So what makes a movie a ‘Drama’? As I get towards the end of my genre summaries for the year, I find this genre a little more difficult to deal with. Mostly that is because so many of the movies fall in this category – all but eleven of the thirty-eight movies on the list.
It is somewhat interesting to define the genre by what is NOT in it. For example it excludes most of the documentaries, which makes some sense. Although Honeyland is a documentary AND a drama. And it seems to exclude almost all the family and animated films, although, for some reason, Lion King falls in all three boxes and, of course, the Fantasy/Animated film I Lost My Body is also considered a Drama. And then, for reasons that just aren’t clear at all, the Maleficent and Star Wars movies did not qualify as Dramas, even though a similar film, Avengers:Endgame, does!
Roughly speaking, although there are obvious exceptions, Dramas are pretty much anything that you probably wouldn’t let your young children watch. Some of that might be because of violence or sex, of course, or it might simply be because the themes are things that children might not understand or appreciate.
So, with that definition, then some 27 of our movies fall into the Drama category. Rating the winners and losers when there are that many is pretty much the same thing as picking the best and worst movies of the year. So here is my summary in list form:
Must See Movies (well crafted and exceptional stories):
Parasite
Little Women
Toy Story 4
Joker
Marriage Story
Lighthouse
Irishman
Movies to See if you’ve seen those seven (in no particular order):
I Lost My Body
Knives Out
Avengers: Endgame
Two Popes
Corpus Christi
Honeyland
It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood
Ford v Ferrari
Pain & Glory
Add to the List (if you are bored and have time):
Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
Ad Astra
Jojo Rabbit
1917
Judy
Bombshell
Rocketman
Richard Jewell
Klaus
Harriet
Les Miserables
Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker
Don’t Waste Your Time (Unless, maybe, you have kids):
Missing Link
Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
Lion King
Frozen II
Breakthrough
How to Train Your Dragon
I still have four documentaries to get through, and will handle them in a separate group review.