I know there are people who resist acknowledging the fact that "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" was the best movie of 2019, but why, why? Quentin Tarantino's script is a gem of so many facets (virtuoso plotting and dialogue, resonant movie-biz nostalgia), and the film's charisma-bomb cast (Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie, plus step-up stars Julia Butters and Margaret Qualley) is so powerfully on that the picture's 161 minutes of fun buddy banter, wild hippie-smashing and sly foot worship simply breeze by. Could the film have been tightened up a little? Sure — but then you'd be left with less of the best movie of the year. (I await the four-hour version.)

For many people, I gather, the best movie of 2019 was not "Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood" but instead "The Irishman," or maybe "Joker," "Parasite," "Marriage Story" or "1917." These are all worthy films; last year was a great one for movies (and for original scripts). And "The Irishman" does have some striking Scorsese moments and a masterfully controlled performance by Joe Pesci — but it's a little creaky, and it really is too long.

"1917," meanwhile, is an admirable piece of work, but somewhat underwhelming. The technical conceit of presenting the movie as if it had been shot in one long take isn't much more than a gimmick, although closing off the possibility of narrative detours and plot complexity did enable director Sam Mendes to create a pure antiwar movie, with a focus on simple endurance. The lead actors, Dean-Charles Chapman and George MacKay, are fine as two soldiers assigned a crucial and very dangerous mission, but they aren't widely known; you can imagine pressure being brought to bear on Mendes to inject some star power into this $100-million picture, thus explaining the miniscule, tacked-on appearances by Colin Firth, Andrew Scott and Benedict Cumberbatch. This awkward casting has an air of commercial desperation, and as fascinating as it is to follow the great cinematographer Roger Deakins as he trails the two young soldiers through a landscape of bombed-out property and scattered horse corpses, the grim message at the end — about the dismal futility of war — is one you may already know.

"Joker," "Parasite" and "Marriage Story" are no-brainer flick picks. "Joker" really is a movie unlike any other — certainly any other comic book movie. Credit to Todd Phillips for bold vision, to the Icelandic composer Hildur Guonadottir for her haunting score and to Joaquin Phoenix for a performance that's equal parts heartbreak and nightmare.

"Parasite" is Korean director Bong Joon-ho's most accomplished film, and pretty much every turn in its twisty story is a surprise, sometimes a bloody one. (The movie is so sleekly constructed that it's hard to imagine a lot of people being defeated by its subtitles.)

"Marriage Story" might seem from its trailer like a bare-bones downer, but it has the excitement and the wonder of two deeply attuned actors (Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver) creating peak performances under the guidance of a director (Noah Baumbach) of particular gifts in this area. (This should be an interesting Oscar season in the household Baumbach shares with writer, director and actor Greta Gerwig, who's having a major moment of her own with the excellent "Little Women.")

As a fan of the Safdie brothers, I was immediately taken with their "Uncut Gems," which presents Adam Sandler in a wonderfully scuzzy new light. And moving on to movies I liked more than loved, let me salute Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe for their work in Robert Eggers's squalid character study, "The Lighthouse" — a picture that I wish added up to a little more than nothing. Another visual coup, Ari Aster's "Midsommar," gets points for its blazing look. It's a sunshiny folk-horror film with an unusual amount of bear-consciousness. But it's nowhere near as scarifying as Aster's debut film, "Hereditary," which is a letdown.

I may have been unworthy of certain films last year. At one time, I was pretty excited about "Ad Astra" — an outer space movie in which Brad Pitt looks as emptied-out as I felt watching it — but the picture proved too silly to be taken seriously. I don't understand the hype around "Hustlers." And I didn't like "Jojo Rabbit" because I don't think Hitler is funny. I know, I know: "The Producers." But Jojo suggests that we can beat back the power of evil by laughing at it. I believe Charlie Chaplin tried this. I don't recall it working.

Kurt Loder is the film critic for Reason Online. To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.