I thought Judy was pretty terrific. Superb casting, nice pacing, authentic period look. In a way it's similar to Marriage Story, an actress divorced and trying to stay with her children. But with the addition of aging and broken dreams, addiction and doubts about if your talent is still intact.

Renee Zellweger is pretty fantastic. Actually it wasn't until 20 minutes in that I recognized/realized it was her. I really go into films blind and try to know as little as possible, except the basic plot and the perceived quality (so i can avoid clunkers).

The storyline is fairly familiar, a former star on the decline and trying to keep up appearances and hold things together despite dink and drugs. But it's all handled so well, that it's affecting and resonant. Impressive film, and I have minimal interest in Judy Garland or her music aside form the Wizard of Oz really. Goes right to the top of 2019 Films for me.

Coming soon!

https://youtu.be/T_RTnuJvg6U

Any way to watch without subbing to Disney?

The Rider (2017)

Some of the best movies about America are being made by a director who didn't even live here full-time until after finishing high school. The immensely talented Beijing-born Chloé Zhao shot her first two feature films within the community of the Lakota Sioux tribe of the Pine Ridge Reservation, in South Dakota, the second of which is The Rider.

Though the film is fiction, Zhao uses nonprofessional actors and their biographies to inform her work; The Rider's star, Brady Jandreau, for example, is actually a horse trainer and rodeo rider (the YouTube video of his accident, which is the inciting incident of the story, is real, too). "The Rider melds two classic film genres — The Western, associated with the masculine, and the Melodrama, considered a feminine form — to offer contrasting perspectives on the life of the main character and the occupation he loves," writes Dismantle. "Through this juxtaposition the filmmaker presents the struggles of Indigenous communities who must navigate the limitations of toxic masculinity and its association with the racially violent mythology of the American West."

Excitingly, Zhao is reportedly also working on an adaptation of Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century — which, who knows, could one day be on this list for the next decade.