Cosmos Movie List 2023
This is my annual list of movies, TV and drama seen in the last year. I saw over 200 movies and TV programs last year. I saw a lot of K Drama and European Sci-FI as well.
Movie Watching Goals 2023
200 movies/TV series by the end of the year.
At least one Korean movie per week
At least one Spanish movie every so often
One Bollywood or another foreign language movie every so often
A mixture of thrillers, K Drama, comedies, romcom, etc
Make a list of Oscar movies and watch several.
Resume going to the theater later in the year.
When traveling to the US watch ten movies each trip
Including one Bollywood, one Spanish, three to four blockbusters, one classic, one comedy
the list
- 88 Minutes US thriller
- Moving to Heaven started in 2022.
- Emily In Paris Netflix B started in 2022.
- The Gray Man American
- Lies Within started in the 2022 BK drama.
- Trolly started 2022 B K drama a-
- Moonball SF B
- Glory K drama B+
- Confidential Assignment K drama b
- The Pale Blue Eyes – Murder mystery featuring Edgar Allen Poe as a cadet Netflix B
- Wednesday started in 2022
- On the line k drama b
- Weight Ton K drama b
- You American
- The age of Adaline started.
- Zone 414 did not finish b.
- Kate did not finish too violently d.
- 1899 needs to look again at America.
- The Invasion of South African c
- Parallel SF K drama
- Crash Course in Romance K drama A-
- Lookup American a big Meh
- One Spring Night K drama
- The Bros K drama
- Like for Likes K drama b.
- Ordinary People K drama b
- Quiet Place Part Two Next flix SF C+
- Echoes Next Flix series b American.
- Veteran K crime comedy b K drama
- Tiger in Winter K drama with a magical realism twist K drama
- After My Death, another Korean teenage crime drama k drama
- Confidential Assignment Two K drama
- Nothing Serious K rom-com
- Uncanny counter K drama
- What’s wrong with Secretary Kim K’s drama.
- Chief of Staff K drama
- Tau American
- Ad Astra American
- White noise American
- Mad for each other K drama
- Along with the god’s K’s drama
- Time to hunt K drama.
- Escape from Mogadishu K drama
- The decision to leave K drama.
- Adenoid K drama
- Hunt K drama
- Confession K drama
- A man from Toronto American
- The unforgiven American
- My unfamiliar family K drama
- You People Eddie Murphy Comedy
- Physical Another Squid Game K drama
- Confession K Drama
- Where the Crawdads Sing American movie
- Unblock Cyber crime K drama.
- Your Place or Mine US romcom
- Nope SCIFi Netflix
- One Spring Night K drama
- Sweat and Sour K drama
- Sweat Tooth
- Salvation
- Safe
- Black Panther Wakanda Forever
- Amsterdam b+
- Black Adam b
- Ant-Man and Wasp b
- Namaland B+
- Holy Betrayal Documentary on Religious cults in Korea
- Outer Banks Third Season
- Me K drama
- God’s Crook Line. Spanish
- Shin Divorce Attorney K Drama
- The Eternal King K drama
- Swing Kids American drama
- Live Up to Your Name K drama
- Murder Mystery 2 – not bad saw Murder Mystery One last year
- Kill Bosun K drama
- Shadow and Bone next season
- Tripple Frontier American
- Switch k drama
- Beef K Drama set in LA
- Strangers Things Season Four
- Queen Maker K drama
- Ticket to Paradise American drama
- The Stranger British
- Florida Man American
- Gone for Good British
- Stay Close British
- Kaleidoscope American
- Harris Goes to Paris British
- Collectors k drama
- The Chair American series
- What/if American series
- You Will Always Be My Maybe – US Romcom
- Black Knight K Drama
- Mother American Crime Thriller starring Jennifer Lopez
- Miss and Mrs. Cop K drama
- Unstoppable K drama
- Ordinary people
- Intruder
- Synopsis
- White noise
- Red notice
- How it ends
- Shimmer lake
- Mad for Each Other
- Private Lifes K drama
- Flower of Evil K drama
- The Mule
- Farber man’s (Oscar pick)
- Living
- Dangerous Games, Legacy
- The Independent
- Tau
- Bloodline
- hypnotic
- intrusion
- the stranger
- I Land
- another life
- colony
- imperfectives
- night flyers
- white lies
- Nice guys
- Glitch Aussies series
- Glitch Korean series
- dark
- awake
- 1989
- the order
- murder mystery 2
- SALT
- Adam project
- Star Trek Strange New Worlds Amazon
- Lost World CBC series on Amazon
- Outlaws Netflix
- Tyrone got Cloned on Netflix
- Lost City amazon
- Otto Netflix
- Terminator 2 Netflix
- Terminator 3
- Terminator 4
- Bird box Barcelona Netflix
- War of the World 2
- Expanse Season five
- Expanse Season Six
- Time Trap Netflix SF movie
- Wheel of Time Season Two Amazon
- Non-Stop
- Stolen
- Mysterious Island
- See You in My 19th Life K Drama did not finish it
- Babblyon saw that RHS did not finish it
- Heart of Stone saw with RHS
- The Stranger Netflix has good reviews but did not finish it
- This is The End C – good stars but a mess of a script
- Alchemy of Souls intriguing K Drama
- Top Gun Maverick Amazon
- No Time to Die James Bond 2021 Amazon
- Shelter Harlon Corbon amazon
- Love at First Sight nextlix see blog entry and review
- Cry, Macho Clint Eastwood
- Carr and the Treasures of the Knight Templar Swedish Movie
- Avatar the waterway
- Guardians of the Galaxy 3
- Everybody knows Todos Lo Sabe’s Spanish movie.
- Bollywood movie Meri Dash ki Dhaka
- Song of the Bandits K drama b
- Cocaine Bear b
- Moving Disney movie b
- Dream K drama about the homeless World Cup A
- Reptile c
- Stillwater A
- King Maker K drama about Kim Dae Jung’s early rise on Disney A
- Ballerina K crime revenge thriller b a bit too violent
- Strong Girl Namsoon sequel see post review
- strong girl bong soon original A see post review
- Eternals Disney c
- Doona K Drama B
- I Care a Lot American Drama B
- Ray of Sunshine K Drama A
- Good By Mr. Black Disney K Drama B
- TheWorst of Evil Disney K Drama B
- Vigilante Disney K Drama B
- The Believer K Drama b
- the Believer Part two K Drama B
- Castaway Diva b
- comedy royal b
- squid Game Two did not finish c
- My Demon did not finish c
- the World Left Behind -Post See review b
- Fall of the House of Usher is based on Poe’s stories b
- Father Stu A
- Don’t Buy the Seller -K Drama about a serial killer who lures victims through ads for used sales
- Night Agent series
- Hostage Celebrity – repeat from a year ago?
- Love in the Villa nice romantic comedy
- almost Normal Family Swedish Netflix movie
- Fubar
- gyesang Creature K drama 6 episodes
- Havana K murder drama with an LGBT love affair theme
- Bloodhounds K revenge crime drama
Documentaries
A note will start watching more short documentaries on YouTube so many things to look at. Also might take a look at the great books documentaries and history courses online and through the library and re-look at Hoopla and other library resources for classics including watching an opera from time to time might get YOUTUBE premium as well at least do the free trial and see if I like it.
Youtube documentaries
Oregon Travel’s top destinations
Southern Oregon overview
Bend places to go
The Empty West Coast
North Korean poverty explained
Appalachia poverty explained
SF Travelogue
Bend Neighborhoods
Grants Pass
Peter Zehan
Turkey
Ukraine
How Trump Could Win
Blues Traveler’s music videos
Big Toad vidoes
George Thorogood and the Destoyers videos
Oscar Nominees BOLD want to see.
CNN —
The strange and sentimental film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” led among the films nominated for the 95th Academy Awards on Tuesday, scoring 11 nominations. “All Quiet on the Western Front” and “The Banshees of Inhering” followed with nine nominations each.
Blockbuster’s “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” each landed nominations for best film, and there is plenty of star power among the nominees. Both Rihanna and Lady Gaga were nominated in the original song category (for tunes from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “Top Gun: Maverick,” respectively), as veterans in the industry were recognized as well.
Those actors include Angela Bassett, who was nominated in the best supporting actress category for her role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever;” Jamie Lee Curtis in the same category for “Everything Everywhere All at Once;” Judd Hirsch in “The Fabel Mans,” nominated for the best supporting actor; Colin Farrell in “The Banshees of Inhering,” and Brendan Fraser in “The Whale,” nominated for best actor; and in the best actress category Cate Blanchett for “Tar,” Michelle Williams in “The Fabel Mans” and Michelle Yeoh in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”
Allison Williams, who most recently starred in the horror hit “M3GAN,” and Riz Ahmed, who received an Oscar last year for his role in the short film “The Long Goodbye,” announced the nominations.
The Academy Awards are set to take place on Sunday, March 12.
See below for a full list of the nominees. BOLD wants to See * seen.
BEST PICTURE
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Allyson Riggs/A24
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Avatar: The Way of Water” *
“The Banshees of Inhering”
“Elvis”
“The Fabel Mans” *
“Tr”
“Top Gun: Maverick” *
“Triangle of Sadness”
“Women Talking”
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
*Angela Bassett in ‘Black Panther Wakanda Forever
Annette Brown/Marvel Studios
Hong Chau, “The Whale”
Kerry Condon, “The Banshees of Inhering”
Jamie Lee Curtis, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Stephanie Hsu, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell in “The Banshees of Inhering.”
Searchlight Pictures
Brendan Gleeson, “The Banshees of Inhering”
Brian Tyree Henry, “Causeway”
Judd Hirsch, “The Fabel Mans”
Barry Keoghan, “The Banshees of Inhering”
Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
Peter Lansana and Ricardo Darin star in “Argentina, 1985”
Amazon Studios
“All Quiet on the Western Front,” Germany
“Close,” Belgium
“EO,” Poland
“The Quiet Girl,” Ireland
DOCUMENTARY (SHORT)
“The Elephant Whisperers”
“Haul out”
“How Do You Measure a Year?”
“The Martha Mitchell Effect”
“Stranger at the Gate”
DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
“All That Breathes”
“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed”
“Fire of Love”
“A House Made of Splinters”
“Navalny”
ORIGINAL SONG
“Applause” from “Tell It Like a Woman”
“Hold My Hand” from “Top Gun: Maverick”
“Lift Me” from “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
“Naadu” from “RRR”
“This Is a Life” from “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
‘Guillermo del Toros Pinochito’
Netflix
“Guillermo del Toros Pinochito”
“Marcel the Shell with Shoes On”
“Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”
“The Sea Beast”
“Turning Red”
ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
‘Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery’ seen *
Netflix
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Living.”
“Top Gun: Maverick”
“Women Talking”
ORIGINAL
s Sammy Fabel man in ‘The Fabel Mans’
Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
“The Banshees of Inhering”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“The Fabel Mans”
“Tr”
“Triangle of Sadness”
ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Elvis’
Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Austin Butler, “Elvis”
Colin Farrell, “The Banshees of Inhering”
Brendan Fraser, “The Whale”
Paul Mescal, “After Sun”
Bill Nighy, “Living”
ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Jamie Lee Curtis, and Michelle Yeoh in ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once
Cate Blanchett, “Tor”
Ana de Armas, “Blonde”
Andrea Risborough, “To Leslie”
Michelle Williams, “The Fabel Mans”
Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
DIRECTOR
Paul Dano, Mateo Zoryan Francis-DeFord, and Michelle Williams in The Fabel Mans, co-written, produced, and directed by Steven Spielberg.
Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment
Martin McDonagh, “The Banshees of Inhering”
Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Steven Spielberg, “The Fabel Mans”
Todd Field, “Tr”
Ruben Ostlund, “Triangle of Sadness”
PRODUCTION DESIGN
Scott Garfield/Paramount Pictures
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Avatar: The Way of Water”
“Babylon”
“Elvis”
“The Fabel Mans”
‘All Quiet on the Western Front
Reiner Bajo/Netflix
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths”
“Elvis”
“Empire of Light”
“Tr”
COSTUME DESIGN
Letitia Wright in ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Marvel Studios
“Babylon”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
“Elvis”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”
ACHIEVEMENT IN SOUND
Paramount Pictures
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Avatar: The Way of Water”
“The Batman”
“Elvis”
“Top Gun: Maverick”
ANIMATED SHORT FILM
“The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse”
“The Flying Sailor”
“Ice Merchants”
“My Year of Dicks”
“An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It”
LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
“An Irish Goodbye”
“Ivalu”
“Le Pupiled”
“Night Ride”
“The Red Suitcase”
ORIGINAL SCORE
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Babylon”
“The Banshees of Inhering”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“The Fabel Mans”
VISUAL EFFECTS
so.
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“Avatar: The Way of Water”
“The Batman”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
“Top Gun: Maverick”
FILM EDITING
“The Banshees of Inhering”
“Elvis”
“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“Tr”
“Top Gun: Maverick”
MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Brendan Fraser in ‘The Whale’
A24
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
“The Batman”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
“Elvis”
“The Whale”
Year in Review
The Best Movies of 2023
Vanity Fair’s chief critic lists the best movies of 2023, from Past Lives and May-December to Poor Things.
By Richard Lawson
November 30, 2023
Past Lives, May December, and Poor Things.From the Everett Collection.
The best movies of 2023 run the gamut from intense dramas to should-have-been studio blockbusters to quietly perfect slice-of-life studies. Some are splashy prestige productions with the backing of a major awards campaign; some are quirky passion projects, as idiosyncratic as the filmmakers who created them. (In a few thrilling cases, they’re both things at the same time.) Existential unease, literate thrills, devastation and the sublime: they’re all here in this year’s best of 2023 list, ranked from wonderful to even better. Happy watching.
From the Everett Collection.
21. Reality
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A bold conceit is carried out with precise technical direction in Tina Satter’s adaptation of the play Is This a Room, a harrowing chamber thriller that stages the transcript of NSA whistleblower Reality Winner’s initial interrogation and arrest. Sydney Sweeney leaves Euphoria histrionics behind to give a measured, tightly controlled performance, deftly mapping a young woman’s dawning realization that her life is about to change, terribly and forever. Satter adds a few cinematic flourishes, but otherwise keeps the film stern and focused, solemnly observing the consequences of speaking truth to power. Starkly presented and small in scale, Reality nonetheless feels huge and vivid, a light breaking through a dark and tangled web of lies and misinformation.
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From Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection.
20. Blue Beetle
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If we simply must have superhero movies, may they all be as lively and appealing as Ángel Manuel Soto’s rollicking adventure. Blue Beetle is sharp in its political argument—framing gentrification as a continuation of colonialism’s long and insidious project—but also abundant with silly humor and genuine sentiment. Xolo Maridueña is a bright and engaging lead, while Adriana Barraza steals scenes as a kindly grandmother possessed of hidden mettle. A rare superhero movie that successfully blends action and message, Blue Beetle was of course a poorly marketed box office dud. Clearly, some studios don’t recognize a good thing when they have it.
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From the Everett Collection.
19. Pretty Red Dress
We have seen aspects of Dionne Edwards’s film before: a marriage straining under the weight of unspoken desire, impossible dreams reached for and unrealized. But Pretty Red Dress synthesizes what might be called cliché into something wholly original. Natey Jones and former X Factor star Alexandra Burke richly render a married couple—one just out of prison, the other pursuing her West End acting ambitions—as they navigate a pivotal moment in their relationship. A thoughtful study of masculinity and sexuality, Pretty Red Dress is above all else a deeply humane film, letting its characters yearn and wish with all the contradiction and nuance of real people in the real world. Edward’s film, her debut feature, is one of the year’s hidden gems, waiting to be discovered in all its intricate facets.
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Photo: ALISON COHEN ROSA
18. Sharper
A movie of the sort they don’t make often enough these days, Benjamin Caron’s twisty con game is a literate pleasure. The cast—Justice Smith,Briana Middleton,Sebastian Stan, and a fabulously shifty Julianne Moore—perfectly balance the sexy and the sinister, tearing into a clever script with panache. Caron, mostly known as a TV director in the UK, has a keen sense of rhythm and an eye for composition. Sharper is polished and sophisticated but never forgets that it is, at root, a seamy little B-movie. Which is great! May there be more compact, nifty films like this, ones that tell a good story and don’t skimp on aesthetics (Sharper was shot on film) like so many streamer-original movies do. Hopefully we’ll someday reach a time when films like Sharper are given proper theatrical releases again.
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17. Memory
A film about both sexual abuse and early onset dementia, Memory has all the trappings of overegged melodrama. But writer-director Michel Franco chooses subtlety over excess, pulling in close on two characters, played with understated grace by Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, as they contend with the limits and regrets of their lives. Set in wintry little corners of Brooklyn, Memory has a keen sense of place—and a sense of true purpose, examining the wear and tear of adulthood with sober compassion.
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From the Everett Collection.
16. Monster
The great Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda offers up another poignant assessment of life’s bumpier dimensions. This time, there is an air of mystery to the story, a secret uncovered through intriguing shifts in narrative perspective. What is eventually revealed is a close friendship, and maybe something more, between two tweenage boys both coping with loss. At once delicate and brimming with feeling, Monster has a deep affection for all of its characters, even the ones who behave rashly or carelessly. Which is to say, all of them—and all of us.
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From the Everett Collection.
15. Perfect Days
Decades into a storied career, director Wim Wenders finds new vim on the streets of Tokyo, traversed by a solitary (but not exactly lonely) toilet cleaner (played by Koji Yakusho) as he goes about his work. Told as a series of linked short stories, Perfect Days finds poetry in the banal, though not in the condescending fashion of so many other so-called tributes to the everyday working man. An existential murmur courses under the modest action of Wenders’s film, prodding the audience toward a sincere appreciation of the small moments that comprise any life in the world. The closing minutes of Perfect Days are among the most moving of the year, as a man wordlessly takes stock of all he’s experienced and putters along toward more.
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From the Everett Collection.
14. Four Daughters
Kaouther Ben Hania’s film is a beguiling blend of documentary and deliberate artifice. To tell the harrowing story of a Tunisian woman, Olfa Hamrouni, who lost two daughters when they joined the Islamic State, Ben Hania has enlisted actors to reenact some of the events leading up to Hamrouni’s estrangement from her children. We also see the hired actors interacting with the real family, all engaged in a lively and at times uncomfortable discourse about parenting and politics. A fascinating survey of post-Arab Spring Tunisia and a probing commentary on memory and storytelling, Four Daughters makes grand use of its meta premise.
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Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.
13. Poor Things
Emma Stone totters and lurches toward greatness in Yorgos Lanthimos’s strange and strangely moving bildungsroman. Stone plays a Frankensteinian creation (a baby’s brain placed inside the skull of an adult body) who, as she grows, becomes a literate and libidinous woman of the world. Lanthimos takes inspiration from the lookbooks of Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton to create a dark fantasy version of continental Europe, through which Stone merrily makes her way, delivering a perhaps career-best performance as she goes. Grim but never bleak, clever but not smug, Poor Things is a nervy experiment that yields oddly beautiful results.
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Courtesy of Heretic.
12. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World
Romanian provocateur Radu Jude takes us on a rambling, funny, creepingly depressing tour of Bucharest in the passenger seat of a well-used car driven by the arresting actor Ilinca Manolache. She plays a production assistant interviewing potential subjects for a workplace-safety-training video—everyone she speaks to has been somehow injured on the job, and is now mired in a hell of legal bureaucracy. Jude takes aim at his country’s frayed social infrastructure, the plundering greed of foreign companies benefiting from cheap labor, and at a media-sick public who have become calloused to the terrible things that flash across our screens every day. Mordant and trenchant, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World does not offer much comfort beyond the grim catharsis of gallows humor.
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From the Everett Collection.
11. Tótem
A family gathers for a birthday party that may actually be a final goodbye to a beloved son, brother, and father in Lila Avilés’s astonishing second feature. Avilés sets her camera darting and wandering around a middle-class Mexico City home as various relatives go about their day, busying themselves with anything other than worrying about the man slowly dying in the next room. Tótem is a riot of noise and motion, but none of it drowns out the sadness at the film’s center. Avilés builds toward a climax that is as dazzling as it is devastating, a moment of familial connection both profound and terribly fleeting.
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Pere Mallen, Rupert Friend, Jean-Yves Lozac’h, Jarvis Cocker, Seu Jorge and Maya Hawke in Asteroid City, 2023.From Focus Features / Everett Collection.
10. Asteroid City
Wes Anderson’s latest is both a return to form and a thoughtful expansion of the director’s humanist impulses. The story of disparate people (played by a starry array of actors) trapped in a tiny desert town at the height of the Atomic Age, Asteroid City considers matters of grief and loneliness, romance and existential wonder. Contained in its lovely diorama box is a winsome picture of life in almost its entirety, all the strangeness and sweetness and arrhythmia of being. What’s more, Anderson’s structural flourishes—Asteroid City is a play within a television broadcast within a film—do not alienate as they have in recent past efforts. Instead, Asteroid City finds true meaning in its layers, offering something like a consoling pat on the shoulder—or a willowy embrace—in difficult, confusing times.
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Courtesy of A24
9. Showing Up
Kelly Reichardt offers up perhaps her liveliest, warmest film yet with this wistful, softly comedic look at the making of things. The director’s frequent collaborator Michelle Williams is all watery sighs and huffs as a sculptor who lives in Portland, Oregon, earning a living at a local arts college and spending her spare time tending to her creative output. Reichardt lovingly teases the pretensions and neuroses of a milieu she knows well, while also saying something rather grand (in a quiet way) about what ends art is supposed to meet. Lilting yet sharp, Showing Up is a must-watch for anyone tinkering away at their own passions.
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‘You Hurt My Feelings.’Jeong Park/ Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
8. You Hurt My Feelings
At first glance, writer-director Nicole Holofcener’s witty, beautifully acted comedy seems like a mere light romp through monied Manhattan. But as she always does, Holofcener has deeper things on her mind. You Hurt My Feelings is a sharp and often poignant study of the mechanics of love, how its eagerness to support and encourage can sometimes have the exact opposite effect. It’s a clever and thoughtful movie about white lies and well-meaning indulgence, wise in its detailed observation of human behavior. And what a human Holofcener has cast in the lead: Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who is also excellent in Holofcener’s Enough Said) gives a radiant star turn, as naturally dexterous with the film’s peppery comedy and she is with its bleary drama. It’s an immensely charismatic performance, one that would, in a just world, be recognized by awards-giving bodies at year’s end.
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Neon/Everett Collection.
7. Anatomy of a Fall
While there is certainly some suspense in Justine Triet’s riveting film, it’s more drama than thriller, an inquest into the unknowable. How well do we really know those closest to us? How well do we really know our own hearts, our own capacities for love and anger? Sandra Hüller anchors Triet’s film with a fierce intelligence, never betraying moral judgment of her character—a woman accused of murdering her husband in what may actually have been a terrible accident. Hüller’s is one of the great performances of the year, as shifty and multifaceted as Triet’s ever-morphing film. Anatomy of a Fall is either a murder mystery or the sad story of a mishap, a look at a marriage brought to the worst breaking point or at one cruelly interrupted mid-sentence. Either way, Anatomy of a Fall is dazzling, provocative entertainment, a worthy winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or and whatever other awards it picks up in the coming months.
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From the Everett Collection.
6. Earth Mama
An auspicious feature debut from filmmaker Savanah Leaf, Earth Mama is a grounded look at motherhood, poverty, and adoption. Tia Nomore, also making her film debut, sensitively plays Gia, a woman at a major crossroads. She’s in recovery and is working to clean up her life in order to get her children out of foster care and make way for a new baby she’s due to deliver any day. As she struggles to find work and hold onto her housing, Gia must confront the possibility that perhaps her baby would be better off with another family. Leaf has not made some gritty, exploitative movie that makes a novelty of Gia’s circumstances; Earth Mama is instead carefully observed and pitched in a credible timbre. Leaf has made an empathetic film about choice, which Gia still possesses despite being denied so much else.
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Franz Rogowski and Adele Exarchopoulos in Passages, 2023.From MUBI / Everett Collection.
5. Passages
A romantic drama without much romance, Ira Sachs’s beguiling character study examines the heedless man at the center of an interpersonal storm. The great Franz Rogowski—preening, pitiable, vibrating with restless energy—plays a film director, Tomas, who disrupts the relative contentedness of his marriage (to Martin, played by Ben Whishaw) by embarking on an affair with a Parisian school teacher, Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos). Relationships crack and heal and crack again in this intelligent, funny, evocative film. Full of sex and talk (the foundation of so many couplings), Passages rambles, in its high-minded way, toward a mysteriously poignant conclusion: an image of a man somehow stuck in ceaseless motion.
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Courtesy of A24.
4. The Zone of Interest
A dreadful film in the most literal sense, British artiste Jonathan Glazer’s fourth feature concerns itself with the man who runs Auschwitz and his family, a happy clan of Germans who enjoy lush grounds, a well-appointed home, even a swimming pool. The boggling horror happening just over the garden walls is never seen—but is palpably felt, mostly through horrifically effective sound design. Glazer’s film is a period piece, but it is also keen with awful relevance to today; the director is ringing something like an alarm bell, hoping to shake people out of complacency, out of the assumption that evil will flamboyantly announce itself rather than insidiously seep in, corrupting every seemingly normal thing it touches. The Zone of Interest is a marvel of form, but Glazer does not prize style over substance. His film is clear and urgent in its themes, its insistence that the noise we hear in the distance isn’t as far off as we’d like to believe.
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Seacia Pavao.
3. The Holdovers
It’s been a long while since director Alexander Payne last served up a prickly little slice of life. The Holdovers is a welcome return to the forms of Nebraska and Sideways, tart and bleary at once. Paul Giamatti, doing his most appealing work since Private Life, plays a sorry, drunken boarding school teacher tasked with watching one left-behind student over winter break in the early 1970s. Newcomer Dominic Sessa is a gangly, endearing revelation as that problem student, while Da’Vine Joy Randolph provides invaluable support as a cafeteria worker tasked with feeding these messy men while tending to her own profound sorrow. Payne’s worldview has been softened by age; where he might have gone mean 20 or so years ago, he instead turns to ragged empathy. He finds the grace in the shambolic, depicting a tired, downtrodden older man as he allows the springy obnoxiousness of youth to coax him out of stasis. The Holdovers is a very good Christmas movie and a great New Year’s one: a look at resolutions that may really stick this time.
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By Jon Pack/ Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
2. Past Lives
One of the most striking debut features in years, Celine Song’s decades- and continents-spanning romantic drama took Sundance by storm in January. Although “storm” implies something aggressive, which Past Lives, in all its delicate emotional insight, certainly is not. Instead it’s a sad, swooning, graceful look at the journeys of immigration and aging, telling a story about two old friends and maybe lovers. The film follows Nora (played as an adult by Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (played as an adult by Teo Yoo), early adolescent pals in Seoul who are separated, seemingly forever, when Nora’s family moves to Canada. Past Lives traces their initially tentative and then wholehearted reunion years later, as they reconcile the realities of their adult selves with their dreamily remembered youth. Song swathes her film’s metaphysical questions in gorgeous, summery light, crafting a lilting portrait of life in its infinite dimensions and sliding-doors possibilities. Past Lives is a must-see gem of a film, one that augurs many good things for its fledgling creator.
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From Francois Duhamel/Netflix.
1. May December
From one angle, May December is a dark comedy about sexual mores and tabloid nosiness about the business of others. From another, Todd Haynes’s film is a bitterly sad portrait of a life brutally compromised by childhood abuse. And another: The film is about the lie of moviemaking, its necessary bending of the truth and its tendency to pretend it’s doing otherwise. There are many more ways to approach May December (shrewdly written by Samy Burch), a transfixing and shape-shifting film, sly and sophisticated. Natalie Portman, playing an actor researching a role she hopes will launch her into the prestige echelon, works wonders, making manifest all of our predatory hunger for sordid detail, our eagerness to assign a moral framework that defines our decency against others’ lack of it. Julianne Moore ferociously plays a woman who once did something monstrous but may or may not still be a monster, while Charles Melton gives the film its beating, broken heart. Coy and vaguely sinister—while still also kind, still attuned to the multitude of ambivalences contained within each character—May December could probably be endlessly unpacked, so varied are its tones and textures and piercing insights. What could have been a nasty little bit of camp is instead something wise and heady, a complex film whose mind whirs at breakneck speed.
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Richard Lawson
Chief Critic
Richard Lawson is the chief critic at Vanity Fair, reviewing film, television, and theater. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. Richard’s novel, All We Can Do Is Wait, was published by Penguin Random House in 2018. You can… Read more
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