Posted in Uncategorized on January 1, 2024 by bookofdread
The best films of the year were pictures that looked unflinchingly at structures of power and splashed cold water in the face of both past and present lack of accountability. But also there were pulpy pleasures to be had astride a giant iridescent seahorse, cackle-worthy pitch black satires and even a sweet 70’s style morsel that makes you remember that sometimes they make ‘em like they used to. Here are my top 20 films of 2023.
20. Mushrooms – Pawel Boroski
Mushrooms is a testament to how interesting a story can get with just three characters walking in the woods. It is a gorgeous, poetic and sad film but I found it very powerful.
19. Stop-Motion – Robert Morgan
Aisling Franciosi is brilliant in this Aronofsky-esque spiral into madness. Stop-Motion is a hallucinogenic nightmare with some of the yuckiest images ever. I loved it.
18. Evil Dead Rise – Lee Cronin
EDR is a worthy entry to the Evil Dead cannon. The cold open was the best part of the film but the audience I saw it with gasped and laughed all the way through and that’s what we hope for.
17. Holy Spider – Ali Abbasi
Chilling, cold-blooded cinema.
16. The Holdovers – Alexander Payne
A typically terrific Paul Giamatti leads this bittersweet snow flurry of a film. Basically a folk song posing as a movie, The Holdovers takes us back in time & tells a story of sympathy & love & it works really well.
15. The Boy & The Heron – Hayao Miyazaki
You don’t have to save the world, but you can save a little piece of it.
14. Barbie – Greta Gerwig
Camp, thy have a new champion, and her name is Barbie.
13. Ferrari – Michael Mann
Pretty cool & even funny until that one scene. I love the scenes with Cruz & the Bank manager. Mann’s best film in ages.
12. Smoking Causes Coughing – Quentin Dupieux
Damn. This movie is so funny and I never knew where it was going.
11. Four’s A Crowd – Alex de La Iglesia
So Romantic! Spanish Larry David & Spanish Jason Momoa are a hoot. This movie is another comedy this year that kept me on the edge of my seat.
10. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-verse – Joaquin Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson
Might have been number one film of the year if it weren’t half a movie. Utterly brilliant filmmaking. Spider Punk is the coolest.
9. The Killer – David Fincher
Fincher is back baby! Best hand to hand fight in a while, & Tilda brings it as always. It’s a bit rushed, but leaves you breathless.
8. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom – James Wan
Just balls to the wall pulp fun that hits the ground (er, sea) running, ( ahem, swimming?) and lands as an exemplary entertainment. The plot is inane to be sure but the thrills in design details, kinetic action sequences and electro epic score are a bountiful harvest.
7. Poor Things – Yorgos Lanthimos
Barbie for the Wednesday kids.
6. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – James Gunn
Really emotional storytelling. Rocket is my favorite character in the MCU so, this was so satisfying. Can’t wait to see Gunn tackle the Man of Steel.
5. Oppenheimer- Christopher Nolan
Pure cinema, dancing through time and space.
4. Godzilla Minus One – Takashi Yamazaki
Powerful genre storytelling with a heart. The best Kaiju film ever.
3. Eileen – William Oldroyd
A chilly thriller with a mean streak, Eileen delivers the goods. William Oldroyd establishes himself once again as a master of time and place and tone.
2. Killers of The Flower Moon – Martin Scorsese
Only a master in his late years with a star such a Leo and a “studio” such as apple could make a $200 million dollar indictment of 20th century US history. As important a film as any made in the last decade.
1. Infinity Pool – Brandon Cronenberg
The best of the new wave of “eat the rich” satires, Infinity Pool has ice in its veins as it relieves its characters of any accountability just as their real world counterparts find ways to squirm out of reproach. Cronenberg is at the top of the game. Long live the new flesh.
Ti West & Mia Goth’s technicolor slasher is a fun sequel to “X” that really lets Goth show her chops.
19. Deep Water – Adrian Lyne
I laughed all the way through this one. While not as explicitly sexy or gory as I would have liked, I thought these characters were a hoot and love a Patricia Highsmith tale. Far from Lyne’s glory days, I still welcome any attempt at this kind of trashy erotic thriller.
18. The Northman – Robert Eggars
One of the most “metal” movies ever made, Robert Eggars telling of this Viking legend doesn’t have the haunting quality of his first two films but what it lacks in subtlety it more than makes up for in animalistic violence and period detail. A stretch for Eggars is still a beautiful thing for the audience. Here’s hoping he renames his upcoming retelling of Nosferatu: “The Vampire”.
17. The Guardians Of The Galaxy Holiday Special – James Gunn
While not really a movie, it IS really fun. We won’t get much more Marvel Gunn I think, so I’m relishing his last little bit with these characters and while it doesn’t set up much, it offers some lovely characterization to Drax and Mantis specifically. Just a blast of the Holiday Spirit, right in ones eyeballs.
16. Old Man – Lucky McKee
Lucky McKee’s Old Man is like a bit of Hateful Eight, Rope and The Twilight Zone all rolled into one. It doesn’t do the film justice to announce the plot, but Stephen Lang carries the whole affair admirably and it the script feels original in an era of so much dazzling IP. I just love Lucky McKee films.
15. Crimes Of The Future – David Cronenberg
Crimes of the Future was rightly heralded as Cronenberg’s return to his sticky past, but what he delivers in addition to another entry into his body of body horror films is a satisfying metaphor about conservative viewpoints and changing ones mind in the midst of future shock. It delivers something the cynical Cronenberg isn’t often known for: hope.
14. Hustle – Jeremiah Zagar
“Obsession is going to beat talent every time. Are you obsessed?”
13. Yule Log – Casper Kelly
Fun and stupid. I loved it.
12. Prey – Dan Trachtenberg
Loved it, best Predator movie since the original. Let’s please keep dropping predators into different periods in human history. Also, can’t wait to see Amber Midthunder in everything please.
11. Avatar: The Way Of Water – James Cameron
This movie scrambled my brains in IMAX 3D. I was exhausted by the end. This is the future. A much better film than Avatar, The Way Of Water is Avatars on a Titanic meets Moby Dick and I am beside myself as I bear witness to this cinematic achievement.
10. Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness – Sam Raimi
I found this film much more fun than that other multiverse movie. I know the plot doesn’t really make any sense, but it is a Sam Raimi film in all the best ways and that’s all it has to be to be this high on my list.
9. Barbarian – Zach Cregger
Somehow impossible to overhype, this little gem lands hard on the horror field, showing others how surprises are still to be had in an overly meta age of fiction. This one will be hard to follow up.
8. Pinocchio – Guillermo Del Toro & Mark Gustafson
Del Toro’s Pinocchio is dark and melancholy and beautiful and sad and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
7. Top Gun: Maverick – Joseph Kosinski
Blockbuster Filmmaking.
6. X – Ti West
X is one love letter to the sleazy 70’s that I could not resist. Nods to Lucio Fulci and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre abound, not to mention Jenna Ortega before she set the world on fire as Wednesday Addams. X is the best film of Ti West’s career. “Pearl” was lovely but made with a very specific set of restraints. I can’t wait for MaxXxine.
5. The Banshees of Inisherin – Martin McDonagh
A haunting and funny film made with the full poetry of the medium on display. Sometimes we want more out of the time we have left.
4. Dinner In America – Adam Rehmeier
“You are Punk As Fuck.” “Fuck em all. Fuck em all…but us.”
3. The Black Phone – Scott Derrickson
This is how you do a horror movie. Perfect in every way. Great script, performances, period detail, music, everything. An all time best from Derrickson. He just became a master. From here, I think he can do anything.
2. Elvis – Baz Luhrmann
Pure cinema. Baz Luhrmann has graduated from electrifying filmmaking to mesmerizing. This film was a thousand realized filmic possibilities and added to our visual language. Add to that the impeccable central performance and incredible use of music, and we have something, dare I say, new.
1. RRR – S. S. Rajamouli
What can be said about this movie, except I had no idea that movies could still be this surprising and fun to me at this age. I thought I had seen it all, and here come Bheem and Raju in the form of bonifide movie STARS. There is so much charisma and old school movie magic in this film. It felt like cold water in the face of the melodrama that has been the trade of hollywood blockbusters for decades. The gauntlet has been thrown. Movies can be so much more fun than they have been. Let’s go, Hollywood, the ball is in your court.
Vital was nothing like I expected it to be. I was familiar with Tsukamoto’s work, however, I was not prepared for how meditative and deliberate Vital would be, when compared with the frenetic punk rock energy of films like Tetsuo and Bullet Ballet.
Vital expresses sharing a trauma so severe it compromises ones identity. The wreck that leaves Hiroshi without his identity can be indirectly compared to the effect the dropping of atomic bombs had on the Japanese people. This event was not only cataclysmic, but, ones self must be completely reinvented after such an event. Hiroshi is a microcosm through which we can observe this phenomenon on a human scale.
Tsukamoto uses dreamy dissolves to warp time and space, present and past and memory and fantasy to a whirlwind effect that left me disoriented. Hiroshi puts together his memories as he dissects that which he loved.
Ryoko, that shattered object of his affection, has become something unrecognizable as that which formerly brought his life meaning. As he digs in and draws, an act of creation in and of itself, he synthesizes his memories with the reality of the corpse on the autopsy table and comprehends a new truth that includes both real and unreal memories of his love and the immutable fact that she is gone forever. Japan, as it existed before the bomb, leaves a faint memory in the trauma of those who survived the horror and an even more distant catalyst for those who were born after: a momentous generational upheaval.
Holzapfel, in The Body In Pieces, her article on Contemporary Anatomy Theatres, explains: “…what is consistent across all forms of contemporary visual media is their tendency to open up and frame the body not as a “whole,” to employ Foucault’s terminology, but other as an assembly of fragments or pieces, sewn together in an almost haphazard way by the skill of an adept editor.” She describes the expression of the body in parts as a way of describing the lacunae, or negative dimension, the very lack of the rest of the body.
In Vital, Ryoko, or by poetic proxy, Japan, is shown as a whole body, dancing and calling to Hiro, but only in a dream state, and only fleetingly. When she is represented in the present, she is but cold meat on a slab, shown in tightly cropped shots that never represent the entirety of what she was.
Like Ryoko, after the unthinkable happened, Japan was left in pieces, the reality of what it once was only a fragmented hazy memory to those who survived. To see it as a whole, one had to have been there before the war. As a result of losing that which they loved, their entire identity was called into question by the trauma, a collective amnesia to things so horrible, they were better not remembered. To examine the past is to revisit the trauma, a task with which both Tsukamoto and his protagonist Hiro meet with diligent study.
Requiem for a dream takes the viewer from dizzying, euphoric highs to soul-crushing lows in a little over an hour and a half. Aronofsky’s mastery of craft steers the viewer’s emotion from the top of the roller coaster all the way down.
Take for example a split screen segment from the first act, in which Marion and Harry take drugs and tell each other their dreams. The split screen effect of the scene between Marion and Harry begins with two faces looking at each other in close up, and the division of the characters is barely noticeable at first, as the camera is equidistant from each character. After a moment each image begins to cut so that there are disparate images on either half of the frame.
Marion touches Harry’s ear. We see her hand on his ear in the left half of the frame. In the right side of the screen we see Marion’s profile.The effect of the split image creates a fracture in both the spatial relationships of the characters and the temporal elements of the scene. What is happening on one side of the screen does not necessarily correspond temporally with the events of the other side of the screen. We are transported by the incongruity of the time and space of the image creating a space out of time and separated from the shared space of the other character occupying the room.
One of the things that has always resonated with me is the contrast in motivation of drug use between Harry and his friends versus his mother Sara Goldfarb. The trio of beautiful junkies purport to have in mind a day in the future when they don’t use any more, but they joke about wasting time. They are young, attractive and seemingly independent. I don’t really understand why they use, other than decadence. Their scenes in the first act are presented in joyful electric montage, when Harry is with Ty playing records or airy fantasias with Marion, such as the split-screen segment or the long take of the paper airplane descending from the condo.
By contrast, Sara never has a golden period in the film. In the opening scene she is burglarized by the living person she loves the most. She starts in a state of retreat. Unlike the youth in the story, she is old and lonely. This loneliness and the idea of transforming her body to fit into the red dress are directly related. If she can be on tv, she’ll offer the kind of connection that she finds from the tv, satiating her loneliness because she imagines those idolized on the tv are never lonely. So her drug use, to fit in the dress and get on tv, is a more psychologically nuanced desire than the desires of the youth. As Moreno asserts, “Sara’s growing addiction to the television and the virtualization of her past and future dreaming devours her power to feel, think and act in the present.”
There’s only one thing that someone would say that is never a lie. ‘I’m lonely.’ Sara Goldfarb’s loneliness in Requiem For A Dream is a horror far worse than any addiction.
Latina’s in 90’s horror exist at the intersection of tropicalization and empowerment. Latina characters were barely represented in the canon of 90’s horror. when they appeared in supporting and leading roles, they were iconic. These few representations rarely offer complex characters. With some examination, we can discover that the 90’s gave birth to a new era of Latina characters in horror, in a number of different types. Though many of these characters are powerful and decisive, the tropes of tropicalization remain, as well as the embarrassing representations of the ‘spicy Latina’. In “The Exotic Other” Malgorzata Martynuska says: “Films with Latina protagonists present a double construction of femininity and Otherness. Ethnic females are othered and marginalized in relation to the dominant construction of whiteness… Latina stars present an exotic look and sexuality creating a strong visual impact.” In almost every case, (but not all!), the Latina characters are sexualized in an exploitative way. I will ask how horror films in the 1990’s positioned Latina characters.
I’ll define these representations as either positive and progressive, damaging and regressive, or some complex mix of both. More often than not, the latter is the case. Finally, I’ll choose key portrayals within the horror cannon as case studies and identify whether the characters exist only as a superficial representation of a Latina, or as a three-dimensional character. There are four key archetypes I will explore here: The Villain, the Anti-Hero, The Connection to the Other Side and The Hero.
The epitome of evil, as she is introduced by Danny Trejo in Robert Rodriguez From Dusk Till Dawn (1995), is Salma Hayek’s Satanico Pandemonium. Satanico dances at the Titty Twister where she also reigns as the in-house vampire queen. Named after a 1975 Mexican film in which a nun is tempted by visions of forbidden desire to cross over to Satan, this exotic dancer has fully crossed over to the dark side. She is seen in only four sequences. She is introduced and dances hypnotically on the stage, every patron of the bar fixated upon her. She moves to the table of the protagonists and delivers tequila to Quentin Tarantino down her leg and mouth to mouth. She transforms into a vampire and attacks Tarantino ripping out his throat and killing him. Finally Hayek battles George Clooney in a fight that ends in her characters death.
The reviews of the film from the era offer little commentary at all on Hayek and the retrospective analysis of the film offers that her depiction is heavily tropicalized as she is presented in bright colors, with flames around her, draped in a yellow snake to accentuate her brown hue. She is, seemingly a very powerful character, able to hypnotize an entire room. She seems like the boss of the vampires. However, minutes later she is dispatched with seeming ease. She does get to slug George Clooney around for a few minutes and she kills Quentin Tarantino on screen, which is some kind of power I suppose. That she is a Latina who is killing the writer, maybe for writing that “foot-tequila scene” is an extra bit of meta textual fun. Though the depiction is entirely sexualized and retrograde, the sequence became iconic due to Rodriguez expert filming and editing and a powerful performance by Hayek. She lands firmly on the side of one dimensional character and we never even know why she is evil, she’s simply a seductive vampire dancer, with a few good Tarantino lines.
The second type I will explore is the Anti-hero. As we move through these characters we will move incrementally. As such, our next character is once again a vampire. In Jim Wynorski’s Vampirella (1996), Talisa Soto plays the title space vampire who comes to Earth on a vengeance quest and by the end of the story learns a little about what it means to be human. Since this was a direct to video release, there are next to no contemporaneous writings about the film aside from a description in TV guide, which characterizes the film as campy schlock and suggests the female lead didn’t fill out the costume well enough. Misogynistic costuming aside, the film is a fairly entertaining vampire sci-fi action film that predates the language of Blade by a few years. That Soto is a Latina has nothing to do with the plot, though I would consider it exoticism that they cast a Latina as the vampire. Soto is pretty good in the role and the film is fairly entertaining. Vampirella has the distinction of being the first comic book movie with a Latina as the lead character. Despite her character being three dimensional and having an actual moral arc over the course of the film. Much of the runtime is filled simply watching Soto in a vinyl bikini and reeks of exploitation. At least she’s the lead character and has an arc.
Rosie Perez portrays Perdita Durango in Alex De La Iglesia’s 1997 film of the same name. The film concerns a pair of criminals who kidnap two young white teenagers for the purposes of human sacrifice. It is largely, a dark comedy. Perez’s character is tough, cruel, sadistic and extremely persuasive. She exhibits enormous agency and moves the world around herself. In one scene she rapes one of her captors. She frequently physically assaults other characters. She is often sexualized and seen nude, including in the opening sequence in which a leopard pulls a sheet off of her naked body, sexualizing and tropicalizing her simultaneously. In the subsequent scene a man hits on her in an airport and she offers to prostitute herself for him. Upon meeting Javier Bardem’s Romeo Delorosa, he actually calls her “senorita spitfire”, either self-aware or egregiously unaware of the trope. Perdita is the ultimate spicy Latina, hard-assed, tough-mouthed and fully capable. She is the character who convinces Romeo to kidnap and kill the white teenagers. By the end of the film, she has learned to love Romeo, and she frees the kids, but she has engaged in so much hateful cruel behavior, it is difficult for the text to come down on her side, despite offering her absolution. I cannot say that this representation is helpful or positive. Perdita is a repulsive character and continues all of the worst most harmful characterizations of Latinas in cinema. Perdita has a moral shift over the course of the film, which sets her apart from a purely evil character like Satanico Pandemonium, but she is hardly three dimensional, her transition into a new moral position makes little sense.
The third type of character we find Latinas in in 90’s horror is the voice of reason. These characters exist opposite male characters who have been drawn into supernatural events and they are there to either convince them to stop messing with the forces of darkness, or in the case of In The Mouth Of Madness, to offer a perspective on reality apart from the sanity of the protagonist. I offer two examples of this type of character: Paquita in Dead Alive, and Linda in In The Mouth Of Madness.
In the first case, Diana Pinalver plays Paquita in Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive 1992.
Paquita is a strong romantic lead who asserts herself with the films bumbling protagonist, Lionel. She is not only his equal, but more often than not his better. She’s clever, capable and even good at killing zombies. She is never sexualized and the one time her race is noted, it is by Lionel’s despicable uncle who regards her as: “Latin, eh? Ooh, I bet you go off like a rocket!” Paquita is exoticised to a small degree, as she takes Lionel to see her grandmother in the beginning of the film and the old woman gives him a tarot reading. There has been some kind of connection to the supernatural in every single case so far, depicting latin culture as occult adjacent. I will argue that Paquita is the most well rounded Latina character in any of these films. She has a complete backstory and her motivations are clear. She is funny, capable, moral and assertive. It is notable that Peter Jackson wrote the film with his future wife Fran Walsh. The female voice here is clear.
Another of these connection to the other side characters is Linda Sykes from John Carpenter’s In The Mouth Of Madness, played by Julie Carmen.
Sykes is an editor for Arcane publishing who must accompany Sam Neil’s private detective as he searches for a prolific and profitable horror novelist who has gone missing. For most of the film, Sykes is portrayed as a savvy high dollar editor for a major publisher, an even handed depiction of a professional female, never once referring to her as Latina. However, by the time the film ends, she has transformed into some kind of nightmare creature from which the detective must escape. Sam Neil finds himself back at the publishers only to have revealed that she never existed in the first place, and that he left to find the novelist alone. What does it say to write this character out of existence? Once again, the Latina character provides a bridge to another reality, a place where nightmares are real.
The world of 90’s horror sorely needed a character who could break these tropes and stand on her own. The 90’s needed a Latina hero. And in the wake of Selena’s death, the world got Jennifer Lopez. In April of 1997, horror and action fans found their Latina hero in Luis Llosa’s Anaconda.
Lopez’s Terri Flores breaks all the rules for Latina horror characters in the 90’s. She is not only the main character of the film and leader of the expedition, she is a Latina filmmaker. She is out to document the rare Shirishama tribe on the Amazon, and has a whole team who answers to her. She is resilient, humane, helpful, kind, and constantly rises to the occasion to perform stunts and kick ass as an action heroine. This character is absolutely a role model to young Latina viewers. Mary Beltran state in “Mas Macha: The New Latina Action Hero”: “Terry as embodied by Lopez in fact can be seen as one prototype of the distinctly Latina action protagonist in her dual construction as both a particularly sexy woman and a capable fighter when she must protect herself or her charges. While Terri Flores is free from the occult adjacent tropes and to a large degree the “spicy Latina” characterization, she is as sexualized as nearly any of these characters. Despite her sexualization, I think Terri Flores is an overwhelmingly positive portrayal of a character who is not only strong and hard-willed under pressure, but of a woman who is a leader and a creative. Just the idea of filmmaker as action hero is super fun but add female and Latina and you have a recipe for a really fantastic character. The film succeeds as much as it does, not on the CGI snake or the b-players, but because Lopez is a star and has charm to spare. She can do cool stuff and looks cool doing it. I think this character opened the door for many Latina action stars to come, such as Michelle Rodriguez, Rosario Dawson and Zoe Saldana.
In every nearly every case Latina characters were sexualized in the horror films of the nineties. In most cases these characters were directly tied to satanic practices or the occult.
Though these black magic adjacent storylines exist alongside torrid tasteless sexuality, and are part and parcel for the horror genre, I would offer that these elements are typical but there are many excellent horror films that can operate outside these lines. Even though these characters are often saddled with unfortunate baggage from a less progressive era, the Latina characters in 90’s horror are iconic, unforgettable and empowered. In most cases these women are the betters of men in their respective narrative, until, in a few cases, they are revealed to be supernatural creatures. These roles paved the way for stronger, more independent characters in the coming decades.
I found Uncle Boonmee steeped in just enough magical realism to keep me interested in the subtext instead of being overwhelmed by the tragic and painful narrative. I have literally watched in my family as my mother died months after a coma. When she came out of the coma she experienced complete liver failure and had to be driven out of town 40 miles every other day for her dialysis. While I enjoyed most of Weerasethakul’s narrative and stylistic choices, one thing that did not resonate with me was the fact that Uncle Boonmee did not seem to be in too much physical pain for the duration of the film, which is not at all the case with someone who is suffering from liver & kidney failure. Now, perhaps it would ruin the haunting vibe to have someone moaning in aching pain throughout, (though, this is explored in David Cronenberg’s film Crimes of the Future 2022 – Viggo Mortensen aches his way through the film…), it is nevertheless a bit thoughtless to describe such a horrific condition with such calm language.
The supernatural creatures are all very interesting and provide imaginative provocation when it comes to the subtext of the film. The ghost of his wife, his hybrid monkey son and even the catfish from the river sequence all provide a kind on insight on not only who Uncle Boonmee is, but on human nature itself. Boonmee stands in for anyone near the end of their life, looking back in reflection and seeking guidance and meaning as the end nears.
In her essay”Hauntology and Hospitality in the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul”, Janet Harbord states: “A ghost story is always on the edge of disbelief. Its affective magic is produced through the final indetermination truth from falseness, reality from illusion, offering the loss of certainty as a vertiginous pleasure. The ghostly brings an anxiety simply by its presence, which is always only a half-presence, an ‘appearance’ of an Other that cannot fully emerge because the ghost is always by definition out of place (of another place, ‘foreign’).
Thusly, ghosts are ideal to represent half-states, a feeling of in-between-ness. Boonmee starts the film with one foot in the grave and dies by the end of the film. He and his family are visited by spirits and in the end, he dies. However, the ending of the film allows no such certainty. We see his wife and son leave a room and go to a bar while seemingly remaining in the room with the family. Nothing really ends. No one really leaves. An echo, if not a strong memory remains and haunts or charms those that remember us. The language that Weerasethakul deploys to achieve this effect dissolves and non-linear storytelling. As supernatural creatures enter and exit the frame by simply appearing or vanishing in dissolve, we are left with a kind of spatial shift and also a suggestion that the figures were always there or at the very least can choose when and where to be seen.
It is a classic comfort to believe that those who we have loved and lost will be there to greet and guide us as we cross over from this world. It is a timeless endeavor to codify these ideas into some semblance of a guess as to what awaits us after death. The idea of ghosts at its most simple implies that death is not the end of our personage. The ghost of Huay, Boonmee’s wife, retains memories and feelings and expresses them. Her personality has followed her into the afterlife. She can be two whens at once. As Harbord says, “Those who live in the present…’are too crude, too primitive’ to invoke multiple temporality. Weerasethakul uses cinema to allow us some understanding of what it might mean to exist in two times at once.
In “Cinematic Past Lives”, Anders Bergstrom quotes Philip Rosen, paraphrasing Bazin: “It is the function of representational art, including cinema, to preserve likeness, and perhaps more, beyond death.” Weerasethakul makes this not only subtext to his film, but truly brings this concept into deep relief so that we can see clearly the methods by which cinema hangs on to images, stories and individuals like ghosts, preserving them in celluloid for as long as the film can last. Now that we have digital archiving, despite the fact this film was shot on film, we can scan the work and give it a true kind of immortality, not unlike the ghosts in the film. The film may disappear from memory, but as long as it is saved on a server or hard drive somewhere, the ghosts of Uncle Boonmee and his family will live on.
To say that Billy Wilder films are preoccupied with sex is a bit of an understatement. The man himself used to tell tall tales of his days in Berlin working as a gigolo, though it is widely understood that this is an embellishment of the days he spent earning extra cash as a dancer for hire. After he moved to Los Angeles he spent time living in a women’s room in the Chateau Marmont and according to Sikhov, the desk clerk at the time, “doubted he dated the same girl twice.” (Sikov, 2017) For Wilder, it seems, sex was simply something one did, sometimes for fun, sometimes for personal gain. His films have an interesting way of positioning the horizontal mambo frequently as a not particularly romantic endeavor, let alone an act done for the sheer pleasure of intercourse. In an early film review for Ole & Axel at BebaPalace (1928), Wilder characterizes the plot as where “There are two jolly girls who have been fleecing their uncle in the country under the pretense of studying painting and sculpture in the city, and the when the uncle decides to drop in to visit his nieces, the two men play along with a plan to pose as Roman and Greek statues. Then they act as a droll pair of teachers in a dance and gymnastics school that the girls set up in their uncles country home. Paying them with love is the least the girls can do.” (Isenberg & Frisch 2021) For Wilder, more often than not, sex was a means to an end, and that end could be something as meaningful as survival or as trivial as a night under the air conditioner.
Wilders early works a writer is populated with playboys and gigolos. In the Lubitsch classic, “Ninotchka,” Leon is a man of means, who has very little concern with the opposite sex besides a trivial tryst. His extended encounter with Ninotchka convinces him that there may be more to life than self satisfaction. In “Hold Back The Dawn” Wilder reflects his time in Mexicali, trying to secure passage into the US. His avatar is a Romanian gigolo named Georges Iscovescu, whose way of life before he was uprooted was contingent on his ability to charm and bed rich socialites. Wilder was just getting warmed up. These characters are more or less what they seem when it comes to how sex forms an aspect of their identity, but as he finds his footing as a filmmaker, people can get so much more for a little seduction.
In one of Wilder’s many masterworks, Double Indemnity (1944) sexy housewife Phyllis Detrichson attempts to purchase nothing less than murder with her open legs. The sale is made, and savvy insurance man Walter Neff decides he’s the only man that can help her execute her husband and make away with his insurance money. Here, Wilder practically invents the film noir, and the femme fatale archetype, while revealing something elemental about both men and women. Neff is so taken by Dietrichson that he’s willing to stick his neck out for some of her sweet nookie. Phyllis is so miserable in her marriage that she’ll seize any opportunity to get out, even if it means a capitol crime. The exchange rate is returned though, when Neff murders Phyllis, after he finds out her feelings were false. “I never loved you, Walter. Not you, or anybody else. I’m rotten to the heart. I used you, just as you said. That’s all you ever meant to me…” says Phyllis, moments before Neff shoots her in the chest.
In A Foreign Affair (1948), nothing so large as murder is bought with sex. Things that are much more important are purchased, such as coffee, canned meat, and milk. These staples of survival are essential in post-war Berlin where singer-dancer Erika Von Schluetow applies her trade to soldiers in bombed out bar. She sings a song, “Black Market”, that could be the thesis of Wilder’s approach to sex in his films.
“I’ll sell my goods
Behind the screen.
No ceiling, no feeling. A very smooth routine
You buy my goods, and boy my goods are keen.”
“No ceiling,” implies that there is no height of depravity to which Erika will not reach; “no feeling,” the desperation affects her not a whit. After Captain John Pringle rescues her from a room full of rowdy Russians, he finds her domicile in back of the stage: a crumbling hole, sad and broken, like the woman who resides there, empty and in need of all the essentials. Regarding the film, Wilder opined, “Someone who saw A Foreign Affair said that they were surprised to see just how much a GI in post-war Berlin could trade for candy bars and cigarettes. That reflection leads me to recall the theme which often turns up in my pictures: People will do anything for money—except some people, who will do almost anything for money”. (Horton, 2001) Here, Wilder reflects that when war takes everything, what’s a little time between the sheets to get the things one needs to survive.
If Erika Von Schluetow is willing to trade sex for the essentials needed to survive, Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard (1950) is willing to give his body and soul for that swimming pool in Beverly Hills. Gillis meets out of work silent film diva Norma Desmond when his car breaks down, and she quickly latches on to the handsome young screenwriter and offers her home as a place where she will pay him to write her comeback picture, “Salome”. Over time Gillis gives up everything for the free meals, rent, and pool that Desmond offers, to the point of killing his ambition for writing. That is, until his compass points him toward fellow screenwriter Betty Schaefer and soon, Gillis is moonlighting with her, working on their own screenplay. Of course, Desmond will have none of it and when Gillis tries to leave she shoots him.
While it is never explicit that Gillis and Desmond consecrate their unholy union with sex, it is heavily implied both in the way she touches him (and he lets her) during her film screening, and the extended period of time that he lives with her. One scene midway through the film makes a heavy implication.
Norma continues to sob. Gillis goes back to the bed, puts his arms on her
shoulders and turns her around.
Gillis: Happy new year.
Norma looks at him, tears in her eyes. Slowly, she enfolds him in her bandaged
arms.
Norma: Happy new year, darling.
She kisses him.
In an interview with the American Film Institute, Wilder makes clear how he sees Gillis: “The part of the writer Joe Gillis, who becomes the gigolo there, was written for Montgomery Clift.” (Horton, 2001) Clearly, Wilder sees Joe as dealing in sexual trade.
Sex doesn’t always equal life and death in Wilder’s universe. Sometimes the commodity of flesh can be used to purchase something as trivial as a comfortable night’s sleep. All The Girl in The Seven Year Itch (1955) wants is to sleep under some air conditioning.
Richard Sherman has just what she wants and he lives just underneath her. She knows just how to get it. While it was a sour spot for Wilder that he could not imply that these characters slept together with his infamous “hairpin,” it is not a stretch to suggest that The Girl would have slept with him and that any red blooded soul would have at least been tempted to invite The Girl into their bedroom. Despite Wilder’s circumscribed agency, it is nevertheless an interesting if trivial (but perhaps realistic) prospect that The Girl would have slid into the sack with Sherman for some of that sweet, sweet A/C.
The intentions of Sugar Kane Kowalczyk are made explicit in Some Like It Hot (1959). Sugar makes her plans to marry a millionaire well known in the galley of the train to Florida. Joe relates, and forms a plan to pretend to be an oil heir and suggest an inability to perform despite his clear status as a womanizer. If Sugar is going to be able to benefit from this relationship, she must first solve his problem. And she goes to great lengths to get a rise out of “Shell Oil Jr.” Now, by the end of this parable about disguises and gangsters, we find out that our characters aren’t quite as shallow as they both seem throughout the picture. However, it is notable, that this might be the only case where a character says out loud to another character their intentions to enrich themselves by marrying up, and acting out on that endeavor in an overtly sexual manner.
Once again, Wilder expresses a world where nearly anything can be bought with sex, and even though it is revealed that our man isn’t rich, both characters operate under this assumption: that they can use their respective sexual charms to get what they want out of others.
Wilder’s masterpiece, The Apartment (1960) uses sex as currency in his most indirect way. The protagonist, C.C. “buddy boy” Baxter is not trying to get or give sex per se, but he loans out his apartment for the affairs of his superiors at work, which leads to a promotion at work, greater pay, a better office, and a jealous love triangle involving his boss and a lovely elevator operator.
Even though Baxter isn’t selling his “sex,” he is still using the opportunity and location for philandering to his personal advantage. In his case sex can buy his way up the corporate ladder. Wilder posits that this is the way of men, either boning out of sheer horniness or getting out of the way of those fuckers who sign his checks. He can either become one of them, compromise his morals and get out of their way, or find his way out of the system entirely. Wilder moralizes the practice to a degree, and we feel empathy for Baxter, a man trapped in a corrupt system which he facilitates. Watching him turn the corner and escape that world, with the possibility of a real love near to him, is greatly satisfying.
If a night in air conditioning is the most trivial thing one can buy in Wilder’s Black Market, surely soda factories in Russia comes a close second. Not the “A” plot by a mile, but in One, Two, Three! (1961)C.R. MacNamara essentially acts as a pimp to his secretary, a gorgeous German bombshell named Fraulein Ingeborg. When the Russian diplomats who can help him set up factories behind the iron curtain are playing hardball, McNamara has Ingeborg dress up in some sexy getup and get up on a table, tossing fire and dancing much to the delight of his Russian adversaries.
He implies that they might have their way with her, should they allow him to open Coca-Cola factories in the largest untapped market in the world. While not essential to the plot, it couples nicely with fraulein Von Schluetow in that we are once again in post-war Berlin, but a decade later. Ingeborg doesn’t live in a hovel, but she is more than willing to prostitute herself in the name of capitalism. Hers is not a mode of desperation, but enrichment. Still, she is a secretary, not a whore.
The titular lady of Irma La Douce (1963) is explicitly a lady of pleasure. She works in the red light district in Paris, and sells sex for her cost of living.
It is the most overt version of prostitution in a Wilder film, where the protagonist is not selling sex for anything specific, but, rather, it is her occupation. Here, Wilder stops her in her tracks after the first act, by having Nestor Patou, her new love, pretend to be Lord X: a wealthy client who is the only one she needs to survive. It is worth noting that while they do have sex, it is only with Patou. So, Irma never has a moral turnabout concerning her profession: it is only Patou who tricks her into stopping sleeping with other men. One could say that that with his sex (and subterfuge) he is buying her fidelity.
One last crude purchase is made in Wilder’s haphazard comedy, Kiss Me, Stupid (1964). After a series of silly pretensions leave our characters in the arms of the wrong women, respectable housewife Zelda sleeps with Dino, assuring her husband of the sale of his song to a major star.
Zelda knows that her hapless husband has spent the night with Polly the Pistol, and despite his intentions, he did sleep with her. Now, as embarrassing as that is, before she sleeps with Dino, she’s just a housewife who has been cheated on. If she can ensure that Dino buys the song, now her husband has a windfall of cash. Should she stay with him, she will directly benefit from that income, or, should she decide to divorce him, the alimony would be considerably greater than if she just left as a broken divorcee. The act of sleeping with Dino was an act of making sure she got hers, regardless of the fate of her marriage.
In the “Black Market” of Wilder’s world, everything is for sale, and the price really isn’t too high, so long as you don’t value your self respect. From air conditioning to a swimming pool in Beverly Hills: “People sell out, Take all I’ve got. Ambitions! Convictions! The works! Why not? Enjoy my goods, for boy, my goods are hot!”
David Lynch’s 2007 film, Inland Empire, is a digitally constructed nightmare text in which a character named Grace drifts from one temporal reality to another in order to offer absolution to a “Lost Girl” who appears to be watching the events of the film on a television while weeping to herself over her sins. Jonathan Goodwin’s essay on the film “The Separate Worlds of David Lynch’s Inland Empire”, offers ideas on what the setting of Poland means for Lynch both aesthetically and politically. Goodwin argues that Poland “shapes both the moral contours and structural features” of Inland Empire, and understands the film to function as a commentary on the benefits of material wealth and the also offering a kind of salve that only cinematic fantasy can provide. Through a dense experimental structure, Lynch as created a new cinematic language of association, by which we can go from one time to another, one place to another, simply by dreaming it, watching someone dream it, or being absorbed into the process of recording and capturing the dream, and therefore changing the nature of our reality.
The language of Inland Empire runs contrary to most films, which are presented as a series of reveals. Lynch, instead, ratchets up a series of obfuscations, creating what I would describe as a language of concealment. Take for example the first time we are exposed to the “sitcom family of rabbit people”. In addition to the camera being placed high like a security camera, giving us a voyeuristic vantage into something that is highlighted as a mass consumption commodity like a tv show, the characters also speak in questions, never offering answers to one another. Between the odd perspective, the riddle-like nature of the dialogue and the laugh track, Lynch conflates what is both “in the shape of a tv show” and also twists each element to an absurd point, to the end of beginning a dialogue with the audience about what is a show or a film.
Lynch deploys a number of formal techniques to place the audience in a dream space. This begins with the overwhelming and dynamic sound design that makes use of cacophonous ambient sounds that drone and hum or clang and crash as he needs to disrupt or jar the audience. Frequently, the ambient hum is used to connect disparate times or spaces, providing just enough connective stimuli to create a continuum from one piece to the other as opposed to many separate chapters. Lynch uses the digital grain of the low-end camera to create high-contrast liminal spaces in and around the film studio, Hollywood alleyways, and dark hallways in houses. The edges of the frame blur and disappear into black, allowing for near seamless editing as he dissolves time and space, while allowing characters and audience to remain, separated from their time, and losing the grounding features within the frame. The effect is disorienting, a recreation of a mental mania, or a mind struggling with reality. Grace, who deteriorates into Sue Blue, finds her world disappearing and warping, as she fumbles and struggles from one dark space into another, hearing stories from strange visitors and delivering her confession of reprisal against a rapist to a wordless analyst.
In his essay, Goodwin claims Zizek identifies the decaying industrial base of Lodz as what attracts Lynch to the location & postulates that Lynch’s fascination with alternate realities is a facet of his political analysis. Lodz is referred to as an “evental site: a place where history haunts the present.” This is as good as any description of what is occurring in the film, as the history of the previous iteration of On High in Blue Tomorrow arrives and warps Grace into a nightmare that sends her back into another time or perhaps another reality. Goodwin describes the film as having “layered hauntings, whose temporal distortions reflect the polish settings landscape”. The crumbling city cannot help but recall the horrors of WWII, even as it attempts to move into a more glamorous present, just as Grace attempts to find success in her new role, the lost girl watching on TV attempts to find grace through an act of absorbing that which she receives from the media she consumes. This may be Lynch’s intention, to show, through the text, how media, through association, can transform the receiver.
Through a number of techniques, Lynch also constantly reminds us that we are watching a film. The most obvious reminder is the Lost Girl who watches on the TV most of what we see, a kind of Matryoshka by way of which we discover ourselves within his hall of mirrors, each one reflecting back upon the viewer. He also uses theatrical lighting, that is to say the light sources move within the frame, something that harkens to theatrical technique and is not found in reality. Verisimilitude is impossible when constantly observing the complex and undulating lighting design. These lights can symbolize new knowledge, such as when she sees the bloody bulb in her husbands mouth and we dissolve to the red lamp, or they can indicate visual chaos, as when a handful of lights dance around Grace’s face in one of her more nightmarish and desperate moments. He uses repetition, much like the hall of mirrors, by showing us scenes we have seen before, such as when Grace appears in the studio or when Grace sees herself across the street on Hollywood Blvd. By re-seeing something we have already taken in, the audience is caught in the temporal loop, not knowing if we are ahead of or behind the events, and doing our best to just hold on to what we can. Lynch may be saying something about the levels of engagement possible in the medium of film which can send us whizzing forward in time or catapult us backwards into stunted understanding. In any case, seeing these things more than once rarely codifies the information, but has the effect of further dispersing of meaning in lieu of showcasing formal effect and asking questions about the limitations of narrative media.
Goodwin rightly asserts that Lynch constantly multiplies the spectatorial mediations. Are we listening to a record? Watching a TV show? Watching a movie? Who is receiving this? He offers the Lost Girl as a proxy for the audience, indicating the key role of spectatorship in the understanding of the film. We are she who watches. It is we who weep openly as the narrative reflects our sins. As we watch a film, any film, we seek those moments that resonate with us as individuals and when those moments arrive, they often cut deep, reminding us of things that are internal, and those moments of self-reflection and rumination are deeply meditative and often painful and cathartic. I believe it is this catharsis that Lynch is chasing here. “Nikki Grace’s travails as Sue Blue allow the Lost Girl (and the audience) to manage their trauma vicariously. Inland Empire is his attempt to articulate the transformative power of “watching”, and that through the psychic and audiovisual trauma we absorb we can become something new, or become something we once were.
At one point a character tells Grace, “In the future, you will be dreaming, when you wake up, someone familiar will be there.” I take this to be a description of watching a film. When you wake up, when you stop living vicariously through the movie characters, some one familiar will be there. Ones self. Through watching, one can rediscover the “self”. For Lynch, films are a method of class struggle, though the palliative qualities of film seem to undermine the fight. We watch to be rich or powerful, but instead we are given a type of sedative provides a convenient mystification. Film allows us to walk in these strangers shoes, but ultimately we must confront ourselves after the film is over. Whether we are transformed by the events is not a dichotomy. It is not a matter of if the film changes us, we are always affected, but it is a matter of degree.
After two years, I have come back to publishing this little list. See below for my picks for 2020. I thought 2021 would be a better year as far as films go, but honestly, it still wasn’t that great, there were some really great films, but overall, I felt the quality continuing to slip. Here are some of my favorites.
20. Army Of The Dead – Zack Snyder
A nutso zombie heist film that is as silly as it needs to be and makes not a lick of sense. Big dumb and fun.
19. Black Widow – Cate Shortland
The villains suck and there are few stakes, but I got more out of this film than the other big marvel movie trading on the good will of the characters previous appearances. Natasha has been slowly developed over many films by many writers and the result is a fascinating, complex lynchpin to the MCU. This film isn’t great, but its a great time spent with a great character. Her family is pretty fun, too.
18. Zack Snyder’s Justice League – Zack Snyder
Zack Snyder’s Justice League fulfills the promise of what this film might have been and then some. The film is a ponderous meditation on grief and wraps the existential themes of Inside Llewyn Davis and Melancholia in a super-hero movie with jarring yet undeniable results. By moving Cyborg to the center of the film, we are given a true in-point to this saga of the gods.
17. Venom: Let There Be Carnage – Andy Serkis
Every bit as funny and fun as the first Venom film with even more development for Eddie and Venom. I laughed, I cried, I hurled. A big crazy monster movie that looks wildly expensive and never at the expense of fun. Delighted the 12 year old inside me. The scene where Venom “comes out” is one of the best of the year.
16. Malignant – James Wan
Never one to rest on previous achievements, Wan tries his hand at Hennenlotter-esque body horror. Action packed, color saturated and wildly plotted, Malignant dares you not to have fun.
15. Nightmare Alley – Guillermo Del Toro
A film that’s sure to leave you needing a shower, Nightmare Alley is the perfect marker of our con-man in charge era. Del Toro proves he’s just as at home with human monsters as the supernatural variety and the ending will leave your jaw on the floor. Special notice for Cate Blanchett who soars above an already impeccable cast.
14. Titane – Julia Ducournau
Titane is maybe even better to think about than watch, but good grief what an experience. This is transcendent filmmaking and it won’t let you off with any simple assessment, and it plays very, very rough. Ducournau is two for two.
13. The Mitchells Vs. The Machines – Mike Rianda & Jeff Rowe
Everything a family movie should be, fun, full of adventure, positive messaging, and bringing those who love each other closer together.
12. Last Night In Soho – Edgar Wright
Is it a ghost story? A Giallo? A time-travel movie? Or is it all of the above? I’m going to call it a damn good time at the movies. Wright is at his best when scraping against horror and I, for one am glad he’s back to the boogeymen (or women).
11. The Sparks Brothers – Edgar Wright
I knew nothing about Sparks before I saw this film except that they did the music for the exceptional Leos Carax film Annette. This documentary maintains the mystique but reveals so much about what the art life is like.
10. The Matrix Resurrections – Lana Wachowski
I love so much about this film. I love blowing up the mono-myth of the “heroes journey” or christ-figure. I love that they only made it in the original trilogy because of true love. I love that the stakes are not world-shattering, but rather, “Can we get Trinity out?” I love sentient machines working with people as friends and moving the narrative away from “us vs them” to “freedom vs control”. I loved seeing all my friends from Sense8! A beautiful film.
9. If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power – Colin Tilley
Halsey and director Colin Tilley have created a beautiful compliment to her album of the same name. Oppressive and downbeat, the film chronicles the martyrdom of an heiress, but acts as a diatribe against the patriarchy. Haunting and sexy, powerful and loving, this film should be seen on a huge screen at maximum volume.
8. Shang Chi & The Legend Of The Ten Rings – Destin Daniel Cretton
I’ve seen it a few times now and it gets better each time. Cool characters, a funny script and a new area of the MCU makes for a great time. My new hope for a future film is to see Awkwafina’s Katy get into a sass off with Yelena Bolova.
7. Red Rocket – Sean Baker
Sean Baker is back with another troubling portrait of a sex worker, this time in south-east Texas. Baker has a gift for making the underside of life look charming and the star making turn here by newcomer Suzanna Son sets the screen aflame. The verisimilitude is its own kind of special effect, for much of the time, it doesn’t even feel like a movie.
6. Annette – Leos Carax
Fearless next level filmmaking and music. Something to be seen over and over to observe the fullness of the craft. A career best performance by Adam Driver. Carax is peerless.
5. Pig – Michael Sarnoski
Cage dusts off the for for hire work and turns in a late career masterwork. “We don’t get that many things to really care about.”
4. The Suicide Squad – James Gunn
Gunn gets to marry his early Troma sensibilities with his super-hero acumen to spectacular results. The best opening sequence of the year, and Harley flying through Starro’s eye with rats swimming around her has to be the most surreal and beautiful image I saw in a movie this year. Gunn has one more at bat with the Guardians, but I also look forward to his brand of R-rated violence next time it comes around.
3. Benedetta – Paul Verhoeven
For his last few films, (Black Book, Elle), Verhoeven has had a serious face on, and I almost forgot how funny and downright silly most of his films are. Benedetta is back to crack jokes y’all. PV is at his best when conflating the sacred and the profane and here he does it with such a light touch if feel like the same cat who did Showgirls and Starship Troopers back to back.
2. Spencer – Pablo Larrain
Something about this movie nailed me, whether it was the performances, the photography or the music, the sum effect was hypnotizing. Full of ghosts and dread, it felt like a gothic horror Christmas film, but one that ends with a bittersweet hope. A fairy tale.
1. Licorice Pizza – Paul Thomas Anderson
PTA has delivered the first film he has ever made that hasn’t felt like homework. True, his films can be fun or compelling, but I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the first time, he gives me, the audience member, permission to have fun. And I had so much fun! Cooper Hoffman is a perfect proxy for any overachieving young man and Alana Haim is going to make the world fall in love with her as she becomes a huge star. This is my favorite PTA film yet. He made a warm hug of a movie and I think we could all use a hug right now.
Well, here it is, a year late. My top films of two years ago. I’ll get to my favorites of last year shortly, but didn’t want to leave a gap here. So, with a year to contemplate here were my favorite films of 2020.
20. Emma – Autumn de Wilde
This film was a frothy colorful delight. The costumes and performances brought new life into a story often told.
19. Empress Of Darkness – Nick DiLiberto
DiLiberto’s follow up to his excellent Nova Seed is another labor of love in hand animated glory. He’s blazing his own trail of heartfelt fantasy sci-fi, and the world is a better place because of his colorful action packed films.
18. Tales Of The Uncanny – David Gregory
David Gregory’s documentary on Horror Anthology films is a gift to horror fans everywhere. Talking to so many fascinating voices in the horror community, Gregory paints a loving portrait of an often overlooked batch of horror insanity.
17. Kindred Spirits – Lucky McKee
McKee has visited several sub-genres within the horror arena, but this is his Shadow Of A Doubt or Poison Ivy, evil house-guest film ala Lifetime movie. While I feel it’s a little soft for McKee, it’s rather excellent for a Lifetime film. The performances are fantastic, (Thora Birch!) and the editing and music as always provide that distinct McKee flavor. Really hoping for a Blu release of this sometime.
16. The Grudge – Nicolas Pesce
As someone who approached this film as a fan of Pesce’s and not really a fan of the Grudge films, I found this film a damn delight. I enjoyed the puzzle box narrative structure and the parade of familiar yet excellent actors throughout. The plotting is wild and the set pieces are amazing. I never knew where it was going.
15. Origins Of A Green Identity – Karen Kocher
This film about Austin’s Green Belt is an informative and stirring look at how the state can take land. Whether or not it is for the public good is very much up for debate. The history and implications are fascinating.
14. Underwater – William Eubank
Hey, fun! They made a monster movie starring you know who-lu. Had a blast with this one. Total surprise.
13. Extra Ordinary – Mike Ahern & Enda Loughman
Just a refreshing horror comedy from the UK. Will Forte as an aging rock star turned Warlock. What’s not to love?
12. The Trip To Greece – Michael Winterbottom
I’m a sucker for these films and this one is the very best of them all. Beautiful locations and emotional performances make this film feel like high art. Which it is.
11. Rebecca – Ben Wheatley
I love the original, and I love this one too. As good a remake as could be hoped for and with Armie Hammer’s new creepy-ness adding to the flavor, it is especially weird.
10. Tomasso – Abel Ferrara
A quasi-autobiographical look at being a womanizing shit-head. Dafoe is brilliant at channeling Ferrara, and you root for the guy, even as he lets you down.
9. Promising Young Woman – Emerald Fennell
Carey Mulligan was born for this role. Masterful filmmaking. I can’t wait to see what Emerald Fennell does next.
8. Palm Springs – Max Barbakow
Just two guys having a good time.
7. Possessor – Brandon Cronenberg
Makes a meal out of the mind hijack assassin genre. As brutal as they come, Possessor is also incredibly thought provoking and wild. What happens when there are minds at odds within a single body? This one is going to age well.
6. His House – Remi Weekes
A horror film that delivers the goods. I never knew where it was headed and when all was revealed, I felt true horror. Brilliant writing and execution. This Weekes character is going to be huge.
5. One Night In Miami – Regina King
Anchored by incredible performances, One Night In Miami allows us to be inside a hotel room and see these figures give voice to nuanced perspectives and justify choices that would change the world. This is the best kind of speculative historical fiction.
4. Nomadland – Chloe Zhao
A humanist portrait of a have not, that allows the viewer to redefine value away from the material world. A masterpiece.
3. P.G. (Psycho Goreman) – Steven Kostanski
A film that remembers how to be fun. It is so FUN! R rated kids movies about killer monsters are about as up my alley as one can be. This one delivers on its premise and then some.
2. Mortal – Andre Ovredal
The most unsung film of the year. This movie is fantastic. A ground up look at a myth. This ain’t your daddy’s Thor.
1. Wolfwalkers – Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart
Simply the best film of the year. The animation is beautiful and the music is wonderful and it will leave you feeling great. I’m so thankful Cartoon Saloon is doing what they do.
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