Posts Tagged ‘Year’

31 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 Movies

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

Superhero movies are dead; long live superhero movies.

They will be back – and soon – but for this brief moment in history, we had a real spicy year for varied cinema.

For reasons that may have made themselves apparent in yesterday’s list, I didn’t quite have as much 2024 free time to devote to spontaneous cinema adventures as I had in previous years. This meant at several points throughout the year I was more sensitive to early movie reviews than usual, and ended up completely missing the likes of Moana 2, Alien: Romulus, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Joker: Folie à Deux, and all three of the new Sony Spider-Man spin-offs. If a sharply positive or at least mildly interesting review did not come across my feed for a new movie and/or a friend didn’t reach out to see it, more often than not I just moved on.

I still reached bang-on 30 new-release films watched in 2024; these are my ten favourites.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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10. The Fall Guy

A supremely silly yet triumphant time at the movies, ascended stuntman David Leitch and his team of action veterans bring abundant life to one of the most underrated – and unlucky – films of the year. The Fall Guy features plenty of real-life spectacle with a wink or two at the camera, elevated by a Sydney setting that allows for much more than novelty: all the tourist-y hallmarks of the city, as well as some of its lesser-known quirks, are used to their fullest to stage pretty crazy sequences. But the best thing about this well-made gem is its cast; Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Hannah Waddingham, and Winston Duke are all fabulous, but every scene shared by Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt is electrifying. Hilarious, adrenaline-charged fun.

9. Deadpool & Wolverine

Speaking of winks at the camera, the single comic book movie to make it on here does so because everything maligned about the recent Marvel Cinematic Universe movies works incredibly well in the context of a seasoned fourth-wall obliterator. It’s kinda hard to stick the well-worn “too many jokes, weird stakes, unimaginative villains” MCU tags on a movie starring Ryan Reynolds’ already-iconic interpretation of Deadpool, especially when Hugh Jackman plays his even more iconic Wolverine mostly straight as a foil. That pitch makes for a solid core, but the inventive – and pretty impressive – action scenes add plenty of gravy, and the myriad extended cameos not only land on multiple meta-levels, but give us some of the most memorably camp MCU performances in years.

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28 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 Gaming Moments

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

I sure hope you like JRPGs and visual novels – or at least appreciate their existence – because this list is positively teeming with them. Come to think of it, there’s an overall theme of Japanese theatricality running through a good 70% of this thing, so strap in if that’s your speed. Japanese or not, these specific moments from 2024 videogames stuck out to me for all manner of reasons; a couple for their challenge, a few for their spectacle, a couple for their immediately evident significance within a wider franchise, a sprinkle for their shocking turns, and a handful for sheer novelty.

Just be warned that, naturally, there are some real gnarly spoilers ahead – and some of them come from several dozen hours into pretty long-ass games.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

MAJOR SPOILERS FOLLOW!

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10. The Frozen Ocean – Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

The stunning art direction of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown ensures its world impresses whenever you enter a new area: from cascades of jewel-encrusted sand waterfalls to grimy pitch-dark caverns and towering citadels, the imagination of the team behind the great Rayman Legends clearly had a lot of ideas stewing during their decade-plus away from the relative spotlight. But there is one locale in the game so striking that I actually gasped once I realised what it was attempting to depict.

As our hero Sargon approaches the easternmost edge of the map and looks out to sea, a towering wave comes into focus, and the wide-lens scrolling effect soon reveals that it isn’t moving. Cue a morbidly beautiful sequence made up of traversing airborne ship debris and weaving through static airborne enemies that ends in a thunderous crash as Sargon reanimates everything all at once, bringing a hail of enemy attention down upon him. Art direction meets game design at its finest.

9. Chocobo Gold Cup Finale – Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

If you haven’t played the truly gargantuan Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, it might seem outright odd to see a moment from a sidequest as my singular favourite. Alas, Rebirth’s weaknesses are tied up in its unavoidable middle-chapter identity lacking both the twisty novelty of its predecessor and (hopefully) the emotional release of its successor, while its strengths lie in the kind of properly-integrated open world wonder Square Enix has been trying to recapture since the PS1 days. That extends very much to the sidequests, many of which only unlock in a particular region if you have met and helped the relevant characters in a prior locale.

So long story short, I was rather fond of the underdog-slash-family-trauma Chocobo racing story that spans essentially the length of the entire game if you keep up with it. The unexpectedly heartfelt reappearance of VII Remake’s Chocobo Sam only added to the bittersweet satisfaction of its finale.

But that isn’t what pushes the sidequest over the top for me; no, that’d be the real-time realisation I had on the final lap of the final race that my chosen Chocobo’s unique hovering ability wasn’t just for gliding across rough terrain Mario Kart shortcut-style. With the smarmy shonen-style villain just ahead of me, I decided in the desperation of the moment to try and find out if she could also glide across wide-open pits like the one just before the final turn. To my immediate shock and fist-pumping glee, she absolutely could, and Cloud pulled out in front right at the very end of the race to initiate a shower of confetti and one of the most satisfying renditions of the FF victory fanfare I have ever experienced.

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27 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 Movie Scenes

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

We’re already into the second half of the 2024 countdowns, so let’s get serious.

The spoilers usually get fairly perilous around this point, but only three of my ten favourite movie scenes this year could reasonably be called climactic ending sequences – and only one of those actually contains a final shot. I can’t quite draw a common pattern through them otherwise: we’ve got a fair amount of tension, some gritted teeth, a bit of action and some comedy thrown in too. A pretty fun year, I’ve got to say.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

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10. The Car – Deadpool & Wolverine

For all its strengths as a fourth-wall-shattering comedy, Deadpool & Wolverine does bring quite a few memorable action scenes along for the ride. The opener single-handily brought *NSYNC back into relevance (well, for people who didn’t already have Bye Bye Bye on their workout playlists – hypothetically), and the side-on bus brawl against an army of Deadpool variants both sends up one-take battles and exists as a perfect example of one. My pick would be the set piece that takes place between those two, where the two title characters have it out inside a run-down car. Not only do you get plenty of creative moves due to the cramped space, but the inciting incident is a seething Hugh Jackman monologue that briefly reminds the audience just how good of an actor he is.

9. Vault Escape – Inside Out 2

In an otherwise admirably-balanced film where even the funny scenes are also tugging at the heartstrings a bit while working hard under the surface to set up a ton of necessary exposition as naturally as possible, only one scene pushes the comedy level all the way forward the whole time. And sure, what may have been a hilarious surprise was partially spoiled by trailers – especially the presence of a YongYea-voiced generically edgy videogame hero from the PS1 days locked away in Riley’s conceptual vault of shame – but for me the funniest part was mostly unspoiled: a direct-to-camera children’s television pastiche known only as Pouchy. I was laughing uncontrollably at every frustrating pause bemusing the main cast in the background.

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26 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 5 Game Consoles

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Console, Games, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

If you believed the online speculation roar, it was supposed to be the year of the next Nintendo console, with strong whispers of an upgraded PS5 machine swirling amidst potentially exciting new hardware developments from Microsoft as per those juicy 2023 leaks. While things didn’t quite turn out according to the hype sheet, 2024 was still a fascinating year to write this list. Well, for the current-gen consoles anyway. Get ready for a wildly unbalanced personal ranking based on which console’s 2024 presence negotiated its year of terrible PR with the fewest stumbles. Uh, yay?

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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5. Xbox One

LAST YEAR: 4th

The top three are pretty wordy this year, so I’ll give the aged-out Xbone about as much attention as Microsoft did this year: it was a fun, often unpredictable console to cover over the years, it got a few new games in 2024, but this may actually be the last time I count it on this top five list.

4. Playstation 4

LAST YEAR: 5th

The biggest 2024 event for the PS4 may just have been the sensational May news story from Sony that revealed fully 50% of Playstation gamers still play on the PS4, despite the fact that virtually all PS exclusives have abandoned the machine by now. The pandemic and its chip shortages may have indirectly assisted the eleven-year-old Playstation 4 by turning the successful purchase of its successor into a pricey flex for a couple of years, but thanks to the low graphical requirements of the world’s most played games and the ever-shrinking size of generational tech leaps, the widely-loved slanted box just keeps on trucking. It may have been a quiet one by this list’s criteria, but I say well played.

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25 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 15 K-Pop Singles

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, K-Pop, Lists, Music. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , .

I may have celebrated a decade of K-Pop appreciation a couple of years ago on this site, but 2024 marked a less glamorous – though no less important – milestone for me: it has now been ten years since a slate of Korean label drama that felt no less than calamitous at the time knocked the proverbial scales of fandom off my eyes and I began to listen to K-Pop without loyalty to specific groups, or without even really taking into account music videos until a song or album had already lodged itself in my brain. So basically how I approach the hobby now.

2014 also brought about enough real-life situation shifts that my curated sources of new K-Pop dried up for the majority of the year, and I had to rush my countdown; despite a few time-honoured bangers at the top, that 2014 Top 15 list is still the playlist I repeat the least in my personal listening time. Though nowhere near that dramatic, 2024 at times felt functionally similar: indefinite podcast hiatuses, changes to curated public playlists, and simple differences in the people I see regularly had me scrambling to do a lot more of my own legwork than usual to find the songs I liked.

But 2024 is not 2014; there are a lot more decent tracks around these days and an awful lot more sources to recommend them.

To make this list, a song has to either have a music video or be the clear lead release from its album or EP. To clear up increasingly blurry fringe examples, only songs containing Korean lyrics count, but you should still listen to H1-Key’s Thinkin’ About You and from20’s Demon. It’s also worth mentioning that much of this year’s playlist is defined by simple audio elements produced well, so I recommend the best set of headphones you’ve got.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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15. APT – Rosé feat. Bruno Mars

We are immediately stretching technicalities for this first inclusion, as the relentlessly catchy single-word repetition coursing through the chorus of viral worldwide hit APT seems both too basic and yet too significant to ignore with my “inclusion of Korean lyrics” eligibility rule. So here it is, in all its irrepressible ear-worminess. The song starts with a crunchy beat that doesn’t overcomplicate itself, and Melbourne’s own Rosé is having so much fun it’s infectious, but the track isn’t much to write home about until Bruno Mars appears to add those famous ad-libs and then triple the impact of the chorus with some of the most satisfying harmonies of the year. By the time the bridge arrives APT is firing on all cylinders, and it has solidified itself as one of the most successful western collabs in K-Pop history.

14. Funk Jam – n.SSign

There’s some interesting distortion echoing around the background of the verses in this one, but the core appeal of the song is simple. In fact, it’s so simple that the title – and the pivotal chorus line – pretty handily tells you everything you need to know: you’re listening to a funk jam. It’s not a world-changing funk jam, but it still slaps pretty hard. In the ongoing race to find the worst K-Pop group name of all time, n.SSign put in a strong effort when they debuted last year, but none of their early music moved the needle in quite the same elite way until the boys boiled it all down to a simple keyboard / guitar setup and started messing around with blues-y sliding notes.

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24 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 Movie Characters

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

For our first dip into cinematic countdowns this year, we have a real eclectic mix of villains, protagonists, and a weirdly high percentage of villain-protagonists. It’s perhaps a bit of a light one for memorable comic relief, which traditionally is well-represented here via cameos and supporting cast members, but maybe that says something about the kind of focused film we were able to enjoy repeatedly throughout 2024 as big-ticket ensembles were few and far between.

While not as spoiler-heavy as the next movie countdown, sometimes I do need to spoil plot moments to talk about why I find certain characters so compelling, so tread lightly.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

SPOILERS MAY FOLLOW.

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10. Kid – Monkey Man

Man, I just love this shot (so did Monkey Man’s marketing team, naturally). The film’s unnamed protagonist doesn’t talk a whole lot, and a significant portion of what might be called his character arc amounts to getting beaten up a bunch, but the astonishing behind-the-scenes story of how Dev Patel and his team got this grimy revenge fantasy flick made is so ludicrously lined with hurdles and pitfalls that it can’t help but come through in the writer-director’s own determined, unwavering lead performance. It’s a wonder to behold, and if it wasn’t so believable Monkey Man would probably just go down in history as yet another John Wick clone.

9. Gambit – Deadpool & Wolverine

I still can’t believe this happened. In a movie that already features a Chris Evans fake-out and an audacious, suspiciously prophetic Wesley Snipes one-liner, Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Feige set straight yet another controversial superhero take from X-Men Origins: Wolverine by putting a properly comic-accurate Gambit on screen – from inherently silly purple headgear to heavily exaggerated Cajun affect. Like, they actually did it. They even cast Channing Tatum, which arguably only works as a joke in a movie so reliant on pummelling the fourth wall that it fully expects its audience to remember that Tatum tried to get a Gambit movie off the ground many years ago. I say “as a joke” because Tatum is clearly so excited to be there that he makes the character work anyway, both as a card-throwing badass and a reliable source of comedy.

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23 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 10 Game Re-Releases & Expansions

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

That’s right, last year’s experimental combined list is back for a sophomore appearance. 2024 was hardly the year to drop the double-barrelled concept, sprinkled as it was with plenty of quality remakes, remasters, and expansion content of all flavours to challenge the year’s full-on new releases for quality. This year I can even properly balance the lists at five entries apiece, and I don’t even have Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred, Starfield: Shattered Space, Fantasian: Neo Dimension Eastward: Octopia, or Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven on there! What a world.

And here’s the thing: I don’t have Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, either. Yes, I know, I know. I know! I’m disappointed in myself too, but it just turned out to be one in-depth RPG too many; I got back to my 2022 Game of the Year a week or two late thanks to a pretty busy time in my life, and then soon discovered that despite completing the game I hadn’t even entered the optional dungeon required to access the new content, let alone beaten it. On top of that, my co-op partner for a large chunk of the base game had also lost access to his character. My heart sank, I picked up something else, and just couldn’t find the slot to go back to it.

Even without Shadow of the Erdtree, however, this evenly-divided list of ten entries still features no less than six RPGs. Yeah, it was that kind of year.

Just like last time, the first mini-list only includes re-releases that don’t aim to fully “reimagine” their source material; essentially any entry within the first five categories from this article count, while contenders within the last two are saved for the main list at the very end of the year. Parentheses indicate the platform on which I played each entry.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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RE-RELEASES
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5. Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance (PC)

2024 was Sega’s best year for videogame releases in decades, perhaps ever; this is the first of about a dozen mentions the Japanese publishing veteran is going to get in the lists this year, after I already dedicated an entire article to the team’s 2024 efforts, so strap yourselves in.

The original Switch version of SMT V was already a fantastic semi-open-world evolution of a legendary series, but the crisp menus and smooth traversal were crying out for just a little more performance, so this multi-platform release years later is just what the doctor ordered. The neatly-optimised PC version is perfect for Steam Deck play (or indeed for my AyaNeo Air 1S), especially now that you can save the game anywhere – at long last!

But of course that’s not the main reason Atlus released this edition of the game: an entirely new story route transforms the experience for returning players and provides a more colourful challenge for newcomers, following the time-tested Atlus tradition of videogame re-releases that pack in enough new stuff at every level to defy simple categorisation. The game still loves to make you regret going into a fight unprepared, but fresh tools and abilities level the playing field enough that you feel like you can take on whatever nightmare lies around the corner. In any other year, this kind of game would have been the flagship Sega RPG. But this, unfortunately for SMT V:V, was 2024.

4. Dragon Quest III: HD-2D Remake (NS)

I do not know what delirium-inducing substance has been slipped into the coffee of every single marketing department at every single major Japanese publisher this year, but here’s yet another great JRPG with yet another awful title. Someone at Square Enix was clearly huffing internal jargon fumes, terrified of any possible ambiguity, and looked at only the key art of the FFVII remake team down the hall without actually playing anything.

Luckily, this wonderful revisitation of Japan’s favourite entry from Japan’s favourite RPG series seems to be selling anyway, because it is as close to a warm hug as a JRPG can be for those of us who grew up on turn-based random-battle grinds. Convincing people why the Dragon Quest games are so compelling has been a struggle ever since XI converted me to a series apologist in 2018, but the simplest explanation remains as true for III HD-2D as it was then: the game’s confidence in the strength of its original, very old-school mechanics shines through via some of the most polished presentation in the business.

The Octopath Traveller / Triangle Strategy projects may have introduced and refined that so-called “HD-2D” aesthetic, but it has never looked this colourful or this vibrant before. The series is also clearly over its controversial attitude to stubborn MIDI soundtracks, because the rearranged orchestral score is simply stunning. These significant overhauls work alongside the small ones – like the ability to see your party in between battle turns or the way the menu messages seem to have a voice of their own – to both cushion the game’s more stubborn habits and enhance its time-tested strengths. Bring on the next two awfully-titled entries.

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22 Dec

Best of 2024: Top 5 Disappointments

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Games, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , .

So that was a bit of a turbulent year for entertainment media, huh?

I don’t do an annual “top news stories” list, because year-to-year there’s no guarantee there would be enough to even make one; it would also be kind of difficult to rank their impact when certain headlines seem outwardly positive while so many others skew negative. But wow, it sure would have been fun to tackle one in 2024. By the end of March alone there was already enough content to knock out a solid top five, as the three main videogame console manufacturers had already provided more than enough twists and turns.

For now, the standard disappointments format will have to do, which means only stuff that undercut some form of my own personal expectation counts. Hey, if ain’t broke…

The list is once again a top five this year, so I’ve tried to group each entry into some kind of common trend wherever it makes sense. Let’s get this out of the way.

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VR BEST OF 2024 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. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.

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5. This is Getting Ridiculous, Ninty

I just have to squeeze in a really personal whinge here. Even though Nintendo were guilty of moves much more worthy of other people’s disappointment shortlists this year, I’ve been following the company for so long now that nothing really gets my hopes up enough to shatter them these days – except the ongoing absence of the Nintendo Switch successor console in any official capacity throughout 2024.

The death by 1000 cuts started early: all the way back in January those sensational “internal delay” reports broke, suggesting the machine was planned for release this year but was pushed into 2025. Widespread assumptions that the house of Mario wouldn’t have enough games to fill out another year without a “Switch 2” were gradually proven wrong – and definitively so in a stellar June Direct – but even as the year rolled on and the system’s absence proved those January reports more likely every day, all the hype-fuelled YouTube channels and outlets turned their attention to the possibility that at least we’d see an official reveal this year… Right?

But things got real weird in the year’s second half. When Nintendo crammed a Museum Direct AND an unprecedented double-feature Indie World / Partner Showcase into the final week of August, a console reveal in the traditionally blockbuster September seemed almost guaranteed, but instead we got tumbleweeds; even a set of credible hardware photo / render leaks didn’t expedite Nintendo’s plans. Then came the weirdest October in recent memory: a new Nintendo alarm clock, a sort-of-secret online playtest for a mysterious multiplayer game, and a new mobile music streaming app each came out of nowhere and released almost immediately. Nintendo was trolling fans at that point.

I’m usually an absolute glutton for videogame console speculation, but by November I had well and truly checked out. This disappointment was largely self-inflicted, I admit, but whatever chaos was going on behind the scenes, the Big N’s marketing machine well and truly knew what it was doing.

4. The Wrong Kind of Aussie Film Nostalgia

It’s been a little while since living in Australia has felt like an outright disadvantage for active cinema movie-watchers, but 2024 had me feeling like the old days had returned on at least two oddly similar occasions throughout the year. To be fair, the second instance was a bit more worldwide, but it still formed a nasty pattern from my perspective.

Around April, the latest in a weirdly rapid-fire line of pulpy Guy Ritchie action flicks was set to release, and despite the relatively poor reception of his recent work I was still keen to switch my brain off and enjoy the unique brand of banter he so regularly delivers. But after release date listings all over reliable sites mysteriously vanished one day with no explanation, it was weeks until my friends and I were able to get any answers as to why The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare was not showing in any cinemas, despite Ritchie’s last effort making its slot on time as expected. Apparently it was a weird Amazon deal that wasn’t made massively public in Australia, and a couple of months later the movie unceremoniously hit streaming services. Just what a silly bombastic WWII movie needed. Yay.

Then in September came something even more drastic: I saw (and enjoyed) trailers for George Clooney and Brad Pitt’s much-hyped Oceans reunion Wolfs more than once in cinemas, and marked its late September release date on the calendar. Just one week before that very release date, chief bankroller Apple announced that the movie would no longer receive a cinematic run at all, going straight to the Apple TV+ streaming service instead to help boost subscribers. In terms of late rug-pulls, I’d never seen anything quite like it, but the gambit appeared to work, resulting in huge early watch numbers. Soon enough a major consequence came to light: director Jon Watts revealed he dropped plans for a sequel as a direct response to that exact big-screen backflip. Tell ’em, Jon.

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21 Dec

Best of 2024 Intro

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2024, Lists. Tagged: , , , , , , .

They say the older you get, the quicker the years seem to go by, and usually I’d have to agree. 2024, however, did not go by quickly for me. That was partially because I had some spicy personal stuff going on, partially because the international sport on offer was a ridiculous embarrassment of riches all year long, and partially because I happened to come across this video on the “holiday paradox” right as things were starting to speed up.

But mostly, it was because 2024 had already felt like it had squeezed in several years worth of outlandish videogame news sucker-punches by the end of May, the JRPGs were out in force like it was the 1990s again, worthwhile movies were actually coming from wildly different sources and getting proper coverage in the wake of the blockbuster industry taking a long smoke break, and I went through yet another significant shake-up in my K-Pop / K-R&B listening habits.

It was also a bit of a highlight year for this site, if I do say so myself. I hit my personal goal of publishing a new post every month except February, making it the most prolific year for Vagrant Rant since 2019 – yes, the pandemic made me less productive, go figure – and it would have beaten even that year if Nintendo had just announced the stupid Switch 2. But I’m not bitter about that. Oh wait, no, I am, but more on that tomorrow, when we kick off another year of annual countdowns on Vagrant Rant!

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VR BEST OF 2024 DISCLAIMER

These lists represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting them as I have. My opinion is not fact. Nobody ever agrees with me 100%. Respectful disagreement is most welcome. Please enjoy.

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31 Dec

Best of 2023: Top 10 Movies

Posted by vagrantesque in Best of 2023, Lists, Movies. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , .

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.

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