Just when you think that Hollywood has become incapable of making anything but tired retreads and money-grabbing sequels, you look back on the year and think: Huh. So they can still surprise us after all.
This was the year when “Avengers: Endgame” and “Spider-Man: Far From Home” demonstrated that, Martin Scorsese notwithstanding, the difference between a theme-park ride and a movie is all in the execution, while “Toy Story 4” proved that sequels can be just as bracing as their first antecedent. While Netflix doubled down on the grown-up market with Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” Noah Baumbach’s “Marriage Story” and the raucous Eddie Murphy comeback “Dolemite Is My Name,” traditional studios were in the game as well, backing big, ambitious, original movies like Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” James Gray’s meditative sci-fi epic, “Ad Astra,” and James Mangold’s fabulous “Ford v Ferrari.” Meanwhile, reliable indie bastions like Fox Searchlight and Sony Pictures Classics gave us such wonderful movies as “Jojo Rabbit,” “All Is True” and Pedro Almodóvar’s achingly gorgeous “Pain and Glory.” Throw good-time flicks like “Hustlers” and “Knives Out” into the mix, and you round out a list of films that easily could have made any Top 10. But here are the personal favorites that made mine.
