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Okay, a short list bearing in mind there's a lot of stuff I've missed and will catch up on in the New Year: 10. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. There's something wonderfully good-spirited about this one, from the bright visuals to banter which feels natural to its story basically being about a bunch of misfits fumbling their way through things beyond their full understanding. Expertly captures the vibe of your average D&D group, complete with the DM introducing a character to try and keep everyone on track. And Hugh Grant's performance is a masterclass in scumminess. 9. Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3. James Gunn has a way with extremes, mingling ugliness and beauty, messy horror with sincere hope, and superheroic chaos with a strong emotional throughline. Closes out the trilogy with genuine suspense and a nice grace note for all its characters. The genre may be in decline but this is a nice way out. 8. M3gan. I was really impressed how this film managed to balance its deliberate wild and wacky elements with actual suspense and a strong emotional arc. True to the times it's less "technology bad" and more "machines do exactly what you tell them to, so be sure of what you're telling them to do." 7. Barbie. Consistently inventive, imaginative, and funny. Robbie and Gosling are both wonderful in their ways, and the fun the story has with its plastic world and its slightly-less-plastic "reality" makes it a breezy watch. 6. Oppenheimer. A nice study of unintended consequences. If Nolan's dialogue remains incredibly on the nose, he at least gives it to really good actors and accompanies it with great visuals. Brings a wonderful lumpy reality to its history. 5. Across the Spider-Verse. Overstuffed in the good way, full of memorable characters and moments, but just about everything involving Gwen sticks with me quite a bit. Pity the filmmakers had to run so many animators ragged to make it. 4. Godzilla Minus One. Captures the brutal fear and anxiety of the character's origin, but also is a little more explicit and hard nosed in its criticism of Japanese society itself and how it let its own people down, without letting the US off the hook. On top of that just a wonderful scary monster movie, the monster himself inspiring the awe and terror that he does at his best. 3. Killers of the Flower Moon. The totality of what it shows is hard to sum up in adjectives. A document of a crime, and a story of guilt and complicity, and also survival. 2. Asteroid City. i kind of love that Anderson has taken his signature formal elegance to weird, even deliberately bracing extremes. This is a film that actively tells you it won't all fit together, and there's something there about how life never quite fits together and things happen we'll never fully understand, but we make stories to try and organize it. Or something. Like, I think it's actually good that we get a few movies that say "Hey, you figure it out." 1. Poor Things. And if movies like this can keep getting made I think this whole cinema thing might survive. Just, a joy- sometimes ugly, sometimes reflecting all sorts of horrors and injustices, but also just a celebration of life. Emma Stone is amazing; Bella Baxter begins as a blank slate, but learns extremely quickly in her own way. The way the movie plays with language and settings and social structures and philosophy is great, and through it all there's a feast of images. It's inspirational, really, saying, hey, we really can do all sorts of things with the little life we're given.
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Dec 31, 2023 10:34
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 22:17 |
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I stuck to 2023 films because it’s honestly harder to keep track of when I saw an older film for the first time, and in general I guess I just don’t group them with the new stuff. It’s more like “ah, finally saw Picnic at Hanging Rock, yeah that’s great.”
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Jan 1, 2024 22:14
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