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  1. #1
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    Best movies of 2023

    BEST MOVIES OF 2023

    As before I'll include as many other people's lists as seem interesting. Unlike the mainstream media, I won't try to say what kind of "movie year" it was. "Terrific," raves Manohla Dargis of the Times, who claims she's seen "hundreds" of films this year (rather vague: Mike D'Angelo could tell us exactly how many). It was good year for me simply because after a long break I got to attend the press screenings of the New York Film Festival, whose Main Slate is always a compendium of the year's best.

    What follows first is just a first working list (I'm late this year) - starting from the NYFF, from which these come:


    SANDRA HÜLLER IN ANATOMY OF A FALL

    ANATOMY OF A FALL (Justine Triet)
    THE ZONE OF INFLUENCE (Jonathan Glazer)
    POOR THINGS (Yourgos Lanthimos)
    PERFECT DAYS (Wim Wenders)
    MAESTRO (Bradley Cooper
    KIDNAPPED (Marco Bellocchio)
    ABOUT DRY GRASSES (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
    PRISCILLA (Sofia Coppola)
    MAY DECEMBER (Todd Haynes)
    THE BEAST (Bertrand Bonello)
    Sandra Hüller is the actress of the year: starring in both ANATOMY OF A FALL and THE ZONE OF INFLUENCE. I like all of these, especially the top five, but also like others not in the festival and may pare this down, and juggle them around.
    Note: in the NYFF I did not get to see ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT and EVIL DOES NOT EXIST. They don't schedule the press screenings so you can see everything anymore, and I haven't caught up. Didn't like, or grasp, MAY DECEMBER that much, but think maybe I missed something, and should rewatch. If you have not seen the films listed above I suggest you do so, if you can.

    OTHER TITLES I RATE HIGHLY:

    THE HOLDOVERS (Alexander Payne) is another strong American candidate.
    OPPENHEIMER (Nolan), or youu could call it BARBENHEIMER, and include Gerwig's BARBIE. Nolan's film is both grand and boring, and introduces us to one of the most exciting American men of the twentieth century.
    PAST LIVES (Celine Song), an Asian-American triumph, full of longing and disappointments, attempts to cross barriers, to come home.
    PACIFICTION (Albert Serra): "Pacifiction is by far Serra’s most serious and sombre film to date, an epic of neutered power and human expendability – a death-knell for humanity rendered as a tropical daydream," David Jenkins, Little White Lies.
    JOYLAND (Salim Said). From Pakistan, a fascinating amalgam of original storytelling and visual delight, it tells of a married man's unexpected falling for a trans woman.
    OTHER LISTS
    There is usually a documentary list, sometimes separate English language vs. foreign list. A foreign list should include AUTOBIOGRAPHY (Mubarak), THE BLUE CAFTAN (Maryam Touzani 2022) GODLAND (Hlynur Palmason); I've already listed PERFECT DAYS (Wim Wenders).

    STILL TO COME - NEED TO SEE
    There are big movies still coming out before year's end, including WONKA (with Timothee Chalamet, THE BOY AND THE HERON (by Miyazaki, a big hit at TIFF, and ORIGIN (Ava DuVarnay, about class and race), THE PROMISED LAND (Nikolaj Arcel, a Danish epic).
    Need to see: LITTLE RICHARD: I AM EVERYTHING, RUSTIN (George C. Wolfe). THE COLOR PURPLE (Blitz Bazawule), on awards lists, not out yet, and other Dec. 25, 2023 releases.

    DELIBERATELY LEFT OUT:

    I usually leave off big epics and blockbusters, which dontn't need my publicity. Will not include Martin Scorsese's KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON because I hated it. I'm a big Marty fan except for his movies. No NAPOLEON. This could be a special list, because I did love SPIDER MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE. Wes Anderson's ASTEROID CITY was disappointing, and made little sense, despite my love of Wes. SALTBURN (Emerald Fennell) Ditto AIR (Ben Affleck), which is a commercial for Nike.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 12-17-2023 at 06:31 PM.

  2. #2
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    Some other 2023 best lists

    Stephanie Zacharek, Time Magazine
    FALLEN LEAVES (Aki Kaurismaaki)
    MAESTRO (Bradley Cooper}
    THE ZONE OF INTEREST (Jonathan Glazer)
    PRISCILLA (Sofia Coppola)
    REVOIR PARIS (Alice Winocour)
    PAST LIVES (Celine Song)
    KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (Martin Scorsese)
    ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET (Kelly Fremon Craig)
    DREAMIN' WILD (Bill Poland)
    These are numbered with a big emphasis on the number and listed from ten down to one; I changed that. A big reason to conslult these lists is for suggestions of films to catch up on. This has enough points of contact to make me want to do that for the three I haven't seen,REVOIR PARIS, ARE YOU THERE GOD? etc., and DREAMIN' WILD. I'm surprised she puts Kaurismaaki's somewhat blah film at the top. Fine the list and explanations HERE.

    Max Cea, Esquire
    He has a list of 65 best movies of 2023 (in reverse order of course), and number 65 is THERAPY DOGS (Ethan Eng 2022), the high school boy's do-it-your-self movie - worth remembering. Let's skip to the end:
    MAY DECEMBER (Todd Haynes)
    ASTEROID CITY (Wes Anderson)
    KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (Martin Scorsese)
    POOR THINGS (Yourgos Lanthimos)
    SHOWING UP (Kelly Reichardt)
    THE ZONE OF INTEREST (Jonathan Glazer)
    HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE (Daniel Goldhaber)
    THE HOLDOVERS (Alexander Payne)
    FREMONT (Babak Jalalia)
    THE KILLER (David Fincher)
    Look up the explanations, which are good, if you like this list. I don't know if a filmmaker wants to be on a list of 64 films. It's the top ten or, forget it. I mean, AMERICAN FICTION, one of the most eagerly awaited films, is #54 here. The byline for this list is Max Cea, who says the year seemed a return to form but that "it looks as though we’ll end 2023 with just over half the total releases of 2019 (and 70 percent of that year’s total box office)."

    Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
    MAY DECEMBER (Todd Haynes)
    PAST LIVES (Celine Song)
    THE HOLDOVERS (Alexander Payne)
    THE ZONE OF INTEREST (Jonathan Glazer)
    PASSAGES (Ira Sachs)
    EARTH MAMA (Savanah Leaf)
    ANATOMY OF A FALL (Justine Triet)
    SHOWING UP (Kelly Reichardt)
    YOU HURT MY FEELINGS (Nicole Holofcener)
    ASTEROID CITY (Wes Anderson)
    Maybe I should see EARTH MAMA and PASSAGES - the only ones in Lawson's top ten I haven't seen. He has 21 on his list and 13 is PERFECT DAYS and 13 is POOR THINGS!. See the whole list with the comments HERE.
    I just realized they are hot listing OPPENHEIMER or BARBIE. The Oscar Expert twins have been assuming OPPENHEIMER will win big in the Oscars.

    Angelica Jade Bastién, Bilge Ebiri, and Alison Willmore, Vulture
    I can't give this list because (1) it's from early November, (2) it's not numbered and there are too many movies on the list, only listed from newest to oldest. You can consULT it HERE.

    Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post

    AMERICAN FICTION (Cord Jefferson)
    THE HOLDOVERS (Alexander Payne)
    YOU HURT MY FEELINGS (Nicole Holofcener)
    ANATOMY OF A FALL (Justine Triet)
    BARBENHEIMER (Gerwig, Nolan)
    JOAN BAEZ I AM A NOISE (Karen O’Connor, Miri Navasky and Maeve O’Boyle)
    PAST LIVES (Celine Song)
    REALITY (Tina Satter )
    AIR (Ben Affleck)
    ORIGIN (Ava DuVernay)
    This corrects that omission so far of OPPENHEIMER and BARBIE, and wittily combines them. She calls I AM A NOISE "superbly constructed" and is probably such a Joanie that she doesn't notice the negativity this picture of her sadly exudes. And it puts AMERICAN FICTION way up on the list. Maybe I should watch REALITY. I consider AIR a mistake to list: it's just a giant product placement. But this list, which you will find HERE, is half, maybe more than helf, fine. I should probably watch ORIGIN.

    List of movies from these lists (on this whole thread) that I might need to look into:

    REVOIR PARIS (Alice Wincour)
    ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT'S ME, MARGARET (Kelly Fremon Craig)
    FREMONT (Babak Jalalia)
    DREAMIN' WILD (Bill Poland)
    PASSAGES (Ira Sachs)
    EARTH MAMA (Savanah Leaf)
    REALITY (Tina Satter )
    ORIGIN (Ava DuVernay)
    THE BOY AND THE HERON (Miyazaki)
    ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT (Raven Jackson)
    HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE (Daniel Goldhaber)
    I'll be juggling priorities with availabilities.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 06-26-2024 at 11:06 AM.

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    David Erlich, Kate Erbland, IndieWire
    PAST LIVES
    THE TASTE OF THINGS (Tran Anh Hung)
    ASTEROID CITY
    THE BOY AND THE HERON
    MAY DECEMBER
    POOR THINGS
    PASSAGES
    ANATOMY OF A FALL
    ALL OF US STRANGERS (Andrew Haigh)
    THE ZONE OF INTEREST
    I haven't mentioned ALL OF US STRANGERS (Andrew Hough whose WEEKEND and FORTY YEARS were so excellent), with its gay main characters and starring Andrew Scott, the engaging Irish gay actor of FLEABAG, and the current "it" boy Paul Mescal, and which was one of the biggest hits and had the youngest audience at the NYFF press screenings. I have (personally, perhaps mistakenly) discounted it because it has a fantasy at the center of it that makes it hard for me to relate to. THE TASTE OF THINGS (also reviewed here in the NYFF) hasn't come up on a list here yet. The other titles readers of this thread will recognize; their order is just rearranged. This list was jointly arrived at by the site's two film critics (how do you do that?), For the generous and interesting introductory comments and thumbnails for each film, as well as for the rest of the list of 25, go HERE. PACIFICTION is no 17, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON no. 15, OPPENHEIMER no. 14, BARBIE no. 12.

    Indiewire also has their end-of-year poll, which I'll watch for.

    The site's (Nov. 30, 2023) list of best new indie directors is mostly of black and Asian directed ones, but for SCRAPPER (Charlotte Regan), an underclass Brit item that looks up my alley, so I will try to watch it. A Sundance hit, it''s about a 12-year-old girl (Lola Campbell) left alone in her London flat whose irresponsible dad (Harris Dickinson) shows up. We could be in similar territory to Andrea Arnold's FISH TANK - a great favorite of mine.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 12-06-2023 at 05:38 PM.

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    David Fear, Rolling Stone
    I'm including Fear's whole list of 20 since it starts with OPPENHEIMER, at no. 20.
    PAST LIVES
    THE ZONE OF INTEREST
    KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
    POOR THINGS
    SHOWING UP
    THE QUIET GIRL (Colm Bairéad)
    ANATOMY OF A FALL
    THE DELINQUENTS (Rodrigo Moreno)
    ALL DIRT ROADS TASTE OF SALT (Raven Jackson)
    BARBIE
    ____________________
    11 to 20:
    AMERICAN FICTION
    ALL OF US STRANGERS
    RETURN TO SEOUL (Davy Chou)
    BEAU IS AFRAID (Ari Aster)
    SKINAMARINK (Kyle Edward Ball)
    PASSAGES
    YOU HURT MY FEELINGS
    BOTTOMS (Emma Seligman)
    THE BOY AND THE HERON
    OPPENHEIMER
    Titles new to appear on this thread have the director given. AMERICAN FICTION I've said is one I'm eager to see. The others I've mentioned already. SKINAMRINK is altogether new to me, but I'm not a horror movie fan. Interesting that as you go down on the list as originally given from 20 down to 1, it starts to seem more sensible. THE DELINQUENTS I had told myself I must rewatch (from the NYFF) because my friend Marcia convinced me it was much better than I thought. BEAU IS AFRAID (starring Joaquin Phoenix in a very messy role) I had decided to pass on as just not my kind of thing.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 12-17-2023 at 06:45 PM.

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    Film Comment’s Top 20 Films Released in 2023

    1. May December Todd Haynes, U.S.
    2. Showing Up Kelly Reichardt, U.S.
    3. Killers of the Flower Moon Martin Scorsese, U.S.
    4. Fallen Leaves Aki Kaurismäki, Finland
    5. Pacifiction Albert Serra, France/Spain/Germany/Portugal
    6. Anatomy of a Fall Justine Triet, France
    7. Afire Christian Petzold, Germany
    8. The Zone of Interest Jonathan Glazer, U.K./U.S./Poland
    9. Unrest Cyril Schäublin, Switzerland
    10. Our Body Claire Simon, France
    11, Dry Ground Burning Joana Pimenta and Adirley Queirós, Brazil
    12. Passages Ira Sachs, France
    13. Trenque Lauquen Laura Citarella, Argentina
    14. Orlando, My Political Biography Paul B. Preciado, France
    15. De Humani Corporis Fabrica Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor, France/Switzerland/U.S.
    16. Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros Frederick Wiseman, France/U.S.
    17. Youth (Spring) Wang Bing, France/Luxembourg/Netherlands
    18. Asteroid City Wes Anderson, U.S.
    19. Rewind & Play Alain Gomis, France/Germany
    20. The Boy and the Heron Hayao Miyazaki, Japan
    . I'm dubious about the second half of this list.


    Film Comment’s Top 10 Undistributed Films of 2023

    1. The Human Surge 3 Eduardo Williams, Argentina/Portugal/Netherlands/Taiwan/Brazil/Hong Kong/Sri Lanka/Peru
    2. Eureka Lisandro Alonso, Argentina/France/Portugal
    3. Close Your Eyes Víctor Erice, Spain
    4. ALLENSWORTH James Benning, U.S.
    5. Gush Fox Maxy, U.S.
    6. Nowhere Near Miko Revereza, U.S./Philippines
    7. The Plough Philippe Garrel, France
    8.La práctica Martín Rejtman, Argentina/Chile/Germany/Portugal
    9. About Thirty Martín Shanly, Argentina
    10. Samsara Lois Patiño, Spain

    CLOSE OUR EYES I can recommend.

    This comes from Film at Lincoln Center. Their full list of films and participants can be found on FilmComment.com.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 12-15-2023 at 01:50 PM.

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    Owen Gleiberman, Peter Debruge, Variety



    The lead trade jouirnal's two senior critics include a few titles we
    have not seen on 2023 best lists before. I'm including their comments. SOURCE

    The Best Movies of 2023, Variety
    By Peter Debruge, Owen Gleiberman


    Looking back, 2023 was a year of wild swings. And two big strikes (if you’ll forgive the pun) — first the Writers Guild and then the Screen Actors Guild took the studios and streamers to task, forcing production to a halt. Yet whatever was going on behind the scenes, Hollywood had a grand-slam year, asserting its audacious cultural relevance with the historic double-header that was "Barbenheimer."

    Variety’s two chief film critics agree that Christopher Nolan’s portrait of the man behind the Manhattan Project is one for the ages — a Lawrence of Arabia-level feat about a turning point in human history, as seen through the haunted blue eyes of one of our finest actors. At the same time, some of the year’s best movies flew under the radar. Consider this a guide to the top cinematic achievements, large and small, whether shot on Imax cameras or hand-drawn by an artisanal French couple. The film industry is constantly in transition, but one thing doesn’t change: the power of a well-told story to transport us. From a visionary new take on Frankenstein to the dazzling old-school Ferrari, what follows are some of the best vehicles your imagination could hope for.

    Peter Debruge’s Top 10

    1. Poor Things

    And God created woman. Playing God in this equation, Willem Dafoe suggests a cross between Dr. Frankenstein and the mad scientist’s monster, whose crudely stitched facial scars belie a childhood of cruel experimentation. Decades later, the benign Godwin Baxter continues his father’s research, reanimating a fully grown woman with the brain of an infant, whom he christens Bella (a fearless and very funny Emma Stone). This tragicomic premise sets up a boldly expressionistic provocation from absurdist social critic Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favourite”), who assembles a demented, Buñuelian satire of gender roles that’s part “Pygmalion,” part “Lolita,” and otherwise totally distinct from anything else on the scene. While “Barbie” poked fun at the patriarchy, born-again Bella upends it.

    2. Oppenheimer

    I admit to being underwhelmed by “Oppenheimer” on first viewing. (Hard to imagine, considering the scale, but it didn’t help that the Imax print broke at the film’s press screening, forcing the theater to switch over to a lower-res backup projector — a twist that must have horrified control freak Christopher Nolan.) Grand as anything David Lean ever directed, this massive, awe-powered biopic had been marketed as the making of the atomic bomb, the detonation of which occurs at the two-hour mark, with a third of the movie still to go. Turns out, that last hour holds the (moral) key to why Nolan had to tell this story. After racing to beat the Germans, Manhattan Project super-brain J. Robert Oppenheimer (a never-better Cillian Murphy) faces the terrifying ramifications of what he’s wrought: We now live in a world of nuclear weapons, whose secrets inevitably fell into dangerous hands. I should have known that “Oppenheimer” would demand multiple viewings, as that was true of “Memento,” “Inception” and nearly all Nolan’s films. My advice to you: See it as big as possible as many times as it takes.

    3. Chicken for Linda!

    The best film at this year’s Cannes (a stellar edition that launched no fewer than four of the entries on this list) debuted quietly in the festival’s indie-centric sidebar, ACID, without pomp or the obligatory standing ovation that official selection screenings get. Three weeks later, it took the top prize at Annecy, the world’s leading animation festival. It’s uncanny, but the Crayola-colorful hand-drawn feature from directing duo Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach (“The Girl Without Hands”) captures the complicated relationship between a single mother and her 8-year-old child better than any live-action movie. The setup is simple: Linda can’t remember her late father, so she asks Mom to cook his signature chicken dish, but the main ingredient proves unusually difficult to come by. From its opening lullaby through to the loony watermelon-fight finale, this observant toon entertains the kids, while giving exasperated parents permission to be imperfect.

    4. Past Lives

    Ten years into A24’s existence, audiences have learned what to expect from the indie studio’s slate, as the company’s films tend to fall into two categories. There are flashy, style-forward movies, like “Spring Breakers” and “Uncut Gems,” and there are subtler, piercingly personal entries (often from voices denied the opportunity to tell their stories a decade earlier) like “Moonlight” and “Minari.” Celine Song’s poetic debut falls into the latter category, offering a poignant counterpoint to A24’s busy, Oscar-winning “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” while suggesting a low-key alternative to that movie’s multiverse premise: What if, instead of there being infinite parallel realities, old souls found one another again and again over the centuries? Here, Nora (Greta Lee), a New York-based playwright born in Korea, reconnects with her childhood sweetheart (Teo Yoo), confronting what her life might have been.

    5. The Monk and the Gun

    If you weren’t lucky enough to catch Bhutan’s official Oscar submission on the festival circuit this fall, keep an eye open for this unpredictable and enlightening comedy in early 2024. Previously nominated for “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” director Pawo Choyning Dorji rewinds the clock a few years, as Bhutan was preparing for its first democratic election — a concept none of the locals seem to grasp, or want, even as they sip Coca-Cola and watch Bond movies on TV. Dorji, who studied in the States, invites Western viewers to observe his idyllic kingdom, contrasting modern materialism with traditional Buddhist values via the film’s lone American character, a rare-gun collector who travels halfway around the world to retrieve a rare Civil War rifle. There’s just one problem: The weapon currently belongs to a pacifist monk.

    6. Anatomy of a Fall

    For the U.S. release of director Justine Triet’s Cannes-winning drama, Neon added an exasperating “didshedoit.com” slate to the beginning, focusing audiences’ attention on the wrong aspect of this unconventional courtroom drama. It’s only natural to wonder: A frustrated writer plunges to his death from the upper floor of his mountain chalet, making his wife (Sandra Hüller) the only suspect. As with “The Staircase,” however, what gripped me about the ensuing investigation was how this tragedy forces the most intimate aspects of the couple’s marriage into the light, effectively putting their relationship on trial. What matters more than the verdict (or the “you be the judge” court of public opinion) is whatever their young son decides, since the trial affords the grieving boy a chance to make sense of what happened.

    7. Origin

    Not since “Roots” has an American drama taken such an ambitious, all-encompassing approach to the stain of slavery. “Origin” is not about ancestry, but the seeds of a system that dehumanizes one group so that others may dominate them — a dynamic for which Pulitzer-winning author Isabel Wilkerson found analogs in Nazi Germany and the Indian caste system. If “Origin” sounds like a lecture (of the sort the Florida school system seems determined to avoid), think again. Rather than making another documentary, à la remarkable “13th,” director Ava DuVernay personalizes Wilkerson’s research, dramatizing how a woman wounded by national tragedy (the murder of Trayvon Martin) and personal setbacks (casual racism, the loss of loved ones) connected disparate ideas to reframe the country’s most difficult conversation.

    8. May December

    At a moment when audiences can’t seem to get enough of true-crime movies on Netflix (where this meta-melodrama is now streaming), Todd Haynes takes a sly look at the imperfect prism through which such stories are presented to the public. Natalie Portman plays a professional actor who swoops into the life of an ex-con (Julianne Moore, channeling tabloid subject Mary Kay Letourneau) years after she went to prison for initiating a sexual relationship with her underage baby daddy (Charles Melton). Determined to absorb all she can from the “real” woman, Portman’s vampire-like star winds up crossing the lines in highly inappropriate ways. Zoom out, and it’s all performance — since Moore’s acting, too — in a mirror room where empathy and exploitation tend to blur.

    9. The Holdovers

    Alexander Payne is back on form, following 2017’s disappointing “Downsizing,” with the kind of intelligent character study that’s earned him comparisons to the great 1970s filmmakers before. “The Holdovers” is set early that decade and features a weathered-celluloid filter designed to look like it was also shot back then, though much of the comedy arises from the tough-love way a boarding school Scrooge deals with his students over Christmas break — conduct that would never fly today. Less a lost relic than a shrewdly contemporary commentary on how the way we expect people to treat one another has changed, the project reunites Payne with Paul Giamatti, uncorking more of that special “Sideways” mojo.

    10. The Taste of Things

    It’s easy to be seduced by the voluptuous way director Tran Anh Hung films the preparation of a series of gourmet French meals, his camera floating about a country kitchen as sunlight and birdsong filter through the open windows. The film, like its characters, takes the time to appreciate life’s pleasures. And yet, like “Babette’s Feast” before it, “Taste” is more than mere food porn. The subtext — and true subject — of this rich dish turns out to be the emotional connection simmering between chef Dodin Bouffant (Benoît Magimel, as the fictional late-19th-century “Napoleon of culinary arts”) and his cook (Juliette Binoche), who’ve shared a decades-long professional passion. The two actors have history, too, adding unspoken depth to this moving workplace romance, whose tender last scene says it all.

    10 more for good measure: “Afire,” “Asteroid City,” “The Color Purple,” “Dream Scenario,” “Eight Mountains,” “Eileen,” “Memory,” “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,” “Perfect Days,” “Reality”

    Owen Gleiberman's Top 10

    1. Oppenheimer

    Christopher Nolan’s mesmerizing drama became a testament to the promise that serious movies for adults can, and will, have a future in movie theaters. In the wake of its success, however, many have asked: How is it that a densely packed three-hour movie about the father of the atomic bomb became a big-ticket blockbuster on the level of films featuring superheroes, avatars, and Tom Cruise? The answer lies in Nolan’s wizardry as a storyteller. He stages “Oppenheimer” as a coruscating light show of history, dazzling in every detail. It’s a film that draws you in with centrifugal force, even at it both celebrates and interrogates the fabled figure of J. Robert Oppenheimer, played by Cillian Murphy as a charismatic mandarin whose scientific genius is matched by his self-justifying insolence. If you think the movie falls off in its last third, you haven’t watched it closely enough. Long after the bomb has been dropped, Nolan uses both the extended 1954 security hearing and the amazing performance of Robert Downey Jr. to place Oppenheimer in the crosshairs of judgment, revealing that his delusions were nearly as large as his heroism.

    2. Anatomy of a Fall

    For a while, Justine Triet’s brilliant drama is built around a mystery of tantalizing darkness. Samuel (Samuel Theis), a teacher and writer, has fallen to his death from the upper level of his sprawling chalet home in the French Alps. Was he killed by his wife, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), a more successful author than he is, and a woman who’s been given ample motivation to resent and even hate him? Or did he commit suicide? Triet hard-wires the tension, gripping us in every moment, and some viewers have come away feeling that the film’s central question — did she or didn’t she? — is never answered. In fact, it’s answered midway through (just look closely at the moment when the police drop a dummy from the top of the house). Yet the tension remains, as Triet stages an explosive courtroom drama that turns into “Scenes from a Marriage” as staged by a 21st-century Hitchcock. “Anatomy of a Fall” tells the story of this marriage — but more to the point it tells a story of women and men in our time, when the shifting power dynamics have increased women’s equality, leaving certain men feeling as if that assertion of justice were somehow a fatal assault.

    3. Ferrari

    Michael Mann brings off a masterful piece of supple ’70s storytelling in this thrilling, humane, high-stakes biographical drama about three months in the life of Enzo Ferrari (Adam Driver), the legendary Italian automaker. It’s 1957, and Ferrari’s company is on the brink of bankruptcy. To attract enough business to save it, his cars and drivers must win the Mille Miglia, the thousand-mile motorsport endurance race through the open roads of Italy. Driver gives Ferrari a coiled authority, and Penélope Cruz is Lady Macbeth fierce as his wife and business partner, who must subsume her rage when she learns that her husband not only has a mistress (Shailene Woodley, good despite a thin accent) but a secret second family. Money and risk, love and hate, all fused by speed — “Ferrari” is a hypnotic ride, one rooted in the specter of death that’s hovering over every hairpin turn.

    4. Maestro

    It’s no exaggeration to say that every scene of Bradley Cooper’s drama about the life of Leonard Bernstein is a lush and vibrant surprise. Cooper stages each moment with great emotional and historical precision (he wants you to feel like you’re right there, eavesdropping). At the same time, the film leaps around with impressionistic freedom, omitting most of Bernstein’s formative conducting career as well as such minor details as his composing of “West Side Story.” Yet Cooper plays Lenny — now aged, now a giddy young man, now courting the woman he will marry, now pursuing the men he also loves, now conducting Mahler with a sweaty transcendent passion —in a performance of such vivid soul-sharing that it scarcely matters what the film leaves out; you’re so caught up in what’s there. As Felicia Montealegre, who married Lenny with open eyes and stood by him, Carey Mulligan creates an indelible portrait of a love rooted in intimacy and play, empathy and heartbreak.

    5. Past Lives

    Celine Song’s drama has a lyrical deceptive quality — and not just because it’s tranquil on the surface and tumultuous underneath. It begins in Seoul, where a 12-year-old boy and girl develop an innocent attraction, then lose touch after her family emigrates to North America. Years later, Nora Moon (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (John Magaro) reconnect through video calls, a bond that’s maintained after she attends a writer’s retreat and meets the prickly New York doofus she goes on to marry. We could swear there are still romantic vibes between the childhood friends, and we wait for them to bloom. The movie, however, has played a trick on us; for that’s not what happens. Yet we weren’t quite wrong. “Past Lives” is a neorealist multiverse film — not a fantasy but a moving drama of the universes of love and possibility, from the past and into the future, we carry around inside us.

    6. Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre

    In 25 years, I’ve rarely liked a Guy Ritchie film; I have never loved one. But this was the year he upped his game, relaxing his dynamo craftsmanship into something less bombastic and more startlingly accomplished. “The Covenant,” the Afghanistan War rescue drama Ritchie directed, is one of the finest movies ever made about the post-9/11 world. That said, my choice for Ritchie movie of the year — and one of the most riotously enjoyable movies of the year, period — is this delirious screwball espionage caper, staged with a quick-talk nonchalance worthy of Howard Hawks, starring Jason Statham as the iciest of superspies, who leads his team, including a divine Aubrey Plaza and a star-worthy Josh Hartnett, on a mission that makes the latest “M:I” adventure look stodgy, all to foil an arms dealer played by Hugh Grant with irresistible sociopathic glee.

    7. Little Richard: I Am Everything

    Lisa Cortes’ transfixing documentary about the wildest king of rock ‘n’ roll is a movie that thrills you in two ways. It uses stunning archival footage to channel the electricity of Little Richard, and the eruptive glory of his volcanic gospel-on-amphetamines music still hits you like a revolution. Yet the movie also takes a deep dive into how Little Richard, a Black queer man who was not about to conceal who he was, entwined the very DNA of rock ‘n’ roll with the perverse power of his identity. His story becomes the stirring and in some ways tragic tale of an artist so ahead of his time that even his own life couldn’t catch up with how he’d changed the world.

    8. May December

    Two words have stood in the way of a full appreciation of Todd Haynes’s daring psychodrama. The first word is “camp” — as if the extravagant elements of this lurid tale of seduction were somehow meant to add up to a postmodern wink. The second word is “tabloid” — as if the fact that it’s a gloss on the true story of Mary Kay Letourneau somehow meant that we’re supposed to place the experience of it in a box marked “trash Americana.” But Haynes, in telling the story of a famous actress (Natalie Portman), who spends a few weeks with the Letorneau-like Gracie (Julianne Moore), who married the former 13-year-old (Charles Melton) she slept with, is actually posing a serious and even dangerous question. He’s looking at a relationship our culture condemns as criminal and abusive and asking: Is it defensible? Could it be love? (Nabokov asked the same question.) Elizabeth, who wants to “become” Gracie (so that she can portray her), becomes our representative as she acts out the answer.

    9. Fair Play

    You could say that this delectably heated-up drama about two hedge-fund analysts, Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) and Emily (Phoebe Dynevor), who are carrying on a serious romantic relationship they have to keep secret (because it breaks the rules of their firm), is like something Adrian Lyne would have made in the ’90s. Except that it may also be the most telling, plugged-in portrait of the killer go-go finance world since Oliver Stone’s “Wall Street.” The writer-director, Chloe Domont, creates money-fueled dialogue (part jargon, all greed) that sizzles and convinces, and once Emily gets the promotion that Luke was angling for, the dissolution of their engagement is fueled by enough psychology and emotional playacting to make the movie a genuine heightened projection of the post-#MeToo world.

    10. The Zone of Interest

    A movie that channels the horror of the Holocaust should hit you with the force of revelation. Yet too many movies with this subject matter do not; Jonathan Glazer’s quietly shocking drama assuredly does. It’s set in and around the stately German bourgeois home where Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), an SS officer, carries on a comfortable domestic existence with his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), and children. The catch is: He’s the commandant of Auschwitz — and the concentration camp is literally right over the wall next to their garden. Glazer creates an unnerving true-life fairy-tale nightmare of evil, using the distant sounds of Auschwitz (the fire from the ovens, the screams) to evoke a monstrousness we can’t see, and that the Höss family lives in denial of. The film is transcendental in style until, in its second half, it becomes a tale of corporate intrigue. Christian Friedel makes Höss an architect of death with the devil’s haircut, and Hüller’s performance as the Carmela Soprano of the Third Reich is chilling.
    Last edited by Chris Knipp; 12-17-2023 at 06:55 PM.

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