The UNDISPUTED Top 10 Movies of 2023 UPDATED

 

People of the scattering and dwindling internet! This is my indisputable and immutable list of the top ten movies of 2023. It shall be etched on a giant granite block and planted high atop Bunker Hill so generations in the future can admire and wonder... and DESPAIR 

• 1a. Oppenheimer: This Christopher Nolan joint features a lot of people in rooms talking philosophically about physics but still manages to be absolutely riveting. But it's also an unbelievably high stakes drama where the consequences could be the literal destruction of mankind. But it's ALSO a practical effects masterpiece where you can feel the weight of (SPOILER ALERT) nuclear explosions  and their repercussions. It features great performances from the entire cast, including the best performance by Robert Downey Jr since... Two Girls and a Guy? "But it's soooo looong" the whingers say. Shut up, whingers! It went by in the blink of an eye, (SPOILER ALERT) just like humanity most likely will, according to Oppenheimer. 

• 1b. Killers of the Flower Moon: Somehow, 80 year old Martin Scorsese hasn't lost a step. 30 year old, coked up Martin Scorsese probably wouldn't have been wise enough to rework a "Birth of the FBI" thriller into this focussed period piece on the specific crimes white supremacists inflicted on the Osage people, but no one else in the 1970's would've either so lets not blame coked up 30 year old Martin Scorsese too much (anyway, Taxi Driver was also pretty good). It's an infuriating, sad, beautifully designed and filmed movie that's somehow also very funny. Everyone finally gets to see Lily Gladstone, who last year was in the best scene in the best TV show of the last ten years (Reservation Dogs). The cast, again, is about perfect. Robert DeNiro's best work since... Midnight Run? The final scenes are unexpected and unexpectedly powerful. But "it's soooo looong" the whingers say. Shut up, whingers! It went by in the blink of an eye. I walked out of the theatre feeling like I got hit by a sledgehammer.

• 3. May/ December: Todd Haynes' much lighter, but still caustic take on Our Dumb Society, and especially the entertainment industry. This movie succeeds in creating a human portrait of everyone involved in a despicable sexual abuse case where the 13 year old victim eventually ends up marrying his abuser. Julianne Moore delivers a believable, but not at all sympathetic performance as the lead Humbert Humbert, based on a real case the tabloids jumped all over in the 90's. Natalie Portmann also does an excellent job as the smart but cynical actress, functioning as an avatar for a pitiless, extractive industry.

• 4. Past Lives: I just saw this movie last night, so there could be some recency bias here, but recent me thought brand spanking new director Celine Song's movie portrays with great skill the idea that people's lives don't have to be defined solely by where you end up (and who you may or may not end up with). It's a quiet, loverly movie with a strong sense of humor about a Korean immigrant who's happily married to a very American guy, but reconnects with an old friend/crush when he comes to visit her in NYC from a "past life" in Seoul. I watched this in a very full Brattle theater that weirdly reacted with very vocal enthusiasm to the picture.

• 5. Barbie: Probably one of the best joke delivery movies since Airplane? Besides being smart and funny as hell, it mostly manages to turn an expensive marketing ploy into a hilarious take down of the patriarchy. Hey, even if one or two of the speeches are obvious to some of us, it doesn't mean they shouldn't be said and heard by an audience that might not ever hear them elsewhere. Also, I bet it sells a sh*t ton of barbies.

• 6. Dungeons and Dragons: Another surprisingly hilarious top-notch movie whose theme is... fat dragons are funny? The first Monty Python-esque movie since Monty Python that manages to actually hit the mark.

 

• 7. Asteroid City: Wes Anderson has somehow honed his vision to a more and more uniquely Wes Andersony place with each successive movie. How far you're willing to follow him will probably translate to how much you like his latest work, but I personally found this multi-layered meta-meta-meta story to be his most affecting and emotional since The Royal Tenenbaums. It deals with loss and grief and the way art can express and maybe mitigate those feelings, but with typical deadpan Andersonian performances by typical Andersonian actors like Jason Schwartzman, Adrien Brody and Tilda Swinton, mixed in with great new players like Scarlett Johansson.   

• 8. Anatomy of a Fall: I think this movie is close to perfect. I guess the reason I didn't put it higher is because it's not very, yknow, fun. A French movie about a questionable suicide/murder in a small family that works as a legal thriller by construct, but utlimately comes off as an examination of how people understand and deal with personal guilt. The center-piece squabble between husband and wife is one of the best filmed and most believable marital arguments since, well, "A Marriage Story"? Also features a very charismatic dog (#thedogdoesnotdie) and a strong performance by the child-actor (Milo Machado Graner) playing the blind son who ends up having to carrying the weight of judgment for his parents' actions.

• 9. Poor Things: Emma Stone is impressive as the "monster" in this Frankenstein-esque steam-punk film by Yorgos Lanthimos. I enjoyed it and especially all the various Lanthimosian touches in this film such as Willem Dafoe burping giant glass balls and Mark Ruffalo playing an absolute cad. It's probably Lanthimos' most "mainstream" movie, but not quite as biting and weird as some of his past greats like "Dog Tooth" or "The Killing of the Sacred Deer." Hell, I still thought it was good and weird and fun, but I want more depth from this director

• 10. American Fiction A funny, biting, sometimes too overt political satire about the commodification of Black lives for the commercial consumption of white liberals by the writer/director Cord Jefferson, who is responsible for writing some of the great episodes in "The Watchmen". The movie is a take-down of the literary world on par with something Boots Riley might do, but still gives its cast of characters fully human lives with all the attendant dramas. Jeffrey Wright carries this movie as an intellectual writer who tosses off a hacky novel about a stereotypical "ghetto" drug dealer as a prank, but the book meets with success beyond his wildest expectations. I doubt you could find another actor who could carry the role with half the power. Sterling K. Brown and Keith David are great, as always. Also, it's set in the Boston. Coolidge Corner! Fort Point! Scituate? 

LATE ADD TO LIST

• Zone of Interest (3a or 4a) A horrifying movie visualizing Arendt's comment about the "banality of evil". It's just a series of scenes of average looking Germans with nazi haircuts going about their day in the literal shadow of Auschwitz. They garden, go boating, have dinner parties, complain about office politics, try on fur coats from murdered jews... you know, normal stuff. The sound design of distant gunshots, shouting and screams is expertly done, barely registering on the periphery until you realize what you're hearing. This movie is especially infuriating in the context of the rise of literal fascism and the willing collaboration of countless "normal" Americans here in 2024.

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Honourable Mentiouns:

Ferrari

Boy and the Heron

The Killer

Godland

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Haven't seen but want to at some point:

Beau is Afraid

1001

The Holdovers

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Best Actor: Hmmm... Hell, Cillian Murphy? I love watching Jeffrey Wright in anything, too.

Best Actress: Emma Stone? Sandra Hüller is also very good in Anatomy of a Fall. 

Best Weirdly Effective Director Cameo: Martin Scorsese

Best Weirdly Effective Adam Driver Performance as an Eye-tal-yan: Adam Driver, Ferrari

Best Weirdly Effective Casting of Random Americana Musicians: Killers of the Flower Moon (Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, Jack White, Pete Yorn!)

The UNDISPUTED Top 10 Movies of 2022

People of the internets: This is my UNDISPUTED list of the best movies of 2022, according to me, the maker of this list. There was plenty to like, but I didn't see anything that really hit me like "Drive my Car" or "Summer of Soul" this year. (two movies on the short list of my favorite movies of the last ten years, though, so no shame on 2022.)

1. Decision To Leave - Park Chan-Wook of "Old Boy" fame directing a twisty, noir-ish romance: A dense, foggy movie about a Korean detective falling for a suspect that may have killed her husband. Also, he's got a chain mail glove in his pocket for handling knife attacks (apparently this is a real thing that some Korean cops do. Too bad Cambridge police don't have em.) The ending is perfect.
                                                                                                                             

2. Aftersun - Hey, its just a movie about a young father taking his daughter on vacation... except it's not that, it's a movie about the memories of the adult daughter looking back on that vacation when she's the same age as the father and understanding him with adult eyes... when it's too late. Gutting. I think I'm getting old.

3. Tar - Cate Blanchett's best performance of her career, and considering she's Cate Blanchett that's saying something. It's a character study of a moderately psychopathic artistic genius (Tar, duh) who finally gets her comeuppance, but it doesn't undercut Tar's genius or love of her art. It's also something of a ghost story, wher Tar is figuratively (literally?) haunted by her misdeeds.

4. Banshees of Inisherin - Colin Farrell/ Brendan Gleeson/ Martin McDonough sometimes hilarious, often bleak struggle to come to terms with mortality on the impossibly scenic west coast of Ireland. In a just world, Barry Keoghan as the dimmest of bulbs on an island of low wattage and Kerry Condon as Farrell's smarter, long-suffering sister looking for a way out would be up for Oscars.

5. Everything Everywhere All at Once - The title is accurate. Crazy good mess of a movie.

6. Petit Maman - Yet another gem of a movie by a writer/director where her lead character is understanding their parent through the magic of film. Hmmm. After the death of her grandmother, a young daughter finds a new playmate who seems a lot like her mom as a child. Filmmaker Celine Sciamma also directed "A Portrait of A Lady On Fire" which was one of my favorite movies of 2020, I'm in for whatever she does next.

7. After Yang - The second beautifully composed, thoughtful movie by former internet video essayist Koganada. Colin Farrell again stars as a father who struggles to fix a crashed humanoid AI that served as the nanny/older brother to his adopted human daughter. It's about that, and what it means to be human, but really it's about people struggling with the meaning of life and of death.

8. Top Gun: Maverick - Whew, thank god all that thinking is over! A very fun action movie sequel that's better than the original jingoistic sugar-rush. Pros: Stunning practical effects with cool fighter jets that cribs the death star scene from the OG star wars almost note for note. Cons: Any time they try to shoe-horn in a love story that's not Cruise/Kilmer the movie grinds to a halt. Lets not even talk about that even though they had zero chemistry in the original, Kelly McGillis wasn't deemed hot enough anymore so they plugged in Jennifer Connelly, who has less than zero chemistry with Cruise. I don't think it's Connelly's fault.

9. Confess, Fletch! - It's very funny! It's got a great cast and a good plot! It's got a Don Draper/Roger Sterling scene! It's filmed in Boston! For the present, it holds up way better than then the dated Chevy Chase Fletch, but maybe in 20 years we'll find something wrong with it, too.

10. Nope -  Yep. (Actually, this is a movie I didn't entirely love at first but it's grown on me. Immediately after leaving the theater with mixed emotions, I was texting friends, mulling over all the stuff going on in the film. Like all of Peele's movies, it's an ambitious movie that still manages to be a good watch. Can't wait to see what this plucky sketch comedian does next.)

Hounourable Mentiouns:

• Kimi: Soderbergh makes the best Pandemic action movie?

• Glass Onion: A fun, shiny whodunnit, but Norton is a villain that's a little too on the nose to be completely satisfying. Janelle Monae and Dave Bautista are great.

• The Fabelmans: Spielberg's "Most personal film yet" lives up to it's billing for good and bad. Spielberg does a great job showing you what he thinks is important about his childhood, but he just can't stop himself from over-explaining everything... in his virtuoustic way. David Lynch as John Ford is the cameo of the century.

• Elvis: I typically hate biopics, but the opening half of this movie is electrifying.  Luhrmann's flashy style suits the subject, especially in the scenes where Elvis first records "That's All Right" cross-cut with him hanging out on Beale St. with his Black influences like Rosetta Tharpe, B.B. King and Little Richard. Austin Butler is great as Elvis. The end credits showing Butler's performance with the real Elvis are cool too. Maybe this shoulda been in the top 10? I wasn't interested in the Vegas/Tom Parker debacle though.

Things I haven’t seen but want to: No Bears, Armageddon Time, All the Beauty and All the Bloodshed, Descendant, Women Talking

Disappointing: White Noise

Not going to see:
EO: Look, I hear it's great but I already watched one movie where a charismatic donkey dies and I can't take another one.

Avatar 2, the Avatarining: It will find me one day... on an airplane, in a hotel... it will find me.

      

Best Scenes:

• Nope: Kaluuya riding a horse through a desert valley full of Used Car Lot Inflatable Dancers while being chased by...
• White Noise: Grocery Store Dance Sequence
• Elvis: The early rise of Elvis performances cross cut with his influences and Beale St.
• About half of the stuff in EEAAO 

Best Actor: Cate Blanchette

Best Director: Todd Field

The UNDISPUTED Top 10 Movies of 2021

1. Summer of Soul - The first movie I saw in a theater after Pando I: The Original, and wow do I recommend seeing (and hearing) it that way. It's unfathomable that all this high quality footage of the 1969 Harlem festival, featuring top of their game performances from Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Mavis Staples, Sly and the Family Stone, etc, etc, sat around in someone’s basement unwanted until now. Director Questlove does a great job cutting the performances together, and intercuts newly shot footage of the artists like Marilyn McCoo and original attendees seeing their performances for the first time in 50 years. It’s instructive, too: this footage puts the lie to the reputation of Harlem in (white) popular culture at the time as just a scary, crime-ridden pace where bad things coud happen to you. The audience shots show some of the happiest, most photogenic festival crowd you’ll ever see, especially in comparison to all the dirty hippies at Woodstock a few hours north that same summer. And it starts off with a 5 minute Stevie Wonder drum solo! It’s exhilarating.                                                                                                                                        

2. Drive My Car - Well, it’s a 3 hour long movie that spends a lot of time with a theater director getting driven around in his old Saab memorizing his lines from a cassette tape, but somehow it’s also completely absorbing and never boring. It’s a movie about grieving and being honest with yourself, has one of the most unique and powerful sex scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie, a great little gag featuring lampreys, and some good rehearsal tips for all you directors out there. 

3. The Power of the Dog - Jane Campion’s Western that's downright Hitchcockian without all the behind the scenes directorial sexual harassment (I'm assuming. Maybe it's sexist to assume Jane Campion isn't trying to force herself on that big slice of American cheese Jessie Plemons between takes? Kirsten Dunst would give her a face full of chiclets if she tried, tho.) Cumberbatch leads a great cast as the domineering cowboy with a not too hidden secret, bullying everyone in his path including his brother’s new wife and fragile teenage son. The movie appears to be a simple character study of people living at the closing of the American “wild” west era, but by the end the focus shifts and you realize you were watching a different film the whole time.

4. Licorice Pizza - There are no bad Paul Thomas Anderson movies, and Licorice Pizza is an unsurpisingly very good and funny movie about mis-matched people warily circling an ill-advised relationship while they try to figure out their lives. Thomas buids the vibe on a progression of funny episodic vignettes set in very scummy, late-Nixon 70’s Southern California. 1,000,000x better than Tarantino’s gauzy version of a similar time period in LA in his footfetishy Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

5. The Velvet Underground - I also watched this documentary in the theater, and it also sounded great. There’s not much existing contemporaneous footage of the band to be had, so Todd Haynes had to be creative, using montages and split screens with static Warhol screen tests of the band-members at the time, while filling the blanks with talking heads from relevant people who were along for the ride. And, of course, it features the best possible soundtrack around. If you’re at all interested in this band, it’s just straight crack. 

6. This is Not a Burial, It’s a Resurrection - Set and filmed in Lesotho it’s a surreal story of an old woman struggling to deal with the death of her family and town at the hands of encroaching post-colonial “modernization,” made literal by plans for a dam that is set to wash away her home. Played with intensity and a face for the ages by actor Mary Twala, it’s a modern fable that also allows us dumb Americans to hang out in an area of the world that will not be familiar to most of us. In that way, it reminds me of last year’s Brazilian movie Bacaru, but more thoughtful and nowhere near as pulpy. 

7. Annette - A musical without any catchy songs (other than the excellent opening scene), that features a weird wooden little girl puppet for most of its length? Oh, and Adam Driver plays a stand-up comedian with an aggressively terrible live act that you get to witness for many, many minutes.  Yet somehow this inventive, infuriating, intensely acted film sticks with you. I don’t know, it works. Another movie where the final scene teaches you what the movie is about without hitting you over the head. Director Leo Carax is a trip.

8. Macbeth - Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in an expressionistic, Wellesian Macbeth production directed by a Coen Brother? Yes

9. West Side Story - I’ve got bad news, folks. The new West Side Story is actually good. Speilberg updates a dated but still justifiably legendary musical with better context and no dumb brownface casting. Some of the performances, especially Ariana Debose as Anita and Mike Faist as Riff are great. Bringing in Rita Moreno for an important role as the coffee shop owner with her own song...good choice. Ansel Elgort…isn’t terrible? (I mean in this movie, I heard he may be a terrible human but have not done the research, as they say) The songs are still great and it’s directed by a guy who knows what to do with the camera. Worth it just for the new “America” Number 

10. Parallel Mothers - Near peak Almodovar, where people deal with melodramatic coincidences and do terrible things but you still sympathize with them. Penelope Cruz carries every scene of this movie about addressing the crimes of the past and the tragedies of the present. They say this is Almodovar’s first “political” film, but it’s not preachy. Not for this Non-Spaniard, non-fascist viewer, anyway. I guess if you’re a fascist that wants to bury the crimes of the past, you might get a little pissy.

Hounourable Mentiouns:

• Green Knight: An Occurrence at King Arthur’s Court with Dev Patel as a feckless version of Gawain and Alicia Vikander as a literal Whore/Princess figure(s). Set in a tired Camelot that reminds me a little of Connery’s Robin and Marian's Sherwood Forest but much more sinister.

• The Last Duel: Affleck/Damon/Driver with newcomer Jodie Comer directed by Ridley Scott. In a pre-Marvel era everyone would be raving about this. 10x better than Gladiator, and the titular Duel is a cinematic tour-de-force that takes up the final 20 minutes of the film. Comer is strong as a woman trapped in horribly repressive circumstances, and the three male leads do a nice job playing three very different a-holes.

• Dune A: Somehow, Villeneuve made a Dune film where you understand what’s going on, the action is gripping and Jason Momoa is f*cking great. It’s not subtle, lacks color, and is nowhere near as daring as Lynch’s version, though.

• No Sudden Move: Soderbergh begins the movie with 5 minutes of Don Cheadle walking up a street in 1950’s Detroit. That’s a good thing. Also, Benicio Del Toro. And a reunion of jerkface Matt Damon and Brendan Fraser from School Ties. More people should see this.

• Pig: Logline: Nicholas Cage as Sad Portland Culinary John Wick who doesn’t fight much. You’d watch this, right?

• Nightmare Alley:  If the original foundational noir didn’t exist (go see it on Criterion Channel), I’d probably rank this higher. This version is good, and much darker in the second half than the original, but overall it’s a little too glossy for me. Del Toro didn’t exactly build his career on subtlety, however.

 

Favorite thing to watch that wasn’t  a movie: The Beatles:Get Back doc 

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Things I haven’t seen but want to:

Lost Daughter, The Worst Person in the World, Titane, Memoria, Bergman Island, Bad Luck Banging

Top 5 Tom Petty Songs Approved for Donald Trump's Last Day in the White House

As an unofficial representative of the Tom Petty estate, I can reveal that after extensive negotiations, they have cleared the following five (5) songs for Donald Trump's Official Last Day:

1. Yer So Bad

2. Don't Come Around Here No More

3. Even the Losers (Get Lucky Sometimes)

4. Refugee

5. Don't Do Me Like That

Flashback: The Petty estate wanted the Trump campaign to stop using "I Won't Back Down" 

Petty Estate Sues Trump 

Non-definitive UNDISPUTED Ranking of 2020 Films UPDATED

People of the Internet, because of the pando, I didn't see as many new films this year as usual, so this is not a definitive list. But whaddya gonna do? Of the ones I saw, this is the UNDISPUTED ranking of films from 2020

1. Lover's Rock - An utterly unique and successful film centered on a portrayal of a West-Indian house party in 70's London with no explication provided and none necessary. Handheld camera roves constantly through the cramped house from setup up through the night in a way that the viewer feels more like another party-goer than a passive participant. Music is great of course.
2. Last Cow - Set in pioneer times in the Pacific Northwest, a tiny story of friendship and pastries well told
3. Da Five Bloods - A crazy, never subtle, ambitious, uneven movie about the damage done by a stupid war to its involuntary combatants on both sides, with the perfect cast to pull it off. Best Spike Lee since 25th Hour? Kudos to a soundtrack that doesn't use "Fortune Son" even once, but instead employs Mr. Marvin Gaye. More honest than Ken Burns' somewhat milquetoast 5,000 hour PBS doc. Delroy Lindo is incredible playing a man broken on the wheel of injustice and trauma, and more than deserving of an Oscar
4. Dick Johnson is Dead - Personal and emotion-stirring film by a documentarian dealing with her father developing dementia by filming various different death scenes starring her father
5. Bacurau - I enjoyed this dystopian, pulpy, immersive experience in a small, literally off the map Brazilian village. The colonial symbolism is heavy, if appropriate. I wish the villains were a little more sketched out, but that's not what the filmmakers were going for.
6. American Utopia - I would probably rank this higher if I HADN'T seen it live in previews in Boston and loved it. The film is still a good time with great music and the close-ups and different angles show some new perspectives, but it can't match the theater experience. Go see it. It's good.
7. Palm Springs - A very good and funny variation on the Groundhog Day theme. Both leads are excellent.
8. Judas and the Black Messiah - I have only basic knowledge about Fred Hampton and his murder by the police, so this movie was a tough learning experience. It's tough to watch because it depicts very clearly the unconsicionable evil of white "law enforcement" in the 60s. I was gritting my teeth the entire time. Daniel Kaluuya is riveting as Hampton
9. I'm Thinking of Ending Things - It's a thinker, alright. Frustrating to watch at times, scary, gets better the more you think about it.
10. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom -The charismatic performances of both Davis and the band are what make this a standout. The dialogue (Monolgues really) make this filmed play a little too stagy for me.
11. Nomadland - A quiet movie of an older woman who decides to live in a van and the American community of "nomads" in similar circumstances. The film is a slice-of-life study shot in a mix of wide landscapes and tight closeups. It's a good thing they got Frances McDormand, as this would not be very compelling without her. Most of the other roles are filled by non-actors living the life.
12. Vast of Night - A very ambitiously shot twilight zone episode. In a good way. Mostly.

Honourable Mention:

• Zappa - A good surface-level bio. You get a feel for Zappa as he would like to be seen: a difficult genius
• Hamilton - I can see why everyone wanted to see this. Daveed Diggs is so friggin charismatic. Funny that this rah-rah version of American history makes right-wingers angry because there's people of color in it
• Tenet -  Blockbuster entertainment! A LOT of necessary explication, but still fun to watch. I turned on the subtitles because critics were complaining you couldn't hear the dialogue. Since he took five years to write the script, I'm going to trust Nolan has all the timelines lined up like Primer. Denzel's kid is a bit of an enigma, sometimes has the swagger and sounds exactly like him and sometimes he's a complete blank. That vampire kid has become a really watchable actor, huh?

Best Performances: Lindo, Davis and Boseman, McDormand, Kaluuya

Have not seen but want to: Wolfwalkers, The Assistant, City Hall, Minari, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, Sound of Metal, Another Round

Seen but did not like:

• Mank - Very good looking movie with an ironically unimaginative script. Fincher's weakest in a while
• Borat II - doesn't feel like much of a revelation that Americans are shitty when properly prodded
• Midnight Sky - Truly awful, I thought Clooney had better judgment than this. Changes the theme of the book of "last surviving humans" into something completely different and saccharine. Some of the special effects are ok.
• Hillbilly Elegy - Look, I'm not going to pretend we weren't drinking and making fun of this movie from the opening credits, but everyone else who watches this movie is going to come away feeling patronized and angry. I suppose Close and Adams deserve props for going full hillbilly. Stick to Arrested Development narration, Ron