Ranking Every Movie of 2019 (well, sort of)

Each of the past four years, the Manifesto has engaged in a fun and ludicrous exercise wherein we ranked every movie we saw that year. It’s always been a profoundly silly column, one that’s more designed to inspire debate than to operate as any sort of official statement of my opinions; for example, it’s provoked heated reactions like “How dare you disrespect Paddington 2!” and “Dude, you ranked Avengers: Infinity War 40 spots below Aquaman, what the fuck?” While I always enjoy getting yelled at on the internet, I acknowledge that these rankings are flawed, because they give the appearance of an ironclad hierarchy that doesn’t really exist. Last year, I ranked First Man 17th and Hereditary 25th; did I really think that the former was significantly better than the latter?

Still, I maintain that a comprehensive year-end wrap-up has its virtues. For one, it serves as a handy recordkeeping function, allowing me to track what I watched and (perhaps more importantly) what I didn’t. It also features a #servicey component: I always include in parentheses, along with the name of each movie’s director and its respective ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, any service where it’s streaming (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc.). In theory, this is helpful for readers who have the ubiquitous questions of “What should I watch?” and “How can I watch it?”

So, I’m retaining the full list this year, but with a twist: instead of literally ranking all 156 movies that I watched in 2019, I’m splitting them into 10 distinct tiers. This is still imperfect, but it’s designed to group the year’s films into legible blocks, rather than just vomiting out one long list. Now, could certain titles slide up or down a tier, when viewed in a certain light? Of course; art is too slippery and personal to be subject to hierarchical rigidity. But in reviewing the year as a whole, this method at least imposes a semblance of order without creating the false appearance of numerical inflexibility. Let’s do it.

Tier 1: The Top 15
For every tier in this post, the titles are arranged alphabetically… except for this one. For a more detailed write-up of the year’s best pictures, click here. Long story short: These movies are all great, and you should watch them.

1. Parasite (directed by Bong Joon-ho; 99% Rotten Tomatoes, 96 Metacritic)
2. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino; 85% RT, 83 MC)
3. Transit (Christian Petzold; 94% RT, 82 MC; streaming on Amazon)
4. Little Women (Greta Gerwig; 95% RT, 91 MC)
5. Knives Out (Rian Johnson; 97% RT, 82 MC)
6. Official Secrets (Gavin Hood; 83% RT, 63MC)
7. Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach; 95% RT, 93 MC; streaming on Netflix)
8. Midsommar (Ari Aster; 83% RT, 72 MC; streaming on Amazon)
9. Never Look Away (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck; 77% RT, 68 MC; streaming on Starz)
10. The Nightingale (Jennifer Kent; 87% RT, 77 MC; streaming on Hulu)
11. Luce (Julius Onah; 91% RT, 72 MC; streaming on Hulu)
12. Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma; 98% RT, 95 MC)
13. Us (Jordan Peele; 93% RT, 81 MC; streaming on HBO)
14. 1917 (Sam Mendes; 89% RT, 78 MC)
15. Booksmart (Olivia Wilde; 97% RT, 84 MC; streaming on Hulu)

Tier 2: Honorable Mention
In most other years, any of these five movies would have claimed a spot in the top 15.

American Woman (directed by Jake Scott; 88% Rotten Tomatoes, 68 Metacritic; streaming on HBO)
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller; 95% RT, 80 MC)
Dolemite Is My Name (Craig Brewer; 97% RT, 76 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Motherless Brooklyn (Edward Norton; 63% RT, 60 MC)
Teen Spirit (Max Minghella; 71% RT, 57 MC; streaming on Hulu)

Tier 3: Really Good Movies!
These 13 movies are all really good! They aren’t perfect, but they’re absolutely worth watching.

Alles Ist Gut (directed by Eva Trobisch; 100% Rotten Tomatoes, 80 Metacritic; streaming on Netflix)
The Art of Self-Defense (Riley Stearns; 84% RT, 65 MC; streaming on Hulu)
Atlantics (Mati Diop; 96% RT, 85 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Dragged Across Concrete (S. Craig Zahler; 75% RT, 60 MC; streaming on Cinemax)
Everybody Knows (Asghar Farhadi; 78% RT, 68 MC; streaming on Netflix)
The Farewell (Lulu Wang; 98% RT, 89 MC; streaming on Amazon)
Fast Color (Julia Hart; 82% RT, 64 MC; streaming on Amazon and Hulu)
Fighting with My Family (Stephen Merchant; 93% RT, 68 MC; streaming on Amazon and Hulu)
Ford v Ferrari (James Mangold; 92% RT, 81 MC)
The Irishman (Martin Scorsese; 96% RT, 94 MC; streaming on Netflix)
John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum (Chad Stahelski; 90% RT, 73 MC; streaming on HBO)
Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley; 97% RT, 84 MC; streaming on Disney+)
Uncut Gems (Josh and Benny Safdie; 92% RT, 90 MC)

Tier 4: Pretty Good Movies
A notch in quality below the prior tier—see how this works?—these (gulp) 26 movies are all still quality productions. They’re pretty good!

Arctic (directed by Joe Penna; 89% Rotten Tomatoes, 71 Metacritic; streaming on Amazon)
Ash Is Purest White (Jia Zhangke; 99% RT, 85 MC; streaming on Amazon)
El Camino (Vince Gilligan; 91% RT, 72 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Dark Waters (Todd Haynes; 89% RT, 73 MC)
Gloria Bell (Sebastián Lelio; 91% RT, 79 MC; streaming on Amazon)
Her Smell (Alex Ross Perry; 83% RT, 69 MC; streaming on HBO)
High Life (Claire Denis; 82% RT, 77 MC; streaming on Amazon)
Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria; 87% RT, 79 MC)
I Am Mother (Grant Sputore; 90% RT, 64 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Lady J (Emmanuel Mouret; 83% RT; streaming on Netflix)
Light of My Life (Casey Affleck; 81% RT, 67 MC; streaming on Amazon)
The Mustang (Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre; 94% RT, 77 MC; streaming on Cinemax)
Paddleton (Alexandre Lehmann; 90% RT, 70 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar; 97% RT, 87 MC)
The Peanut Butter Falcon (Michael Schwartz and Tyler Nilson; 96% RT, 70 MC)
The Perfection (Richard Shepard; 73% RT, 60 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Peterloo (Mike Leigh; 66% RT, 66 MC; streaming on Amazon)
Ready or Not (Tyler Gillett and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin; 88% RT, 64 MC)
The Report (Scott Z. Burns; 81% RT, 66 MC; streaming on Amazon)
The Souvenir (Joanna Hogg; 90% RT, 91 MC; streaming on Amazon)
Spider-Man: Far from Home (Jon Watts; 91% RT, 69 MC; streaming on Starz)
Togo (Ericson Core; 92% RT, 71 MC; streaming on Disney+)
Triple Frontier (J.C. Chandor; 71% RT, 61 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Under the Silver Lake (David Robert Mitchell; 58% RT, 60 MC; streaming on Amazon)
Waves (Trey Edward Shults; 83% RT, 80 MC)
The Wedding Guest (Michael Winterbottom; 44% RT, 57 MC; streaming on Showtime)

Tier 5: Not Bad, But…
This is the most populous tier, with a whopping 34 entries. All of these movies are fine, but I couldn’t help wanting more from them.

All Is True (directed by Kenneth Branagh; 72% Rotten Tomatoes, 59 Metacritic; streaming on Starz)
Birds of Passage (Ciro Guerra and Cristina Gallego; 96% RT, 85 MC; streaming on HBO)
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (Chiwetel Ejiofor; 86% RT, 68 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Captain Marvel (Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck; 78% RT, 64 MC; streaming on Disney+)
Charlie Says (Mary Harron; 59% RT, 57 MC)
Crawl (Alexandre Aja; 83% RT, 60 MC)
The Death of Dick Long (Daniel Scheinert; 74% RT, 69 MC)
Diane (Kent Jones; 93% RT, 86 MC; streaming on Hulu)
Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan; 77% RT, 59 MC)
First Love (Takashi Miike; 97% RT, 76 MC)
Frozen II (Jennifer Lee and Chris Buck; 77% RT, 64 MC)
Good Boys (Gene Stupnitsky; 80% RT, 60 MC)
High Flying Bird (Steven Soderbergh; 93% RT, 78 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Honey Boy (Alma Har’el; 94% RT, 73 MC; streaming on Amazon)
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (Dean DeBlois; 91% RT, 71 MC; streaming on Hulu)
I See You (Adam Randall; 72% RT, 65 MC)
In the Shadow of the Moon (Jim Mickle; 59% RT, 48 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi; 80% RT, 58 MC)
Joy (Sudabeh Mortezai; 92% RT, 75 MC; streaming on Netflix)
The King (David Michôd; 71% RT, 62 MC; streaming on Netflix)
The Last Black Man in San Francisco (Joe Talbot; 93% RT, 83 MC; streaming on Amazon)
The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (Mike Mitchell; 85% RT, 65 MC; streaming on HBO)
Little Woods (Nia DaCosta; 96% RT, 74 MC; streaming on Hulu)
Long Day’s Journey into Night (Bi Gan; 93% RT, 88 MC; streaming on Kanopy)
Missing Link (Chris Butler; 89% RT, 68 MC; streaming on Hulu)
Queen & Slim (Melina Matsoukas; 82% RT, 74 MC)
Richard Jewell (Clint Eastwood; 76% RT, 68 MC)
Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher; 89% RT, 69 MC)
See You Yesterday (Stefon Bristol; 95% RT, 74 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Shadow (Zhang Yimou; 95% RT, 81 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Star Wars: Episode IX—The Rise of Skywalker (J.J. Abrams; 52% RT, 53 MC)
Styx (Wolfgang Fischer; 95% RT, 78 MC; streaming on Kanopy)
Wild Rose (Tom Harper; 92% RT, 80 MC; streaming on Hulu)
Yesterday (Danny Boyle; 63% RT, 55 MC)

Tier 6: Better Than You Think
Neither this nor the subsequent tier fits neatly into this column’s overall scheme, because they hinge less on my overall opinion than on my experience relative to my expectations. Some of the 13 movies in this tier are quite good; others are nothing special. But they all played better for me than their overall critical reputation had led me to anticipate.

The Aftermath (directed by James Kent; 28% Rotten Tomatoes, 43 Metacritic; streaming on HBO)
Aladdin (Guy Ritchie; 57% RT, 53 MC; streaming on Disney+)
Alita: Battle Angel (Robert Rodriguez; 61% RT, 53 MC; streaming on HBO)
Anna (Luc Besson; 36% RT, 40 MC)
Bombshell (Jay Roach; 70% RT, 64 MC)
The Current War (Alfonso Gomez-Rejon; 33% RT, 55 MC)
Dumbo (Tim Burton; 47% RT, 51 MC; streaming on Disney+)
Glass (M. Night Shyamalan; 37% RT, 43 MC; streaming on HBO)
The Goldfinch (John Crowley; 24% RT, 40 MC)
Greta (Neil Jordan; 60% RT, 54 MC; streaming on HBO)
Hotel Mumbai (Anthony Maras; 77% RT, 62 MC; streaming on Hulu)
Jumanji: The Next Level (Jake Kasdan; 71% RT, 58 MC)
Where’d You Go, Bernadette (Richard Linklater; 49% RT, 51 MC; streaming on Hulu)

Tier 7: Disappointing
The flip side of the prior tier, these are movies that I was eagerly anticipating—either because of strong critical buzz or because I have a fondness for their director or cast—but which ultimately underwhelmed me. None of these 14 films is bad, exactly; they just didn’t move me as much as I’d hoped.

Ad Astra (directed by James Gray; 84% Rotten Tomatoes, 80 Metacritic)
Always Be My Maybe (Nahnatchka Khan; 89% RT, 64 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Apollo 11 (Todd Douglas Miller; 99% RT, 88 MC; streaming on Hulu)
Avengers: Endgame (Anthony and Joe Russo; 94% RT, 78 MC; streaming on Disney+)
Blinded by the Light (Gurinder Chadha; 89% RT, 71 MC)
Harriet (Kasi Lemmons; 73% RT, 66 MC)
I Lost My Body (Jérémy Clapin; 96% RT, 80 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Joker (Todd Phillips; 68% RT, 59 MC)
Just Mercy (Destin Daniel Cretton; 83% RT, 68 MC)
The Laundromat (Steven Soderbergh; 42% RT, 57 MC; streaming on Netflix)
The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers; 90% RT, 83 MC)
Long Shot (Jonathan Levine; 81% RT, 67 MC; streaming on HBO)
Lucy in the Sky (Noah Hawley; 22% RT, 36 MC)
Shazam! (David F. Sandberg; 90% RT, 71 MC; streaming on HBO)

Tier 8: Not Good, Not Terrible
The world is grey, and so are movies. I can’t enthusiastically recommend any of the 20 films in this tier, but I can’t entirely dismiss them either. They all have their virtues, even if none of them completely worked for me.

Black and Blue (directed by Deon Taylor; 52% Rotten Tomatoes, 54 Metacritic)
Brightburn (David Yarovesky; 57% RT, 44 MC; streaming on Starz)
Domino (Brian De Palma; 34% RT, 40 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Dora and the Lost City of Gold (James Bobin; 84% RT, 63 MC)
Downton Abbey (Michael Engler; 84% RT, 64 MC)
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile (Joe Berlinger; 55% RT, 52 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (David Leitch; 67% RT, 60 MC)
J.T. LeRoy (Justin Kelly; 55% RT, 55 MC)
Judy (Rupert Goold; 82% RT, 66 MC)
Low Tide (Kevin McMullin; 71% RT, 64 MC; streaming on Amazon)
Ma (Tate Taylor; 55% RT, 53 MC; streaming on HBO)
Piercing (Nicolas Pesce; 72% RT, 63 MC)
Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (André Øvredal; 78% RT, 61 MC)
Serenity (Steven Knight; 20% RT, 37 MC; streaming on Amazon)
Someone Great (Jennifer Kaytin Robinson; 82% RT, 63 MC; streaming on Netflix)
The Standoff at Sparrow Creek (Henry Dunham; 77% RT, 62 MC; streaming on Hulu)
21 Bridges (Brian Kirk; 50% RT, 51 MC)
Unicorn Store (Brie Larson; 64% RT, 44 MC; streaming on Netflix)
The White Crow (Ralph Fiennes; 67% RT, 61 MC; streaming on Starz)
Zombieland: Double Tap (Ruben Fleischer; 68% RT, 55 MC)

Tier 9: Pretty Bad, Not Deplorable
These 11 movies are… not great. But I didn’t totally hate them.

Body at Brighton Rock (directed by Roxanne Benjamin; 66% Rotten Tomatoes, 53 Metacritic; streaming on Hulu)
Cats (Tom Hooper; 20% RT, 32 MC)
Dark Phoenix (Simon Kinberg; 23% RT, 43 MC)
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (Michael Dougherty; 42% RT, 48 MC; streaming on HBO)
The Highwaymen (John Lee Hancock; 57% RT, 58 MC; streaming on Netflix)
It: Chapter Two (Andy Muschietti; 63% RT, 58 MC)
The Lion King (Jon Favreau; 53% RT, 55 MC; streaming on Disney+)
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil (Joachim Rønning; 40% RT, 43 MC)
Men in Black International (F. Gary Gray; 23% RT, 38 MC; streaming on Starz)
The Two Popes (Fernando Meirelles; 89% RT, 75 MC; streaming on Netflix)
Velvet Buzzsaw (Dan Gilroy; 62% RT, 61 MC; streaming on Netflix)

Tier 10: Bad Movies
It’s rare that I actively dislike a movie. Part of that is due to selection bias—I generally avoid watching films that are purported to be terrible—and part of it stems from my tendency to locate the virtues even in weaker productions. The following five movies—two of which were big critical hits—were the exception for me in 2019. I did not like them. At all. (OK, a couple of them still do some things well, but you get the idea.)

Climax (directed by Gaspar Noé; 70% Rotten Tomatoes, 67 MC; streaming on Amazon)
The Dead Don’t Die (Jim Jarmusch; 55% RT, 53 MC)
Gemini Man (Ang Lee; 26% RT, 38 MC)
A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick; 80% RT, 78 MC)
Secret Obsession (Peter Sullivan; 31% RT; streaming on Netflix)

That’s a wrap on all 156 movies that I watched in 2019. Happy streaming.