To officially launch my recap of 2019 in film, here’s a grab bag of cinematic honors that fail to fit within any of the themed lists to come:
SEX SCENE(S)
1. High Life — Juliette Binoche Matriarchal Ritual
2. Our Time — Closet Banging
3. The Lighthouse — One-Eyed Sailor
4. Midsommar — Ritual
5. Climax — Demonic Psychedelic Rave Orgy
6. Knife + Heart — All
7. Queen & Slim — Concreation
8. The Chambermaid — Window Washing
9. Chained for Life — Sound Mix
10. A Matthew McConaughey Double Feature — The Beach Bum (Conversational Cunnilingus) & Serenity (Thrust-free Cumming)
11. Long Shot — Simultaneous Premature Orgasm
12. Parasite — Clockwise
13. Aniara x3 — Tonguey Makeout into Turned Gender Tables / Vigorous Fingerbang / Ritual Ceremony
14. The Souvenir — Intimacy?
15. In Fabric — Mannequin
16. The Third Wife — Post-Cunnilingus Juicy Make-Out
17. Sauvage — All
18. End of the Century — Rough Realism
19. Under the Silver Lake — Rear Window Everywhere, Even in the Bedroom
20. This Is Not Berlin — Sex Sounds
21. Pasolini — Thrusting
22. My Days of Mercy — Celebrities
COLORS
- Pain and Glory
- The Beach Bum
- Black Mother
- Uncut Gems
- Ad Astra
- The Last Black Man in San Francisco
- The Laundromat
- Midsommar
- Under the Silver Lake
- Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood
- Climax
- The Third Wife
- The Souvenir
- Asako I & II
- Luz
- Chained for Life
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire
- Rafiki
- Waves
- Invisible Life
- 6 Underground
- John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
- The Art of Self-Defense
- Muted colors are still a color-related choice!
- Isn’t It Romantic
- That Nancy Meyers aesthetic.
- Midnight Family
GORE
- Midsommar
- Rambo: Last Blood
- John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
- 6 Underground
- Hellboy
- Slaughterhouse Rulez
- Brightburn
- The Dead Don’t Die
- Child’s Play
LIGHTING
- The Lighthouse
- Ad Astra
- All Is True
- Little Women
- The Last Black Man in San Francisco
- Marriage Story
- The Irishman
- Midsommar
- The Nightingale
- Richard Jewell
- A Hidden Life
- John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
TITLE
My favorite titles fall into one of three categories:
- Titles In Themselves
- No matter their connection to the content of the movie, these titles immediately catch the eye.
- Titles in Relation to the Movie
- These titles may not be impressive on their own, but they in some way enlighten an element (preferably elementS, emphasis on the plural) of the movie that audiences may not have contemplated otherwise.
- A Combination of the Two
- Too straightforward to need an explanation.
In Themselves
- The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then The Bigfoot
- Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
- Sea Of Shadows
- SOS!
- Satanic Panic
- Cassandro, the Exotico!
- The exclamation mark!
- David Crosby: Remember My Name
- It’s in conversation with the title of his famous solo album…
In Relation to the Movie
- The Souvenir
- The Image Book
- Our Time
- Chained for Life
- Parasite
- The Laundromat
- Synonyms
- Les Misérables
- Midnight Traveler
- Wild Nights with Emily
- Queen & Slim
- The Lighthouse
- Marriage Story
- The Nightingale
- The Man Who Killed Don Quixote
- Relaxer
- Non-Fiction
- By the Grace of God
- One Cut of the Dead
- Framing John DeLorean
- Charlie Says
- Where’s My Roy Cohn?
- End of the Century
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire
- Pain and Glory
- Always in Season
- Climax
- Too Late to Die Young
- Everybody Knows
- Styx
- Screwball
- Never Grow Old
- A recommendation, a prediction, or a threat?
- Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
- The Biggest Little Farm
- Working Woman
- Braid
- Woman at War
- Fighting with My Family
- Jay Myself
- “Myself” sounds an awful lot like “Maisel”
- Angel Has Fallen
- A Score to Settle
- Breakthrough
Both
- Her Smell
- I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians
- Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese
- Uncut Gems
- The Last Black Man in San Francisco
- Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood
- The Dead Don’t Die
- Under the Silver Lake
- Varda by Agnès
- Island of the Hungry Ghosts
- Dragged Across Concrete
- The Death of Dick Long
- Ash Is Purest White
- Giant Little Ones
- The Current War: Director’s Cut
- Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles
- Happy Death Day 2U
- Lucy in the Sky
- Them That Follow
- What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire?
- Hail Satan?
- The question mark!
- Ad Astra