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maltatoday | SUNDAY • 29 DECEMBER 2019 7 2019 ROUNDUP FILM Our resident film critic TEODOR RELJIC sifts through a year's worth of film reviews to pick the worst and best of the bunch films of 2019 1. IT: Chapter 2 The first chapter was an ef- fectively realised reset of the Stephen King killer clown com- ing-of-age saga, but it success is the greatest undoing of Andy Muschietti's adaptation of the latter half of King's doorstopper novel. Animated by a repetitive yet somehow still barely com- prehensible 'treasure hunt' plot engine and coasting on an inflat- ed special effects budget, this is horror cinema as haunted house ride in the worst way imagina- ble. 2. The King Doing Shakespeare's history plays by removing the Shake- speariness out of them and scrunching them up into a single 'epic' historical drama that is largely made up of Timothée Chalamet pouting in overly-darkened medieval sets unsur- prisingly yields consistently dour results. 3. In the Shadow of the Moon A time-travelling police procedural that does embrace its lurid side, but ends up giving us some- thing of a soupy and disappointing concoction that fails to live up to its inherent potential. A bland experience whose title – revealed only at the end – belies the dullness of the whole thing. 4. Velvet Buzzsaw So begins the cavalcade of Netflix disappoint- ments… With a great cast and a promising director in Tony Gilroy (whose Nightcrawler was one of the true dark horse re- leases in recent memory), this art-world satire ends up registering as facile and cheap, never having the decency of leaning into its pulpier roots and languishing in smugness instead 5. Greta The return of Irish director Neil Jordan to the directorial seat should be a cause for celebration, so it's crushing to see that he opted for this over- ripe melodrama as his erstwhile comeback, even if Isabelle Huppert does her damndest to gift him with a conniving femme fatale for the ages.