2023 in movies

As ever, my review archive is here. In 2023 I attended seven film festivals, only possible because Sundance and Tribeca continue to allow critics to work remotely, as do the London trifecta (Flare, LFF and Raindance) to a limited extent. I also reviewed 127 movies for publication, which is an average of one every three days, and (if I do say so) pretty good for someone with a different full-time job. I would like to assure all the commissioning editors reading this that I will have no trouble keeping up that pace as long as the cheques clear. Though obviously I did not review everything I saw – if you want me to please hire me!

Hollywood is presently very low on steam, but it doesn’t matter because the rest of the world, including independent American cinema, is more than making up for it. Indian cinema has been ready for this moment for a very long time – think how long it took Kpop to go global – and after the tipping point of RRR’s Oscar I think next year it’s going to go mainstream, at least in the UK. There’s a huge difference between mainstream American blockbusters, which are primarily about normalising fascism through the concept of the superhero and the pleasures of the war machine, and blockbusters from everywhere else in the world, which are about the sanctity of life even as war/swordfights/fighter pilots are sometimes necessary (yes, even in Godzilla Minus One, which surprisingly had as strong an anti-war message as I have ever heard, and had the people in the Cineworld around me bawling their eyes out; The Creator would have done much better if it knew which side it was on). The box office numbers for Hollywood blockbusters in the latter half of this year means this impatience is manifesting loudly and it will be interesting to see how the rest of the world seizes this chance.

Everywhere sex is largely, though not entirely, being replaced with implication, which is usually pretty boring, though it does mean that when people go for it they go hard (ahem). For example I didn’t like Fair Play but I really appreciated it opening with a cunnilingus-on-her-period scene. The German movie Someday We’ll Tell Each Other Everything told the story of a young woman’s coming of age primarily through her sexual experiences, and it baffles me that so many people didn’t appreciate the subtlety of its achievement. And let’s not start on Saltburn.

It’s also noticeable that movies are playing with multiple languages in a way that’s taken forever to catch up to the real world, and there’s a highly visible push for genuine multiculturalism in a way which means films worldwide are becoming both more and less parochial. (For example, Australia’s choice of Shayda as their Oscar nominee. It’s about an Iranian mother and daughter in the Australian social care system, so an international story in an extremely specific local setting.) More immigration stories!

Globally there needs to be a happy medium between making movies only with either sofa-change or $150 million; it’s not original to say we need more mid-budget movies but by golly we do.

We also need for stuff not to be ghettoised on streaming services. More physical media!!! Though the fact that I can buy DVDs for 10p in my local charity shops allows me, very cheaply, the joy of being a one-woman saviour of this stuff. It was a surprise to me when I realised the Blu-ray player I bought last year in Argos handles all regions, which is great news on that front at least, if possibly too little too late.

At the Berlinale, I noticed that the positive review of its gay movies were primarily by gay critics, and that sense has stayed steady over the year, so that’s a continuing depressing case where the art is ahead of the majority of its audience (and another area where my intersectionality can add value to your publication; I am a proud member of GALECA in addition to other film critic organisations, if you need more of my bona fides). That said, it’s now obvious that even the most mainstream entertainments are ensuring the rainbow spectrum is included without comment – I am thinking of the pangender character in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 and the lesbian wedding at the center of straight romcom Anyone But You – which is a goddamn delight.

Here are my greatest hits from the year.

Favourite: Past Lives. It has kept number one position since I saw it at the Berlinale in February. If you take nothing else away from my end-of-year roundups just see this one, and thank me later

Most Enjoyable: Godzilla Minus One; Hit Man (I am that fool); Jawan; Polite Society; 80 for Brady (you heard me)

Most Obscurely Excellent: All the Colours of the World Are Between Black and White (Nigerian); The Chambermaid (Slovak, but really mittel-European); Fremont (American, set in the Afghan diaspora); Green Night (a lesbian Korean-Chinese Christmas thriller); The Innocent (French); Till the End of the Night (German; Timocin Ziegler’s awful character but astounding performance has stayed very strongly with me all year). Also the Armenian new-wave classic Hello, It’s Me, which I caught at Cannes. The fact that four of those movies are gay and one centers a trans character is not lost on me. Also The Settlers is a Chilean movie starring a primarily British cast that is so violent and disturbing it’s almost unspeakable, but that is a very, very strong recommendation.

Best in Rep: Kundun; The Last Wave; La Ronde, in the Curzon Mayfair, which let’s hope will be saved; RRR; Stop Making Sense (before which someone from the cinema came out in great irritation to inform us that there was NO DANCING ALLOWED); Working Girls (long live Lizzie Borden)

Best Quote: Joaquin Phoenix telling an English ambassador “you think you’re so great because you have boats” in Napoleon

Best Cameo: The one in Rye Lane. As a south London film critic, it was also a very exciting milestone to be interviewed in the Evening Standard about the movie

Most Unexpected Crying Prompt: Jeffrey Wright’s monologue in Asteroid City 

Newest Crushes: Adria Arjona in Hit Man; Swann Arlaud in Anatomy of a Fall; Alia Bhatt in Rocky aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani; François Civil in The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan; Pierfrancesco Favino in The Last Night of Amore; Andrew Koji in Seneca; Glen Powell in Hit Man and Anyone But You

Previous Crushes Most Strongly Renewed: Paula Beer; Jamie Bell; Juliette Binoche; Rob Collins; Adèle Excharopoulos; Franz Rogowski; Channing Tatum

Funnest Theatre Experience: my howls of laughter at the [spoiler deleted] reveal in Heart of Stone prompting an already rowdy audience into a group discussion of just how stupid that movie is, while it was still happening

The New One I’ve Started Watching Every Time It’s On Television: Pride and Prejudice (Joe Wright version), which I saw in the OG cinema run by dragging my then-husband to a screening very much against his will while we were on holiday in Venice

Newest Greatest Movie of All Time: Love Again, in which Celine Dion devotes time and energy to helping a underappreciated cultural critic date; I can’t imagine what I saw in it. The critic is a Scotsman in New York who loves basketball named ROBERT BURNS, and played completely straight by Sam Heughan, who is an angel from heaven to have given us this gift

The year’s most cinematic real-life moment involved me dragging a suitcase early one morning past a Parisian fire station, where they were washing the fire trucks to the love theme from The Last of the Mohicans. It was enchanting. Then I dragged my suitcase to the station and caught my train.

I don’t track how many movies I see overall because ironically that’s too much like work (and I won’t use Letterboxd because they claim copyright over all posts). But of course my main movie experience this year was being at the Cannes Film Festival. Please hire me to write for you so I can afford to go again.

I would also like to stress that I only felt safe seeing all these movies, primarily in the cinema, because I mask when I’m indoors with strangers and I really wish more people did the same.

If you have read this far, I would like to thank you most sincerely for your support of my work, and to wish you and your families all the best for 2024.