2023. Proof that the 2020's aren't done with messing with us. There were some definite high points, career-wise, to be celebrated this year. Yet, there has been so much chaos in America and the world at large, that one wonders what the value of any of it is in the eternal scale. Well I'll tell you: Sanity. The ability to shut out the rest of the world and experience a story that is not our own. To share in another's experience, plain and simple, is a gift. A gift that lifts our spirits, for the simple fact that being outside of our own cares, and inside someone else's, puts into focus exactly what we love, and love is universal. Life and struggle are universal, and so are the sounds of laughter, the sounds of sobbing, the sounds of alarm, the sounds of whimsey. We all need to be reminded that what we all love goes so much deeper than what we each hate. Hate is selfish, love shares. Why am I going on like this? Because I still believe that we can come together to share popcorn and stories. These are the stories I loved this year. They were someone elses; they're mine now. Maybe they can be yours, too.
As usual, each film has a link to where you can watch it, or find out more about it. Just click the title.
#PPLLCTenBest2023 #TenBest2023 #TenBest
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Asteroid City, Indian Paintbrush Films, Directed by Wes Anderson
Wow, just about everyone is in this. It makes for a nice low budget setting having the whole thing happen in one town. (An American town conceived, built, and filmed in Spain.) But maybe Wes Anderson is getting a little too Wes Anderson even for Wes Anderson. Anyway, I loved it.
Dream Scenario, A24 Films, Directed by Kristoffer Borgli
Personal subconcious as viral video. Finding out that one's essence is not one's own. It has been shared beyond what we thought were our limits, and certainly what we know are beyond our desires. We'll get there one day. It's closer than you think.
The Holdovers, Focus Features, Directed by Alexander Payne
I don't usually rank my top ten films, but if I did, this would be #1. Not just a throwback, a time capsule of filmmaking from a moment when movies took as long as they needed to discover their characters and their stories, without being rushed, or contrarywise, overstaying their welcome. And I'd like to think that book on Camera Obscura is out there somewhere. Look in his right eye, people.
The Venture Bros: Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart, Astrobase Go!, Directed by Jackson Publick
I discovered the Venture Brothers when I was newly divorced in 2005, and feeling just a bit rebellious. I am a very buttoned down married man, but I tend to be a bit of a cad when I'm single. But then, I don't like being single. My stuffy "I'm an adult and I don't do that sort of thing" standards tend to slide. Still, the Venture Bros never lost their place in my heart. That they have returned this year to scratch my eyes out while simultaneously blowing me a kiss, has a melancholy attached to it that buoys my soul, in it's way. Plus, the Monarch is a clone; who knew, right?
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How To Blow Up a Pipeline, Wolfpack Pictures, Directed by Daniel Goldhaber
Not because it's particularly good, but because it's particularly brave. I don't agree with any of the politics here. In fact I'm the son of oil pioneers, so I'm pretty offended by the whole thing. But this is the story of people in my son's generation actually doing something about what they think is right. And actually doing something is rare in any generation.
Here at the end of the year, after all we've seen, it's what I would consider an extremely ironic and naive story. There are no easy answers in our world. And just within *their* world, there is plenty irony to go around. These kids drive a van for their exploits. They use electricity to build their bombs, which are composed of a lot of fossil fuels. So they're experiencing how necessary it is to use oil and gasoline to get done what you need to in life. They also sound like every other modern terrorist organization when listing their justifications on the radio. From Al-Qaeda to Ireland to Hamas. They don't deal with that quandary in the movie. But then, it's propaganda.
But it's also probably the biggest risk-taking movie of 2023.
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Concordia Studios with Apple Original Films
The story of Michael J. Fox slowly learning to deal with the fact that his body will not yield to the authority of his mind, affected me on many levels. In the end, Mr. Fox's mind refuses to give in to his body.
I know something of that struggle. Movies of this nature have always held a special place with me. Long ago in film school, in fact in order to apply for film school, I was required to give my thoughts on the movie The Best Years of Our Lives; that film ultimately undercuts its own story by giving in to the cliche of a handsome man having his life healed by a beautiful woman. Nevertheless, it was Harold Russell, a real life veteran who lost his hands to a bomb (playing a fictional character who lost his hands to a bomb), who resonated the most completely with me. I recall commenting back then, that the scene where he attempts to light a match held my attention better than any horror film. Specifically because the one thing I didn't want to see happen was for someone to offer to help him.
It needed to be his little victory, and thankfully this was something director William Wyler did not undercut. In that space of time between striking the match and lighting it I felt my own lifetime's worth of moments just like his. It's hard to describe to someone who doesn't have that same feeling inside them. The inner thoughts, "I've done this before with nobody watching, please let me just get through this, please just let me get through this please don't let them offer to help me," are real prayers that millions of us the world over say to ourselves a thousand times a day.
Michael J. Fox had many of those moments written on his face, and the love of his wife which has carried him through to this point felt ever the stronger because we saw that she was the kind who would be there for him but, in those small moments, *not* help him, until and unless he asked.
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Oppenheimer, Universal Pictures, Directed by Christopher Nolan
I'm nominating the entire film, except for Cillian Murphy's butt. When your movie is accessible to Nolan Nerds *and* Barbie Girls, it's a good movie. I've always been a sucker for real history, well told. I think the conceit of nuclear holocaust as metaphor for walking into the future with calamity, terror, and a whole lotta hope, speaks to how Christopher Nolan is able to find the humanity in fantasy--which is what fantasy does best, really. And the thing about Oppenheimer's fantasy, is that it came true. Now, if Mr. Christopher could just learn how to edit sound, he might make a name for himself.
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Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, Marvel, Directed by James Gunn
Our traumas don't have to define us. There are people out there, just as broken as we are, who will love us no matter what. The racoon made me cry. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the best acting Bradley Cooper did this year.
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Are You There God? It's Me Margaret, LionsGate Films, Directed by Kelly Fremon Craig
A Judy Blume classic. For my daughter, from the dad who doesn't understand her but loves her anyway.
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Godzilla Minus 1, Toho Studios, Directed by Takashi Yamazaki
Japan still makes the best Godzilla movies. America has never trusted that. The first Godzilla was chopped into an actor's reel for Raymond Burr. The new Monsterverse movies are similarly Americanized and bombastic. "Minus 1" takes place at around the same time as the original--and has practically the same budget--but it sticks to the roots of Godzilla's Japanese angst and is all the better for it.
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Extra Mentions:
ISS: International Space Station, Bleecker Street Media, Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite
This doesn't release officially in the United states until January 19th, but it released at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2023. I'm adding it to the list based on the concept alone. Ingenuity matters in entertainment, and especially in high concept horror. The best horror taps into whatever the audience is nervous about in the real world. This looks like a great microcosm of the desire to respond to and control ultimately undefinable issues, and the futility of doing so. After all, with the world on fire below them, what are scientists in an orbiting cannister devoid of external weapons really trying to conquer besides their own fear?
The Shepherd, Esperanto Films with BK Studios and Argo Films, Directed by Iain Softly - Produced by Alfonso Cuaron and John Travolta
Somewhere between a short film and a TV Movie, but it didn't need to be any longer. If you crave something to warm your heart and renew your faith in the infinite possibilities within you and without you, this is one of those movies. For my money, better than that controversial one about what freedom sounds like. Maybe there's still hope for the Disney formula yet. The one thing we know about people, places, and things, is that we can never really know them. Not all the way. But we have people who love us, even and particularly who have passed on, who want the best for us and who are there, if we look.
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And those are my picks for the best English (native or dubbed) movies of 2023. Even with the strikes, the entertainment world did very well by their audiences this year. Turned it up to 11.
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Eric C. Player is an independently poor filmmaker, and the president of Panther Pictures, LLC, in Fargo, North Dakota. He is a father, fan, storyteller, "Picker," Corvair driver, and Super8 camera fan. A graduate of BYU and Chapman University film schools, his films have played in theaters all across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and movies to which he was a contributing writer or producer are available on Netflix, Amazon, and Vimeo. He has written and produced film and video content for twenty-six years, and has been writing Chapter-Fiction since the sixth grade. His 2007 production, Nothing But The Best, was an Official Selection of the 2010 Newport Beach Film Festival. His 2016 short, Moment of Anger, received multiple honors including Best Short and Best Director at the Road House International Short Film Festival in Santa Monica, California. His 2023 short film, Stay With Me was an Official Selection of the Boston Film Festival. He currently has one short in post-production and one and a half feature scripts which have worked their way from spiral notebook to screenplay software. Eric Player on Imdb.
