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<\/a><\/p>\nAlex writes a year in review of 2019 of sorts, and an appreciation of Little Women.<\/em><\/p>\n For as long as I have been conscious of these things, 1999 has been a \u201cgreat movie year.\u201d Various online content factories spent all of 2019 reminding us of that fact and, for once, their impulse was not idiotic.<\/span><\/p>\n By the end of 2007, I was extremely confident that it too was a similarly great movie year. At the age of 21, I was aware enough to know that the ability to see Michael Clayton, There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men within a couple of weeks of each other meant there was something happening in the Hollywood water, metaphorical water that I aggressively guzzled as frequently as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n I felt a similar sensation at the cinema as 2019 began to draw to a close. Despite a fairly bleak desert of cinematic options for the middle third of the year, the winter swooped in with movie after movie that I deeply enjoyed, in a way that reminded me of what was happening toward the end of 2007.<\/span><\/p>\n Why does this matter? How does whether or not a collection of great movies get released in the same year affect anything? If Dreamworks hadn\u2019t been pre-occupied with Saving Private Ryan\u2019s 1998 awards campaign, does American Beauty get produced as fast as it did in 1999? If there had been an unexpected monsoon in the Texas desert, delaying No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood\u2019s neighbouring productions (and releases) a few months, would that have swung my opinion on 2007? What if Disney shelves Ford v Ferrari as a relic of the old, pre-merger 20th Century Fox? Does that affect 2019\u2019s standing? And does it actually matter? I truly don\u2019t know.<\/span><\/p>\n One thing I am fully confident on, however, is that this essay is going to end up as being much too close to something I wrote but a month ago, a piece that by its conclusion had comfortably stated my suspicion that 2019 will be remembered as a good year. So be it. When I wrote that one, I hadn\u2019t seen Little Women yet, so now I\u2019ve got some new things to say.<\/span><\/p>\n Admittedly, Little Women was not a movie I anticipated loving. Greta Gerwig has been on the Chris Pratt No Bueno list since I wanted to rip my eyes out in the middle of the interminable Frances Ha. I liked her solo directorial debut Lady Bird, albeit nowhere near as much as the rest of the moviegoing public seemed to. (Like so many other films, I saw why people loved it, it simply didn\u2019t connect with me the way it did with others. This is fine. These things happen.) As a sporadically logical person, I tend to view my previous reactions to an artist\u2019s work as potentially indicative about how I will feel about their next piece and, as such, expectations were measured. In this case, as in so many others, my assumptions were incorrect.<\/span><\/p>\n Early on in Little Women, I was pleased if not excited. I had suspected there could be some modernizing by way of time-shifting in this film, and lo and behold there was, pretty much immediately. We\u2019re introduced to Jo as a writer in New York, before flashing back to her home life as a younger girl. As the scenes set in the past began, I noticed a certain vibrance to everything. It all felt a little too warm: the performances, the faster pace of the Christmas morning dialogue between the sisters, even the hue of the shots themselves looked warmer than the previous scenes. Sunlight and fireplaces had replaced overcast skies and wet city streets.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAnyhoops,\u201d I thought, \u201cthis could be interesting, should it turn out that they\u2019re being directed totally differently for a turn to come later or something\u2026 But that surely won\u2019t happen.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n In the early 1990s, Hollywood was coming out of the initial post-Jaws, post-Star Wars boom of diving full-on into the world of embracing stories specifically designed to please the highest number of people possible. The idea for so long – buoyed by the success of Steven Spielberg\u2019s work both as director and producer – had become to make a film that couldn\u2019t possibly offend anybody in order to maximize its box office opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout the 1980s, there was an independent movement bubbling in American cinema, with the burgeoning success of Michael Moore, Spike Lee, Jim Jarmusch, Gus van Sant, Richard Linklater, and the Coen Brothers coming all relatively close together, followed by Steven Soderbergh winning the 1989 Palme D\u2019Or at Cannes for Sex, Lies & Videotape. These were all filmmakers inspired by the mainstream in some capacity, but willing to look a bit left of centre to tell the stories in a slightly different way, which culminated in the success of the wunderkind who came slightly after them, Quentin Tarantino. After Reservoir Dogs was a Sundance success, and Pulp Fiction became a cultural sensation, all the studios were looking for their own burgeoning young auteur. This is how Paul Thomas Anderson, David O. Russell, David Fincher, Spike Jonze (plus Charlie Kaufman), Alexander Payne, Christopher Nolan, et. al became enmeshed as a sort of Hollywood New Wave, the biggest wave of talent to hit Hollywood in a limited time period since the famed 1970s*.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n