List of 2023
Not everything I've seen for the year but everything I think deserves to be noted, for good or bad. More mainstream than I'd like but life happens. I do try note films I've seen but not newly released in 2023, and why I thought them worth talking about.
34. Suzume - Makoto Shinkai continues to ape Miyazaki's images, characters, and concepts, everything from Spirited Away (protagonist's beloved cursed into another form, if not pigs then a nursery chair) to Howl's Moving Castle (portals that open into different locations or time periods), troweling rough edges smooth with a thick serving of corn syrup. Emotionally stunted work, fixated on fantasy encounters between boy and girl at the expense of all else. Must be sentenced to wandering the streets tolling a bell and crying 'Unclean! Unclean!'
33. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - everyone talks about how revolutionary it is to digitally animate on 2s (12 drawings or 'frames' per second) as opposed to the standard-issue 1s (24 frames per second)-- in effect moving away from the smooth and photorealistic-- when the Japanese have been doing this all along, largely by hand and in far better films. Miles Morales is a groundbreaking character-- at least on the comic book page-- but his film incarnation feels too wholesome, like a Disney princess in drag (mind you I'd welcome Disney in drag, just lose the 2% lowfat milk).
32. The Flash - Better than expected, mostly for the melancholic presence of Michael Keaton and his air of What Might Have Been. Otherwise disposable.
31. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny - Another I liked more for the what might have been than what is -- if you liked Indy, this is a passable capstone; if you like crisp inventive action sequences, you miss the Spielberg touch.
30. Oppenheimer - Historical testimony, biographical study, investigative noir; drop in a blender and hit 'puree.' Christopher Nolan is consistent-- when it comes to the money shot (a leap across an abyss, a stage trick involving magic cabinets, the detonating of the first-ever nuclear fission device) he cuts away to a different angle. A mess, and not in a good way.
29. Barbie - The first twenty minutes is a witty parody of Barbie and her neon pink mythos; the remaining runtime is a toothless satire on male entitlement and corporate mismanagement, a neat-as-any demonstration of The Golden Rule: he who makes the gold (in this case toy manufacturing giant Mattel, who produced) makes the rules.
28. Napoleon - More sumptuous and expensive-looking than genuinely elegant, the movie emphasizes Napoleon the lovestruck buffoon over the brilliant strategist and innovative statesman, which leads one to ask: couldn't they depict the strategist and leader and then demonstrate why he's still a buffoon? Nowhere near as passionate or prodigiously creative as Abel Gance's 1927 classic.
27. Talk to Me - Danny and Michael Philippou's visually freewheeling debut features a terrific premise inspired I presume by W.W. Jacobs' classic tale 'The Monkey's Paw' -- in this case an embalmed hand that helps one communicate with the dead. The second half flags not a little, partly because the brothers need to manipulate the characters into a contrived resolution, but interesting sequences still abound and the concluding image is a corker.
26. Saltburn - as far as eat-the-rich films go not bad, with Barry Keoghan and Rosamund Pike the standouts in an excellent cast, but the genre includes some of the greatest most ferocious satires in all of cinema (Purple Noon, Teorema, Boudu Saved From Drowning, Rules of the Game) and this just isn't extraordinary enough to rank.
25. Anatomy of a Fall - Justine Triet's legal drama with the help of Sandra Huller assembles the portrait of a marriage that has slid sideways, throws enough uncertainty into the process that like a juror you're not sure what verdict to deliver. Dry visual style but the performances and coy careful script make it work.23. Godzilla Minus One - Back and badder than ever, only the humans swarming at its feet are depicted with more care than usual. Arguably the best since Hideaki Anno's majestic 2016 incarnation, Gareth Edwards's coyer 2014 version, and the still unmatched 1954 original. Not a fan, alas, of the have-your-cake-and-eat-it ending.
22. Meg 2: The Trench - The first hour is trapped underwater and dimly lit; when the movie surfaces and sets foot on dry land it morphs into goofy fun, a cross between Jurassic Park and Free Fire. On the whole I prefer this kaiju production, warts and all.
21. The Creator - Derivative (of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Blade Runner, and Platoon) and illogical (Why develop a floating assault platform so vast anyone can take a potshot? And why build a counterweapon that has to take years to grow into full power?) but the core narrative-- of a haunted man's developing affection for a foundling child-- is effective.
20. The Exorcist Believer - David Gordon Green doing to The Exorcist what he did to Halloween, picking up a well-loved horror classic and subverting its assumptions. If you're not a fan of the William Friedkin original (I'm not) this is for you. Easily the best of the franchise since Exorcist 2: The Heretic.
19. American Fiction - Cord Jefferson's directorial debut is yet another well-written visually flat comedy (see Alexander Payne), this time a rueful sideways glance at the impossible often contradictory forces that pull at the modern African-American writer.
18. El Conde - Pinochet has faked his death and is living in an isolated farm. The metaphor of dictator as literal bloodsucker is perhaps too obvious for the arthouse treatment but still we have Pablo Larrain's take and it has its moments, most notably involving a strikingly beautiful virgin nun named Carmen (Paula Lucshinger).
17. The Zone of Interest - Jonathan Glazer's fanatically controlled museum piece is a bit too much of a museum piece; a little too lifeless, a little too bloodless a lot sanitized. Still, as academic exercises go, it's very well done.
16. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 - James Gunn's darkest entry of the franchise, yet still manages to be laugh out loud funny. Gunn has a gift for depicting damaged characters, on full display here.
15. Silent Night - Man loses his son and his voice, takes a year to prepare for payback. Grimmer less stylish John Woo nevertheless retains his spark.
14. The Killer - David Fincher at his more elliptical, more a sterile exercise of style and stylish performances than anything. Not quite Jean-Pierre Melville, master of the genre, but not bad either.
13. The Holdovers - Alexander Payne and Paul Giamatti's latest isn't visually distinctive but does evoke lowkey emotional magic, delivers the occasional sting.
12. Past Lives - Celine Song's debut feature is quiet but graceful; the finale, an extended tracking shot along an East Village sidewalk, unexpectedly potent.
11. Infinity Pool - Brandon Cronenberg eschews his father's clean pornographic style to do a more baroque version of John Frankenheimer's Seconds, the true source of horror less the fleshy onscreen mutilations and more Mia Goth's sadomasochistic hold over Alexander Skarsgard.
10. Asteroid City - Wes Anderson doesn't indulge in the usual film bro cliches-- guns and assassins and fast cars-- but takes off in a trajectory all his own. The immersion in '50s Space Age paraphernalia makes this a perfect double feature with Richard Linklater's Apollo 10 1/2
9. May December - Todd Haynes' unsettling look at tabloid narratives (in this case the Mary Kay Letourneau story) and the secrets they may or may not contain.
8. Ferrari - Michael Mann's latest is a stripped-down speed machine with huge wheels and even bigger engine, black maw of a mouth, hull painted a gleaming rosso cora; inside is a lot of roar and not much creature comfort, not even an ashtray.
7. Poor Things - Yorgos Lanthimos' most visually gorgeous work yet, a combination of Victorian England, Antonio Gaudi, and either Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam depending on what phase of their career you're looking at. Not perhaps as sophisticated yet deeply felt as James Whale's two Frankenstein films-- arguably the definitive onscreen treatment of Mary Shelley's classic novel-- but good enough.
6. Evil Does Not Exist - Think Local Hero meets Dersu Uzala, though Ryusuke Hamaguchi's film is both more tonally delicate and more startlingly funny than such a combination might suggest; if anything Hamaguchi's humor is dryer than Forsyth's, and so lightly played you can miss the laughs altogether.
But beware; some bushes hide a poisoned spine, some fairy tales a secret jolt of horror. Arguably my favorite of the genre last year.
5. Master Gardener - not so much another of Paul Schrader's God's Lonely Man narratives as a continuation: what happens after a Schrader protagonist finds redemption? With incantatory passages on flowers casting a botanical spell, and sneaky good work by Joel Edgerton, Quintessa Swindell, and Sigourney Weaver-- one of the most underrated films of the year (premiered 2022, released in the USA 2023).
3. Essential Truths of the Lake - Lav Diaz's first-ever prequel follows the early adventures of Hermes Papauran, the 'Philippines' greatest investigator'-- basically a detective with a philosophical bent and a gift for guilt-wracked obsessive brooding. He never lets go and neither does Diaz, in this latest meditation on the crimes of the Marcos dictatorship.
2. Killers of the Flower Moon - less a depiction of the Native American victims (which I suspect Scorsese didn't want to presume to speak for) than a blackly comic takedown of the thugs that preyed on them. At its emotional heart: the strange strangely moving Jesus-Judas relationship between Ernest Burkhart (a deftly dimwitted Leonardo DiCaprio) and his Osage wife Mollie (a nicely understated Lily Gladstone).
1. The Boy and the Heron - perhaps Miyazaki's final film, done with economy and passion and a surfeit of fabulous imagery.
Films I found interesting:
Dust Devil (1992) - Richard Stanley's hallucinatory second feature-- about a serial killer demon, the woman he's fated to meet, and the Namibian police officer hunting him-- seems less affected by supernatural forces than by heat haze and highway hypnosis. Fascinatingly unhinged.
Experiment Perilous (1944) - Jacques Tourneur's take on George Cukor's Gaslight is hobbled by a smaller budget and an ostensibly less-than-stellar cast but does feature Tourneur's inimitably insinuating visual style and a simmering pas de deux between George Brent and twinkle-eyed Paul Lukas.
The Suspect (1944) - Robert Siodmak's camera follows Charles Laughton's spiraling descent into mayhem and murder in this sumptuously produced Edwardian noir.
The Furies (1950) - Walter Huston as a carnivorous King Lear and Barbara Stanwyck as his libidinous Cordelia dominate this larger-than-life psychodrama set against the backdrop of Anthony Mann's West-- a diorama of vast plains and craggy heights that reflect the characters' emotional landscape.
Henry Fool (1997) - where Hal Hartley literally gives the Devil his due. The film follows the outlines of the Faust legend, with the eponymous character (Thomas Jay Ryan) enabling trash collector Simon Grim (James Urbaniak) to realize his potential as a literary celebrity-- and then things get a little weird. Offbeat, off-kilter, off the radar in every sense, one of the better films of the late 90s.
Could not with much regret keep up with the always vital Filipino independent filmmaking scene-- that's my fault-- but thanks to a recent project on Filipino-Asian collaborations have been been able to catch the following:
Dawn of Freedom (1944) - Yutaka Abe and Gerardo de Leon's handsomely produced propaganda film wields Manila like a gigantic studio set, yet details the tentatively developing relationship between Filipinos and their Japanese occupiers with surprising delicacy.
Shiniuma (Dead Horse, 2016) - Brillante Mendoza's haiku depicting an undocumented Filipino worker's life in Hokkaido, his capture by immigrant officers, and his eventual Manila homecoming. With an indelible performance by Lou Veloso.
Gensan Punch - Brillante Mendoza's biopic of 'Nao' Tsuchiyama depicts a one-legged boxing champion full of grit and spirit and a startling sweetness.
A Hard Day - Law Fajardo's remake of the Kim Seong-hun original, about a corrupt cop trying to fix his fractured life, is a fascinating study on what can translate from Korean to Filipino setting in an action movie, and what can't.
Kintsugi - Law Fajardo's romance between a Filipino immigrant worker and the daughter of his Japanese boss is both a showcase for the charms of Saga prefecture (and its renowned ceramicware) and a quietly poignant romance.
Imbisibol (Invisible) - arguably Fajardo's best work, from a one-act play by Herlyn Alegre, an observant and ultimately devastating look at Filipino migrants, documented and undocumented, in bleak wintertime Japan.
First published in Businessworld 1.5.24
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