2023 was a great year for movies. With inspiring films from new global directors, world class action thrillers that took their franchises to new heights and original works from some of our best American filmmakers, there was plenty to see on the big screen since last January.
Here are my favorites of the past twelve months.
10. Gran Turismo
Shockingly great and loaded with action and drama, GRAN TURISMO rounds turn four and crosses the finish line as my second favorite film of 2023 so far, (Summer 2023) only behind "M:I Dead Reckoning".
I did not see this one coming at me until I was ready to jump out of my seat cheering, more than once, I might add.
Imagine "Rocky" or "Creed" on the race track, bathed in superb photography and excellent acting.
This is NOT, I repeat NOT, a "Videogame" movie. And that's a great thing.
Archie Madekwe (Heart of Stone, Midsommar) stars as Jann Mardenborough, a young man living in the shadow of his Dad's soccer career and brother's sports aspirations. Jann would rather spend all day in his room playing Gran Turismo on Playstation. His parents think its just a "driving game" as did I going in. But the film perfectly begins with the actual history of the game's creator, and his commitment to build the most perfect driving simulation in history.
Orlando Bloom (The Lord of the Rings) stars as Danny Moore, a Nissan marketing executive with an out-of-the-box idea on how to bring a younger audience to their brand. He wants to build a Gran Turismo driving academy, bringing the top 10 gamer drivers from around the world to the academy. Whoever wins the Academy will then represent Nissan in the most dangerous sport in the world on the global racing circuit.
It's a crazy idea. And this really happened.
Jann's father Steve (Djimon Hounsou) is a blue collar guy who thinks Jann is wasting his life away on video games in his room. "Why can't you be more like your brother?" comes into play. Former Spice Girl Geri Horner (Ginger Spice) proves she's got acting chops as Jann's Mom, who is more supportive of Jann's path.
Bloom exceeds expectations as well and is never predictable.
When Jann is invited to the Academy, the film really drops into full gear.
Danny has brought disgruntled former race car driver and current mechanic Jack Salter (David Harbour) in to train the driver wannabees. Jack is all roses and sunshine and Jack is the brutal voice of truth, driving all the young gamers past their limits. Adversaries appear, challenges are met, but not in anyway that felt predictable.
The screenplay by Jason Hall (American Sniper), Zach Baylin (Creed III) and Alex Tse (Watchmen) is a taut, fun and fast paced tale, moving us through Jann's experience at high speeds. When it does slow down, it's for unexpectedly strong quiet moments between Jann and his parents or his girlfriend Audrey, well played by newcomer Maeve Courtier-Lilley.
Every time that I expected lazy writing or a trite turn in the story, GRAN TURISMO took another excellent turn down the right road.
Blazing the track paved by Steve McQueen's 1971 race classic "Le Mans", 1966's racing classic "Grand Prix" and Ron Howard's under appreciated 2013 film "Rush", the driving scenes are superb.
Director Neill Blomkamp (District 9, Elysium) creates by far his best film from my perspective, immersing you in the car with Jann and spiraling the camera down and through every curve, every track around the world. Visually, this is one of the best films of the year. I loved when mid-race, every piece of the car comes apart and separates, leaving Jann in the seat driving just as he did for thousands of hours at home, then the pieces all fly back together as you hit 300+ MPH speeds on straightaways.
The music score by Lorne Balfe is excellent, every bit as soaring as the one he composed last year for "Top Gun: Maverick".
This is a one of the most visually visceral films I've seen in a long time.
Madekwe and Harbour (Hellboy, Stranger Things) are the heart of the film as the two men's lives and pasts intersect and their appreciation for each other's talents grows. They're both great and this is the best I've ever seen Harbour.
Hounsou (Amistad, Gladiator) has a scene near the finale with father and son coming to terms that's incredibly moving. There wasn't a dry eye in our screening.
My cynical assumption about 2/3 of the way through the film was that Hollywood had taken a clever idea and then built a thrilling fairy tale around it. Stick through the start of the end credits to see just how wrong I was, as we see the actors and the people they played, together on screen, along with the facts of Jann's journey.
If you wanted to stand up and cheer when Rocky took down his opponents, get ready for that same swell of genuine triumph and emotion watching Jann's incredible real life tale.
Funny, moving, brilliantly told and loaded with awe inspiring racing thrills, GRAN TURISMO came out of nowhere and gets the checkered flag with an A+. I'd watch this again tonight. You should do the same, on the biggest screen with the best sound you can find.
Buckle up, this is a thrill ride you shouldn't miss.
9. Killers of the Flower Moon
Epic in scale, storytelling and emotion, Martin Scorsese's KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON is another incredible film from one of our best American directors.
At just shy of three and a half hours long, the film feels much shorter as you're pulled into the land of the Osage tribe in 1920's Oklahoma.
The Osage have been relocated several times and have now landed on the most oil rich land in America.
Scorsese uses newsreels to show the Osage people enjoying their wealth, with the highest per capita wealth in America.
The black gold spewing from the ground also brings greed, murder and corruption on every train.
Leonardo DiCaprio is very UN-Leo like as returning war soldier and line cook Ernest Burkhart. Dim by any measure, sporting a very nasty set of unclean teeth and a constant look of befuddlement, Ernest falls under the wing of his wealthy Uncle William "King" Hale, played by Robert De Niro. King Hale has ingratiated himself into every part of the Osage people, highly respected as an advisor and business partner helping the tribe assimilate with their incredible wealth.
But Hale is a corrupt, murdering crime boss bent on gaining the rights to every rig.
De Niro is flawless as Hale, speaking platitudes to the Osage in their language one minute and ordering a murder the next. It's a great performance in a career full of them.
DiCaprio's Ernest is a pawn who's too dumb to even know he's being moved around the board by his Uncle. Driving for Hale's private taxi service, Ernest meets Mollie, a respected and outspoken woman of the Osage. She observes Ernest as he drives, shaking her head at his arrogance and goofy demeanor. He's clearly a low life that loves cash and she's somewhat charmed by the fact that he makes zero effort to hide it.
Newcomer Lily Gladstone is absolutely terrific as Mollie. She's funny, stoic and smart. Gladstone conveys so much in silence. As her world turns upside down through the film, she stands toe-to-toe with DeCaprio and De Niro and never flinches. It's an impressive performance and I would bet she wins the Best Actress Oscar next Spring.
Scorsese (Goodfellas, Casino, Cape Fear) and Eric Roth (Dune, Munich, A Star is Born) have crafted a screenplay that honors the source material but vastly improves upon it. The book focused on the creation of the FBI as a new agency and the murders among the Osage people as the first case they ever tackled. The film shifts all the light to the Osage, and we become more fully invested in their plight.
The FBI does arrive about two hours into the film, and no one knows who in the hell they are. Jesse Plemons (Fargo Season 2, The Irishman) is excellent as Tom White, one of the first FBI agents in history.
The last 90 minutes accelerates quickly as the mystery of the many, many deaths are investigated and the wolves start turning on each other.
John Lithgow (The World According to Garp, Dexter) is perfect as the US Prosecutor bringing the case to trial.
William Belleau is fantastic as Osage leader Henry Roan. Anytime he was on screen, he owned every inch of it, as does Yancy Red Corn as Tribal Chief Bonnicastle.
In the massive cast, there's not one misstep, save the usually likeable Brendan Fraser, who seems to have stumbled in from a live-action Foghorn Leghorn movie. He's incredibly off-putting in a thankfully small role as Hale's lawyer.
The film moves quickly and to me, flowed much better than Scorsese's last very long film, "The Irishman", which was great, but made me glance at my watch occasionally to check my progress.
The special effects, photography and production design that bring the 1920's reservation and small town to life are all stunning. Apple gave Scorsese a $200 million budget and I never had to wonder where it went.
Robbie Robertson's music score is excellent, reminding me of 70's Elmer Bernstein scores when it isn't carving out a very specific niche of its own.
The film has a lot to say about the Osage people, their treatment in history and the outside greed that nearly destroyed them. By portraying all the horrible deeds put upon them as acts upon people we grow to care about in the story, it personalizes the terror and makes you stand back and consider history and our place in it.
Like Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" and Ana DuVernay's brilliant film "Selma", KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON unwraps lives that should impact the way we look at the world.
In a lifetime of epic films, this stands near the top of Scorsese's legacy as one of his finest works. I'd be surprised if he wasn't on the podium next to Gladstone come Oscar time, wielding a Best Director statue. Of course, he might have to wrestle it away from a deserving Greta Gerwig for the massive global hit, "Barbie" and Christopher Nolan for his superb work on "Oppenheimer".
Powerful, smart and important, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON earns an A+.
8. The Creator
With hints of "Children of Men" and "The Terminator" and bathed in the spirit of "Aliens", THE CREATOR emerges as a brilliant, original epic from Gareth Edwards.
The film opens with a clever news real showing how AI robots have made life on Earth easier, from mundane tasks like walking the dog, to driving our cars. It ends suddenly with the depiction of the AI system we created to protect us nuking downtown Los Angeles.
The world splits into two factions. New Asia embraces AI as the natural evolution of life and lives side by side with them. The West bans AI and is devoted to wiping every measure of them off the planet.
Edwards uses time in interesting ways to tell the story. We meet Joshua, a retired soldier with incredibly realistic artificial appendages to replace the ones lost in war. He's relaxing with his very pregnant wife Maya (Gemma Chan from "Crazy Rich Asians"). They're in love and loving life. The reliably fantastic John David Washington (Tenet, BlacKkKlansman) inhabits Joshua, springing to life when two warring forces descend upon their beach side home.
US forces arrive at the same time as the AI led police. Maya is lost and Joshua joins his US team in the quest to kill The Creator, the elusive architect of AI seeking to create a world changing weapon.
Allison Janney (I, Tonya) is excellent as Colonel Howell, commander of Joshua's strike team on the mission. The entire "drop down to the planet and dust off the attack team" raises chills of James Cameron's "Aliens" in all the right ways. The production design and sound effects are spectacular, with state of the art effects throughout taking you to an Earth 40 years in the future that's unrecognizable, yet very familiar.
Jaw-dropping is too cliche a phrase for the look of the film. Edwards vision here is every bit as revolutionary as Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner", with which it shares some innate part of its replicant DNA.
Ken Watanabe (The Last Samurai, Inception) is excellent as Harun, a lead AI soldier whose known Joshua for many years.
The center of the film is the mysterious young AI Alphie, the prize that both sides desire. Madeline Yuna Voyles makes her big screen debut as Alphie and she's terrific.
Any "Aliens" fans out there remember the opening of the film, when the robot unit breaks into the escape pod and finds Ripley, scanning the inside of the ship with that quickly moving wall of blue light that made a giant THX "THUMP" when it went past the camera? Edwards does. The massive US orbiting weapon lays out that blue light in huge grids, targeting people or entire ships with destructive weapons.
Film fans will also see strong flavors of "Apocalypse Now" as well.
The action scenes are fantastic and numerous. Edwards brings the same incredible style and action prowess that he did to the best Star Wars spinoff ever made, "Rogue One", a film I would argue is better than 90% of the entire Star Wars series.
But here, Edwards has created his own story, his own atmosphere, his own world.
He's teamed up again with his "Rogue One" co-writer, Chris Weitz (About a Boy) and managed to develop a story and characters that never preaches, but elegantly grasps numerous bigger topics.
War, religion, global politics, free will, loss & grief, humanity in general all emerged for me.
If it sounds "woke" or agenda ridden, it's not. It never is. But it's smart enough in creating characters that you live through, to raise all those questions in your mind.
Is AI the terrifying menace that the Terminator films proposed?
Answer that question before you see the film and then ask it of yourself again afterwards. Fascinating. As Shipley says to Joshua, "Whose side are you on, huh?"
Hans Zimmer's music is powerful and soaring, with Asian influences that also weave through the title cards that begin each major section of the story. Zimmer is a chameleon. I'm convinced there's no such thing as a "Zimmer" music score. I could pick a Danny Elfman score, a John Williams or a Jerry Goldsmith score out blindfolded. But Zimmer? He's incredibly elusive, and our ears are all the better for it.
The final act is brilliant, soaring past expectations.
The last five minutes are as perfect as film gets.
THE CREATOR is one of, if not my favorite film of the year. Inspiring, exciting and heartfelt, it gets an A+.
7. Oppenheimer
A prophet isn't allowed to be wrong. Not once.
OPPENHEIMER explodes onto the screen for three riveting hours, leaving you in awe, both of the man and Writer/Director Christopher Nolan's talent.
Don't let the three hour running time scare you. Nolan's challenging story structure and nimble use of different time frames propels the historical story past you at a breakneck pace. That's especially impressive when you realize that a good 80% of the film depicts characters in conversation.
But what conversation.
We meet J. Robert Oppenheimer as a young man, brilliant, cocky and pushing himself to new scientific discoveries.
You barely get your footing before Nolan grabs the timeline forward to a hearing, after the worlds first atomic bombs have exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then we're pulled back to Oppenheimer as a new professor where he's recruited by lifelong military man Leslie Groves (a hilarious Matt Damon, perfectly cast) to begin developing the first weapon of mass destruction.
These timelines intersect like so many colliding atoms, informing each other, interacting and exposing motivations, relationships and changing attitudes. Nolan and his editor Jennifer Lame (Hereditary, Tenet) craft a puzzle so clever that it will take me multiple viewings to truly understand its complexity.
Unlike "Tenet" or "Inception" where Nolan is establishing new worlds or new rules for his tale, this is a part of history we all know at least at a surface level. But how little I actually knew. I haven't felt this brilliantly fed full of new knowledge and perspective since my first viewing of Oliver Stone's superb "JFK".
All the story lines are captivating and the cast that Nolan has assembled is immense.
Robert Downey Jr. delivers his all-time best performance in his searing portrayal of Lewis Strauss, a career politician whose life is woven together with Oppenheimer's for decades. Downey nearly steals the film, disappearing into the role. His face during the final scenes of the hearing and his final dialogue with his Senate Aide (Alden Ehrenreich leaving "Solo" far behind in all the right ways) is fantastic. I see a Best Supporting Actor trophy in Downey's hands next Spring.
His performance isn't the only jaw dropping one.
Emily Blunt (Edge of Tomorrow, A Quiet Place) stuns as Oppenheimer's wife Kitty. A former communist now facing McCarthy style inquiries, she spends most of the film drinking quietly in anger. Her emotion explodes when she's finally given a chance to express her thoughts at the hearing, unloading on the very slimy Jason Clarke (The Great Gatsby) as nefarious lawyer Roger Robb. It's one of those scenes that makes people clap in the movie theater. Well earned.
Kenneth Branagh and the legendary Tom Conti (The Duellists) shine as Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, as does Macon Blair as Attorney Jim Garrison. How about that for a JFK connection. Josh Hartnett (Pearl Harbor) makes a welcome big screen return as Ernest Lawrence, one of Oppenheimer's most trusted scientists.
At the center of the excellent cast and onscreen for nearly every scene, Cillian Murphy (Inception, 28 Days Later) brings incredible depth to his performance as Oppenheimer. Insecure, yet arrogant, naive yet bold, his Oppenheimer is a very complicated, brilliant man. Torn between his commitment to protect the USA against the Nazis as they work to develop the same bomb and his unrelenting nightmares of what the atomic bomb will do to the population around it, Murphy conveys every bit of that anguish. Nolan injects moments of his nightmares into reality, giving you a tangible perspective of Oppenheimer's struggle.
I wasn't surprised but was truly appreciative that this is a smart, adult film, not pandering to any middle ground. Oppenheimer is fiercely sexual and his relationship with Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh in another strong performance) in the face of her instability and political leanings shows a loyalty that's bound to cost him. Pugh (Midsommar, Don't Worry Darling) continues her incredible screen run, teeing herself up against sure bet nominee Emily Blunt in next year's Best Supporting Actress category.
Nolan delivers one of the most compelling history lessons in film history.
It never lags and certainly never stops. Ludwig Goransson's music score is overwhelming, LOUD, intrusive and one of the stars of the film. There are times when in combination with the sound effects, it's almost too much, bombarding your ears in a crescendo that seems to arc for nearly the entire film.
I sense that was Nolan and Goransson's intent, as one of the best scenes in the movie is the silence after the Los Alamos test of the a-bomb. Between the flash of light and the shock wave quite some time later, Nolan pulls us through reaction shots of Oppenheimer and his team in deafening silence.
As the crowd celebrates, Oppenheimer seems to balance the joy of success with the realization of what he's done.
Nolan brilliantly expands on that moral wrestling match in the last hour of the film.
It's a white hot verbal and visual assault on politics and power that leaves you gutted as the film's final images wrap around the screen.
Nolan has a lot to say about Oppenheimer, politics, war and the men who yield it.
He says it all brilliantly.
One of the best films of the year, OPPENHEIMER exceeds high expectations and burns an A+, standing as one of Nolan's greatest film achievements. It's his best film in over a decade since "The Dark Knight Rises" and may just prove to be his masterpiece.
6. John Wick 4
John Wick has saved the best for last.
An absolute action masterpiece that shoots, stabs, and drives its way into my all-time Top 10, JOHN WICK: CHAPTER 4 is perfection.
We’ve come a long way from the first installment. Chapter 4 opens with returning director Chad Stahelski channeling David Lean. “Lawrence of Arabia” fans will love that rising sun and the slowly emerging four men on horseback. It turns out to be John Wick riding the horse like he drives a car, shooting at the three men ahead of him galloping across the desert.
The photography is pure homage to Lean, but it’s not the last director he’ll pay silent reverence to, or at least as silent as things get when every gunshot pounds through you in full tilt Dolby Cinema glory.
It seems that there is no way out for Wick and his death sentence from the High Table unless he can vanquish the powerful new Blofeld of our piece, the Marquis, played by Bill Skarsgard with serious menace. Hell, he’s almost scarier here than in his role as Pennywise the Clown in “It”.
And that’s saying something.
Skarsgard is polished Euro uber-riche, wearing a million-dollar wardrobe and a feverish desire to take out Wick. He starts laying waste to everyone who’s every befriended our man, John.
That list is loaded with great actors including Ian McShane as Winston, the manager of the Continental Manhattan and his concierge Charon, perfectly played by Lance Reddick, who just passed away last week.
Hiroyuki Sanada (Avengers: Endgame, Bullet Train) is flawless and powerful as Shimazu, the manager of the Osaka Continental and his daughter Akira (Rina Sawayama) is his concierge. The Osaka hotel is one of the first places John goes and the Marquis soon arrives with a massive death squad to take him out.
The fight sequence, ok let’s call it a battle sequence that takes place is one of the best action sequences in film since The Bride took on the Crazy 88’s in “Kill Bill”. It’s thrilling, violent, creative and jaw dropping. But don’t get too excited because Reeves and Stahelski will top it at least twice in the nearly three-hour film.
The legendary Donnie Yen (The Ip Man film series, Rogue One) joins the cast as Caine, a blind assassin and friend of Wick who’s now been assigned to kill him. Yen brings such gravitas to the screen every time he’s on it, it’s astonishing.
Clancy Brown (Carnivale, Highlander) is a great add as Harbinger and Shamier Anderson (Destroyer) is excellent as Tracker, a hitman with a dog at his side that comes in very handy dealing with the bad buys. Tracker may be on Wick’s trail, but he’s not of the mind to kill him until the bounty is high enough to warrant his attention.
The film hops brilliantly from New York City to Osaka, to Paris and to Berlin for major sequences that are part of Wick’s quest for revenge and release. The $90 million budget looks like at least twice that and the photography by Dan Laustsen (The Shape of Water, Nightmare Alley) bathes everything in rain, blood and sweat.
Several sequences push this incredible thriller into my top 10. Wick’s faceoff against Killa (Scott Adkins in a superb fat suit) in a nightclub is surprising, brilliantly staged, and relentless. I’ve never seen a hero take this much punishment and get back up. It’s hilarious and thrilling.
It’s followed by Wick facing off hundreds of hit men trying to collect a $26 million bounty on his head. Wick enters an old/dilapidated French chateau and he’s met by killers in every room. Moments into the sequence, the camera takes us up into the air and looks down into the rooms from above, following Wick as he kills hitman after hitman with every weapon imaginable. It’s an obvious homage to Brian De Palma, with one impossibly long continuous shot. The camera then slides back down to eye level as the mayhem continues, looks up a stairwell and then slides effortlessly to the bird’s eye view again as Wick and Tracker face off in a brutal battle against each other and the hit squad. It’s jaw dropping.
Is there a better action sequence in the film? Debatably, yes.
John Wick drives a muscle car the wrong way into the multi-lane roundabout circling the Arc de Triomphe, with a dozen cars chasing him. Every car has 3 or 4 hitmen shooting at once. Wick is throw from the car and fights hand to hand combat for five minutes against hundreds of assassins. I lost count on how many bodies got hit by cars and thrown through the air. If I’d had a chance to think, I might have wondered why traffic never stopped. But the flow of cars never stops or slows down, creating the most lethal game of human frogger you’ve ever witnessed. It’s brilliant. Just when you think it’s over, Wick grabs a motorcycle, and the chase continues.
The final showdown is a clever finale, reverting back to a mano-a-mano fight that serves up plenty of Sergio Leone vibes, right down to the music and the long takes.
The screenplay by Shay Hatten and Michael Finch gets a lot right. These two should write the next James Bond film. The dialogue is great, the characters are well defined and plenty of emotion and personal drama lives between the action.
The last decade of “Mission Impossible” and “John Wick” films set the standard for franchise filmmaking. Every film gets better than the last. You can’t say that about Marvel movies, you sure as hell can’t say that about OO7 films.
Keanu Reeves deserves praise for creating a modern man-with-no-name character. The fact that he’s still doing this kind of stunt work at 58 years old is incredible.
JOHN WICK 4 is fantastic. It’s 169 minutes of action thriller nirvana that gets an A+ and a fresh spot in my all-time Top 10 favorite films.
It’s bloody brilliant.
Just don’t ask John Wick to climb any more stairs. Please. No more stairs!
5. The Killer
It's been nine years since we've been able to immerse into a true David Fincher thriller. He's back. His explosively brilliant new film THE KILLER is everything you want and then some, a "Dexter/Day of the Jackal" deep dive into a professional killer.
As the film opens, our nameless assassin is holed up inside a WeWork location in downtown Paris. He's quietly observing his current target across the boulevard, who appears to command at least the top floor of an expensive, old-world hotel.
Michael Fassbender appears in his first film in four years as The Killer. Each of his movements is carefully planned. Sleep is a luxury savored in small doses. He monitors his heart rate and yoga sessions while watching the neighboring flat through a rifle scope.
Fincher's sound design is flawless, as is the cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt (Mank, Manhunter). Fincher immerses you into the day and night sounds of Paris, while his camera follows The Killer's scope from room to room, front door to cafe, popping across the wet streets like Jimmy Stewart's snooping camera in Hitchcock's "Rear Window".
Fassbinder's lethal character narrates the story to us, weaving through the quiet moments in what appears to be his inner monologue. Or is it a confessional? As the killer chooses his actual words in life very carefully, the narration is our only view into his thoughts.
When the assassination goes wrong, the film explodes into a flurry of non-stop action. Watching the Killer cover his tracks is fascinating.
Like the excellent 1973 thriller, "The Day of the Jackal", his everyday routines appear mundane, quiet. While that film spent two hours getting to the assassination, Fincher spends only about the first 20 minutes getting to the attempt.
We're then whisked off on a globe hopping adventure as The Killer returns to his enclave in the Dominican Republic, realizes he's compromised and then begins a lethal quest to eliminate any collateral damage from his failed job. To say more would be criminal, let Fincher pull you down those avenues.
One of the my favorite Fincher films, and also one of my favorite films of all time is his 1995 thriller, "Se7en". Andrew Kevin Walker, who wrote that film, writes this one as well. Adapting the graphic novel by Alexis Nolent and Luc Jacamon, Walker creates distinct chapters that take place around the world. Each one may as well be another planet, as Fincher offers up New Orleans and Florida in ways you've never seen them before. Balanced with the narration, you're half laughing at The Killer's descriptions, while Fincher sinks below the tourist maps to much darker parts of town.
You'll recognize the Fincher-isms that we've all come to love.
Time jumps. A journey from the airport in which no camera shot lasts longer than three seconds, yet you as the viewer never get lost.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross provide the music score, a pulsing, modern take that gets under your skin and stays there. No one plays with swirling spatial sound like Reznor and Ross and they add to their growing legacy of film scores (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) with another seductive, propulsive score that pulls you in and never lets go.
The supporting cast is strong.
Tilda Swinton is The Expert.
Arliss Howard is The Client.
Charles Parnell is The Lawyer.
All are great.
But they all are in service of Fassbender as The Killer. He's excellent.
He's the slow burning core at the center. I loved that I couldn't quite figure out what his next steps were going to be, or where he'd draw the line.
Only in the final moments did I realize I actually already knew the answer to those questions.
I loved his aliases used on credit cards and airline tickets. Every child of the seventies will.
No one creates a modern thriller like David Fincher.
He's precise, intelligent, violent and creates a fully-modern take on the suspense film in cinema. A Hitchcock for our time, he deserves to stand alongside Hitch as a visionary. Since the 80's I have loved Brian De Palma as a modern Hitchcock, but his films always felt like tasty, nasty homages to the master, loaded with more graphic blood and sex than Hitch would ever have felt comfortable with in his day.
But for me, Fincher stands as the more complete filmmaker, creating unbearable tension by introducing a killer into our everyday life. It all feels as logical and ridiculously unpredictable as life itself. We're just collateral damage to the events he depicts. As in "Se7en", the events in motion cannot be contained.
Fincher has added another masterpiece to his film legacy with THE KILLER.
It slays without hesitation or remorse, earning an A+.
4. Past Lives
It's been a very long time since I've seen a Writing/Directing debut as perfect as Celine Song's PAST LIVES.
Covering decades in the lives of a young couple, the film feels like you're intruding on real lives and all the twists that fate delivers.
We meet Nora and Hae Sung as 12 year old children in Korea. Competing for top academic awards, Nora is fragile and Hae Sung is her comforter.
Young actors Moon Seung-ah and Leem Seung-min are terrific as the youngsters, teeing up the emotions of characters that we'll follow for decades as their confidence levels swap places.
When Nora's filmmaker parents decide to immigrate to Canada, the two young friends are suddenly separated.
Flashing forward 12 years, Nora (Greta Lee from "Money Monster") is living on her own in New York. She's an emerging writer looking for her voice and a Pulitzer. Online with her sister one evening, they are searching for childhood friends.
On a whim, she searches for Hae Sung and discovers that he was recently looking for her on her famous father's website. She's intrigued and returns his inquiry.
Hae Sung (perfectly played by Teo Yoo) is still in school, hanging with his friends and living at home. He's thrilled to reconnect with Nora.
Song creates a masterful middle section of the film as the two twenty-somethings carry on a relationship on Skype. We can see they're falling in love.
In a lesser film with hack writing, they would have conflicts based on him living at home and her being on her own in NYC. But the conversations feel authentic, with all the quiet pauses and hesitant commitment that they would naturally entail.
When Nora is about to embark on a writing retreat and Hae Sung is headed for his final studies in Shanghai, the two, almost on a whim, decide to take a break.
Flash forward another 12 years and the two are in very different places in their lives.
Nora is now a playwright in search of a Tony, married to American writer Arthur, played by John Magaro (Overlord, The Big Short). Hae Sung is an engineer in Korea about to embark on a week-long vacation to New York City.
Is he coming specifically to see Nora?
How will the two interact when they see each other in the same city for the first time in 24 years?
How will Arthur react to Nora's first childhood crush visiting?
In Song's talented hands, there isn't a false moment, or a predictable one for that matter.
The last 30 minutes of the movie is the most pitch perfect big screen romanticism since Warren Beatty and Julie Christie's final scene in 1978's "Heaven Can Wait".
And yet, Nora and Hae Sung's path couldn't be more different.
Beautifully made, the film feels like a travelogue to South Korea blended with a Woody Allen-esque love for NYC and all its boroughs.
One of the best movies of 2023, PAST LIVES will touch your heart while it makes you think. That magic chemistry alone makes Song one to watch and earns her film debut as writer/director an A+.
I'll be shocked if she's not nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 2024 Oscars.
What a beautiful movie.
(In Korean with Subtitles & English)
3. Maestro
As a Director, Bradley Cooper proves he's not a one-trick pony with his moving, soul shaking sophomore effort, MAESTRO.
I thought his Directorial debut with "A Star is Born" was startling in its confidence and style. But that pales compared to his new creation.
Transforming in look and voice into the first great American conductor/composer, Leonard Bernstein, Cooper gives his best performance to date.
And what a subject.
As the film opens, Bernstein takes a phone call in a darkened room, behind a curtain that I assumed was a stage. Due to another conductor's illness, he's given his first chance to conduct at Carnegie Hall. He pulls back the curtain to reveal that he's in a New York apartment and has left the bed of his lover David (Matt Bomer).
As the camera sweeps up to look down from above, Bernstein runs out of the apartment, down numerous hallways and he's suddenly tuxedo clad, walking onto the stage for his debut.
Cooper gets so many things right in the opening ten minutes.
The lighting and camera movements are brilliant, creating the first show of the momentum Cooper creates in his storytelling.
We see just a moment or two of Bernstein conducting in the passionate, BIG style, but the film focuses instead on the reactions, the instant stardom that descends.
At a party soon afterward, hosted by his sister Shirley (comedian Sarah Silverman, shockingly good) Lenny meets actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn.
Felicia is played by Carey Mulligan in a performance so strong that I'd bet the house she wins Best Actress next year at the Oscars. From her endearing introduction to Bernstein, to their whirlwind friendship and 25 year marriage, Mulligan is a powerhouse.
I expected the film to detail Bernstein's career, which it certainly does, but in a style wholly unexpected. Bernstein wrote the music for "West Side Story" but the premiere or show is never seen, it's referenced, and the opening, haunting moments of its overture are heard, but not in context to the show itself.
The film sometimes leaps decades, never losing us or its storytelling, because Leonard and Felicia are always at the core.
Felecia is well aware of Lenny's dual life. She's so caught up in their love that she accepts it. As society changes and the 50's and 60's move into the more accepting 70's and 80's, Lenny's dalliances are emboldened by the times.
Their young children become teenagers and young adults and rumors about their father swirl.
Mulligan and Cooper capture a couple in crisis and in love. Life and death challenges occur, but Felicia & Lenny are always connected. The temperature of that connection is film making at its best.
There are several standout moments in the film.
A fantasy sequence set to Bernstein's music for "On the Town" is fascinating and telling. Who's fantasy is it?
A Thanksgiving day scene in which Felicia confronts Lenny takes place in their massive New York City apartment, as the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Snoopy Balloon floats past outside towering windows. It's a stunner. Cooper seems to have mastered the gifts of Director Steven Spielberg, creating visual moments that impact the story but don't distract from the conversation within.
I don't remember the last movie I saw that understood the power of silence on this level. Cooper wields it masterfully. Conversations pause at pivotal moments. Quiet moments of pain and realization are played out perfectly. You could hear a pin drop in the theater numerous times.
But Cooper also unleashes the power of Bernstein's music and his conducting of masterworks as the counterpoint to his quiet moments.
In one long, single-shot sequence that will likely become a signature of Cooper's work as a director, Bernstein conducts the London Symphony Orchestra and chorus inside the ornate Ely Cathedral. As Mahler's "Resurrection" Symphony #2 is performed, we see Bernstein conducting at length for the first time in the movie. In one continuous shot, the camera circles slowly, capturing Bernstein's conducting style in all its eccentric, passionate, fever-pitched intensity.
Cooper's performance in this six-minute scene is incredible. Like Daniel Day-Lewis in Spielberg's "Lincoln", Cooper becomes Bernstein. He studied conducting for six years to conduct that 6 minute and 21 second piece. As the music soars and builds, reaching new power every time you think it's reached its ultimate crescendo, you're pulled into one of the best moments in film this year.
The scene ends perfectly, with Felicia in the wings, solitary and moved by her husband. His movement to her in that moment, the second the music stops is powerful.
If the film ended there, I would have been content.
But it continues into Felicia and Lenny's later years, serving up redemption and loss in one powerful scene after another.
The chance to watch two adults having a powerful, unhurried conversation on the big screen seems like a gift in its simplicity.
Production design is first rate throughout and the sound design is terrific.
Steven Spielberg was originally slated to direct the film, but after seeing an early cut of "A Star is Born", Spielberg told Cooper, "You're directing Maestro".
With only two films on his resume, it might be too early to call MAESTRO Bradley Cooper's masterpiece, but it wouldn't be unwarranted.
MAESTRO soars to an A+ as one of the best films of 2023.
2. The Color Purple
I remember seeing the original cast of THE COLOR PURPLE nearly twenty years ago, in 2005 on Broadway. The musical adaption of Alice Walker's novel was stirring and powerful.
But it pales in comparison to the exhilarating new film version that hit theaters on Christmas Day.
There hasn't been a film that I've FELT more than this one in 2023.
Director Blitz Bazawule, his cinematographer Dan Laustsen (The Shape of Water, John Wick 4) and an incredible cast fill every moment with authenticity.
It's the best movie musical since "Chicago" hit screens back in 2002.
Fantasia Barrino reprises her role as Celie from the 2015 Broadway revival and she's fantastic. Separated from her sister at a young age after being attacked by her father, to whom she's born two babies that were immediately taken from her, Celie is married off to the cruel Mister (the great Colman Domingo).
Celie leads a tortured life, sustained by the memories of her sister Nettie, who she loses contact with for 20 years. There are two films worth of characters direct from Walker's classic novel as the film chronicles decades of Celie's life.
Danielle Brooks (Orange is the New Black) repeats her Tony winning role as Sofia. She owns the movie as the joyous, outspoken wife of Harpo (Corey Hawkins) one of Celie's stepchildren. Her song "Hell No!" is a showstopper. Sofia's story arc is heartbreaking and sometimes very difficult to watch. Brooks is excellent. She's a sure Best Supporting Actress winner next year.
Mister's girlfriend Shug Avery is a lounge singer whose return to town launches two of the film's best musical sequences. "Shug Avery" sees the entire town preparing for her arrival. It's hilarious and massive, with Fatima Robinson's rousing choreography filling the town's streets. Shug's arrival at the juke joint and performance of "Push the Button" brings down the house right into the swamp.
Taraji P. Henson is excellent as Shug. She shows great singing and dancing chops and brings compassion and tenderness to Celie, who's starving for both. Henson and Barrino's scenes together are perfect.
In one, "Dear God - Shug",Bazawule slides into Celie's fantasy, with Shug's bathtub tuning on a giant Victrola as Celie circles her, walking on a massive record. In "What About Love", the two women are transported to a huge stage with full jazz era orchestra, slipping out of black and white into full color as the music swells.
Like "Chicago" it frees the staging of the musical numbers from the characters actual world into the much bigger and impressive setting of their imaginations.
Halle Bailey, H.E.R., David Alan Grier and Louis Gossett Jr all bring power to their roles, but it's Barrino that astonished me. As a singer who won 'American Idol" back in 2004, her fame rose and faltered and she slipped back into obscurity before reemerging with her Broadway role as Celie. She's perfect here.
Powerful, resilient and stirring. Watching her find her own footing inspires.
In the film's final act, "Miss Celie's Pants" serves up another showstopper, but it's topped twice.
Barrino's 11:00 number "I'm Here" is a gut punch of triumph and emotion. She stands right alongside fellow Idol alumni Jennifer Hudson and her performance of "And I Am Telling You" in "Dreamgirls". That role won Hudson a Best Actress Oscar. Surely Barrino will get nominated, but I worry she'll lose to Emma Stone's female empowerment Frankenstein monster in "Poor Things". I hope not. Stone's performance was physical and quirky, but emotionless. Barrino's is the polar opposite in every way.
The final song "The Color Purple" is Bazawule's finest moment. I won't describe it here as I don't want to spoil any of the impact of the scene. It's staged beautifully, leaves you emotionally spent and SOARS.
I have enjoyed many films this year, but as I started off the review saying, I haven't felt any film with the depth and power that THE COLOR PURPLE delivers. Well paced, perfectly cast, unflinching in presenting Walker's original story and exhilarating, it gets an A+ and may just be my favorite movie of 2023.
Well, it almost was..... Emerging above all as the best film of the year for me and the most fun I had in a theater in 2023, was yet another entry that somehow topped the great chapters before it.....
1. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One
Tom Cruise simply gets it. Impossibly upping the action, suspense and thrills, he's created the best film in the MI series seven films in, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE DEAD RECKONING PART ONE.
WOW, just WOW.
As he proved last summer with "Top Gun: Maverick", Cruise is truly the last big American movie star we have and he's personally committed to entertaining you.
With a $290 million budget for the first half of the series finale, this globe hopping adventure opens with an intriguing submarine sequence under the ice cap that will seem very familiar to longtime James Bond fans.
(It's just the first of many OO7 references from start to finish, I'll write a separate article on those Easter Eggs after everyone has had a chance to see the film. NO SPOILERS!).
Henry Czerny makes a welcome return to the film series, his first since the original film back in 1996. He's still our slimy, clandestine government force head guru Kittridge. He's back to set Ethan up for a mission that ups the stakes on every previous film.
With a suddenly sentient AI super computer called "The Entity" probing every defense and banking system around the globe, there appears to be only one way to shut it off.
Luckily for us, it's an old fashioned cruciform key, the two halves of which are in the hands of different players around the world.
Ethan Hunt (Cruise) and his team Benjy (the hilarious Simon Pegg) and Luther (a reliably great Ving Rhames) are off to Abu Dhabi in pursuit of their confidant Ilsa Faust (series favorite Rebecca Ferguson). Upping the massive dust storm of "Ghost Protocol", Ethan battles against a large force of horseback assassins in pursuit of Elsa.
DEAD RECKONING has the best sound mix of any film I've heard in recent memory. You don't just watch this movie. You FEEL IT. The wind blasts literally barrage you in your seat. Alongside composer Lorne Balfe's fantastic, nearly non-stop music score, my ears haven't been this happy in a movie in a long time.
The action moves to an incredibly complex and entertaining sequence at the ultra-modern Abu Dhabi airport, where US agents Briggs (Shea Wingham from "Take Shelter) and Degas (Greg Tarzan Davis from "Top Gun: Maverick") are in hot pursuit of Ethan. Kudos to Wingham and Davis as new characters that provide some serious laughs and action chops to the film. Wingham's Briggs is a trigger-happy maniac and Davis is the voice of reason. These two could do their own "Lethal Weapon" style spinoff to great effect.
The airport is full of intrigue, introducing us to professional pickpocket/thief Grace, perfectly embodied by Hayley Atwell, Peggy Carter for all you Avengers fans. Grace steals the key from the man looking to sell it, but Ethan is hot on her trail.
This sets off a two hour series of non-stop events as every government on the planet comes after the key.
A massive scale car chase through the streets of Rome is one of the best ever filmed, all the more so because it's done "French Connection" style with no CGI. That really is Cruise driving handcuffed to Grace through the Eternal City.
The action moves to Venice where The White Widow (the effortlessly menacing Vanessa Kirby) is reunited with Ethan and his team as she stages a massive party at which she's hoping to secure/sell the key.
Every film lives and dies by its villain and wow do we have a great one this time around. Gabriel is The Entity's right-hand human, a violent, explosively dangerous man from Ethan's past motivated to bring him loss & pain. Esai Morales, who I know best from his four seasons on "NYPD Blue" back in 2001-2004 is an inspired casting choice. He's so good in the role that you regret he hasn't been making big screen appearances the last two decades.
His henchman is the lethal assassin Paris, played in bad-ass form by Pom Klementieff, who plays Mantis in the "Guardians of the Galaxy" films. She is relentless. Her maniacal laughs during the Rome chase sequence as she slaughters everyone in her way cuts deep.
The finale aboard the Orient Express as it speeds through Norway is simultaneously a tribute to the train sequence finale of the first film, while one-upping it X 100.
Unless you've been under a rock, you've seen the behind the scenes features on Cruise's daring jump off a mountain on a motorcycle. But the payoff of that jump is a complete surprise and a huge, much needed laugh in a suspenseful sequence.
The train crash that follows is the greatest ever filmed, combining live action, full size trains and a fantastic scene with Hunt and others (I'm not spoiling anything!) trying to escape the train as it falls one car at a time off a cliff.
This is action film making in its finest form.
Director Christopher McQuarrie and Cruise are great partners again in this, their fourth film together and third MI entry in a row as a team. Those last three MI films are arguably the three best action films of the last 8 years.
Just as he did with "Top Gun: Maverick" last summer, Cruise isn't satisfied with thrilling you. He wants to entertain you. Once again, he's topped himself, with a perfect blend of laughs, thrills, suspense, drama and high stakes intrigue.
At two hours and 46 minutes long, the pace never lags, setting up a Part Two that I can't wait to see. Forget that, I can't wait to see this again ASAP to experience it all and see what I missed.
DEAD RECKONING PART ONE is the best Mission: Impossible movie yet.
If only the James Bond producers approached their films with the same commitment that Cruise does to MI. The Mission Impossible series passed OO7 two films ago and never looked back.
The opening credits, set to a booming new version of the classic theme song, don't even kick in until about the 30-minute mark. If you don't get goose bumps during those sixty seconds, you're in the wrong theater.
See this on the biggest screen with the best sound system you can find.
It's the ultimate summer thrill ride and gets an A+.
Thank you, Tom Cruise. You GET IT.
An instant mover into my all-time Top 100 films.
Honorable Mentions that almost made my Top 10:
The Holdovers, Sisu, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, The Flash, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Elemental.
What were your favorites?
Happy New Year to all! Here's to 2024 and another year of all new adventures on the big screen.
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