Is 2019 Already a Doomed Movie Year?

So far, 2019 has been what I can only describe as a strange year for me as a movie fan. Many podcasts I listen to and news sites I read seem to think it’s been a particularly dry year for filmgoers, especially in terms of awards contending fare. 

I, on the other hand, am not too worried because I feel like we are always hearing this same type of narrative come the end of the summer movie season. Besides even if the past couple years were a little stronger up to this point, their second-half slates left me extremely disappointed. While critically acclaimed movies like Get Out, Black Panther, and BlacKkKlansman were released earlier in the year, the major Oscar competitors almost always still fell in the fall/winter calendar. 

This year is no different. Us, Avengers, Once upon a Time in Hollywood, and The Farewell all have a chance to make strong showings come awards season time. There’s also a ton of potential left to make 2019 a fantastic year for cinema. I could make a laundry list of films I cannot wait to see that are hitting theaters in the coming months. Ford v. Ferrari, Ad Astra, The Irishman, 1917, and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood are just a few of these. 

What does strike me as different from most other years is how much more I’ve enjoyed the big blockbusters. While I do feel like Hollywood is in a period where creativity and originality isn’t valued a highly as it should be, these are the films that we need in order to keep the industry alive and as long as they’re entertaining me, I have no complaints. I found myself enjoying Captain Marvel, Avengers: Endgame, and Spider-man: Far From Home much more than most of the Marvel movies released in the past few years. Aladdin and Hobbs and Shaw were also really fun times at the theatre. If anything, it was the bigger films that I had been heavily anticipating that left me underwhelmed. I found Toy Story 4 to be perfectly passable but also unnecessary. Rocketman was decent but not great and a comedy like Long Shot left me really wanting more. 

Then, as always, there’s the great films that no one is talking about or that have no chance at awards. Some of these include Hotel Mumbai, Fighting with My Family, The Best of Enemies, and Yesterday. There’s always at least a few of these each year and it’s honestly always the most disappointing aspect for me. They are fantastic pieces of entertainment and nobody sees them or bothers to remember them. 

Is 2019 already doomed to be a terrible year for movies? Not by a long shot. There is still plenty of stuff to look forward to and there’s already been some real gems that have come out. Like I said before, the thing that makes 2019 stand out in my eyes is how much more the big-budget movies have hit for me. Right now, we should be gearing up and getting ready for a promising fall/winter release schedule. I’m just hoping, unlike 2017 and 2018, that what I see lives up to its potential.