2019 in the Rearview Mirror

It’s now 2020, and time for the yearly wrap-up. For films from 2019, I think I’m going to hold off a few months. It looks like we saw 17 movies from 2019 in 2019. But there are at least 10 solid looking movies in the queue - most either saved or wait listed. Maybe I’ll check again around Oscar time (hint: none of our faves are likely to be up for Oscars). For now, I’ll propose Fast Color as the best non-franchise 2019 film we saw in 2019. We also liked Hotel Artemis and Bad Days at the El Royale, for other smaller scale, indie-ish action movies.

For 2019 trends, we discovered the heavy metal horror comedy genre. Depending on your definition, we watched several. The quintessential heavy metal horror comedy features (1) a gang of loser teen metal heads who (2) discover the song that conjures demons, (3) giving them powers but (4) threatening the apocalypse. Most of the movies we saw didn’t meet all criteria. One of the best, Heavy Trip, only met the first. By that standard, Detroit Rock City fits. Jennifer’s Body and Suck fit all but the first pretty well, because the rock is more indie than metal. Probably the best example, and a fine and funny movie, is New Zealand’s Deathgasm.

And that’s about it for “themes” in 2019. We watched some horror - Us and A Quiet Place being two top picks. We didn’t watch a lot of music docs: I think just Amazing Grace and Echo in the Canyon. No Shakespeare, no special black and white classics. Lots of new or recent superhero stuff - I love it all, but Captain Marvel and it’s ex-namesake Shazam! made much impact. I don’t know if it counts, but I guess John Wick 3 was our fave action movie - even if it is third in what looks like an endless series.

I guess our best bet, for plain day-to-day enjoyment value, has been those 2-pack classics, usually horror, like Mad Love/Devil Doll. They don’t usually make “best of”, but are always entertaining, sometimes memorable, and come in easy to digest bite-sized pieces - two movies, usually under 75 minutes each.

That leads to our streaming options. We gave up Netflix streaming, and took up Hulu, then dropped Hulu when it wasn’t really coming through for us. We have been using Amazon Prime exclusively for a while. They have The Expanse, many RiffTrax movies, but what I’ve been into is the non-classic classics. That is, black and white movies from the 30s-50s that aren’t that great but are often entertaining and sometimes coo-coo crazy. Since they are usually in the 60-75 minute range, I can watch one after Ms. Spenser has gone back to work, but before it’s time to go to bed. I should really start blogging them, because they are so forgettable that I never remember whether I’ve watched one. Also, I fall asleep a lot. I don’t consider that a bad thing.

In conclusion, the best film of the year is probably still Bringing Up Baby - which we didn’t watch this year. In fact, if we could choose one film, we might replace BUB with a Marx Brothers movie.
Like Cambridge’s Brattle Theater, we will watch them every New Year’s Eve. This year I bought a collection of the lesser movies, and we watched Room Service, then The Big Store on New Year’s Day. An auspicious start.

Now, Ms. Spenser is taking her students on a field trip to Vietnam, and I will be watching some men’s movies. Expect a lot of martial arts, dumb action and rom-coms. Then back to the usual fare. Let’s have a great 2020!