The Big Picture · Review · Top Five · Roundtable
June 28, 2019/ 95 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Sean and Amanda take apart 'Yesterday,' the Richard Curtis-Danny Boyle rom-com about a world that's forgotten the Beatles, then Sean and critic Adam Nayman argue out their top five movies of a weak first half of 2019.
19 films across 4 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
'Yesterday' erases the BeatlesSean and Amanda review
A struggling musician wakes up in a world where nobody but him remembers the Beatles, and passes their songs off as his own. Himesh Patel is terrific and the concert scenes land, but Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle never follow through on the premise's implications, and the ending trades the Beatles' legacy for an Ed Sheeran needle drop and a jumbotron marriage proposal.
Adam Nayman's Top 5 Movies of 2019 So Farin conversation with Sean
No. 1: Claire Denis's English-language debut, a bleak death-row-prisoners-on-a-spaceship film with Robert Pattinson. Adam calls it uncompromised almost to a fault, and quotes a one-word verdict from Jim Jarmusch: strange.
No. 2: Jia Zhangke's decades-spanning gangster drama, told from the girlfriend's side and starring his longtime collaborator Zhao Tao. Adam calls Jia one of the defining international directors of the last 20 years.
No. 3: Christian Petzold's refugee drama, staged like a WWII-era Casablanca but shot and dressed entirely in the present day, with no period design at all.
Tied for No. 4: Bi Gan's art film, marketed in China as a mainstream romance, which reportedly sent opening-weekend crowds out furious. Built around a long, unbroken 3D tracking shot.
Tied for No. 4: Hu Bo's four-hour debut about a dying industrial town. The only film he ever made — he died by suicide at 29 before it was released.
No. 5 on both critics' lists: Joanna Hogg's autobiographical drama about a film student's affair with an older, secretly drug-addicted man. Honor Swinton Byrne stars opposite her real-life mother, Tilda Swinton.
Sean's Top 5 Movies of 2019 So Far
No. 1: Alex Ross Perry's five-act portrait of a punk frontwoman in decline, with Elisabeth Moss in what Sean calls the performance of the year. Loud and messy by design, with a quieter back half.
No. 2: David Robert Mitchell's shaggy L.A. conspiracy thriller about a guy convinced the universe is hiding a message meant just for him. Baggy and overlong, but Sean's seen it three times and keeps finding more in it.
No. 3: Chad Stahelski's third assassin movie. Sean's pitch is pure craft — fight sequences he says he hasn't seen the like of before.
No. 4: Jordan Peele's Get Out follow-up, a doppelganger horror movie Sean says he liked more on first watch than the discourse ultimately did.
Honorable mentions just missed each list
An honorable mention for both: Steven Soderbergh's iPhone-shot basketball labor drama, written by Moonlight's Tarell Alvin McCraney.
"A terrific Pixar movie" doing everything the franchise needs it to.
A men-on-one-last-heist movie, elevated for Sean by a needle drop of 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' and Ben Affleck's midlife-malaise casting.
An all-archival documentary of the moon mission, built from previously unseen footage.
Revisited briefly, having already covered it at length elsewhere.
Late-period Brian De Palma, which Adam calls "an incredible mess and a mess with incredible things in it."
Adam's shoutout for a not-yet-released documentary: Brett Story's interviews with New Yorkers about climate anxiety and economic precarity.
Also mentioned raised along the way
In the 'Yesterday' review Bohemian RhapsodyRocketmanMen in Black: InternationalNotting HillFour Weddings and a FuneralBridget Jones's Diary
Setting up the year-in-review conversation Avengers: EndgameAlita: Battle AngelCaptain MarvelDragged Across ConcreteBooksmartThe Last Black Man in San Francisco
Alongside Sean's picks Get OutMidsommarThe MatrixGood TimeUncut Gems
Alongside Adam's picks PhoenixA Touch of SinExhibitionFree FireGone GirlMoonlight
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV Too Old to Die YoungTwin Peaks
Podcasts Ringer Dish