Honeyland (2019)

This is unusual in that the movie was nominated in both Best Foreign Language film and Best Documentary. 
The movie is set in an isolated mountain region deep within the Balkans, Hatidze Muratova lives with her ailing mother in a village without roads, electricity or running water.  The filming took three years because of the remoteness of the location.  Hatidze comes from a long line of Macedonian wild beekeepers, eeking out a very modest living selling honey in small batches in a city 12 miles from her home--which she walks to. Her peaceful existence is thrown into upheaval by the arrival of an itinerant family, with their seven rambunctious children and herd of cattle. Hatidze optimistically meets the promise of change with an open heart, offering up her affections, her brandy and her tried-and-true beekeeping advice.  It doesn't take long before Hussein, the itinerant family's patriarch, senses opportunity and develops an interest in selling his own honey. Hussein breaks the rules of beekeeping, starves his hives, which attack Haditze's bees and upsets the natural order of things.  Taken on a macro scale, their conflict exposes the fundamental tension between nature and humanity, harmony and discord, exploitation and sustainability. Even as the family provides a much-needed respite from Hatidze's isolation and loneliness, her very means of survival are threatened.

American Factory (2019)

I didn't realize it when I watched the movie, but this is the first movie that the Obama's worked on with Netflix, and lets just say it is not a "feel good" story by any means.  All of the five nominees for Best Documentary share a very grim view of the world.
The filmmakers made an Oscar nominated short documentary about the closing of a GM plant near Dayton, Ohio in 2009.  This is filmed in that same factory when it is reopened as a Chinese financed factory, Fuyao Glass America.  The money and the chairman are from China, and you can see from the beginning that there are significant culture clashes.
The American workers are happy to be back at work, but they are making less than half of what they made as GM workers.  The Chinese struggle with the safety regulations, leterally ignoring them and seem annoyed when it is pointed out to them that following them is the law.  Then there is the trip that Chairman Cao arranges for the Americans to visit a Chinese factory.  Workers are much more organized, more professional, faster, and they work 6-7 days a week.  It is starkly evident that we just cannot compete with that on the international stage.  All the air is sucked out of the room as the story comes to a close.

Bombshell (2019)

The movie is not aptly names since it should have come as no surprise that Fox News tolerated sexual harassment from the top down.  It would have been a bombshell if they treated women as equal partners, both intellectually and professionally. 
The film outlines what happened before and during the summer of 2016, when “Fox & Friends” morning show co-host Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit against the former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and Megyn Kelly—the network’s biggest star at that point—came forward with Ailes harassment tales of her own.
Chalize Theron is magnificent.  She plays Megyn Kelly to a tee, embodying the anchor with eerie accuracy. You feel as if you’re watching Kelly herself, and the fact that she’s doing an extended walk-and-talk to explain the inner workings of the conservative news network accomplishes a couple of crucial things right off the top. Kelly shares in conspiratorial tones who the players are, how the power structure operates and what people must do to survive—especially if they want those coveted spots on air. and it softens her for those of us who find the real Kelly to be too edgy.  

The Irishman (2019)

Some might call this an epic, others might characterize it as a bloated movie in desperate need of editing.  I see the merit in wither description, as it runs over 3 hours and there is a lot of detail that could have been left out.
It is the story of the Mob and Teamsters labor union hitman and courier Frank Sheeran (a real-life figure, who died in 2003 aged 83), who is played by Robert De Niro.  Shortly before Sheeran shoots mobster Crazy Joe Gallo outside Umberto’s Clam House in Little Italy in 1972, Gallo celebrates his birthday at the Copacabana club where comic Don Rickles is performing.  De Niro has been here in not just one but two other movies that centered on the seamier side of life.  It is not Scorsese and Mafia lore that make The Irishman a requiem, however, but the way it morphs from an ebullient, sprawling comedy-drama about the outsider Sheeran’s three-decade involvement with La Cosa Nostra into a mournful reflection on friendship, betrayal and the unassuaged guilt men take to their graves.  The movie garnered 10 Academy award nominations, including for all three of it's heavy hitting lead characters, and is well worth watching.

The Edge of Democracy (2019)

Petra Costa is known for her storytelling.  This documentary finds her intersecting the personal and political on the public stage, and in the process documents a crisis erupting in slow motion over the last several years at the heart of Brazilian politics. Thanks to extraordinary access to figures at the center of the story – former leftist Workers’ Party presidents Lula de la Silva and Dilma Rousseff, as well as rightwingers Michel Temer and current president Jair Bolsonaro– Costa manages to craft an intimate primer about the state’s descent into populism and the fraying of the country’s democratic fabric.  Her access to both sides of the story is extraordinary.  Her grandparents made their fortune in the construction industry, which propped up the likes of Temer and Bolsonaro (and continues to do so), and her Marxist parents went to prison because of their opposition to the military junta that once controlled the country. At one point, Costa observes her mother’s warm first meeting with Rousseff; both women were held at the same prison, although not at the same time, and have much in common.
The criticism that this does not show the profound descent into poverty and violence that has been rampant throughout Brazil as this story unfolded is well founded, but I appreciated the calm telling of a terrifying story of the profound influence that oligarchs wield on the world stage.

Missing Link (2019)

This movie is nominated for an Oscar and it won the Golden Globe award this year.  The theory is that with Frozen II and Toy Story 4, the Disney vote was split and this came out the winner (which doesn't make total sense to me, but then I am neither a film critic nor an expert on all things Hollywood), but none-the-less it is a funny story that I very much enjoyed.  It is also probably amongst the last of the dying breed of stop motion animation films that will be made.
The story is somewhere between a road trip comedy and a buddy adventure.  The movie follows the brave adventurer Sir Lionel Frost on a journey to find the legendary Sasquatch and reunite him with his long-lost relatives. Along with fellow explorer Adelina Fortnight, the trio weather all manner of perils and ultimately learns that sometimes you can find family in the places you least expect. It is an adventure story that traverses iconic locations in the world circa 1900 but also navigates subtexts like xenophobia, classism, and the anti-evolutionary precept of human exceptionalism. We were a room full of adults who loved it, start to finish.

The Joker (2019)

There is a lot to say about this movie, but how it got nominated for the most categories, and how the director beat out Greta Gerwig for the nomination is a mystery to me.
This is both the origin story for the Joker as well as for Batman, and it is not a pretty picture.  At worst it emphasizes all the basest human qualities, and glorifies them.  It seems quite contemporary in both its scope and content.  We are living in the time of Gotham, and there are no checks and balances what so ever.  It is a tragedy.
On the other hand, it depicts mental illness in a horrific light that it does not deserve.  The fallacy that people with mental illness are violent is unfair and untrue.  What is true is that the victims of domestic violence do go on to struggle with violence themselves.  A book on the subject, No Visible Bruises, avers that most mass shootings have an origin in domestic violence, and some start by killing a family member, and then go on to kill others. So not a great message there.
Finally, Joaquin Phoenix plays crazy like no one else.  He is entirely believable as the antihero who starts off being a victim and then emerges as a killer who inspires others to follow his example.  There is no bottom to his rage and it rolls off him in every scene.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

What to say about a Quentin Tarantino movie?  Unfortunately there is this underlying edge to it that just feels like he neither likes nor gets women.  Once you take that as a given and move on, the movie flows.
For a change, this is not a stylized replica of an existing genre, but rather a broader commentary track about the movie industry, looking back to what is essentially it's middle years. 

It is  ambitious and at the same time entirely ordinary. For in setting his story on three very specific days in 1969, the writer-director also brushes up against the specter of the Charles Manson murders, the impact this threat had on that community, and the seismic shift happening in the Southern California culture during that era. Working class stiffs like blue-collar stunt man Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) or fading character actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) counter-balance the rise of the counter culture, leaving those on the downhill side of their careers to fight to hold on to what they had.  And then there is the revisionist history, just so you don't forget that it is a Tarantino  movie.  Not my choice in any category it is nominated in.

How to Train Your Dragon:The Hidden World (2019)

This is the third in the series, and it closes a chapter.  The story is a bit unimpressive, but the animation is gorgeous, in an over the top sort of way.
Hiccup's father is gone, and Hiccup struggles to take his place as a leader. Meanwhile, Berk is struggling to care for a community that can barely contain the dragons who vastly outnumber the people.
Two new characters are the focus in this third film, and it turns out that Toothless is not the last of his species. A white female, dubbed by Astrid as the Light Fury, arrives. But she is part of an elaborate trap by ruthless dragon hunter Grimmel the Grisly, who is determined to kill Toothless and as many other dragons as he can. Hiccup, Astrid, and the other Berkians work together to keep Grimmel away from their dragons and from the Hidden World, a secret dragon sanctuary.
There is a fair amount of silliness in this, which maybe I would have loved if I was 50 years younger, but this is my last choice in the feature length Animated nominations this year.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)

This is all kinds of special effects, and that is what both dominates the 150 minutes of screen time you log in watching it, but it also has more of a plot to follow than the last couple of movies--although as I think about them, they kind of echo the plot progression of the first Star Wars movies released, which happened in my late teens (in other words, quite a long time ago).  This is the latest in the current trilogy, the one where good is the acknowledged underdog and evil is the overwhelming favorite to take home the prize.
The roles in this story, as in others, have seen women rise to leadership roles.  They are still mostly bad asses rather than using their intuition and social skills to rise above the fray and do good, but still, this is a welcome change from where the series started.  Adam Driver is exceptional in that this seems so far afield of what he normally does as to be impressive that he pulls this off too.  The sound and lights and special effects are impressive, and the gratuitous creatures of yore are actually toned down and more enjoyable.  All in all, this was really pretty good.