Up from under in 2019

In 2016, Donald Trump was elected president. In 2019, he was impeached. It was finally time to rebel.

Or was it?

In a cinematic nod to the complicated times we live in, 2019 was a year of underdog stories, though it was not always clear if the underdogs were actually the good guys. For every Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, in which the good guys vs. bad guys ethos was fairly simple, there were two of the most acclaimed films of the year, Parasite and Us, which muddied those waters. Both dealt rather literally with the concept of characters coming up from under to claim what they think is theirs, whether the filmmakers are sure they agree with those characters or not. Then you've got movies like Knives Out, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, The Laundromat and Hustlers, which are a little more sure-footed in their world view but still showcase some ambiguity. You also have Ford v. Ferrari, where the world's largest car manufacturer is cast as an underdog.

The cinematic preoccupation with such issues points at an anger that is defining our times, though not necessarily a prescription for what to do with that anger, nor a sure idea of who is to blame for it. While a cynical outlook would accuse these filmmakers of cowardice in their convictions, seeking not to alienate any segment of the viewing population, it's probably more realistic to say that filmmakers are expressing their own sense of uncertainty. Things are bad, and fixing it is not easy, and we are all, probably, to blame to some degree.

Truth be told, even The Rise of Skywalker was not simple in its portrayal of good and evil, as it also features Kylo Ren coming up from under to overthrow ... himself.

Maybe we are all a little bit Kylo Ren, trying to resist giving in to our hate, looking for the Ben Solo inside of us, hoping we find him before Kylo consumes us.

Performers of the year

Each year in this post I highlight those who had a really good year, and then, those who did not. Keep in mind that to be singled out in these lists, you have to have a) been in at least two movies in the previous year, and b) made either films that were generally good or generally bad, not a little of each. So while I loved Adam Driver in Marriage Story and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, he was also in The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and The Dead Don't Die. Sorry, Adam. (But check here for a whole post devoted to yourself that is entirely positive in nature.)

Three who had a good year

Scarlett Johansson - I probably don't need to sing the praises of ScarJo after she scored two Oscar nominations yesterday, but this is a bit of redemption and also a return to form for this underappreciated actress, who appeared on my 2017 “three who had a bad year” list after landing on "three who had a good year" in 2014. But suffice it to say she has long since made up for the twin missteps of Ghost in the Shell and Rough Night, a bounceback resoundingly confirmed by landing three movies in my top 20 for this year. Her 2019 started off with the highest ranked of those, Avengers: Endgame (#8), in which her character plays quite a significant role. Even though you probably don’t need the spoiler alert at this point, I’ll focus on a non-spoilery moment that perfectly encapsulated why I loved this movie. While despairing over the Avengers’ collective failure to prevent the deaths of half of the universe’s inhabitants, Johansson’s Natasha Romanoff expresses a palpable sense of loss, frustration and uselessness, and punctuates the scene by threatening to throw a peanut butter sandwich at Steve Rogers. Her craft has matured to the point where she can pull off this delicate balance of anguish and humor, and bring a sense of intimate quirkiness to a three-hour movie. It’s a different type of quirk she brings to Jojo Rabbit (#10), as she’s maintaining a lively crackerjack sensibility to will herself and her son through the worst parts of Germany under Hitler. She likes to play games and act out scenarios with her son, whom she’s trying to love despite the fact that he might be a true believer, while also hiding a Jewish teenager upstairs – both from the party and from him. Marriage Story (#20) reminds us that she also has a knack for realism. It’s a credit to her performance that she brings a balance to the movie that Noah Baumbach’s script does not. Baumbach can’t help but telegraph that Adam Driver’s character is a stand-in for himself, but Johansson won’t let it become Driver’s movie, communicating her own wants, needs, strengths and weaknesses in a comparative minimum of gestures. Johansson does a lot with a little, and never has that been more clear than the year 2019.

Florence Pugh - It's not that I didn't know recently Oscar-nominated Florence Pugh prior to the start of 2019, but suffice it to say I didn't have any idea what a dynamic, charismatic force she is. She made something of an impression on me in Lady Macbeth a couple years back, but because I didn't love that film, I wasn't totally sold on her. Well, I became so from her first moments of screen time in Fighting With My Family (#28), and it just got better at approximately four-month intervals for the rest of the year. Pugh got to use her native British accent for the only time this year as Paige, a would-be professional wrestler who gets chosen to come to Florida to train for the WWE. I had no idea I would like this film at all, let alone as much as I did, and Pugh's brand of "confronting naturalism" was key to that. I guess by that I mean that she has this type of dominant presence -- maybe a magnetism -- without ever overplaying, and thereby staying within the bounds of naturalism. It was again useful to have that as an anchor in the otherwise fantastical Midsommar (#23), in which her agonized crying at the start of the film was my most chilling sound of 2019. The way Pugh grapples with grief, a shithouse boyfriend and adapting to outrageous and ever-changing circumstances was perhaps the most acute case of viewer surrogacy this year. But her crowning achievement may have come in Little Women (#4), where she's more of an ensemble player, but where she steals scenes just by virtue of her command of the craft of acting. She may be the best actor in a film that also features Meryl Streep and Saiorse Ronan, which is really saying something. (Okay, she still has a way to go to catch Streep.) Not only does she kill in her emotional moments, but she handles more deftly than anyone else the fact that the narrative spans seven years in these characters' lives, meaning that she's playing ages 13 through 20. Pugh is 24, but she convinced me effortlessly that she was a naive 13-year-old girl given to tantrums and upending bowls of popcorn when her father returns from the war. I have a feeling her charisma and dynamism will continue to astonish us throughout the next decade.

Adele Haenel - Now here is someone I didn't know at all going into 2019. My first time seeing her in 2019 was not even in a 2019 movie, and I only realized she was in BPM (Beats Per Minute) when I had occasion to look her up on IMDB after her other two films. (But I'm sure she was really good in it.) And one of her other two films is not even something anyone else would have seen yet, unless they also went to the Melbourne International Film Festival. But her incendiary (pun intended) screen presence led me to list Adele Haenel here for her work in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (#2), which was preceded by me being captivated by her in Quentin Dupieux's latest, Deerskin (#37), at MIFF. Let's go in the order I watched them, just to save the best for last. Deerskin is a typically oddball film for Dupieux in which Jean Dujardin (hilarious) plays a man obsessed with a deerskin jacket he buys on the internet, and the increasingly bizarre things it prompts him to do, possibly by actually communicating with him. Haenel plays the young would-be filmmaker he meets in a bar, who gives him the benefit of the doubt despite an increasing certainty that this guy is wacko. I was truly disarmed by the way Haenel portrays this woman, seeing a fellow misfit and trying to connect with him in the face of ample evidence of his instability. Humanism exudes from the performance. Of course, the real reason to write about Haenel is her arresting work in Portrait. There may be no more memorable character introduction in 2019 than the one captured above, and I do mean captured, as Haenel spins toward the character (and the camera) that's been following her, both of whom, in a way, have designs on secretly "capturing" her image in permanent form. But instead of being offended, Haenel also smiles, revealing the character's intelligence -- she frequently knows more than she's letting on. But she's an ephemeral presence, the very definition of how it's impossible to truly possess someone. Her work in the film's final scene is a master class in acting, and emotionally devastating. As she almost inevitably crosses over to English language stardom, the future is bright for this flame.

Honorable mentions: Elisabeth Moss (Her Smell, Us), Awkwafina (The Farewell, Jumanji: The Next Level), Kevin Hart (Jumanji: The Next Level, The Upside), Meryl Streep (Little Women, The Laundromat), Laura Dern (Little Women, Marriage Story), Timothee Chalamet (Little Women, The King)

Three who had a bad year

Matthew McConaughey - Is this the end of the McConaughssaince? After Matthew McConaughey followed a series of lazy choices with a series of artistically rigorous and critically lauded ones, now he just seems to be dazed and/or confused. Although he arguably hasn’t made anything truly successful since 2014’s Interstellar, 2019 caught him in particularly bad form. Only by the skin of his teeth did he avoid appearing in my worst movie of the year as the obnoxious titular layabout, Moondog, in Harmony Korine’s The Beach Bum (#144). I’ll state again, and probably not for the last time, that I was as shocked as anybody to hate this movie as much as I did considering how much I love Korine’s Spring Breakers, but McConaughey was a key part of that reaction. The main character Korine wrote for him is a witless stoner poet whose supposed charms are impossible to discern unless you happen to be one of the idiots who surround him in this movie. McConaughey probably thought he could “alright alright alright” his way through this role, but it’s truly baffling that he believed there would be anything endearing whatsoever about a guy who drunkenly stumbles his way through south Florida from joint to joint and bongo jam to bongo jam, his stringy hair blowing in the wind. And if that’s the point, then that’s even more baffling. The venue doesn’t change much for Serenity (#139), Steven Knight’s incomprehensible follow-up to the 2013 film Locke – incomprehensible in and of itself, but also incomprehensible as a follow-up to his grounded previous film. Here McConaughey plays a deep sea fisherman on the island of Plymouth, who is inexplicably focused on catching a particular tuna, almost like that tuna insulted his mother. He’s also cash poor, so he’s got to consider it when his ex-wife approaches him with a plan to bump off her abusive current husband. The setup may sound unremarkable, but where this film goes is utterly cookoo – and McConaughey doesn’t come close to selling it. At least Serenity will one day be a candidate for a “so bad it’s good” marathon; The Beach Bum is just bad. One 2019 note in McConaughey’s favor is that he probably gives the funniest interview in Between Two Ferns: The Movie (#56), in a scene that also involves water. But when your other two movies are in my bottom ten of the year, it’s just not enough.

Ian McKellen - No lifetime achievement award exemption for you, sir. Ian McKellen is 80 years old so I would not expect him to be at his prime, but it's the choices that were bad, not the actor. And oh how bad they were. I was grumbling enough about The Good Liar (#114), but Sir Ian wouldn't have even been a consideration for this list before I saw Cats (#146), so let's start there. Cats was not only my worst film of the year, it's probably a contender for worst of the decade if I kept track of that sort of thing. The only version of Cats I had ever seen was put on by kids in my junior high, so I didn't appreciate or remember until I saw it just how little there is to this thing, and how ridiculous what there is is. I've already ranted about Cats elsewhere so let's just stick to Ian. He stumbles on screen about halfway through and sings some song about the theater, making it an appropriate role for McKellen I suppose. But he looks like he doesn't know where he is and that no one explained anything about the movie to him, which they probably didn't. I would have said McKellen is one of the most dignified screen presences we have, but Cats is an out-and-out dignity eraser. It makes his work in The Good Liar look absolutely Shakespearean by comparison, but that's a shitty movie too. What starts with an interesting idea about a cat-and-mouse game in the elderly set devolves into something unwisely topical involving assumed identities, World War II and the #MeToo movement. And then it goes downhill further from there. McKellen gives what I would call a game effort, but there's no disguising he chose to be in two turkeys this year, both of which came out after Thanksgiving. Please somebody make another X-Men movie with old Magneto or another Middle Earth movie with really old Gandalf so I can forget about 2019's one-two gut punch.

Liam Neeson - Neeson had a bad year both off the field and on. In fact, I boycotted Cold Pursuit (#100) back when it was released because it came out right on the heels of Neeson saying he wanted to beat up/kill a "black bastard" (or whatever he said) when he was younger and a friend told him she'd been sexually assaulted by someone who fit that description. We didn't cancel Liam Neeson -- probably because the very reporting of the story was intertwined with an apology for his shortsighted behavior -- but it just so happened that his 2019 body of work could give us reason. His biggest offense in that regard was not Cold Pursuit but Men in Black: International (#136). It's not that Neeson himself is bad in it -- he's a consistent enough performer that he almost never comes across as actually bad. But it was a terrible choice, a choice that also ensnared a number of other talented actors (Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Emma Thompson (no relation)), who had other, better work in 2019 to offset this choice. The fact that he's the villain in the film is probably the most obvious of any number of obvious aspects to this lifeless reboot. When I did get around to seeing Cold Pursuit on one of my international flights, I was similarly non-plussed by it. While some quite foolishly compared it to the work of Joel and Ethan Coen, I found it to be a joyless revenge story with a body count it pretends to mourn (but secretly celebrates) by putting a gravestone-like lifespan on the screen every time a character dies. Was this the "cinematic innovation" that was meant to distinguish this from a dozen other joyless revenge stories Neeson has made in the Nicolas Cage phase of his career? It didn't work, and neither did Liam Neeson in 2019.

Dishonorable mentions: Jason Clarke (Pet Sematary, Serenity), Kumail Nanjiani (Stuber, Men in Black: International), Snoop Dogg (The Addams Family, The Beach Bum), Zac Efron (Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, The Beach Bum), Zazie Beetz (High Flying Bird, Joker)

The year women took the lead - sort of

For years it's been easy to say that women don't get opportunities in Hollywood and that there are no good roles for women. And for years it's also been accurate to say that.

I don't want to get ahead of myself, like the hopeful who thought that electing Obama meant ending racism, but it's starting to be possible to say that this is changing.

Anecdotally, I noticed far more movies this year than ever before in which women were the protagonists or, indeed, nearly the entirety of the cast. But I wanted to go beyond the anecdotal, so I crunched some actual numbers.

I went through the 2019 movies I saw and decided if each movie clearly had a male protagonist, clearly had a female protagonist, or it was not possible to make that determination. That last included primarily ensemble movies (such as Knives Out) and movies with co-leads (such as Marriage Story, though I suppose that's a bad example as you could argue it's more from the male perspective).

Although movies fronted by men were still the highest total at 70 of the 146 movies I saw (48%), there were more movies with clearly female protagonists (49) than ensemble movies (27), and the combined total of those last two categories exceeded movies with male protagonists by a total of six movies. That's some kind of progress, I think.

There also continues to be an uptick in the number of movies I see directed by women or at least co-directed by women. This year that total was 30, or 21%. And while I'm not sure if that sounds good in a vacuum, it's an increase of nine titles from two years ago, when I was last compelled in one of these year-end wrap-ups to make an observation about the positive strides made by women. And this is without me seeing some obvious female-directed movies you might have expected me to see, like Charlie's Angels or Frozen II.

Perhaps of greater significance, symbolically speaking, is that three of my top five movies of the year were directed or co-directed by women. That would be Portrait of a Lady on Fire at #2, directed by Celine Sciamma, Little Women at #4, directed by Greta Gerwig, and Birds of Passage at #5, co-directed by Cristina Gallego. That's got to be a record because if it had happened before, I'm sure I would have remembered it. For good measure, a woman (Penny Lane) also directed my #7, Hail Satan? (That's not a question -- the question mark is in the title.)

Anecdotally, it feels like more than it actually is because it really seems like Hollywood is trying, and because it's some of the biggest films out there that are getting this female bent. And while that's not enough to let them off the hook for years of failing to try, it does mean that we are truly getting a wider range of voices and perspectives out there, which is worth celebrating on face value.

Funniest scenes of the year

Cinematic comedy has been in the doldrums for a while now, as not only is there a shortage of hilarious films from 2019, there's a shortage of hilarious films from the past decade.

But this doesn't mean I don't still love to laugh at the movies, so I thought I'd focus here on the moments that made me laugh in 2019, even when the films on the whole could not be described as comedies in some cases. Five such moments, to be exact.

Because it's best not to know about funny scenes before you see the movie, I'll do my best to avoid exposing you to spoilers. I'll list the title first, and if you haven't seen the movie, just skip that one and go to the next.

I'm numbering them for oganizational purposes only, as they don't represent a best-to-fifth-best in this case. Actually, they represent the order in which the movies appeared on my chart.

1. Marriage Story - Adam Driver's knife trick. Few things in 2019 compared to the absurdity of Driver's Charlie trying to pretend to a shortly departing social worker that he didn't just leave a foot-long gash in his arm from a trick with a box cutter gone wrong. His attempt to play it cool while quickly escorting her out of the house was comic gold.

2. Always Be My Maybe - Cameo. You've certainly had this cameo spoiled by now, but in case you haven't, and so your eye doesn't jump to it in passing over it, I'll refer to the actor only as KR. KR's extended restaurant self-parody and its continuation in his apartment afterward kept me laughing consistently throughout its surprisingly lengthy duration.

3. Jumanji: The Next Level - Johnson's and Hart's impersonations - I'm not sure whether this qualifies as a scene or a whole segment of the movie, but when Danny DeVito and Danny Glover first get pulled into the game, and are impersonated by Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, there was no end to the gales of laughter that spewed forth from me.

4. Between Two Ferns: The Movie - Pick an interview - Again a bit of a cheat here, as I don't really remember enough about this movie to remember which celebrity interview was the funniest. I just know that they kept me in a constant state of giggles throughout.

5. The Hustle - Rebel Wilson's first mark - Our introduction to Wilson's character includes a scam of a guy who balks at her physical appearance after she represents herself quite differently on a dating app. The line deliveries of the two actors in the scene, and how this plays out so richly to punish him for his shallowness, had me in stitches.

That it took me until my #89 movie on my chart to find five funny scenes worth highlighting -- some of which may not even be correctly defined as "scenes" -- gives you some idea just what we're up against in terms of comedy at the movies. Here's hoping for better in 2020.

Vive la France

The films of France and me have not had a great recent history. It's been since last decade that I've really gone for anything from France, as two Jean-Pierre Jeunet films, Amelie and A Very Long Engagment, made my top ten lists in their respective years (2001 and 2004), while The Diving Bell and the Butterfly was in both my top ten of 2007, a year that also featured La Vie en Rose in my top 20, and in my top ten of the decade. I had French language films make my top 20 in 2012 (Amour and Monsieur Lazhar), but they have been shut out of my top ten for a dozen years now.

Well, 2019 was a vindication of sorts for French cinema. Not only did two French language movies make my top ten in Portrait of a Lady on Fire (#2) and I Lost My Body (#9), but a third, Deerskin, landed at a very respectable #37. That's probably also the most French language films I've seen in a single year in ages.

Is France getting better at this or is my mind just expanding?

Who cares. Welcome back, France.

** NOTE: Here's what happens when you start writing something before you fully research it. It seems crazy now to think that I forgot entirely about Gaspar Noe, one of my favorite filmmakers of the last decade, the only film of whose I saw in time to rank it, Climax, was my #5 movie of last year. My excuse? Climax also has other spoken languages? Well, the point of this segment was to congratulate France, so I'm just going to leave it.

2019 by the numbers

Breakdown of movies by star ratings - 5 stars (5), 4.5 stars (12), 4 stars (22), 3.5 stars (35), 3 stars (22), 2.5 stars (17), 2 stars (14), 1.5 stars (10), 1 star (8), half star (1). That's more five-star movies than usual but fewer 4.5 and four-star movies. So, a bit of a top-heavy year, with double digit 1.5 star movies being a high in recent years.
Total new movies watched in the calendar year - 264
Total rewatches - 113
2019 movies seen for the first tine time the theater - 76
2019 movies seen for the first time on video/streaming/a plane/that kind of thing - 70
2019 films seen more than once - 4 (Parasite, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Midsommar, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood)

Best non-2019

I also saw movies that were not actually released in 2019 -- 110, to be exact. Here are the ten best, listed alphabetically.

BPM (Beats Per Minute) (2017, Robin Campillo) - A passionate French political screed/romance about the need to do something in the dawning years of the AIDS crisis. It did something to me alright, both intellectually and emotionally.

The Breadwinner (2017, Nora Twomey) - Just when I thought this decade had enough great animation already, this one came along late to throw a wrench into the works. Irish animator Nora Twomey finally really connected with me with this story of a young girl posing as a boy to try to keep her family alive after her father is imprisoned in war-time Afghanistan.

Capharnaum (2018, Nadine Labaki) - It's possible this portrait of poverty-stricken refugees in Beirut could have qualified for 2019 if I'd squinted on the release dates, but I chose to count it as 2018. It would have been a top ten contender in 2019 though.

Das Boot (1981, Wolfgang Petersen) - Where have you been all my life, Das Boot? A simply astonishing achievement for a director I judged more in terms of Hollywood movies like Air Force One, who is clearly capable of so much more.

Harakiri (1962, Masaki Kobayashi) - How can a samurai movie that features almost no fighting, and replaces that with talking, be not only one of my favorite samurai movies of all time, but also one of my favorite movies ever to come out of Japan? Don't know, but Harakiri pulls it off.

I Am Not Your Negro (2016, Raoul Peck) - A draw-jopping survey of the African-American experience in the latter half of the 20th century, as envisioned by legendary author James Baldwin. It's of legendary quality.

The Innocents (1961, Jack Clayton) - The only movie on this list I hadn't even heard of prior to 2019 might also be my favorite from this group. An absolutely chilling and perfectly executed haunted house movie with an unnerving Deborah Kerr performance at its center.

Paris, Texas (1984, Wim Wenders) - A total upending of my expectations, Wenders' film wanders and meanders. And finds its way to an emotionally resonant and deeply humanistic place I never saw coming.

The Tracker (2002, Rolf de Heer) - The Nightingale was not nearly as affecting as I expected if only because I saw The Tracker a few weeks before it. De Heer's story of an indigenous Australian unwittingly helping find another indigenous Australian on the run addresses the same issues with deceptive emotional potency.

Your Name. (2016, Makoto Shinkai) - Anime has rarely seemed as achingly beautiful as it does in this body-swapping fantasy. I'm still seeing the ripples in its water and the wind in its trees.

Nice to meet you

Jimmy Fails (The Last Black Man in San Francisco)
Ali Wong (Always Be My Maybe)
Winston Duke (Us)
Baykali Ganambarr (The Nightingale)
Samara Weaving (Ready or Not)

Welcome back

Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers)
Ray Liotta (Marriage Story)
Eddie Murphy (Dolemite is My Name)
Julie Hagerty (Marriage Story)
Mary Kay Place (Diane)

Another name for ...

Little is ... Little Women
Marriage Story is ... Fighting With My Family
Ready or Not is ... Fighting With My Family
Brightburn is ... Hellboy
Pet Sematary is ... The Dead Don't Die
Knives Out is ... Murder Mystery
The Two Popes is ... Good Boys
Arctic is ... Cold Pursuit
Joker is ... A Vigilante
Fyre is ... The Hustle
Midsommar is ... High Life

Quick hits

And finishing with a speed round of odds and ends:

Highest ranked best picture nominee - Parasite (#1)
Lowest ranked best picture nominee - Joker (#117)
Best picture nominees not seen - None
Actor most deserving of an Oscar nomination who didn't get one - Eddie Murphy (Dolemite is My Name)
Actor least deserving of an Oscar nomination who got one - Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)
Actress most deserving of an Oscar nomination who didn't get one - Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers)
Actress least deserving of an Oscar nomination who got one - None (haven't seen Harriet, Judy, Bombshell or Richard Jewell)
Director most deserving of an Oscar nomination who didn't get one - Greta Gerwig (Little Women)
Director least deserving of an Oscar nomination who got one - Todd Phillips (Joker)
Director who won me back - Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story)
Director who sent me running - James Gray (Ad Astra)
Movie I should have loved but didn't - Knives Out (#84)
Movie I shouldn't have loved but did - Ford v. Ferrari (#17) 
Movie that got better the more I thought about it - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (#31)
Movie that got worse the more I thought about it - Joker (#117)
Best Netflix movie - I Lost My Body (#9)
Best Netflix movie I actually saw on Netflix - The Perfection (#11)
Worst Netflix movie - Unicorn Store (#143)
Best reenvisioning of Shakespeare - The King (#33)
Worst reenvisioning of Shakespeare - Ophelia (#123)
Most tired reenvisioning of Shakespeare - The Lion King (#99)
Most Shakespeare per capita - All is True (#80)
Best movie featuring a bear - Midsommar (#23)
Best movie that sounds like it should feature a bear - Paddleton (#55)
Best beach movie - Fyre (#19)
Biggest beach bummer - The Beach Bum (#144)
Best body horror - The Perfection (#11)
Worst body horror - Cats (#146)
Best Steven Soderbergh movie - The Laundromat (#22)
Worst Steven Soderbergh movie - High Flying Bird (#135)
Best rejuvenation of an old text - Little Women (#4)
Worst rejuvenation of an old text - Dumbo (#141)
Best use of Captain Marvel in a movie - Captain Marvel (#63)
Worst use of Captain Marvel in a movie - Avengers: Endgame (#8)
Worst use of Captain Marvel in a movie, part 2 - Unicorn Store (#143)
Best use of Spider-Man in a movie - Avengers: Endgame (#8)
Worst use of Spider-Man in a movie - Spider-Man: Far From Home (#97)
Angriest birds - The Nightingale (#26)
Less angry birds - Birds of Passage (#5)
Stupidest birds - Angry Birds Movie 2 (#142)
Worst looking in an iPhone birds - High Flying Bird (#135)
Best sequel - Avengers: Endgame (#8)
Worst sequel - Men in Black: International (#136) (I didn't see the first Angry Birds Movie so I don't know)
Most 2019 movie - Us (#25)
Least 2019 movie - Cats (#146)

Okay, we'll wrap up this 2019 business tomorrow with portmanteaus, then it's on to best of the decade!