Next week the Toronto International Film Festival kicks off, which means the fourth-quarter onslaught of award-seeking prestige pictures won't be far behind. It's the best of times and the worst of times.
I'll see more good movies from now to the end of the year than I did in the first eight months of the year -- but will also be deeply disappointed by some. I wrote my contractually obligated fall movie preview for last Sunday's newspaper, and almost nothing popped out as looking all that promising. Maybe the Safdie brothers' Uncut Gems; maybe Taika Waititi's Jojo Rabbit; probably Bong Joon Ho's Parasite and François Ozon's By the Grace of God. I'm always up for a Pedro Almodóvar movie. Joker and Judy sound intriguing. There are a lot of documentaries.
But I have a bad feeling that I've already seen the best movies of this year. I'm still thinking about Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood and hope that the rumored four-hour episodic version ends up on Netflix. The film was too long, but if given the opportunity to stop it and pick it up again, I'd gladly re-immerse myself in Quentin Tarantino's 1969.
Hollywood will almost certainly make my year-end Top 10. So will Olivier Assayas' Non-Fiction and Josh Cooley's Toy Story 4.
Most of the other 2019 films I'd recommend are already on DVD or streaming: Christian Petzold's Transit; Joe Talbot's The Last Black Man in San Francisco; Alex Ross Perry's Her Smell; Sebastián Lelio's Gloria Bell; Zhangke Jia's Ash Is Purest White; Alan Elliott and Sydney Pollack's Amazing Grace, and David Robert Mitchell's Under the Silver Lake round out my So Far list.
I haven't seen The Souvenir or an An Elephant Standing Still or The Latest John Wick movie. Avengers: Endgame is cued up, but I haven't had the heart to press play yet. I have seen The Dead Don't Die, Booksmart and Us. It's going to take a strong fourth quarter to keep 2019 from going down as a pretty "meh" movie year.
But most years, by definition, are meh movie years. Not every year can be 2007 or 1967 or 1939 or 2018. Besides, as I keep reminding everyone, we haven't seen 2019's best shot yet. Maybe Downton Abbey will be good. (Not likely, since they rejected my spec script in which the Crawleys mixed with Unity Mitford, King Edward VII, Wallis Simpson and other Nazi sympathizers.)
...
If you missed it in theaters, or if you want to watch it again, be advised that Daniel Campbell's Antiquities will make its premium cable debut at 2:45 p.m. Sunday on Showtime.
Because I know a lot of the people who worked on this Arkansas-made feature, I recused myself from reviewing it when it opened theatrically, handing it to our Philadelphia-based critic Piers Marchant without telling him of the film's providence. He liked it.
"What starts out as a Bob Newhart-esque comedy of contrasts between an eternally normal figure amid a veritable thicket of crazed eccentrics -- Joe vs. the Weirdos -- eventually spreads beyond surface types and at least hints at deeper emotions underneath the bluster and oddball outlooks," he wrote. "... its genial manner and generosity with its cavalcade of eccentrics keep it enjoyably palatable. Campbell regulates his risk by keeping the pace brisk and not hanging on to any scene long enough for the seams to show, which avoids many of the pratfalls often found with such comedies.
"There isn't all that much here to stick to your ribs, but its smooth finish goes down like a frigid limeade on a scorching afternoon."
After the debut, the film will, for a year, be periodically screened on Showtime and available for streaming On Demand.
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MovieStyle on 08/30/2019