The Year 2019 in Movies

Matt Lynn Digital maintained a strong focus on reviewing movies in 2019. In taking a cinematic look back at the films we reviewed this year, we’ll provide a look into 48 distinct movie. We’ll additionally look into the concept of remakes and sequels as a bonus look into the field of movie making.

(The best movie Matt Lynn Digital saw in 2019 was Vertigo as directed by Alfred Hitchcock. We reviewed this film in April).

Atop our list of movies is the one film that received a perfect rating, that of 5-stars on a scale of 1-to-5 stars on the movie rankings list. Alfred Hitchcock‘s Vertigo (1958) is a film that uses a narrative style mixing in mystery, thriller, romance, and psychological illness to suggest that a character isn’t guilty. Vertigo is the first of two Alfred Hitchcock movies reviewed this year.

(Matt Lynn Digital reviewed 2001: A Space Odyssey as directed, produced and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. We reviewed this film in January).

Our second best film for the year introduced us to space tourism and a future of what traveling in space might look like in Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The rating of 4.75-stars reflects the quality in innovation, storytelling, science fiction and genre creation. This is also the first of six movies reviewed this year associated with space travel.

(Three films rated at 4.50-stars included 1980’s Ordinary People, 1992’s Glengarry Glenn Ross and 1998’s Saving Private Ryan. The films were reviewed in January, April and July, respectively).

Four Academy Awards awaited the film Ordinary People (1980), a sad, moving, and emotionally satisfying film. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992) offers the colorful language of full-throated criticism of the modern American business culture. The first of six films produced, directed or both for Steven Spielberg happens to be the first of three films starring Tom Hanks in our review this year. The film Saving Private Ryan (1998) shows a highly realistic depiction of the human cost of war, culminating in the central stories of a group of soldiers tasked with saving one soldier whose brothers died in that same war.

(Three of six films rated at 4.25-stars by Matt Lynn Digital included 2019’s Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, 1999’s The Matrix and 1988’s Big. The films were reviewed in August, May and November, respectively).

The film Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood (2019) provides a fictional retelling of the time, the place, and an fact-adjacent place of Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s. A winner of four Academy Awards, the film The Matrix (1999) offered a groundbreaking dystopian movie-going experience. The film Big (1988) made a splash with the whimsy of a 13-year-old boy in a grown man’s body.

(The remaining six films rated at 4.25-stars by Matt Lynn Digital included 1988’s Rain Man, 1989’s Field of Dreams and 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas. The films were reviewed in October, June and December, respectively).

Another winner of four Academy Awards in our reviews this year was the serious yet comedic film Rain Man (1988). The second film, Field of Dreams (1989), while being perhaps the best baseball film ever made is the first of three movies reviewed this year to star Kevin Costner. The film How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) offers an irrepressible portrayal of an aggrieved Grinch who does not care for the holiday of Christmas.

(Four of eight films rated at 4-stars by Matt Lynn Digital included 2019’s Joker, 1961’s A Raisin in the Sun, 2016’s Hidden Figures and 1995’s Apollo 13. The films were reviewed in October, June, November and July, respectively).

The film Joker (2019) tells a gritty, physically demanding, emotional gut punch of an origin story of a would-be foil of the comic book character Batman. A Raisin in the Sun (1961) is a film adaptation that reviews the value and purpose of dreams, the need to fight racial discrimination and the importance of family. The film Hidden Figures (2016) focuses on three African American women fighting society and culture placing the obstacles of indignity, prejudice, and institutional obstruction in their way in service of the space race. The blockbuster film Apollo 13 (1995) tells a triumphant story of human ingenuity and tragedy averted.

(The remaining eight films rated at 4-stars by Matt Lynn Digital included 1992’s A Few Good Men, 1993’s The Remains of the Day, 1993’s The Fugitive and 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The films were reviewed in July, February, March and September, respectively).

A Few Good Men (1992) is a film that tells the fictional tale of a Navy lawyer who has never seen the inside of the courtroom while defending two reticent Marines accused of murdering a colleague in Cuba. The film The Remains of the Day (1993) explored how to waste your life emotionally and politically. The preceding two films garnered a dozen Academy Award nominations between the two of them. In the film The Fugitive (1993) you see the story of a man unjustly accused of murdering his wife who gains his freedom through a train accident then sets to establish his innocence. In Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), a partially live action and animated film offers an adult sensibility filled with lurid details, gags of a lighter nature, and an all around good time.

(Four of fourteen films rated at 3.75-stars by Matt Lynn Digital included 2019’s Motherless Brooklyn, 2019’s Knives Out, 2017’s The Darkest Hour and 2012’s Looper. The films were reviewed in November, December, April and June, respectively).

The film  Motherless Brooklyn (2019) sets itself against the backdrop of 1950s New York City with a puzzle for lead character and private detective with Tourette’s Syndrome. Knives Out (2019) as a whodunnit works for not being based on anything. The film The Darkest Hour (2017) follows the trying days of the Dunkirk Evacuation with Operation Dynamo. Rian Johnson, with his second film in this paragraph in Looper (2012), gets creative with two characters battling each other through time in an interesting science fiction plot.

(Four of fourteen films rated at 3.75-stars by Matt Lynn Digital included 1999’s October Sky, 2018’s Ready Player One, 2010’s Inception and 2018’s Widows. The films were reviewed in May, February, January and September, respectively).

The film October Sky (1999) tells the tale of a difficult father son relationship and the formation of a career in the early days of the space race. The science fiction, fantasy, and action film Ready Player One (2018) offers clever mixes of graphic and reality set in the hypothetical year 2045. Winning four Academy Awards, the film Inception (2010) offers a decent science fiction story line with an entertaining if dreamy cinematic experience that works well in movie or home theaters alike. The film Widows (2018) offers political intrigue, a corrupt local crime boss, and a broken relationship between a husband and wife that gives this story some punch.

(Six of fourteen films rated at 3.75-stars by Matt Lynn Digital included 1988’s Bull Durham, 1986’s Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, 1983’s Terms of Endearment, 1982’s Poltergeist, 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and 1954’s White Christmas. The films were reviewed in October, August, February, August, June and December, respectively).

The film Bull Durham (1988) is the film of a rookie, a veteran, an experienced fan seeking a love triangle and baseball.  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) tells a comedic high school version of the message stop and smell the flowers. Winning five Academy Awards, the film Terms of Endearment (1983) tells of the family problems of an independently spirited daughter and her hard to please mother. The original film Poltergeist (1982) gains momentum as random occurrences in the home begin to introduce themselves and grow into outright disturbances that scare the audience. An alien-themed film with a lyrical bent gives a glimpse into the wonder that is the move Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). White Christmas (1954) is the romantic movie for Christmas that quite honestly inspired the genre.

(Four of ten films rated at 3.50-stars by Matt Lynn Digital included 1996’s Fargo, 1998’s Fallen, 1985’s The Color Purple and 1941’s Dumbo. The films were reviewed in February, March, March and March, respectively).

Fargo (1996) won an Academy Award for screenplay written for the screen while playing in the genres of crime, drama, and possibly thriller. Most correctly, the film should be characterized as a dark comedy in small town America. The film Fallen (1998) mixes the genres of supernatural with police thriller in tackling a clever telling of aiming to defeat the supernatural. The film adaptation of The Color Purple (1985) could have been harder hitting in getting into some of the upbringing and forcibly separate lives of sisters Celie Johnson and Nettie Harris. Brutal truths in the lives of the sisters are explored nonetheless with dignity. The fifth movie released by Disney was the animated film Dumbo (1941). The 64-minute feature gets into the story of a baby elephant forced to work in order to survive.

(Three of ten films rated at 3.50-stars by Matt Lynn Digital included 1963’s The Birds, 1990’s Arachnophobia and 2018’s Brian Banks. The films were reviewed in May, June and August, respectively).

The sudden and unpredictable attacks of birds form the premise of the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds (1963). Arachnophobia (1990) just might be the film for you have a fear originating in childhood that you’d like to have comically challenged for two hours. The film Brian Banks (2018) recounts much of the story of a man sent to jail unjustly in what appears to be a clear case of injustice.

(Three of ten films rated at 3.50-stars by Matt Lynn Digital included 2019’s The Secret Life of Pets 2, 2019’s Gemini Man and 2010’s The Town. The films were reviewed in July, October and December, respectively).

The Secret Life of Pets 2 (2019) is an animated film that follows the lives of pets in an apartment in New York City as pet owners leave for the day with the added mixture of a circus, a farm, and an airplane flight. The film Gemini Man (2019) deserved better than the box office gate the film received in theaters.  The Town (2010) offered a film looking into the notion of burglary, armored trucks, banks, and Fenway Park serving as places just as distinctly as there were funny notions of love and loyalty.

Movies landing with a rating of 3.25-stars included The Jackal (1997) reviewed in May,  The Running Man (1987) reviewed in August, The Mule (2018) reviewed in August, Welcome to Marwen (2018) reviewed in September and Ad Astra (2019) reviewed in October.

Addressing the theory of remaking movies or offering sequels that keep a franchise going, we offered why this can work to assist storytelling and cinema in a look we made in March. We looked into A Star is Born (1937), A Star Is Born (1954), A Star Is Born (1976) and A Star is Born (2018). We looked into The Wizard of Oz (1939) and The Wiz (1978). Then there were Little Orphan Annie (1932), Annie (1982), Annie (1999) and Annie (2014). The films The Godfather (1972) led to sequels The Godfather: Part II (1974) and The Godfather: Part III (1990). Batman Begins (2005) led to The Dark Knight (2008), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). The film Jaws (1975) led to three sequels, namely Jaws 2 (1978), Jaws 3-D (1983), and Jaws: The Revenge (1987).

We finally offered our Top 20 Movies in ranked order (with reviews) in April. I recommend taking a closer look, as there are movies that we didn’t specifically review in 2019 that are worth your time. 2019 was a good year for reviews with us. Invite your friends to follow us if you agree.

Matt – Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Bruce Willis, Richard Gere and the movie ‘The Jackal’

Today we at Matt Lynn Digital choose to review a decent if not great film called The Jackal (1997). Made perhaps a decade later than was appropriate for the look and feel of the film, the story follows a decent Cold War era with little in terms of pretense in trying to capture a nostalgic feel that fans of movies from bygone eras might seek. Despite this, some celluloid heroism was on the menu with The Jackal.

(Bruce Willis as The Jackal in The Jackal).

The movie called The Jackal is a fictionalized account that is inspired by the legend of Carlos the Jackal. This film gets little into the historical figure though seeks to tell a story of the legend with a single statement of crime as the central premise for the film. Bruce Willis stars as the character The Jackal bent upon transacting a crime for hire with infiltration into the actions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the USA.

(Sidney Poitier as Preston in The Jackal).

Sidney Poitier, as the character Preston, heads an FBI unit tasked with thwarting the criminal enterprise of The Jackal. Preston runs a well run team that uses instinct and judgment in preventing crime. Willing to take risks while also cooperating with foreign intelligence units to prevent the crime to be perpetuated by The Jackal, Preston takes a gamble in seeking the assistance of an imprisoned IRA fighter by the name of Declan Mulqueen.

(Richard Gere as Declan Mulqueen in The Jackal).

Richard Gere is the imprisoned IRA fighter Declan Mulqueen that Preston and the MVD‘s Valentina Koslova, as portrayed by Diane Venora, peg as the support needed to track The Jackal and stop the crime all parties know The Jackal to be plotting while not being clear if The Jackal even exists. A justification for including Mulqueen in the effort to preempt the politically motivated crime is offered in the film.

(Diane Venora as Valentina Koslova in The Jackal).

The rationale that brings about Mulqueen’s support for the preemptive law enforcement effort is that Mulqueen’s primary love interest and would-have-been mother to Mulqueen’s child Isabella, as played by Mathilda May, was purported to have a reliable connection to the Jackal. This cajoled association brings about the movie trope rationale befitting a movie from the 1980s, yet was a narrative device in The Jackal.

The Jackal as a character, meanwhile, has been moving forward with the planning for his criminal enterprise with the acquisition of a high powered repeating rifle, an era appropriate computer and phone system to broach communication and imaging considerations, and thus needed a platform on which to mount the weapon within an era appropriate mini-van. Jack Black as Lamont was that supplier and naive player in the larger narrative of the crime to which the film was building.

(Jack Black as Lamont, left, and Bruce Willis as The Jackal in The Jackal).

FBI agent Witherspoon as played by J.K. Simmons was a member of the team tasked with enforcing the joint FBI/MVD mission to protect people and prevent crime aligned against the efforts being enacted by The Jackal. Witherspoon and MVD operative Valentina Koslova quite possibly share a similar fate in the movie as the effort to prevent crime and thwart the political motivation in play at the hands of The Jackal. Where the movie’s outcome concludes is with a natural confrontation that is required of this type of film, and the tension in how that transpires, in addition to the outcome of the larger crime, were in fact resolved with the film.

(J.K. Simmons as Witherspoon in The Jackal).

There was action, suspense, and turning points of growing tension through The Jackal, so the film worked with regards to including appropriate plot points and narrative structure. The story, despite multiple stars with the chops to carry that story, somewhat disappointed. The feeling of the film, as mentioned, would have been more appropriate given a release date of 1987 rather than 1997. Some of the notions for expressing a more equitable role for ladies in this type of story also were also more contemporary of at least a decade earlier. Given this, and how I felt in response to the film’s resolution, I give The Jackal 3.25-stars on a scale of one-to-five stars.

Matt – Saturday, May 25, 2019