Okay, let's wrap this up. Got games to do come February. I have a lot of Honorable Mentions this year, I'll try to be as quick as I can.
Honorable Mentions:
Talk to Me, dir. Danny & Michael Philippou
I'm upset with myself that I could not find room for this one on the Top 15. Maybe I still should go back and dump Oppenheimer, actually. After all, that's just a biopic and this is a movie where a dude nearly blinds himself while possessed by ghosts. Talk to Me is a really solid horror movie about being young and stupid and playing dangerously. Only instead of the usual fun kids stuff like drugs, sex, mild vandalism, shoplifting (you know, victimless crimes), these Australian kids are summoning shambling corpses to take over their bodies. It seems like a harmless, spooky time, until Talk to Me gets very very nasty. It starts gross with a dying kangaroo on the side of the road, then keeps going down that way as our protagonist, Mia (Sophie Wilde) keeps playing with worse and worse fire. Heck of an ending too.
All of Us Strangers, dir. Andrew Haigh
This very easily could have made the list, and might have ranked extremely high, maybe Top 3. I loved 99% of All of Us Strangers. I was really blown with the tenderness and love depicted with all the characters. The magical realism gimmick of lonely adult Adam (Andrew Scott)'s time travel is clever, but the cleverness is less the point than the emotions it stirs. Adam can travel back to his childhood home to be comforted by, and eventually confront young versions of his parents (Claire Foy & Jamie Bell). Meanwhile, he is falling in love with a man in his building, Harry (Paul Mescal). It is a beautiful, sometimes delirious battle between trauma of the past and the possibility of a better future. Lots of great male facial hair - I grew a short beard because of this movie.
And yet... one of the worst fucking endings of the year. I'm furious with that choice. Furious. And yet, Andrew Haigh ends it on a gorgeous final shot, that maybe redeems the sudden swerve to horror tropes.
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Amongst Thieves, dir. John Francis Daley & Jonathan Goldstein
One of the most fun movies of 2023 and audiences largely didn't care. Maybe this simply had bad luck, if Dungeons & Dragons had released a year later, everybody would still be horny for Baldur's Gate 3 and this movie would have killed. Or maybe not, I can never understand mass audiences. This is a great adventure movie full of fun characters, Chris Pine remains the S-Tier Chris into 2023. And while it never gets meta, you can see the meta plot of a Dungeon Master intervening in the story to make it keep moving. "Here, I'll give you an over-leveled NPC to help you through this dragon fight." "Okay, here's a teleportation devise." And then when the players start asking "wait, can we use the Portal Gun like this", the DM thinks and says "sure, you know what? That's cool". There's a gelatinous cube, there's an owlbear, there's death magic, Chris Pine sings, what more can you want? I'm impressed by the remarkably mature and serious scene featuring a hilariously tiny Bradley Cooper. Cooper is a better actor as a little Hobbit homewrecker than he is in Maestro.
Jawan, dir. Atlee
2023 was the big comeback year for Shah Rukh Khan, one of the great Bollywood stars. He had two huge action blockbusters, this and Pathaan, both extremely worth seeing. Jawan is the more ambitious movie, a play on SRK's 2007 film, Om Shanti Om, which also starred Deepika Padukone. This plot is full of twists, so I'll try not to give too much away. Let me just say that in the first few scenes, SRK appears as some kind of super human mummy in a small village and murders several attacks. Then we cut to an elaborate Taking of Pelham 123 train heist where SRK is now a bald Joker supervillain. And it only gets more bizarre from here. This is a also very relevant Indian work of social commentary, deploring recent Indian corruption scandals and government incompetence, and solving them with ridiculous Lupin III heists. SRK speaks directly to the audience, begging them to vote for their interests, not petty ethnic squabbles (very dramatic statement from a Muslim star during Prime Minister Modi's Hindu nationalist era). I wish Jawan ended with SRK punching Modi in the face, it definitely hedges the politics, but it's fun along the way.
Priscilla, dir. Sofia Coppola
I really liked Elvis in 2022. Still, I was not pleased how little attention was given to Priscilla Presley, his wife. So Priscilla was an extremely necessary movie. Priscilla's actress, Cailee Spaeny is actually almost the same age as Elvis's actor, Jacob Elordi, in real life. But they have a a foot and a half difference in height. The way Sofia Coppola films them, Priscilla is a tiny little girl in her mom's make-up around leering horny fully-grown men. It is a very disturbing picture of sexual abuse, emotional abuse, even while Coppola shows the life at Graceland as exciting and glamorous. She buys in with the fantasy of rock'n'roll icon power at times, if only to make all this make sense, to show why anybody would do this to themselves. There's a lot of attention given to the technology and technique of femininity. Being Priscilla Presley is not an identity, it requires a lot of maintenance and staged decisions. Every part of this queen's life was manufactured by the King.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, dir. Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, & Justin K. Thompson
Yes, this is one the all-time great achievements in animation. I rewatched this movie recently and actually liked it more the second time. Maybe the multiverse jokes and Sony transmedia synergy were over-done. That Venom joke sucked. But I was glad to see Miles and Gwen back on another adventure, this time so much bigger and more absurd. The problem is that this is half a movie. Some Part 1s can at least be a complete story setting up a sequel, this is not. It ends on a cliffhanger. So in 2025 or 2026, Across the Spider-Verse 2 might rank very highly.
Saltburn, dir. Emerald Fennell
I was literally halfway through writing the 2023 list when I finally saw this. No idea why Saltburn got such a weird backlash on social media. I guess some people think they're too good for licking tub drain water or sticking their dicks into grave soil. Saltburn is a gorgeous movie shot in the thin Academia ratio. That's a choice I usually find pretentious, not this time. Really great framing on a lot of shots. But the important thing is that Saltburn is a gruesome thriller, even it's social commentary is more tepid than that bathwater. And it ends on a nude dance scene that finally introduced Americans to Sophie Ellis-Bextor's pop jam, "Murder on the Dance Floor".
Suzume, dir. Makoto Shinkai
This is the third time Makoto Shinkai has made basically the same movie since Your Name. I really like that movie, so he can doing it. Suzume is still a sincere magical romance across modern day Japan with some eco-commentary. The plot does get messy. Suzume is really too different movies, one about a girl running away from home with a college boy turned into a chair. The other is a road trip with her aunt where they listen to classic Seventies J-pop. I don't think the pieces fit together here any better than do in The Boy and the Heron, but who cares?
Zone of Interest, dir. Jonathan Glazer
A movie about the life of the Nazi with the worst haircut of them all, Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel). Höss built his sprawling, idyllic family home right up against the walls of Auschwitz concentration camp. He could have made his little colony anywhere. However, he was so desensitized to his actions, he legitimately could not see how raising his children right next to the machinery of death would be a problem until they are swimming in bone fragments and Zyklon B runoff. Most of Zone of Interest is the normal every day life of this German settler family, while low in the sound mx is the screams and gunshots of the genocide happening next door. It is an extremely disturbing and impressive concept. Zone of Interest is also very boring. The boredom might be the point. I simply do not want to watch Nazi Home Movies, sorry. Respect it a lot.
Huesera: The Bone Woman, dir. Michelle Garza Cervera
Easily the most obscure movie on this list. I think everybody missed out on this Mexican horror movie. Valeria (Natalia Solián) is a young woman in Mexico City about to have her first child. Then she is possessed by a creepy crawling demon woman. There's plenty of great movies about the body horror of pregnancy, which is fitting. It's an experience that sees your flesh radically transformed for the pleasure of a male partner and off-spring you may not even want. Glad that's not ever happening to me. Huesera combines that with themes of bisexuality, class, race, and indigenous black magic. I really should have covered this for my October demons series, just like Talk to Me. Dang.
Beau is Afraid, dir. Ari Aster
I appreciate the attempt, man. Certainly nobody has felt more anxieties than Ari Aster did in 2023. He's replaying the same themes of intense generational trauma and hopelessness that he put into Hereditary, only this time it is a comedy - of sorts. There's a lot going on in this movie from dystopian visions of modern society to fantasy journeys to a giant kaiju penis. Beau is Afraid is a three epic of a guy being extremely not okay. At least 3/4ths of this movie is one of the most interesting theatrical experiences of 2023. If your movie reminds me of both The End of Evangelion and Synecdoche, New York, you're doing something right.
On the other hand... this is also making the Worst List
Dishonorable Mentions:
There's like 20 more movies I really recommend from 2023. It was a really good year for movies, so good even the new Saw sequel was fun. But now we have to talk the other side of the coin:
The Flash, dir. Andy Muschietti
This is how the Snyderverse ends, not with a bang, but with an empty
theater. Yeah, this was really bad. The most promising part is the scene where our super-fast hero puts a baby in a microwave. The rest is forced, awful comedy, until it is inexplicably melodrama. The Flash also has the ugliest special effects of the year (after MODOK) in its time travel kaleidoscopes. Ezra Miller is a deeply
unpleasant person, and this movie needed to have two of them. Andy Muschietti
as a creator feels desperate to impress while having no style of his
own. He's trying to be Zach Snyder, he's trying to be James Gunn, he's
trying to be Tim Burton, and he's none of these people.
Shazam: Fury of the Gods was also terrible.
Knock at the Cabin, dir. M. Night Shyamalan
I am not sure how you can watch this gross movie about awful things and believe that the world is worth saving. Enough people legitimately believe that God wants to murder gay people without us needing to make a movie about it, just feels tasteless. Knock at the Cabin even has the temerity to end on a vaguely hopeful note, as if this experience was worth it just by inspiring faith. Fuck you. If the entire balance of reality depends on the blood of a really nice family, then reality is fundamentally vile and should be destroyed. "The lives of billions outweigh the lives of a few" - I am not engaging in this kind of math, leave that for the fascists. We must dethrone and overthrow the deranged God of this film.
The Exorcist: Believer, dir. David Gordon Green
I reviewed this one already.
David Gordon Green has been fired for the sequel, and that's a good
decision. I don't envy whoever is tasked trying to clean up this mess. In fact, just cancel that sequel.
Beau is Afraid, dir. Ari Aster
I respect this movie a lot. I also find the conclusion to be such an intense pile of misery as to be completely useless. This should be everything I love about a movie, a director's painful self-loathing represented on the screen. And instead, I'm left with this loathsome hollowness. A movie where better things are not possible. I can't love a film that depicts Jewish family roots as an inescapable cruse. Just not something I need right now - and it goes on for twenty minutes too long. I get it, already, Ari! I know it sucks, dude!
End with the giant dick, dude.
Best Performances of 2023:
Ryan Gosling as Ken in Barbie - Lol, I'm cancelled. He was the main character of the movie, and his song is the best part. Not even going to put Margot Robbie here. At least not for this movie.
Margot Robbie as Herself(?)/Actress/Wife in Asteroid City - Has only one scene, she killed it.
Sandra Hüller as Sandra Voyter in Anatomy of a Fall
Alyssa Sutherland as Ellie in Evil Dead Rise - "mOmMy'S wItH tHe MaGgOtS nOw."
Natalia Solián as Valeria in Huesera: The Bone Woman
Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart in Killers of the Flower Moon - This would have been a great movie if it were about Mollie. I think DiCaprio is awful in this movie.
Marshawn Lynch as Mr. G in Bottoms - The Academy were all cowards for not nominating Beast Mode, he's so damn funny in this.
Greta Lee and Tae Yoo as Nora and Hae Sung in Past Lives - John Maggaro as Arthur was also really good, but these are the stars.
Ji-Min Park as Freddie in Return to Seoul - Best performance of the year, I stand by it.
Mia Goth as Gabi in Infinity Pool - I'm a simple man, Mia Goth goes nuts in an exploitation movie, she's on the list.
Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer in Oppenheimer
Jeffrey Wright as Monk Ellison in American Fiction
Charles Melton as Joe Yoo in May December
Carey Mulligan as Felicia Montealegre Bernstein in Maestro - Bradley Cooper made this whole movie begging and screaming for an Oscar, and well, give it Mrs. Bernstein instead, please.
Mark Ruffalo as Duncan Wedderburn in Poor Things
Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal as Adam and Harry in All of Us Strangers
Sōya Kurokawa as Minato Mugino in Monster
Jason Mamoa as Dante Reyes in Fast X - Aquaman playing the Joker, it rules. He saves this movie.
Amie Donald and Jenna Davis as M3GAN in M3GAN - I don't think this movie is a masterpiece but M3GAN was the breakout star of 2023.
And Shah Rukh Khan for just being Shah Rukh Khan in two good movies.
Massively Inaccurate Prediction List of Best Movies of 2024:
If you check my lists from last year, I correctly named four of the fifteen movies that would eventually make my Top 15, which is actually not bad. (Also I had already seen Skinamarink by that point, so I cheated). Dune 2 is now the Hollow Knight: Silksong of movies, I'm sure it will come out one day.
15. Madame Web, dir. S.J. Clarkson - The trailer for this movie is so bizarre. It is a horror groundhog's day superhero movie. I think AIs are already running studios, because what the fuck is this? This could not make any sense to a human.
14. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, dir. George Miller
13. Alien: Romulus, dir. Fede Álvarez
12. Nosferatu, dir. Robert Eggers
11. Challengers, dir. Luca Guadagnino - One of several movies I saw trailers for in theaters only to learn they were going to be delayed into 2024 because of the strikes. Really annoying but life has gone on.
10. MaXXXine, dir. Ti West - Kinda weird news about this one since Mia Goth is being sued for allegedly kicking an extra in the head. Hmm.
9. Drive-Away Dolls, dir. Ethan Coen
8. The People's Joker, dir. Vera Drew - People might be hyped for the wrong Joker movie this year.
7. Megalopolis, dir. Francis Ford Coppola - Or maybe this is the Hollow Knight 2 of movies.
6. Blitz, dir. Steve McQueen
5. The Taste of Things, dir. Trần Anh Hùng
4. The Shrouds, dir. David Cronenberg - Can the Cronenberg Family pull off a hat trick on my Top 15s?
3. Love Lies Bleeding, dir. Rose Glass
2. Mickey 17, dir. Bong Joon-ho
1. Dune: Part 2, dir. Denis Villeneuve - HYYYYYYYYYYYPE!!!
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