10 Awesome 2019 Movies You Probably Missed

7. The Art Of Self-Defense

If you took one look at the marketing for The Art of Self-Defense and assumed it was a goofy comedy about Jesse Eisenberg learning karate, it isn't that movie at all.

The second feature from indie filmmaker Riley Stearns (Faults), this is a devastatingly truthful satire of toxic masculinity and the forces which drive men to seek it out.

With shades of Fight Club, Eisenberg's protagonist Casey joins a local karate dojo in order to learn basic self-defense following an assault, and falls in underneath his aggressively hyper-masculine Sensei (Alessandro Nivola), who has some very specific designs on Casey.

Without spoiling anything, the film is full of deliriously dark surprises, and that Stearns can keep the film on an even keel despite some extremely sharp tonal shifts is to his major credit.

Eisenberg gives his best performance in years here, but equally good are Nivola and the brilliant Imogen Poots as one of Casey's fellow students. Don't miss this one.