Back in Action!
Surprise, bitch! Bet you thought you've seen the last of me!
Just when you thought you could get rid of me, I’m popping back into your inboxes and social media feeds! Hello!
The reason for my disappearance from this Substack during the winter comes down to the fact that things were happening that I didn’t want to write about. I was living the “after” scenes of a horror movie. In January, I moved from the apartment building where I went through so many traumatic things into a new place. The rest of the year was learning exactly what it is like to leave a haunted house. It’s weird.
In some ways I felt safer, the people who hurt me don’t know my address. I am going out of my way to keep it that way. I can go to bed with the knowledge that there isn’t really a chance the people who hurt me are going to come breaking in again. It is nice. I breathe easier. I have less nights plagued by nightmares. That’s all great.
However, when you leave a haunted house, there are also a lot of messy negative feelings. The most prominent of which was grief. Leaving that apartment made the situation things feel final in a way that they did not feel before and it finally made me realize that I had lost so much. I lost my home, I lost my family, I lost the concept of who I was going to be and who was going to love me (who had loved me). The estrangements began to feel more like deaths. And I realized I had to mourn them.
In many ways it is more dramatic than it sounds. 2023 was delightful in that it was the first year in a long time where I am coming out of it without a new thing that will plague my nightmares on a recurring basis. It was a year without a Major Traumatic Event, and after years of struggling to survive. Years where traumatic events were just normal stories? It’s a blessing. I’m blessed.
Still, I was mourning. Anniversaries and Big Days hit more than they usually did. There was a solid bit of time where I just did not socialize with people. I would take myself out to things, but avoid people. I was hospitalized for a bit with a kidney infection and didn’t have anyone to put down as an emergency contact, and so there was a chunk of time I was bitter and scared about that.
And all of those feelings are fine, but I also didn’t have the energy to write about them. Many people can write lovely things about traumas they have suffered. Many people can turn that into gold. XOJane certainly made a killing on it back in the day. However, if there is anything I have realized this year itis that I am not one of those people. I have a therapist who listens to me ramble about these things on a weekly basis and that’s healthier than a Substack.
Still, I would like to get back to writing again. There are so many dumb things that I have seen that I need to ramble about (My Life with the Walter Boys is the dumbest show I have binged in quite a bit!). There are so many little stories I would like to put somewhere. And now that Twitter is dying, well, where else is there to put them? Hopefully, in 2024, I will be in a headspace to put them here. For my sake.
For now though, let’s get to the impetus for me reviving my Substack. It’s time to discuss my Top 10 Films of 2023.
Top 10 Movies of 2023
I saw too many new releases in 2023. 250 of them! That is a bonkers number and I have no idea how or why I accomplished this feat. Upon thinking about it, I assume that it was because I treat AMC A-List’s ability for subscribers to see up to three films this week as a required weekly task instead of an upper limit that the company hopes you do not reach. I truly have no idea though how I fit in so many movies into my life. All I can say is that Nicole Kidman should give me a medal, and the following ten were my favorites of the lot.
The Teacher’s Lounge
Middle school is hell. The Teacher’s Lounge uses this basic reality to spin an engrossing thriller about a teacher who thinks she can do the right thing and quickly realizes that it is easier thought than done. The best thing about this movie is the way it makes thriller moments out of what would seem like mundane situations — an interview with the student newspaper, team building exercises, the return of a test, gossiping in the break room. Normal things become anxiety inducing in this movie as the central character realizes the limitations of both herself and the institutions that she’s in. The movie also has a real handle on the way that young teens can be nightmares. It’s easy to note that middle schoolers bully each other but the over-righteous student reporters who believe they can pinpoint the school’s institutional issues with their seventh grade overzealous editorializing (and charge extra because they want coffee!) were a nice touch that fits in with modern culture. Even the costuming and hairstyling is wonderfully unglamorous, as the main character’s bun is never perfectly done which would never be the case in a Hollywood production. Everyone in this movie is struggling and that is what makes it compelling to watch.
Killers of the Flower Moon
Killers of the Flower Moon was probably the film that I had the highest expectations for when I finally went to see it. I had read the non-fiction book it was based on, and thought it was a compelling, horrifyingly unknown story. The changes that Martin Scorsese said he was making to focus more on Osage Member Mollie (as opposed to FBI investigator Tom White), seemed like a smart way to go, as the book makes her the heart of the story. Plus Robert DeNiro seemed like pretty good casting as the main orchestrator of the atrocities in William Hale. Coming out of it, I found that I didn’t find that every choice worked for me (I am on the side of history that found Brendan Fraser to be doing Too Much), but the ones that did made an impact. Lily Gladstone is great as Mollie and I am so happy that she is going for Lead at the Academy Awards, where even if I don’t put much stock in them anymore, I would be thrilled if she won. The film is incredibly long but I did not want to leave the theater to go the bathroom even when I had to. And the ending scene and cameo? A nice little one bit that encapsulates so much — how we commodify crimes, how we forget victims and how easy it is to get away with murder for certain people (even when you’re caught). It is even a reminder that Scorsese knows that it wasn’t fully his story to tell. It may not be the best ending of the year, but it’s a standout that I think of months later.
8. The Holdovers
The movie experience shapes how you view a movie. This isn’t an opinion I hold, it’s a fact. There’s a part of me that believes that if I saw Past Lives on any day but the messy emotional one that I did end up seeing it on that it would have be enon this list. There is also a part of me that knows that the audience I saw The Holdovers with boosted it onto this list in turn. It was Saturday of Halloween weekend at AMC Lincoln Square. The audience was mostly elderly white people who had nothing better to do that weekend but see the latest Alexander Payne movie. They adored it. Every joke fucking hit. One hit so hard that I worried a person was going to die from laughing. And when you’re in a theater that’s communally enjoying something, you enjoy it too. The performances hit better. The cinematography hits better. The jokes hit better. I am glad I saw The Holdovers the way I saw it, because it let me love it. It’s nice to love things.
7. Asteroid City
I feel like Asteroid City may possibly be Wes Anderson’s most divisive movie ever? From conversations with friends and being a human being with a Letterboxd, I have found people have either loved it or hated it without much ground in between. As you could probably guess by its placement on this list, I, personally was a fan of Asteroid City. I was into how the movie was a puzzle box that didn’t always make sense and how it uses that structure to grapple with the many things we encounter on a daily basis that just don’t make sense — love and grief and life, in general. “I don’t understand the play.” That’s the point. That’s what makes it great.
6. Air
2023 has been the year of capitalism movies. These are movies that are movies, but also are a pseudo-advertisement for a product. While most people are cynical and bitter towards the genre, I have found that everyone seems to have their exception. For the majority of people, it was Barbie. For hipsters, the choice seems to be BlackBerry. For me? It was Air. I saw Air at a time when I was very sad and I came out of it feeling better because it was such a well-made basic crowd pleaser. Chris Messina cursing out people! Ben Affleck being ridiculous! That one time when Matt Damon just says Adidas is made up of Nazis! For two hours, I just had a good time and that’s what cinema is supposed to be about sometimes! Enjoying yourself while watching a story play out on the big screen. And, I am not ashamed to admit, the movie was so good, I caved and bought some Air Force 1s on Poshmark after seeing it. I love them. I love Air. I don’t love capitalism, but I’m allowed my exceptions, okay?
5. Oppenheimer
I was dreading Oppenheimer going into it. Christopher Nolan had exhausted me with Tenet and Dunkirk and The Dark Knight Rises. The idea of a three hour biopic on the man who spearheaded the nuclear bomb directed by him and featuring many actors in key roles who were beginning to tire me didn’t seem appealing in the slightest (It should be said that Cillian Murphy —whose minute of screentime in The Dark Knight Rises is the one thing I am wholly positive on when it comes to that movie— was not one of those actors). And yet, after seeing Oppenheimer, I became a devotee immediately. I read the 600-page book it was based on! I spent too much time making sure I could get an AMC A-List reservation to see it in IMAX 70MM like a true film bro! I’m considering going back to the 70MM IMAX when it rereleases next month! The idea that Oppenheimer was a man who lived his life as a guy who never realized that his actions as consequences hit to me. The technical work got to me. And, the ending, when it all comes full circle? That really got to me. Just when I thought I was out, Nolan has pulled me back in to his cult of devotion.
The Zone of Interest
It is a movie that you can’t believe got made and then became so successful that it is running a pretty successful awards campaign — a Holocaust movie that focuses on the people doing business and living their lives outside Auschwitz’s walls. It is a film that reminds you that evil isn’t always dramatic or pompous. Evil is sometimes just having a birthday party while you ignore the sounds of people being tortured in the background (the sound design in this is so compelling and vital, it’s a shame it never got a Dolby release). Things are bad, but not for these characters. So does it matter? The audience should hopefully know that of course it matter. But, given our current times, and the amount of pro-genocide propaganda ads that I can’t seem to escape lately. I’m not entirely sure that they do.
Monster
I almost didn’t see Monster. If not for my commitment to filling in all of my weekly A-List slots, I would have skipped it because it wasn’t put on my radar and I wanted to avoid the logistical hassles of see it (it was playing at the AMC in Times Square … the land of a thousand escalators). I am so happy that I braved those escalators to see it, because I left the theater so excited to read anything I could about it. I never should have doubted Hirokazu Kore-eda, as it was only last year when Broker made my Top 10 Movies of 2022 list even though I almost skipped that as well (we will not discuss The Truth). A moving tale about perspective and the many things we can never know about another person, Monster tells the same story three times over and each time it becomes more emotionally impactful. Everyone can be a monster, but everyone has more to them as well. Sometimes it’s just a matter of where you are looking.
May December
There may be a running theme in this list this year — I am either ambivalent or outright dreading a movie and then end up being pleasantly surprised by it. May December is the peak version of that occurrence for me in 2023. On paper, it seemed like catnip for me: the Mary Kay Letourneau case meets a takedown of overserious actor preparation. But then all the initial reviews seemed to focus on Camp. The hotdog line gets so much play in write-ups that I was worried that the abuse case at the center of all of this was going to be left behind to focus on antics instead. Mommie Dearest for a new generation, if you will. Thankfully hotdogs aren’t the wire hangers of 2023 and May December focuses much more on the many forms of exploitation at its story, rather than just being Camp. At the heart of it is Charles Melton’s affect portrait of Joe, the young husband who is slowly coming to terms with his history and how much it has cost him, as he is simultaneously exploited once again by Portman’s actress for her allegedly Important Art. The movie performs a hire wire act in mocking many things at once (Hollywood, white women who get away with abuse because they act ignorant) but in a way that takes it all seriously but with a wink that still makes it come across as more than a straight up lecture. One of the films I can’t wait to revisit in the new year.
Perfect Days
If there was any movie that I needed to see this year, it was Perfect Days. There has not been a more validating movie experience. I kept weeping, not from sadness, but just in the little ways that it reminds you that perfect days don’t have to be Big or Great, they just have to have the little things that make you joyful. Driving around to the perfect song. Playing around with shadows. Indulging your hobbies. Fucking around with the vending machine. Dealing with annoying co-workers or distant family members or hassles at your job. The perfect day is the one you’re living in, even when it sucks, even when you’re doing stuff that seems menial. Honestly, I am making myself weepy just even typing this brief capsule up. I loved this movie. I love movies. I love talking about movies, even if nobody pays me to do it (even if nobody cares what I think!) I hope to be able to indulge in all of these things again in 2024, a year that will hopefully be filled with many imperfect perfect days.
Welcome back!