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gazzhowie · 9 months

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My Top 25 Movies of 2023.

Sitting in cinema screens in 2023 has continued to re-enforce that it is a weird time for the industry, with huge three hundred million dollar (!) blockbusters attracting only ten or twenty people per screen on opening weekend and highly acclaimed independent movies being given no home except for a dumped VOD release. This year felt ‘tough’ being a fan of both great films and the big screen experience.

Anyway, scaremongering over... it is time for me to dust off the cobwebs from my Tumblr account and post my Top 25 movies of this year, 2023.

[Years 2008 through to present are available in the archive.]

As always, films listed are based on their UK release date whether that’s in the cinema or on DVD, VOD etc. Which was a tough rule to stick to this year because I thoroughly enjoyed the lean and effective b-movie action horror antics of Last Voyage of the Detmer, which could’ve earned a slot on my list had its UK release not been pulled 2 weeks prior to its date due to its European distributor going bankrupt.

Frequent visitors know that I’ll throw out a few special mentions to all the films that I wish I could’ve included but couldn’t make fit yet believe they deserve a shout-out regardless and then I get stuck into what I think are the 25 best films of the year. Anyway, without further ado, here are the ‘also-rans’ and ‘near-misses’ separated per genre that very nearly made the final list:

Action movies that I have enjoyed this year include The Covenant which holds the distinction of being an actually enjoyable and tolerable Guy Ritchie movie, John Wick: Chapter 4 who’s bludgeoning and unnecessary excess gives way to a final hour that is part ode to Walter Hill’s The Warriors and part ‘modern action classic’ effort, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 which was uneven but still the best Marvel effort in quite some time (though that is a low compliment), the first part of the French two-parter Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan which brings John Wick-ian action to the oft-told tale, the Gerard Butler ‘Prime Exclusive’ double-bill that was Kandahar and Plane, Denzel Washington’s (“final”) entry in his Equalizer series and Thomas Jane’s cheapo Brannigan / Coogan’s Bluff b-movie tribute, One Ranger.

Not many comedies impressed me this year but going off the ones that made me laugh and surprised me some what were the kind of delightful Woody Harrelson sporting underdog remake Champions, the vastly better than we all thought it was going to be / surprise sleeper success of the year No Hard Feelings and the ‘animals saying uncouth things’ silliness that was Strays.

I liked a lot of horrors this year; the legitimately great (no seriously!) Influencer, the gimmick-heavy but incredibly effective No One Will Save You, the immensely fun Kids Vs Aliens, the Covid-19 slasher that you didn’t realise you secretly sort of wanted that was Sick, the semi-disappointing yet still enjoyable recalibration that was Evil Dead Rise, the Godzilla-homaging creature feature The Lake and the frankly insane / insanely nasty Project Wolf Hunting.

Not a huge amount of animation blew me away this year but Leo was a stand-out for not just being shockingly good but for the sheer amount of repeated viewings it has gone through in my house with my boys without it losing too much. I have to also give props to Spiderman: Across The Spiderverse which was gorgeous to look at and immensely entertaining but excessive and unwieldly to its own detriment.

It was a good year for documentaries with both Milli Vanilli and The Pigeon Tunnel impressing me immensely. The former being surprising in its depth and emotion. But within the documentary form it was a banner year for the ‘biography’ approach with genuinely excellent and thorough studies of fascinating people. I loved Mr Dress Up, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Judy Blume Forever, Hatton and Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.

Dramas I’ve liked a lot in 2023 have been Till which moved me immensely, the justifiably acclaimed May December, The Burial which was far more captivating than it had any cause to be, the Netflix survivalist preposterousness that was Nowhere, Ben Affleck’s fabulously entertaining Air which was another entry in the ‘business origins’ subgenre that continues to somehow flourish, Michael B. Jordan’s overdirected but strong Creed 3, the ode to old-fashioned 1990s studio potboiler thrillers that was To Catch a Killer, the Sky Original Dead Shot and the smart phone / techno warning Unlocked.

And in a little section all of its own marked ‘better than they had any right to be’ I’ve got to give a shout-out to Elizabeth Banks’ incompetently directed but decidedly fun Cocaine Bear, the Jackie Chan / John Cena greenscreen-heavy team-up Hidden Strike, the wonky but fun Scream 6, the exhaustive Extraction 2, the low-bar hurdling Blue Beetle and the absolutely insane (and mildly better than the last two excretable efforts) Fast X.

And now… my Top 25 favourite movies of 2023… but for those who know me to be an enormous John Woo aficionado I will make clear from the outset that at the time of compiling this I still have not seen Silent Night. Sorry.

25. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial

We must mention William Friedkin’s last film before his death - a reminder that the man was a master filmmaker across the board but specifically a master at letting the material and the performance(s) lead. Never has that felt more reinforced than with his interpretation of The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial where, like what he did with his excellent made-for-tv redo of 12 Angry Men, he lets the power of one single setting, a very good cast and exceptional material (in this case a soft update of Herman Wouk's 1953 play of the same name) lead and he gets out of the way and stays there. A more fragile or less confident director at the age Friedkin was, at that point in his career / so close to the end, would've likely been tempted to go big or get flashy to show they've still "got it". There was nothing fragile or unconfident about Friedkin right up to the end. This is an impressively engrossing watch with a great kick at the end that Jason Clarke absolutely sells the shit out of.

24. Talk to Me

I genuinely thought the 'hype' machine was going to have seriously done a number on this, a la BARBIE, but thankfully that turned out not to be the case.

Directors Danny and Michael Philippou have taken a weathered and well-worn concept - that grief and trauma can be open gateways for otherworldly malevolence to exploit - and they've injected it with a fresh voice / energy, whilst respecting 'old standards' like practical effects work.

The concept is decidedly hokey and the lead character isn't particularly likable to say the least (though Sophie Wilde is excellent playing her), but the Philippou Brothers are so thoroughly committed here and the practical effects work is so impressive that it's infectious.

You're almost pulled 'in' despite yourself because the scares are so well-executed and the feeling of dread is so effectively threaded. You know you're being 'played' and you try to fight against it, but it's a mark of its quality that it gets you anyway.

23. Beau Is Afraid

If Taika Waititi parlayed the goodwill and acclaim from a series of beloved low-budget Kiwi comedies into a mainstream career making multimillion dollar Marvel movies and becoming one of the most sought after studio hires of the last decade, then Ari Aster has used the instantly accepted and highly regarded successes of HEREDITARY and MIDSOMMER to... *checks notes* ... work through some complicated shit involving his relationship with his mother (and his father - who may or may not be an actual 'penis monster') and have arthouse kingmakers A24 pay $35 million for it.

This made less than a third of its $35 million budget back (because, come on now, how on earth do you effectively market this thing?) so it's tiring but true that the label "cult classic" has •already• been applied to it.

Look, I'm offering zero defence to accusations against the film that it is overlong, incredibly self-indulgent, ill-disciplined, carrying nowhere near the depth it claims to, tiresome and exhausting. It IS all those things. By the final stretch it is floundering haaard and there's a serious feeling of being trolled starting to set in.

But, first of all, it shouldn't be discounted how excellent and effective Joaquin Phoenix is here and Aster's wildly uneven material is greatly assisted by his casting. Secondly, it has to be acknowledged that there's moments - long stretches, in fact - where there's absolute brilliance at play here.

There's masterfully crafted moments of genuine hilarity (dark hilarity, for sure) alongside flashes of abject discomforting horror. I'd go so far as to say some of the most interesting, inventive, unique and intriguing moments in cinema this year are tucked away inside this behemoth of a clusterfuck.

People pushed hard for the extended cut of MIDSOMMER to be released. I'm pushing for the reduced cut of this.

22. There’s Something in the Barn

I thoroughly enjoyed and had a great time with this. It's not at all embarrassed to lean into its influences, evoking affectionate RARE EXPORTS / GREMLINS vibes without coming across like its heavily plagiarising from them.

It’s got a terrific dry wit to it thanks to writer Aleksander Kirkwood Brown's script and which the cast, especially Martin Starr (essentially doing his SPIDER-MAN shtick here) and a very winsome Amrita Acharia, sell well. And director Magnus Martens doesn't skimp on the dark stuff and sense of foreboding either.

There's no snobbishness to put up against this thing - it's a horror comedy that made me laugh multiple times and jump occasionally. That's a very solid success to me and I highly recommend it if the likes of RARE EXPORTS, KRAMPUS, CHRISTMAS BLOODY CHRISTMAS and SINT are favourites of yours.

21. Pearl

I'm a big fan of Ti West and I really enjoyed X, which was one of my Top 25 of 2022 and which in my review I defended by saying:

"... It's very easy to dismiss what West is doing here as just an exacting homage to THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE but it's more than that. Obviously there's overt nods to it but you could also suggest West is doffing his cap affectionately to Paul Thomas Anderson's BOOGIE NIGHTS, Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO and, yes, both Lewis Teague's ALLIGATOR and Tobe Hooper's EATEN ALIVE as well..."

This is an interesting companion piece to that movie (with a third entry, MAXXXINE, imminent) made more fascinating due to how it came into existence:

Whilst in their Covid 'bubble' prior to production beginning out in New Zealand for X, director Ti West and star Mia Goth became so enamoured with the backstory they were creating for the character of Pearl that they wrote an entire prequel, pitched it to A24 and built filming into the back end of the original production. A high value 'two-ffer' if ever there was one.

The end result is something less blatantly and broadly enjoyable than the first (second) story but it's definitely the more curious and interesting one; if X really was Ti West's TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE / BOOGIE NIGHTS / PSYCHO / EATEN ALIVE bastardisation, this is his Douglas Sirk melodrama injected with Technicolor and falsely set loose as a 'follow your dreams' fable gone really, really wrong.

It obviously lives and dies by the lead performance and, by crikey, Mia Goth is so good here. That much-memed final credits thing is lauded but it's that late stage monologue that drops your jaw a little. If horror wasn't so easily dismissed her performance would've won awards.

For years we've always considered horror prequels to be the nadir of the genre. After all, who cares if Leatherface only became Leatherface because he was made redundant? Or Jason Vorhees killing nubile teens because he got his pot farm trampled on? Or... or... how no one taking Michael Myers trick or treating turned him into a psychopath? Here though, PEARL indicates that doesn't always have to be the case.

20. Reality

For those worrying as to whether Sydney Sweeney's tsunami of scantily-clad content across advertising and social media platforms has left her precariously overexposed (in more ways than one), along comes this fascinating and considered film to remind you that behind the bikinis, the false nails and the airbrushing is an extremely talented actress capable of incredibly powerful work.

Devoid of make-up, carrying the film nearly 70% of the time in close-up shots she can't fake her way free from and regimentally parroting the actual recorded FBI transcripts down to every sigh, stumble and gulp Sweeney is frankly astonishing in how she carries this thing.

Director Tina Satter keeps things tight in terms of both location, framing and running time (it plays as an almost real-time exercise) and as a result the film becomes a riveting, claustrophobic and maddening display (how did Reality Winner's actual charges and ridiculous sentence stand when all of this occurred without correct due process and legal entitlements being followed from the outset?) from a first-time film director showing exceptional command of her cast and her visual space.

19. Fair Play

Chloe Domont's corporate morality play / torchlight on gender politics by way of a recalibration of the 1990s style erotic thriller is all the more astounding because of how assured and masterfully controlled it is for someone's feature directorial debut.

Driven by two excellent performances from Phoebe Dynevor (who I'd not seen before in anything and was astonished by her) and Alden Ehrenreich (who I think is terrific and deserves treated way better by the industry), and supported by atypically great turns from Eddie Marsan and Rich Sommer, this thing has no right to be as engulfing and nail-biting as it is for what it is.

Domont refuses to make compromises or concessions in the way she presents latent sexism, money, toxic alpha cultures, wounded pride and corporate backstabbing infecting her characters. It's a brutal, relentless ride she takes us on.

One where the brash bloodied cunnilingus opener keeps returning to your conscience like it was heavy foreboding for what feels inevitable - these two can't keep tearing away at each other like this, surely? Not without someone dying at the other's hands.

You keep trying to shake that feeling off, telling yourself that it's not ~that~ kind of film. But as this thing starts to barrel towards its third act it is testament to Domont, and how Dynevor / Ehrenreich are executing her material, that you come to realise all bets are off.

18. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

There's action movie franchises and then there's •this• action movie franchise; hitting its stride at the fourth entry, delivering back-to-back masterpieces with its fifth and sixth and now this - a seventh entry so frickin good it rides out evident flaws (and Mark Gatiss' horrendous "accent") that would absolutely fatally decimate other films!

Because it feels sacrilegious to even say this but the latest entry manages to straddle both being very good, decidedly high end, etc etc and... *whispers it* ... kinda 'samey' to what we've had since Christopher McQuarrie became 'grand master':

Still no one trusts the inherent righteous genius of Ethan Hunt, forcing him to go against one and all. Blah blah. There's excessive shots of Tom Cruise running. Yes, yes. There's elaborate stunts seamed together by a 'not as clever as it thinks' plot. Of course. And too many characters. Far too many. Confoundingly, it feels somehow a little stale and yet brilliant.

The film's 'grand' action sequence this time round has been so overexposed, so heavily spoilt (a making of dissection for it ran before the film itself at my screening for Christ's sake) that you naturally assume it'd deflate a little by the time you see it 'in context'. That's not so. Mainly because it is actually just the entrée to the main course which is the train finale.

The climax is an utter masterwork of technical execution, mixing real stuntwork with very well done greenscreen and (yes, shocking as it is to say for a Tom Cruise movie) CGI facial replacement alongside terrifically accomplished narrative construction.

If like me you continue to be aggrieved by the presence of Simon Pegg's Benji and how he's ostensibly exactly the same character as Luther with exactly the same skillset, routinely forcibly sidelining a vastly superior Ving Rhames, then that's more evident here than ever before. So much so that they literally 'Poochie' Luther out of the film in the third act. Which is obviously racist bullshit. Also, I know I stand alone in my apathy towards Rebecca Ferguson (I really don't get the adoration for her / her character at all) and my hatred for Vanessa Kirby and all the stupid gurning that comes with her, but both are drowned out by a crackin' turn by Pom Klementieff and a performance from Hayley Atwell that you really need to believe the hype on; she lights up the screen and is a tremendous comedy player amongst all the weighty waffle.

And that's the film's biggest flaw that ROGUE NATION and FALLOUT both managed to masterfully swerve - the minute the action stops the film starts to sink under the weight of really heavy exposition. Mounds and mounds of the stuff, in fact. I know McQuarrie and Cruise have been open about how they conceive a script around action set-pieces but this is the first time where the stitchwork is so headache-inducing having to listen to it that you start to see a wobble in the method for the first time... even more so now McQ and Cruise have started injecting all this whiffery about "the choice" and portentous context about how IMF agents work, are recruited, etc. Like, what are you doing trying to 'John LeCarre' my fucking MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE movies, goddamnit?

Still, it's the most minor of hardships considering you're never more than 10 minutes off from getting out the other side of all that exposition and getting to another sublime action sequence or a close up of Atwell's wonderous smile.

17. Sisu

"Sisu is a Finnish concept described as stoic determination, tenacity of purpose, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness, and is held by Finns themselves to express their national character. It is generally considered not to have a literal equivalent in English (tenacity, grit, resilience and hardiness are much the same things, but do not necessarily imply stoicism or bravery)."- Wikipedia

The RAMBO sequels should look to this, kneel before it and weep just for being in its presence.

And we better start doing the same with Jalmari Helander, who in just three movies has done Finnish 'interpretations' of John Carpenter horrors, 80s Amblin movies and now 'lone warrior' action films to magnificent effect.

This is a gloriously ridiculous live action cartoon of violent excess and bonkers propulsion; land, water and air set-pieces of utter insanity stitched together with inventive, nasty gore.

It is outlandish in its speed, its fat-free story construction and its refusal to ever stop or give way to wimpy, silly things like character development.

16. Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

I totally get Hollywood's whoreish mentality for seeing something succeed and then bastardising it to the point that what we once loved is something we become bored by - it's why we suffered through a noughties onslaught of what felt like nothing but zombie movies because 28 DAYS LATER landed well or why everyone's trying to do "shared universes" now because of Marvel.

Or why after the massive success and instant affection for INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE every animated movie of late has been plagiarising the hell out of it.

You saw the trailer for this - a heavily belated sequel to a spin-off from a SHREK sequel - pulling that very shit and it just felt a bit like your old dad after your mum's left him, spraying on the 'hair filler' and squeezing into skinny jeans to "get back out there" and prove he's "still got it"...

... and then it just casually reveals itself to be a film of massively inventive design (both visually and narratively), that's surprisingly deep and very funny - and as a result superior to both its predecessor and the entire franchise from which it was born.

You don't •think• you NEED time spent in the company of Olivia Colman and Ray Winstone as Mama Bear and Papa Bear or Florence Pugh as Goldilocks and John Mulaney as Jack Horner... or best of all ELITE SQUAD's Wagner Moura as Death... but you absolutely do! Don't make the mistake of thinking you're 'above' this sort of thing, cos I can guarantee you you're not.

It's a delight!

15. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

It feels like I've got to be apologetic in my opinion of this if 'Film Twitter' / the critical majority is to be believed, in which case I'm sorry but I enjoyed this. I just don't think you should ever underestimate the positive impact factor(s) that can be drawn from this particular actor turning up on screen as this particular character, scored to John Williams' music. And I'm saying this as someone who's seen KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL.

I can see why people would have issue with this latest / last outing; it's overlong to the point of bagginess (there's a staleness that starts to set in from the repetition of Jones and Co landing at a location, having the baddies immediately show up, outwit them and make off with the macguffin only for Jones to steal it back) and the character of Helena Shaw is a fairly odious and unlikeable one who exists to cause more shit for Indiana Jones than is tolerable (and I was no fan for the most part of how Phoebe Waller-Bridge played her).

And then there's the 'look' of it too. Did it HAVE to have such a shitty, plastic sheen to it? It cannot be overstated that one of the most tremendous qualities of those first three INDIANA JONES movies was in how Spielberg went out to REAL locations and had Vic Armstrong and Harrison Ford REALLY ride REAL horses and jumped on top of REAL tanks or fall under REAL trucks. Here, it's pixels and screens. Again. With nothing learnt from the issues KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL generated.

James Mangold has done a commendable job of 'apeing' Steven Spielberg and there's a lot - and I mean a lot - of great action here. But the vast majority of it has the shine taken off by continually cutting into terrifically adrenalinised action sequences to insert very obvious greenscreened shots of Ford and Waller-Bridge bickering and shouting like they were really honestly / definitely / maybe there involved with the sequence when it was getting filmed.

It's infuriating because this thing is stacked to the gills with thoroughly enjoyable, legitimately well-designed action sequences - the escape from the castle in the French Alps, the Apollo 11 parade and New York City Subway chase, the Tangier sequence, the Aegean Sea set-piece, the Ear of Dionysius cavern stuff and the airfield chase - but in every single one there's moments of really quite shoddy CGI that draws you right out of the moment to remind you 80% of this was done on computers. There's not ever a moment to make you gasp in awe at how the stunt-man survived like in the original trilogy. But there's a LOT of moments that has you thinking "This thing cost $350 million?"

But all that said, Mangold making a 'fan' version of a Steven Spielberg INDIANA JONES movie is better than Steven Spielberg phoning in one. And I'm not going to lie, this thing had me from the minute the font come up in the opening titles and we got a straight-up legitimate 1940s set INDIANA JONES mini-movie (which seemed to sit as an eery bedfellow to MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 7, weirdly enough) with the best... though still not flawless... de-ageing techniques I've seen.

14. The Fabelmans

It's more than a little disingenuous for all involved, specifically Steven Spielberg himself, to describe this as "semi-autobiographical" and "loosely based" on his adolescence and first years as a filmmaker when anyone who's read any number of books on the man or watched director Susan Lacy's 2017 biographical documentary can see the beats are all there, wholesale. If THIS is "loosely" then the biopic version would be the greatest invasion of privacy ever committed. This ~isn't~ a "fable", man!

I can also see with it why some have braced against it and the instant critical adoration that was applied to it, because the longer it sticks around the more muddled it becomes about what its point of view is and whether it has anything left to say. By the end it slides to a stop after 2½ hours with an admittedly wonderful (and wonderfully bizarro) comedic bon mot having scattered barely etched vignettes / sketches in its final stretch. And tonally, there's questions as to really what was trying to be said with that late 'Ditch Day' subplot and whether co-writer Tony Kushner was working through his OWN stuff within Spielberg's memory bank.

That being said, I loved it in all honesty. For the first two thirds of its running time, I thought it was •really• something special - and anyone pushing out the notion that this is Spielberg on autopilot ain't watching this properly. That cold pan cutting his [screen] father from the frame in a moment of parental happiness but leaving in his [screen] mother and her lover? That's some brutal, subtle craftsmanship there. And layered on top of choices like that is more precision cinematography from Janusz Kamiński and scoring (for the final time?) by John Williams.

The performances across the board from Gabriel LaBelle (as 'Sammy' / Spielberg), Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, [CENSORED] and Seth Rogen are extremely good. Though as atypically great as Williams is here, I'm not certain this ends up being the 'ode' to Spielberg's mum, Leah Adler, that some think it to be.

I totally understand the perspective of those that see this cynically as a 'pre-designed awards hoover' - you can't help but come away from Judd Hirsch's cameo feeling like the entire thing was written as a Best Supporting Actor Oscar clip reel - but for me it just hit me right in the chest... exactly as it will for anyone who spent some of their best summers with their dearest friends, being creative, making films, watching films, dreaming of a future that involved cinema, fending off unsupportive family and trying to hold close those that did try to help your talent flourish.

13. Babylon

As much as Film Twitter has taken against BABYLON's final moment, it must be said that for a "love letter" to cinema and the movie industry overall, Chazelle can 'sign it off' how he likes (and "SINGIN' IN THE RAIN to AVATAR" is certainly •a• take!) with no obligation to be subtle. However, considering there's NOTHING subtle about this film whatsoever preceding it, why you'd think it's conclusion would be any different is silly.

I'm a Damien Chazelle fan. I liked WHIPLASH and LA LA LAND enormously and I genuinely consider FIRST MAN one of the finest films of the last decade. No matter its flaws (of which there are several), I drew a great deal of enjoyment from this, his latest effort. Repeat viewings have put it as one of my favourite films of 2023.

It's a very, very messy film. Chazelle seems to believe the debauchery and excess of the era his narrative lands within - Hollywood's transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s - gives him unrestrained reign with an overindulgent running time and a cavalcade of graphic content. Added to all the blood, vomit, excrement, etc etc the opening Kinoscope Studios Exec's bacchanalian mansion party is the "opening sequence of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN" of debauched, drug-fuelled, orgy sequences in cinema.

There's no real consistent throughline to any of this which makes it all the more difficult to embrace across 190 minutes and because it plays like a plethora of sketches it has massive peaks and troughs Chazelle doesn't always seem to have total control of - the vignette involving Margot Robbie's Nellie LaRoy first experience of recording a 'sound' take starts solid, gets funny, outstays its welcome and then beats you into submission.

There's a lot of excellence here though. Whether that's in Brad Pitt's surprisingly layered, moving and deft turn or through the sojourns onto the desert location shoots of multiple oscillating productions, topped off with the very 'on' appearance of Spike Jonze's 'Not Otto Preminger' Otto Von Strassberger.

I'm thinking that opening on elephant defecation and sordid acts of urolagnia is something that in retrospect director Damien Chazelle may well be regretting now critics have been "pissy" about his latest film and it's now considered the big box office "turd" of the year.

12. The Killer

I've seen a few people talk about this as if it's "beneath" David Fincher, inarguably one of our greatest working filmmakers today. Like a tight hitman-out-for-revenge yarn based on Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon's comic book series is not "worthy" of him or something. Clearly these people are forgetting this is the same guy who spent 6 years in development hell on a WORLD WAR Z sequel, gave us the glorious (if flawed) bit of pulp that was THE GAME, the immensely effective b-movie in an a-picture gown in PANIC ROOM and remade an adaptation of a popular airport potboiler with THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO in amongst whatever is regarded as his "prestige" flicks.

It's absolutely a David Fincher movie; that's apparent in the droll humour, the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross soundtrack and the clever visual flourishes - like the entire Amazon 'bit' in the final stretch.

It's a caper. A yarn, if you will. A bit of pulp, just with high end flourishes - such as Fincher's meticulous choices, Erik Messerschmidt's cinematography and the casting itself (Fassbender, Arliss Howard, Charles Parnell and Tilda Swinton).

There's this brilliant layering here between the clinical, detailed voiceover Michael Fassbender provides (that leads us to believe this is an assassin at the peak of his 'game') and the actions we physically see from him on screen (missed shots, beat downs suffered, etc) that indicate there's a little bit more than what's on the surface.

I had an absolute blast with this - a tight / immensely refreshing sub two hour, jet black comedic (the aliases!!) thriller that sits as Fincher's hat tip to Jean-Pierre Melville's classic, LE SAMOURAÏ.

... Though I do want to deduct a star off my final rating for the bit where Tilda Swinton co-opted my favourite 'go to' pub joke that I've relied on for 20 years. Now whenever I tell it people are going to say I've just ripped it off this, goddamnit!

11. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.

What an absolute gem of a film!

You knew you were in steady hands because Judy Blume's 1970 source novel is just that good, Kelly Fremon Craig's EDGE OF SEVENTEEN is an instant classic and there's a dependable excellence that comes with casting the likes of Rachel McAdams and Kathy Bates.

But there was always the risk that this COULD'VE got fucked up. Some idiot at the studio might have tried to modernise it. Or believe that it needed more 'incident'. Or cast someone too precocious in the lead role. But James L. Brooks clearly bodyguarded this thing correctly.

The final result is a sweet, funny and very lovely little film with an absolute sweetheart of a turn from Abby Ryder Fortson as the title character.

I genuinely loved spending time watching this.

10. 20 Days in Mariupol

There's a moment in this - Mstyslav Chernov's truly harrowing frontline documentary of the twenty days he and his colleagues spent besieged in Mariupol after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine - involving an emergency cesarean and an unresponsive newborn that is more upsetting, more thrilling and more uplifting than the combination of every horror and every feelgood drama released in the last five years.

This is the most important and vital film you'll see this year and then never ever want to see again.

More so because as humans in this modern age we rather callously only seem to have the heart / stomach / attention-span for one 'war' at a time, and we appear to have abandoned the Ukrainian conflict to refocus our outrage on what's going on in Gaza instead.

For large parts of it we feel like Mstyslav Chernov's been given exclusive access to the pits of hell and he's taking us on a tour. This is intense and riveting, shockingly so considering the unrepentant footage of dead or dying children.

9. The Night of the 12th

I've worked in the field of investigation for over 20 years and I can tell you this much - this movie fuckin gets 'it', man.

In opening with the title card that it does it offsets any eventual disappointment you may feel when the ending arrives. You don't feel short-changed because you've been brought in from the start to share the frustration with the characters.

There's nothing easy here. Nothing pat. Just real investigatory pathways followed with dead ends jumping out in front when everything in your gut says this lead, that lead or the next was going to be 'the one'.

It painstakingly shows that the work is in the hours. And the work can become an obsession. An obsession that gives nothing back equitable to what it takes from you.

It starts with a suitably harrowing and upsetting sequence and it ends on character uplift in lieu of narrative resolution. It also sits as one of the best movies about the art and reality of investigation in modern cinema.

8. The Creator

If there's anyone out there still 'over crediting' Tony Gilroy for the success of ROGUE ONE - one of the best (and the last great) STAR WARS films - this is the "fuck you" exhibit.

Gareth Edwards' sci-fi action epic doesn't entirely land its thematic intentions and hampers itself somewhat by placing dramatic reliance on the anti-acting vessel that is Gemma Chan, but by crikey is it an enthralling and gorgeous-looking ride. (John David Washington remains a magnetic watch, though I do wonder because he sounds so much like his dad whether we're all just hooked on the idea that they've 'prequelised' Denzel?)

You're gifted something here that feels like 1982 Ridley Scott and 1993 James Cameron have got together to play with action figures and do a sci-fi Vietnam movie... it's glorious stuff!

Full of some of the best effects and well realised set-pieces of the year, it's the old 'protect the child' trope given a beautiful lick of paint thick to feel make it feel just about unique enough and a) stand out in an ocean of comic book movies and sequels, and b) probably make Neil Blomkamp go "Ahhh. That's how you do this? Riii-ght!"

So of course no fucker showed up to watch it!

7. Close

I don't really have friends. I don't have the sort of 'personality' that lends itself to people being able to find me tolerable at the most basic level - at least for more than a couple of hours at a time anyway.

I've come to accept and acknowledge this fact the older I've got in life. I've always tried to make friends / keep friends etc but the type of person I am seemingly lends itself to being easily used and/or quickly put down.

It wasn't always like this though. When I was a child there was a boy who saw something in me that others did not and could not. He was in my class and lived close by my grandparents, where I spent most of my time. We were bonded by our loneliness amidst a sea of heads at school as much as our shared sense of humour. Even at a young age I came to appreciate this friend for simply •liking• me and we quickly became inseparable.

On the last day of school, with a vast and limitless summer ahead of us before separate high schools would provide an inevitable divide, we had an argument. A silly, stupid, ~nothing~ argument - significant enough in postscript that I can still recall it now 31 years on - that degenerated into shoving and me accidentally banging his head off a bathroom wall during lunchbreak.

We left school that day with our friendship impacted and the first week of the summer holiday's heavily damaged by him not being by my side in it. And on the very night that I finally decided I didn't want this to continue any longer... that the very next morning I would pick up the phone and ask him if he wanted to go ride bikes in the dene... he died.

An asthma attack. A fuckin asthma attack.

He died not believing that I was his friend and that devastated me. It still does. 31 years later, I think about Neil at least once a week. I see clips of talent show magicians and KNOW that'd have been him. I've tried all my life to replicate a friendship like it and I've never succeeded. But can we ever generate that closeness in adulthood towards someone like we could as children, when we were free of responsibility and bonded by limitless possibility?

I've frequently wondered what my life would've been like if Neil had still been in it, telling myself over and over that this would've been one of the rare pre-teen childhood friendships that lasted.

I miss him and would give anything to be able to deliver the apology to him that he deserved then and is still owed now.

So... all THAT said... it goes without saying that this deeply human, carefully etched and very naturally drawn drama hit me like a train travelling at 150mph.

This is one of the most effective and important films about grief, trauma-processing, adolescence and friendship that there's been in some time.

It really is a brilliant piece of cinema that should be shown in schools to every kid from twelve upwards.

6. The Eight Mountains

Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch's adaption of Paolo Cognetti's novel is a (both visually and emotionally) astonishingly beautiful effort with two fascinating and textured performances from Alessandro Borghi as the adult Bruno and Luca Marinelli as the adult Pietro.

It's an intimate epic; a careful, patient and quietly profound treaty on friendship, life, love, ambition, Buddhist concepts, ancient Indian cosmology, growth, nature and the weight of legacy.

Come for the stunning footage of the gorgeous Italian Alps, but stay to be deeply moved by something really rather special, wholehearted and sincere that steps right over whatever BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN esque expectations or assumptions you may well carry into this.

5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

I've never understood anyone - especially the aged fanboys frequently responsible for ruining the STAR WARS and MARVEL 'discourse' - who's shown territoriality over the TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES as a "franchise".

The reason this ramshackle 1984 indie comic by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird has blown up into five television series, seven films, multiple video games and a range of toys / merchandise for four decades is mostly down to the way it sorta reinvents itself every five or so years. Which means there's some form of TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 'content' now for all of us in one way or another.

And one of the most impressive - but not THE most impressive - things about this film is how it incorporates something from everything that's gone before without becoming a complete mess. The spirit of the comic book source material is front and centre alongside the legitimate effort of the 1990 movie adaptation. The "that'll do" crappy clart of its sequels is avoided whilst the huge scale of the maligned Bay-ified 2014 - 2016 movies is represented. It definitely captures everything about the first Saturday morning cartoon that enamoured the property to us way back when.

It's a glorious effort. It truly is. I watched it with my son and his friends and the huge grins on their faces was infectious. I struggled to think of another entertainment entity that has moved so effortlessly through the generations like this has.

It's a visually resplendent film. It takes the reconfiguration of the animated form a la the SPIDER-VERSE movies and delivers a surprisingly more focused and tighter effort than the latest SPIDER-VERSE sequel. It is dripping with an energy and confidence that will surprise you, as well as a whole heap of heart and humour that will delight.

Yeah, there's moments here and there where the energetic visual styling becomes a little too cluttered in its action sequences but it is a minor grumble against what is a surprising instant masterpiece of its type:

A sweet and funny teen movie walking in the shoes of an animated giant sized comic book blockbuster wearing the coat of a New York conspiracy film, drenched in classic East Coast hip-hop and a score by by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and performed by one of the most impressively eclectic voice casts of recent.

(Within a roster of Hannibal Buress, Rose Byrne, John Cena, Ice Cube, Natasia Demetriou, Ayo Edebiri, Giancarlo Esposito, Post Malone, Rogen, Paul Rudd, Maya Rudolph, Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr, Nicolas Cantu and Brady Noon, it is Jackie Chan that absolutely steals this thing by a considerable distance!)

4. Asteroid City

If you aren't a Wes Anderson fan this is not the film that is going to convert you. An immaculately stylised and composed metatextual 'Russian Nesting Doll' celebration of the construction of art and the art of storytelling? No way. No how.

There was elements of it that didn't work for me but what •did• work I was head over heels in love with. The [CENSORED]*constructs felt almost like afterthoughts and didn't particularly resonate. A lot of reviews hit Anderson for being unfocused and overindulgent, and I kinda can see where they're coming from. But only with regards to that particular element.

[* censored by me and hopefully by everyone else because they've done a wonderful job of hiding the story construct from the marketing]

The rest of the film is primo Wes Anderson in his most astonishingly stylised form with his attention to detail never more sharp.

A complaint that must be noted though is in the casting, where the usual 'Anderson Players' appear to have ran a 'pyramid scheme'; bringing in actors who's casting has attracted other actors to the point of it being too cluttered an ensemble in too lean a film to let everyone truly shine. Despite all the plaudits, I think Scarlett Johansson is well out of her depth here. And I just think if you're going to hire the likes of Steve Carell (replacing a Covid-addled Bill Murray at the last minute), Margot Robbie (who should've played Johansson's part, and vice versa) and the sublime Sophia Lillis but barely use them properly it's almost a crime!

When it's funny it is hilarious. When it is delightful it sits as a heavenly confection. And when it wobbles it still isn't as ponderous and disappointing as some of the lesser elements of THE FRENCH DISPATCH.

3. Oppenheimer

I found every plaudit for this to be true and what a reward it was to receive as cinema lies stale in its current state, crusted with the stale decay of innumerable shitty-sheened superhero movies and sequels to things no one was asking for.

Here's a mature, complex, expertly constructed character study of great depth and intelligence; a film primarily made up of scientists and mathematicians thinking and squabbling amongst themselves whilst a non-linear deep betrayal born of immense pettiness plays out almost as an appendices to the traditional biopic... yet, thanks to the music of Ludwig Göransson and editing by Jennifer Lame, it moves like this insanely kinetic action thriller instead.

The ending stretch feels almost ~too~ trite and neat though, it must be said. Although maybe I'm tarnished by a feeling that no movie should depend on the cripplingly irritating overacting of Rami Malek to play last-minute 'saviour'.

Cillian Murphy is frankly outstanding here and whilst most critics have the Best Supporting Actor Oscar locked for Robert Downey Jr (who's brilliant and who's Lewis Strauss receives a 'kiss off' by Nolan here that almost feels like a Marvel Cinematic Universe esque tease for a sequel about Strauss arranging the JFK assassination!) it would be good to see Matt Damon get some recognition here as his General Groves very nearly steals the whole movie with very little.

The casting is so sumptous overall that every scene induces a "Hey! That's..." as the likes of Kenneth Branagh, Josh Hartnett, Casey Affleck, David Krumholtz, Matthew Modine, Benny Safdie, Jason Clarke, Michael Angarano, Jack Quaid, Josh Peck, Olivia Thirlby, Macon Blair, Tom Conti, James D'Arcy, David Dastmalchian, Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich, Tony Goldwyn, Alex Wolff, James Remar, James Urbaniak and (is it a spoiler to say?) Gary Oldman as Harry S. Truman roll out to 'play' for one or two minutes.

It's the sort of movie so stacked and packed even at 3 hours that it puts Emily Blunt (as Katherine "Kitty" Oppenheimer) in such an undercooked and underdeveloped role you wonder why they cast a 'star' in it... until that clearance hearing scene near the end where she goes and delivers the impact of a... well... an atomic bomb and you think to yourself "Oh. That's why they cast Emily Blunt!"

It's a gorgeous-looking - Hoyte van Hoytema's cinematography is luscious - cinematic achievement by Christopher Nolan, where his visual ambition and clinical cinematic technique have really come together once again to remind you the term "modern great" as a filmmaker is well earned.

2. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

A "great time" - seeing as the film itself had my beloved GAME NIGHT's Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley at the helm - perhaps. But a resoundingly delightful time that left me instantly eager for more of these movies and DEFINITELY future revisits of this one? I'm shocked at just how brilliant this was.

I can't believe that one of my favourite films of the year is a 'fantasy heist action comedy adventure' based on the infamous tabletop role-playing game.

Especially considering I've never played nor have any frame of reference / interest towards the tabletop game (my sole DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 'knowledge' stems from the 1980s cartoon series - which gets a pretty terrific nod here!) and one-third of the cast is made up of actors (Michelle Rodriguez and Regé-Jean Page) I can't normally stand.

I've been a big Chris Pine fan for a long time now and his performance in this only increases the fandom. And I've flat-out crushed on Sophia Lillis since IT and she's pretty tremendous (if a little underserved) here. The whole cast - yeah, including Rodriguez - are pretty wonderful with Hugh Grant clearly having a grand ol' time, a "big star" mid-movie cameo that'll only land depending on your opinion of this diversive 'talent' and Justice Smith very nearly stealing the movie out from under Pine.

This thing is built within the framework of a marriage between THE PRINCESS BRIDE and the aforementioned GAME NIGHT. It's ostensibly LORDS OF THE RINGS meets OCEAN'S 11; a series of ever escalating challenges and heists that are thrillingly executed within a film that's very, very, VERY funny. The opening prologue is a complete statement of intent ("Where's Jonathan?") that tells you exactly the movie you're going to get.

Killers of the Flower Moon / Godzilla: Minus One

Simply astonishing to indulge in - there's such a deft, surprising delicacy to elements of Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon that's all the more astounding considering the abhorrent subject matter.

That comes mainly from the performance Lily Gladstone provides this film with. In a sea of tremendous work - and by God it's both magnificent to see Robert DeNiro be great again and for Leonardo DiCaprio to finally do something in my eyes that lives up to his [overstated] reputation - she is working on some other stratospheric level.

Comments about the length by some don't resonate with me. I certainly didn't feel it, necessarily. It's probably the length it needs to be to do justice to the masterful source material its adapted, deliver a legitimate love story (of which, don't be fooled by its toxicity, this is), a film of weighted historical and cultural context AND a true life / true crime procedural.

It's surprisingly less gratuitous than you'd probably expect too. Especially considering we're in the hands of our greatest living filmmaker, someone who's never shied away from presenting us with absolute violence of an uncompromised nature.

There's also these splashes of jet black comedy occasionally popping up too - like the horribly bleak but darkly funny scene in which one henchman asks a lawyer about whether adopting then killing his Osage wife's kids would make him a benefactor of their riches. When the lawyer rightly points out it sounds like he's confessing to planning child murders he replies not unless the lawyer's answer would be affirmative.

This is a film that consumes you. It pulls you in and drags you down - you're in the presence of pure evil and weak character, and Scorsese expertly holds you there so escape feels as impossible as justice must have to the Osage.

It's very easy to 'throw around' the term "masterpiece" when it comes to Martin Scorsese. Mainly because the fucker keeps effortlessly making 'em. But by crikey this really is one.

Equally majestic as a piece of cinema, but in an entirely different form and genre is Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla: Minus One.

By concentrating on making an interesting drama with genuinely well-etched characters (that just so happens to have a giant radioactive monster passing through intermittently) equal to a barnstorming blockbuster creature feature (that allows itself to be infected with enthralling drama and character development), this steps up in the year of the Godzilla franchise’s 70th year to take the position as its best entry [by a considerable distance] in its illustrious history.

Buzzing with some of the best set-pieces of the year soundtracked to a thumping and all-consuming score by Naoki Sato, there’s genius in recalibrating a Godzilla movie – of all things – in order to develop an incredibly touching human drama and social commentary about what makes a family, what is the true definition of patriotism and courage, what real service to one’s country presents as and how to find air to breathe / the will to go on in a post-war Japan where unrelenting despair hangs in the atmosphere wherever your head turns and ‘fear’ manifests itself as a skyscraper-sized lizard-of-sorts.

We know we’re being played with the cute kid and the manipulative makeshift family relations, but that doesn’t stop it being wonderful. The marriage of sincere impacts caused by war and loss with sci-fi fantasy (but no less tense) fantasy action shouldn’t work, but they very much do. This thing is firing on multiple levels and it succeeds across the board to stand as the best blockbuster of the year.

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Here's a Letterboxd link for this whole thing if you're that way inclined.

Tell your mum I said hello.

See you next year...