Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Killers of the Flower Moon
Mission-Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One
Past Lives
Saltburn
10.The Killer:
David Fincher's second feature for Netflix marks his first home run in the streaming movie space. Michael Fassbender gives his best performance in ages as a deeply respected Hawaiian-shirt wearing assassin forced to go on a lengthy revenge tour after a botched job results in an assassination attempt on his girlfriend (Sophie Charlotte) that left her nearly fatally wounded and Andrew Kevin Walker's script paints a darkly hilarious picture of an obsessive man who puts himself and everyone in his orbit in grave danger just to further pad his obscene bank account and stroke his massive ego. While it may not be exactly what some people were expecting it to be, it's still very much the kind of slick, cynical character study that Fincher is just obscenely good at making.
9.Bottoms:
Absurdist comedies are fucking back baby! Bottoms is the product of people who grew up loving Wet Hot American Summer, Bring It On, Fight Club and But I'm a Cheerleader and wondered why nobody had ever thought to make a movie that blends all of them together. Well, fortunately nobody beat Emma Seligman (Shiva Baby) to the punch of concocting this unexpected hybrid because nobody else could've made something that's as weird, hilarious and ballsy as this. Ayo Edebiri and Rachel Sennott-who also co-wrote the script with Seligman-are a comedy dream team that fearlessly anchor the film's nutty heightened reality, Seligman stages everything from the fight scenes to the heart-to-hearts with a sincere, almost grateful sense of glee that somebody allowed her to make something so warped in the 2020's and it turns out that Marshawn Lynch is as good at improvising as he was at delivering punishing runs on the football field.
8.Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse:
Across the Spider-Verse manages to do something that the live-action Marvel films have largely failed to do up to this point: Make the multiverse interesting. It turns out that focusing on the people at the center of the story over over the pseudo-scientific gibberish that makes the multiverse concept run does wonders for the whole infinite parallel universe plot device. Who knew! Anyways, the second entry in Miles Morales' (Shameik Moore) and Gwen Stacey's (Hailee Steinfeld) journey is even more vibrant, heartfelt and visually-dazzling than the previous film. I'll be eager to see if Chris Lord, Phil Miller and their large collection of collaborators can pull off the hat trick of excellence by delivering a compelling conclusion to the twisty cliffhanger of this film in the upcoming Beyond the Spider-Verse-which is being billed as the final entry in this franchise.
7.Creed III:
Blazing a trail for Adonis Creed that's completely separate from Rocky Balboa was a unique challenge for Michael B. Jordan to take on for his directorial debut, but his reverence and knowledge for the character made him the perfect person to tackle it. Creed III makes the strong choice of expanding on Adonis' troubled past that had been referenced in the previous entries by showing just how close he was to throwing away his boxing career before it even started and how the sins of his past suddenly arrive to threaten his blissful present as a retired boxing superstar-turned-successful trainer when his old friend Damian (Jonathan Majors) gets out of jail after 18 years and proves that he's hungry to pursue a career in pro boxing. This was a great way to elevate the stakes of the series and further explore the legacy of Adonis Creed by forcing him back into the ring to fight somebody whose shoes he easily could've been in himself if a single event broke a different way. Regardless of whether or not Balboa returns in some capacity, the future of Creed is in excellent hands with Jordan at the helm.
6.Poor Things:
A darkly comedic, deeply feminist steampunk adventure re-imagining of Frankenstein is right in the sicko sweet spot of one Yorgos Lanthimos. Emma Stone turns in the funniest, boldest performance of her career thus far as Bella Baxter-a Victorian-era British woman who gets a second chance at life after a scientist (Willem Dafoe in a bizarrely moving performance) successfully brings her back to life after discovering her corpse in a nearby river and Lanthimos and screenwriter Tony McNamara relish the opportunity to tell a liberating story of a naive yet deeply curious woman as she navigates the world through a fresh set of eyes during a chaotic jaunt around the globe with a womanizing lawyer (Mark Ruffalo-who excels playing against type as a suave, tantrum-prone manchild). Its eccentricity and frequent sex scenes will make it a tough sell for some, but I found it to be an invigorating, very unique film that deserves to be showered with awards in the coming months.
5.Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3:
Man, Marvel is going to miss James Gunn something fierce. The new head of DC Studios completed his obligations to the MCU by giving the ragtag collection of outlaws whose growing bond with each other and the very idea of being heroes he's documented over the course of nearly a decade's worth of movies the rousing, emotional and completely contained send-off they deserve. What the future holds for the Guardians remains a mystery, but it feels safe to assume that whatever Kevin Feige elects to do with them next won't hold a candle to the magic that Gunn and his incredible ensemble cast were able to make with these characters.
4.The Holdovers:
One of those simple, lovingly-crafted human stories that nobody in Hollywood really makes anymore for whatever reason, The Holdovers is an extremely funny yet deeply melancholic film centered around an unlikely bond that forms between three broken people (Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, newcomer Dominic Sessa-all excellent) who are holed up together at a Massachusetts boarding school while the rest of their classmates and colleagues are all on vacation for Christmas/New Year's. It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if this delightful little 70's-set movie climbed further up my list upon rewatch.
3.Barbie:
Using the Barbie brand as a way to cleverly explore gender roles, feminism and societal pressures/double standards put on women were all things I expected to get from Greta Gerwig's film based on the iconic doll line. What I didn't expect was that Barbie would also be the hardest I laughed at any movie released in 2023. Whether it's taking shots at the Mattel corporation, using humor as part of its handling of the aforementioned themes or just simply dropping a goofy one-liner to elevate a scene, Gerwig and her talent-rich cast's (particularly Margot Robbie, Kate McKinnon, Issa Rae, Alexandra Shipp, Michael Cera, Will Ferrell and film MVP Ryan Gosling) ability to consistently inject huge laughs into a really thoughtful, rich script is what allows Barbie to go from great to transcendent.
2.All of Us Strangers:
In the hands of a lot of filmmakers, a film about a lonely queer screenwriter (Andrew Scott) who begins visiting the ghosts of his parents (Jamie Bell, Claire Foy)-who died in a car accident when he was 12-at his childhood home while he's starting a relationship with a man who lives in his sparsely-filled London apartment building (Paul Mescal) would be a cornball melodrama that lacked even a single strand of sincere emotion in its DNA. In the hands of Andrew Haigh, it's an alternately beautiful and devastating tale of isolation, grief and identity that possesses the surreal, too good-to-be-true wonders of a dream and gut-wrenching pain of the real world in equal measure. How this powerful miracle of a movie seemingly isn't in contention for any awards outside of England and the Independent Spirits is completely beyond me.
1.John Wick: Chapter 4:
In a world where money wasn't so important and Lionsgate had a larger library of lucrative IP's to work with, John Wick: Chapter 4 would be the end of the main franchise. Even with the near-guarantee that Wick won't get the luxury of a peaceful retirement from the professional killing game and this perfect finale will be aborted, John Wick: Chapter 4 remains a masterpiece. This is the kind of sweeping, electric epic that Chad Stahelski has been building up to as he expanded the scope of John Wick's world with each subsequent film. The melding of compelling new characters (Donnie Yen's blind badass Caine who has an extensive history with Wick, Bill Skarsgard's wildly entertaining dirtbag antagonist the Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont Rina Sawayama's revenge-seeking Akira) with old favorites (Ian McShane's Winston, Laurence Fishburne's The Bowery King, the late Lance Reddick's Charon), the story does a great job of introducing and solving new problems while also resolving lingering ones without ever dragging or losing focus and of course, the hugely satisfying, incredibly well-crafted action setpieces do an incredible job of conveying just how massive the efforts are by the High Table to finally kill Wick. Movies like John Wick: Chapter 4 are what caused me to become such a fan of the action genre and there's no doubt in my mind that it will help breed an entire new generation of genre obsessives.
No comments:
Post a Comment