2019 TOP TEN LIST

Here is my best of the year, with a countdown. 2019 was a challenging year. I'd rather not dwell on it as I nearly cut my blog out entirely, but I still enjoy watching films. I really love maintaining my lists on Letterboxd.

10. Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Long live the King! Kaiju madness erupts in this incarnation of Godzilla, which picks up where the last film left off and finds humanity struggling to survive and explore the giant monsters that lurk beneath the Earth. Enter Mothra, Ghidora, Rodan, and others- a total of 17 Titans are mentioned to have been found and humanity's time on our little sphere may have come to an abrupt end.

9. Polar:

Based on a graphic Novel produced by Dark Horse comics, "Polar" is a fairly standard Assassin taking out his former employers story. Mads Mikkelson is the Assassin, and it's a fiarly kinetic, fun, and amusing little comic book style story.

8. The Furies

A gruesome and fairly twisted flick about several women who are kidnapped and hunted by several masked killers for the sport and entertainment of others. It's a gory spectacle that is elevated by the pure artistry in the gore effects, including a terrific defacing of one victim.

7. It: Chapter Two.

While it doesn't succeed in capturing the same momentum of the first film, the continuing story manages to remain faithful to the book and has a few decent sequences of it's own. Bill Hader's performance is terrific and Jessica Chastain carry the weight of the majority of the film, but James McAvoy somehow manages to fail in capturing the charm of Bill.

6. Shazam!

So few films are willing to embrace the warmth, innocence, and pure fun that comics have long held for children. Many of our current films try to twist these heroes with jaded and "edgy" interpretations, from the Justice League to the Avengers- there is a sense of something dark and haunting about our heroes. Then- There's Shazam! And Billy Batson is the pure and unadulterated look at what it should mean to be a child in the eyes of a child, even one as frustrated and edgy as Batson.

5. Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark:

Based on the collected works compiled by Alvin Schwartz, this film manages to creep, crawl, and worm it's way into the imagination to become one of the most effective genre films of 2019. It's PG-13 rating doesn't work to diinish the creepiness of the film and it's lack of patently offensive gore and vulgarity does not reduce the impact of the scares.

4. Avengers: Endgame

Pure spectacle, Endgame brings back our heroes for another go-round in the MCU. Five years after their failure to stop Thanos, the Heroes reunite to try and set back that which went wrong. They don't want to change the past as much as return those who have been lost to the world they left behind. Fun adventure, lots of plot holes, a number four on my list for good reason.

3. REady or Not

Pure fun.

2. Alita Battle Angel

Holy crap, this movie had EVERYTHING in it!

1. One Cut of the Dead

If there was one film I want people to see from this year, this movie is it. But you have to stay with it for the whole run- you can't leave because you think it's boring, you can't leave because you don't quite get what's happening... everything is answered in the movie and it's well worth the wait and the watch. I guarantee you have never seen anything like this before.