What Happened to Me in the Dark
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
While insanity raged around the world, people seemed ready to go back
to the movies. The seemingly unshakable Marvel kingdom began to topple,
and "Barbenheimer" was the filmic event of the year. Emma Stone acted up
a storm in Poor Things, equaled in intensity only by a Cocaine Bear.
John Wick and Godzilla returned in impossibly good sequels. Spider-Man,
Ninja Turtles, and a boy and a heron were tops in animation. And yet I
found ten other movies that hit me just a little bit harder, affected me
just a little more deeply. [Note: The Zone of Interest was disqualified
from my San Francisco Examiner list due to it not opening in theaters in
2023, but I'm including it here, reluctantly bumping Earth Mama down to
the runner-up list.]
- The Top Ten -
1. Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese's furious, majestic epic is the flip-side of Dances
With Wolves, a tale of white greed and racism with the twisted,
toxic King Hale (Robert De Niro) and his easily-manipulated nephew
Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) doing everything in their power to steal oil
from the Native Americans of the Osage Nation. DiCaprio's relationship
with Mollie (Lily Gladstone), both loving and deceitful, only
complicates matters. The three-and-a-half-hour movie rips through its
story like a bullet, never feeling padded or bloated, and it's capped
with Scorsese's examination of his own place as a storyteller. It's a
mature, masterful work.
2. Past Lives
A remarkably beautiful feature debut by Celine Song, Past Lives
is not really a romantic tale, but a nuanced exploration of connections,
distance, and time, telling the story of a childhood romance and its
players reuniting after years apart. It's a love triangle with equally
perfect corners, with a perfect beginning (the trio sitting at a bar,
described by unseen others) and a perfect, unspoken ending.
3. Priscilla
Sofia Coppola's delicate, humane film is the flip side of last year's
flashy Elvis, telling the story of Elvis's partner
Priscilla (Cailee Spaeny), made to stay behind, forbidden to express
herself, and forced to pass the unbearable hours alone. Unlike a normal
biopic that merely tells what happened, Coppola imagines what it all
must have felt like.
4. Fallen Leaves
One of the great masters of deadpan, Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki
has been around for decades, yet has never achieved magic quite like
this oddball tale of two would-be romantic partners whose coupling is
derailed by several ridiculous roadblocks, as if the universe itself
were a stoic prankster.
5. Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troigros
Legendary documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, 93 as of this
writing, gifts us one of his most dynamic films, a magnificent,
four-hour food movie about a family of famous French chefs, but it's
also an exploration of the best (and pettiest) of human behaviors.
6. Showing Up
Kelly Reichardt's look at a community of artists in Portland — with
Michelle Williams as a tightly-wound sculptor — is like a lovely little
short story, with mostly ordinary things happening to mostly ordinary
people, but still adding up to something extraordinary.
7. The Zone of Interest
Jonathan Glazer's brilliantly deceptive Holocaust film never directly
shows any atrocities in its story of a Nazi officer and his family,
living in the shadow of a concentration camp. The real trick of the film
is that you find yourself going along with its rhythms, almost becoming
complacent, before being shocked awake again. It's a good lesson for
life.
8. Asteroid City
One of Wes Anderson's finest films, exploring everything from loss to
showbiz to life in the universe,
Asteroid City has a breathable,
exterior feel — less stuffy than his previous film — and so many
fleeting moments of existential wonder, that it almost requires a
viewing in slow-motion.
9. May December
Director Todd Haynes and star Julianne Moore return to the darkly queasy
territory they explored in their masterpiece Safe in this story of an
actor (Natalie Portman) shadowing an unusual couple. Surface
pleasantries give way to secret, stabbing undercurrents.
10. Fremont
While touching on the immigrant experience, this black-and-white indie
about an Afghan ex-military translator, Donya (Anaita Wali Zada), who
works in a San Francisco fortune cookie factory, creates bits of
delightful deadpan humor, but its greatest strengths lie in its ability
to appreciate small moments of strange beauty.
Ten Runners-Up
Guilty Pleasures & Little Treasures
Great Performances
- Juliette Binoche, The Taste of Things
- Sterling K. Brown, American Fiction
- Robert De Niro, Killers of the Flower Moon
- Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon
- Robert Downey Jr., Oppenheimer
- Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers
- Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
- Greta Lee, Past Lives
- Paul Mescal, All of Us Strangers
- Tia Nomore, Earth Mama
- Rosamund Pike, Saltburn
- Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers
- Andrew Scott, All of Us Strangers
- Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla
- Emma Stone, Poor Things
- Teyana Taylor, A Thousand and One
- Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
- Koji Yakusho, Perfect Days
21 Great DVD and Blu-ray Releases
The Year's Worst Films
Thanks for reading. I appreciate you all. May the future bring peace and joy to each and every one of you. -- JMA
