The Best Movies of 2019 So Far...
'Midsommar' is one of my favorite movies ever, and stands atop the list of the best of 2019 so far.
I’ve seen more than 73 wide releases in 2019, but according to Wikipedia, these are the wide release movies and Netflix releases that I have seen this year between January first and July 15, 2019. This seems like the perfect time to look at the list, and see where we are in 2019 in terms of the wide releases of the year. What can we learn, what has 2019 wrought at the multiplex.
Horror is having a good 2019 with two of the top three movies of 2019 emerging from the horror genre, and a third horror movie, Happy Death Day 2U lingering just outside the top 10. Midsommar and Us would be 1 and 2 on this list if not for a movie that I feel as if I am the only person who has seen it, and knows it exists. Daddy Issues is a transgressively sexual, in your face modern romantic comedy. It’s the kind of challenging modern movie that likely cannot be appreciated in its time, as it captures so much of modern sexuality and culture that it is perhaps too modern, so of its time that it cannot be seen fully until a few years pass.
Classic rock n’ roll is having a good year at the movies. Rocketman, the Elton John biopic, and Yesterday, a movie about the music of The Beatles are each in my Top 10, and not just because I am a big Elton or Beatles fan. Both movies use the music to elevate the story being told, but the music doesn't completely dominate that story. Rocketman is a musical that requires a great deal of fantasy to incorporate the music of Elton John and yet, the music never dominates the drama, and we get a great sense of the life of Elton John with the music as a dominant, but not all consuming aspect.
Superheroes are also having a great year with even DC turning out a solid effort in Shazam, which is surprisingly still in my Top 20 movies of the year. Captain Marvel has stayed with me in ways I didn’t expect, and ranks ahead of Avengers: Endgame despite that film’s massive cultural and artistic impact as the final film of the first phase of what has been a remarkable, historic run of Superhero movies.
At the bottom of the list are movies you would expect from Tyler Perry, and horror remakes from the 80s like Pet Cemetery and Child’s Play. What I did not predict or expect was how much I truly despised the remake of Hellboy. I used a website called RankingEngine.PubMeeple.com to create this list, and the site uses a format that has you decide between two options at once, and once you have completed your choices between however many options you enter, the site spits out a list based on your preferences.
Throughout the choosing process I kept finding myself picking against Hellboy over and over until finally, there it was at the bottom of the list because I hated it so very much. So, here’s the list of my ranking of the Best and Worst Wide Release features of 2019, and Daddy Issues, because I couldn’t not rank it.
- Midsommar
- Daddy Issues
- Us
- Rocketman
- Yesterday
- Tolkien
- Booksmart
- John Wick 3: Parabellum
- Isn't It Romantic
- Captain Marvel
- Happy Death Day 2U
- Avengers Endgame
- Long Shot
- Toy Story 4
- Spider-Man Far from Home
- Late Night
- Always Be My Maybe
- Shazam!
- The Sun is Also a Star
- Escape Room
- The Kid
- Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile
- Velvet Buzzsaw
- Triple Frontier
- The Upside
- Stuber
- Pokemon Detective Pikachu
- Dumbo
- How to Train Your Dragon The Hidden World
- Aladdin
- Fighting with My Family
- The Hustle
- The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part
- The Secret Life of Pets 2
- Annabelle Comes Home
- Five Feet Apart
- Missing Link
- Breakthrough
- Little
- Dark Phoenix
- Anna
- Men in Black International
- Cold Pursuit
- Alita: Battle Angel
- Godzilla: King of the Monsters
- Poms
- Brightburn
- Uglydolls
- The Dead Don't Die
- The Beach Bum
- What Men Want
- Serenity
- Miss Bala
- The Prodigy
- Crawl
- Captive State
- Glass
- After
- The Curse of La Llarona
- Child's Play
- Ma
- A Dog's Way Home
- A Dog's Journey
- Wonder Park
- The Best of Enemies
- The Intruder
- Shaft
- The Dirt
- Greta
- Pet Cemetery
- Replicas
- Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral
- Hellboy
About the Creator
Sean Patrick
Hello, my name is Sean Patrick He/Him, and I am a film critic and podcast host for the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast I am a voting member of the Critics Choice Association, the group behind the annual Critics Choice Awards.
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