56 Movies I Missed from 2019 (Part 1)

As usual, before I rank the movies I watched from 2019, I want to call out some that were on my radar, but I didn't get around to. This list was crazy long last year, because I sucked at keeping up with current movies in 2018. This year, I kept it down to just over the number of current movies that I actually watched.

Here they are in the order in which they were released. More or less. Because of initial releases in festivals and whatnot, some of this is really hard to organize.

1. Scrawl

Daisy Ridley in a horror movie about a couple of kids who make a comic book and then things in it start happening in real life. I like that it's about comics. I like even more that Ridley's in it.

2. The Public

Emilio Estevez directs his next film after The Way, which I very much enjoyed. It's about homeless people taking over the public library during a bitter cold spell as an act of civil disobedience. So that sounds interesting. And in addition to Estevez, it also stars Gabrielle Union, Jeffrey Wright, Alec Baldwin, and Christian Slater.

3. Transit

I must have seen a trailer that I like or something, because I'm not familiar with the filmmakers. Or maybe it was that tagline: "Casablanca as written by Kafka." It's about a guy trying to escape occupied France under an assumed identity, but then falls in love with the wife of the person he's pretending to be.

4. Little Woods

A modern Western with Tessa Thompson as an outlaw partnered up with her sister (played by Lily James).

5. The Nightingale

The writer/director of The Babadook has created an Australian Western about a woman who teams up with an Aboriginal man to get revenge on a dude. I love every word of that.

6. Teen Spirit

Elle Fanning always gets my attention, but I heard great things about not only the movie, but also its soundtrack.

7. The Chaperone

Alright, Julian Fellowes. You had me at Downton Abbey, Elizabeth McGovern, and Haley Lu Richardson's haircut.

8. In Like Flynn

I'm a big fan of Errol Flynn. Sign me up for a movie about his adventurous, pre-Hollywood life in Australia.

9. Slaughterhouse Rulez

Margot Robbie and Simon Pegg are people I like in this comedy about monsters attacking an English boarding school. I also like monsters and English boarding schools.

10. The Price of Death

Sounds like a low-budget Maverick meets 3:10 to Yuma, but it's a recent Western, so I'm interested.

11. All Is True

I'm actually embarrassed that I haven't seen this one yet. Kenneth Branagh directs a film in which he also plays William Shakespeare with Judy Dench as his wife and Ian McKellen as his patron, the Earl of Southampton. I mean, get your act together, Mike.