Another year of great movies done. Hi. regular readers of this blog. It's time for me to tell you about all the films I liked in 2023.
Let's mix it up a little. In previous iterations of this roundup, we've put the world cinema selections for last. This time, let's make it first. Why? I just want to. And give that I have an announcement at the end of part 3, there's a bit of a reason for this specific order.
I think in terms of movie watching, 2023 is the first year where we truly found ourselves free of the coronavirus pandemic. And by "free", I mean the virus is totally still everywhere (transmitted even more in its entire history by some accounts) but most of us pretend it isn't there because we're all tired of this shit. People returning to the cinemas categorically includes annoying people, and predictably, twoish years of isolation in our homes messed us up in ways we are still beginning to discover. I have also been guilty of this at times, I am no saint, sometimes I even annoy myself.
Something also shifted the moviegoing public's preferences this year. For some reason, Hollywood tentpole franchise films are no longer the guaranteed financial successes that they were before the pandemic. Disney was hit hard by this shift, with many of their releases (including several movies from their vaunted MCU) barely making a fraction of their budget, and a pittance compared to their past box office glories. Audiences found themselves drawn to biopics such as Oppenheimer and relatively well constructed commercial products like Barbie.
Streaming in festival spaces died down as more festivals returned to face to face screenings, with hybrid setups rare or even gone in some instances. Various film industries geared up their production, but only time will tell how the landscape will change from here on in.
This list includes all my favorite 2023 films that I saw in the past year; any 2022 film is counted; and ranking is relatively loose and based more on vibes than anything else. I used to say "favorites, not best" but heck, my favorite films are the best to me. This list does not include Filipino films, that's in a separate list. Also because I'm a weeb (or something), a lot of these films are from Japan. Go figure.
here is a list of
John Tawasil's
25 WORLD CINEMA FAVORITES 2023 EDITION
25. Shayda (dir. Noora Niasari) - many of the films on this list are hewn from personal experiences. Based on the director's personal experiences in a women's shelter, Shayda is a prayer for breath in a suffocating world where freedom feels like a distant dream.
24. Animalia (dir. Sofia Alaoui) - Animalia is also about seeking freedom - this ambitious, imaginative mix of science fiction, horror and Islamic eschatology depicts metaphorical birds in metaphorical cages, where the end of the world ironically gives them what they need, though not necessarily what they want..
23. Past Lives (dir. Celine Song) - this was dangerously close to not being included in this list, but I do so after a rewatch where I fixated on John Magaro's character, where I read the film not necessarily as a story about fated love, but a film about endless regret; a film not necessarily about immigrants, but a film about trying to understand them; not necessarily a film about those who leave and those left behind, but instead about the people who choose to stay and the people who keep those people where they are.
22. The First Slam Dunk (dir. Takehiko Inoue) - Slam Dunk fans have been waiting years - even decades - for a final conclusion to the story, and this is a near-perfect way of doing so, Inoue proving he has a grasp of film as skilled as his grasp on manga. And even for non-fans, The First Slam Dunk is a wonderful, exhilarating film that will keep you on the edge of your seat up until that final buzzer.
21. Concrete Utopia (dir. Um Tae-hwa) - in the space of two hours and ten minutes, through propulsive, compelling filmmaking, Um Tae-hwa creates a microcosm of the human condition, and shows humanity in all its flawed glory: equal parts civilized and barbaric, equal parts enlightened being and savage animal all in one.
20. Lonely Glory (dir. Keitaro Sakon) - I enjoy a good villain story - or rather, a story about a protagonist so ruthless in their design, so doggedly stubborn in their desire to achieve their goal, that only in retrospect do they see the wreckage (both human or otherwise) in their wake. With a career-highlight performance by Kokoro Morita, Lonely Glory surprised me in ways I didn't expect.
19. Poor Things (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos) - Yorgos at perhaps his funniest and most twisted, Barbie without the corporate paradox and flawed iconography, a claiming of self drenched in sex and violence, messy and flawed and even problematic, but ultimately a blast to experience and autopsy its various little parts.
18. Ryuichi Sakamoto Opus (dir. Neo Sora) - one of my most personal picks in this list. Opus is my favorite concert film of the year, a solemn yet powerful goodbye to a peerless artist who gave and gave to his art until, in the end, there was nothing at all.
17. Seventeeners (dir. Prithvi Konanur) - a harrowing portrait of two people who otherwise mean well and want to do the right thing, but whose hands are tied because of a society more concerned with appearances rather than what is right.
16. Killers of the Flower Moon (dir. Martin Scorsese) - not the best Scorsese, but still a cutting exploration of race, guilt, of perspective, heck, of storytelling itself. Dismantles its source novel's mystery setup and transforms it into an indictment of shameless white American greed.
15. The Taste of Things (dir. Tran Anh Hung) - I never expected to cry to food (in a non hangry context, mind you) this year, but I did, and for good reason. It made me happy, it made me sad, it made me hungry, and it's such a lovely depiction of the many ways we express our love.
14. Blue Giant (dir. Yuzuru Tachikawa) - I've been disappointed by many "jazz" films that only use the medium as a platform in the service of another story, but I've never seen a film that embodies Jazz itself: a chaotic yet somehow synergistic mishmash of creative energy and technical skill. In its musical sections and through a mix of 2d and 3d animation, Blue Giant captures in cinema form the essence of what Jazz is and what it means to fans of that musical genre. Remarkably, it gives up on the fight of proper adaptation - aware of the medium's shortcomings to cover everything, it depicts its source manga in an appropriately jazz-like fashion by riffing on the text. It shouldn't work, but it does, and the result is amazing.
13. Abang Adik (dir. Lay Jin Ong) - an astonishing, gripping film about what it means to be an unseen son of Malaysia whose loudest, most powerful scene is drenched in silence.
12. Shin Kamen Rider (dir. Hideaki Anno) - introspective Hideaki Anno is best Hideaki Anno. Anno frames this legendary tokusatsu hero's story as a meditation on loneliness, our desire to form relationships with an 'other', and how people are both heaven and hell in turn.
11. Io Capitano (dir. Matteo Garrone) - I expected this film to be bleak, and in a way, it is: in this oddysey, many people are left by the wayside. But what blew me away in this film by Matteo Garrone are the small glimpses of humanity, kindness and hope despite it all.
9. River (dir. Junta Yamaguchi) - Junta Yamaguchi has shown with his two feature films how much he enjoys playing around with the medium, telling fantastically structured stories that transcend their gimmick and are legitimately a fun time at the cinema. It's way more fun than many movies with ten times the budget, which is proof that a good movie just needs a good idea executed wonderfully.
8. Do Not Expect Too Much From The End of The World (dir. Radu Jude) - this uncompromising, biting satire of the state of Romania (in both senses of the word) and how its lessons stay unlearned in the course of generations made this one of the most surprising films I've seen this year.
7. A Man (dir. Kei Ishikawa) - one of my early favorite films of 2023, Kei Ishikawa's A Man interrogates the notion of identity through Japan's 'disappeared people,' or Jouhatsu. At times strange and obtuse yet very compelling, it is in a way a spiritual brother to Shohei Imamura's A Man Vanishes (1967).
6. Abnormal Desire (dir. Yoshiyuki Kishi) - Another film that unexpectedly blew me out of the water (was that a pun? lol) This film deals with a sensitive subject in such a tender, human way that I found it quite remarkable, showing its human characters in all their dimensions, good or bad. Also, such an unexpected turn from Yui Aragaki.
5. Perfect Days (dir. Wim Wenders) - no film has wanted me to clean toilets in Japan like this one (I may have visited one of those fantastic toilets a few days ago and left a game of tic tac toe). Wender's latest is a solemn look into the life of an ordinary man who chooses to stop as the world moves around him; a rock quietly sitting in a raging stream.
4. Godzilla Minus One (dir. Takashi Yamazaki) - my favorite franchise film of the year that is frankly light years beyond anything Hollywood has produced in 2023, if only because it recognizes spectacle unto itself does not make a good movie, that metatextuality has ruined the notion of American blockbuster filmmaking, that good characters always elevate a decent movie into an excellent one, and that people aren't exactly tired of franchise films - they're tired of bad ones. RRR showed Hollywood that lesson last year, hopefully they'll get the message this time.
3. Not Friends (dir. Atta Hemwadee) - In the past few years Thailand always had a place in this list, usually for a film that reaches beyond its mainstream bounds and achieves something quite lovely. What starts off as a fun love letter to filmmaking shifts in its second act into an examination of friendship itself, and how we move and inspire each other in small yet profound, invisible yet deeply felt ways. I can only speak for myself, but I found it all deeply moving.
2. Evil Does Not Exist (dir. Ryusuke Hamaguchi) - Hamaguchi's examination of human nature, on the nature and perception of 'evil', and the violence imposed by capitalist interest on indigenous and rural spaces is riveting cinema that lives in my mind rent free ever since I watched it a few months ago.
1. Monster (dir. Hirokazu Kore-eda) - what is a monster? A parent who acts out only in loving service to their child? An education system that devours well-meaning educators and strips them of the ability to express their empathy? Misunderstood people who only want the opportunity to love? Or a society that shuns anyone who strays from the norm? In gentle yet devastating strokes, Kore-eda paints a picture where everyone is seen as a monster in their own ways, but are only human beings trying to live out their lives the way they want.
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Next up is a list of 10 of my favorite Filipino Films so stay tuned for that.
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