I guess the new movies are all in for the year. There weren't any this week and that gave me time to catch up with a couple that I missed when they first arrived a week or so ago. And to look back at my favorites from the whole year. Here's the menu:
Poor Things: 3 ½ stars
Ferrari: 2 ½
The Best of 2023: various
POOR THINGS: This one appears on a lot of 10-best lists this year, almost on mine too. Not quite though because it's too deadpan absurd. Imagine a Frankenstein-like story in which a young woman jumps off a bridge and is brought back to life by a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe) who also transfers the brain of her unborn child into her own head. What could that mean? Surrealism about a woman who is unburdened by any knowledge of the world and, like a child, has to learn it all. Maybe.
Emma Stone performs that growth perfectly, first as an unsteady child-like woman (a beautiful retard someone calls her) and then dealing with men (one who wants to marry her and another (Mark Ruffalo), a cad who takes her travelling). She learns about sex, or, as she calls it, “furious jumping.” There's a lot of that and stay away if you've got even a bit of prudishness in you.
This is the latest from the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos but the source is a novel by the Scottish author Alasdair Gray. They push the story into a thesis on women's rights, about breaking free of the repressive ideas of the Victorian era, which the film somewhat seems to be set in. Stone's character finds she can earn money working in a brothel, reads Emerson but is told something contrary: that “we're all cruel beasts.” She's not. On seeing a camp of poor people she laments “Who am I to lie in a feather bed while dead babies lie in a ditch?” The thoughts are good; the film looks great and is often funny and usually weird. (In theaters) 3 ½ out of 5
FERRARI: I read that Michael Mann intended to make this film next right after The Last of the Mohicans. That's more than 30 years ago. It might have worked better back then, felt more innovative and novel than it does today. He might have put more passion into the tone of it. As it is for a long time I was wondering why am I watching this? Car racing films have to whip up tension right from the start. This seemed to be merely a mild story about corporate difficulties for a man with a sketchy private life. It does rev up, but takes its time.
Adam Driver plays Enzo Ferrari who in 1957 finds his iconic car company in Italy close to failing. Accountants suggest a merger with an American company. As a former race-car driver he thinks motor sport can save him because “win on Sunday, you'll sell cars on Monday.” He assembles a team to put five cars into a gruelling 1000-mile race called the Mille Miglia. There's tact required to integrate an ace driver from Spain. There's heavy competion mounted from the Maserati team. And that's a perfectly good story for a movie. But there's more: He's got a fiery wife (Penelope Cruz) and a genial mistress (Shailene Woodley). Keeping them balanced is a difficulty. He lost a son with his wife and has another with his mistress. His wife blames him for the loss and won't condone him accepting the second boy as an heir. And there's still the big race to come. Fast driving eventually perks up the melodrama. Watch out for accidents though. (In theaters) 2½ out of 5
BEST OF 2023: Strikes, COVID, even war got in the way but 2023 turned out to be a remarkably good year at the movies. So good, I'm not even going to hold my list to 10 best. I'll just stop counting. Look at the candidates: Barbie and Oppenheimer, still linked after all this time. Two films produced by the Obamas (he has them both on his own 10-best list, by the way). Two Japanese animated films that talk about death and the afterlife. And at least one film that came so early in the year, Living starring Bill Nighy, that I couldn't include it though I gave it my highest rating way back when.
I didn't see every film so my list can't be called “the best”. Just what I liked most of the films I saw. They're in no particular order. And since most aren't in theaters anymore, check here https://www.justwatch.com/ca to find where they may be streaming.
THE HOLDOVERS: A terrific holiday film about a grumpy private school teacher having to watch over some students who aren't wanted back home during a Christmas break. Good feelings emerge. Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, as a cook, and newcomer Dominic Sessa impress strongly.
TO LESLIE: The best movie from very early in the year has Andrea Riseborough as a Texas lottery winner who drinks all that money away, is rejected by old friends but given a second chance by an unlikely supporter. And a key admonition: “You're what wrong with your life” she's told.
THE ZONE OF INTEREST: Not a holiday film but a chilling statement of the banality of evil. Based on a novel but also a real situation, this is about a family living a quiet, middle-class life right beside the Auschwitz concentration camp where the father is the commander. Sandra Hüller shines as the mom.
ANATOMY OF A FALL: Sandra Hüller also excels in this French film as a woman charged with murder after her husband fell (or was pushed?) from the balcony of their ski chalet. It's a highly engaging mystery when it gets to court.
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON: Martin Scorsese's recollection of an outrageous terror spree against some Indigenous people in the US is long but so revealing and damning that you won't mind. Powerful with Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert DiNero and endearing Lily Gladstone.
THE BOY AND THE HERON: The first of three strong animated films this year may be Hayao Miyazaki's last. The Japanese master came back from retirement to give us this dazzling film about a boy (possibly like himself) who exists in post-war Japan and is transported to a magical world and thoughts of the afterlife by stories from a talking heron.
SUZUME is also Japanese and also deals with the afterlife but in a much more fanciful way. The girl of the title has to travel the country to shut doors that let natural disasters in. It's an emotional reaction to the ever-present possibility of earthquakes and the memory of a big one back in 2011.
SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER VERSE: The third animated film is a follow up to an Oscar winner and has been praised as the best ever. American exceptionalism aside, this is a super-charged adventure, full of action and melancholic emotion as Miles Morales encounters multiple Spidermen out in the multiverse.
SALTBURN: The super-rich aren't like us. So finds Barry Keoghan as a college student who is attracted to a classmate and thinks he may be attractive to him. A weekend at the man's family estate shows otherwise but arouses envy and a stark follow-up. A weird but engrossing movie by British actor/director Emerald Fennell.
BARBIE: Ah yes, the gem of the year. The film by Greta Gerwig is based on toys but goes far beyond them into a critique of what they do. Barbie in all her variations create unrealistic aspirations among young girls. Barbie, played by Margot Robbie, fights back. Ryan Gosling is terrific as Ken.
OPPENHEIMER: Of course I had to put this one next. It's couldn't be more different and yet forever linked with Barbie. Christopher Nolan charts the creation of the Atom bomb but even more the disgusting treatment its creator got when he dared to speak out against it. There's powerful message here.
MAESTRO: Leonard Bernstein revealled for people who've likely rarely heard of him. With Bradley Cooper starring (and directing) and Carey Mulligan as his wife we get a vibrant portrait of the man and his indiscretians.
FALLEN LEAVES: Dry humor from Finland, from an expert in that entertainment specialty, Aki Kaurismäki. Two lonely people meet, fail to meet again and … well just watch. Working class people work hard to find some form of happiness in this charmind film.
LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND: The first of two films here produced by the Obamas. This one is full of dread about the state of our world. It's a dystopian vision as Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke rent an Air BnB only to find Mahershala Ali is there saying he owns it and needs it because there are blackouts everywhere. There's a political element that's eventually cited and feels like a warning.
RUSTIN: This is the other Obama film, a lively and enlightening recollection of Bayard Rustin the man who organized the famous March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his “I have a dream speech”.
Colman Domingo is charismatic in the title role. The march had real effect, as the film deftly explains.
BLACKBERRY: Phones weren't smart until a small company in Ontario made one that was. They were used all over, until Apple came up with a better one. This film revives that history with office hijinks and intense dedication portrayed by Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton and others. You'll laugh, feel proud and wonder how it got away.
BONES OF CROWS: The horrific history of the residential schools here in Canada is recalled in this multi-generational drama.
The film by Marie Clements doesn't hold back in showing the lingering effect on children taken from their homes and taught to be non-Indian in these schools.
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES: Three films dealt with them directly this year. Two about forest fires. ON FIRE is a harrowing drama about a family driving through an inferno. ELEMENTAL: REIMAGINE WILDFIRE is about the science: the danger of forest fires and what to do to protect yourself, your house and your community. HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE is exactly what that says. Taken from a provocative non-fiction book, it shows a group of young eco-activists out to do exactly that. All three films are powerful.
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