On my last Top 10 list, I said unless something amazing happens, early 2019 hasn’t exactly been the best slate of movies to watch this year. Well, then August happened, and August had more than a few films that populate this Top 10 list before awards season kicks in. Seriously! There are 5 new films on here, including a new top 4! Guess the Avengers scared every studio away for a couple months.
Haunting and more ambitious than Get Out, Jordan Peele’s 2nd film ripples with tension and suspense. Lupita Nyongo’o gives a spectacular, chilling performance in the movie that gives us new phrases like “the tethered” and makes scissors scarier than ever.
This is the movie that is ground zero for career launching. Joe Talbot, Jimmie Fails, and Jonathan Majors all should become bigger household names for their efforts here, which tells a San Francisco gentrification story as if it were about to be sent in sonnet form to William Shakespeare himself.
Netflix’s promotion of this movie was pretty lackluster. Don’t know why, because this movie’s merger of time travel with race relations storytelling is smartly conceived and executed very well. Props to Stefon Bristol; dude, where did you come up with this idea?
British Pakistanis and Bruce Springsteen don’t seem like an ideal match for a great film. But in Gurinder Chada’s hands, the movie gets the Bend It Like Beckham treatment, turning the story into a great exploration of culture, music, family, racism, and the working class. Despite those serious themes, its hella funny too.
Yimou Zhang is not a filmmaker well known in America, but China’s medieval martial arts auteur does it again with this beautiful looking gem. Using epic storytelling and sumptuous visuals, Shadow can proudly stand among Zhang’s best work including Hero or Raise the Red Lantern.
It takes guts to follow up a perfect film. But Toy Story 4 pulls it off, again proving how Pixar’s master storytellers can continue to find a deep well of emotional truth in a bunch of plastic figurines or a spork with pipe cleaner arms. If this is Woody/Buzz/etc’s swansong, then it’s a perfectly sweet one to end on.
Mark Twain’s DNA is all over this completely adorable road trip movie. Shia Laboeuf and Dakota Johnson are great, but Zack Gottsagen will get all the praise here, as I don’t really recall a man with Down Syndrome leading a movie in such a fun and joyful way.
A scathing, pitch black satire that is very clever and very biting. Jesse Eisenberg and Alessandro Nivola are really great in their study of how pervasive, cruel, and amusingly stupid toxic masculinity is.
A story about a dying grandmother and a family hiding her secret feels like it should be really sad and manipulative. Such is the delight of Lulu Wang’s beautiful film, which presents the differences between the East and West in a subtle, lovely funny way, and contains a revelatory performance from Awkwafina.
A fairly sprawling look at a former GM plant that was taken over by a Chinese company. This prescient documentary takes an unflinching look at the universal struggle of working people and how the powers that be are unaware of the pain and suffering these heroes endure because of their decision making.
