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Now before we get to our number one film for 2019, I would like to list some of the films that almost made it on to this year’s list. The fact that these five great films are not listed in the top fifteen only illustrates what a great year 2019 was for cinema.
Honorable Mentions
(listed in no particular order)
Booksmart
More info about the film can be found here: IMDB
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch
Rocketman
More info about the film can be found here: IMDB
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch
Long Shot
More info about the film can be found here: IMDB
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch
The Standoff at Sparrow Creek
More info about the film can be found here: IMDB
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch
Petta
More info about the film can be found here: IMDB
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch
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Now for Video CULTure’s pick for the best film of 2019:
1. Once Upon A Time… In Hollywood
Hollywood in the year of 1969 is a city in transition. The long dominate studio system is begining to be upheaved by a new wave of filmmakers and performers who are pushing film to grittier places with more naturalistic performances. This left many actors, who were nurtured by the old system, scrambling for safety nets in either television or foreign film productions.
Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) was already struggling to find work though. Dalton had left behind a career as a popular television cowboy to purse film stardom five years earlier. He had mild success but is back to television – only this time he’s playing the bad guy in guest spots on hotter actors’ programs. He’s in a low place where the best offer he gets comes from Italian filmmakers looking for American stars they can afford. His only real friend is his stunt double and driver Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Booth has trouble finding work himself, for much more complicated reasons and together the pair are just doing their best to get through these tumultuous times.
Their struggle is in direct contrast to Rick’s new neighbor, budding starlet Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie). Her film career is heating up and she’s just married the hottest director in the world. Everything is looking up for Tate.
How does Sharon Tate’s story intersect with Rick and Cliff’s though? This is the basic question behind Quentin Tarantino’s new film ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD.
When this film was first announced, it was assumed by many that the film would focus on the infamous murder of Tate and her friends by the Manson family cult that occurred that same year. This horrific real-world event signified the end of an era in Hollywood. It seemed like a natural fit as Tarantino is known for films filled with sudden violence. These people forgot a simple fact though, Tarantino loves and revers classic film and film stars.
His love is readily apparent in every frame of ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD. Everything in the film is a lavish recreation of the late 60’s Hollywood aesthetic. It’s impossible to look at the world that Tarantino has reconstructed and not want to spend time there. The pacing of the film encourages this sense of longing. Tarantino lets scenes play out at a leisurely pace, allowing you to feel like you are really getting to know these individuals as they go about their lives – whether it’s Rick learning his lines for the next day’s pilot shoot, speeding through the Hollywood streets at night next to Cliff, or gleefully watching one of her own performances with Sharon Tate – you very quickly become attached to them and want things to work out in their favor.
All three leads turn in career-best work to compliment the film expertly crafted around them. DiCaprio externalizes the fear of every aging creative who worries that their best days are behind them. He is all vulnerable masculinity and that is not a thing you see very often in big-budget films. Pitt’s Cliff Booth is a true counterpoint to DiCaprio’s Dalton. Booth is confident and at peace with his place in life as a guy who never quite made it. He’s also capable in a way that only truly mythic film characters can be. So, that when needed he can be a destructive force but mostly, he just wants to hang out with his dog and his best friend. A lot of things will become big in pop culture from this film but the thing that will make the biggest impression is Brad Pitt as the best friend everyone wishes they had watching their backs.
Margot Robbie was really in the most difficult position of the three. She is portraying a real person after all. It’s no secret that Tate was horrifically murdered in the summer of 1969 and Tarantino’s script uses the audience’s knowledge of her fate to have her presented as the very embodiment of the wide-eyed Hollywood dream. Robbie plays this to the fullest giving the fictional representation of Sharon Tate a sense of joy and enthusiasm that causes her to feel like the axis on which the whole film spins, despite her limited screen time.
That seems appropriate since her real-world fate was the true turning point to a darker time in our pop culture history… Tarantino loves her though, as much as he loves everything else about the time period, as much as he loves his own created characters that he’s placed in this magical version of 1960’s Hollywood. That love leads to the biggest revelation about how the story unfolds:
The real world is ugly and can be truly horrible. Movies allow us to see the world as we want it to be… even if it’s only for a little while.
ONCE UPON A TIME… IN HOLLYWOOD is Quentin Tarantino showing us how he wishes the world could have been and it’s simply joyful and the best film of 2019.
More info about the film can be found here: IMDB
To find out where this film is available to stream, click here: Just Watch
-Matthew Essary
Twitter: @WheelsCritic