You might have been lucky/unlucky enough to catch some/all of these…
June is coming to an end, meaning we’re six months down in 2019.
The halfway point is here, so it is time to look back over the cinematic year to date, and talk about the best and worst of the big screen.
Everything here was released in Irish cinemas in 2019, so nothing from Netflix, and nothing that has already been released in the States but yet to arrive here.
With that in mind, on we go!
#5 Best | JOHN WICK 3: PARABELLUM
The addition of Halle Berry, attack dogs, those guys from The Raid, high-kicking horses, and a prolonged knife-fight is exactly the shot-in-the-arm that this franchise needed.
Considering this one is a MASSIVE box office success (it has made more than the first two combined), we’ll be very happy at the prospect of Wick tearing up the action movie rulebook for the next decade or however long Reeves is capable of being a badass.
#5 Worst | GLASS
M. Night Shyamalan was really on to a good thing here.
After the underrated Unbreakable ended up being the spiritual predecessor for the rightly appreciated Split, he went ahead and put all those characters in the same movie for what should have been an incredible, intelligent smackdown of real-world heroes and villains.
Instead, he locked them up for most of the movie, made Sam Jackson an immobile mute, and ended on a fight scene that looked like it was filmed for €10 in an empty car park.
#4 Best – EIGHTH GRADE
Bo Burnham shouldn’t be this good at writing and directing a movie about the absolute exact inner workings of the mind of a teenage girl, but here we are, with one of the most painfully insightful and laugh-out-loud brilliant takes on the sub-genre of “awkward teen-com”.
Elsie Fisher is a huge talent to watch, nailing the highs and lows of every day life of being a socially inept teen in the age of social media.
#4 Worst – DARK PHOENIX
Apocalypse should have been just that, the end of everything.
But Fox and Marvel eked out another X-Men movie with this over-talented, under-served cast, re-visiting the plot of The Last Stand, but somehow making a worse go of it this time around.
Sophie Turner does her best with 90% of the plot laid on her shoulders, but there isn’t an actor alive who could pull this script out of the nosedive of quality.
#3 Best – THE FAVOURITE
Released here on New Year’s Day, The Favourite remains one of the best dark comedies we’ve seen in a long time, resulting in a Best Actress Oscar for Olivia Colman, as well as Best Supporting Actress nominations for both Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone.
The tale of two women vying for the attention of the most powerful person in the world goes to some extremely nasty places to prove the lengths that some of these people will go to for just a little bit more than they already have.
After The Lobster and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer, director Yorgos Lanthimos is on one of the greatest cinematic rolls we’ve ever seen, and we can’t wait to see what he does next.
#3 Worst – SERENITY
Oooof. Oh boy. Where to start with this one?
Oscar winner Matthew McConaughey and Oscar winner Anne Hathaway star in a sexy revenge thriller from the creator of Peaky Blinders.
This SHOULD have been great.
Instead we end up with one of the weirdest big-screen car crashes we’ve witnessed in some time. No two actors are in the same genre, no two scenes make sense alongside each other, and the full scope of the plot is something you need to go into blind and let wash over you.
The only terrible film on this list that we fully recommend you watch, in a Showgirls or The Room kind of way.
#2 Best – AVENGERS: ENDGAME
You’ve seen it.
You’ve all seen it.
You know how great this was, how difficult it must have been pull off, and yet Marvel did it.
How they’ll top it, we’ve no idea, and we get a headache even thinking about it.
#2 Worst – THE HUSTLE
Every year’s Worst Of list needs a scare-free horror and a laugh-free comedy.
We’re still waiting on that truly profoundly terrible horror movie, but we’ve already received our chuckle void, with Anne Hathaway making a second appearance on the bad side of this ranking.
A gender-swapped remake of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels already existed in the form of the much-better Heartbreakers.
Here, we’ve got Rebel Wilson playing “Rebel Wilson in every Rebel Wilson movie”, and Anne Hathaway drowning in a British accent.
#1 Best – BOOKSMART
From a truly terrible female “comedy”, to this year’s best movie so far, a truly magnificent female COMEDY.
Directed with hilarious and creative insight by Olivia Wilde, with two stellar leading performances from Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein, assisted by a constantly funny script.
Between this, Eighth Grade, Long Shot, and Late Night, 2019 truly has been a remarkable year for female-led funny movies.
Booksmart gets the A+.
#1 Worst – HELLBOY
Horror stories have since surfaced about this movie’s production, with actors reportedly making up their lines on the day, and the overall plot seemingly changing on a whim.
It is all up there on the screen to see, with an end product that looks like the director, the cinematographer, and the editor all hated each other and decided to take their feelings out in their work.
Again, it should have been good, with director Neil Marshall (The Descent, Game Of Thrones) and actor David Harbour (Stranger Things) both seeming like perfect fits for this tale.
But this didn’t just disappoint those who went in with any expectations.
It is a disappointment to anyone with a working set of eyeballs.
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
