Now we arrive at the year’s most stacked and probably most fun list. I had a shortlist of 28 scenes from 31 movies to whittle down to ten, and it’s been a good time reliving these well-constructed moments of tension, emotional catharsis or just plain fun at the movies. But while sifting through the shortlist I had a wild realisation: 2019 was a real good year for movie songs. I’ve got three of them on the main list and two in the honourable mentions, but worry not – there’s plenty of other stuff too. Including, obviously, lots and lots of big fat spoilers.

Proceed with caution.

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VR BEST OF 2019 DISCLAIMER

This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is rarer than an EA game without microtransactions. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!

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10. All Hands on Deck – Shazam!

Like quite a few people out there, outside of Batman and friends I’m not a huge DC guy. There’s an awful lot about DC Comics characters that I don’t know. I also did not keep up with a ton of the marketing for Shazam! So I had no idea that the titular character has a super-powered foster family in the comics with whom he fights bad guys. But it didn’t take long for the movie to charm me – and make me well up a bit – with its regular human foster family plot. The movie’s portrayal of believably flawed kids living together in a community held together by a ridiculously patient couple really, really got me. So when the finale places a bunch of dominoes in a row in order to set up that power-dividing moment, it felt triumphant and earned. The fight afterwards is incredibly cheesy and a bit too neatly staged, but it was hard to care. I was having too much fun.

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9. Speechless – Aladdin

The single new song added to the live-action Aladdin remake is so ill-fitting of the original’s plot that the movie literally stops dead to stage it. As in, Princess Jasmine moves around the palace singing it while everyone else is frozen still. It’s a Broadway-ready move that’s all about a character expressing pure emotion, preparing herself to make a power move in real life. But my word, what a performance. Saying that Naomi Scott sings the hell out of Speechless just isn’t a sufficient use of words. She dominates the melody, the staging, the scene and the movie with an organically-building dose of vocal control that crescendos into a sledgehammer. At the end she is singing with a level of vein-popping intensity that I can’t recall seeing in a movie outside Les Miserables. Genuine emotion overflows from her eyes in every close-up. This actress was already Kimberley in Power Rangers; I’m only human, you guys.
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8. Not Evil – The LEGO Movie 2

The LEGO Movie 2 was one of the most unexpected box office flops of the year, and I get why; The concept the first one nailed so well now feels ludicrously overdone and then some. The movie does take a while to find its footing in a drastically different setting, but once we are introduced to Tiffany Haddish’s ruler of the “Systar System”, Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi, the story finds its feet in preparation for another emotional gut punch reveal. Said introduction takes place via a fabulous villain song in which the queen takes great pains to explain that she is Definitely Not Evil What Are You Talking About. One by one she charms each supporting character in our main gang of heroes to her side, from Benny to Batman, all the while stumbling over hilariously unfortunate slips of the tongue. Half belter, half sing-talk showcase, Haddish relishes every second. The best part? The whole dazzling production is a bit of double-layered foreshadowing for two separate twists.
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7. Lost in the Woods – Frozen II

Following up the soundtrack from the first Frozen was always going to be a tall task, but one way to do it is to bring back the same songwriting team. And wouldn’t you know it, the songs go alright. There’s no Let It Go-level banger (How could there be?) and there are fewer comedic tracks, but overall this is a worthy soundtrack filled with quality. Into The Unknown is the justified soaring headliner. All Is Found reveals new layers whenever you listen to it. Kristen Bell’s powerful performance of The Next Right Thing helps make it a stunningly evocative song about grief that I dare hope might save a few lives. But my favourite of the bunch has to be Kristoff’s long-awaited showcase Lost in the Woods, which is built around a gloriously cheesy 1980s ballad music video aesthetic. Accompanied by a horde of harmonising reindeer, Jonathan Groff nails the numerous individual vocal quirks required to sell each of the pop factory homages awaiting throughout the song. Weezer’s unexpected closing credits cover manages to be just as good – check out the amazing music video. No more songs now, I promise.
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6. “That Wasn’t So Hard”- Spider-Man: Far From Home

The definitive point in Spider-Man: Far From Home where the stakes, the tone, the mysterious new character, the film itself all change; also one of the cleverest delivery systems for pure spoken plot exposition in recent memory. Immediately following a heartfelt conversation with a conflicted Peter Parker in which he reluctantly accepts the Tony Stark tech control glasses codenamed EDITH, the camera lingers on the heroic Quentin Beck a.k.a Mysterio a little too long, then pans in to reveal a creepy smile spreading across his face. He shrugs his shoulders, utters the phrase “See, that wasn’t so hard” and falls back on his stool in jubilation. The bar disintegrates around him in an electronic haze, and he proceeds to crack a celebratory beverage while thanking specific members of his technical team for their years-long hard work on the plan to take down the legacy of their common enemy: Tony Stark. He explains each role in detail – just like the leader of a sports or corporate team would after a victory. So the movie can have its cake and eat it too.
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5. Canine Revenge – John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum

If I felt like it, I could just finish this list with the best five fight scenes in John Wick Chapter 3. The movie is just that good at mixing up its action set-pieces – and executing on each and every one. But I won’t do that, even though Parabellum puts up a fight between Keanu Reeves and two of the main villains from The Raid franchise, adds a fresh spin on the cinematic horse chase, goes ham with knives, and ensures you’ll never look at a book the same way again. And that’s because my favourite action beat of the movie belongs to the dogs. Halle Berry’s extended cameo as an old connection of John’s with a pair of very well-trained German Shepherds peaks just after it looks as if one of said dogs has been shot dead in a desert-borne deal gone wrong. But nope, it’s got a vest on, and the stage is set for a shootout that spills out across a roofless Morocco complex. The extended sequence certainly involves Berry and Reeves getting plenty of shots in, but the seamless dog assists keep coming, each one free of camera trickery and each one more impressive than the last, until the gang makes their successful getaway with one last acrobatic leap into a car window. In the words of Reeves himself, whoah.
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4. Finale – How To Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

Stunning visual leap aside, I don’t think as highly of the third How to Train Your Dragon film as I do of the second. It has rather different strengths and weaknesses, telling a reactionary story about making adult decisions. But when it finally delivers on the big goodbye the series has been hinting at for a while, it really goes for the tear ducts. First there’s the goodbye itself, where Hiccup and Toothless part ways at last. That’s bad enough. But then there’s the final two minutes. My eyes stood absolutely no chance watching the cautious post-timeskip journey Hiccup takes to the eponymous hidden world, travelling on a small boat with Astrid and their two adorable children. He finds Toothless – who has his own children now – and though there’s some tension at first, they embrace like the old friends they are and before long they’re all on a ride together for old time’s sake. It’s a mostly wordless reunion with a few nervous laughs and a whole lot of hopeful, heart-warming closure. At the end of a solid movie, this is the ending the amazing trilogy deserves.
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3. The Mansons vs Tarantino – Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

Shocking, violent, thrilling, unapologetic and steeped in controversy, the ending of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is peak Tarantino. The rest of the movie is indulgent in a way only an old-fashioned auteur filmmaker like him could realistically pull off in this day and age – and I love it – but it also goes about planting multiple Chekhov’s Guns amidst a sea of scenes and references that are simply there for their own sake. All of these go off in quick succession when the time comes for the story to tackle the tragic moment that virtually killed Tarantino’s beloved old-school Hollywood optimism in real life. Only something is different. Cliff Booth’s earlier visit to the infamous Spahn Ranch prompts a conversation among the would-be murderers of the Manson family that leads to a change of targets from Sharon Tate to Hollywood’s two fictional protagonists. Then the old acid cigarette, the long scene of Booth cooking for his ridiculously obedient dog, and the one-shot joke about Rick Dalton’s working flamethrower prop all pay off in one gore-soaked turn of the tables that ultimately explains the film’s title and will likely go down as one of Tarantino’s most unforgettable cinematic moments.
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2. Plush Rush – Toy Story 4

It’s a simple explanation, this one: Throughout 2019 there was no other moment that a movie made me laugh this painfully hard. Ducky and Bunny are already two of the funniest characters in Toy Story 4 when it happens, thanks to the magnificent casting coup reuniting Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele to voice them. But it still comes out of nowhere. When Buzz Lightyear looks in desperation to the incredibly confident pair for a plan to obtain a crucial MacGuffin from the lovely old lady in charge of the antique shop that traps them all, Key and Peele bounce off each other in typically frantic style as they cycle through explanations of plans with ridiculous names – all involving luring the lady to a pile-on ambush. Then they explain the Plush Rush. What follows is a brilliantly-paced setup that plays with expectations more than once, dances with horror movie framing and crosses the funny line multiple times before landing the money shot and a quick cut. This one really hurt me.
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1. On Your Left – Avengers: Endgame

Not just the movie moment of the year. The movie moment of the decade. I struggle to envision this kind of thing happening again for a long, long time. To be fair, twenty-one movies of setup just doesn’t happen overnight. This kind of pay-off still isn’t easy, but somehow a movie that’s already given us the shocking FIVE YEARS LATER card, the “Hail Hydra” crowd-pleaser and the fist-pumping Captain America Mjolnir moment still has room to top itself. I doubt I need to explain why this single line – and the famous call to action that shortly follows it – made me ugly-cry in the cinema both times I saw it. Avengers: Endgame is the highest-grossing movie of all time. You get it.

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Honorable Mentions
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—A Cover Is Not a Book – Mary Poppins Returns

This grandiose song feels like at least three songs in one, and it’s the only one to give Lin Manuel Miranda a completely solo verse where he gets to sort-of rap. It’s shameless and great.
—Help – Yesterday

Yesterday is obviously packed full of Beatles songs, but this one shows up right at the height of the story’s emotional self-conflict, so it shakes out as a live performance laced with shockingly venomous desperation.
—Nascar Showdown – Ford V Ferrari

The penultimate race scene of the movie is much shorter than the Le Mans finale, but it’s shot impeccably, with sound design matching visual cuts perfectly. I was leaning further forward in my seat with every gear change.
—Train Fight – X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Sticks out like a sore thumb as a re-shoot, but easily the best action scene in this otherwise limp movie.