Top 10 Films of 2023

There are many words I could, and would, spit out to describe the previous year in cinema, in lieu of a more formal analysis. Whether out of intellectual exhaustion or lack of cohesive thought due to the general incoherence of modern day film discourse, to even begin to extrapolate the present moment in this medium, a task I'm normally not averse to speculating on, seems anything but intriguing to me as I type this the night prior to yet another Cannes press conference and upon news of the United States and Iran inching ever closer towards a larger regional war in the Middle East. Perhaps I'm just drained from inundation or giving into what I perceive as trickling feelings of a broader cultural deluge, marked by the dreary post-pandemic, late capitalist malaise most of the world appears to be suffocated by right now. To even begin to try and cohere 2023's film output into thematic or aesthetic reasonings instantaneously brings me to tedium, an ironic notion considering that the year brought with it some of the strongest works of its decade from a diverse spectrum of artistic ends. Enough of the rote intellectualizing, let's get to the fucking movies.

10)  MASTER GARDENER

(Dir. Paul SCHRADER)

A near final tone poem from an ailing monastic mind, effortlessly constructed with grand sweeping aesthetic + ideological flourishes only a seasoned artist of Schrader's fabric can construe. Room for only the most acute forms of gesture, unburdened by countervailing forces in an assured search for personal catharsis.

9) FERRARI

(Dir. Michael MANN)

Mann displays a fatigued urgency to memorialize Enzo as a hollowed out vessel, pushing and accelerating towards the salvation of his namesake company, as carnage mounts in the periphery. Capitalistic ambition as a vortex of death, swallowing up those in its wake, giving literal meaning to the metaphor of the motor vehicle as a big metal coffin.

8) ASTRAKAN

(Dir. David DEPESSEVILLE)

In awe of the seemingly effortless poetry weaved here. Much less of the Pialat-Bresson homage I was hyped up to believe, but even better since Depesseville's conjured a filmic language specifically of his own, abandoning common moral straits of coming-of-age cinema and hyper fixating solely on the interior world of his protagonist Samuel, and all the profound, loving, perverse, disturbing and violent renderings understandable only to him and no one else, including us the spectator.

7) SHOWING UP

(Dir. Kelly REICHARDT)

A diffusion of emotions documenting process, labor and the interpersonal as being equally critical to a finished work of artistic creation. A new mode for Reichardt, whose naturalism is occasionally interrupted with more obvious directorial intervention than ever before. I'd like to see more of this.

 

6) MAY DECEMBER

(Dir. Todd HAYNES)

Continue to be perplexed by DP Christopher Blauvelt's cinematography, which appears to somewhat emulate a certain mode of celluloid imagemaking with its soft textures, blown out lighting and aggressive grain, but rendered entirely through digital tools and noise applied in post. Here, the effect is given a metatextual role, shrouding Haynes' tabloid drama with an amalgam of the past and the present in contentious dialogue. The attempt to translate and cohere what's happened before is muddied and filtered through impulses and motives removed and autonomous of the inciting entities.

5) KNOCK AT THE CABIN

(Dir. M. Night SHYAMALAN)

Completely devoid of excess emphasis of its thematic tenets, Shyamalan neatly culls towards quantities of physicality and the description of presence within frames, both singular and in succession. Each character is induced to exist as a chess piece of unique dynamism, all strategically advancing towards an end game of increasing stakes. And as the world around them bends ever so graciously towards the side of dubiousness, does the emergence of an upsetting tragedy with one of its central characters strike with a crystalline point of inflection, marred in the moral stress of its own difficulty. It is exactly here where some have seemingly been put off by Shyamalan's effortless capitulation to Christian righteousness, when it's in fact anything but. By exonerating the meek through brutal theological martyrdom, a "greater good" is anointed, that must apparently be fed casualty and demise to appease such a world order. For the film to accept this stance conflictingly, is perhaps the most downbeat method of harsh critique devised. In a world of increasing strain and suffering, giving in to actors and ideologies cloaked under the guise of greater salvation, does nothing but soften the blow (to the head).

4) FALLEN LEAVES

(Dir. Aki KAURISMAKI)

Star-crossed lovers joined together by the toolkit of cinema. A series of unvarnished pleasures for the remaining romantics left in the world.

3) THE PASSENGERS OF THE NIGHT

(Dir. Mikhael HËRS)

A sprawling canvas of unalloyed warmth in the caring company of Hers’ ensemble of starry-eyed dreamers. Charlotte Gainsbourg once again reminds us all why she remains one of the most endearing actresses of her generation, this time channeling her characteristic diffidence into a new mode of sanguine heart that'll just melt you to your core. If you ever need a pick me up, look no further than this.

2) NOBODY'S HERO

(Dir. Alain GUIRAUDIE)

A pitch perfect farcical exercise on France and the greater EU's centrist fecklessness about a wide range of "others" based largely on mere perceptive assumption, and the cacophony of ridiculous conflicts that arise from both sides-ing the fuck out of every situation, as to not be totally committal to either stance both liberal and conservative. Also that Guiraudie manages to keep Mederic's paranoid Islamophobic impulses and his inability to simply turn down an interested female co-worker (to the point of having to excuse himself by identifying as gay to her) on a relatively equal plane of dilemma is an impressive feat of fictional line threading.

1) THE KILLER

(Dir. David FINCHER)

An exception to the unwashed is granted a conscience by fate, forcing tension within his role against the rigidity of an ever oppressive world of transactions and commoditization (the titular Killer operating out of an abandoned WeWork office is a hilarious touch). The battles may still be physical, but with personal autonomy comes existential friction. What previously was just routine technocratic exercise, elevates to a war between the mechanisms of capital and a soul with a wounded heart, informed with years of skilled navigation operating as a hand for such a system. The circumstances are personal, but work is work and ultimately, revenge is just a job.