Best of 2023 - End of Year Report

Oh, Hi Mark. And goodbye to 2023 - a good year for film, not so good in other fields of human endeavour. My film count was a bit down on last year - I saw 90 in total, including 82 new viewings and 59 trips to the cinema (just under half at the Luna in Leederville). Anyway, here are my favourite 10 films that I saw in 2023, with a podcast at the bottom of the words.

[Click on the titles for links to full reviews]

10. Cairo Conspiracy (2022)

A terrifically tense religio-political thriller about a first year university student dealing with events above his station in Cairo. Stellar performances in this rare glimpse into Egyptian culture.

9. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (2023)

James Gunn polishes off his Guardians trilogy with aplomb, centring the dramatic story on Rocket while allowing the rest of the crew to bring the chuckles and action stylings. Nobody quite hits the nails with the musical beats like Gunn.

8. Talk to Me (2022)

Best Aussie film of the year is also probably the creepiest. The Phillipou brothers, straight out of Adelaide, give us a way into the demon world via a mangy old porcelain hand. Sophie Wilde is fantastic as the focus of the story, grieving her mum and possibly finding some answers to her questions via the hand. Having the courage of its convictions adds value to the finale of the film, too.

7. Citizen Sleuth (2023)

I saw this at the 2023 Revelation Film Festival and it was my pick of the roster. It's a doco about a young woman called Emily Nestor who ran a true crime podcast that 'investigated' a road death in her area. It's part thriller, part expose on current fads, part exploration of self (that of Nestor, specifically). It really gives you something to chew over.

6. Final Cut (2022)

Great stuff, this. It started out as the worst film possible - terrible acting, poor timing, awful 'comedy', until you realise what's afoot. Romain Duris is on top form as the director of a low-budget zombie film, who runs into all manner of trouble during filming. The set-up, and eventual pay-off are cleverly worked and the climax is just reward for sitting through the brave intro section. Top farce work from actual director, Michel Hazanavicius.

5. The Old Oak (2023)

Ken Loach reckons he's done after this film and if so, he can't have served us a much better exemplar of his style. This film sees a bunch of Syrian refugees pitching up in the grim north; Durham, to be precise. Some of the locals aren't fook'n aven it man, and this attitude sets local barman, TJ, against the rest. A lovely plea for understanding and sense in a shitty world.

4. Aftersun (2022)

This is a fine two-hander about a young dad and his near-teenaged daughter trying to connect on a holiday in Turkey. Debutant director, Charlotte Wells strikes a rich vein in the relationship between Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio - they're brilliant together. An unsettling undercurrent runs through the film that keeps us guessing and wondering about what happened after(sun). Amazing filmmaking.

3. The Boy and the Heron (2023)

Not far off the very best from the guvnor of Ghibli Animation, Hayao Miyazaki. It involves a young boy who moves to the countryside during WW2 following the death of his mother. Once there, odd things start to happen, mostly stemming from the malevolent heron of the title. This fantasy-infused delight is kind of like a wrap-up of his career and it'll be a shame if he does hang up his quill (yeah, he probably doesn't use a quill).

2. Babylon (2022)

Damien Chazelle's vibrantly messed up ode to Hollywood's golden era just spanks along from the get-go. The opening party sequence is worth the ticket alone, but the filming on location stuff that follows is even better. Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie bring the wattage but the real star is Chazelle himself. He moves the pieces around the board with a confident exuberance that belies his inexperience (this is his FOURTH feature, for fuck's sake).

1. Saltburn (2023)

A late dash to the finishing line for this filthy, icky satire on privilege and desiring it. The disgustingly eccentric Catton family have, and Oliver Quick have not. But he want. Debauchery and skullduggery ensue at the Saltburn manor over a hot summer. The cast, the dialogue, the cinematography, the music - all superb. Emerald Fennel has delivered a modern classic.

Some more highlights from films I saw in 2023 are laid out below:

Best kids' films: Wonka, The Amazing Maurice, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Feelgood films: Tenor, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Wonka, The Crime is Mine.

Feelbad films (but still good): Living, Godland, Prison 77, All the Beauty and the Bloodshed, The Blue Caftan.

Weirdest films: Sick of Myself, Eo, Freaks.

Best shits and giggles: Cocaine Bear, Renfield, Palm Springs.

Best scenes: The diner scene in The Innocent, the hallway brawl in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3, the train sequence in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, the Battle of Austerlitz in Napoleon.

Best performances: Bill Nighy in Living; Noémi Merlant in The Innocent; Fares Fares in Cairo Conspiracy; Sophie Wilde in Talk to Me; Cillian Murphy and Emily Blunt in Oppenheimer; Richard E. Grant and Rosamund Pike in Saltburn; Nicolas Cage in Dream Scenario; Sandra Hüller in Anatomy of a Fall; Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio in Aftersun.

Best songs: 'In the Meantime' (Spacehog) in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3; 'Syntynyt Suruun ja Puettu Pettymyksin' (Maustetytöt) in Fallen Leaves; 'Under Pressure' (Queen and David Bowie) in Aftersun; 'Destroy Everything You Touch' (Ladytron) and 'Murder on the Dancefloor' (Sophie Ellis-Bextor) in Saltburn.

[Now, I'm not going to do a 'Worst of 2023' because I really only saw one terrible film last year. The rest were just blurgh (Slumberland, Operation Fortune, etc.) or run-of-the-mill blockbusters (Black Adam, Ant-man 3, Avatar 2, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, etc.). The most egregious of the lot, though, was Ari Aster's interminable neurosis toss, Beau is Afraid. Well, Shady was almost afraid but the overriding emotion was more anger than fear. Awful fucking shite.]

Comments

Hard Truths

It's been six years since Mike Leigh stepped behind the camera for the disappointing Peterloo but this film is a return to tip top form. In fact, by my reckoning, that 2018 historical record was his only career misstep. And in Naked , Secrets and Lies and Happy-Go-Lucky , he has written and directed some of the very best British films of all time. Hard Truths reunites him with one of the stars of Secrets and Lies , Marianne Jean-Baptiste. She plays Pansy, an angry, fearful misery guts who can't help but annoy her family (and members of the public) with her constant, nasty invective. At first, her moaning is quite funny until the realisation that this woman is suffering takes hold. Pansy is married to plumber Curtley (David Webber) and they have a son in his early 20s, Moses (Tuwaine Barrett) who doesn't say much and stays in his room playing flight simulator games. Both these guys deal with Pansy in their own way, in quiet despondency. Her only real friend is her sister,...

I'm Still Here

Walter Salles directs this true story of Brazil's military regime and the people they 'disappeared'. It's mostly set in 1970/71 in Rio de Janeiro and focusses on the Paiva family, which consists of a fairly well-off father, mother and five kids. The first third of the film is all set-up. We're introduced to the family, their group of friends, their housekeeper, the local beach, it's a great, leisurely paced buildup. All throughout this opening though, there's a hint of intrigue - late night phone calls to the father, Rubens (Selton Mello); people off-camera popping in to pick up things; talk of envelopes; glimpses of army trucks driving along the beach road. Foreboding embedded. The family's middle-class idyll is blown apart one day when some humourless bastards arrive at the house to escort Rubens away to 'give a deposition'. Rubens' wife, Eunice is obviously worried but shows a calm exterior, mindful of her children, especially the younger...

The Story of Souleymane

The Story of Souleymane was the media preview opening film of this year's Alliance Française French Film Festival . This drama of frustrations, directed by Boris Lojkine, feels like a real story, probably not too far removed from the myriad other folk trying to find a better life in Europe (or other, more economically advanced countries than their own). Souleymane is a young Guinean bloke working as a fast food courier (ala Uber Eats) in Paris, but this is more complex than it sounds. For reasons soon made clear, he has to borrow the courier account of another guy to earn his bikkies. A simple request from the courier company to upload a selfie sees Souleymane dashing to the workplace of the guy who 'owns' the account, to get the pic. Just one of the many anxiety inducing trials this poor lad goes through. The nugget of the story is that Souleymane is a couple of days away from his residency interview. For whatever reason, it's decided that he must lie to the authorit...

Captain America: Brave New World

This is very much a soft launch for phase 5 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's not terrible, just kind of a facsimile of earlier, better films, specifically Captain America: The Winter Soldier , which was a throwback to 1970s political paranoia films. There are also echoes of films like Telefon , The Ipcress File , The Manchurian Candidate and Three Days of the Condor . And there are clear parallels with the skip fire that is the USA these days. Harrison Ford's character, Thaddeus Ross, is the newly minted president and is presented as a blend of Biden (old and doddery) and Trumpington (a literal monster in the White House). I imagine it took a mountain of cash to persuade Ford to take up the reins after William Hurt (who played Ross in five MCU films) died a couple of years ago. The presence of Ford is actually one of the best things going for this, he still has that 'old film star' charisma. Anthony Mackie as Sam Wilson, the old Falcon but new Captain America, d...

Conclave

Conclave (or Knives Out in Vatican City ) is a cracking religio-political thriller full of meaty performances and an Oscar-winning script by Peter Straughan that winkles just enough out to leave the audience with some work to do. Straughan has some excellent work on his resume ( Frank , Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy , etc), so throwing him together with director Edward Berger ( All Quiet on the Western Front ), and heavyweights like Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini and John Lithgow, was a recipe for success. The start is also an ending. The pope has passed away and the high-ranking priests are gathering to grieve and plan the succession. Fiennes plays Cardinal Lawrence, and as Dean of the College of Cardinals, it's up to him to organise the conclave, the meeting to elect the new pope. I'll say now, one of the positives of the film is that there's not too much jargon, so it isn't completely baffling for us atheists. It actually plays a pretty straight ba...

The Monkey

What's this then? Modern horror, I guess. Or just another addition to the relatively recent spate of animal-titled films: The Lobster , The Crow , The Whale , Pig , Lamb , First Cow , Black Dog , Red Dog , Dog Man , Monkey Man , Wolf Man , Cuckoo , Cocaine Bear , and Hundreds of Beavers . Whatever the reason for its existence, this Stephen King adaptation is a curious beast. Osgood Perkins (son of old Norman Bates himself, Anthony Perkins) writes and directs here. He also has a pretty funny cameo. The story starts with a bloke in a pilot's uniform (Adam Scott) trying to sell a windup drumming monkey toy (DON'T CALL IT A TOY!!). A bloody event occurs, not for the last time in the movie. Cut to 1999 where we meet Hal Shelburn and his twin, Bill (both played by Christian Convery), who live with their mother, Lois (an in-form Tatiana Maslany). The pilot of the opening scene is the dad/hubby who has done a runner, leaving the cursed monkey for the lads to find (though, to b...

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

This will be a quickie review as there's a pod to follow that gets into it more. But I'll say right now, I loved this doco. It's an excellent cold war history lesson pieced together from fascinating archive footage, much like Asif Kapadia's films, Senna and Diego Maradona (I guess his other feature docs Amy and Federer are a similar style, but I've not seen them). This film, directed by Belgian, Johan Grimonprez and edited by Rik Chaubet, is about the murky removal and subsequent assassination of Patrice Lumumba, first Prime Minister of the (Democratic) Republic of Congo. It's a panoply of found footage, mostly newsreels and old interviews, interspersed with a jazz soundtrack and band visuals that really fit the era. Honestly, this sifting and compiling must have taken a fecking age, so big props to Chaubet and Gimonprez (who has some experience with this form of doc - Dial H.I.S.T.O.R.Y. , for example). The 'stars' include the likes of Nikita Khrus...

Tatami

Tatami is the semi-spongy flooring you might find in an old Japanese house. Or in a judo dojo where competitors try to stay off their backs while trying to pin or throw the other (I'm hazy on the rules, as you can tell). That's how tatami is used in this Iranian/Israeli coproduction of the same name, directed by Zar Amir Ebrahimi (Iran) and Guy Nattiv (Israel). The film opens with Leila (Arienne Mandi) and her teammates on their way to the world championship of judo in Tbilisi, Georgia. We peg Leila immediately as a bit of a rebel as she's listening to hip-hop on her headphones. We also see her coach, Maryam (Zar Amir, see above) eyeing her suspiciously on the bus ride. When we arrive at the stadium, Leila bumps into fellow judoka, Shani (Lirr Katz), and they have a natter like fellow competitors do. But Shani being Israeli complicates matters slightly. Bout-wise, Leila is in the groove, dispatching opponents with relative ease. And here's where things get murky. The h...

All We Imagine as Light

This meditative exploration of the lives of women in Mumbai has a lot to say about class, religion, poverty, the patriarchy and the strictures of Indian society. This could be a tinderbox of themes but writer/director Payal Kapadia treats the characters and situations with a mild, sympathetic, even phlegmatic touch. We meet a nurse, Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and her younger colleague and housemate, Anu (Divya Prabha). The two of them have relationships, tangible and nebulous, as well as interactions with people like Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam) a cook at the hospital, and the temporarily placed doctor Manoj (Azees Nedumangad), who yearns after Prabha. Anu has a secret Muslim boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon) and workplace rumours paint her as a bit of a trollop. Prabha's 'arranged' husband married her and then promptly upped sticks to Germany (the arrival of a German rice cooker is loaded with meaning). The desperation and sadness of the people, especially the women, seeps through th...

The Good Teacher

I took a post-work trip to the Palace cinema in Perth's Raine Square for this anxiety-inducing drama at the Alliance Française French Film Festival . There have been a few of these 'snowball' films of late, where one innocuous moment gets misunderstood and events spiral from it. In this case, a good-looking, young literature teacher, Julien (François Civil) is accused of trying to seduce a student in his class. It's clear she has misconstrued innocent looks and utterances, but the letter she writes to the deputy principal needs to be looked into. A chain of missteps begins. This is based on events from the life of the director (and co-writer with Audrey Diwan), Teddy Lussi-Modeste. It seems something similar happened to him when he was teaching in a northern Paris school, and here he scratches open a few old wounds. Assuming the lead character's (and by association, the director's) innocence, the knock-on effects are dispiriting, to say the least, and fucking f...

Film Shapes

Search This Blog