The Best Movies Of 2019!

Howdy!

For our last post of the week, I will be discussing my favorite movies of 2019!

Since I didn’t do my “Movies I Want To See” series last year, I wasn’t really keeping up with the newer movies but I was okay with it. What I did instead was I basically made a vow to make time in my day (or night) to watch something in my DVR folder or on Netflix. This was probably the smartest thing I did, because I ended up checking out a lot of films in the meantime. I even tried to make this post a little easier because I used Pinterest to keep track of everything I watched throughout the year.

The Hours (2002)

I think this was the most important film I watched at the beginning of the year. It was a story about three women in their different time periods, but it circled around their lives at the time they are reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. So, you have Nicole Kidman starring as Virginia Woolf. The time is 1923, and she is in the process of writing the book but you learn that she has had series of breakdowns and attempted suicide in the past. The next character is Laura, played by Julianne Moore and the year is 1965. She is a mother, who is very unhappy. And finally, there’s Meryl Steep, who is Clarissa and we are back in the present which is 2001. She is a bisexual woman, who tries to keep an eye on her former partner Richard and meets his mother after his death by suicide.

It was a heartbreaking movie that I both loved and hated, because at the time I watched it, I was very depressed and since I have had contemplated suicide in the past, it hit me deeply. After I finished it, I literally got out my notebook and wrote in it about how I was feeling and mostly I was full of anger on my situation in life. I cried and cried, but I let myself cry it out and I’m glad I did that because once I was done, I suddenly felt better about everything. I was no longer sad about my life. If anything, it helped me move on. I don’t know if I kept that entry or not, I think I got rid of it around October.

Descendants 3 (2019)

I was really surprised that not only did I watched this movie, but I loved it! A part of me was conflicted at first because I was watching it to honor Cameron Boyce and the other part I was curious to see what the song was during the promos! After the first song and dance routine was over, I instantly got comfortable on my bed and watched the whole thing in one sitting!

If you have not checked out the films, it is about the descendants of our beloved Disney characters, but there’s a catch as the good characters live in Auradon. They have their magical powers and basically live in a place of luxury, whereas the villains all live on a island that takes away their magical powers and isolates them away. At the time of this film, the original descendants of Maleficent, The Evil Queen from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Jabar, and Cruella Di Vill go back to the island and chose four kids to come to be educated and live with their mentors on Auradon.

I am a sucker when it comes to musicals. Disney musicals use to really get me when I was younger, but I kind of thought I was too old to enjoy them again. It was shocking how quick that thought flew away after I heard “Queen Of Mean” sung by Sleeping Beauty’s daughter Prince Aubrey (Sarah Jeffrey). I’m not going to even hide the fact that after I heard for the first time, I rewind the whole song over so I could learn the lyrics on my closed captions! I learned it within a day or so; the same thing happened with “Night Falls” too!

Chaplin (1992)

This one was probably the best I had seen in a long time! I am familiar with the story of actor Charlie Chaplin, but I was not expecting to enjoy seeing Robert Downey Jr. playing him. I was so worried that I would be picturing Tony Stark the whole time, but thankfully I didn’t. He completely took over the man and his iconic role as the “Tramp” to the point where you thought you were seeing the real Mr. Chaplin on your television screen!

The film is all about Charlie Chaplin’s life, starting while he is exiled in Switzerland after being accused of being a communist. He is met with his biographer to discuss what he wants to put in his book. So, we are taken through some things from his young life with his older half brother Sidney and their mother, who had psychotic breakdowns to what led him to create his own production studio and finally the point he meets his wife and love of his life: Oona O’Neil.

It was such a good film! I wasn’t able to watch it in one sitting like I wanted, but it never really left me, I was haunted by the previous scenes so I kept telling myself to go back and once it was over, I was really bummed but wanted to recommend it to anyone who would listen honestly!

For Sama (2019)

I don’t know what drew me to watch this documentary but I did, and I’m happy that happened because it was hauntingly beautiful!

PBS was airing this on “Frontline” one night and I just felt complied to check it out. It made my heart ache for everyone in Syria. It made me think of a friend I had that lived/lives there, and the reason why I said “lived” is because it’s been around four years since I have heard from her. She use to tweet about her father dying and she was having to move with her family, and it just didn’t seem real until I watched this and I began to think of her again and wonder where she was or did she make it out alive?

This film was recorded in a range of two or three years. The title “For Sama” is in dedication to the filmmaker’s daughter Sama, who was born at the height of the civil war in Syria. Sama’s mother is Waad Al-Kaeb, she married a doctor that treated people who were hurt prior and during the bombings in Aleppo. The whole film is in Arabic but English subtitles are provided at the bottom of the screen. You could hear and feel every emotion like pride for their home, worry that they wouldn’t make it, horror to seeing everyday people, children included with various injuries from the aftermath of the bombings and the love in the tone of her voice. It does get pretty graphic but it was real. When you hear about bombings on the news on TV, I feel like for most people (myself included) can switch off their minds to how a bomb that dropped to the ground, on top of homes, that the innocent escaped in time. You will see children die and be born within five minutes of each other.

Detroit (2017)

It was so surprising that it took me two years to finally watch this film. I remember the day I was going through the new movie trailers on YouTube and then coming across this one. I am a lover of real life situations being played out on film. I would rather spend the rest of my days watching them because then I would never forget about our history as human beings. Not everyone has the best intentions for others, much less themselves and I think it is the perfect way to describe the situation of this movie.

Detroit is a story of a time where there was a lot of violence towards the African-Americans and the police department of the 1960’s; there is injustice among the community and everything has hit a breaking point. You are introduced to a group of people who are staying at a hotel and somebody starts shooting at the police as a joke, and since tensions are already high and everybody feels threatened, things get very out of control and the consequences were awful. They could have been better, hell, even prevented as nobody should have been killed in a way these people were and then you realize that even though the times have changed, history has a way of repeating itself over and over again.

I am finally done with this post, but if you’d like to see what else I watched in 2019, you should go check out my Pinterest board. I hope you have enjoyed this post and have a great weekend!