8. Portrait of a Lady on Fire
Writer/director Céline Sciamma takes her time with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and the results are mysterious, romantic, and quietly devastating.  The key to the film's success is that it presents its romantic leads—two thoughtful women, trapped within the conventions of their time and class and social obligations—with such tenderness and understanding. One is an artist named Marianne (Noémie Merlant), and the other is Héloïse (Adèle Haenel), engaged to marry a wealthy Milanese gentleman. The plan, arranged by the betrothed's aristocratic mother (played by Valeria Golino), is for Marianne to paint Héloïse's portrait without the subject being aware of it. These two women become quite intimate, by looks and by brief but pointed conversations, before anything romantic emerges. That romance evolves naturally, and in the process, Sciamma delves into deeper ideas, not only about the relationship between art and the artist, but also about how such fleeting moments can become eternal by their reflection in art. There's a sense of mourning and the inevitable to Marianne and Héloïse's story, and the third act of the film wrestles with time in deeply affecting ways. The film observes and communicates these women and this relationship as they are, as they were, and as they always will be.

7. The Irishman
This isn't, as far as we can tell, Martin Scorsese's swansong, but with The Irishman, he definitely and definitively seems to be closing the book on his gangster films. The director's latest opus is a 209-minute epic about a mob assassin making the long, eventful trek to becoming a wheelchair-bound old man, alone and unloved and mostly forgotten in a nursing home. Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro, who, like a couple of his co-stars, plays the character at various ages, thanks to some effective visual effects) is a man digging his own grave, but so, too, is everyone else here. The other players include Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci, coming out of retirement for his first significant screen role in 20 years), the cousin of a mob boss who helps Frank get into crime, and Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino), who takes Frank on as his right-hand man. Steven Zaillian's screenplay spins and juxtaposes three narrative threads, showing Frank rising through the ranks, in the hours before he will become infamous (if only in rumor), and telling his life story to the only person who will listen—no one. After this archetypal gangster faces the long and dark night of being alone and forgotten, what else, really, could Scorsese have to say on the subject?

6. Shazam!
Here's a film that isn't just a superiorly entertaining superhero tale. It's also a very funny one, which skirts the line of parody without ever fully crossing it. Shazam! shows just how easy it is to do something different with a typical, worn-out story. Director David F. Sandberg and screenwriter Henry Gayden also show how rewarding it can be to take such a chance. Billy Baston (Asher Angel), a foster kid, receives superpowers from a wizard (Djimon Hounsou), looking for a new champion to keep the forces of evil at bay. The kid is granted the ability to transform into a muscle-bound, skin-tight-costume-wearing adult superhero (played by an affably, awkwardly foolish Zachary Levi), simply by shouting the hero's name: Shazam. The utter absurdity of this setup shows that we're not expected to take the mechanics of this superhero seriously, but there's also something pure about this premise. Superheroes show us what we could be. The powers, such as flying and deflecting bullets and shooting lightning, are just the benefits. The real aspiration is in being the best person one can be. This is a great superhero film, because it pokes at the silliness of these stories while still embracing the core of why they matter. Whatever may come of this particular universe of superheroes, let's hope that Shazam remains his own endearingly goofy and sincere entity.

5. Little Women
Greta Gerwig doesn't just justify the existence of another cinematic adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's beloved novel. The writer/director's Little Women makes a strong case that we need a new telling of Alcott's book every generation or so. The tale of the March sisters, who grow up during the Civil War and find their places in the world in its aftermath, is timeless for its simple storytelling and its rich characters. The filmmaker has decided to play with the novel's structure, and the results are enlightening, thoughtful, and quite daring.  In this version, the characters' pasts and the futures dance together through intercutting and sometimes devastating juxtapositions. The overwhelming feeling is that we are always in the present with these characters—their pasts leading inevitably toward their futures, their futures defined by their pasts, their heartbreaks and their joys and their deep bond as sisters an eternal constant. Gerwig's simple re-shaping of the tale encourages us to consider, not only how Jo (Saoirse Ronan), an aspiring writer, and her sisters (played by Emma Watson, Eliza Scanlen, and Florence Pugh) grow over the course of almost a decade, but also how vital Alcott's book is. Gerwig's version of Little Women shows, without any doubt, that there is still much to mine and to learn from Alcott's deceptively simple tale. This is a boisterously charming and emotionally rich adaptation, giving new life to and new ways of looking at this story.

4. A Hidden Life
For some time, Terrence Malick has been one of our most overtly religious filmmakers. That trend seems to continue with A Hidden Life, which tells the story of Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl), an Austrian farmer who became a conscientious objector when the Nazis rose to power. In this telling, Franz stands up to an evil power structure, is imprisoned away from his family, and must decide if his moral belief is worth the cost of his life. Because Malick keeps the story grounded in the mortal realm, Franz is wholly alone in his suffering, and the price of his misery is the total of everything Franz is and could be. Malick is infinitely patient in his approach to this tale. The story puts forth a simple but impossible question: What can one person of sound conscience do in the face of evil? Pain after pain is inflicted. Doubt after doubt comes. Opportunity after opportunity is presented for Franz to save himself. Franz accepts the pain, suffers the doubts, and refuses the opportunities. Malick's goal with A Hidden Life is to present a man, ordinary in every way except in his commitment to his faith.  That faith is, simply and powerfully, in the beliefs that there is right, there is wrong, and there is some force—either from here or beyond—that tells us which is which. It's up to us and us alone to decide what to do with that knowledge.

3. Parasite
Parasite is a master class of tone control. Co-writer/director Bong Joon Ho has crafted a film that's easy to describe but difficult to categorize. It's a comedy and also a thriller, but the film is much more than either of those simple characterizations. This is a smorgasbord of a film, in terms of its methods, its goals, and its ideas. The reason all of this works as well as it does—as a cohesive vision and an exhilarating experience—is that Bong and co-writer Han Jin Won's screenplay focuses on a single idea: desperation. Every character here is desperate in his or her own way. Throughout the film, Bong continually subverts our sympathies—making us question why we connect to certain characters, reminding us why we did, and then starting the process again.

The basics of the plot have a poor family, the Kims, injecting themselves, one by one, into the lives of a wealthy family, the Parks. From the story's start, the film's title seems to suggest the Kim family, but there's also the thought that the actual parasites are the Parks, using the Kims to live with even more comfort. If both of these ideas can be true, maybe the real parasite is something else. The majority of Parasite goes for laughs, horror, social satire, and the excitement of not knowing what could come next, yet Bong and Han's screenplay closes with a genuinely heartbreaking finale. That should seem impossible, but such is Bong's mastery of this material.

2. The Nightingale
Writer/director Jennifer Kent's film is about a lot of things—revenge, survival in the wilderness, dehumanization through racism, the effects of colonization on a land and a people, the cruelty of men and the apathy of the world. The Nightingale takes a long time—filled with misery upon misery, indeed, from start to finish—for Kent to arrive at even a minimal glimmer of optimism. The story, set in Australia in 1825, follows Clare (an astonishing Aisling Franciosi), who is raped and whose family is murdered by a trio of British soldiers, led by Leftenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin, in an intimidating performance). She seeks revenge and enlists Billy (Baykali Ganambarr), an aboriginal guide, to find the men who wronged her. The simple plot, though, is merely the backbone of a much larger, much more nuanced examination of various levels of cruelty and horror, as well as grief and trauma.

1. For Sama
This remarkable documentary from co-directors Waad al-Kateab and Edward Watts puts us right into the middle of life amidst a military conflict. For Sama shows the perspective of a young woman—a journalist, an activist, a daughter, a wife, and, most importantly to the film's central narrative, the mother of a daughter whose first year of life is entirely defined by death, destruction, fear, and uncertainty. It's the best film of 2019.

Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved.