Category: Film
Best movies of 2023
As usual, they are in the order I saw them (more or less), not ranked ordinally. And sometimes there are reviews behind the link, sometimes by me:
Knock at the Cabin, theology all over this one.
Return to Seoul (NYT review).
John Wick 4, yup.
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
You Hurt My Feelings
Incredible But True
Bottoms, lesbian best friends in high school, not what you think.
Joan Baez: I am a Noise, you don’t have to like her music to like the movie.
Dream Scenario
May December, drenched in Bergman’s Persona. And that is my pick for the best movie of the year.
The Killer (Netflix)
Godzilla Minus Zero. I haven’t even seen this one yet, but I am confident in my judgment.
Updates will be made as is appropriate. Overall, after some big dry spells, it was a pretty amazing year for movies. Maybe not for Hollywood, but for movies. Moviemakers are adapting well to the new circumstances and the new economics. There are many more recommended selections I haven’t had the chance to sample yet, and maybe after I wake up I will put my list of those in the comments section.
What did you all like?
*Napoleon*
You can’t treat it as a normal movie with anything contextualized or explained. Nope. Rather think of it as a crazed male fantasy (the director’s? Certainly not mine) about one particular way of living, presented large and vivid on the screen, with sex scenes too. The fantasy doesn’t even have Napoleon as an especially smart guy, which of course he was. The battles scenes for Austerlitz and Waterloo are some of the best ever filmed. I can’t bring myself to call it “a good movie,” but it was better than expected and I was never tempted to leave.
May December (movie review, no real spoilers)
May December is an excellent movie, with tinges of Bergman’s Persona (just look at the poster at the link) and Girard to boot. It has some of the finest lines (“That’s what adults do”) and scenes (the make-up exchange) of any film this year or maybe even this decade. How about Natalie Portman’s “transformation monologue” toward the end? Or the segment when she explains to high school students what it is like to do a sex scene in a film? Who in this movie has real desire? Which of the two women handles celebrity better? Who envies whom and why? Interestingly, the movie is also pro-natalist. Might it be the best product to come out of Hollywood in 2023?
*Holy Spider*
A very good Iranian movie, the first half feels like David Fincher but in Farsi. It is about a serial killer, so you must be able to tolerate some difficult scenes. The second half takes some brilliant and creative turns, concerning broader Iranian society. I dare not divulge those for fear of spoiling the suspense for you. The movie also bears on the current role of Iran in the Middle East conflict and has a definite Straussian side. Recommended, for those who can. On Netflix.
My Conversation with the excellent Brian Koppelman
Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
Brian Koppelman is a writer, director, and producer known for his work on films like Rounders and Solitary Man, the hit TV show Billions, and his podcast The Moment, which explores pivotal moments in creative careers.
Tyler and Brian sat down to discuss why TV wasn’t good for so long, whether he wants viewers to binge his shows, how he’d redesign movie theaters, why some smart people appreciate film and others don’t, which Spielberg movie and Murakami book is under appreciated, a surprising fact about poker, whether Jalen Brunson is overrated or underrated, Manhattan food tips, who he’d want to go on a three-day retreat with, whether movies are too long, how happy people are in show business, his unmade dream projects, the next thing he’ll learn about, and more.
Excerpt:
COWEN: Thank you. I have some very simple questions for you about the history of television to start with. I grew up in the 1970s and I’ve long wondered, “Why was TV so bad for so long before the so-called Golden Age?” Maybe you could date that to the 90s or the noughties, but why weren’t shows in the 70s and 80s better than they were? Would you challenge that premise?
KOPPELMAN: Well, I also grew up in the ’70s. I was born in ’66. I’m not sure that the hypothesis that it was bad is correct. It certainly wasn’t, in general, as an art form, operating on the level that cinema was operating on or the level that music, in part, was operating on during that time.
But if we look at, say, children’s television, I could argue that Jim Henson and Sesame Street, for what it was and aimed at what it was aimed at, was as important as any television that’s on today. I would say that Jim Henson moved the art form forward. He figured out a use case for TV that hadn’t really been done before, and he created a way of thinking about the medium that was really different.
Then, look, Hill Street Blues shows up in the ’80s and, I think, figures out how to use certain techniques of theater and cinema and novels to tell these TV stories. Like any other business, when that started to connect, then people in the business started to become aware of what was possible.
Yes, it was a function of three channels, to answer your question. Yes, in the main, of course, TV was worse. No doubt about it, but there were high points. I think those high points pointed the way toward the high points that came later. For me, NYPD Blue is the network show that’s fully on the level of any of these shows that came after. David Milch cut his teeth on Hill Street Blues.
There’s a wonderful book by Brett Martin, called Difficult Men, that’s about showrunners. It starts, in a way, with Bochco and Milch in that time period. It’s a great look into how this idea of showrunners created modern television. HBO needing something, all these business reasons underneath it, but how people who came up through, originally, Hill Street were able to go on and start this revolution.
COWEN: In your view, how good, really, was I Love Lucy? Is it just a few memorable moments, like Vitameatavegamin? Or is it actually a show where it’d be good episode after good episode, like The Sopranos?
And from Brian:
I don’t know Wes Anderson. I don’t know him, but I met him once. I love his movies, and I love that his movies are 90 minutes. The one time I met him, we were screening a film. He invited some people who happened to be in town, who he knew were film people, so I got to watch a movie with him. Afterwards, we were just talking about movies, and I said, “These movies of yours — they are 90 minutes,” and he said, “Yes. I found that the concepts I’m interested in don’t really support a journey that lasts longer than that.” He’s an incredibly disciplined filmmaker. I was like, “That makes total sense.”
Recommended, interesting and entertaining throughout.
My Conversation with Harriet Karimi Muriithi
This is another CWT bonus episode, recorded in Tatu City, Kenya, outside of Nairobi. Harriet is a 22-year-old waitress. Here is the audio, video, and transcript. Here is the episode summary:
Harriet is a 22-year-old hospitality professional living and working in Tatu City, a massive mixed-used development spearheaded by Jennings. Harriet grew up in the picturesque foothills of Mount Kenya before moving to the capital city as a child to pursue better schooling. She has witnessed Nairobi’s remarkable growth firsthand over the last decade. An ambitious go-getter, Harriet studied supply chain management but and wishes to open her own high-end restaurant.
In her conversation with Tyler, Harriet opens up about her TikTok hobby, love of fantasy novels, thoughts on improving Kenya’s education system, and how she leverages AI tools like ChatGPT in her daily life, the Chinese influence across Africa, the challenges women face in village life versus Nairobi, what foods to sample as a visitor to Kenya, her favorite musicians from Beyoncé to Nigerian Afrobeats stars, why she believes technology can help address racism, her Catholic faith and church attendance, how COVID-19 affected her education and Kenya’s recovery, the superstitions that persist in rural areas, the career paths available to Kenya’s youth today, why Nollywood movies captivate her, the diversity of languages and tribes across the country, whether Kenya’s neighbors impact prospects for peace, what she thinks of the decline in the size of families, why she enjoys podcasts about random acts of kindness, what infrastructure and lifestyle changes are reshaping Nairobi, if the British colonial legacy still influences politics today, and more.
Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: How ambitious are you?
MURIITHI: On a scale of 1 to 10, I will say an 8.5.
This episode is best consumed in combination with the episode with the village elder Githae Gitinji. The contrast between the two perspectives is startling. And here is my CWT episode with Stephen Jennings, concerning Tatu City itself.
What should I ask Ami Vitale?
Yes I am doing a Conversation with her. From Wikipedia:
Ami Vitale is an American photojournalist, documentary filmmaker, educator and speaker. In 2018, she published a photo book titled Panda Love which captures pandas within captivity and being released into the wild…
In 1994, Vitale joined the Associated Press (AP) as a picture editor in New York and Washington, D.C.[5][6] She self funded her travel through her work with AP and left for the Czech Republic in 1997.
She moved to Prague, Czech Republic, and spent a year covering the war in Kosovo, traveling back and forth to Prague, and spending a month at a time in the war zone. She later traveled to Angola, and then to the second Intifada in Gaza and Israel. In 2000, she received an Alexia Foundation grant to document a small village in the West African nation of Guinea Bissau.
Vitale currently photographs wildlife and environmental stories in order to educate about global conservation issues. She is a visual journalist working as a photographer for National Geographic, a documentary filmmaker, and a cinematographer. Her recent still photography focuses on wildlife conservation in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. As an ambassador for Nikon and a contract photographer with National Geographic magazine, she has documented wildlife and poaching in Africa, covered human-wildlife conflict, and concentrated on efforts to save the northern white rhino and reintroduce pandas to the wild.
She has traveled to more than one hundred countries. Here is her home page, which includes links to her documentaries. Here is her Instagram.
So what should I ask her?
*The Creator* (movie review with spoilers)
This movie was deeper and more philosophical than I was expecting. Imagine a Buddhism that decides the AIs represent the true renunciation of desire, and thus embody the Buddhist ideal. Globally, the AIs ally themselves with the Buddhist nations, now unified under a “Republic of New Asia” banner. Mostly it looks like Vietnam (water buffalo), until snow-capped mountains are needed near the end.
The Buddhists considers the AIs to be kinder than humans. America, however, tries to destroy them all, as part of a misguided quest to bomb the proverbial data centers.
You will find visual quotations from A.I., Robocop, Terminator II, Kundun, Star Wars, Blade Runner, Apocalypse Now, Firestarter, Westworld, Lost in Space, the Abraham story from Genesis, and more. The special effects were good, and surprisingly understated compared to the usual excess. Scientific consistency, however, you will not find.
In this movie it is Eliezer and the Americans who are the bad guys. I was surprised to see Hollywood make that move.
From the director of Rogue One, a good sign of course, and the soundtrack is by Hans Zimmer. This movie is not perfect, but I am very glad I saw it. The U.S. reviews for it are unreliable, the BBC did OK, Vulture too.
*Landscape with Invisible Hand*
Despite its only middling at best reviews, I found this one of the most original and intriguing movies of the year. The formula “African-American family movie plus Only Fans for space aliens” isn’t exactly exhausted, or for that matter even plausible as the basis for anything. Yet the whole production comes off surprisingly well once you accept the absurdist premise, and it feels freshly cinematic. The movie also has a lot of economics, and self-consciously so, though not exactly in a free market direction. Here is the trailer.
What should I ask Brian Koppelman?
I will be doing a Conversation with him, here is Wikipedia:
Brian William Koppelman (born April 27, 1966) is an American showrunner. Koppelman is the co-writer of Ocean’s Thirteen and Rounders, the producer for films including The Illusionist and The Lucky Ones, the director for films including Solitary Man and the documentary This Is What They Want for ESPN as part of their 30 for 30 series, and the co-creator, showrunner, and executive producer of Showtime‘s Billions and Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber…
So what should I ask him?
Why aren’t Barbie tickets more expensive?
That is the theme of my latest Bloomberg column, as for mamny showings there is excess demand and long waits to see the movies. Here are some of the reasons why markets are not clearing:
A more relevant factor behind the static pricing has to do with social networks. Both the movie theater and the studio want to attract customers who will talk about the movie afterwards, whether directly to their friends or on social media. They also want customers who will want to see the movie multiple times, and generate a kind of cult following.
For the most part, younger audiences better serve these functions than do older audiences. Younger people have on average more friends and see them on a more regular basis, and are more likely to text friends or post on TikTok. They generally have greater enthusiasms. Older people are more likely to have more limited social networks, filled with other older people, and if they have children at home, less likely to go out.
In other words, in terms of publicity at least, a younger moviegoer is more valuable than an older moviegoer. (It is a painful admission for an older moviegoer like myself.) So if theaters raised their prices, the audience would skew older and wealthier. It would be harder for the movie to generate much buzz, and what buzz it did generate would have less impact.
Keeping the price low, on the other hand, favors those willing to scour the internet for tickets, or those who can commit to a scheduled movie date and time in advance. This is typically a younger group.
A second reason for keeping prices low is that moviegoers might feel ripped off if they had to pay a higher price for every movie they really wanted to see. In the short run, the theater would pull in more money, but over time moviegoing could become less popular. Customer goodwill matters.
A third reason that the price does not rise is concession income. A movie theater earns much of its income — it can be almost one-third of revenue for some chains — from selling soda, popcorn and other items, and typically it does not share that money with the studios. That makes revenue from ticket sales a smaller share of the overall profit.
I am looking forward to the rest of this year in movies.
How to assign property rights in actor AI likenesses
This is an issue in the Actors and Writers Guild strikes, with a key issue being whether studios should be making “take it or leave it” offers which give them rights to the AI likenesses in perpetuity, even for extras. Here is part of my take in my latest Bloomberg column:
I suggest that the eventual strike settlement forbid studios from buying the rights to AI likenesses for more than a single film or project. Or, as a compromise, the contract could be for some limited number of projects, but not in perpetuity. Actors thus would remain in long-run control of their AI likenesses, yet if they wanted to keep selling those likenesses – project by project – they could do so.
Note that this proposal is along some dimensions quite inegalitarian. That is, future stars would end up much richer and the large numbers of actors who fail would end up slightly poorer. They would not be paid small upfront sums for rights that would quickly become worthless.
We can feel better about that trade-off if we consider the interests of the fans. Many people (myself included) enjoy the image and thought of Han Solo (one of Ford’s most famous roles), whether or not they are paying money in a given year to see the Star Wars movies. Would those fans prefer that Ford or some movie studio be in control of the Han Solo image?
The answer may depend on the wisdom and aesthetic taste of the actor in question, but overall I would opt for actor control of the AI likenesses. At least some actors will care about the quality of the projects their likenesses are attached to, rather than just seeking to maximize profit from deploying the likenesses. So, if the question is whether an AI likeness of Han Solo can greet visitors at the entrance to a Disney ride, Disney might say yes but Ford might say no, or at least he would have that choice.
Having celebrity images remain scarce rather than overexposed is a good aesthetic decision, even if it keeps some market power in the hands of Ford, his eventual heirs and future movie stars more generally. With these additional restraints on AI likenesses, we will likely end up with a more exciting, less tired and less overexposed kind of celebrity culture, and I hope that leads to broader social benefits, if only by cultivating better taste among fans and viewers.
Such a proposal is not so unusual when viewed in a broader context. Standard labor contracts don’t allow you to sell your labor to your boss in perpetuity, as you always retain the right to quit. Few people consider that limitation on contracting objectionable, as it protects human liberty against some hasty or ill-conceived decisions, such as selling yourself into slavery. If your AI likeness ends up being such a good substitute for your physical being, as it seems our current technological track may bring, why should we not consider similar restrictions on the contracts for the AI likeness?
Worth a ponder, these are not easy issues.
*Barbie*
You can object to the lack of plot impetus in this work, or cite several other objections, not entirely without reason. Yet the film is fresh, interesting, and creative throughout. It is full of ideas, starting with an investigation of how lookism oppresses women, and then it continues to deepen. By the end, the surface-level and Straussian readings dovetail nicely and converge. The song “Closer to Fine” is used well. By no means fully satisfying, but insightful throughout.
*Oppenheimer*, the movie
Well, you know how the story ends so there are no real spoilers. I will say I found about thirty minutes of excellent movie in a three hour experience. The best material starts when the test bomb goes off. There is remarkably little about the social, intellectual, or scientific excitement at Los Alamos — a serial Netflix installment would have done a better job with that. The dialogue is choppy and poor throughout. Most of all, the movie spends about two hours fleshing out McCarthyite themes in what I found to be a very repetitive and uninsightful manner. I have seen what — five?? — movies that do the same. Even Woody Allen did a better job of this in his The Front. The various male-female relations all seem so hurried. There was too much music.
So I give this one a thumbs down. I do like that it forces the viewer to think more about nuclear weapons, and I am sure many people will learn some history from it. The movie definitely has its uses, but overall I enjoyed Mission Impossible 7 more.
Mission Impossible 7 (no real spoilers)
Eh. It has some good scenes, but there was no movie in the movie, as they say. I do understand this is a film and also a visual event, but the evil AI should have been kept abstract, rather than visualized in such a corny, stupid fashion. That reminded me of Hitchcock’s Spellbound, which is also too visually literal. This installation of the MI series uses a bunch of Hitchcock tricks, some expected James Bond, and then a bunch of LOTR moral and “power corrupts” themes, which don’t fit the kinetic emphasis in the on-screen action. Most of all, I am struck by the great lengths they go to in order to portray lone individuals as decisive over the final outcomes. In a Bond movie there is a wire to be cut, a button to be pressed, and a specific villain to be vanquished in a remote island lair, with a stomach punch-invulnerable henchman along the way. OK enough, but here they have to work far harder. They even solve for the strategic game between the AI and the good guys, and it still isn’t clear who is a decisive agent in the action.
And so the movie ends with “part I and uncertainty,” as even 2 hours 40 minutes was not enough to get a single individual to matter. Modelmakers, take note.