By Another year of cinema has passed, which means it’s time for our second annual Golden Cages awards, the only end-of-the-year awards program featuring everyone’s favorite actor as a screaming statuette! Over the next two weeks leading up to the Academy Awards, we at Flixist will be announcing our winners across seventeen different categories for what we consider the best achievements in film in 2019. Why do we wait so long into the year to do this? Because we can! So sit back, relax, and enjoy the awards.
How do you like your movies? Do you like your movies to inspire you? Do you like your movies to make you believe in love?Do you like your movies to make you laugh so hard you cry?
Or
How about a movie that induces the worst panic attack of your life and your blood pressure to soar to never before reached levels? Well that’s my kind of movie and that was Uncut Gems. Which is by far the most underrated movie of the year.
In 2017, Josh and Benny Safdie absolutely floored me with the film Good Time. They pulled out a performance from Robert Pattinson I didn’t know was possible and kept me on the edge of my seat in a euphoric wild ride that I didn’t see coming. So when I heard 2019 was bringing their next film, I was all aboard. Then when I heard it was starring Adam Sandler and the Boston Celtic’s legend Kevin Garnett, I was making plans to wait in line. THEN, I heard it had to do with sports betting and I began to prepare for the most panic inducing film I can imagine. Well guess what? I wasn’t even close to prepared.
The incredible direction by the Safdie brothers was out of this world. The pacing, the writing, the overlapping dialogue, the performances pulled from a cast of unknowns and the ending… oh… the ending! It is all capped by one of the most unexpected, unbelievable, and shocking performance by Adam Sandler. Everything he did was interesting and I wanted more. He played someone so unlikeable, so flawed, so despicable, but somehow you never stop loving him.This performance, mixed with the direction combine to create an incredible world and one of the most intense theater going experiences I have ever been apart of.
When I look back at the movies from 2019 I guarantee Uncut Gems will stand the test of time. It was unlike anything I have ever experienced and an ending that shocked me in a way I can not remember feeling in a theater. Bravo Uncut Gems, Bravo!