The Year in Review
MIKE D'ANGELO
[ALL COMMENTARY BELOW IS MIKE'S, FROM HIS WEBSITE]
No new information here for those who regularly check my site, where I maintain a running list (albeit organized by year of premiere rather than year of U.S. release) all year long. But I like to formally weigh in at this time, even though I'll spend much of January catching up with a handful of probably-not-my-thing titles, including but not necessarily limited to Maestro, Ferrari, Origin, Occupied City, The Boy and the Heron, The Crime Is Mine, The Color Purple, American Fiction, and (for some reason; you can see I've been dragging my feet) Napoleon. Final film that seemed a likely contender for my list was The Zone of Interest, which I drove down to see in L.A. on New Year's Eve; I have many thoughts, which are forthcoming, but you shan't find it below. Nor will you find many of the usual suspects—I've never exactly been Mr. Consensus, but 2023 represents a break from my peers more pronounced than any I can previously recall, culminating in a #1 that virtually nobody else cares about. Indeed, at this writing I've concatenated the top 10 lists of more than 40 critics, and three of my top four films (it was the top three period before Poor Things got bumped up a spot) have appeared on literally none of them, not a one. I do not set out to be this way, believe me. I just think y'all are wrong about what's great, even more than usual. "Jury's still out," I wrote in this space last year, "on whether the recent paucity of movies that genuinely excite me [...] reflects pandemic tribulations or just a general shift away from the sort of fearsomely complex, arguably 'problematic' character study I tend to favor"; it's now pretty clear that it's the latter, and who knows whether that'll shift over my remaining lifetime.
Anyway, here's where things stand as the calendar turns. It's my "polls" list, including some films that premiered at festivals last year but are Skandie-eligible this year. Oh, and I'm starting at the bottom, even though there's zero suspense for many of you, because dammit that's how this should work when the list is meant to be read rather than merely browsed.
10. Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt, USA)
Everybody loves that film! you point out. And indeed they do, but I don't want it here (which is true of every film up to #5; none of them would have made the cut as recently as 2018 or 2019). Perfect example of solidly good work that just doesn't excite me in any respect, though I really admire how unsympathetic and sometimes downright annoying Michelle Williams makes Lizzy. Like another title on the list, Showing Up is one I'm gonna watch again soon, hoping it'll catch fire this time. (That happened with TÁR last year. Went from 68/100 to 79/100 when I took a second gander.)
9. Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, France)
And here's that other title now. Again, no significant complaints—I just wasn't wowed the way that so many others have been, possibly because it feels more conventionally case-of-the-week to me than does its titularly acknowledged inspiration, Anatomy of a Murder. Only the flashback to Samuel's secret recording of his furious argument with Sandra transcended a baseline of keen interest and threatened to shake me up a bit, and then that didn't prove as instrumental as I'd have liked. Maybe I'll get more invested in Daniel, their son, upon a second viewing. You really need to.
8. The Five Devils/Les cinq diables (Léa Mysius, France)
Give it up for the 2022 Quinzaine, which I only just realized served as the world premiere for no fewer than four of the films on this list. From a purely narrative standpoint, this was perhaps the most interesting (if definitely not the most successful) fantasy-centric picture I've seen in some time, with a conception of "time travel"—those are some pronounced scare quotes, which you'll understand if you've seen it—that truly caught me off guard. Its spell has lingered. Skandies voters: Please strongly consider Sally Dramé (who plays the child) for your Actress ballot.
7. De humani corporis fabrica (Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor, France/Switzerland/USA)
Another Fortnight '22 premiere. I'm not bothered by surgery unless the patient is both conscious and experiencing pain, so didn't have to steel my way through this duo's latest experimental doc; indeed, had it been all surgery all the time—omitting lengthy sequences in the dementia ward that just didn't feel of a piece with everything else—it'd likely be in my top five somewhere. Just this minute realized that I should maybe add "dropped suction tube" to my Best Scene shortlist, though I'll have to double-check whether that qualifies as a scene and not just a darkly hilarious moment.
6. The Royal Hotel (Kitty Green, Australia/UK)
Far and away the film I'm most surprised to find on this list, as I thought The Assistant wildly overrated. There's a lot more fascinating self-interrogation here, thanks to the contrast between Hanna and Liv; mostly, though, I just spent the entire movie with my stomach tied in knots, awaiting the seemingly inevitable violence that sort of does arrive but also sort of doesn't, quite? It's an amazing tonal balancing act that Green inexplicably chose to ruin with a spectacularly misguided finale (especially the final shot). Still, I got rattled, and Scorsese didn't manage that.
5. White Noise (Noah Baumbach, USA)
This was last year's #5, but I'm leaving it here because everyone was wrong about it.
5. The Apartment With Two Women (Kim Se-in, South Korea)
Arguably a cheat, as it hasn't been released in the U.S.; I don't anticipate that it ever will be, though, and it's Skandie-eligible, and my list desperately needs it, so here it is. As I noted in my review, Two Women Wearing the Same Underwear (as its Korean title roughly translates) better captures the flavor of this insanely volatile mother-daughter relationship/feud/codependence, which plays like the human equivalent of mutually assured destruction. Imagine one of those Shirley MacLaine mom movies (Terms of Endearment, Postcards From the Edge), but so Korean.
(Here's where we finally reach films that I legitimately love. Cue copious weeping from Bilge Ebiri, who probably legitimately loved at least 40 films last year.)
4. in water (Hong Sangsoo, South Korea)
Guess I'm a sucker for formal gimmickry—I like Woo's Silent Night better than most (though not enough for it to be here), and was captivated by Hong's hour-long portrait of anhedonia, visually represented by images that are never quite in focus and are sometimes wildly out of focus. The most extreme shots are beautiful to me in the same way as are Almereyda's PixelVision films, and what's going on emotionally somehow managed to sneak up on me the second time as well as the first. Best "snap out of it" since Moonstruck—this one, as recounted after the fact, haunts me.
3. Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, Ireland/UK/US)
Not sure I've ever identified as strongly with a movie character as I do when Bella suddenly announces "I must go punch that baby." She's a magnificent creation (literally), encompassing every stage of human development refracted through the twin lenses of "sugar and violence," as she describes her solo adventure in Gorgeously Fake Lisbon. I'm not keen on much from the wedding to the ending, and feel as if that stretch creates a false impression of the whole, but will give the final word to Madame Swiney: "We must experience everything. Not just the good, but degradation, horror, sadness. This makes us whole, Bella. Makes us people of substance, not flighty untouched children." Artistically speaking, at least, amen.
(Also upon reflection I may give Mark Ruffalo 30 Skandie points just for the way he says "Mmm, well..." when Bella asks whether the refractory period is a physiological weakness in men.)
2. Enys Men (Mark Jenkin, UK)
It's not a horror film! So long as you're not expecting to be frightened (you won't be), there's at least a chance that you'll be able to get on Enys Men's hypnotic wavelength, which comes as close to pure filmmaking as any picture I saw last year. By which I mean that close to 100% of its impact derives from composition, shot duration and editing rhythm, at all of which Jenkin excels. I quite liked Bait as a formal exercise but never got involved in its familiar village-tension narrative; applying the same style to something mysterious and inscrutable pays enormous dividends.
1. Falcon Lake (Charlotte Le Bon, France/Canada)
I'm a bit scared to watch this again, for fear that it'll be revealed as ordinary, just another coming-of-age story (with a tragic element). Virtually nobody else cares—Falcon Lake is absent not merely from the year-end awards conversation but from any conversation at all within my own earshot—so did I somehow imagine that Le Bon, making her first feature, demonstrates an uncanny emotional sensitivity and a quietly arresting visual assurance? Watched the entire film with a growing sense of hushed awe, and then the ending—not what happens, but specifically how it's orchestrated, and the way that it creates an overpowering retroactive sadness—knocked me right the fuck out. The only 2023 release that I'd call truly great. Skandies voters who haven't seen it are directed to Theo's 2022 list, where it sits at #5; I won't spoil Daniel Waters' list, to which I was given a sneak preview, but can tell you that he has it even higher. Not just me. But mostly just me.
Now for the old-school A.V. Club bonus categories, excepting Outlier (a film on your list but nobody else's), which I can't know. Almost certainly would've been Falcon Lake, which would have made it my first #1 Outlier.
Most overrated: Fallen Leaves
I should note that last year I had Aftersun here, and then liked that film a whole lot more on second viewing (though still less than most people). Could happen again. I chose Kaurismäki's film not because I disliked it (rating 59/100, solid B-) but because the praise for it seems to me so bizarrely disproportionate to its very modest virtues. Yeah, Aki's films are always "minor," by design, but the dude's alcoholism here is a simple romantic obstacle that winds up being just as simply resolved. "Please stop drinking." "Okay, I will." That somehow takes 81 minutes. (At least it doesn't take 132.) There's just not enough to this movie for it to be among any year's best, imo. But many differ!
Most underrated: Silent Night
Don't understand the knocks. Kinnaman is fine—the role demands very little of him, and that's what he gives, but I don't believe that substituting [whoever you think might've been better] would make any appreciable difference. Woo's working in a different mode than he did 30 years ago, still knows what's he doing—I repeat myself, but the prolonged brawl here (with the dude our hero idiotically kidnaps) is to me far more impressive than its equivalent setpiece in Fincher's Killer. I did see it with my dad, who's 78, and it could wind up being the last movie we ever see together (he's fine, but we only get together a few times a year and the end is coming), but I don't think that made me orders of magnitude more receptive/forgiving than I ordinarily would be. Had fun.
Biggest disappointment: The Line
What the hell is The Line? you're probably wondering. Barely got a release (it played four non-consecutive days at Metrograph—not quite enough to qualify for the Skandies), and for good reason; I've consistently liked Ursula Meier's films, and even recently managed to spur a flurry of interest in Strong Shoulders (judging from its immediate appearance on a certain site's freeleech roster), but The Line, about a young woman whose mother files a restraining order against her, and who then proceeds to spend all of her time exactly 101 meters from her former home (keeping beyond an actual, wildly irregular line painted by her younger sister), is just plain moronic.
Most pleasant surprise: Bottoms
Really it's The Royal Hotel, but the idea is to avoid repeating films from your top 10 (or top 15, as was the case when I actually did this for the A.V. Club; I now have five extra options). Same idea, really—I didn't care for what I saw of Shiva Baby (which, as that phrasing suggests, I didn't finish), and initially thought that I might be too damn old and straight to appreciate Seligman's follow-up. But it won me over, in large part by embracing a "we're such losers" sensibility that's gone all but extinct in the indie world. Most recent movies remind me of Liz Phair's "Extraordinary" (shudder); Bottoms is more like "Fuck and Run." Imperfect analogy, but hopefully you get the idea.
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks