What do 2023's thirty best films have to say about who we are right now?
Let's dig into one of the best film years in a while
2024 is fully underway, at least here in our home.
Toshi’s kicking off his second semester at college and he’s taking his first real film classes now. He’s also meeting older film students and making some new friendships and it feels like he’s starting to find his voice and his footing. It’s thrilling to watch. Allen’s enjoying his sophomore year of high school without his brother there to define him in any way, and he’s coming into his own. He’s driving now, and with his 16th birthday coming up soon, he feels very adult all of a sudden.
I’ve been hard at work on my other project all year and now I’m in “wait and see” mode, which is always difficult for me. Thankfully, I’ve got plenty to keep me busy. The 4K year is just ramping up, and I’m excited about some of the things we’ll be seeing in the weeks and months ahead. I’m not going to weigh in on the James Cameron controversy until I see the discs, but I’ll say this. I went to a screening of the new 4K restoration of The Abyss that was held at The Village Theater in Westwood. That’s one of the best rooms in Los Angeles, an outstanding screen with impeccable sound, and The Abyss looked fantastic there. I saw the film in theaters in 1989 and when they did the director’s cut in 1992, and this is the best presentation I’ve seen of it so far. I’ve also watched the new digital release of the Aliens 4K edition and I’m of mixed mind. I want to see the disc because I simply don’t have the right bandwidth for a digital version to ever totally compare.
Even if Cameron whiffs these long-anticipated titles, there are plenty of other things to be excited about. Criterion’s been crushing it since they embraced 4K, and I am excited about titles like Trainspotting and Lone Star and Blood Simple and Days of Heaven and the Apu Trilogy, all of which I’ve added to my collection recently, as well as titles like Picnic at Hanging Rock, To Die For, McCabe & Mrs Miller and that thrilling Heroic Trio two-pack, all of which look like essential upgrades. They continue to be distinguished by the broadest taste of any specialty distributor in physical media, and the sheer rate at which they’re putting things out right now is impressive. I’m also enormously fond of Arrow, which is responsible for brand-new 4k versions of both of Schwarzenegger’s Conan movies. I don’t care about Destroyer, but I feel like I’ve been waiting since the moment I bought into the format for someone to give me a great new remaster of Conan the Barbarian, the 1982 John Milius film that I love so very much.
One of the reasons I’m embarking on this Movies of My Lifetime project is because it feels different when you are spending your time thinking about your favorite movies, landmark movies from every era, instead of just passively soaking in whatever contemporary pop culture is doing. I’ve made a conscious decision about most of what I’ve watched in January, and the result has been some serious good vibes. There are so many movies at this point, with so many more being released every week, that it’s ridiculous to try to stay current on every single thing, and not particularly healthy. That’s just churn. When you are choosing movies specifically because of the way they make you feel, you’re rewiring your brain. It’s a very real, very powerful chemical effect, and I’m going to do my very best to keep this feeling going all year. It may sound self-evident that watching more great movies will make you feel better, but when you’re a working critic, much of your job is about watching whatever’s being released next, and you surrender any real control over your headspace. You watch everything, so there’s no real curation on your end, and it can become numbing.
Of course I’ll still watch as many new movies as I can, but I think I’m going to try to be far more aware of what I program around those films. Like every other human being on the planet, I need to know the mind-blowing truth about Agent Argylle, but I also want to spend most of my time absolutely up to my neck in great ‘70s and ‘80s films, writing about them for you guys. I feel like I’ve finally digested 2023 as a film year, and I have some final thoughts before we move on. If you’d like to see my final list, you can scan it quickly on Letterboxd, where I picked my favorite 30 films of the year. I’ve written about some and haven’t written about others, but overall, it’s one of the best film years in quite a while.
Take my top five, for example. What a wild variety of filmmaking and filmmakers. Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest is the film that will stick with me the longest, a moral horror story that also directly interrogates the settler mindset in a way that is designed to show you how close you are to the people in the film, and how gentle a nudge it takes for many people to embrace fascism. I am haunted by the craft of the film, the terrifying soundscape that gets into your head, the cinematography that makes the whole world feel slightly queasy. The film’s conclusion, flashing forward to the same site now preserved as a working museum, does absolutely nothing to let you off the hook, which is the point. This is not a film about the past, and anyone who views it through that safe filter is missing it. I was astonished by how personal The Boy and the Heron is, and by the way it almost feels like a greatest hits collection of past collaborators who returned to help our greatest animator make one more masterpiece. It is a film that will reward repeat viewings, a film of great depth that also works as a purely visual experience. I’m so bored by the people who can’t get over the idea that Leonardo Di Caprio chose not to play a heroic FBI officer, seeing something instead in playing the smiling face of complicit evil. Killers of the Flower Moon is a fascinating example of what happens when you approach an adaptation with an open mind, and it never makes the easy choice that would make it feel like Hollywood’s typical approach to this type of material. I’ve seen it four times now and would happily watch it again right now. It is a rich and mature work from one of our great living masters, and the key to understanding the choices he made comes in the film’s final moments. Look who is telling you the story. Look at how they’re using it to sell things. America has always been great at turning tragedy into entertainment and patting itself on the back for telling the story, and Scorsese knows full well that he’s part of the problem even if he’s also part of the solution.
Celine Song’s Past Lives may be a debut, but it’s every bit as accomplished as the other films at the top of my list. It’s a very simple story on the surface about two people who met in Seoul, South Korea as 12-year-olds who get a chance to reunite for a few days in Toronto as adults. Greta Lee has been doing terrific work for a while now, but this feels like her coming-out party as a viable movie star. She is phenomenal as Nora, and Teo Yoo gives a soulful, sincere performance as Hae Sung, the young man she can’t help but be drawn to when he reappears in her life. They have several near misses over the years and they both seem to move on, so when Hae Sung travels to New York, hoping to finally see her face to face, it’s not clear what he wants. She’s married, and John Magaro does exceptional work as her husband, determined not to let jealousy lead but understandably anxious about this very real connection his wife and her old friend still have. It is a knowing, adult film, subtle and small, but the things it deals with are some of the most important in our lives. It is deceptive and the longer I’ve sat with it this year, the more impressed I am by everything about it. And then there’s Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s movie about the reason he makes movies, a gorgeous, hilarious, heartbroken little movie that I have to imagine people are going to love more in the years to come. This is the key by which you can decode everything else Anderson’s ever made, and it feels like the most self-aware movie he’s ever made, but also the most vulnerable. I love his artificial dollhouse worlds, these microcosms he creates where he can play out these incredibly emotional stories in a way that allows him just enough distance to be able to handle the feelings they evoke. This is also the first great COVID movie, where it feels like a film about the year we all spent in lockdown, and I would not have expected that to be so damn funny.
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