**These lists are in no particular order.**
The first quarter of 2019 is already over. Out of all the movies released so far, I watched 25. Some of them were great, others… not so great. The following are all the movies I watched that were released this year, and what I thought about them.
Sections:
- The Best
- Honorable Mentions
- “Eh, It Was Fine”
- Disappointments
- Hot Garbage
- Final Tally (with Honest Consensus)
- The (Big) Ones I Missed
The Best
On the Basis of Sex
Release Date: January 11th
Director: Mimi Leder
Starring: Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer
Plot: We follow Ruth B Ginsburg from her first day at Harvard to tackling her first big case for equal rights.
Why it’s good: I’m normally biased against historical movies, but the performances made up for that. Plus, how can you not love this woman?
Interesting Fact: Daniel Stiepleman – the writer of the film – is Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s nephew.
Best Line:
Judge: “The word ‘woman’ does not appear even once in the US Constitution.”
Ruth: “Nor does the word ‘freedom,’ Your Honor.”
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 72%
Coffee Sip Score™: 8/10
Oscar Odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: Nah
Dragon Ball Super: Broly (English Dub)
Release Date: January 16th
Director: Tatsuya Nagamine
Starring: Sean Schemmel, Christopher Sabat, Chris Ayres, Vic Mignogna
Plot: Goku & Vegeta must fight against a new Sayain named Broly.
Why it’s good: If you’re a fan of Dragon Ball, this is a no brainer. If you’ve never seen anything Dragon Ball before in your life, this would be very confusing. Obviously, I’m the former, and therefore I have a huge bias. While this does have questionable CGI and not many characters (Emperor Pilaf is in this… but Gohan is not even mentioned.), it is awesome. I honestly don’t know what else to say. It’s more Dragon Ball action that we’ve all come to love, a new and better Broly origin story, hilarious, an incredible scene where Broly goes super sayain, and I will always jump at the chance to see Goku on the big screen. I hope they continue making more and I honestly will not care what the plot is.
Interesting Fact: The hype for this film was so high that the tickets were sold out in Japan, 5 months before the official release.
Best Moment: The entire movie.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%
Coffee Sip Score™: 9/10
Oscar Odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: lol could you imagine?
Brexit: The Uncivil War
Release Date: January 19th
Director: Toby Haynes
Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch
Plot: The story of how Brexit came into fruition.
Why it’s good: We get to see everything that led up to one of the craziest events in history, shown through well-acted performances and a wacky high-energy atmosphere.
Interesting Fact: Despite himself being a ‘remain’ advocate, Benedict Cumberbatch only agreed to do the film after he had been assured by James Graham, who wrote Brexit: The Uncivil War, over a meeting that it is not going to end up being a ‘pro-EU stitch-up.’
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82%
Coffee Sip Score™: 8/10
Oscar Odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: Nah
Fyre / Fyre Fraud (Netflix / Hulu Fyre Fest Documentaries)
*I included both because they’re both good. Both have things the other doesn’t.
Release Date: January 14th (Hulu) / January 18th (Netflix)
Director: Jenner Furst, Julia Willoughby Nason (Hulu) / Chris Smith (Netflix)
Plot: The story of quite possibly the biggest scandal of the millennial generation.
Why they’re good: You have to see it to believe it. A popular rapper and an insane con artist team up to launch the biggest music festival since Woodstock. As things go wrong one after another, it’s absolutely insane to see how everyone defends not shutting the festival down, and what the people actually go through once they arrive. Anyone else get Tanacon vibes from this?
Interesting Fact #1: Billy McFarland agreed to appear in the [Hulu] documentary on condition that he be paid.
Interesting Fact #2: I swear to God I never heard about this whole story until these documentaries.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 76% (Hulu) / 92% (Netflix)
Coffee Sip Score™: 8/10
Oscar Odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: One of them should get Documentary Feature
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World
Release Date: February 22nd
Director: Dean DeBlois
Starring:
Plot: When Toothless gets a girlfriend and a new threat arises, it is up to Hiccup to decide the fate of both the Dragons and the people of Berg.
Why it’s good: Colorful, beautiful animation, epic soundtrack, action-packed, hilarious, smoothly paced, and an ending that almost made me lose my shit.
Interesting Fact: With a running time of 104 minutes, this is DreamWorks Animations longest film.
Best Line:
Hiccup: You brought a baby to a battle?
Fishlegs: I couldn’t find a sitter.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 91%
Coffee Sip Score™: 9/10
Oscar Odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: Best Animated Feature
Us
Release Date: March 22nd
Director: Jordan Peele
Starring: Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, Evan Alex
Plot: A family vacation to the beach turns fucking weird.
Why it’s good: Uh… uuuuuhhhhhh. Well… without trying to delve deep into this, Jordan Peele’s second feature film is wonderfully made. Smooth camerawork, brilliant writing, the pacing was fine, and the performances all worked together flawlessly. And the score, let me tell you, was one of the best horror movie scores I have heard in the past decade. I genuinely believe Jordan made a film that will keep people talking and theorizing about for the rest of the year.
Interesting Fact: Lupita Nyong’o based Red’s voice on Robert F. Kennedy Jr and specifically the spasmodic dysphonia he suffers from.
Best Line: “OK. Playing “Fuck tha Police” by N.W.A.”
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94%
Coffee Sip Score™: 8/10
Oscar Odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: I gotta think about this one.
Honorable Mentions
The following movies were not good enough to make the “Best” list but were good enough to at least mention.
Glass
Release Date: January 18th
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Starring: James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson
Plot: David Dunn is back to track down Kevin Crumb. But when Elijah Price also returns, things get real shitty real fast.
Why it’s good: James, Bruce, and Samuel were perfect as predicted, several twists that lead to a satisfying ending, Anya Taylor-Joy is 😍, and enough plot structure to keep things going and interesting enough to see what happens next. That’s it. Honestly, it was James McAvoy’s performance, the ending, and the hype that a movie from 2000 is getting a sequel that allowed me to enjoy this.
Why it didn’t make the list: Definitely didn’t live up to the hype, wonky dialogue, questionable pacing, a boring middle, and David Dunn didn’t shine as much as I was hoping.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 36%
Coffee Sip Score™: 7/10
Oscar Odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: lol no
Velvet Buzzsaw
Release Date: February 1st
Director: Dan Gilroy
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Zawe Ashton, Rene Russo, Daveed Diggs
Plot: After a series of paintings by an unknown artist is discovered, weird shit begins to happen to those that take monetary advantage of them.
Why it’s good: Original, creepy, a few jump-scares, decent writing, and lots of familiar faces.
Why it didn’t make the list: The performances and direction suffered bad enough to make this 2 hours drag.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 65%
Coffee Sip Score™: 7/10
Oscar Odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: Nah
The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
Release Date: February 8th
Director: Mike Mitchell
Starring: Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Banks, Will Arnett
Plot: 5 years after the events of the first movie, Emmit and crew journey to find the source of the evil Duplo’s power.
Why it’s good: More adventures of Emmit and crew, a very strong beginning, visually pleasing, funny, colorful, heartwarming, and lots of references for us adults.
Why it didn’t make the list: This should be obvious, it was nowhere near as magical and fun as the first movie, the writing was eh, not as quotable [as the first], it has geared more towards kids but kept references for adults (For example: a certain character does a certain popular dance move from a certain popular video game, but then there is a heavy, yet hilarious, Die Hard reference.), a lot of musical and “real world” parts that were used for time addition became annoying, and a very questionable twist towards the end. I hope they don’t try to milk this.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 83%
Coffee Sip Score™: 8/10
Oscar Odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: Nah
Captain Marvel
Release Date: March 8th
Director: Anna Boden, Ryan Fleck
Starring: Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Jude Law
Plot: Vers, a Kree from the planet Hala, becomes stranded on Earth with a group of alien shapeshifters called Skrulls.
Why it’s good: More MCU lore, every character that wasn’t Carol Danvers were phenomenal, the chemistry between Fury and Danvers was perfect, the personality of the Skrull surprised me, but I came to like them a lot, a twist that saves the movie, an action-packed and smooth second half, and a heartbreaking Stan Lee commemoration.
Why it didn’t make the list: I wouldn’t necessarily say Brie Larson was bad, it was just the directing and writing for her character that was awful, I hated the smug look she had the entire movie, the dialogue for everyone was poorly written, every scene before she lands on Earth was horribly paced, there was no world building when it came to the Kree, and a very bad post-credit scene.
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79%
Coffee Sip Score™: 7/10
Oscar Odds ¯\_(ツ)_/¯: Nah
“Eh, It Was Fine”
The following titles are ones that I found weren’t great, but also weren’t terrible. They were just fine, nothing to rave about. These ones are the most likely to be forgettable.
- Reign of the Supermen
- American Hangman
- The Upside
- Leaving Neverland Parts 1&2
- Triple Frontier
- Dragged Across Concrete
Disappointments
These movies were ones that I was hoping would be great, but ended up not meeting expectations. And I put them in their own category instead of Hot Garbage because I want people to know I had high hopes for these, and I was let down. And I’m sad about it.
Hot Garbage
The following titles are ones that I found to be very bad, mentally damaging, and/or boring, and I absolutely do not recommend them.
- Escape Room
- The Prodigy
- Alita: Battle Angel
- Donnybrook
- Fighting with my Family
- Serenity
- Sgt. Will Gardner
- The Dirt
The Final Tally
Best: 7
Honorable Mentions: 4
Eh, It Was Fine: 6
Disappointments:
Hot Garbage: 8
Total: 25
Honest Consensus (My opinion): So far this year sucks.
The (Big) Ones I Missed
I will try to watch as many of these as I can next year. But with a new year, means 500+ new movies. So, I will finalize this list at the end of February (after the Oscars); after that, I will cease to update it.
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