The best of the movies you didn’t see in 2019
While visionary directors like Quentin Tarantino and Bong Joon Ho were sucking up the superlatives over the awards season, a bunch of other exceptional films might well have slipped under your radar. Now is the perfect opportunity to catch them on your preferred streaming platform.
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Quentin Tarantino grabbed movie-goers’ attention with Once Upon A Time in Hollywood. Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite rewrote the Oscar rule book. And Taika Waititi’s JoJo Rabbit cultivated the element of surprise. But while these visionary directors were sucking up the superlatives over the awards season, a bunch of other exceptional films might well have slipped under your radar. Now is the perfect opportunity to catch them on your preferred streaming platform. Here’s Vicky Roach’s list of 10 movies you shouldn’t have missed.
DIEGO MARADONA
130 minutes (M)
You don’t need to know much about soccer to be captivated by the story of Diego Maradona – as it is recounted, here, by documentary maker Asif Kapadia (Amy, Senna).
But aficionados will appreciate the finer points of the Argentinian striker’s on-field performance in the face of relentless, targeted attacks from opposition players. And Kaspadia has uncovered a wealth of never-before-seen footage of the soccer megastar in action (including 500 hours of tapes from Maradona’s personal archive). The only subject in Kaspadia’s “fame trilogy” not to have died prematurely, Maradona’s mythic tragedy has its own distinctive twist.
BURNING
148 minutes (M)
While Parasite rewrote Oscar history, another very different but equally compelling South Korean film made an indelible impression on those who caught it during its limited theatrical release. The less you know about Lee Chang-dong’s near-flawless adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s short story “Barn Burning” the better -- by toying with genre expectations, the director gets right inside movie goers’ heads – but be prepared for its unusually slow-burning pace. The haunting, Gatsby-ish love triangle is set in and around the South Korean city of Paju, which is close to the border with North Korea (at several points in the story, the hermit kingdom’s propaganda broadcasts ring out across the paddocks.)
LONG SHOT
125 minutes (M)
He’s a socially awkward idealist with a haphazard approach to personal grooming who writes acerbic exposés for the left-wing press. She’s an elegant, accomplished, Mensa-smart politician who has risen rapidly through the ranks to become the US’s youngest ever Secretary of State. It’s a match made in the fertile imagination of two sharp-penned screenwriters -- Dan Sterling (King of the Hill, The Office, The Interview) and Liz Hannah (The Post) – and brought to life by the odd couple chemistry of Charlize Theron and Seth Rogen.
Smart, funny, emotionally engaging ... this is a romcom for moviegoers who like a sprinkling of politics with their popcorn.
NEVER LOOK AWAY
189 minutes (M)
Directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck (The Lives of Others), this sweeping historical drama is inspired by the singular life of German painter Gerhard Richter (who has distanced himself from the project on the basis that it is not fictionalised enough). Spanning 30 years, Never Look Away explores its subject’s childhood in Nazi Germany, his stint as celebrated painter of social realist murals in East Germany, and the events that immediately followed his defection to the West. Handsomely shot, expertly paced and extraordinarily seductive. The film clocks in at a whopping 189 minutes, but it feels about half that long.
A SHAUN THE SHEEP MOVIE: FARMAGEDDON
87 minutes (G)
Shaun is extraordinarily expressive – for a plasticine sheep. It’s got something to do with the way he dislocates his jaw from left to right, as if he were about to speak out of the corner of his mouth, in his reaction shots. The fact that the irrepressible mischief-maker is non-verbal only adds to his ovine charm. While most animated animals have the gift of the gab, this ruminant ruminates. In so doing, he channels the universal appeal of the silent Buster Keaton comedies of the 1920s. The successful TV star (voiced by Justin Fletcher) partners up with an impish alien (Amalia Vitale) in his second big screen outing. Clever, funny, playful, sweet ... Farmageddon is ET in sheep’s clothing.
ANIMALS
109 minutes (MA15+)
Partying isn’t so much as hobby as a vocation for the two women who run fabulously amok through this arrested coming-of-age drama. On the eve of her best friend’s 30th birthday, Laura (Holliday Grainger) realises that she’s somehow lost a whole decade. While Tyler (Alia Sawkat) rages – fiercely, fearlessly -- against the inevitable, Laura tentatively begins to explore an alternative path (which basically boils down to growing up). Adelaide’s Sophie Hyde (52 Tuesdays) directs this Irish-Australian coproduction, based on Emma Jane Unsworth’s 2014 novel, with a sure-but-sensitive hand. A witty, raucous celebration of female friendship – and other hard stuff.
2040
92 minutes (G)
A warm, fuzzy, feel-good movie about climate change? Now there’s a tall order. But in the face of overwhelming odds, actor-turned-filmmaker Damon Gameau delivers. In An Inconvenient Truth (2006), former presidential candidate Al Gore showed us just how badly we had messed up planet. Thirteen years -- and a seemingly endless series of natural disasters and toppled heat records – later, the director of That Sugar Film chooses a different tack. 2040 employs a winning combination of hope, computer graphics and science faction to combat our apocalypse fatigue. It’s an extremely smart move. Compulsive, compulsory viewing.
AN UNEXPECTED LOVE
125 minutes (M)
A film about love, desire and domesticity – all of which present significant challenges to a
long-time married couple. Marco (Ricardo Darin) and Ana (Mercedes Moran) begin to question their reasons for staying together after their son leaves for university. Rejecting comfort, companionship and complacency, the Argentinian couple strike out on their own. Moving into a friend’s vacant apartment, Marco initially struggles to find his feet. Liberated from her role as a wife and mother, Ana blossoms. What marks An Unexpected Love apart is its attention to detail and the natural screen chemistry between Darin and Moran, whose characters are smart, funny and unusually self-aware. A romcom for grown-ups.
SORRY WE MISSED YOU
101 minutes (MA15+)
Having won a BAFTA Award for I, Daniel Blake (2017), which explored Britain’s failing social security system from the perspective of a 59-year-old carpenter, welded-on lefty Ken Loach turns his attention towards the gig economy. Sorry We Missed You, which was nominated for the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, focuses on a family of four struggling to make ends meet under the slate grey skies of Newcastle. Seduced by the idea of becoming “master of his own destiny”, a former construction worker (Kris Hitchen) signs up as a franchisee with a postal delivery service. To raise enough money for the deposit on a van, he sells the family car, putting added stress on his wife (Debbie Honeywood), a dedicated care worker who already races against the clock to treat her clients within the agency’s allocated appointment time. We know where this story is headed, but the devil is in the detail. Harrowingly humane.
SOMETIMES ALWAYS NEVER
97 minutes (PG)
Just when you thought Bill Nighy was in danger of becoming a caricature of his former self ... comes a role that fits him like one of his bespoke suits. Sometimes Always Never subverts the British actor’s signature wry humour with a melancholy edge. The result is an affecting performance of artful eccentricity against a stylised Merseyside backdrop that complements it beautifully. Sam Riley (Control) responds with just the right – wronged — note of repressed emotion as the son who stayed. Directed by Carl Hunter, from a nicely judged screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce, Sometimes Always Never might best be described as a tragic-comic family mystery in which Scrabble provides many of the clues. Delightfully droll.