Happy Post-Oscars week! I know I generally have my top 10 films of the year out right before the Oscars, but Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has been keeping me thoroughly distracted. I am hoping to get that out by the start of next week. Congratulations to all of the winners at the Academy Awards, especially for my boy Christopher Nolan FINALLY getting the recognition he deserves. Time to give my final 2023 movie reviews.
Maestro
I did not vibe with this movie AT ALL. I think Bradley Cooper is a talented actor and a somewhat talented director, but he needs to take a break from the Oscar-bait films. This movie was supposed to be a biopic about Leonard Bernstein, but after two hours I still felt like I knew nothing about him. It was an interesting choice to highlight Bernstein’s marriage as opposed to the rise in his musical iconography, which I was hoping to see more of. A lot of the dialogue felt cringeworthy and a bit too artificial, trying too hard to be set in the 1950s.
The cinematography is quite good and you can tell that Cooper has a good eye behind the camera, but this makes me wonder if he might be better being the director of a film that he doesn’t star in. For a film that desperately tries to sell you on its importance and emotional resonance, it unfortunately lands quite flat.
Grade: C-/60
Rye Lane
Kind of watched this on a whim with a friend and had no idea what it was about. It’s hard to truly love a rom-com when you don’t believe the chemistry between the two leads. Unfortunately that’s how I felt about Rye Lane, even though tonally it was great, and the movie really popped with its bright visuals. The premise of the film was great too, paying homage to similar films like the Before Trilogy, where a relationship begins to bud after one long hangout. It’s also quite funny at times too, but again, hard to truly get invested when you can’t buy into the two leads’ relationship.
Also, can I just say, I HATE the fisheye lens cinematography. I find it so distracting and 99% of the time it is such an eye sore. Unfortunately, this movie has so much of it, and I found it really annoying.
Grade: B-/73
Blackberry
Blackberry tries its hardest to emulate the magic of The Social Network, and mostly pulls it off. The story about the rise of the Blackberry phone is mostly interesting, with Glenn Howerton providing some truly dazzling Dennis from It’s Always Sunny energy.
Films like this one are always fascinating because everyone loves a good underdog story. Most of the dialogue is pretty snappy similar to Aaron Sorkin’s work, but every now and then it veers a bit too much into the fantastical where people start to become more like caricatures rather than real life people. Overall, it’s a pretty fascinating look into an often forgotten piece of hardware that was once at the top of the world for a brief moment in time.
Grade: B/79
Anyone But You
Sydney Sweeney’s rise to stardom has been quick and widespread, and I have been a willing participant. I first heard of her through the HBO show Euphoria, which I refuse to watch because I don’t want to see adults playing teenagers struggling with sex and drug addiction. I used to think that Sweeney was just a very marketable actress with limited range, until I saw her in Reality, which left me quite impressed with her. Naturally, a rom-com featuring her and Glen Powell seems to be a match made in heaven. Two hot people being hot and doing hot things? What’s not to love?
Well, I think the film is pretty good! The premise is perfect for the genre, and it scratches that itch that people will want to see in a rom-com. I gotta say though…while Glen Powell is great, Sweeney is…not as great. A lot of her line delivery seemed quite lifeless to me, which is a complaint that I’ve heard about her in the past.
Regardless of her acting, it’s hard to deny the chemistry between the two. It’s a fun movie that passes the time quickly. Anyone But You has also made quite a lot of money as well, so it’s nice to see that people are going to theaters to check it out, especially for a genre that hasn’t been entirely profitable for a while especially because it’s more likely to go straight to streaming nowadays. I know that there are rumblings for a sequel and I don’t know how that would happen based on the premise, but I’ll most likely be tuning in.
Grade: B/76
American Fiction
Jeffrey Wright leads a clever satire about black people “selling out” in American Fiction, and is one of the funniest films of the year. It’s got a lot of interesting social commentary about “blackness” and themes of identity.
While I don’t think the ending is quite as satisfying as I hoped and at times it gets a bit too overambitious in its messaging, this is definitely a film worth watching. I think there are a lot of films out there made by black filmmakers that try to capture the nuance in social commentary that American Fiction largely achieves, but come short. This is a refreshing story bolstered by some solid performances, especially from Wright who absolutely earns that Oscar nomination.
Grade: B+/81
The Taste of Things
If you decide to see this film, be warned: you must not watch it on an empty stomach. If the opening of Saving Private Ryan is an all-out assault on the senses when it comes to the hellishness of war, The Taste of Things‘ opening scene is an all-out assault on the senses with food for a legit 20 minutes.
Watching this film reminded me that there are few things more erotic than food. I mean, this is the food-porniest of all food-porn movies. The sights, the sounds, the smells. I know you can’t smell a movie, but you can pretty much smell this movie. It’s one of the most beautiful films of 2023, a celebration of French cuisine and the French expression of love. I’ve never seen a movie directed by Tran Anh Hung before, but I’ve certainly developed an appetite for his work and I definitely want to see more. Finding a good romance movie seems very few and far between nowadays, but 2023 gifted us with Fallen Leaves and The Taste of Things, so I am quite content with how things have been going this past year for a genre I’m not as well-versed in. I can’t wait to watch this movie again sometime at home, in front of a huge assortment of dishes ready to eat.
Grade: A-/86
Perfect Days
Ah yes, toilet cleaning ASMR: the movie. Perfect Days is a quiet and slow paced slice of life film that is heavy on the vibes and light on the story. I’ll admit that the first half of the film felt a tad repetitive and slightly boring to me, but things really turned around in the second half. Not necessarily because a lot of exciting things happen in the latter half, but more because of the character finally clicking for me, leading to more meaningful character interactions. Kōji Yakusho is wonderful as Hirayama, a man of very few words but with a simplistic and optimistic outlook on life. It’s always fascinating to see films through the eyes of an everyman, and it certainly helps that it takes place in the beautiful backdrop of Tokyo. It’s nice to see a movie where loneliness isn’t portrayed as a bad thing, because there are a lot of people out there in the world who enjoy time to themselves and living a quiet lifestyle. However, I do wonder how happy-go-lucky Hirayama would be if he had to clean American public toilets instead of Japanese ones. He might be really depressed then.
Grade: B+/81
Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos’s newest Emma Stone collaboration is stunning in its artistry and beautifully filmed. Remember how I said earlier that 99% of movies with the fisheye lens aesthetic are an eye sore? This is the 1%. I’m now convinced that Lanthimos is the only director who can pull off fisheye lens. The production design is immaculate in Poor Things and the title cards for each chapter are perfection; I wish I could have them framed in my house.
With all that being said, I did not enjoy this movie, and found it quite frustrating. Without giving too many plot points away, the film is essentially about a character named Bella Baxter (played by Emma Stone) who experiences her sexual awakening and spiritual enlightenment in her journey across Europe. As she becomes more exposed to the world and the philosophies that shape those around her, all those influences slowly begin to form her worldview as she becomes more independent in thought. I found the world of Poor Things to be very fascinating, and Emma Stone’s performance is certainly a very bold one worthy of the accolades she’s received. However, whenever Bella would become curious about the world, it would always revert back to that of a sexual nature, something that the film is overly indulgent in. I felt like half of the movie was of Bella having sex, which got really repetitive and uncomfortable for me. The movie could have benefitted a lot more from having different types of intellectual stimulation with situations that broadened Bella’s mind, but too often the director confined the viewer to the bedroom instead.
It’s hard for me to give Poor Things a bad grade, because objectively speaking it’s quite fantastic on all fronts. It’s a shame that the narrative doesn’t hold up as well because I really would have liked to love this one. Lanthimos continues to be a very divisive director for me, and after giving a number of his films a shot, I’m not sure I want to keep sticking around, no matter how many awards his movies get.
Grade: C+/66
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