The 50 best films of 2019 in the US: the full list
1Parasite
Bong Joon-ho’s bizarre black comedy won Cannes, then stormed the US in a buzz of excitement. This shocking Downton-ish satire has a whipcrack script, perfect performances – and a goggling twist. The UK is in for a treat next February. Read the full review.
2
The Irishman
Martin Scorsese’s best film since Goodfellas is a monumental immersion into fading mob glamour, featuring shape-shifting turns from Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci. Read the full review.
3
Marriage Story
Heartbreaker … Scarlett Johansson, Azhy Robertson and Adam Driver. Photograph: Wilson Webb/Netflix
Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver excel as a couple caught in the storm of an increasingly vicious – and often hilarious – separation in Noah Baumbach’s bittersweet heartbreaker. Read the full review.
4
1917
Sam Mendes’s phantasmagoric first world war nightmare is ambitious and unshakeable storytelling, and the director’s finest film yet. Read the full review.
5
Little Women
Witty … Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan and Eliza Scanlen as the March sisters. Photograph: Wilson Webb/Allstar/Columbia Pictures Corporation
Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of the much-loved Louisa May Alcott novel brings all the requisite festive bells and whistles but also manages to be sly, witty and swift on the price of feminism. Read the full review.
6
The Souvenir
Tom Burke and Honor Swinton Byrne star in Joanna Hogg’s most personal and intimate drama to date: the extraordinary and excoriating story of her first major romance. Read the full review.
7
Once Upon a Time In Hollywood
Double act … Pitt and DiCaprio. Photograph: Andrew Cooper/AP
Dazzling and disturbing, Quentin Tarantino’s love letter to 60s Hollywood comes with style, verve and a wildly disquieting violent final act. Read the full review.
8
High Life
Juliette Binoche’s evil doctor and Robert Pattinson’s monkish lab rat consider their crimes in space in Claire Denis’s stirring English-language debut. Read more.
9
Uncut Gems
A towering performance from Adam Sandler drives the Safdie brothers’ anxiety-inducing film about a risk-addicted jewelry dealer. Read the full review.
10
Pain and Glory
Reverie and reflection … Antonio Banderas in Pain and Glory. Photograph: Manolo Pavón/AP
Antonio Banderas gives the performance of his career as a quasi-Pedro Almodóvar in this tricksy yet sincere late stage elegy. Read the full review.
11
Midsommar
Florence Pugh is plunged into a terrifying pagan bacchanal in a magnificent folk-horror tale from Hereditary director Ari Aster. Read the full review.
12
Monos
Our second Apocalypse Now nod in this list is Alejandro Landes’s deeply mad thriller about a wild cult of teenage bandits who have rituals, guns and a hostage – but no Colonel Kurtz. Read the full review.
13
Knives Out
Wickedly entertaining … Daniel Craig, Lakeith Stanfield and Noah Segan in Knives Out. Photograph: Claire Folger/Allstar/Lionsgate
Rian Johnson takes a breather from Star Wars to revisit his Brick roots with this wickedly entertaining Agatha Christie homage featuring a star-packed cast. Read the full review.
14
For Sama
One of the most extraordinary documentaries of recent years, this story of a baby in war-torn Syria, begun while her mother was still pregnant, is impossibly moving, upsetting and uplifting. Read the full review.
15
Booksmart
Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut is a riotous blast; a funny, filthy, female Superbad that’s also extremely smart and strangely sensitive. Read the full review.
16
Transit
A taut and elegant adaptation of Anna Seghers’s 1944 novel, this unfortunately topical tale of stolen identities, refugees and riot police is deeply and enduringly disturbing. Read the full review.
17
The Farewell
Moving and witty … Zhao Shuzhen, left, and Awkwafina in The Farewell. Photograph: Casi Moss/AP
Awkwafina leads Lulu Wang’s moving and witty culture clash tale about a Chinese-American family. Read the full review.
18
Ash Is Purest White
Jia Zhangke’s melancholy epic stars Zhao Tao as a resilient gangster’s moll burning with misguided love in a shape-shifting China. Read the full review.
19
Hustlers
J-Lo delivers a standout turn in this snappy caper about a gang of strippers who scam Wall Street bankers. Read the full review.
20
The Report
Gripping … Adam Driver in The Report. Photograph: Atsushi Nishijima/courtesy of Sundance Institute
Adam Driver and Annette Bening give excellent performances in an utterly absorbing film indicting the CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation practices. Read the full review.
21
All Is True
Kenneth Branagh and Judi Dench gave us a poignant insight into William Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway’s later life turmoil in this delicate biopic written by Ben Elton. Read the full review.
22
Honeyland
Terrific … Honeyland. Photograph: Dogwoof films
In this terrific documentary shot in North Macedonia, a female beekeeper is rattled by her new, disruptive neighbours. Read the full review.
23
A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood
Tom Hanks charms as beloved children’s TV figure Mister Rogers in a moving and engrossing departure from a traditional biopic. Read the full review.
24
Harriet
Kasi Lemmons’s belated but remarkable slavery biopic features Indiana Jones-style derring-do and a barnstorming central turn from Cynthia Erivo. Read the full review.
25
One Cut of the Dead
Lively … One Cut of the Dead. Photograph: Third Window Films
Noises Off meets George Romero in this lively and genre-revitalising metafictional horror show by Shin’ichirô Ueda. Read the full review.
26
A Hidden Life
Terrence Malick’s rhapsody to a conscientious objector – his second about the second world war – is a high-minded hymn to modern saint. Read the full review.
27
In Fabric
Set in an unearthly department store, Peter Strickland’s bizarre ghost story sees Marianne Jean-Baptiste battling a frock from another dimension. Read the full review.
28
Synonyms
Newcomer Tom Mercier excels as an ex-Israeli soldier who ups sticks to Paris in a big to ditch his national identification in Nadav Lapid’s latest.
29
The Good Liar
Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren are delicious foils in Bill Condon’s expertly paced and twisty story about an elderly conman who may have met his match. Read the full review.
30
Her Smell
Elisabeth Moss plays the monstrous, self-destructive singer of an all-girl band overtaken by younger, prettier rivals in Alex Ross Perry’s unsettling punk drama. Read the full review.
31
Loro
Fascinating … Toni Servillo in Loro. Photograph: Gianni Fiorito
The film Paolo Sorrentino was born to direct and Toni Servillo born to star in didn’t quite live up to that billing, but this Silvio Berlusconi biopic is still a masterly and fascinating take. Read the full review.
32
Peterloo
Large-canvas history lesson from Mike Leigh, outlining the events surrounding the notorious Peterloo massacre in 1819 at a meeting calling for voting reform. Read the full review
33
Amazing Grace
Transcendent … Aretha Franklin. Photograph: Amazing Grace Film, LLC
Had Aretha Franklin approved of Sydney Pollack’s transcendent 1972 documentary, it doubtless would have shown up on our list closer to the time it was shot. Still, better late than never. Read the full review.
34
Clemency
Alfre Woodard is given a rare opportunity to lead in a tough-minded drama about a prison warden questioning the morality of death row. Read the full review.
35
Birds of Passage
The cost of the Columbian drugs trade to its indigenous people is uncovered in Ciro Guerra’s poetic and shocking drama. Read the full review.
36
The Eyes of Orson Welles
Mark Cousins’ whimsical but heartfelt love letter to the cinematic polymath connects the director’s films to his paintings and drawings. Read the full review.
37
Rafiki
Sheila Munyiva and Samantha Mugatsia. Photograph: Big World Cinema
Banned in Kenya until its director sued the government, Wauri Kahiu’s tale of two girls’ secret relationship is a fine depiction of the first flush of love. Read the full review.
38
Sunset
László Nemes follows Son of Saul with a cryptic and hyper-stylish study of the fracturing Austro-Hungarian empire on the eve of the first world war. Read the full review.
39
Diego Maradona
Gripping study of Diego Maradona. Photograph: Altitude Film
After Amy and Senna, Asif Kapadia tackles someone still alive in this gripping study of football, euphoria and catastrophe. Read the full review.
40
The Lighthouse
Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson are lonely masturbating lighthouse keepers in Robert Eggers’ triumphant follow-up to The Witch: a salty, black-and-white Steptoe and Son in hell. Read the full review.
41
Apollo 11
A front row seat for the moon landings? Few could resist this astonishing documentary featuring previously unseen footage, released for the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong’s lunar walk. Read the full review.
42
Ray & Liz
Richard Billingham mined his own family for this bleak debut, capturing the claustrophobic loneliness of a couple cut off from everyone, including each other. Read the full review.
43
Us
Gobstopping satire ... Lupita Nyong’o. Photograph: TCD/Alamy
Jordan Peele’s follow-up to Get Out was a less obvious slam-dunk, but still an immensely skilful doppelganger satire with a gobstopping central turn from Lupita Nyong’o. Read the full review.
44
Dolemite Is My Name
Eddie Murphy’s glorious return is the richly entertaining tale of cult 70s blaxploitation star Rudy Ray Moore’s rise from nightclub standup to the movies. Read the full review.
45
The Image Book
Jean-Luc Godard’s latest essay film is a crazed mosaic with power and vitality of a horror movie and all the delight and joie de vivre of the French legend’s finest work. Read the full review.
46
Rojo
Parable of iniquity ... Andrea Frigerio, Laura Grandinetti and Dario Grandinetti
Benjamín Naishtat’s satire, set before the coup that installed a military junta in Argentina, is an enraging – and informative – parable of iniquity about the fate of the disappeared. Read the full review.
47
Ad Astra
Brad Pitt goes intergalactic in search of long-lost dad Tommy Lee Jones in James Gray’s thrilling Freudian mashup of Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Read the full review.
48
Atlantics
Mati Diop’s supernatural debut forces young Senegalese lovers to choose between love, duty and servitude, then adds a surreal twist. Read the full review.
49
The Nightingale
Grisly gothic thriller ... Baykali Ganambarr and Aisling Franciosi. Photograph: Matt Nettheim
Jennifer Kent follows up The Babadook with some real-life monsters: the men who ran Tasmania’s penal colonies in the 1820s – one of whom gets some grisly, if just, comeuppance in this gothic thriller. Read the full review.
50
Bombshell
A touch too on the button but still full of poise and acid, this is the story of how Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron, sporting exemplary prosthetics), Gretchen Kelly (Nicole Kidman) and a newcomer played by Margot Robbie toppled Fox News boss and sex pest Roger Ailes (John Lithgow).