By Vincent Abbatecola
Now that the 92nd Academy Awards have come and gone, we not only look towards the movies awaiting release in 2020, but we also look back on the movies that we might not have had a chance to see. While one of those reasons might be because of busy schedules, another reason might be that some of these movies didn’t receive wide releases. With that, here are some movies from 2019 that you might not have caught in theaters, but should make time to check out. Some might be available to stream, but others might have about a month or so to go before they become available for home release.
Note: This is a list of films that grossed less than $10 million at the domestic box office, but it doesn’t include movies from streaming services that were given a limited theatrical release beforehand.
10) Honeyland
Some of the best traveling that you could have done last summer was to go to Macedonia, by way of your movie theater and immersing yourself in Tamara Kotevska and Ljubomir Stefanov’s gorgeous documentary about Hatidže Muratova, a woman in a remote village whose lifestyle of beekeeper is interrupted by a family who moves in near her and asks Hatidže to teach them her profession. This movie is an in-depth exploration of the conflict between Hatidže and her understanding of the intricacies of beekeeping versus the profit-driven intentions of the family. In the middle of this, there’s also an emotional look at Hatidže caring for her elderly mother, who lives with her. What’s intriguing about the movie is how it doesn’t include any interviews or narration, but rather plays out like a feature as the camera simply follows Hatidže around as she goes about her day-to-day routine. For a view of a little corner of the world, you can’t do any better than this movie.
9) The Mustang
At its core, director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre’s drama might look like your typical narrative of a main character trying to redeem himself from a troubled past, but it’s deeper than that. The story focuses on an incarcerated man, Roman (Matthias Schoenaerts), who participates in a rehabilitation program that involves prisoners training mustangs and soon becomes attached to one of the horses, who he names Marquis. Schoenaerts’ performance is one that makes you see how broken down his character is after being locked up for several years, but then opens up little by little as his friendship with the horse grows. It’s a powerful connection that displays the hopefulness within the situation in which Roman finds himself, and Clermont-Tonnerre is able to keep us emotionally engaged without resorting to cheap sentimentality. You’ll experience Roman’s uncertainty in the beginning, but in the end, you’ll feel liberated.
8) Honey Boy
After working on two documentaries, Alma Har’el makes her feature directorial debut in bringing actor Shia LaBeouf’s semi-autobiographical script to audiences, which chronicles his years as a child actor and the time that he spent in rehab as an adult. However, LaBeouf isn’t just the screenwriter, but also portrays a fictionalized version of his father, while Noah Jupe and Lucas Hedges portray the younger and older versions of a fictionalized LaBeouf, respectively. All three cast members deliver emotional performances that help create both an impactful story about show business and a poignant father-son narrative. While the movie has a fairly straightforward structure, there’s also a feeling of experimentalism because of the merging of Har’el’s documentarian sensibilities and the aspects that go into a feature film, all of which create something that feels almost dreamlike. After the trouble into which LaBeouf has gotten himself over the years, his achievement with this film solidifies a promising new chapter in his career.
7) Waves
Like many emerging filmmakers, Trey Edward Shults seems to become more ambitious with each movie, which is something that he has exemplified in his coming-of-age story about a family in South Florida trying to stay together in the aftermath of a tragedy. This might seem like another day-in-the-life type of story, but with the film’s epic scope and searing emotion from its cast, which includes Kelvin Harrison, Jr., Taylor Russell, Sterling K. Brown, and Lucas Hedges, there isn’t any doubt that you’ll become invested in the characters’ plight as they go through a difficult time. Through adventurous camerawork and eclectic color schemes, Shults makes the film’s settings come alive, and with the wonderful cast occupying these vibrant environments, you don’t feel anything less than transported.
6) The Biggest Little Farm
One of the most joyful movies of the year comes from director John Chester’s documentary about him and his wife, Molly, acquiring Apricot Lane Farms in Moorpark, California, and building one of the most beautiful farms you will ever see. To view all of the forms of life that coexist on the farm’s breathtaking acres is a sight to behold as it shows all of the big and small details of what goes into managing a farm and helping everything thrive. This is an inspiring undertaking that exhibits what’s possible when people follow their dreams to accomplish something that some might seem as impossible, and you’ll be enthralled by the wonder of it all as you witness the magic that John and Molly bring to the world with their farm.
5) Pain and Glory
It’s always intriguing to find out what makes artists tic, and that’s what writer-director Pedro Almodóvar accomplishes with his semi-autobiographical film about an acclaimed filmmaker, Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas), whose career is facing a downturn. As he tries to gain back a creative spark, the story delves into his past to reveal how Salvador became a gifted director. Banderas delivers a mediative performance that grants us access into his character’s deepest thoughts, and he’s backed up by a stellar supporting cast of characters who help us see the strained connections that have weighed on Salvador for years and inspired his work. Almodóvar has given audiences many movies over his dynamic career, but this is one that brings us close to the factors that have driven his work, and we’re fortunate to have such an opportunity to get to know Almodóvar on a level such as this.
4) Les Misérables
If there was any movie that had you feel apprehension throughout, only to then throw you into chaos for the final 15 minutes, it’s director Ladj Ly’s social drama about three members of a Paris anti-crime brigade who are plunged into the slums of their community when they try to investigate a theft committed by a teenage boy. Damien Bonnard, Alexis Manenti, and Djibril Zonga, who portray the officers and appeared in Ly’s short film of the same name, off of which this movie is based, all have conflicting views on how to handle the streets, which creates immersive interactions that have you wait to see how they will handle their job. This is a timely story that has you question the actions of both the police and the civilians, offering a narrative whose questions can’t be answered right away, but must be pondered for some time after the film’s haunting conclusion.
3) Clemency
Writer-director Chinonye Chukwu delivers a powerful story about a prison warden (Alfre Woodard) who must face the troubles that her job has placed on her as she prepares for an inmate (Aldis Hodge) to be executed for a crime that he might not have committed. Woodard’s performance is one that’s so inward as to how she’s feeling, that this somehow makes her portrayal even more effective because of how we see he trying to bottle everything in so she can do her job, and Hodge is just as superb as a prisoner who must hold onto any last bit of hope that he has of being found innocent. With the impact that’s brought to this movie by all who are involved, this is a film that has you beg to yourself for everything to turn out okay, even when the bleakness never seems to lift.
2) The Last Black Man in San Francisco
One of the year’s best directorial debuts for a feature came with Joe Talbot’s thematically and visually striking portrait of a young African-American man (Jimmie Fails, playing himself in a movie partly based on his life) who returns to his childhood home and tries to reclaim it in a gentrified San Francisco. Fails and Jonathan Majors, who plays the main character’s best friend, provide heartrending performances that give raw emotional power to this melancholic view of what it’s like to not recognize the place from where you came. We sense the displacement that the two characters face, but rejoice in the friendship that they find in each other, making this a cinematic bond that’s unforgettable in its genuineness, and a movie that’s unfaltering in showing how much home can mean to a person.
1) Luce
There isn’t anything more engaging than a movie that keeps you guessing all of the way through, and director Julius Onah’s drama thriller (based on a play by J.C. Lee, who cowrote the screenplay with Onah) was one such movie. The story follows a high-school scholar and athlete, Luce Edgar (Kelvin Harrison, Jr.), who’s soon looked upon with suspicion when a startling discovery is made in his locker. Harrison, Jr., Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, who play Luce’s adoptive parents, and Octavia Spencer, who plays his history teacher, all provide performances that boil over with tension as they battle with each other to try to find out the truth that Luce is or isn’t hiding. During this, the viewer is always shifting their allegiance as to who they believe, and by the end, you still might not know who to trust, and that’s what gives this movie its lasting impact.