2023 in Review: Not Necessarily The Best Films of 2023

 

Yes, you read that title correctly.

I make no claims that what follows are the absolutely very best films of the years just ended. And here's why...

As the title of this blog says, I am a PART TIME cinephile, not a full-time professional film critic. To date, I have seen 105 of the films released in 2023 - which is a lot, but less than half of what a professional critic would see. Then again, as a highly selective amateur critic, I focus on seeing as many high-quality films as I can squeeze into a schedule that allows for other passions and pastimes. So this list isn't totally eccentric; you'll see a number of overlaps with other critics' lists. 

Also... to qualify for my list, a film must have been in general release for the first time in the Chicago area between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023, inclusive. (Film festival screenings don't count.) This means some 2023 films will be considered for my 2024 list; those include Memory, All of Us Strangers, Origin, The Taste of Things, and The Zone of Interest. This also means that some films generally considered to be 2022 releases were actually considered for this year’s list, and a few of them made the Honorable Mention list.

Then there were the eligible films that I just didn't get to, usually due to missed or limited opportunities. (And by “missed or limited opportunities", I mean they haven’t yet played in suburban theaters. Or sometimes they have, but I ran out of  either the time or the inclination to see them.) For 2023, these include: Fallen Leaves, Godzilla Minus One, Napoleon, Ferrari, The Iron Claw, Dream Scenario, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, and American Fiction.

I'm not a particularly academic or intellectual critic, and I chose the films on this list largely based on how much I thought about them after seeing them - and how badly I wanted to see them again. (In fact, I've watched six of the ten films at least twice so far.) 

Having said all that, here are my ten favorite movies of 2023.(I've provided information on where you can stream each of them; "the usual platforms" means Apple, Amazon, Google Play and Vudu.)

10. Linoleum (director Colin West)

It's nearly impossible for me to tell you why you must watch Linoleum without giving away its stunning and entirely surprising ending.  It starts as a gentle comedy about a bumbling, 1960s dad (Jim Gaffigan) who hosts a TV science show for kids but doesn't seem to get much respect at home. One day, as he is walking home, a red sports car literally drops out of the sky and crashes to the road near him, its driver appearing to be a younger version of himself. Later, when he's on camera with his show, two stagehands appear to clear off the set pieces - one of whom sports a very 21st century hoodie and man bun. Those are our first clues that Linoleum is playing with notions of  space, time and the unreliability of human memory. This unprepossessing little film turns out to be a lot more than you expect, and those stunning final moments are absolutely worth the ride.

Linoleum is available to stream on Hulu with a subscription or to rent on the usual platforms.

9. A Compassionate Spy (director: Steve James)

This startling documentary proves an interesting companion piece to Oppenheimer, detailing how a young scientist working on the Manhattan Project (Ted Hall) shared classified nuclear secrets with Russia and evaded punishment.  Director Steve James (Hoop Dreams, Life Itself) combines dramatic recreations of episodes from Hall's life with narration by his feisty, unrepentant widow, Joan. This  approach may sound cheesy, but it actually works to underline the moral questions inevitably raised by Hall's actions. (He also shows footage of Ted himself confessing many years after the fact, but it's Joan's testimony that sticks in your memory.)

Nowhere do the dramatizations have more impact then in the passage where Joan tells us of her husband's tortured conscience and his plan to confess to his crimes in the hopes of saving Julius and Ethel Rosenberg from the electric chair. Joan didn't just talk him out of it; she forbade him to come forward in the strongest possible terms. This leads to a stunning dramatization of an actual moment from the Halls' life: on their way to a dinner party in upstate New York, they drive past Sing Sing prison at almost the precise moment that the Rosenbergs are executed there, a particularly haunting Mahler symphony playing on the car's radio as they pass.

Mrs. Hall is a challenging narrator, to the say the least. She's a proud old-school lefty who works forcefully to control the narrative around her husband's crime - and sometimes drifts into cloud cuckoo land. She brags about her activist daughter who "was a Maoist back when China was the good guys." ("And when precisely would that have been?" this reviewer wondered. recalling the devastating famine wrought by Mao's Great Leap Forward initiative, not to mention the chaos and violence that were instigated by his Cultural Revolution.)  I'm not sure who the good guys are in this particular story either. James doesn't answer that question for us, but gives us plenty to ponder instead.  It's a provocative and unsettling film.

A Compassionate Spy is available to stream on Hulu with a subscription or to rent on the usual platforms.

8. Maestro (director Bradley Cooper)

To fully appreciate Maestro, you'll need to put your expectations aside. If you're looking for an in-depth history of Leonard Bernstein's contribution to music, this isn't it. Rather than is an impressionistic portrait of his complicated marriage to Felicia Monteleagre (beautifully played by Carey Mulligan). By 'impressionistic,' I mean you're going to get fleeting but significant glimpses of their relationship at various stages. And by “complicated,” I’m alluding to Bernstein’s many extramarital affairs, mainly with men.

I completely understand why this approach to the life of Leonard Bernstein is frustrating and unsatisfying to many viewers. But if you can accept Maestro on its own terms, it's an admirably accomplished piece of filmmaking. Bradley Cooper who wrote and directed, in addition to playing Bernstein, captures the heady combination of passion, talent and ego that drove him. With Mulligan, he creates a compelling and nuanced portrait of a marriage that endured - and sometimes thrived - albeit largely through compromise and capitulation on Felicia's part. It would be trite to simply observe that marriage to a genius is tough, but Maestro puts some real teeth into that assertion. 

Maestro is available to stream only on Netflix with a subscription.

7. May December (director: Todd Haynes)

A friend tells me she can't bring herself to watch May December. I assume her reluctance stems from the fact that Julianne Moore's character, Gracie Yoo, is obviously based on Mary Kay LeTourneau, the infamous pedophile who seduced a 13 year old boy, eventually having his baby while serving time for child molestation - and ultimately marrying him. 

I understand her reluctance. But May December isn't lurid, nor does it take any predictable or expected approach to the incendiary subject matter. When we first meet Gracie, she has been married to Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) for twenty years, the two of them settled in a Savannah, Georgia McMansion with a daughter in college and twins about to graduate high school. 

Natalie Portman arrives, playing a particularly vacuous actress cast as Gracie in an upcoming film. She prattles on about the 'very complex, very human' story she's about to perform and assures Gracie she wants her to "feel seen and known.' But it's all so much bullshit. The very point of Todd Haynes' acerbic take on this story is that people and situations like these are ultimately unknowable. Tabloids, TV shows, 'true crime' movies - none of the pop culture venues by which we peer at deviant behavior really gets to the heart of it. Gracie, as cannily played by the always brilliant Moore is slippery, almost shape-shifting. One minute she's a sweet, soft spoken, cake-baking Georgia housewife, the next a critical, passive-aggressive mother telling her daughter, "You're so brave to show your arms in that dress." At night, in bed next to Joe, she piteously sobs like a child over the slightest disappointments of her day. Then she's up early the next morning, rifle in hand, stalking quail in the early morning fog. 

There are comic flourishes here and there, such as when Gracie stares ominously into her fridge and announces "I don't think we have enough hot dogs," while ominous music swells on the soundtrack.  Or the uncomfortable scene where Portman speaks to a group of high school students, in very inappropriate detail, about what it's like to shoot movie sex scenes.  But the non-ironic heart of the film lies in Joe's story line and Melton's fine, sensitive performance. Amidst all the evasive posturing by Moore’s and Portman's characters, it's Melton’s Joe who grapples with the truth of what happened between him and Gracie, and the disturbing possibility of his own exploitation and abuse.

Haynes (whose most brilliant prior work includes Safe, Far from Heaven and Carol) doesn't play to our expectations or make bold pronouncements about his characters' guilt or innocence, much as we might have wanted that. He plays around the edges of the story, teasing out small bits of information, but never giving us the full picture.  His approach is frustrating at times, but ultimately brilliant

May December is available to stream only on Netflix with a subscription.

6. Past Lives (director: Celine Song)

There is a quiet and gentle beauty to this film that accumulates tremendous emotional power as it proceeds.

Told in three distinct chapters, it follows the lives of two junior high school sweethearts in Korea, Hae-sung and Na-young, whose friendship is upended when the girl's family moves to Canada.  The two connect online as young adults (now played by Teo Yoo and Greta Lee), while she is studying playwriting in New York and he is serving in the Korean military; after some initial excitement, however, that connection eventually peters out. They finally reunite in person in New York where Na-young has changed her name to Nora and gotten married.

It's the accumulation of seemingly small but finely observed moments that make this film special. I can never forget the scene where they meet in Central Park for the first time in 20 years: his obvious nerves as he repeatedly tucks his shirt in and smooths his hair, her buoyant nonchalance as she greets him with a hug. It's a tiny bit of business, really. But the details were so perfectly calibrated and true that it brought tears to my eyes (and still does, even as I write this.)

Past Lives is about the transformation of a particular friendship over time, and much of it is framed in ways specific to Korean culture and the immigrant experience. But it also evokes universal truths about the ways we all evolve and change as we get older, and sometimes grow apart from people we once loved. As the characters themselves acknowledge in the final chapter, we are different people in different stages of our lives, but we can always remember and cherish who we used to be.  These observations seem almost trite when put in writing, but Song's lovely script and meticulously directed scenes give them power and resonance.

Past Lives is available to rent on the usual platforms.

5. Priscilla (director: Sofia Coppola)

Sofia Coppola is the cinematic poet of the loneliness in privileged lives, as she has demonstrated to perfection on films like Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette and Somewhere.  Who better, then, to adapt Priscilla Presley's memoir Elvis and Me?

Here's what I wrote in an earlier post about Priscilla - I can't say it better now:

“Here, as in her earlier film, Marie Antoinette, Coppola is specifically concerned with the outwardly pretty but inwardly desolate life of a (too young) woman trapped in the gilded cage of her husband's royalty. (Yes there's a difference between being the King of France and the King of Rock and Roll, but I think the analogy stands.) 

I can clearly recall an interview given by Priscilla Presley around the time she published her memoir of life with Elvis. She was quietly insistent that the 'real Elvis' was a sweet and decent man. Coppola's depiction of their relationship lines up with that assessment even as it refuses to back off from the uncomfortable creepiness of it all. It's startling when Elvis' friends invite a wide-eyed, guileless 14-year old to meet Elvis at their home, even weirder when Elvis arranges to install the still teen-aged Priscilla in Graceland by setting up his father as her temporary guardian. He controls and dictates everything from her wardrobe choices to her friendships and even a Catholic school education; he also feeds her pills to help her sleep. Yet he demurely postpones the consummation of their relationship until she reaches legal age, and it isn't clear whether this is evidence of his innate chivalry or the result of frank discussions with his legal team.

Yet Elvis, as impressively portrayed by Jacob Elordi, comes off as an essentially well-intentioned man who got too rich and too famous too fast. There is genuine affection and decency in his portrayal, as well as unreasonable anger and startling dictatorial tendencies. His performance makes it all too easy to understand how Priscilla fell under his spell. He's seductive and terrifying in equal measure. 

For her part, Callie Spaeny as Priscilla makes the slow transition from wide-eyed innocence to thoroughly exhausted 28-year-old with seamless authenticity. It's an exquisitely measured performance through which we can always see Elvis as Priscilla must have seen him.”

As of 1/15/24, Priscilla is not yet available for streaming rentals, but can be purchased on the usual platforms.

4. Killers of the Flower Moon (director: Martin Scorsese)

If you read my earlier review, you might be surprised to see this ranked so highly. But despite my wish that the Osage point of view might have been articulated in a bit more detail, Killers of the Flower Moon remains, indisputably, a masterfully crafted and powerful experience.

Martin Scorsese turned 81 late last year. As he's grown older, his films are not only getting longer, but also plumbing ever deeper levels of moral urgency. (A trend that will likely continue with his next announced project, a film about Jesus.). Killers is, in some respects, just one more impressive entry in Scorsese's tales of white men behaving badly, yet there is a more potent sense of tragedy here than in most of his earlier films.  Nowhere is the film's broken heart more stunningly personified than in the performance of Lily Gladstone, as the Osage woman who marries and is betrayed by a foolish white man (Leonardo Di Caprio).

Killers of the Flower Moon is available to stream on Apple with a subscription or to rent on Google Play.

3. Barbie (director: Greta Gerwig)

I saw Barbie twice in the theater, and my memories of both showings are pure, pink-tinted joy, much like what Margot Robbie radiates in the photo above. (She's singing the Indigo Girls' classic Closer to Fine, which is also one of my favorite songs to belt out while behind the wheel of a car.)

Beneath its shiny, silly surface, Greta Gerwig's film actually has a lot to say about being an American female in the years since Barbie became our favorite doll. It's no accident that women and girls flocked to this movie, making it the box office hit of the year. It's not just a movie, it's a tribal experience of sisterhood. We came together in those packed cinemas to share the laughter of recognition. We’ve all had a "Weird Barbie" with raggedly shorn hair and a shitty Magic Marker make-up job. We’ve all longed for a world like “Barbie World” where we could achieve anything we wanted with the full, loving support of other women. And we’ve all felt the exhaustion and futility of the culturally imposed need to be unfailingly 'nice' and 'likable' that is so perfectly expressed by America Ferrara in a now famous monologue. That we get all this validation in a very funny movie fueled by non-stop product placement feels more like a joke the Mattel company wasn't quite in on than it does a craven cash grab.

And kudos to Ryan Gosling for his fully committed, good natured portrayal of Ken as a handsome doofus whose whole reason for being is simply 'to beach.'  You could complain that the guys get short shrift in this film, but that gloriously daffy "I'm Just Ken" production number is actually one its best, most memorable scenes.

Barbie is available to stream on Max with a subscription or to rent on the usual platforms.

2. Oppenheimer (director: Christopher Nolan)

I'll be totally honest here. Oppenheimer is this high on my list because it's a three-hour movie that doesn't feel like a three-hour movie.  The first time I saw it, I was in a huge IMAX auditorium alongside a wheelchair-bound friend, which meant our seats were right up front, just below the enormous screen. I watched the whole three hours with my neck uncomfortably craned back and never minded. I was too engrossed in the drama, the stellar performances and the complicated moral questions around the deployment of the atomic bomb. And yes, I watched it a second time on streaming, and that second viewing went by as seemingly fast as the first. 

(My only complaint is that I got a little distracted by the number of well-known actors showing up in brief roles - hey it's Kenneth Branagh! Matthew Modine! Rami Malek! Jason Clarke! Gary Oldman!  I was very anxious for the final credits to confirm that I really had spotted British actor Tom Conti playing Albert Einstein - he hasn't been onscreen much in recent years.)

Seriously though… with Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan seamlessly integrates the many facets of a complex story about a complex man into a film both thrilling and intellectually stimulating. He is absolutely masterful when incorporating scientific information, giving us just enough for a high-level understanding of how the bomb works, but not so much that we’re baffled and constantly trying to keep up. Cillian Murphy’s portrayal of Robert Oppenheimer is mostly in his eyes. He's soft spoken and his body language is restrained, but you can see the curiosity or moral panic in his subtlest sweeping glances.

 Oppenheimer is available to rent on the usual platforms.

1. The Holdovers (director: Alexander Payne)

The Holdovers is not an unusual choice for the year's best film; it's topped a few other lists as well. But it feels like a specifically personal choice for me because so much of what I loved about it intersects with my own experience. In addition to being set in the the early 70s, the film is styled to deliberately evoke films of that decade, right down to old "R" rating header that precedes the story. Watching it made me feel like I was a teenager again, in the decade where my passion for film really exploded. It also features Paul Giamatti as a pedantic, fussbudgety Latin teacher which resonates with me - a straight-A student in Latin for all four years of high school. I actually understood many of the Latin phrases he used before he translated them.

Personal attachments aside, this is just a beautiful, sensitive, compassionate film about the unlikely alliances formed between wildly different people thrown together under uncomfortable circumstances. Paul Giamatti plays the cranky Latin instructor assigned to tend the handful of private academy students who are forced to remain at school over Christmas break. His charges eventually dwindle to just one, an insufferably snotty boy (Dominic Sessa ) whose apparent arrogance is a mask for deeper troubles. There is also the school cook, whose son was recently killed in Vietnam (Da'Vine Joy Randolph), grieving privately while brushing off too easily offered condolences.

Put all that in writing and it sounds hokey. But be assured, The Holdovers is no such thing. Nothing in the developing relationships between these characters ever feels forced or precious. Every one of them is recognizably, stubbornly human and real, and no conflict between them is ever resolved in a pat or predictable manner. This is a film I know I will come back to, time and time again, in the coming years just to bask in its humanity and intelligence. 

Alexander Payne, who previously - and memorably - directed Giamatti in Sideways, elicits an even greater performance from Giamatti this time. It's no exaggeration to call it a performance for the ages.  I dearly hope that he wins a well-deserved Oscar.

The Holdovers is available to stream on Peacock with a subscription. It can be purchased on the usual platforms, but rentals are not available as of 1/15/24.

Honorable Mention:  Showing Up, Earth Mama, The Quiet Girl,  BlackBerry, Anatomy of a Fall; A Thousand and One, R.M.N., Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret; Flora and Son.

2023 Nominees to the Academy of the Overrated: Asteroid City, Poor Things, Saltburn

2023 in Review: Unpopular Opinions

 

This is the first in a series of posts looking back at the the past year in film and television.

Back in 2013, I briefly reconsidered re-naming my blog What Movie Did THEY See? It was my reaction to finding myself diametrically opposed to most other film bloggers on the merits of so many films. (For example, I was - and remain - baffled by the generally very favorable response to Josh Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing. Most loved it, I hated it. Anyone re-watched that lately? Anybody own it on DVD?  I thought not. Thank you, I feel vindicated.)

A decade later, I'm having the same sense of WTF? with regard to one critical darling that I didn't care for. I'm equally baffled by the outpouring of gratuitous nastiness being slung at another film that I very much liked.

Director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite) never does things by halves. If there's grossness, provocation or discomfort to be had in a situation, he'll lay it on thick. Poor Things is no exception to that rule. Visually stunning, but relentlessly shocking, it'll either delight you or wear you out. Myself, I fall definitively into the category of the worn out.

Lanthimos' favorite actress, Emma Stone, plays Bella, the Frankenstein-like experiment of one Dr. Godwin Baxter (William Dafoe, made up to looks as if pieces of his face had been torn off and then sewn back in place - rather grotesque and never explained). Bella, while pregnant, killed herself by jumping into the Thames River. Baxter implants her unborn child's still-functioning brain into Bella's cranium and brings her back to life. We then get to watch Stone play a grown woman with the mind of an infant, and initially she has great fun with the role - unsteadily staggering around like a toddler, speaking unintelligibly, throwing food, and so forth. Then she starts to learn things - including, to her endless delight, how to masturbate - and it's no holds barred from that point on. Bella swiftly progresses from self-pleasuring to coupling with men to working in a brothel while sorting out what pleases her and what doesn't. She also travels, reads Emerson and gives money to the poor. But mostly she has a lot of sex.

It wasn't prudishness so much as weariness and sensory overload that had me squirming in my seat and even zoning out entirely from time to time.  The spectacular scenic design and fine performances aside... how much boinking does a person have to see to get the point? Every time Stone took her pants off, all I could think of was the plaudits and award nominations she'd be showered with for her 'brave' performance. It's right up there with Barry Keoghan's performance in Saltburn in terms of brazen envelope-pushing. Between that film and this one, I've now reached my 'outrageousness' quota for the year.

All through Poor Things, I kept wondering what it was like for Stone on the set, shooting these scenes day in and day out. Was she game for all this or did she have any doubts, any moments when she thought, "I  CAN'T do this scene."?  Was she ever coerced into doing a scene she wasn't comfortable with? What's bugging me is that, even though it's Stone giving that unabashedly raunchy performance, there's a male director pulling the strings.  They've worked together before; maybe he's doing things to help Stone feel safe and protected on set. Maybe not. 

And this is where I start thinking about Jane Fonda.

Fonda went on record recently about a French director she'd auditioned for in the '60s (but didn't name in the interview). She was horrified when he told her he'd need to hear what she sounded like when she climaxed in order to consider for the role. Fonda was clearly traumatized by this experience. She's also spoken, regretfully, about the fact that she had to get drunk in order to shoot the "stripping naked at zero gravity" scene that opens Barbarella, directed by her then-husband Roger Vadim. That's how terrified she was. 

Barbarella, like Bella Baxter on some level, was a sexual adventurer, but also a lewd punchline in her day. Stone's Bella, by contrast, is being celebrated for her lack of shame about her body and her determination to experience pleasure on her own terms.  In theory, that's a step forward for women, but the graphic depiction of it here feels more like a step backward to me.  For better or worse, I am a product of my own generation (a late-wave Baby Boomer who turns 64 this month), and I can't quite make this leap. Stone's portrayal of Bella, under the direction of  the ever-provocative Lanthimos, still feels a bit exploitative to me.

I'd be curious to hear what Stone says about her Poor Things experience when she gets into her 80s. I won't be alive then to hear what she says, but I'd still be curious.

With Maestro, the whole problem is the title. When you make a film about Leonard Bernstein and call it Maestro, audiences expect a full-bodied biopic highlighting Bernstein's musical accomplishments. But a better title might have been Lenny and Felicia: Portrait of a Marriage.

Because that's what Maestro really is - an artsy, impressionistic look at a difficult marriage between the bisexual Bernstein and Felicia Montealegre (impeccably portrayed by Carey Mulligan , who I dearly hope will win the Oscar). And by 'impressionistic," I mean it's a collage of pointed glimpses at the couple's life throughout various stages in their marriage. Admittedly, it omits or shortchanges some of Bernstein's male lovers and several of his best known musical works. West Side Story, for example, is mentioned twice in passing. Many of his compositions are there, but often unidentified and used as underscoring in scenes with dialogue. While it doesn't delve into the specifics of Bernstein's musical career too deeply, it does conjures up a heady vibe of the energy and passion that drove him. If you take the film on its own terms, and don't demand that it be something else, it's actually a very accomplished piece of filmmaking.

Of course, some cannot accept Maestro in its actual form. While it has a respectable 78% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, many prominent critics fall into the "Rotten" column. And those that do are shockingly dismissive of the film's writer/director/star Bradley Cooper. Even the enthusiastic endorsements Cooper has received from Bernstein's son and daughters don't appear to be helping.

Richard Brody, the New Yorker's pompous gasbag of a film critic, is not alone in deeming Cooper's recreation of Bernstein directing a Mahler symphony at Ely Cathedral  "a brazen, Oscar-striving money shot." Cooper, who has a well-documented lifelong passion for orchestral conducting, spent SIX YEARS honing his conducting skills for that scene, which is at least 100,000 times what Brody spent honing his snarky little swipe at Cooper's ambition. If Daniel Day-Lewis had spent six years learning to conduct Mahler for a film role, he'd have been elevated to sainthood. Just sayin'.

It's fair to say that Maestro misses a few opportunities. It would have been fun, for example, to see the infamous fund-raising soiree that he and Felicia hosted for the Black Panthers - the one so caustically described in Tom Wolfe's equally infamous essay Those Radical Chic Evenings.  But I firmly maintain that, if you're looking for an exhaustive, definitive portrait of Leonard Bernstein, you need a mini-series for that.  A two-hour movie can't come anywhere near getting that job done. Cooper chose a narrower focus, and within the boundaries he set for himself, he did a more than admirable job.