What a crazy, terrific year for chaotic bisexuals! In 'Passages', Franz Rogowski is possessed by the spirit of the protagonist in Mike Bartlett's 'Cock' and cheats on Ben Whishaw (of all people!) with the lady from 'Blue Is the Warmest Colour'. In 'Anatomy of a Fall', Sandra Hüller is almost out-acted by (of all creatures) a dog. In 'Afire', the bisexuals die in a forest fire; in 'Saltburn', the bisexual is on fire. And 'Poor Things' establishes, once and for all, that people are (born) bisexual unless proven otherwise. ('Maestro' also has a bisexual, but I'm not a fan of this movie.)
Speaking of "movies," I saw only 167 in 2023, according to my Letterboxd. That includes miniseries and short films. By comparison, I logged 209 entries in 2022, and 384 the year before that. What does this mean? Simple, really--we're really back, and by 'we', I mean the world. I started my thing with USyd in March (I'm supposed to be writing my thesis now, but here we are). I went to India, to Delhi and Jaipur and Agra, and saw cows and monkeys roaming the city streets like they owned them. I went to Hong Kong and walked the alleys of Sheung Wan during typhoon signal T9 (thanks, Sedricke!). I went to the Thai-Myanmar border with scholars from many parts of the world and saw the refugee camps and daily, illegal crossings across the Moei River. I returned to Dumaguete and finally met Sir Mike in person; I returned to Taiwan and ran into a former schoolmate in Jiufen. Oh, and I also went to the theater--lots of times. The best productions I saw were in Sydney: Belvoir's 'Scenes from the Climate Era' and Red Line's 'A Streetcar Named Desire', but I digress.
In mid-October, as we slowly realized that Israel's out to nuke the whole of Gaza and was just using the 7th as a pretext, I lost my appetite for anything facilely White, American, Caucasian, Jewish, which is why I've yet to watch the second season of 'The Gilded Age' (I'll get to it next week, promise). We truly are living in a fucked-up age, and it continues to amaze me how some people--some dearest and nearest to me--seem so blithely unaware of that fact. I'm not a doomer; I'm a realist (I have a prominent Capricorn placement). COVID has been allowed to rip through society. The Marcos-Duterte empire shows no signs of slowing down. The people of Palestine are being genocided by Israel and the US before our eyes. It's January--and hot as hell in Iloilo, when in past years it had been cool. What a time to be alive.
Anyway, the usual disclaimer: This list considers the stuff I watched in 2023 and the leftovers from 2022. Richard Bolisay, in his Substack, said it best: "The best part of list-making is the limitation..." In other words, get over yourselves and stop acting like you're American critics who need to watch all the awards contenders before making a yearender, and just make that goddamn yearender. Nobody cares. It's just a list. This year, I have a top 14--but really, the only placement I'm a hundred percent sure of is my number one. After that, it's anybody's game.
1. 'How To with John Wilson' Season 3 (HBO; dir. John Wilson)
Decades from now, a new generation of cinephiles and TV-philes will hopefully look back at 2023 and unearth this gem of a show, and be introduced to its singular brilliance. John Wilson is more than a filmmaker; he is scribe, anthropologist, historian, comedian, court jester, investigative journalist, private detective, and psychiatrist rolled into one. All hail the great documenter of humanity's endless capacity for absurdity.
2. 'Interview with the Vampire' Season 1 (AMC; dirs. various)
When I think of this show, the word that comes to mind is SCREAM. Imagine Patti LuPone and Nathan Lane having a baby and forcing that baby to do a musical directed by Martin Scorsese after he's had one too many shots of tequila. This is 'Mean Girls' in the golden age of bisexual liberation. As the vampire Lestat, Sam Reid is so mother, father, and GOAT in this. Of the mediocre tenor in the opera he's watching, he wonders, "Are they pulling talent from roadside gas stations?" Like I said, GOAT.
I'm chalking this joint placement up to recency bias. Two European films that knock it out of the park with, among other things, their portrayals of writers and their relationships with people. In the first, the writer seems determined to be a pain in the ass to everyone around him. In the second, the world is a pain in the ass to the writer, whose pain-in-the-ass husband's death is being pinned on her by a French court where lines from a novel can apparently pass for evidence. If Sandra Hüller wins the Best Actress Oscar, I'll stop wearing underwear for life.
Just an incredible, incredible celebration of queerness, and as a recording of live performance, one of those "I wish I could have been there" pieces of art.
This is a show that really gets its audience, knows exactly what they know, and has a firm grasp of the insane times they're living in. Staged dinner at Applebees, anyone? (Molly Shannon deserves all the awards and has gotten none, which is how you know the human race is doomed.)
It is almost miraculous that, amid the noise, the theatrics, the varying 'largeness' of shows like 'Succession', 'Abbott Elementary', and 'The Last of Us', there exists 'Somebody Somewhere'--a show about welcoming the silences, small and deafening, that life throws at us seemingly at random. Bridget Everett and Jeff Hiller, as an odd couple in the American Midwest, drink, laugh, fight, make up, make noise, and make do. I love them so much.
He's a queer one, Julie Jordan Todd Haynes. I mean, getting Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore to do a lisp-off?
Two very movie movies that I saw in the cinemas, and which I think should be seen in cinemas and no place else. Both shot by their cinematographers like rent's overdue, both anchored by fearless lead performers--Cillian Murphy and Emma Stone--who deserve to sweep their respective awards races. And, incidentally, both epitomizing Powhatan's immortal line: "These white men are dangerous."
Both of these shows could be ranked higher, of course, but I wanted to highlight the others first. I was there in 2018 when very few people hereabouts were talking about 'Succession', and I was there when Jeremy Strong finally bellowed, "I'm the eldest boy!" This final season really went all in on the King Lear-ness of it all, to phenomenal results. Meanwhile, no other show has embodied 'joy' quite like 'Abbott'. I suspect we'd be a calmer, better world if only more people watched it.
Two vastly different documentaries about the wreckage--human and animal--left behind by empire's endless capacity for evil. The latter should have won last year's Oscar for Documentary Feature; the former should be winning this year's.
The rest of my 5-star titles, in alphabetical order:
'Brand X' (dir. Keith Deligero)
Perfect short film. Absurd Bisaya humor on point. Must watch with the biggest crowd imaginable.
'Fleishman Is in Trouble' (FX on Hulu; dirs. various)
A triumph of writing and structure, its seamless, intelligent use of narration worth studying for other filmmakers, and finding the consummate vessel in the amazing Lizzy Caplan (a.k.a. Janis Ian!).
'Joyland' (dir. Saim Sadiq)
A film that revels in the beauty of storytelling--narratively, visually, textually, dramatically--and so thoroughly earns our joy in watching it.
'No One Will Save You' (dir. Brian Duffield)
Duffield is now two for two in my book, as someone who adored 'Spontaneous'. And I've been saying this since 'Unbelievable': Kaitlyn Fcking Dever is a Fcking Actress!
'Past Lives' (dir. Celine Song)
A Sondheim song come to life.
'Retrograde' (dir. Matthew Heineman)
A documentary that perfectly captures America's habit of betraying its "friends."
'Rye Lane' (dir. Raine Allen-Miller)
Fun, funny, trippy: a film that dares to and more than succeeds in evoking the rush and high of falling in love.
'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' (dirs. Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers & Justin K. Thompson)
The highest praise I can give this film is to call it a 2.5-hour acid trip, as if it were repulsed by the mere idea of letting the viewer's senses settle even just for a fraction of a moment.
'What We Do in the Shadows' Season 5 Episode 5 (FX; dir. Yana Gorskaya)
Formally titled 'Local News', but better known as 'The Abduction of the Journalist Joanna Roscoe'--the comedic peak and lone highlight of an otherwise mid season.
'Women Talking' (dir. Sarah Polley)
A coup de cinemá in the way it deploys language as primary vessel for imagination, in the way it deploys imagination to conjure radical alternatives, in the way it turns gender polemics into cinematic language. Rooney Mara is best in show here--she with the mystical face of one who's just gotten off The Mayflower.
PLUS--24 four-star titles I wholly recommend:
'12 Weeks' (dir. Anna Isabelle Matutina); '11,103' (dirs. Mike Alcazaren & Jeannette Ifurung); 'Argentina, 1985' (dir. Santiago Mitre); 'Babylon' (dir. Damien Chazelle); 'Beyond Utopia' (dir. Madeleine Gavin); 'Bold Eagle' (dir. Whammy Alcazaren); 'Bottoms' (dir. Emma Seligman); 'Cunk on Earth' Season 1 (BBC Two/ Netflix; dir. Christian Watt); 'Dead Ringers' (Prime Video; dirs. various); 'The Horror of Dolores Roach' Season 1 (Prime Video; dirs. various); 'Joy Ride' (dir. Adele Lim); 'Kapag Wala nang mga Alon' (dir. Lav Diaz); 'Kokomo City' (dir. D. Smith); 'The Last of Us' Season 1 (HBO; dirs. various), although episode 3--'Long, Long Time'--was a 7-star, heartbreaker of an episode; 'Lucky Hank' Season 1 (AMC; dirs. various), although episode 5--the dinner party--was topnotch: Suzanne Cryer's out-of-nowhere scream upon finding out she's getting published in The Atlantic was too real; 'Mga Handum nga Nasulat sa Baras' (dirs. Richard Jeroui Salvadico & Arlie Sweet Sumagaysay); 'Nimona' (dirs. Nick Bruno & Troy Quane); 'Palengke Day' (dir. Mervine Aquino); 'Passages' (dir. Ira Sachs); 'R.M.N.' (dir. Cristian Mungiu); 'Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie' (dir. Davis Guggenheim); 'Talk to Me' (dirs. Danny & Michael Philippou); 'The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar' (dir. Wes Anderson); 'You Hurt My Feelings' (dir. Nicole Holofcener)
* * * * *
What follows is a list of my 30 favorite screen performances of the year, in many ways the MVPs of their respective films or TV shows. I have opted to exclude performances I have already mentioned earlier--for example, Kaitlyn Dever in 'No One Will Save You'. So make of this what you will, but also go check them out.
1. Murray Bartlett ('The Last of Us' Season 1)
2. Rose Byrne ('Platonic' Season 1)
3. Hong Chau ('The Whale'; 'Showing Up')
4. Daisy May Cooper ('Rain Dogs' Season 1)
5. Kieran Culkin ('Succession' Season 4)
6. Jennifer Ehle ('Dead Ringers')
7. Claudia Enriquez ('12 Weeks')
6. Jennifer Ehle ('Dead Ringers')
7. Claudia Enriquez ('12 Weeks')
8. Milo Machado Graner ('Anatomy of a Fall')
9. Lily Gladstone ('Killers of the Flower Moon')
10. Ryan Gosling ('Barbie')
11. Taraji P. Henson ('Abbott Elementary' Season 2)
9. Lily Gladstone ('Killers of the Flower Moon')
10. Ryan Gosling ('Barbie')
11. Taraji P. Henson ('Abbott Elementary' Season 2)
12. Stephanie Hsu ('Joy Ride')
13. Cedrick Juan ('GomBurZa')
13. Cedrick Juan ('GomBurZa')
14. Jane Krakowski ('Schmigadoon' Season 2: 'Schmicago')
15. Ronnie Lazaro ('Kapag Wala nang mga Alon')
16. Justina Machado ('The Horror of Dolores Roach' Season 1)
17. John Magaro ('Past Lives')
18. Rachel McAdams ('Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.')
19. Charles Melton ('May December')
20. Carey Mulligan ('Maestro')
21. Park Ji-Min ('Return to Seoul')
22. Pedro Pascal ('The Last of Us' Season 1)
15. Ronnie Lazaro ('Kapag Wala nang mga Alon')
16. Justina Machado ('The Horror of Dolores Roach' Season 1)
17. John Magaro ('Past Lives')
18. Rachel McAdams ('Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.')
19. Charles Melton ('May December')
20. Carey Mulligan ('Maestro')
21. Park Ji-Min ('Return to Seoul')
22. Pedro Pascal ('The Last of Us' Season 1)
23. Chris Perfetti ('Abbott Elementary' Season 2)
24. Rosamund Pike ('Saltburn')
25. Margaret Qualley ('Sanctuary')
26. Bella Ramsey ('The Last of Us' Season 1)
24. Rosamund Pike ('Saltburn')
25. Margaret Qualley ('Sanctuary')
26. Bella Ramsey ('The Last of Us' Season 1)
27. Margot Robbie ('Babylon')
28. Sarah Snook ('Succession' Season 4)
29. Ben Whishaw ('Passages')
30. Ramy Youssef ('Poor Things')
* * * * *
29. Ben Whishaw ('Passages')
30. Ramy Youssef ('Poor Things')
* * * * *
I have 10 more things to point out:
1. Lawrence Ang's editing of 'Leonor Will Never Die'.
2. Justin Hurwitz's all-timer, Oscar-losing score for 'Babylon'. 'Voodoo Mama', 'Gold Coast Rhythm', and 'Manny and Nellie's Theme'--and variations of the last two thereof--on loop.
3. Nicholas Britell's closing themes for 'Succession' Season 4 made the closing credits an event in themselves.
4. Say what you will about 'Barbie', but that production design is insane.
5. The Trinity test scene alone in 'Oppenheimer' makes the price of admission worth it, but unquestionably the highlight of the film is the one with the small crowd of White Americans going gaga over news of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Through sly use of light and sound, Nolan evokes pure horror.
6. The animation of 'The Boy and the Crow' is the best I saw in 2023; it's a shame this short film feels like an abruptly abandoned idea.
7. The wonderful deployment of theatrical sensibilities in 'The Wonderful Life of Henry Sugar'.
8. The pitch-perfect playing of literary types by the ensembles of 'Lucky Hank' and 'You Hurt My Feelings'. Writers being petty and nasty and butthurt? Sign me up!
9. Prime Video's 'Dead Ringers' as a written thing--to quote James Poniewozik of The New York Times, "a wondrous monster that firmly answers the questions too many adaptations fumble with: Why bother and why now?"
10. The second season of Netflix's 'Heartstopper' was a chore to go through, but its explication of bisexuality--the accompanying dread, confusion, uncertainty and self-doubt, and the world's biphobia--was dazzling and piercing in its truthfulness.
* * * * *
Finally, here are three non-2022/23 titles that I saw for the first time this year and rated five Letterboxd stars:
'Jaws' (1975, dir. Steven Spielberg)
'The Talented Mr. Ripley' (1999, dir. Anthony Minghella)
And four non-2022/23 titles rated four Letterboxd stars:
'All the President's Men' (1976, dir. Alan J. Pakula)
'Back to the Future' (1985, dir. Robert Zemeckis)
'Citizenfour' (2014, dir. Laura Poitras)
'Dead Ringers' (1988, dir. David Cronenberg)
* * * * *
Links to my past lists, which are best read as time capsules documenting what I'd seen and where I was at the time I wrote them:
