The 25 Best Films Of 2019 We've Already Seen

We are robots. We cover film and our best of year-end lists cover every single possible angle of film and TV. And yes, we’re oh so tired and we hope this doesn’t feel too perfunctory. Look, we’ve covered, as suggested, every stripe of 2018 movie and TV coverage performances, new directors, breakout actors and actresses, documentaries, all kinds of new exciting talents and each year we say to ourselves, “eh, let’s dial this back, it’s too much, no one cares that much do they?” And each year we find ourselves going, “Oooh, ooh, oooh! What about this? What about that? Let’s highlight this! Let’s not forget that!” and our enthusiasm goes off the rails and we actually pulled off more Best of 2018 coverage this year then I think we ever have before. Well, we hope you do care and have read, but we’re so painfully obsessive about it all, we might be just be making this time-capsule documents of each year in cinema for ourselves.

READ MORE: The 25 Best Films Of 2018

You’ve seen our list of the Best Films Of 2018 as voted by over 40+ Playlist contributors, you’ve seen our Worst List and our 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2019, and hopefully you’ve read the recent The Best Films Of 2018 You Didn’t See—more overlooked and forgotten movies still worth your while—but there’s more frankly, though we’re almost done, we swear. We attend a lot of film festivals. Globe-trotting Jessica Kiang is all over the world including Cannes, Berlin, Venice, San Sebastian and more. Greg is always at Sundance and Telluride and we’re always popping up somewhere. So, although we’ve written up the Most Anticipated Films of 2019 that we haven’t seen yet, we like to categorizes a sub-list of 2019 Films we have seen and the best ones so far, given that people like Jess and others are essentially living in the future and seeing movies much earlier than the public is. Think of it as yet another way to get excited for another sub-strata of movies that you should definitely see.

READ MORE: The 100 Most Anticipated Films Of 2019

So, without further ado, our list of the 20 best movies of 2019 that we’ve already seen, at various film festivals around the world that should be set for release some time this year if they’re not already—plus a very comprehensive list of at least another 40 films (around 65 total!) we have seen set to come out in 2019. Let’s get to it. – Rodrigo Perez

Click here for our complete coverage of the best and worst of 2018.

In Fabric
Director: Peter Strickland
Cast: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hayley Squires, Steve Oram Gwendoline Christie
Synopsis: Set against the backdrop of a busy winter sales period in a strange department store run by unusual people, a cursed dress is followed as it passes from person to person, with devastating consequences.
Verdict: Esoteric surrealist and homagiste Peter Strickland loves his mondo exotica throwback riffs to ‘60s and ’70s psychedelia and that obscure corner of the Eurotica world where horror, art, and softcore porn like to congregate and do god knows what together. For “In Fabric,” slightly less composed and stylized than his chamber drama “The Duke of Burgundy,” Strickland mixes phantasmagorical giallo with British kitchen-sink realism. It’s an unlikely concoction, but one that’s hilarious, absurd, sexy, and totally bizarro. Slightly more modest than his last cinemasploitation effort, Strickland’s latest is still essential viewing that’s “delirious [and] deeply delicious in sumptuous form and sly humor.”
Our Review: B+ review from TIFF.
Release Date: TBD – RP

“Her Smell”
Director: Alex Ross Perry
Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Cara Delevingne, Dan Stevens, Amber Heard, Ashley Benson
Synopsis: A self-destructive punk rocker struggles with sobriety while trying to recapture the creative inspiration that led her band to success.
Verdict: Alex Ross Perry is proving himself to be one of the most eclectic, versatile modern auteurs, yes, he earns that distinction and his ‘90s grrrl rock band movie, “Her Smell,” seemingly inspired by the Holes, L7s and Babes in Toylands of the world, is a bold, super ambitious work. It’s also grating, and uncompromising, like 2/3rds of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music abrasiveness meets 1/3 softer-keyed, totally different movie. It’s cut up into 5 acts—three abrasively long ones—is Shakespearean in form, and may not be for everyone, but it is a striking piece of cinema and features an outstanding performance by Elisabeth Moss. Everyone should at least see it.
Our Review: B review from TIFF.
Release Date: March 29 via Gunpowder & Sky – RP

Birds Of Passage
Director: Ciro Guerra and Christina Gallego
Cast: José Acosta, Natalia Reyes, Carmiña Martínez
Synopsis: In the 1970s, a family of struggling farmers become enmeshed in the Colombian drug trade to better their lives.
Verdict: If Oscar-winning filmmaker Ciro Guerra doesn’t earn an Oscar nomination for “Birds of Passage,” chalk it up to a year of fierce competition, and frankly, bigger, wealthier studios with more money flaunting films like “Roma” and “Cold War.” Because by all accounts Guerra has done it again and created not just another masterpiece, but his best film to date, an epic, dynastic rise and fall cautionary tale about making a deal with the devil. It’s Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” meets lushly exotic films like Nicolas Roeg‘s “Walkabout,” and not since Zhang Yimou‘s “House of the Flying Daggers.” Co-directed with his partner, producers, and co-writer, “Birds of Passage,” is “no dusty period piece,” our Cannes reviewer wrote. “It is wildly alive, yet it reminds us that no matter how modern we are, there are ancient songs our forebears knew whose melodies still rush in our blood.”
Our Review: The rare A grade from Cannes.
Release Date: February 13 (NY)/February 15 (L.A.) via The Orchard – RP

Climax
Director: Gaspar Noé
Cast: Sofia Boutella, Romain Guillermic, Souheila Yacoub, Kiddy Smile, Giselle Palmer
Synopsis: A group of French dancers experiences a hallucinatory nightmare when they realize their sangria bowl has been spiked with potent LSD.
Verdict: Gaspar Noé has never been one to play coy about the controversy his extreme brand of cinema draws. He loves to spurn viewers and critics alike into an impassioned debate about the content on display. Noé brought “Climax” to the Cannes Film Festival as though it were a challenge, marketing it with a poster capitalizing on the ire his previous films have drawn. To his great surprise, the film was met with nearly universal praise. Sofia Boutella anchors the ensemble of dancers with a commanding, Keatonesque lead performance as she ambles her way through a descent into a hellish acid trip. This film makes the most effective use of Noé’s flashy, hyperkinetic cinematic form since 2002’s “Irréversible,” choreographing an equally hypnotic and horrific dance into corruption of the mind, body, and soul.
Our Review: Jessica Kiang’s B-grade Cannes review. 
Release Date: Originally loosely set for a fall 2018 release, A24 is releasing the film stateside on March 1. – Ted Silva

“The Nightingale”
Director: Jennifer Kent
Cast: Aisling Franciosi, Damon Herriman, Sam Claflin
Synopsis: Set in 1825, a young Irish convict woman, chases a British officer through the rugged Tasmanian wilderness, bent on revenge for a terrible act of violence he committed against her family. On the way, she enlists the services of an Aboriginal tracker, who is also marked by trauma from his own violence-filled past.
Verdict: Jennifer Kent directed the Aussie indie horror “The Babadook,” so need you say more? Sure, her latest is no horror, however, something more akin to Western revenge thriller. Our review from Venice says it could use a trim, describing it as an “overlong but beautifully imagined revenge fable,” but it still sounds essential.
Our Review: B/B+ review from Venice
Release Date: IFC Films will release the thriller this summer. – RP