2023 in Movies, So Far

Strong Awards Contenders:

• Past Lives

  • Review: This is a brilliant movie whose beauty and impact lies in its ability to deliver death to the heart by way of a thousand papercuts over its brief runtime. It would pair excellently with either Moonlight or David Lean’s Brief Encounter as stories that can point to societal phenomena like immigration, sexual identity, race, class, or gender roles but through an entirely personal lens. Director Celine Song, with minimal visual flourish, perfectly articulates longing and creates a feeling of bated breath for resolution that we know will either never come or conclude with melancholy. I’ve read thoughtful criticism of this film regarding how its characters are meant to conform to the story and its themes rather than fully existing as people, but I feel what Song achieves is too powerful to discount.

  • Contending In: Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay, maybe acting or directing.

• Killers of the Flower Moon

  • Review: Scorsese’s restrained (yet perfect) style of late is a perfect match for this film’s topical, grim material by being unflinching yet de-stylized in its depictions of violence and evil permeating a community. The folksy and religious platitudes masking utter contempt and suspicion remind me of The Night of the Hunter, and a comparison to that masterpiece is both complimentary and apt. The performances in this sprawling yet grounded crime tale are sublime across the board, with our villains toggling between subtle nuance and near-cartoonish buffoonery without a hitch. It’s spectacular, riveting, infuriating, and ultimately moving and unique among Scorsese’s oeuvre despite bearing his unmistakable signatures.

  • Contending In: An awful lot I imagine, but it’ll be hard-pressed to win.

• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

  • Review: 5 years after Into the Spider-Verse blew away critics, introduced a game-resetting animation style and created something unique in a well-worn genre, its sequel is here. The movie is non-stop in every sense, featuring an overwhelming amount of detail and artistry in every frame, a novel’s worth of dialogue delivered at a rapid pace, and the freshest presentation of a superhero story you’ll see done today. And yet, it derives its impact in how it’s different from other superhero movies, how it understands and attempts to defy the rules of superhero movies and so is ultimately limited as a piece of art, but still more than worth your time.

  • Contending In: Best Animated Feature, where the race is probably already over.

• Oppenheimer

  • Review: I have already written about one of this year’s masterpieces, but I’m happy to report that nearly 3 months later, Nolan’s magnum opus (and second-best behind Dunkirk) still hasn’t left my mind. Nor has Cillian Murphy’s fantastic performance complete with intricacy, specificity, and precision that all lends itself to the film’s own mixed emotions on the father of the Atom Bomb. I can’t wait to see what else joins this film as the year’s best, but it’s not going anywhere.

  • Contending In: It’s probably a better question of what this movie ISN’T contending in, but the answer there is likely some acting and Best Original Song unless I really missed something.

• Barbie

  • Review: I also covered my feelings on Barbie extensively earlier this year, but time and thought has revealed more of the film’s shortcomings in what it meant to say about everything that it sharply observed (is it better to be a Barbie or not? Was Barbie a “good thing for women” or not?) as well as its plot contrivances and plotting in general. However, it was and remains a poppy blast that’s well-crafted from top to bottom and has a perfect understanding of its winking tone – the signature blockbuster of the year to be sure.

  • Contending In: A decent amount, but the number of nominations will clue us in to this movie’s chances of big success.

Should Be Contenders:

• John Wick: Chapter 4

  • Review: This series continues to push the envelope, not in its violence, but in how bombastic it can be while still delivering enough of the goods to be taken seriously. In both regards, this baby is cranked to 11. This 3-hour-long incendiary shotgun blast rips from films as highly regarded as Lawrence of Arabia in its opening minutes and cult classic The Warriors in its closing hour, every performer seems to have gotten a different memo when it comes to their non-action scenes, but it all works. Director Chad Stahelski crafts set pieces with overwhelming style and every lightning-fast moved is choreographed within an inch of its life to deliver action spectacle of such high purity that anything else becomes weak product.

  • Should Contend In: Production Design – every wall that gets blown to bits by gunfire is a designed set. And those sets are gorgeous.

• Asteroid City

  • Review: Even if you’re not huge into Wes Anderson, you’ll find his latest approachable, if (intentionally) a dry and deadpan. Wes cooks up a wonderful metaphor for how we all kinda lost it during COVID lockdown and the futility of military-bound jingoism, a loving representation of 50’s cowboy and sci-fi culture, and a vision of an array of people stuck in the middle of nowhere after witnessing something profound. But that’s just the story within the story; zooming out, this is also about the nobility of the artistic pursuit that essentially comes down to one exchange between actor and director: “I don’t understand it.” “That doesn't matter, keep telling the story.”

  • Should Contend In: Screenplay.

• Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

  • Review: Growing up as a boy, I wasn’t exposed to Judy Blume’s beloved and enduring 1970 novel about a preteen girl’s experience attempting to find friends and self-identity amidst significant change. I’m very glad I was exposed to this movie, which features delightful performances from its child and adult actors and tackles the life of an 11-year-old, complete with frustration, confusion and first menstruation – something she longs for and dreads all at once. Director Kelly Fremon Craig deals with all these topics frankly, warmly, and delicately, but the real miracle she pulls off is making the experience of Margaret’s mom as full of confusion as Margaret’s; growing up never stops.

  • Should Contend In: Screenplay, Best Supporting Actress (McAdams)

• Showing Up

  • Review: I’m just beginning to approach the films of indie stalwart and evergreen cinephile favorite Kelly Reichardt and so only have so much to say about her work, but from what I’ve seen so far, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better expresser of humanity. The idea of expression and artistic process is key to this low-stakes story, which revolves around an artist who works part-time at an artistic community/school where she is (at least in her own mind) far more talented than everyone else, but she pays rent to an artist who is far superior, whatever that means. Michelle Williams is terrific as the frustrating and frustrated Lizzy whose showcase is getting closer by the minute despite mounting interpersonal obstacles and trouble with her cat – seriously, it’s quite a grounded story.

  • Should Contend In: Screenplay, Best Actress, Best Editing

• Blackberry

  • Review: We’ve been blessed (cursed?) with a bevy of true-life stories about late-wave capitalism corporate risers – and some fallers – that have been mostly straight-to-streaming films or miniseries; I’d argue that only The Dropout really broke out. This film feels like both the perfect complement to those stories and the perfect answer to them; it’s a story of goofballs without too much ambition pushed forward by a near-sociopathic success-craver. It’s a bit of a corporate crime story, a bit of a comedy (there’s a very light tone here), a bit some men in suits screaming at each other (a way into my good graces) but is ultimately a story of outsiders who never had a chance.

  • Should Contend In: Best Supporting Actor

Solid Recommendations:

• How to Blow Up a Pipeline

  • This low-budget indie was an early-year festival noisemaker that is sitting on Hulu! The films on this list that have anything to say are speaking about timeless ideas as told through moments in the past, or pure fiction, or with a modern framing and sensibility but this is a film that is speaking about the here and now. Daniel Goldhaber has crafted a taut and fast-paced tale of a group of radicalized misfits who are taking drastic action because they feel they have no other choice. I appreciated the naturalism in the performances and filmmaking, but I didn’t feel the level of sear or tension that I wanted to; the film doesn’t do much to interrogate the moral compass of our ecoterrorists, but the frankness and urgency in every aspect of this story is too fresh and sharp to ignore.

• Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

  • I was surprised by the warm word of mouth I was seeing about this movie online, and now that I’ve seen it consider me a supporter! There’s some inconsistency in pacing and tone, and the climax doesn’t quite feel earned or of a piece with the rest of the story, but the lead performances from Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez meet the comedic bent of the story in such winning fashion it’s impossible to ignore. If you’re like me and couldn’t really point to the difference between a cleric or a paladin, and don’t *really* care about the lore when the characters are just fun to be with, I’ve got a secret for you: the filmmakers feel the same way, and it works great.

• Creed III

  • Michael B. Jordan hasn’t just become the new face of the Rocky franchise, but with his debut as director, he’s fully taken it over. The first film in the series to not feature the Italian Stallion transitions the focus solely to Adonis and a ghost of his dark past, or rather what his life could have been, coming back to haunt him. Jordan effectively captures the relationships and tensions between his characters behind the camera and communicates a man trying to break away from the circumstances of his past quite well for a pop vehicle, but it’s controversial actor Jonathan Majors who gives the best performance here. Of course, everything must be settled in the ring. There, Jordan makes bold directorial choices that I certainly haven’t seen in a boxing movie before – a little too literal for my taste, but I applaud him all the same.

• Air

  • A finely crafted, mildly intriguing, see-it-coming-from-a-mile-away movie that is the exact kind of mid-level stuff I love to consume. Damon and Davis are excellent, and the film is oddly aware of its contradictions in celebrating the underdog story of a massively wealthy corporation whose product is built in sweatshops by using to Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” not once, but twice. However, despite acknowledging this contradiction, the film isn’t really interested in offering any sort of perspective; no matter what NIKE is or means, its most dedicated employees are men in self-acknowledged middle-age crises just trying to do something meaningful. And you know what? I enjoyed it and found myself caught up in the stakes of landing the big deal.

Off The Beaten Path (and both on Hulu!):

• Rye Lane

  • This charming and fresh romcom feels custom-made for anyone who thinks that these movies all feel the same, featuring assuredly bold filmmaking set in the hip urban world of Brixton. The film’s eccentric visual flair does threaten to overshadow the sweet burgeoning relationship at its center but is uniquely conceived. Of course, this film lives and dies by its lead performances and relative newcomers Vivian Oparah and David Jonsson (Gus from Industry) deliver the goods in this story about two people who are trying to help each other get over and one-up their exes; you can guess what happens along the way. What you can’t guess is who pops up as the sole proprietor of a burrito joint called “Love Guactually”; this film is dripping with wit.

• Sanctuary

  • This film’s similarities with Rye Lane end with the fact that its successes and failures rest on the back of the two leads’ performances, as this contained chamber piece is the story of a vengeful dominatrix out to get a piece of her client’s lucrative new salary. The psychological warfare and verbal sparring that Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott wage on each other is gripping, but you can feel the strain to justify a feature runtime. The movie is a twisty fun time, full of paranoia, perversion, and reality-questioning mind games, but I’m mixed on director Zachary Wigon’s visual style. The production is lovely, with bold colors exaggerating every aspect of the set and heightening the charged encounters, but the camera is doing a LOT and I found myself taken out of it. Substance should be complemented by and inform the style, not the other way around.

Well, I Watched It:

• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

  • I have very little positive to say about this film, and not a ton negative either; it doesn’t take any chances, which is maybe the worst thing a film can do. Every interesting idea lurking around the margins, such as Nazi remnants in the CIA re-surfacing to match wits with our beloved Dr. Jones or the presence of neo-Nazis is glossed over in favor of extended and completely forgettable and empty action sequences that are special effects bonanzas rather than inventive set pieces. I know there are obvious limitations that Harrison Ford’s age present, but with a different approach we could’ve had something very smart, potentially moving, and still thrilling on our hands – director James Mangold (Logan, Ford V Ferrari) was clearly playing steward for the spend-heavy but risk-averse suits on this one. Raiders of the Lost Ark is maybe my favorite blockbuster ever, and it’s a shame to see Indy go out like this.

• Red, White, and Royal Blue

  • Look, sometimes your wife reads a cute romcom novel and then wants to see the straight-to-streaming adaptation of it. This Amazon product has its intentions in good places, but no real sense of identity. It wants to exist as both a fantasy-bound star-crossed-lovers tale of modern Royals but also wants to address contemporary issues. The conflict doesn’t end there – it features what it seems to think is dirty dialogue, but then follows it with restrained and tasteful depictions of sex. The fact that one character’s mother is a Democratic woman from Texas who is America’s President (and yet still needs to “turn Texas Blue”) isn’t the most out of touch idea; that would be an election actually being decided on Election Night.

• The Machine

  • Look, sometimes your friends like Bert Kresicher and want a brightly colored and action-filled distraction featuring Bert Kresicher. There’s more than the minimum amount of thought in the action choreography (if you want to see how influential John Wick is, you can look no further than this film) and the lighting suggests some degree of competence in the filmmaking, but bizarre editing and a pretty low jokes attempted/jokes landing ratio holds this one back for me. You might not have even heard of it until now.

• Ladybug and Cat Noir: The Movie

  • Look, sometimes your 4-year-old nephew needs a brightly colored and action-filled distraction. Based on his confusion around why our leads were dancing in the sky, he’s not quite ready for abstract musical numbers, but he was ready for the two leads to be superheroes and could grasp their abilities and motivations, so he’ll be alright. I was quite impressed with the animation style, the composition of some of the anime-influenced action, and the fidelity to its Parisian setting by incorporating known landmarks directly into the story. If your young one needs something, I’m sure there’s worse, but you will struggle to invest in a story you’ve seen before.

The Remaining Watchlist:

Anatomy of a Fall, The Zone of Interest, Priscilla, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I, May December, Fair Play, Maestro, Reality, The Killer, Rustin, Saltburn, Poor Things, American Fiction, The Bikeriders, The Holdovers, The Taste of Things