it the most is how shitty my experience was at the theater at which I saw it was. 

Portrait is going to be watched by me real soon, I've been putting it off for too long. 1917 and Little Women are both gonna join that list of movies I keep meaning to see though, that's a long list and ever growing.

I saw RotS and there was no way that was ever making my top 10 of the year.

[LittleDaniel]

Oh yeah, Star Wars. Because I really liked TLJ and I heard RotS was a) bad and b) shit all over TLJ, I kinda doubt I'll ever get around to seeing it?

[gunnar hendershow]

1 minute ago, LittleDaniel said:

Oh yeah, Star Wars. Because I really liked TLJ and I heard RotS was a) bad and b) shit all over TLJ, I kinda doubt I'll ever get around to seeing it?

It has its moments if you watch it in a vacuum. But a big part of the movie is waving away everything TLJ did.

[Gorka]

There's an inadvertently funny promotional stand for the Rise of Skywalker DVD at my work.

All the other new releases have "***** Brilliant Film - Critic" "***** A Masterpiece - Critic" across multiple shelves.

Rise of Skywalker: "Complete the Saga." (x4) That's it. But it's fitting.

Edited April 30, 2020 by Gorka

[GoGo Yubari]

Gonna actually work my way through the whole list up to this point now. Thoughts one the ones I've seen!

 

The Farewell is great. Wonderfully acted, I think one of the great outrages of the Oscars this year was that neither Akwafina nor Zhao Shuzhen were up for Best Actress or Best Supporting Actress, and the ending (by which I mean both how the movie ends and the usual biopic update) is superb. It's for sure worth your time.

It: Chapter 2 was fine but on the whole one of the bigger disappointments of the year. They did a great job casting the adult versions of the Losers Club but as a movie itself, it was a) really not that scary, all the scares felt pretty obvious and b) felt a bit repetitive. Much more successful as a comedy than a horror, I think.

Detective Pikachu did some really cool things, it was great seeing the way they translated the Pokemon world to live action + CGI, but after a certain point it needed to have a plot, and the plot was just perfunctory. Definitely the best video game to movie adaptation of the millennium to this point, though, only the first Mortal Kombat really compares.

Ready or Not is extremely fun, one of those great late-summer movies. In most other years it would have cracked my top ten effortlessly, it just had the misfortune of coming out this past year. Absolutely worth a rental, but I hope it comes to a major streaming platform soon because it's a movie I really want to show people.

Toy Story 4 worked much better than it had any right to. They should really stop going to that well but I'm not going to act like I didn't have a good time with it. It didn't handle its ensemble cast all that well, I think, but Forky was a great addition and the Woody stuff was very satisfying.

Shazam! has a great core idea for adapting the source material and picked the perfect guy to play the lead. It's a fun movie that I think can be improved on going forward, specifically by hopefully having a better idea for the villain than "hey, here's Mark Strong in one of these movies again."

The Rise of Skywalker is bad.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire, oh my gosh. One of my favorite romance movies of the last decade. The ending really got me. Also has the weird footnote of being the last movie I saw in a theater before they all shut down for the foreseeable future, and it was a good one to go out on.

1917 is the most impressive spectacle movie of the year, probably, give or take whether you consider Tarantino recreating '60s Hollywood spectacle or not. I have some misgivings with it, mostly in little details like the way they handle the couple German soldiers you actually see, but it's worth seeing either if it comes back to a theater or if you have a killer home setup.

Captain Marvel is a bit like Shazam in that I felt like it was a good template for a better movie to come, but there's some incredibly clever stuff they do in terms of subverting fan expectations (their take on the Skrulls) and in the story structure overall. Still, I think Brie Larson kind of had a thankless task for most of the movie basically playing a character with, deliberately, not much to play. I was excited to see her playing the Captain Marvel we get at the end of the movie in Endgame, but then it turned out they filmed the movies out of order. Oh, well.

Little Women was wonderful. Kind of wild that Saorsie Ronan is so wonderful in this and it's still only my third-favorite performance of hers in the last decade.

[Benjamin]

RotS was pretty horrid and I’ve seen it twice in the cinema because I hate myself, I guess. 

1917 was good but it wasn’t near my top 20, I reckon. 
 

Captain Marvel was a ton of fun and I loved it, really need to rewatch it again. I think it was just outside my top 10.

Little Women is absolutely amazing and should have been way, way higher. Undoubtedly top 5 of last year. 
 

I really need to see Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

[MalaCloudy Black]

I guess I should see ROTS sober because I didn't mind it..

[Gabriel]

21 minutes ago, How The Cloud Stole Christ said:

I guess I should see ROTS sober because I didn't mind it..

I didn't think it was bad at all. More just disappointing. It was still Star Wars, which for me is good enough, but the new trilogy definitely suffered from not having a consistent voice throughout. I thought Force Awakens did a good job of setting things up in a familiar way... then The Last Jedi came and kinda threw a bunch of curveballs at us... and then Rise of Skywalker ends it all by taking it back to the story that was being led to in Force Awakens, not Last Jedi.

I will need to watch it again, but it's definitely not a great way to end things.