10 Favorite New-to-Me Films of 2023

It's been a long year to say the least. Unequivocally it's one of the longest feeling of my lifetime with all of its eventful happenings and revelations, and yet with the calendar year proving to be a real endurance test, its cinema has felt anything but. Despite the average running time for many new auteurist outings seemingly calcifying to a comfortable place of 2+ hours, the act of patience, whilst still a virtue, took rest this time around as the films I had the privilege of experiencing this year - both old and new - solidified as notably stronger than recent years past. Though this in part can be attributed simply to the curatorial nature of my own choosing of what to see, I like to think that conditions informed from my real life experiences instilled new fervor to the works of years past I finally was able to catch up with, and the newly produced ones which also had more juice going for them than usual as well. Whatever the chemistry or math, it's once again been an honor to revel in so much good shit. Of the films released prior to the current release year of 2023, and the "catch-up" year of 2022, here are the very best I witnessed and considered.

10) LE SYSTEME ZSYGMONDY (2000)

(Dir. Luc MOULLET)

Light & friendly comic foil with an astonishing canvas of color and location. From the tones of the natural mountainous environment to the striking discernment in choice of character attire.

9) A VOLUNTARY YEAR (2019)

(Dir. Henner WINCKLER & Ulrich KÖHLER)

Albeit a much less logistical and theoretically ambitious film compared to Köhler's prior In My Room (2018), I'm more swiftly entranced by the acute leanness in form and keen eye for his subjects' behaviors here which cogently hybridizes two of his reoccurring focuses (humanity's animalistic urges conflicting within austere social settings and humanity's relationship to its surrounding environments and infrastructural organization) into a neat little father-daughter helicopter parent drama. Can't speak much for spotting Winckler's direction, so my observation, whatever its validity, reaches and applies to what I've seen of Köhler's only.

8) ANA AND THE OTHERS (2003)

(Dir. Celina MURGA)

Starts off with quaint familiarity (the much mentioned similitude with Rohmer is well warranted) featuring some of the most relaxed pans & tracking shots I can ever compare to memory. Cryptically teases an internal motive from the otherwise wandering Ana, before spending its entire second half teasing a mere glimpse of that motive to be enacted upon and seen to its conclusion. Murga keeps her direction emotionally hidden throughout in all the ways that work well for me and maintains a structural fluidity that allows for Ana to float along freely, largely untethered to broader fictive strata, which is crucial for the turn towards urgency from stasis it takes in its final stretch. The drama of the seemingly aimless drifter shaped and encouraged to its most neat form.

7) HEREAFTER (2010)

(Dir. Clint EASTWOOD)

The grief-themed drama uniquely transformed via the mere permeation of Eastwood's "late style" automata. Every step forward efficiently gives way towards Eastwood's most abstract impulses, which in turn allows for the emotional centers of each scene to pool up until all that's left is the pure substantiated weight of that accumulation.

6) THE IDIOTS (1998)

(Dir. Lars von TRIER)

Far more self-effacing and even carefully put together than I ever imagined it to be (yes, I actually believe this.) Chastises with its surface provocation only to the extent of establishing its canvas of personalities before briskly maneuvering into LvT's commonplace of centered interactions to extract from the film's actual core. Much of it chronicling the dissolution of its titular subjects, identifying the pain points and structural fragilities of their game as an endeavor little beyond abstruse fulfillment. But yet within it, expectedly from Trier, a tangible tension is outlined, tracing some iota of heartfelt desire to sever from the daily trivialities of nuclear-based middle class life, which then deviously serves to complicate the end of the protagonist Karen's emotional arc in the film's silently merciless coda.

5) CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974)

(Dir. Robert ALTMAN)

Two altering masculinities bonding at a temporary stop in each's lives during a malaise period in American life. Tethered together only by loosely attributed commonalities. Multiple traps that allude to transactional motive or temptation is constantly teased on Seagal's behalf, but Walsh's kinder instincts and Altman's cool reserve keep the film perfectly above obvious conflicts, allowing for a greater platform of easy-breezy characterization. A total knockout.

4) DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978)

(Dir. George ROMERO)

Comes off to an extent as Romero reconfiguring Night of the Living Dead (1968) with the downbeat volatility of The Crazies (1973) to further grasp the national crises of the past decade. That our four protagonists consist of a duo of Vietnam-coded vets disillusioned with serving a state seemingly beyond disrepair and a couple of commoners intent on continuing the nuclear tradition forging on in a collapsing structural order, seeking temporary refuge in a shopping mall is obviously no happenstance on Romero's part, and yet the results feel anything but fine tuned to this grand thematic cohesion. A logical procedural through and through. In a manner that resonated to me streaks of Howard Hawks' direction, Romero optimizes his fiction and characterization to lean form with a suspense vehicle that gracefully cascades into a cantankerous symphony of pain and pleasure, augmenting American sickness and then releasing it with good old fashioned genre movie violence before repeating the cycle again and again and again.

3) MAN'S GENTLE LOVE (2002)

(Dir. Jean-Paul CIVEYRAC)

In many ways the closest a film has come to transmitting the same broken-hearted sensations I felt while reading Norwegian Wood the very first time. Plays in the familiar space of the impressionable young romance that's forecasted with an impending expiration date, but Civeyrac keeps proximity to his protagonist ever so fragmented and distant enough that even with his built-in POV narration annotating an exclusive perspective, the rifts sowed between this interiority and Civeyrac's observational tendencies establishes a unique grammar oscillating between the public and the personal. Operating almost entirely upon the deceptively simple ellipsis of Raoul's life before and after his trials with Jeanne, which sees his entire internal fabric deteriorate upon the abrupt conclusion of their budding intimacy, and ending unresolved, is an unrepentantly bold and anti-sentimental maneuver, but one that aptly hammers in the melancholic strains such circumstances would invoke in reality, converging real life psychological afflictions stained in the photographic canvas of Celine Bozon's Vermeer-esque impressionism. Where life and art meet.

2) CURE (1997)

(Dir. Kiyoshi KUROSAWA)

Kiyoshi persistently posits the externalities of psychoanalytic methodology and occult phenomena to trace the origin of Mamiya's unknown ability and motive, using the strained tension between these two polar maxims to explain a truth to form major unease, as it becomes increasingly evident that neither is such from the incoherent chaos in the details. Eroding the self to emerge the other end a new man.

1) THE BIRTH OF LOVE (1993)

(Dir. Philippe GARREL)

Fiction knitted so loosely, that a complete propulsion of spontaneous behaviors eminently rise to and hold the fore as narration. Perfectly accomplishes what Hong's cinema has never quite reached for me yet.