Here we are again hovering around the two-thirds mark of the current year, and as the Olympics wrap up in Paris we rather fittingly have three French films helping to fill out the next quickfire cinematic batch. Beyond that, however, it’s kind of difficult to throw a thematic blanket around this eclectic set of movies, so I won’t try. We’ve got highly-anticipated sequels, mighty-strange original premises, and unconventional thrillers, with the odd poor execution thrown into the mix.
Oh yeah, we also have one extra movie this time, making this technically a batch of eleven. The extra flick is there to make up for two things: two of these films form one complete story and were released at the same time here in Australia despite a staggered release overseas; and that J.Lo visual album extravaganza really should not have counted as a whole entry back in April. So we’re squaring things up a bit.
We did know this would be the case to be fair, but hoooo boy it was a tough opening to the year for movies. It’s been a good while since I’ve started a fresh year with so few options on the near horizon outside of the previous year’s American film schedule off-cuts. For a while there it looked like Dune Part II was the only actual 2024 film worth anticipating, and I might have hit the ten-movie mark around June or something.
Luckily, a couple of odd streaming releases caught my attention when friends recommended them, and then around late April the various layered impacts of last year’s Hollywood strikes began to ease off, and suddenly a flurry of intriguing stuff began to hit our big screens. So we just make the customary April slot for the year’s first ten way-too-brief cinematic summaries, and it’s been a surprising amount of fun getting there. Here we go:
What a strange, fascinating year this was for film.
The cinematic quality absolutely showed up in 2023: multiple mega-budget discussion magnets rolled onto big screens without even one (1) superhero in them – and some of the movies that did feature comic book origins were even quite good! We got gigantic big-screen showcases and intimate streaming-friendly art pieces waiting to be picked apart. We got new Scorsese, new Fincher, new Scott, and new Nolan joints within one calendar year, and they all looked expensive – which just seems crazy in a post-lockdown world.
Speaking of which, the last of the major pandemic-delayed movies may be behind us now, but we may be in for a wave of strike-delayed features – hopefully made by fairly-compensated people – over the next couple of years.
I saw 28 new-release films in 2023, which was always going to come far below my 2022 tally, but almost everything I saw this year was worth my time, and some of these may even be worth yours! To close out the year as always, these are my top ten favourite movies of 2023.
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VR BEST OF 2023 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you agree with me 100%, go buy a lottery ticket. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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10. Barbie
Our first entry seemed for a while like it could have gone in either an ultra-shallow or overly-pretentious direction, and it kind of did neither. Frustratingly uneven given the ridiculously stacked roster of people involved both in front of and behind the camera, Barbie is still a relentlessly entertaining ride from the triumphant set design of its opening scene to those loopy, abstract final minutes. And sure, it has prompted remarkably varied discussions about quality, thematic payoff and commercial realities among my friends and family that I have and will likely continue to enjoy over time – which will always give a movie extra points in my book – but it also gave us two of the best musical sequences of the year, one of Kate McKinnon’s most unhinged cinematic turns, and that career-highlight performance from Ryan Gosling.
9. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I
I’ve found the seventh Mission Impossible film exceedingly hard to quantify over the last half-year, largely because after they made two of the greatest action movies ever back-to-back, Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie decided to lean into more character-focused territory – and tell only half a story – for their third Mission Impossible project as a team. Thus many of the narrative choices the script makes are yet to be resolved, and for once the action isn’t uniformly excellent enough to make up for this: the movie features only the second-craziest vehicular chase down a Roman staircase this year (and unbelievably, the year’s third-most-intense action scene on a European staircase altogether); the realities of the pandemic clearly also limited the volume of real-world stunt magic this time around.
But just to be clear, I still love this movie; Ethan’s established crew (Ilsa Faust aside) is handled as endearingly as ever, newcomer Grace makes a fantastic entrance, and the lead character’s continued transformation into the ultimate ride-or-die partner keeps the stakes impossibly, entertainingly high.
Here we are already – much slower than last year but still far too quickly. It’s been an eventful middle third of the year for film: a pair of megaton Hollywood strikes with wide-reaching (and justified) implications, no less than three big-name blockbusters releasing as “Part Ones” like it’s the early 2010s all over again, the official end of the ill-fated DCEU, and of course the irresistible juggernaut that was Barbenheimer. The news cycle has been juicy, and the movies haven’t been half-bad either. Most of them, anyway.
And so we arrive at the first movie milestone within a year that couldn’t possibly live up to the cinematic majesty of 2022… could it?
Nah, it couldn’t. But maybe?
Though 2023 perhaps opened with a bit of a stutter after the dust settled from the customary late-Australian Oscar buzz period, by mid-April we are in the thick of a release schedule that has already delivered surprises and quality in equal measure. I know I’ve missed one or two word-of-mouth gems so far and you can be sure I will catch up on them by year’s end, but here’s my first batch of ten (you could argue it’s technically nine) new-release films for 2023:
I don’t know, I’ve never done a third one of these within a single year before; I’m not sure what else to title this one.
This probably still would’ve felt like a bonus list even if we weren’t living through one of the best cinematic years in recent memory; but here we are, so I’ve enjoyed somewhat of an unfamiliar feeling of lightness to accompany this third batch of 2022 films. Every new release is like an extra sprinkling of spice on a delectable banquet; the usual slightly anxious anticipation of wondering when the next good movie will hit just isn’t there for me at the moment.
Which is great because while the pleasant surprises keep on coming, the quality over the American summer blockbuster season thus far has been a bit all over the place.
So, uh, this happened. Never had to do back-to-back movie summaries before – but don’t say I didn’t warn you. It turns out that this is a pretty huge cinematic year.
I don’t know what feels more surreal: The near-certainty that this is the most new release films I’ve ever fit inside a month across my whole life, or the fact we live in a world where I could manage a whole nineteen movies before the first Marvel release of 2022. And a lot of those movies are good! Who knew!
Some of them are even really good; in fact I’m feeling bold enough to say that come the end of December, if my overall movie of the year somehow isn’t on this page I’d be shocked. In that unlikely case we would have truly enjoyed a special 2022.
We are fully back to our regular schedule of movie-watching! Getting to the ten new releases mark when April has barely begun – without having to scrape around on streaming services – feels a bit like coming home if I’m honest. While you can probably say I started that journey in earnest last year, 2022 so far has largely brought my friends’ enthusiasm for the big screen back as well, so I’ve been having a better time watching as a result. That might have affected how positive I feel looking back at this batch of cinematic morsels, but who knows; they might just actually be decent viewing.
Well, with one or two exceptions.
The Aussie film release calendar is about to get properly packed, too – here’s hoping a good start leads to a good year!
Ah, 2022. Welcome. It’s good to see you. Such promise you hold.
I mean, I’m sure we’ll get some good Marvel movies, and maybe even the last of the 2020-delayed crop (Top Gun Maverick and Mission Impossible 7 are at the top of the hype pile for me). And K-Pop will do its thing and continue to mutate in enough directions to produce quality tracks. But most of all, 2022 promises a properly spread-out videogame release schedule, perhaps to an extent not seen since the legendary 2017. The first quarter alone looks unambiguously stacked, ready to start millions of players off already behind on their backlogs. Bring it on.
Until it gets going, here’s the best stuff I watched, played and listened to in 2021:
The year in general may have felt like its own form of tired sequel when all was said and done, but after scrambling to the finish line in 2020 and doing my best to bask in the unexpected, I finished 2021 having seen 31 whole new-release movies. Sure, that’s mostly because we got almost two years of delayed blockbusters crammed into one, but numbers are numbers.
More movies means I can be more confident of a quality list that properly reflects my tastes, but it also makes ordering the movies a tad trickier. I found this year in particular that quite a few of the films I saw came off somewhat uneven, with plenty of individual elements worth praising but almost as many misfires. That, of course, just makes them more fun to discuss, which in turn tends to make me like them more. Some even make this list. Because I will be vaguely gesturing towards such individual elements, you may find slight spoilers here, but it’s unlikely.
Let’s finish this thing.
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VR BEST OF 2021 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is beyond unlikely. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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10. In the Heights
My most anticipated movie of an uncertain year for movies – mostly cause I knew I’d enjoy at least some of it, and that first trailer was incredible – John M Chu’s adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s stage musical In the Heights is exactly the visual feast fans could’ve hoped for. Though it hacks one of the main characters’ stories to bits in the name of streamlining an already-long runtime – and the musical already lacks the plot momentum of Miranda’s Hamilton – some of the other changes to the source are neat, efficient and well-executed. Some of the stage songs even take on new life with the visual flair added in the film, while the ones that were already highlights take another step up.
9. Raya and the Last Dragon
It’s a bit of a struggle to articulate what I enjoy so much about this movie, but ultimately I think it comes down to a simple claim: Raya and the Last Dragon features the best-looking hand-to-hand combat scenes I’ve ever seen in an animated film. Any criticism that it breezes past its cool wordbuilding is definitely valid, but there are plenty of other things to like about the movie: Awkwafina’s larger-than-life performance style almost works better in animation than live action, the entirety of the team-gathering second act is good fun, and the central message about old wounds preventing current growth is poignant. I stand by what I said back in July: It’s my favourite non-musical Disney animated feature in twenty years.
Vagrant Rant 