The 50 Greatest Movie Moments Of 2019

Hollywood has been trying to capture that special quality of anime on the big screen for years, but all they needed to do was give Zhang Yimou a bunch of umbrellas made out of daggers. Yimou makes a glorious return to the wuxia movie with Shadow, a stunning monochromatic epic. But the subdued color palette only unleashed Yimou's most violent and over-the-top action yet, that culminates in a brutal battle between unlikely warrior Jingzhou (Deng Chao) and the infamously unbeatable general Yang Cang (Hu Jun). The two engage in a dignified duel, Yang armed with a spear and Jingzhou armed with an umbrella that slowly unfolds to be revealed to be made entirely of giant razor-sharp daggers. It would make for an epic enough fight scene if it wasn't soon revealed that an invading army armed with these exact umbrellas were sneaking into the city, using the umbrellas to slide through the paved streets to avoid the onslaught of arrows. It's hard to describe this moment without resorting to screams of, "It's awesome!!" but it truly is flat-out awesome. (Hoai-Tran Bui)

"I should have said 'thank you' a thousand miles ago." That's just one of the lines which shoot straight to the audience's hearts in the final, cathartic song of Wild Rose. Jessie Buckley's Scottish country singer Rose-Lynn has spent the entire film constructing emotional barriers and making excuses for her behavior, but she takes a sledgehammer to all of that in one last moving, redemptive, emotional song – one which serves as an apology to her long-suffering mother and beautifully completes Rose-Lynn's character arc. (Ben Pearson)

The year of Keanu Reeves peaked with his hilariously meta appearance as himself in the Netflix rom-com Always Be My Maybe. The John Wick actor makes a sudden unexpected appearance midway through Always Be My Maybe, and every minute that he's onscreen is some of the funniest cinema made in 2019. Introduced as Sasha's (Ali Wong) celebrity date, Reeves is pretentious, his oblivious, and he's completely, hilariously self-centered — the kind of star who will sincerely whisper "I miss your thighs" one minute and cry at the sound of time another, before later picking a fight just for the thrill of the rush. The whole thing is made even more hilarious by the well-known fact that Reeves is one of the nicest and humblest celebrities out there, so seeing him play a hipster asshole is comedy gold. (Hoai-Tran Bui)

The Art of Self-Defense is a film about how toxic, idiotic and powerful people seize control of young, vulnerable men. And late Riley Stearns' pitch-black, mesmerizing comedy, Jesse Eisenberg's Casey has had enough. His karate instructor, the gun-hating Sensei (Alessandro Nivola) has burned his life to the ground, fundamentally destroying him as a person in the name of his nebulous plan to reshape others in his monstrous mold. So Casey does the only thing he can do: he challenges Sensei to a fight to the death. Seeing no challenge coming from his weak pupil, Sensei obliges...only for Casey to pull a pistol and shoot his tormenter to death. It's simultaneously a crowd-pleasing victory, the bleakest joke possible (its seeds are planted from the opening scenes), and an act of horrifying violence. It's perfect. (Jacob Hall)

Billy Batson has a hard time accepting his place in the world, and as an orphan, he never really lets himself get close to anybody. But his life changes dramatically when he's endowed with the powers of a wizard, allowing him to transform into an adult superhero called Shazam. Soon he realizes that his new makeshift family is better than the one that chose to abandon him, and their connection becomes even stronger when he transfers some of his magical superhero power to all of his adopted brothers and sisters, giving us an entire Shazam family. It's a moment that feels straight out of the nostalgic family adventure movies of the 1980s and even 1990s, and the cast pulls it off remarkably. Plus, when's the last time we saw a proper family of superheroes dealing with some nasty monsters? It's just good clean blockbuster fun. (Ethan Anderton)

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World brings the DreamWorks Animation franchise to an end. It also brings the end of the beautiful friendship between a boy and his dragon. The viking leader Hiccup and his Night Fury dragon Toothless say goodbye when each of them realize that all of the once-feared dragons will be much safer in the newly discovered hidden paradise. But it's not goodbye forever, because years later, after Hiccup and Toothless have started families of their own, they reunite, and their kids get to meet each other too. These two will never truly say farewell, and the movie serves as the perfect lesson for kids and adults alike that no matter how much we grow or how much time we spend apart, there always be friends that never leave our hearts. (Ethan Anderton)

In a movie that was already filled with ruthless deaths and plenty of blood, the ending of Ready or Not makes good on the promise of the batshit crazy Le Domas family being destroyed if they don't complete a sacrificial wedding ritual as mandated by their ancestor in exchange for their little family empire. They need to kill their family's new bride before the sun rises the next morning. After a night of bloodshed, when the family's time is up to complete the ritual, and the bride is still alive, it seems like the curse wasn't actually real. But then suddenly, each of the family members begins to explode in a spectacularly grusesome and bloody fashion. (Ethan Anderton)

Richard Shepard's The Perfection is not the film you think it is. Just when you think it's an erotic thriller about two musicians who hook-up halfway around the world, those two young women go on a road trip through rural China where one contracts a seemingly deadly parasite that starts to destroy her body and brain...and then her companion tells her to the only way to save her life is to chop her arm off. What?! The movie knows that's exactly what you're thinking, because the action then rewinds, revealing how this entire experience was faked by Allison Williams' Charlotte for reasons yet unknown. It's the moment where you realize that this film isn't playing around and it sets the stage for some of the craziest and gnarliest twists we've seen in recent memory. (Jacob Hall)

The Death of Dick Long is one of the most overlooked movies of 2019. It's about a bunch of Southern-fried morons with lots of time to kill, and when one of their own dies in a freak accident, a cover-up kicks in that lasts for most of the movie. But when one of Dick Long's pals finally has to explain the circumstances of Dick's death to one of his loved ones in an emotional speech (I don't even want to spoil it here in case you end up watching it – and I hope you do), the movie takes what could easily be a dumb joke and plays it fully straight. It's reflective of the film's entire approach and its treatment of its characters, never taking the opportunity to mock its characters for an easy laugh and instead affording its lovable idiots some genuine, human respect. (Ben Pearson)

As 1917 progresses, we watch Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay) endure overwhelming obstacles in his attempt to deliver a message that will save hundreds of British lives. But as the clock ticks down, he has to think outside the box if he's going to save them in time. Instead of shoving his way through the trenches to reach his final destination, Schofield does the unthinkable: he climbs up on the battlefield and runs perpendicular to waves of soldiers charging toward the front lines, desperately trying to dodge explosions and collisions with his fellow soldiers to cross his metaphorical finish line before all those doomed men walk into a trap. The camera pulls back, capturing the scope of the run in its full, terrible, jaw-dropping glory, all as the score swells and sound effects blast away in surround sound. It's a moment tailor-made for the big screen, and one of the most indelible cinematic images of 2019. (Ben Pearson)

Marriage Story is a hard movie to sit through. It can be funny, but it's also painfully raw. And after all the horrible fights and bitter divorce battles have seemingly come to an end, Noah Bambach does something interesting: he lets Adam Driver sing. Driver's Charlie, still reeling but resigned to his divorce from wife Scarlett Johansson, is out with some friends when a piano player starts tinkling Being Alive" is from the Stephen Sondheim comedy "Company." Charlie knows the song – he's a theatre kid, of course he does – and he immediately begins crooning it. His singing seems sarcastic at first, but he gets more and more into the song, his voice rising. His relationship has ended, and he knows it – and he knows he's lost it all. In a year full of great Adam Driver acting moments, this might be the best. (Chris Evangelista)

This is the scene that sold Midsommar for me as being not simply a horror film, but a horror film with a happy ending. It boils down to the idea of shared trauma — something that Dani (Florence Pugh) had been sorely lacking in her life in the aftermath of her entire family's death. Stumbling upon her boyfriend Christian (Jack Reynor) having sex with another woman in a strange, freaky orgy of bodies, she begins to cry, the sobs rolling through her body like a tidal wave that can't be contained. It's the breaking point for Dani as she loses the last person she thought she loved, until a group of women from the commune join her in her feral, outraged sobs, heaving in time with her and sharing in her grief. It's a bizarre and beautiful moment that echoes real life: in the trauma we share and the communities we form through it. (Hoai-Tran Bui)

The first half hour of One Cut of the Dead is an intentionally shoddy, low-budget horror movie filmed in one chaotic take. The middle half hour flashes back in time to reveal the harried development of this ambitious project. The final half hour lets us watch the actual filming from a distance, as everything goes hilariously wrong before going wonderfully right. The shaky, amateur hour crane shot that concludes the original film is revealed to be a last-minute improvisation after the actual breaks. The only solution: the cast and crew must build a human pyramid, passing the camera up to the highest person to nail the shot. Watching everyone come together to get this done is a hilarious pay-off to a gag set up so early in the film and a beautiful tribute to the literal blood, sweat and tears shed during production of a film. (Jacob Hall)

If you set aside the gothic horror, the allusions to ancient myth, and the overwhelming sense of cosmic dread director Robert Eggers soaks into every frame of his follow-up to The Witch, you're left with one of the best movies ever made about having a shitty roommate. The taciturn Thomas Howard (Robert Pattinson) and the grizzled Thomas Wake (Willem Dafoe) have little love for each other when they're assigned to care for an isolated lighthouse for one month and their resentment only grows over long days, uneven work duties, and many, many farts. Eventually, Howard makes it clear that he doesn't enjoy Wake's cooking, leading the older man to curse his young comrade with a monologue – filmed in one unbroken extreme close-up on Dafoe's face – full of fury and scorn, demanding that the gods of the sea strike the younger man down. It's the film in a nutshell: hilarious and weird and creepy and unlike anything else.  (Jacob Hall)

Amid the big questions that The Farewell poses about ethics and its depiction of the growing cultural divide between East and West are small moments of quiet sentimentality that make Lulu Wang's semi-autobiographical drama feel so real and tactile. One such moment is when Billi (Awkwafina) joins her grandmother Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) as she practices tai chi outside. Nai Nai attempts to coach her granddaughter through the movements, which Billi halfheartedly does, affectionately calling her "stupid child" — a term of endearment in Chinese. Nai Nai preaches the benefit of tai chi, beaming as sheconfidently declares her practicing of the martial art as the reason for her continuing good health. A flicker of sadness passes through Billi's face and she practices the movements with a renewed energy, yelling out an awkward "Hai!" It's a wonderfully quiet moment that puts on display the real love that Billi and her Nai Nai share for each other, and embodies the film's thesis of gaining a fuller understanding of cultural differences through grief: at the end of the film, Billi is back in the streets of Brooklyn and still in turmoil over the secret of her grandmother's cancer. She stops, takes a deep breath, and yells out a loud, ringing "Hai!" (Hoai-Tran Bui)

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is ultimate a hang-out film, and while most of that hanging-out involves Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, there's also Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate. Quentin Tarantino turns the doomed actress into the heart and soul of the film – a free-spirit who drifts through Los Angeles like she's walking on air. Most important of all: Tarantino brings Sharon Tate back to life and makes her something more than a "Manson family victim." She's not a victim at all here – she's a living, breathing person. After a delightful sequence in which she effecitvely charms herself into a movie theater for free by revealing she's one of the stars of the movie currently playing, Sharon ends up dancing her way to a seat, excited to see herself larger than life. And there's something magical about having Sharon Tate alone at the movies, watching herself on the screen. To make the moment extra meta, Tarantino has the footage Robbie's Sharon is watching feature the real Sharon Tate. This could've backfired – sure, Robbie and Tate look somewhat similar, but not that similar. But it works. And it works primarily because of Robbie. She sells the moment, looking both overjoyed at her performance, and at the reaction of the rest of the audience. They laugh at her jokes, they cheer when she kicks ass. Up on the screen, she's alive. And in the world of this film, she has her whole life in front of her. (Chris Evangelista)

The end of Avengers: Endgame is about more than just taking down Thanos. It's about putting an exclamation point on an entire era in the Marvel Cinematic Universe – a universe which didn't exist until after Robert Downey Jr. first stepped into the role of Tony Stark in the original Iron Man. Tony's act of sacrifice completes his transformation from a selfish billionaire playboy philanthropist into a man who's willing to lay down his life for the greater good, and his final, triumphant words to his most dangerous villain carry the weight of 20+ other movies in them. That guy's always been great with a quick comeback, and this one meant the most of all. (Ben Pearson)

Captain America is undoubtedly the MVP of the final battle of Avengers: Endgame, and there are two key moments that we've combined here to represent this incredible sequence. The first, seen above, is when Cap summons Thor's hammer Mjolnir into his hand and starts beating the crap out of Thanos. He knocks Thanos to the ground, brings down lightning, throws the hammer at his shield to create a shockwave, and generally kicks ass. Unfortunately, his victory is short-lived, and it seems like all hope is lost. But then reinforcements come in, and everyone who Thanos snapped away five years ago comes back ready for battle. And then we finally get that moment fans have been wanting to see for years: Avengers, assemble. (Ethan Anderton)

I wrote about this scene in detail for /Film's Best of the Decade coverage, and since the film hasn't opened in wide release yet, I'll keep this description short and spoiler-free. But suffice it to say that Portrait of a Lady on Fire's lingering final shot is one of the most powerful images of the year, a poignant culmination of the movie's swooning romance, and a wonderfully realized microcosm of one of the film's key ideas – how the act of looking at another person, of really seeing them, can feel vital and even revolutionary. I bow down before actress Adèle Haenel and writer/director Céline Sciamma. (Ben Pearson)

When Louisa May Alcott first published Little Women in 1868, she was pressured by her publisher to change her ending so that her heroine, Jo March, would end up married by the end. It's a real-life situation that Greta Gerwig's adaptation cheekily reflects, in an Inception-style ending that is left ambiguous as to whether Jo (Saoirse Ronan) gets the romantic ending she writes in her book. The final 10 minutes of the film are bookended by Jo negotiating with her publisher Mr. Dashwood (Tracy Letts), who is rankled when she insists that her heroine end the book married to no one, keeping in line with her frequent declarations that she will never marry. But Mr. Dashwood insists that the character must be married, or else the book won't sell. Jo acquiesces as long as she gets to own the copyright to her book, and the scene cuts back to her running in the rain to reunite with Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel), the handsome French professor who she had fallen in love with in New York. "I love it," Mr. Dashwood remarks after the scene plays out, swooning violins and all. "It's romantic." In the film's final minutes, a sunny future is envisioned in which a married, blissfully domestic Jo walks through her crowded school with her sisters, cutting back and forth between that and a joyful Jo watching her book get printed through a window (in a scene not unlike a woman watching her newborn in a hospital). Little Women presents two options: the life of domestic bliss or the life of a writer? It could be one or the other, or both. Whatever the ending you prefer, both are valid, and both are just as joyous. (Hoai-Tran Bui)

At one point in Knives Out, detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) compares the enigmatic case of Harlan Thrombey's death to a donut – a case with a hole at the center. But the better moment comes later in the story, when things get a even more complicated. For some hilarious reason, Blanc decides to return to that same metaphor, even though it doesn't work quite as well anymore. "I thought your story would be the donut hole in the donut's hole," he says, "but now I see that there is a hole in the middle of the donut hole!" Craig plays it straight, with the character deep in his own head as he tries to put all the pieces of this mystery together. It's a silly, fun bit of dialogue, but as to be expected from writer/director Rian Johnson, it's also instructive about Blanc himself. He's not an untouchable super sleuth who always has the perfect line locked and loaded for any situation – he's just a guy, equally capable of belaboring goofy metaphors as he is making keen observations that everyone else misses. (Ben Pearson)

Jojo Rabbit is downright hilarious. But many times throughout, the tone suddenly shifts drastically and gives us some powerful drama. But there's no scene more heart-breaking than the one when Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis) gleefully follows a beautiful butterfly through his town square, only to suddenly find himself staring at his mother's shoes on her lifeless feet hanging in mid-air. She's been executed by hanging for spreading word of revolt against the Nazis. It's a gutpunch that comes out of nowhere, and it's extremely effective and affecting. It was this moment that solidified this as one of the best movies of the year. (Ethan Anderton)

A balance between horrifying and macabrely hilarious, the climactic moments of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood finally clue you into what Quentin Tarantino has been building toward. The filmmaker is once again playing around with changing history, and in his world, Sharon Tate and her friends are no longer the victims of a brutal murder. Instead, the members of the Manson Family go to a completely different house: that of Sharon Tate's neighbor, Rick Dalton. And who should be there but Cliff's stunt double pal Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who just happens to be tripping on acid. After some hilarious banter Cliff calls in his trusty sidekick – a pitbull Brandy, who proceeds to chomp down on the testicles of Manson member Tex – before Cliff eventually stomps his face in. Brandy then turns her attentions toward Manson member Katie while Cliff then proceeds to bash a woman name Sadie against a wall. It's unrelatedly brutal, and anyone who wants to criticize Tarantino for this brutality is justified – more than a few people have pointed out that the female members of the Manson fam are treated far worse here than the sole male, Tex. In the chaos, Katie ends up out in the swimming pool – where Rick (Leonardo DiCaprio) just happens to be chilling. His solution: grab a flamethrower from one of his movies (that he still happens to have, and that still works), and proceed to set the screaming woman aflame. The violence here goes beyond anything Tarantino has done before, and I'd argue that that's the point. The filmmaker is surpassing brutality and tipping into the world of the absurd – why the hell would Rick still have a working flamethrower in his shed? However you interpret this moment, the results are clear: Sharon Tate lives on, and the Manson Family become a footnote in history. Who knows, maybe in this world, they've all been forgotten, and the world at large never even learned the name Charles Manson. (Chris Evangelista)

The delirious beauty of Parasite is how it manages to deftly leap between genres and tones within a given scene without feeling artificial in any way. Late in Bong Joon-ho's modern masterpiece, the Kim family's plan to infiltrate the wealthy Park family has gone hideously awry and they hide beneath the coffee table in the mansion's living room as the Parks return early from a trip. What begins as a scene of Hitchcockian suspense – will they get caught? – slowly develops into tragedy. No, they don't get caught. But they do get to overhear the Parks, their employers, talk about them. And be honest about them. The look on Song Kang-ho's face when he hears them talk about his odor is one of the most gut-wrenching moments of cinema I have seen in recent memory. The pain and humiliation quickly overpowers the delicious suspense from moments earlier. (Jacob Hall)

After all the killing has stopped, Martin Scorsese's The Irishman concludes with a whisper. Hitman and mob stooge Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro) is somehow the only one left standing – everyone he's known (that he hasn't killed) has either up and died on him, or, in the case of his own family, abandoned him. He's alone in his nursing home, left with memories of things that once seemed important to him but clearly are utterly pointless. No one really knows what he's done, save for a priest, who asks Frank if he's sorry for his many crimes. Frank's answer: not really. He's learned nothing. And all he has left now are those memories, and the silence that surrounds them. It's Christmas as the film ends, but as Frank says, he's going nowhere. He just wants the door to be left open a little bit as we leave him. It is what it is.  (Chris Evangelista)