This was an excellent year for crime films—both in terms of quality and variety. This is a list of the ten best in this category, picked mostly by me after lots of hand-wringing and with lots of input from our office and my friends. Please note that this list is not ranked. That would have been much too difficult.
Here are the rules for our selection: all films considered all had to be full-length feature films, released in theaters in the United States during the 2019 calendar year. This list considers international films as well as domestic ones. “Crime” is defined rather broadly, to include all illegal activity from theft, to murder, to cons, to gangster stuff, to on-the-lam stories. It does not include war films, which means that movies like Ladj Ly’s Les Miserables and Taika Waititi’s Jojo Rabbit and Sam Mendes’s 1917 are excluded. Our list also exclusively considers fictional films, which means that it doesn’t count masterpieces like Petra Costa’s The Edge of Democracy or Alex Rivera and Cristina Ibarra’s The Infiltrators.
Most of these films are still in theaters—wishing you a very cinematic holiday season!
Parasite
Written and directed by Bong Joon Ho, this film won the Palme d’Or at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival (making this the first Korean film every to do so)! It’s the story of an unemployed family, the Kims, who grows very intrigued by the wealthy Park family, and scheme to integrate themselves into their lives. It’s a scathing, brilliant class-study, and a gripping film with one of the most impressive dramatic arcs I’ve seen.
Knives Out
Written and directed by Rian Johnson, this clever whodunnit begins when a wealthy patriarch, a mystery novelist (Christopher Plummer) is found in his study, dead of a knife wound to the throat. All the guests at his estate (his various relatives and housekeepers) have reasons for wanting him killed. There are virtually no clues. There is no way anyone could have made it into his chamber to do the deed. And so a brilliant detective (Daniel Craig) shows up on the scene to help the police investigate the crime—a crime which is, at this point, totally unsolvable. But the film turns all of this on its head, plotting a creative, extremely smart story that constantly shifts expectations.
Queen & Slim
Directed by Melina Matsoukas, with a screenplay by Lena Waithe, Queen & Slim is about two young people (respectively, Jodie Turner-Smith and Daniel Kaluuya in the eponymous roles) whose lovely first date goes horribly wrong when they are pulled over by an unscrupulous policeman. The incident unfortunately escalates, leading to Slim’s shooting the policeman in self-defense. But after this ill-fated moment, the two know what lies ahead for them (Queen is a lawyer), so they go on the run together. But as they are chased down, a video of their encounter goes viral, turning them into national symbols for black rights. But it’s also, in the words LitHub Assistant Editor Aaron Robertson, “fable-like”—a new entry into a canon of African American folklore, beautifully and brightly lit hauntingly written.
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is about the apex of cultural unrest that was 1969. The story interweaves two days in the lives of Sharon Tate and two fictional protagonists, during 1969. Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), are two washed-up Hollywood types. Rick, the former star of a cowboy show, now guest-stars on shows as the villain-of-the-week. Cliff, Rick’s former stuntman, is now his driver and “gofer.” Rick lives next door to Hollywood’s new cool kids, the director Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and his wife Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), in the house that would become the tragic site for the Manson murders. But the film is mostly an exploration of a film industry that changed amid a transforming (counter)culture.
The Irishman
Martin Scorsese’s towering three-and-a-half hour epic about the disappearance and killing of Jimmy Hoffa is one of his best movies so far, and it reunites the director with Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, and Joe Pesci. The story is framed by the refelections of Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a former hitman and labor organizer, who reflects on his life, and how he was involved in the tragic vanishing of Jimmy Hoffa, the ex-president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.
The Souvenir
Written and directed by Joanna Hogg, this semi-autobiographical film is about a film student in the 1980s (Honor Swinton Byrne) who falls in love with a charming, magnetic older man (Tom Burke) who is not all that he seems. The film is about distraction, duplicity, A.O. Scott wrote in The New York Times, who called it one of his favorite movies of the year, noting its most special quality, how it exists ‘paradoxically,’ as “a movie that feels like it was meant for you alone and also like none of your business.”
Uncut Gems
This gritty, bleak, terrifying, bleary-eyed new film from indie-filmmakers Benny and Josh Sadfie stars Adam Sandler in a transformative performance as Howard Ratner, a New York City jeweler with a penchant for making high-stakes bets. Hungry to strike it rich, he embarks on a dangerous and complicated scheme to make the ultimate score. The film has been lauded by critics, but Sandler’s performance in particular has been celebrated as a triumph. Manohla Dargis wrote in the New York Times of his performance, “Sandler makes a persuasively unsteady hub for this pinwheeling anarchy. It’s an intensely physical role—Howard racks up the miles—and generally a reactive one. Every so often Sandler gets to expand the character’s emotional register, in lulls and moments of tenderness and real feeling. Then boom! He’s off again, diving into the clamor…” There’s even even talk of an Oscar nomination.
Dolemite Is My Name
This film isn’t exactly a crime film, but it’s a film about the career of a crime film legend, so it counts. Eddie Murphy, in his first R-rated film since the 80s, plays real-life comedian and rapper
Rudy Ray Moore, whose brash, comical alter-ego, the trash-talking, kung-fu-fighter Dolemite, became a Blaxsploitation sensation during the 1970s. It’s a biopic, yes, but it’s one with funk, style, and a lot of heart. “Dolemite is my name, and fuckin’ up motherfuckers is my game!”
Hustlers
Hustlers, written and directed by Lorene Scafaria and inspired by a New York Magazine article by Jessica Pressler, is the story of several strippers, led by Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) whose lives are rocked by the 2008 financial crash, and run an elaborate con to steal from Wall Street clientele. The film, featuring an all-star cast including Constance Wu, Cardi B, Lizzo, Lili Reinhart, Keke Palmer, Julia Stiles, and Mercedes Ruehl, celebrated for its dynamic storyline which celebrates the awesomeness of its main characters (an attitude not normally brought to “stripper” characters in films), also problematically affirms a complicated and frustrating narrative about the profession that stresses dishonesty and crime. Come for the feminism and supportive female friendship, stay for J-Lo’s incredible performance. The woman does not age. She simply cannot age.
Ready or Not
Ready or Not, the comic-slasher film from directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, tells of a young woman named Grace (Samara Weaving) who is about to marry her boyfriend Alex (Mark O’Brien). Alex’s family has amassed a fortune manufacturing board games, the wedding is at their estate, and at midnight, the bride and the groom must partake in a mandatory family tradition: the newcomer must draw a card, picking a game for the family to play together. Grace gets “Hide and Seek” and is told to go hide. But unbeknownst to her, the game is to the death. But Grace is tough, and the movie turns into an impressive, savage critique on patriarchal convention, the history of marriage as a form of enslavement, and the myth that women need men.
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Honorable Mentions / Questionably “Crime” Movies
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High Life
Directed and co-written by Claire Denis (with Jean-Pol Fargeau), High Life (released in France in 2018 and the USA in April 2019) is the story of several criminals (including death row inmate and sad dad Robert Pattinson) who are sent on a horrible experiment in space (to explore fertility issues and black-hole travel), at the whim of a cruel scientist (Juliette Binoche). Claire Denis is one of the best living filmmakers, and this fascinating movie is a haunting, meditative tour-de-force.
Peterloo
This film, directed to typical historical fastidiousness and great length by Mike Leigh, represents the 1819 Peterloo Massacre, a major conflict in British history in which British forces attacked a peaceful pro-democracy rally in Manchester of 60,000 that had gathered to demand political reform against increasing poverty levels. Leigh, an incredibly meticulous artist who makes intimate, fully immersive films, uses his talents perfectly to tell a highly personal account of this terrible historical moment. Emily Yoshida wrote in Vulture: “It’s an almost overwhelming sequence of humanity that grows to an unbearable crescendo of panicked voices without a single note of dramatic score to augment it. Leigh caps it off with a tragically ironic bookend lifted straight from the pages of history, which makes the horrors of the battlefield feel downright civilized compared to the horrors of a police state. The first time I saw Peterloo, it sent me out of the screening room onto Park Avenue with my blood boiling.”
