Thursday, March 21, 2024

My Top Ten of 2023

by
Julien Faddoul


10. A Thousand and One (AV Rockwell, USA) 

Teyana Taylor’s utterly believable performance as a mother and Rikers ex-convict that struggles to cogently shape a good life for she and her son is what’s chiefly arresting about this 2023 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize winner. But to dismiss the film as another kitchen-sink family drama from Sundance would be a grave mistake. First time director AV Rockwell has made a confident, skilfully filmed old-fashioned sermon on the slow gentrification of the small enclaves of NYC throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. The foreground drama and the background commentary dove together beautiful, hampered only in the final act, when Rockwell relies on the kind of writerly character revelations that work better on the stage. 


9. Anatomy of a Fall (Justine Triet, France) 

Justine Triet’s cerebral, engrossing drama works very well as an intellectual courtroom puzzle but even better as a dissection of a strained marriage after it has dissolved. Much of the discourse devoted to the film since it premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival (where it was honoured with the Palme d’Or) has focused on its central mystery, which is odd since this critic never found it all that mysterious. Its emotional strength is closer to that of an Ingmar Bergman chamber drama sharply scrutinising the curious but eerie situation Triet’s characters have found themselves in. It benefits greatly from a wonderful attention to dramatic details, and from Sandra Hüller’s intelligent lead performance. 


8. May December (Todd Haynes, USA) 

Based on the scandal of Washington State sex offender Mary Kay Letourneau, this is a campy, semi-comic attack on the sensationalist approach the modern culture has taken to provocative true-crime stories. Natalie Portman plays an actress doing research for a film about the fictional equivalent of Letourneau and husband Vili Fualaau (Julianne More and Charles Melton). The film indulges in hilarious depictions of prosaic cinematic symbolism – a speech on sex scenes that disconcerts a room of high school students; an early morning hunting walk on the day of an imperative graduation ceremony; a butterfly rearing hobby, the irony of which no character is wise enough to ascertain. The performances are also uniformly excellent here, particularly Portman's. As with all of Haynes’ work, this is about finding your way to the people who understand you, and in giving equal flavour not only to the victims and victimisers but to all those who endeavour to probe he forms a fascinating, unsettling and biting combination. 


7. The Taste of Things (Trần Anh Hùng, France) 

Watching Trần Anh Hùng’s immaculate The Taste of Things is to watch a highwire act in sensory illustration. The film begins with about 40 minutes of footage of our characters simply (or perhaps not so simply) preparing a meal. Throughout that time Hung establishes a romance not just between the characters, and not just by the food being prepared, but also between the audience and his cinematic cadence. The sights, the sounds, even the smells all feel tangible, photographed with great care and visual style. The story depicted could not be simpler: Set in France in the 1880s, a wealthy gourmand and his cook share a love of food and for one another, until one of them becomes gravely ill. Some may find this romance of art, food and companionship to be a mere trifle, but cinematic trifles are rarely this evocative. 


6. The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki, Japan) 

The first film in 10 years by the living filmmaker I most revere. Set right in the middle of Japan’s participation during the Pacific War, a young boy whose mother has died moves from Tokyo to the country where his father has opted to marry his late wife’s sister. What follows is a calm yet elating onrush of stream-of-conscience phantasmagoria of the kind that Miyazaki’s peers come nowhere close to. It is a film about the grief that one undergoes when one realises they cannot control everything. Whether it is the death of one parent, the marriage of another, the disintegration of a world without malice or the irritating realisation that there are no more cigarettes for you to bargain for. For me, my great sorrow is in the fact that I don't have the power to keep this majestic filmmaker alive forever. The day he finally leaves the earth will be one of the saddest of my life. 


5. Passages (Ira Sachs, France) 

If the year 2023 had a cultural theme it was what I would call Post Sexual-Revolution Revolution. We live in comical times where sex, both in media and in life, is experienced through unusual avenues and perceived with awkward judgemental assessment, especially by young people. Modern-day filmmakers have already realised this (at least before a dummy like me did) and many have chosen to galvanise audiences with brave attempts at sexual exegesis, some fascinating and some not. May December, All of Us Strangers, Kokomo City, Fair Play, Infinity Pool, Saltburn, Bottoms, Eileen, Sanctuary and my #1 film on this list all confront sexual desire and relationships with unabashed candour. Ira Sach’s Passages might be the frankest and Mubi, the film’s US distributor, was forced to release the film with no MPAA rating, after that rationally moribund organisation slapped the film with an NC-17 rating. The film itself is a gripping, Rohmer-esque depiction of the psychological damage that careless people wreak on their partners, whether the relationships are “traditional” or not. Tomas, a German filmmaker based in Paris (Franz Rogowski, magnificent here) cheats on his husband Martin (Ben Whishaw) with a female primary school teacher who interned on his latest film (Adèle Exarchopoulos). Tomas cruelly yet pathetically then goes on to use each of them in an attempt to fill an emotional destitution he has yet to acknowledge. Formally, Sachs has never been better, staging and editing the disintegration of both relationships beautifully through a series of unpleasant intellectual arguments, hateful jabs and, as I insinuated earlier, uninterrupted scenes of wanton gratification. In the end, he allows us to decide whether anyone here has sufficiently learned their lesson or if usury is a deep-rooted pitfall. 


4. Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, USA) 

For many cinephiles, when it becomes clear that a filmmaker’s intentions will be indecipherable, a kind of exhilaration seems to kick in. This usually occurs around the 45-minute mark and often serves as a reminder that everything in art is about context. In this case, the context is placing Killers of the Flower Moon within the oeuvre of probably the most important living filmmaker. It’s a work that’s full of surprises, but they are of the implementation variety. The film plays essentially like Goodfellas (1990) if Henry Hill’s crimes were all psychological coercion instead of for his love of the gangster life. Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart is our window into that psychology and it’s a dizzying emotional ride. Based on David Grann’s non-fiction book, this 206-minute film depicts the small-scale genocide of the Osage Nation during the 1920s in Oklahoma, but unlike Grann’s book, which is told from the point of view of the FBI, Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth focus on Burkhart’s marriage to Osage Indian Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone, exceptional). 

This is a film about regret. The regret for past criminal behaviour, the regret of being blind to the fact that one was in a toxic marriage, and the regret of a national atrocity without any probable reparative amends that would seem effective or even beneficial after such a period of time. Scorsese softens his usual robust, muscular approach – as he has done more and more in this late stage of his career eg. Silence (2016) and I Heard You Paint Houses (2019) – for something more elegant and purified, rhythmically emphasizing the casualness of the routine barbarity within a select community. It's long, deliberate and doesn't really provide any formal or narrative revelations. But surprising and insightful needn't be transposable, and the ending has been justifiably lauded for the thematic gut-punch it truly is. 


3. Showing Up (Kelly Reichardt, USA) 

There are few filmmakers working today who treat their audiences as intelligently as Kelly Reichardt. The mixture of her generosity of characterisation and her slow tempo almost always bolsters a kind of humanity that proves irresistible. In Showing Up, Michelle Williams plays Lizzy, a sculptor and arts administrator assistant for the Oregon College of Art and Craft. As an individual she is eminently irritating even though she is often unequivocally correct. She deals with her stressful family as well as her flighty landlord and neighbour Jo, a rival artist who is both more accomplished and more successful. After providing you with that outline, you might conjure in your mind something parodic or even demeaning. But you’d be hard-pressed to find a more concentrated and unaffected depiction of a milieu this year; Reichardt fills her film with intermediate spaces (shots) of mundane proceedings, all of which are soothingly recognisable. Showing Up is the rarest of movies: one with no mockery whatsoever. 


2. The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer, UK/Poland/USA) 

Any film that would, on its surface, fall into the “conceptually bold” category will always be received with proportionate amounts of regard and dismissal. But Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, which won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, has also proved to me to be contradictory in the general public’s assessment of it. Much of what’s been written about the film seems to interpret it as a kind of art-show piece, a sensory experience into a bizarre time and location in humanity’s history. That’s all perfectly valid, but for me the film was much more of a fable, a fictionalized reconstruction of specific people in history that brilliantly traps the audience in a dual cognition of both what happened then and what could very easily happen in the future. It’s slightly odd for me to define the experience as fable-like, since Glazer’s film is actually much closer to historical events than Martin Amis’ book on which the film is based. The novel depicts a love triangle between the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, his wife and a Nazi officer, all of whom are tagged with fictional names. But literature is a different medium, and the brilliance of Glazer’s tactic here is cinema supreme, and I find it hard thinking of any literary equivalent to the kind of experience the film induces. 

The film depicts the commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), as they and their children live in a house and garden next to the camp, until he is promoted and told they must move back to Germany. The film begins, and then it ends. We observe their family life, until we close on the same black screen that was seen at the beginning. All the while, beyond the garden wall, gunshots, shouting, and sounds of trains and furnaces are audible. It was shot with Sony Venice digital cameras equipped with Leica lenses which were embedded on the set and kept running simultaneously. Each take was accomplished sans any crew on set, allowing the performers to play out their scenes in isolation of the outside world. Make of this what you will, and some critics have dismissed it as a formal exercise that may achieve the opposite effect intended, but it’s certainly impossible to ignore. 


1. Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, USA/UK/Ireland) 

At a time when so many films – including (evidently) some of the most venerated – lack the basic artistic competency of shape, cohesion and nuance, Poor Things is such an easy film simply to regard. Even if that weren’t the case, Yorgos Lanthimos’ delicious science fiction fantasy contains about as much “movie” as any handpicked selection of 50 bad movies I saw this year. I feel unintentionally sardonic putting it that way because Poor Things actually has a kind of shapelessness to it. But it’s a rockiness that somehow also feels utterly anchored, buoyed by the writing and the acting. Ever since his wonderful Dogtooth (2010), I’ve been fairly unimpassioned with Lanthimos’ succeeding output, mostly due to what I feel are the derivative and erratic compositional affectations that he indulges in. Those certainly remain, but the bizzarro premise (based on the Scottish novel by Alasdair Gray) allows a company of artists to cook with fuel and create both the most thrilling entertainment and stimulating dissertation of the year. Meticulous sets and costumes by James Price, Shona Heath and Holly Waddington, a finely tuned use of the zoom lens by Robbie Ryan and exemplary dialogue by Tony McNamara. 

Brought back to life by a genius but certainly nutty scientist (Willem Dafoe), a young woman in Victorian London named Bella Baxter (or is she?) tracks a quixotic and circuitous route to the understanding of human equality and true liberation. Emma Stone is Bella in what amounts to a performance of not only astonishing technical precision but also of superb wit and dexterity. Psychologically, she ages throughout the film from infant to adult and we are at all times acutely aware of each stage of her development. She is a marvellous creation and her scenes chiefly with a debauched lawyer played by Mark Ruffalo are comedically exquisite. 

It is a savage comedy with several hilarious sequences, fascinating global scenic design and brilliant leading performances. It delightfully skewers the inanity of adulthood, primarily sexual etiquette and gender politics, with an amplified sense of the general oddness of life, as seen through the eyes of its central human brainchild. And for me the film is best summarized by itself, a line of dialogue from a French Madam played by Kathryn Hunter: “We must experience everything, not just the good, but degradation, horror, sadness. This makes us whole. Then we can know the world. And when we know the world, the world is ours.”




Honourable Mentions:

All of Us Strangers
Kokomo City
Menus Plaisirs Les Troisgros
Wonka

The Films of 2023


217 Films 


**** 
Poor Things


*** 
All of Us Strangers 
Anatomy of a Fall 
The Boy and the Heron 
Killers of the Flower Moon 
Kokomo City 
May December 
Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros 
Passages 
Showing Up 
The Taste of Things 
A Thousand and One 
Wonka 
The Zone of Interest 


** 
The Adults 
Afire 
American Fiction 
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret 
Asteroid City 
Barbie 
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves 
De Humani Corporis Fabrica 
The Eight Mountains 
Elemental 
Falcon Lake 
Fallen Leaves 
Fremont 
The Holdovers 
How to Blow Up a Pipeline 
The Iron Claw 
The Killer 
Maestro 
Oppenheimer 
Past Lives 
Perfect Days 
Reality 
RMN 
Robot Dreams 
Tori and Lokita 
You Hurt My Feelings 


About Dry Grasses 
Air 
Alice, Darling 
American Symphony 
Blackberry 
Bottoms 
The Boys in the Boat 
The Burial 
Cairo Conspiracy 
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget 
The Color Purple 
The Creator 
Creed III 
The Delinquents 
Dumb Money 
Dream Scenario 
Dry Ground Burning 
Earth Mama 
El Conde 
Enys Men 
Fair Play 
Ferrari 
The Five Devils 
Flora and Son 
Godland 
Godzilla Minus One 
Human Flowers of Flesh 
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 
John Wick Chapter 4 
Joy Ride 
L'immensità 
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One Monica 
Moving On 
Napoleon 
Nimona 
No Hard Feelings 
Nyad 
Pacifiction 
Peter Pan & Wendy 
Piaffe 
Priscilla 
Radical 
Renfield 
Revoir Paris 
Rustin 
Sanctuary 
Scrapper 
Sharper 
Skinamarink 
Society of the Snow 
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 
Stonewalling 
The Super Mario Bros. Movie 
Tetris 
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 
Will-o’-the-Wisp 


NO STARS 
About My Father 
All Fun and Games 
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania 
Anyone But You 
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 
The Beanie 
Bubble 
Beau is Afraid 
Big George Foreman 
The Black Demon 
Blueback 
Blue Beetle 
The Boogeyman 
Book Club: The Next Chapter 
Candy Cane Lane 
Carmen 
Cat Person 
Champions 
Chantilly Bridge 
Chevalier 
Cocaine Bear 
The Covenant 
Diary of a Wimpy Kid Christmas: Cabin Fever 
80 for Brady 
Eileen 
The Equalizer 3 
Evil Dead Rise 
Expend4bles 
The Exorcist: Believer 
Extraction 2 
The Family Plan 
Fast X 
Final Cut 
Finestkind 
Fingernails 
Five Nights at Freddy's 
Flamin Hot 
The Flash 
Fool's Paradise 
Freelance 
Genie 
Ghosted 
God Is a Bullet 
Golda 
The Good Mother 
A Good Person 
Gran Turismo 
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 
Happiness for Beginners 
Haunted Mansion 
A Haunting in Venice 
Heart of Stone 
The Hill 
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes 
Hypnotic 
Infinity Pool 
Inside 
Insidious: The Red Door 
Jesus Revolution 
Kandahar 
Knights of the Zodiac 
Knock at the Cabin 
The Last Voyage of the Demeter 
Leave the World Behind 
The Little Mermaid 
Love Again 
M3GAN 
The Machine 
Mafia Mamma 
Magic Mike's Last Dance 
Marlowe 
The Marsh King's Daughter 
The Marvels 
Maybe I Do 
Meg 2: The Trench 
Migration 
The Miracle Club 
Missing 
The Monkey King 
The Mother 
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 
Next Goal Wins 
No One Will Save You 
The Old Way 
On a Wing and a Prayer 
One Ranger 
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre 
The Out-Laws 
Pain Hustlers 
Paint 
Paradise 
Plane 
The Pod Generation 
The Pope's Exorcist 
Prisoner’s Daughter 
Quasi 
Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire 
Red, White & Royal Blue 
Retribution 
Ruthless 
Saltburn 
Scream VI 
Shazam: Fury of the Gods 
Shotgun Wedding 
Sisu 
65 
Space Oddity 
The Starling Girl 
Strays 
The Tank 
Theater Camp 
A Tourist’s Guide to Love 
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts 
Trolls Band Together 
We Have a Ghost 
What Happens Later 
What’s Love Got to Do with It? 
When Evil Lurks 
Wish 
You People 
Your Place or Mine

Sunday, March 12, 2023

The Films of 2022

 

216 Films


****


***

After Yang 

All the Beauty and the Bloodshed 

Benediction 

The Cathedral 

Compartment No. 6 

Decision to Leave 

Happening 

In Front of Your Face 

Paris, 13th District 

Saint Omer


**

Aftersun 

All That Breathes 

Babylon 

The Banshees of Inisherin 

Barbarian 

Bones and All 

Bros 

Confess, Fletch 

EO 

Everything Everwhere All at Once 

Glass Onion 

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande 

Hit the Road 

Kimi 

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On 

Nope 

The Sea Beast 

Stars at Noon 

TÁR 

Triangle of Sadness 

Turning Red 

Women Talking


*

Ahed's Knee 

Ali & Ava 

All Quiet on the Western Front 

Amsterdam 

Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood 

Armageddon Time 

Athena 

Avatar: The Way of Water 

BARDO 

The Batman 

Bodies Bodies Bodies 

Broker 

Call Jane 

Causeway 

Cow 

Crimes of the Future 

Descendant 

Don't Worry Darling 

Dual 

The Duke 

Elvis 

The Fabelmans 

Fire Island 

God's Creatures 

The Inspection 

Inu-Oh 

I Want You Back 

Lightyear 

Living 

The Lost City 

A Love Song 

Mack & Rita 

The Menu 

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris 

Nitram 

The Northman 

Official Competition 

On the Count of Three 

The Outfit 

Playground 

Pleasure 

Prey 

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish 

The Quiet Girl 

Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical 

Resurrection 

RRR 

Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams 

Saturday Fiction 

See How They Run 

7 Days 

She Said 

Smile 

Strange World 

The Tale of King Crab 

Thirteen Lives 

Three Minutes - A Lengthening 

Three Thousand Years of Longing 

Till 

To Leslie 

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent 

Violent Night 

Wendell & Wild 

We're All Going to the World's Fair 

White Noise 

Windfall 

The Woman King 

The Wonder


NO STARS

The Adam Project 

Against the Ice 

Alice 

Aline 

All the Old Knives 

Ambulance 

The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales 

Bigbug 

Blacklight 

Black Adam 

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 

The Black Phone 

Blonde 

The Bob's Burgers Movie 

Breaking 

Brian and Charles 

The Bubble 

Bullet Train 

Cha Cha Real Smooth 

Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers 

Choose or Die 

Christmas Bloody Christmas 

A Christmas Story Christmas 

The Cursed 

DC League of Super-Pets 

Death on the Nile 

Deep Water 

Devotion 

Disenchanted 

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 

Dog 

Downton Abbey: A New Era 

Emancipation 

Empire of Light 

The Estate 

Falling for Christmas 

Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore 

Father of the Bride 

Firestarter 

Fistful of Vengeance 

Fresh 

Futura 

God's Country 

The Good House 

The Good Nurse 

The Gray Man 

The Greatest Beer Run Ever 

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio 

Halloween Ends 

Happy Happy Joy Joy 

Hellraiser 

Hocus Pocus 2 

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. 

Hotel Transylvania 4: Transformania 

Hunt 

Hustle 

Infinite Storm 

Jackass Forever 

Jerry & Marge Go Large 

Jurassic World Dominion 

The King’s Daughter 

Lady Chatterley's Lover 

Lou 

Luck 

Lyle, Lyle Crocodile 

A Man Called Otto 

Maneater 

The Man from Toronto 

Marry Me 

Master 

Meet Cute 

Memory 

Men 

Moonage Daydream 

Moonfall 

Morbius 

Mothering Sunday 

Mr Harrigan’s Phone 

Mr Malcolm’s List 

My Best Friend’s Exorcism 

My Policeman 

Out of the Blue 

The Pale Blue Eye 

The People We Hate at the Wedding 

Persuasion 

Pinocchio 

Poker Face 

Prey for the Devil 

The Princess 

Redeeming Love 

The School for Good and Evil 

Scream 

Scrooge: A Christmas Carol 

See of Me 

Slumberland 

The Son 

Spiderhead 

Spirited 

Spoiler Alert 

Sr. 

Studio 666 

Summering 

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 

They/Them 

Thor: Love and Thunder 

Ticket to Paradise 

Top Gun: Maverick 

Topside 

The 355 

Uncharted 

The Whale 

Where the Crawdads Sing 

Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody 

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story 

You Are Not My Mother

My Top Ten Films of 2022

by 

Julien Faddoul 


10. After Yang (Kogonada, USA) 

Pacified, tender science-fiction drama about a family of four: Father Jake (Colin Farrell), mother Kyra (Jodie Turner-Smith), their Chinese adopted daughter Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja) and their android Yang (Justin H. Min), who was purchased as a means to educate Mika on her Chinese heritage. This is accomplished film video-essayist Kogonada’s second feature and like his first, Columbus (2017), it explores the fragility of human interactions in an architected environment. Some viewers may have a hard time being stirred beyond polite attentiveness, for the film is deliberate and tranquil, but Kogonada’s Ozuian configuration on the underlying mood sets him apart from less visual directors. 


9. Saint Omer (Alice Diop, France) 

This is documentarian Alice Diop’s first narrative film, and she employs a rhythm and editorial structure that derives unconditionally from that of the investigative observer. The majority of the film’s dramatic power essentially comes from the audience knowing we are observing someone who is observing someone else. Critically, the film’s reception seems to have fallen into two camps, those who find this method riveting and those who have found it stultifying. I see both sides. But my placement of the film on this list obviously affirms where I ended up emotionally (and this is despite the last 10 minutes or so, which regrettably fall hard into flagrant sentimentality). A pregnant French novelist (Kayije Kagame) attends the trial of a Senegalese woman (Guslagie Malanda) accused of murdering her 15-month-old child by leaving her on a beach to be swept away by the tide. The plot itself is based on the French court case of Fabienne Kabou, who was convicted of the same crime (she received 20 years in prison), a trial which Diop attended in 2016. Diop presents the scenes of the trial more or less as they would play in real life, and it ultimately matters less whether we can comprehend the defendant’s actions, and more that such events occur in the first place with such alarming commonality. 


8. In Front of Your Face (Hong Sang-soo, South Korea) 

Describing the films of Hong Sang-soo is a task that many critics find difficult to those who are wholly unfamiliar with him. He is often compared to French master Eric Rohmer and sometimes to Woody Allen, but the comparison I often glom onto first is Steven Soderbergh in low-budget autoschediastic mode (movies like Bubble (2006) or The Girlfriend Experience (2009)). He writes, directs, produces, photographs, edits and even composes the music for his movies. Characters are usually seen simply walking around a city, drinking soju, and sleeping with one another. The main characters in his films are often movie directors or actors, and scenes typically consist of a single shot with spontaneous zoom-ins and zoom-outs, with often unscripted dialogue. This time, a former actress with a secret returns to Seoul from the United States to visit her sister and meet with a director to discuss her possibly returning to acting. I began this by broadcasting on the filmmaker’s creative personality because I feel that In Front of Your Face is probably the best place for first timers to start, not only because it evades slightly from some of his regular tropes (it’s certainly evident that there is less improvisation this time) but because it is one of his most emotionally naked. Make of it what you will. 


7. The Cathedral (Ricky D’Ambrose, USA) 

The year’s biggest surprise for me. 35-year-old director Ricky D’Ambrose’s semi-autobiographical account of growing up in a rather tense and bitter Long Island family received a mixed reception when it had its North American premiere at the 2022 Sundance Film Festival (it had had its official premiere a few months prior in Venice, something D’Ambrose was obligated to do due to receiving a grant for the film from the Venice Biennale College Workshop). The film is 87 minutes long and covers a little over 2 decades. Jesse, played by a series of young actors at different ages, deals with his parents’ divorce (Brian D’Arcy James and Monica Barbaro, both excellent) as well as trying to interpret cryptic secrets from the histories of both sides of his family. The film unfolds sequence by sequence through a juxtaposition of precisely framed shots, often focusing on random household items or aspects of interior decoration that show the world as a collage of childhood memory. The film also uses extensive narration and period-specific archival footage. Some have compared these rhythms to those of the great Chantal Akerman. The period detail is impressively distinct (and correct), as are the sad emotions on display. Although this is his second film (I somehow missed his first, Notes on an Appearance (2018)), this is a major new voice in contemporary cinema, and I can’t wait to see what he does next. 


6. Paris, 13th District (Jacques Audiard, France) 

The year’s most underrated film, Jacques Audaird’s sex drama about four inhabitants in their 30s of the Parisian arrondissement of the title (Les Olympiades, in French) was unfairly dismissed when it played at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival as a mere trifle entry amongst the celebrated director’s more robust and substantial serious works. Émilie (Lucie Zhang, in one of the year’s best performances) meets Camille (Makita Samba) who is attracted to Nora (Noémie Merlant), who crosses paths with Amber (Jehnny Beth). Audiard wrote the film in collaboration with Céline Sciamma and Léa Mysius, both celebrated directors in their own right, based on three graphic novels by American cartoonist Adrian Tomine. The conversations are frank, the sex scenes are graphic and the situations and personality-types we encounter prove witty and enchanting. 


5. Benediction (Terence Davies, United Kingdom)

If you were to ask me to name my favourite living filmmakers, Terence Davies would be one of the first names I would offer up. Openly gay and imposingly well-educated, he is now in his late 70s, and famous mostly for his autobiographical works (Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988) and The Long Day Closes (1992)) and his literary adaptations (The House of Mirth (2000) and Sunset Song (2015)). His last two films however have been biopics, 2017’s A Quiet Passion (which made my list that year) starred Cynthia Nixon as American poet Emily Dickinson and this film, a biographical romantic drama on the harrowing life of British war poet Siegfried Sassoon. Unlike Dickinson, I must admit I was not that familiar with Sassoon’s writing, let alone his unconventional life. Jack Lowden plays the young Sassoon in what would be my choice as the year’s best performance. Sassoon survived the horrors of World War I and was even decorated, before being sent to a psychiatric facility for his anti-war stance. He had love affairs with several men during the 1920s, married, had a son, and converted to Catholicism. Peter Capaldi plays the older Sassoon. Like all of Davies’ films, everything is meticulously composed, with exacting tracking shots and remarkable bits of technique, laid over some brilliant Wildeian rejoinders (this movie is very bitchy) and, again, Lowden’s phenomenal, heartbreaking performance. 


4. Happening (Audrey Diwan, France) 

France, 1963. Abortion is illegal, under penalty of prison. Anne (Anamaria Vartolomei) is a university student at Angoulême, with dreams of being a writer but is quietly badgered by the other girls for her often promiscuous behaviour with local boys. After not feeling particularly well, she visits her local doctor (Fabrizio Rongione) who informs her she is pregnant. At this point in the film, as Anne lies on the examination table hearing this unwelcome news, we might expect our main character in what has so far been a quiet, observant drama to begin contemplating a change in life goals or even to begin crying in a wallow of worry and distress. Instead, she sits straights up, turns to the doctor and sharply whispers “Do something.” 

I must say this moment knocked me sideways unlike any other in a movie this year. From that point on, Audrey Diwan’s often terrifying film (which was the surprise winner of the Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice Film Festival) captivates one and never lets go. There’s no need for this critic to initiate more discourse on this long analysed socio-political debate. Suffice it to say that Diwan’s perspective concurs with the rhetoric that much of the anti-abortion legislation attempts that have been perpetuated over the last 7 decades CLEARLY derive from sects of power and sects of fundamentalism in the pursuit to convince women everywhere that their desires in life are negligible and that they are somehow horrible miscreants for wanting any kind of life that doesn’t…okay, I should probably shut up now before I alienate anyone. But agreeing with a filmmaker would mean nothing to me were her formative technique not as enthralling as it is here and were her central performer not as exceptional as she is here. Happening is a great movie about what many young women around the world go through, a topic that many filmmakers are unfortunately too timid to tackle. 


3. Decision to Leave (Park Chan-wook, South Korea) 

Just exemplary filmmaking, through and through. In some measure, this is Korean director Park Chan-wook’s most conventional film – he is mostly known for highly violent melodramas like Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002), Oldboy (2003) and Thirst (2009) – but his formal dynamism is utterly exceptional. What begins as a simple cat-and-mouse mystery becomes something akin to an East Asian Vertigo (1958). Hae-Joon (Park Hae-il), a seasoned detective, investigates the suspicious death of a man on a mountaintop. Soon, he begins to suspect Seo-rae (the glorious Tang Wei), the deceased’s wife, while being unsettled by his attraction to her. Park’s compositions and editing style are so invigorating here, doing away with what one might call connective-tissue shots and letting the staging bleed with emotion. One never knows quite where they are or what to think or who is ahead of whom. It’s the most fun I had at the movies in 2022. 


2. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (Laura Poitras, USA) 

Were I to excavate a central theme within the 2022 year in film, it would be that the super-rich are destroying any and all attempts at upholding a civilized society. The Menu, Glass Onion, Triangle of Sadness, Bodies Bodies Bodies, Confess, Fletch, even The Batman all explore this motif, sometimes with humour and sometimes with an ominous admonitory. All the Beauty and the Bloodshed does neither because documentarian Laura Poitras doesn’t really need to. None of the actual declarations, affirmations or events that are depicted in this cinematic piece of non-fiction should be news to anyone who has been following the journalism of the last 5 years that focused on the United States Opioid Epidemic. 

The film is two documentaries combined into one. The first is an activism chronicle that follows the advocacy organization PAIN (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) and their participation in the fall of the Sackler Family – the founders and owners of the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma, accountable as the architects of the opioid epidemic and the press-dubbed “most evil family in America.” The second is a rather different film that concentrates on PAIN’s founder Nan Goldin, one the greatest and most innovative American photographers of the last 40 years, who developed an addiction to Oxycontin, and had a near fatal overdose of Fentanyl. 

The film is structured in seven chapters, each of which begins with a photographic sequence or archival footage of a period of Goldin's life. No other film this year is likely to make you angrier. But what makes Poitras’ construction here so commendable is that it might also be this year’s most moving film too. We are privileged with a generous helping of Goldin’s slideshows, that still have the ability to stir wildly different reactions within us as they did when she first premiered them, maybe even more so. The two thematic throughlines of the movie comment on one another so beautifully that one feels they are witnessing something momentous. 


1. Compartment No. 6 (Juho Kuosmanen, Finland/Russia) 

To quote a great animated series about an anthropomorphic horse: All we have in this terrifying world are the connections we make.* Finnish director Juho Kuosmanen’s second feature takes that sentiment and cloaks it inside a somewhat old fashioned romantic-comedy scenario. The theme is a familiar one: A young Finnish woman (Seidi Haarla), living in Moscow as a student and having a rather cooled love affair with her professor, takes a train trip to the arctic port of Murmansk to see some of the rare hieroglyphics she’s been studying. Forced to share the long ride in a tiny sleeping compartment with a gruff and churlish Russian miner (Yuriy Borisov), the unexpected encounter leads the two occupants of Number 6 to discover who they really are and what kind of love connection they are truly seeking. 

That’s the basic plotline of Compartment No. 6, and strictly speaking Kuosmanen’s film rarely attempts anything ambitious in its execution. It’s shot almost entirely in handheld, with much of the film confined to the title train compartment, which creates a cramped sense of placement that never leaves the viewer’s mind. Those of you who have ever taken a long train trip over several days will agree that Kuosmanen gets the mood exactly right. But the emotional throughline of the film is something different entirely, and if you could predict where this eloquent little gem was going dramatically, then dear reader you’re a less jaded man than I am. Based on the prize winning book Hytti nro 6 by Rosa Liksom, the film itself was also a prize winner at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, where it was honoured with the Grand Jury Prize, before receiving it’s US release at the beginning of this year. 

So why place the film at the top of this list? Funnily enough its conventional elements are an incendiary for its greatness. The romcom is a film genre that the world adores, and yet Hollywood production companies and distributors have kicked it slowly to its near-death with both hackneyed writing and a general disinterest in its wide exhibition potential. Compartment No. 6, and movies like it, should serve as a nullifier. Both cultural and societal traditions have instilled in us the kind of human relationships we expect to be given in our stories. The couple at the centre of this film (Haarla and Borisov are both magnificent, incidentally) share a form of love that is piercingly tender and strangely profound and I could not stop thinking about it. All that matters in this world are our connections and our experiences, and Compartment No. 6 was an experience I greatly treasured. 


*And yes, if you have not seen the Netflix series Bojack Horseman, which played originally for 6 seasons from 2014 to 2020, please do. You will not regret it.



Saturday, April 16, 2022

My Top Ten of 2021

 by 

Julien Faddoul 


10. The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, USA) 

Messy, downbeat parable with Schrader’s typical allusions to Bressonain themes, though not the form. William Tell (Oscar Isaac) is a casino card counter who lives a spartan existence. This is shattered when he is approached by Cirk (Tyler Sheridan), a vulnerable and angry young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel (Willem Dafoe). Like all of Scharder’s films, there’s the constant fear of it going over the top, but the characters here remain endlessly fascinating. 



9. The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, Norway) 

Joachim Trier completes a trilogy of sorts about the rambling thoughts, feelings, and general goings-on of young adults in Oslo, Norway. Chronicling four years in the life of Julie (Renate Reinsve), a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, the film is told to us in 12 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. As drama it’s often beguiling, beautifully played and elegantly constructed. 



8. Days (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan) 

Tsai, at his best, is more transportive than any other filmmaker currently living. Apparently, this entry was somewhat made-up as he went along. The first half consists mostly of shots of Tsai regular/muse Lee Kang-sheng receiving acupuncture for a neck pain and the younger Laotian newcomer Anong Houngheuangsy praying and washing vegetables. The second half brings these two together in a series of prosaic moments that prove incredibly moving. 127 minutes comprising of only 42 shots, Tsai’s singular cinema is always resplendent to behold. 



7. Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodovar, Spain) 

Almodovar’s most overtly political film sees him mixing melodrama with argumentation. As a result, he focuses less here on mise-en-scène than he ever has before, and more on performance. Two single women give birth in the same maternity ward on the same day. One (Milena Smit) a teenage mother pregnant from a sexual assault, the other a middle-aged fashion photographer (Penélope Cruz, magnificent here) having an unplanned but much-wanted first child. Afterwards, their lives intertwine. Almodovar lets us fill in most of the drama for ourselves and although some of his excavations are better than others, every year that boasts a new film from him is richer for it. 



6. Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Denmark/France/Norway/Sweden) 

An engrossing, highly affecting animated documentary on the real life story of “Amin Nawabi's” (a pseudonym used to protect his true identity), who arrived in Denmark as an unaccompanied minor in the mid 1990s after escaping the Mujahideen in Kabul and spending a childhood in shipping containers, an Estonian prison cell, and a claustrophobic hideout in Moscow. For the first time he is sharing his story with his close friend (director Rasmussen) as he plans to marry his long-time boyfriend and embark on the next phase of his successful Academic career. Both the conceptual use of animation as a stylistic agent for a non-fiction, interview documentary and the particulars of “Amin’s” story are nothing decidedly fresh, but there’s something about the incarnated, overwhelming humanity here that feels unquestionably significant. 



5. Red Rocket (Sean Baker, USA) 

The greatness of Sean Baker as a storyteller lies in the fact that he depicts intense belligerence in a hopeless milieu, and yet always pulls it off without an ounce of condescension. On the contrary, his films are often hilarious, but never supercilious. He truly loves these characters and that’s a palpable representation. Finding himself down and out in Los Angeles, an ex porn star (Simon Rex) decides to crawl back to his hometown of Texas City, Texas, where his estranged wife and mother-in-law are living. Just as this dysfunctional family seems to be making things work, he falls for a teenage girl working at a local doughnut shop. This film belongs in a very fashionable category of film nowadays that entertainingly depicts the relentless seediness of an idiot hustler. This one trumps most of them not only because of Baker’s aforementioned humility but because of Rex’s astonishing performance, which is a staggering illustration of an inner intensive force. If posed with the question of what was the best performance of 2021 for me, his is my definitive answer. 



4. Pig (Michael Sarnoski, USA) 

Delivered to us by a first-time feature filmmaker, a truffle hunter (Nicolas Cage) who lives alone in the Oregonian wilderness must return to his past in Portland in search of his beloved foraging pig after she is kidnapped. An unpredictable and invigorating journey through a world that is both reverently familiar and completely made-up, with truly one of the greatest actors of our time as our tour guide. Most modern movies are saturated in an ocean of automatic pilot. This one's not only consistently emotionally surprising but is able to make all its points in 92 minutes. Rare. 



3. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/Columbia/UK) 

The most transcendent sensory experience I had in a cinema all year. Tilda Swinton (excellent) plays a Scottish expatriate living in Bogotá, Colombia who finds herself bothered by increasingly loud bangs which prevent her from getting any sleep – colloquially known as Exploding Head Syndrome. Her attempts to treat this ailment lead her deep into the Columbian countryside. When often asked to name my favourite directors working today, Apichatpong Weerasethakul is always one of the first names I bring up (and not just because I love pronouncing his name). He is of the Asian slow cinema but his experimental narrative and Buddhist-like rhythms make him unique even in that group. I will admit that Memoria feels somewhat lighter to me than his earlier works on reincarnation – this is a film about diegetic sound and its efficacy in cinema, in relation to real life. But he remains the prime sensual filmmaker for the senses. 



2. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, New Zealand/UK/USA) 

The favourite film of most critics this past year, Jane Campion’s long awaited eighth feature seems to exist from a different era of cinema – despite the fact that most people probably experienced this film on Netflix. A charismatic rancher, Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), inspires fear and awe in those around him. When his brother (Jesse Plemons) brings home a new wife and her son (Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee), Phil torments them until he finds himself exposed to the possibility of love. The brilliance of the film is in its deceptive superfluousness; it unfolds less like a dream and more like a dream of a dream. But an ultra-precise one. The final moments crystalize all that has come before, not just narratively but emotionally. Superb. 



1. Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA) 

One of the bewildering potentialities of art is its power to transport you and even make you wistful for a time, place and emotional climate that you weren’t even alive for. This is why the popular practice of looking back and soaking in one’s own autobiographic path is unnecessary, despite its inherent comfort. Culturally, in the era we live in now, the outgrowth of this has been bastardizing. Nostalgia is bigger now than in any time in history. But the key to this problem percolates less in the macro sense and more the micro, which is that people are nostalgic for the unsophisticated garbage they associate with their childhood innocence. People long not for the important times of their development but the comfortable times. I don’t feel there has ever been a film that encapsulates this better than Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling, episodic, masterfully realized paean to the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s is told to us in kaleidoscopic fashion, taking place over 3 years, with an ever-expanding cast of characters whose imperfections Anderson embraces. A romantically tinged if essentially chaste friendship between a 15-year-old boy (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour) and a 25-year-old girl (musician Alana Haim, exceptional here) is the centre of this panorama, and one which has proved controversial among audiences this year. But even though the film is essentially a coming-of-age romp, it never shies away from the queasiness of its period either. Everything here is just so evocative and specific; shot in plump 35mm and written and filmed during the pandemic, every avenue taken within this polygon repays gratifying dividends and proves utterly irresistible. 




Honourable Mentions: 

Drive My Car 

Luca 

The Tragedy of Macbeth

The Films of 2021

 

205 Films


****

Licorice Pizza



***

The Card Counter 

Days 

Drive My Car 

Flee 

Luca 

Memoria 

Parallel Mothers 

Pig 

The Power of the Dog 

Red Rocket 

The Tragedy of Macbeth 

The Worst Person in the World



**

Annette 

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn 

Bad Trip 

Being the Ricardos 

Bergman Island 

C'mon C'mon 

The Disciple 

Dune 

Encanto 

The French Dispatch 

The Harder They Fall 

A Hero 

The Inheritance 

Nobody 

No Sudden Move 

Petite Maman 

Raya and the Last Dragon 

Summer of Soul 

Titane 

Undine 

Zola



*

Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar 

Belfast 

Benedetta 

Best Sellers 

Blue Bayou 

Boiling Point 

CODA 

Copshop 

Cry Macho 

Dream Horse 

The Eyes of Tammy Faye 

The Feast 

Finch 

A Glitch in the Matrix 

The Green Knight 

The Hand of God 

House of Gucci 

The Humans 

I'm Your Man 

In the Heights 

The Killing of Two Lovers 

King Richard 

Language Lessons 

The Last Duel 

The Lost Daughter 

Luzzu 

Malignant 

Mama Weed 

The Map of Tiny Perfect Things 

The Matrix Resurrections 

The Mitchells vs the Machines 

Nightmare Alley 

No Time to Die

Passing 

A Quiet Place Part II 

Spencer 

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run 

Stillwater 

Stowaway 

Supernova 

Swan Song 

The Tender Bar 

Tick, Tick... Boom! 

Together Together 

Val 

Wild Indian 

The World to Come



NO STARS

The Addams Family 2 

Alpha Rift 

The Alpinist 

American Skin 

Antlers 

Army of the Dead 

Army of Thieves 

Awake 

Black Widow 

Bliss 

Blithe Spirit 

Boogie 

Boss Level 

Breaking News in Yuba County 

Bruised 

Candyman 

Chaos Walking 

Cherry 

Cinderella 

Clifford the Big Red Dog 

Come True 

Coming Home in the Dark 

Coming 2 America 

The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It 

The Courier 

Crisis 

Cruella 

Dear Evan Hansen 

Demonic 

The Dig 

Don't Breathe 2 

Don't Look Up 

Edge of the World 

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions 

Eternals 

Falling 

Falling for Figaro 

Fatherhood 

Flag Day 

F9 

The Forever Purge 

Ghostbusters: Afterlife 

Godzilla vs Kong 

The Guilty 

Gunpowder Milkshake 

Halloween Kills 

Hard Luck Love Song 

Held 

Hell's All That 

Here Today 

Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard 

Hive 

Honeydew 

Hotel Transylvania: Transformania 

The Ice Road 

Infinite 

Joe Bell 

John and the Hole 

Jolt 

Jungle Cruise 

Kate 

Knocking 

Lamb 

Land 

Last Call 

Last Night in Soho 

Long Weekend 

Love Hard 

Mainstream 

Malcolm & Marie 

The Marksman 

Mayday 

Me You Madness 

The Misfits 

Mortal Kombat 

Mouthful of Air 

My Zoe 

Naked Singularity 

Needle in a Timestack 

Nightbooks 

Old 

Old Henry 

Outside the Wire 

Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin 

Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway 

Pixie 

Port Authority 

The Protégé 

Queenpins 

Rams 

Red Notice 

Reminiscence 

Respect 

Schumacher 

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings 

7 Prisoners 

Silk Road 

Snake Eyes: GI Joe Origins 

Son 

Son of Monarchs 

Space Jam: A New Legacy 

Spiral: From the Book of Saw 

Spirit Untamed 

The Starling 

The Suicide Squad 

Survive the Game 

Sweet Girl 

Things Heard & Seen 

Thunder Force 

To All the Boys: Always & Forever 

Tom & Jerry 

Tom Clancy's Without Remorse 

Trigger Point 

12 Mighty Orphans 

The Unforgivable 

The Unholy 

Vacation Friends 

Vanquish 

Venom: Let There Be Carnage 

The Vigil 

Voyagers 

The Water Man 

We Broke Up 

Willy’s Wonderland 

The Woman in the Window 

Wrath of Man 

Yes Day