What a year it has been. I really feel like I need a long break. They said Covid was over, but it was not. It’s still here and it’s still not nice. Fuck Covid! But I guess one’s treatable Covid pales in comparison to whole countries ravaged by war, which seems to be the evil intent of many of those in power at the moment. A total bunch of wankers, the lot of them. Alas, this is not a political blog. I’ll let my film reviews do the talking instead.

The year in film has been an interesting one. It seems the trend of a successful return to the cinema screens has continued this year. Following last year’s Avatar 2 (haven’t seen it, probably never will), Top Gun 2 and Jurassic Park…I want to say 6, a further two movies hit beyond the US$1 billion worldwide grossing mark in 2023. Those were Barbie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Mario!), with Oppenheimer not far away. But it must be remarked that the simultaneous release known as the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon (yes, it is now in the dictionary) was the fourth-biggest Box Office grossing weekend of all time. For a change, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was not the usual record-breaking success story, with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 the only strong performer, and Ant-Man and the Wasp:…I want to say Quadrophenia,and The Marvels receiving mixed reviews and disappointing Box Office returns. On the other hand, in a second instalment set in the animated Spider-Verse (sigh), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse hit the highs. Fast X (no, not another brain fart name-change by super-twat Elon Musk) accelerated the never-ending Fast and Furious franchise with massive success, and the Cruise-meister continued his trend towards a massively profitable, action-filled period as a sexagenarian (come on, it means someone who’s in their 60s!) with Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.

I saw a few more movies than I did last year, mainly due to a renewed vigour in attending the cinema and not always relying on the increasingly crap options outlaid by streaming services. I was always certain that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was going to be so overblown before its release and then disappointing when it was, so much so that I approached it with very little expectation and in the end, I thought it was a worthy action-packed watch. A much better, and totally unexpected, action-adventure fantasy was Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves, which was rollicking, clever and funny. Ben Affleck’s Air, the story of how Michael Jordan’s basketball shoe became a phenomenon, was a decent and entertaining sorta-biopic, with Matt Damon as usual delivering the goods. Another true story, Dumb Money, which was based on the r/WallStreetBets and GameStop short squeeze saga from a few years back, was an hilarious, feel-good gem, despite the odd flaw here and there.

Down Under, veteran Rolf de Heer delivered an intriguing but extremely bizarre story set in a grim and violent dystopia with The Survival of Kindness, showcasing a memorable first-time central performance by Mwajemi Hussein. Despite much being made of it before it even came out, likely due to the artificial intelligence storyline, M3GAN was not near as clever as it thought it was. In fact, it was very generic in its sci-fi horror tropes, but then again, it was probably not a movie aimed at people like me and I am totally fine if other people really liked it. Finally, I must share my thoughts on the latest entry into the Wes Andersonian canon, Asteroid City – typical in its rolling list of stars, typical in its embrace of playful sophistry and quirk, and typical in its style and exquisite attention to detail. However, the story for me was a little too far up its own hole in that it was clearly a homage to the people that work in film and theatre. Which is fine but the specific people Anderson and Roman Coppola are referring to are people like themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I very much enjoyed the film and it is possibly the best ‘single set’-based film he has created thus far but overall, it doesn’t come up to the standards of his other films.

In addition to the above, I also caught up with some releases from late 2022 throughout the year and these included: The Wonder (a solid, eerie psychological drama set in Ireland at the time of the Great Famine); Emily (an intriguing but inevitably boring loosely biographical story about Emily Brontë); EO (a brilliant companion piece to Bresson’s Au Hasard Balthazar that has the power to make you very sad and very angry); The Woman King (a quality action film set in West Africa in the 1820s with a kick-ass female-led cast that delivers a lot on what it promises); Prey (a surprisingly good action film that acts as a weird but worthy prequel to the Predator franchise, with an interesting setting amongst Native Americans in the 18^th Century); Crimes of the Future (Cronenberg Senior returns to his body horror highs with a film that works sometimes, but then really doesn’t); Men (Alex Garland takes his hand to the broadening subgenre of folk horror with mixed, and often gross and muddled, results); and Amsterdam (an overlong, over-bloated, massively pretentious, poorly-acted, tone-deaf, nonsense of a so-called quirky drama by that guy who never really knows how to make a good film despite getting so many A-list actors to star, David O. Russell).

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But let us move to the crème de la crème list, my top 10 films of 2023 ordered by month of release:

The Fabelmans (Steven Spielberg) – released in January 2023, running time: 151 minutes

I certainly went through the emotions with Spielberg’s latest. It felt like typical Spielberg-mush at times, but then it surprised me and went in different directions. At the end, I felt enriched by it, almost enchanted by it. He really has a way with creating magical cinematic moments and even my most cynical impulses were won over by his overall tendency to present the best sides of people. Michelle Williams and Paul Dano are sublime as the fifties Mid-West Jewish parents of a budding filmmaker, designed on a young Spielberg. There are some great supporting performances and cameos too. It is a film that is worth the 2 and a half hours for sure.

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Enys Men (Mark Jenkin) – released in January 2023, running time: 91 minutes

Following up on his excellent low-budget film from a few years ago, Bait, Mark Jenkin stays in his home county of Cornwall for another modestly-made, authentic-seeking gem. Made during the pandemic on a closed-set on an island off the southwest coast of England, Jenkin opts for folk and psychological horror this time around. Like Bait, the dialogue and action are sparse, but the meaning and symbolism of the material are rich. Mary Woodvine and Mark Rowe play their parts to stunning effect, and the style and setting is so perfectly on the money. It has The Wicker Man vibes, and probably owes some kudos to Ben Wheatley but it is mostly its own thing and, despite the horror label, I would opine that it is more spiritually-inviting than scare tactic-repellent.

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Holy Spider (Ali Abbasi) – released in January 2023, running time: 117 minutes

There is a whole big story behind this top-quality Iranian-based, European-funded crime thriller that is as disturbing as the content of the film. It is based on the true story of a serial killer who murdered 16 female sex workers on the streets of Mashhad at the start of the millennium. The film adds a fictional aspect in the guise of a female journalist who tracks down the killer despite the authorities’ frequent threats towards her. Director Abbasi, himself an Iranian exile, filmed in neighbouring Jordan because it could never have been made in his home country. The film focuses on misogyny and it overtly criticises the country’s puritanical justice system. Mehdi Bajestani as the deeply evil, family man serial killer is extraordinary, and Zar Amir Ebrahimi as the relentless heroine is equally brilliant – it is just so depressing to hear that both actors’ lives have been in danger ever since the movie was released.

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Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt) – released in April 2023, running time: 108 minutes

Simple. Understated. Funny. Sad. Absorbing. Vintage Reichardt! Somehow, Showing Up didn’t get quite as many accolades as her previous films, but maybe that was as intended. Then again, it does have André 3000 from Outkast in a very small background role, but you wouldn’t even notice that it’s him to be honest. Michelle Williams, brilliant as always, empathetically plays a meek sculptor who works for her mum at the Oregon College of Art and Craft. There is no plot as such, just a culmination of low-key events that lead to the main event of an exhibition of the sculptor’s material that is attended by her family, her colleagues, and other interested arty folk. It speaks to the power of Reichardt’s direction that you as a viewer gets drawn into the most unassuming things e.g. the sculptor’s charmingly nice neighbour/landlady consistently fails to fix her hot water despite being asked nicely several times – I couldn’t help but be quite bothered by the fact that it never gets fixed!

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Beau is Afraid (Ari Aster) – released in April 2023, running time: 179 minutes

I have struggled with Aster’s previous two films. Here is a young director so determined to reach into the zeitgeist with gratuitous displays of shock, awe and horror, that he is unable to contain himself when he gets behind the camera. In short, it all feels so forced. However, Beau is Afraid is so forced upon the viewer that it becomes something more than the sum of its parts. It is a surreal Kafkaesque odyssey that clocks in at just under 3 hours, and be warned: it can be extremely hard work at times. But Joaquin Phoenix is a speciality actor that can carry you through even the most tedious moments. He is so earnest in his execution of acting, and yet he can be so unintentionally hilarious. And that is what makes this film stand out for me. It is funny on a whole new level, and it also seems to be in control of its own destiny.

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Master Gardener (Paul Schrader) – released in May 2023, running time: 111 minutes

For someone who has consistently wrote or directed films over the past 6 decades, Paul Schrader shows no signs of losing energy – this is evident in his many strong statements against wokeism and cancel culture in recent years (I don’t fully agree with him on those). You would be forgiven for expecting this passion to break out in his latest film, but Master Gardener is a deftly controlled and restrained piece about a reforming criminal with Nazi tattoos establishing himself as an exemplary horticulturist for a rich estate owner. Joel Edgerton is pitch perfect in the lead role, and Devonté Hynes’ score is delectably suited to an atmosphere of consciously-contained sexual and violent tension amidst a botanical garden of quaintness.

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Barbie (Greta Gerwig) – released in July 2023, running time: 114 minutes

Adapting a plastic doll fantasia into a live-action feature film was probably on a lot of money-driven minds since Barbie first appeared on shelves in the late fifties. Indeed, there has been over 40 animated films – all aimed at a young girl demographic – but moulding the concept of the toy into a high-concept, existential, very clearly for-adults, high production values comedy was certainly not expected. And what a triumph! It is one of the funniest films I have seen in years and I enjoyed every minute of it. Margot Robbie navigates the story of Barbie finding challenges in a real, unforgiving world perfectly, and the side story of Ken as he grapples with moving from a matriarchal society to a patriarchal one is gold, with Ryan Gosling giving a career-best performance.

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Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan) – released in July 2023, running time: 181 minutes

The art of Nolan knows no bounds. But as we saw with Tenet and Dunkirk, there is always room for error. As you are told from a young age though, you learn from your mistakes. This is the way I see Nolan’s latest magnum opus – Kubrickian in scope and in that, a hopeful reach for some sort of perfection. It delivers quite magnificently, with Cillian Murphy hallucinatory in his depiction of the man who drove the creation of the atom bomb. The supporting cast is also fantastic, particularly Matt Damon and Robert Downey Jr, but one flaw remains in Nolan’s repertoire and that is his inability to fully realise female characters, Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh criminally under-utilised here. Alas, the film itself, in all its technical marvel, is a long-range treat. Cinema at its finest. Worth watching again and again in the same way as 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese) – released in October 2023, running time: 206 minutes

I mean, getting a numb bum for sitting in the cinema for hours is kind of a moot point when it comes to a top-quality movie. For some, Scorsese’s latest epic may be too long but really, I think it is more important to judge what is at its heart. And there is a lot of heart in this movie. It is an intelligent, gripping treatise about America’s recent past and the country’s treatment of its Indigenous peoples who were there before European invasion (although it rings true for many other parts of the world too) – something that is shamefully under-told by Hollywood. The story is based on actual but under-reported accounts about murders of wealthy Native Americans in Osage County, Oklahoma in the 1920s. Scorsese brings his typical flair for violence and rapid-fire edits to proceedings (you got to have a few shocking shots to the back of the head), and allows De Niro and DiCaprio to give us impressively nuanced performances as the antagonists of the story. But Lily Gladstone outshines them all as the surviving heart of the Osage Nation tribe. Dedicated to the late, great Robbie Robertson, the film is magnificently complimented by his relentlessly beating soundtrack.

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The Killer (David Fincher) – released in October 2023, running time: 118 minutes

There is something so impressive in David Fincher’s style. He always seems to be in touch with what is going on at this current moment, and he intelligently and subtly wedges the notion of current events into his films. Some may dislike his penchant for the dark and disturbing, but he is not making movies for the whole family. He is making movies for adults. The Killer is a portrait of a professional hitman. Very simple. It takes a Bond-esque premise whereby we are treated to sequences of the hitman in various action-packed scenarios located in different parts of the world – there are many scenes of him at airline and car-hire counters providing various aliases. But it is more Alain Delon in Le Samouraï than any of the Bonds. It is also different to anything you have seen before. It is quite fun. In fact, it is quite funny. Fincher masterfully ensures that Fassbender, in the lead role, narrates to us and fraternises with his enemies with a gruff, deeply serious and assured voice, but so often he shows himself up to be calamitous and misjudging. That, in my opinion, is why the film stands out.