By Ezra Stead

By Ezra Stead
By Ezra Stead
As always, it is important to stress that this list is a compilation of my ten personal favorite movies of the year, and not necessarily the “best,” though I do consider the top three to be timeless, unassailable classics. The bottom three are, on the other hand, a few that I feel have not gotten the love they deserve on lists like this one. 2019 saw feature film conclusions to two of my all-time favorite television series in Deadwood and El Camino, both of which I considered for this list before ultimately deciding to count them as TV in order to make room for other, equally worthy movies. It is a bit of a cheat, necessary because of the difficulty of ranking my ten favorites out of the 113 movies I managed to see in 2019, so allow me to indulge in a bit more cheating….
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By Ezra Stead
The Dead Don’t Die, Sweden / USA, 2019
Written and Directed by Jim Jarmusch
“Humor is subjective” is a phrase I forced myself to remember several times throughout legendary independent filmmaker Jim Jarmusch’s latest, The Dead Don’t Die, as several other people in the audience with me reacted audibly and approvingly to jokes I found relentlessly unfunny and lame.
Here are some of the bits that elicited laughter…
Farmer Frank Miller (Steve Buscemi) is introduced in a diner, wearing a bright red baseball cap with white letters in a recognizable font reading “Keep America White Again.” That’s it. That alone got a laugh, of the performative type borne not of true mirth but a desire to let others know you get the joke (or so it seemed to me, at least). Read More
By Ezra Stead
Pet Sematary, USA, 2019
Directed by Kevin Kolsch & Dennis Widmyer
I would never recommend reading a movie review without having first seen the movie in question for yourself, but I would also never dream of spoiling the plot of a movie I review without providing a fair warning. So if you are somehow unfamiliar with the basics of Pet Sematary (come on, you’ve had thirty years to see the original movie, and thirty-five to read the book – what are you even doing with your life?), consider this your warning to stop right here and rectify that.
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By Ezra Stead
On the cult-classic two-season animated sitcom The Critic (R.I.P.), one of the half-dozen or so fake movie clips recycled in the opening credits throughout the series depicts a Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers-style black-and-white ballroom dancing scene suddenly interrupted by a full-color Tyrannosaurus Rex devouring the dancing couple. The show’s protagonist, Jay Sherman (voiced by Jon Lovitz), responds with his usual catchphrase (“It stinks!”), but every time this particular clip comes up, I can’t help but think he’s dead wrong about it. That would clearly be one of the greatest movies ever made, because nothing can improve literally any movie like the sudden, unexpected appearance of a prehistoric creature or two. In other words: surprise dinosaurs! Read More