While 2023 was a turbulent and stressful year for the film industry… it was also a fantastic year for the movies. It built on the momentum from 2022, when blockbusters came back with a vengeance after the lockdowns, and showed a lot of filmmakers going bigger and even taking some genuine risks. Not just delivering big-screen spectacle but actually pushing what certain genres were capable of conveying. What’s more, quite a few filmmakers that I’ve been ragging on for years like Eli Roth, Will Gluck, Guy Ritchie, and Tim Story redeemed themselves with some quality productions this year. Hell, I even got over my problems with David F. Sandberg; regardless of how disastrous that film turned out, this felt like a year where grudges could be forgotten and we were all working towards better days.
It was also a landmark year for yours truly, although if you were going just by what I put up on here, that might require some explanation. FilmInk kept me good and busy through the year, giving me more work than any other year previous, and… honestly, that I got given so many big-name features to look at (quite a few of which will show up on this list) was a solid reassurance that my editor trusted me to get this shit right.
Also, I finally met one of my personal goals and got one of my write-ups up on the review wall at the Dendy Newtown, a cinema I frequent and that tends to have the better selection of all of the cinemas in my ‘area’ (it’s still a bit of a trek from here in the suburbs).
So, as a last hurrah for a pretty damn good year for both myself and the artistic field I’ve dedicated my time to examining, let’s take a gander at my picks for the Top 20 Best Films of 2023. But first…
Special Mention: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
This used to be the spot for the Best Worst Film of the year, but I’m going to try something different this year and highlight The Film of the Year. Basically, it’s the film that (in my opinion) most encapsulates what the year was as a cultural moment. It could be the film that condenses what the year felt like to live through (Host in 2020), that most dominated the conversation (the Snyder Cut in 2021), that captured the public mood and sentiment (Parasite in 2019… or possibly the Dumbo remake, although both for the same reason), or all of the above (Everything Everywhere All At Once in 2022).
And for 2023… yeah, we’re going with the Man Vs. AI blockbuster. But not just because it’s a sturdy pop culture artifact for the year when AI started to become an actual existential threat (if not a lethal one… yet). This also lands here because it’s so emblematic of how… fucking weird the industry has gotten post-COVID. We are at the point where physical cinemas are on the endangered species list, and the man that industry professionals are banking on to save them is the certified mad lad that we’ve spent several years clowning on for his ego (and usually with good reason).
It is quite the surreal situation we’re in right now, to the point where this whole thing will likely make for its own movie somewhere down the line, but it’s with that foundation that a lot of this list was even able to exist on in the first place. Well done, you crazy, crazy diamond.
#20: Infinity Pool
This is a good benchmark for the list to follow because Brandon Cronenberg’s latest film is about on par with his last feature Possessor, and that came in third the year it came out. Like Possessor, this privilege-pulverising dark tourism satire is fully formed both in presentation and in its ideas, making for a very well-made and highly entertaining libertine libation. As someone who makes a living from chronically overthinking movies, I have a real appreciation for those that give me a to to go over, and the ideas in this one basically explode out of its already-layered premise. Alexander Skarsgard added another notch to his manly belt, and Mia Goth… well, we’ll be seeing more of her later on, but in the year that really got me to notice her as an actress, her deliciously twisted turn here helped solidify her as one of my new favourites working today.
#19: Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan managed another union for the divide between mainstream and arthouse, with this big-name blockbuster about the birth of the atomic bomb that I can easily see teaching a whole new generation of audiences just how real that threat was and still is. It certainly got me thinking about how much I’d taken it as an abstract up to now, with Nolan and Cillian Murphy’s nuanced performance as Oppenheimer himself heaping the emotion onto the notion of such great terror coming out of human creation. In a year dominated by technological advancement serving as an omen of dread in the creative industries, this was an extensive but rewarding look at a time when we went through a similar dilemma and how… horrifying the results were. Here’s hoping we learn from the past so our future looks brighter in a less “My eyes! The goggles, they do nothing!” kind of way.
#18: Saltburn
I caught this on FilmInk detail at SXSW Sydney, with my grandmother in tow, and holy shit, is this a hell of a film to see with a large crowd and/or elderly relative. Emerald Fennell had already gotten into my good books with Promising Young Woman, but this is absolutely unhinged in the best way possible. Barry Keough as class insurrectionist Oliver takes his penchant for sheer unnerving presence and pushes it right over the edge into delectable insanity, doing things with bathtubs and graves that’d make John Waters beam with pride. The whole cast is amazing, bringing out career highlights from actors that I either already hold in high regard (Richard E. Grant) or had basically written off for recent blunders (Jacob Elordi), but it’s Keough’s bloodstained path of malicious envy that makes this perverted, filthy, downright freaky delight so damn good. Can’t wait to see what lunacy Emerald comes up with next; you better not kill the groove, DJ.
#17: Sick Of Myself
One of the more noteworthy events of 2023 (to me, at least) was the widely-lambasted ‘apology’ video from YouTuber Colleen Ballinger. There’s always some kind of Internet drama that gets people crawling out of the woodwork to toast marshmallows on the dumpster fire (another example from the Hip Hop community was Melle Mel’s embarrassing Eminem diss track Kickback), but it really seemed like everyone reacted to that little gem. And it’s not difficult to see why, as it’s not every day that someone responds to sexual abuse and grooming allegations by breaking out the ukulele and singing about the Toxic Gossip Traaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain!
This little Norwegian sleeper (which I’ll admit wasn’t expecting much from when I got sent out to review it) manages to deliver effective satire on social media narcissism and Main Character Syndrome, during the same time frame that the online world got an almost-unthinkable example of just how bonkers that mindset can get. A madcap depiction of Munchausen Syndrome that is just as critical about attention whores as it is about how disabled people are treated in an abled society, director Kristoffer Borgli and star Kristine Kujath Thorp deliver some incredible hate-watch laughs and even some deserved confrontation about how… normal this shit really is.
#16: The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar
Wes Anderson had an amazing year in 2023, with his feature
Asteroid City just barely missing the cut to make this list (confining
my picks to just 20 proved especially difficult this year). But for as terrific
as that film was as a Rosetta Stone for Anderson’s myriad of storytelling
quirks and mannerisms, Henry Sugar is what truly revealed the heights that that
methodology could reach. Through his dollhouse formalism, his adaptation of the
Roald Dahl short story portrayed a Western mystic who discovered how to pierce
the veil of reality… in a way that invites the audience to start doing the
same. Not gonna lie, since watching this, it feels like I can more easily see
the green code in the walls, pushing past the façade of the material world and see the universal oneness.
I went into this expecting the usual Wes Anderson fun and insatiable production design, and it certainly delivered on that, but it also makes for one of the more spiritually fulfilling releases that I’ve ever covered on here. I get the feeling that I really need to start covering more short films on here; I don’t want to miss out on more brilliance like this.
#15: Past Lives
One of my big narrative weaknesses is films that deal with ‘what could have been?’. Ever since I literally got recommended a film by my therapist to help me with my habit of brooding and psychically hitting myself for what I’ve done in the past, and even what I haven’t done. Naturally, that means that a film like this, which deals in unrequited love and the quiet tragedy of a romance that never was, was pretty much destined to get into my good graces. However, even beyond my penchant for this kind of narrative, this likely would’ve landed on here anyway because the film craft and construction on this is next-level.
Celine Song’s script here is one of the best of the entire year, patiently sketching out its central three characters and refining the traditional love triangle dynamic to make any and all pairings both inviting and heartbreaking in relation to all the others. Upon learning about Song staging a Chekhov play entirely in The Sims 4 (I mentioned this in my proper review, and I’ll repeat it here: Truly an amazing example of creativity thriving in quarantine), I was all kinds of hoping that her feature debut would hold up to that ingenuity, and sure enough, she managed it. Brava, Celine Song!
#14: The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes
Just as Harry Potter narrated my childhood, the Hunger Games series narrated my young adulthood. The power fantasy of the new generation making the world better than their parents left it was something foundational in my perception of the world upon leaving high school, and the films themselves are all incredible. The Hanging Tree scene in Mockingjay Part 1 is my favourite moment in any film, perfectly capturing how an artistic creation so small and personal can lead to such grand and reality-shaking actions; viva la revolución!
And then director Francis Lawrence (who helmed three of the four main Hunger Games movies) returned to the franchise, and basically tore the guts out of the lie that this very series fed a whole generation. This is some bleak settling of accounts, following series villain Coriolanus Snow in a world that shows all of the class warfare of the original films, but stripped of all the gloss and glamour, replacing it only with the cold realisation that, all this time, we’ve been watching kids die and thinking it’s okay just because we had a token hero who could totally make everything okay again.
This was one of the more sobering experiences I had with a film all year, and not just for the cold-shower revelation of what the 3rd Wave of YA adaptations ultimately amounted to, now that we’re living in an era when despotism, war, and technological oppression are all factual reality. It also helped clarify something that I’d been wrestling with for a while in my own writing, that being the dichotomy of how horror films treat their main characters. It’s part of the reason why I kept ragging on Eli Roth, seeing him as enforcing a more misanthropic attitude that went against the more empathetic take of, for example, Mike Flanagan.
But then this film comes around, and it dawned on me that splitting hairs on whether we’re supposed to want characters to die or be sad if they do is wholly unnecessary. At the end of the day, I’m still here to see characters die, and it’s time to come to terms with that. Even after all these years, this series is still finding ways to go beyond where I expect films like this to go… even if it means taking its own predecessors to task for what they perpetuated.
#13: Barbie
It’s possible to ‘sell out’ and still deliver something that can be considered true art. I may have some lofty and occasionally-pretentious views on art and cinema in particular, but I still recognise that all commercial art is made within a capitalist system where financial return is the defining trait for what does and doesn’t get made and exhibited. But ever since I saw Method Man rap about candy back in 2011, I’ve understood that skill can break through even the most cynical of circumstances.
It was also confirmed with this particular film, which went full blast with pink pastels and child’s toys to deliver some solid feminist solidarity and a solid candy-coated antidote to the unhealthiness within the Manosphere. Not that they’d ever go near this, because saying that men should find their own happiness that isn’t defined by how many women they can fuck is somehow ‘oppressive’ (y’all as fragile as the joints on an actual Barbie, I swear), but the way that Greta Gerwig and her husband Noah Baumbach explored these topics showed some of the most well-groomed self-awareness of any modern film. Like, in a cinematic age where self-awareness in cinema is largely an excuse to hand-wave laziness, this was insanely refreshing.
#12: Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism
While The Pope’s Exorcist put doubt to whatever fondness
I had for the modern wave of exorcism movies, Godless is what clinched it. It
cleared up all the fantastical window dressing and revealed the actual, horrible
reality of what is commonly understood to be the cleansing of the soul of
demonic influence. My own understanding of spiritual matters has kept me open
to possibility of such things having some basis in reality, but even I at my most woo-woo still finds issue with how much Catholicism is held up on a
pedestal in mainstream portrayals of this practice.
Nick Kozakis managed to make a scarier horror film than anything the Conjuring universe could come up with, and all without relying on special effects to depict some unambiguous inhuman evil that is so unlike how humans are capable of. Instead, he dove deep into the national fascination with true crime, depicting a real-life exorcism case as one of the most traumatic and heart-wrenching things a human being can put another human being through. It highlighted how easily some can commit the worst acts while still completely believing that they are doing the right thing, while also acknowledging how easily desperation can lead us to doing just that.
Also, not for nothing, but Kozakis himself gave me some nods on social media when I posted my initial review; real recognise real. Thanks for doing the Aussie indie scene proud, and looking forward to what you got for us next.
It is frankly exhausting seeing two-bit culture critics talk about how popular entertainment isn’t about escapism any more and how everything is political and the nebulous ‘Left’ want to push their agenda on your children. Because, y’know, art only became political when chunderheads started noticing it.
No, escapism hasn’t gone anywhere and isn’t going anywhere; we’re just more aware of how to use it nowadays. And in this case, we have a delirious French comedy that combines nostalgic American and Japanese media like tokusatsu and horror anthology kids' shows, to make a statement about the way we as an audience engage with escapism and whether it ever was an ‘escape’ from our real world.
By breaking down the goofy-as-fuck trappings of more speculative and sensationalist genres, Quentin Dupieux gets to the core of the matter by showing how so many of the things we gravitate towards in fictional media is more about personal connection than turtle monster go brrrrrr. Oh, this film certainly has its share of whacky out-of-context moments, up to and including a pair of talking lips floating in a bucket of gore, but the deeper emotional moments have to do with the characters and their very human foibles.
It not only cuts through one of the more nauseating modern talking points concerning popular culture, but it also serves as a stalwart defence against the elitist attitudes that SF films still garner in more ‘respectable’ circles. All done with a refreshing briefness that a lot of bigger-name genre fare could learn from; you can accomplish more in 80 minutes than in over two hours if you know what you’re doing.
#10: Nimona
The sleeper cult hit of 2023, this film’s merits go far beyond the obvious. When taken brick-by-brick, this is amazingly well-constructed and so streamlined that it fits snugly into the modern animation market while making the most of its recognisable ingredients. Its climax at the statue of Gloreth was an emotional blow to the heart that rivals Inside Out’s bus ride for moments that made me go “Oh fuck, I’ve been here before”, and serves as another example of how family films can tap into poignancy that evade even the better ‘mature’ features.
But what really makes it land this high is how it fits into the larger conversation concerning LGBTQ representation in media and on our own side of the screen, and the frankly disastrously amount of in-fighting going on within our own community. Seeing Gays and Lesbians employ the same concern-troll tactics against Trans people that had been used against themselves over the decades has been rather heartbreaking to witness, as has the continuing cavalcade of… actually, not holding back here, fucking dipshits like Dave Chappelle, J.K. Rowling, and all the fucksticks within the Daily Wire Expanded Universe doing all they can to drive the wedge even deeper.
Without even getting too direct about such things, using fantasy and world-building metaphor to get the point across, this film took me off-guard the most when it wound up detailing that very conflict and how it serves as just another means of turning the populace against themselves so that no-one fights the real enemy. Nimona herself serves as a deeply affecting portrayal of what that forced Othering can do to people, where being pushed into a corner often leads to self-loathing and outright self-destruction. I was born lucky enough to have my hardware and software match up enough that I didn’t need advanced upgrades to make everything work properly, but I’ve experienced enough dissociation even with that build to know that Trans people deserve better than society has deemed fit to hand them.
And to top it all off, this film’s completion all on its own served as a backhand right in the face of Disney, who thought that Blue Sky Studios finally hitting their stride wasn’t good enough and tried to stop this from being finished. Take notes, Blood And Honey: This is how you stick it to the House of Mouse.
#9: Pearl
Taking the already-phenomenal foundation of X, Ti West and Mia Goth delivered one of the strongest character pieces of the year, and indeed for the decade going forward. The amount of heaving, palpable tragedy on offer here is off the charts, bulking up Pearl as a sympathetic slasher villain by revealing everything that went into her actions in the first film. Her abusive home life, her failed aspirations as a performer, the overall suppression of her individuality, her caged sexuality; this is what happens when you pair a director/writer and a writer/star who know what they have created and how to make the most of it.
But really, if I’m being honest, this film makes it on here purely on the strength of its third act. Between Mia Goth absolutely destroying that monologue, and the waking nightmare of an end credits sequence, the back-end has emotional power that eclipses even its own impressive lead-up. A tribute to every person who had to abandon their own desires out of social and societal pressures, and an acknowledgement of the pain that comes with trying to keep it all together in spite of that.
#8: Saw X
In terms of memorable reactions to movies this year, it’s hard to top “I literally blacked out in the middle of watching this”. In hindsight, I recognise that I tend to get really squeamish when anything involving brain-picking gets shown (I distinctly remember passing right out when first watching a similar scene in Ridley Scott’s Hannibal), so my little out-of-body experience was likely from me cringing so hard that I squeezed my soul out for two solid minutes.
But without even getting into how unique that viewing experience was for me, this earns its spot on this list because I feel vindicated. After spending so many years championing this series, extolling how much I love these films more for their character drama and moral explorations than their gratuitous gore, here comes a film that brings those elements right to the forefront and making audiences realise, hey, this is actually really good!
Personally, I don’t consider this film to be all that different from what the series has offered up to this point. Tobin Bell as John Kramer is still the focus, the story is still about his justification for his torture tests and how he views them as a genuine form of therapy, and how the relationship between him and Amanda is still one of the most engaging as can be found in any horror franchise. It’s just that Kevin Greutert (both as director and editor) made more time to show them off and emphasise that this series is good. Not only that, but he and the writers refined that core to clear up the more unintentional moral issues with what Jigsaw does, and returned him to what I would consider to be his rightful place as a dark anti-hero.
And all this at movie ten. At this stage, most other horror franchises either completely bottom out or switch things up so much that they barely even resemble the original article. But no, this series has reached its arguable high point almost two decades after it first began. I’ve been ride-or-die with this franchise since Saw III, and while I’m not entirely sure if the next film could pull off this same duration, my eagerness to see this series continue to flourish has become as rejuvenated as the series itself. 10/10, would totally blackout again.
#7: Aftersun
Easily the best example of psychological cinema on the whole year, this is also one of the biggest emotional blows of any film I’ve likely ever reviewed on here or elsewhere. Continuing on from what I said about brooding and reflecting on the past back with Past Lives, this look at how much we really know about the people we love hit me like a goddamn train. Seeing Paul Mescal struggling with his inner demons, and Frankie Corio struggling to see those demons, it felt like I was experiencing some real shit about the pain we all experience and how it offers a morbid kind of comfort when we discover that we aren’t alone in living with it.
It also got me thinking quite a bit about my relationship with my own dad, which is a bit distant nowadays and, even when he lived closer to me, I often think that I didn’t take advantage of more personal time with the man while I still could. A lot of my own traits that I consider as integral to my personality, like being young-at-heart after all these years and my sense of humour, I believe I inherited from him… and watching this, I wondered both if I knew enough about him to know if that was true, or if I would be able to tell him so before something… irreversible happens. I talked about telling my mum how much I loved her after watching this film in my review, but I still need to do that with my dad. I might even show him this movie; maybe he’ll see the same things that I did.
With each new John Wick entry, Chad Stahelski and Keanu Reeves just keep pushing the genre ceiling higher and higher. Going beyond the world-building excellence offered by the first film, Chapters 2 and 3 built up the visual stakes until we reach Chapter 4, where it’s like a grand work of violence art. It is far more than just the latest entry in the franchise; it is the amalgamation of every advancement these films have made for modern action cinema, elevating the genre to a status so glorious, so lofty, so mindblowing, that I doubt even its own follow-ups will be able to match it. I mean, good Dude, that staircase scene is as exhilarating as it is bloody hilarious.
It's a nearly-three-hour epic that will serve as the artistic ideal for anything that would dare to call itself an action film going forward. There’s little chance of anything, even within this same franchise, being able to meet this level of excellence, but the market overall would benefit from more filmmakers at least trying to.
#5: Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
By sharp contrast, here’s a film that the market could
learn to be less like. Words cannot express my horror when, after being
so gosh-darn happy about this film’s sequel coming out in 2024, news dropped about how much production crunch went into this film’s creation. It would take an actual miracle for Beyond The Spider-Verse to make that release window, and quite frankly, the conditions that'd have to be met in order for that to happen would be so disastrous, I wouldn't even want it after all that.
No amount of great art is worth people being exploited in order to create it,
and if higher-ups aren’t able to conceive of creating things without grinding
workers into the ground to do it, then quite frankly, they shouldn’t be
involved in this industry. Phil Lord may have some modern animation classics under his belt, but that's no excuse for the frankly absurd micromanagement he pulled behind the scenes. To quote Seth Rogen as Steve Wozniak: "It's not binary. You can be decent and gifted at the same time." Do better, dude.
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, holy shit, this is a great movie. It takes the crazed eclecticism of the first film and found ways to go even further with it, creating a non-stop kaleidoscope that compressed all of reality into a technicolour typhoon strung together with infinite spider webs. That it managed to get to the heart of the character of Spider-Man, and the unfortunate attitudes towards telling stories with him across all media, is an outstanding accomplishment for the continuity all on its own, but it became truly incredible when delivered with something that feels like the nexus point for every single piece of animation that preceded it. Pure, unfiltered sensory overload cinema, and despite what I originally said, I am more than willing to wait for the conclusion of this story if it’s delivered at this same level. If I have to choose between an immediate exploitative product and a delayed ethical product, there’s no choice to be had; do it right or not at all.
#4: Beyond Utopia
This film legitimately intimidated me when I first had to write about it for FilmInk, and indeed still intimidates me just trying to reiterate those same points here. Its sheer existence as a piece of media is an act of bravery above and beyond anything I’d ever be capable of in my lifetime; no amount of vitriolic or doting write-ups about fictional stories will ever match the impact of seeing a film journalist actually follow North Korean defactors as they make the long trek from their authoritarian hellscape to safety. The thrills on offer here watching footage where, at any moment, the people on-screen could be in actual danger outmatches anything else on this list, including the films yet to come.
Everything I have ever said about cinema as a vital part of human existence and its power to create real change in our reality can be applied here, as Madeleine Gavin and her guerrilla team of genuine heroes vividly capture both the nightmare nation of Kim Jong-il and his brood, and the valiant efforts of those who crossed numerous state lines to escape it. If I had to highlight a single film on this list that must be watched, it’d be this one.
#3: Babylon
For a good few months, I was convinced that this was going to be at the top of this list. Damien Chazelle took the biggest of big swings and (potentially) bet his own career on it. It arguably goes even further than any of the other ‘storied filmmaker shows how much they love films’ films that have come out recently, as this not only holds onto the artistic ideal of the medium, but also doesn’t pull any punches in showing how much damage it does and how much is inflicted in its name. From the studios that exploit workers, to those same workers living beholden to public perception, to the aggressive shifts in production norms that can leave entire swathes of the industry behind, Chazelle shows all of the blood underneath the bronze.
And he does this while making an absolute banger, creating visual spectacle that is as gargantuan as the cultural ramifications within, managing to make even the bigger efforts in 2023 and 2022 look like mere target practice in comparison. The balancing act being done here with weighing up the dirty business behind the scenes and the genuine art in front of them is still mesmerising to think of, not to mention the genuine risk made with the spellbinding finale, condensing over a century of film history into just under three minutes. I’m not saying I blame anyone for being absolutely befuddled at seeing Na’vi show up in this movie; I’m just saying that it makes sense in context.
Justin Hurwitz’s soundtrack deserves a very special mention as well, as it has become my favourite film soundtrack of all time. I’ve returned to it on-and-off throughout 2023, because there are few things that get that frisson building like those glorious horns and infectious chants. FUCK, I love these tunes. And I love the hell out of the movie they were made for as well.
#2: Poor Things
This marks a first for this blog, as my initial review was the first I had posted after watching the film in question twice. I’ve returned to films the year they came out before, but not during their initial theatrical release window. Not since Spy Kids 3D have I done that, and that was (as far as I can remember) only because I missed the first ten-or-so minutes on first viewing. With this, it was because I felt the need to confirm for myself that the story of Bella Baxter, the autistic an-soc hedonist bi badass bitch, was indeed the most seen I had ever felt watching a movie. So, I doubled-up on reviews over Christmas so that I could return to this film in the cinemas without having to worry about scheduling conflicts, and I can safely confirm that, yes, this film is fucking amazing. Hell, I can do you one better: I can confirm that this film’s depiction of a woman forsaking her mask, and engaging with her own desires and ambitions without restraint, changed something fundamental within me. Story time!
So, I saw this film at Event Cinemas in George Street at the Sydney CBD; I go there pretty regularly for FilmInk screenings, and even for my own writing, and there’s a certain… phenomenon I’ve gotten used to seeing when I’m in the area. More times than not, there will be a street preacher somewhere in the area between Town Hall and the nearby church, banging on about what-in-the-fuck-ever that they think is so vitally important to yell at people just trying to make the next train. Now, between my internalised hang-ups regarding religion as a Queer person, and my habit of impromptu theatricality out in the wild, I’ll admit that I’ve had thoughts about confronting these people before. Without fail, every time I pass by these preachers, I am filled with the insatiable desire to yell “Hail Lord Satan!” at the top of my lungs as I walk by.
Unnecessary? Maybe. Potentially dangerous, since this is the same area where local legends get jumped by police for far less? Possibly. Over the top? Undoubtedly. But then, that’s why I always suppressed that desire. Bite my tongue, keep my head down, don’t make waves; just… be normal. Of course, as I got into in my review proper, that push to suppress my natural instincts can do a lot of damage, and it’s something I’ve been dealing with ever since I was first diagnosed as autistic. Even now that I’m at a stage in my life where my amount of fucks to give about what people think about what I say and do is at an all-time low, I still struggle with being authentically me.
But as I left the cinema that day, and overheard yet another bible-thumping mouthpiece (this time going on about how God can cure mental illness...), I felt the mask slip off. And I actually did it. With my full chest, face to the sky, and leaving without another word, even as someone tried to pull me aside to ask me more about my thoughts on Satan. Maybe I just gave that preacher more fuel for their own rantings, or maybe I just gave everyone there a decent-enough story to tell when they get asked how their day was, but I truly do not care either way. All I know is that the feeling of liberation I felt that day, of finally being able to tell that, yes, that was me who did that, is something I wouldn’t have traded for anything in the world. I wanted to bottle that feeling so I could always remember that, no matter how crippling my social anxiety may get (even if there’s no one around to socialise with), I am my own person.
So yeah. This is one of my new favourite films, and it led me to a moment that felt like a core memory being created. What could possibly top that? Well…
#1: Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3
It is highly unlikely that Marvel will ever make something this good again. A film that couldn’t have been made by anyone else, that derives emotional power specifically because that person made it under these specific circumstances, probably won’t turn up on the company assembly line anytime soon. It is the zenith of James Gunn’s resurgence arc, taking shots at those like Mike Cernovich who tried to get him fired, and at Disney for nearly doing just that before back-peddling to try and make sure something worthwhile would come out of the MCU post-Endgame. There's been some films I've liked, but I'd hardly call them 'essential'.
As someone who has been on his side from day one (those jokes were indeed disgusting and tasteless, but the conflation between that and him actually being an awful human being… yeah, I sympathise with how shitty that feels), this feels like the culmination of Gunn's entire career, going all the way back to his script for Tromeo & Juliet. A warm and honest hug of reassurance to every idiot, every misfit, every dropout, and every fuck-up, telling them… telling us that it’ll all be okay, so long as we have each other. We all deserve happiness, and not just what others think is ‘right’ for us.
While the larger context of its creation certainly adds to its impact, since this is the kind of harmony between real-world and fictional thematic texts that makes for the ultimate underdog story, the emotional punch of this film is just out-of-this-world. Seeing Rocket Raccoon’s origin story, and how deeply the rest of the Guardians care about him… I mean, forget the fact that it got me gushing water out of my eyes like a power washer when watching it (both times, at the cinema and at home), just writing that now has got me tearing up. And it's not just the trauma that he goes through that gets that reaction; it's also the moments when not only did he reclaim his personhood from the High Evolutionary (without a doubt the most hatefully watchable villain of any superhero film) but fought to make sure no one else would go through what he did.
Rocket is my superhero. He represents an inner strength and ability to overcome one’s own trauma that I aspire to, and hope to live up to. That is what superheroes as an ideal are meant to be, after all: Positive human traits raised to a refined, paragon status, that are able to lift us up and inspire us to become better as individuals. The very idea that the filmmaker capable of this is going to be doing Superman next excites me to no end, and definitely softens the blow of the MCU likely never reaching this height again, since DC very well could in the coming years. Even the DCEU (which, both during and after the Snyderverse, I admit to mostly liking), at its peak, never got this deep into the core of my being. 2022's The Batman has already been dethroned as my new favourite superhero film.
I mean, even outside how much this bent my heart in half (as soon as Dog Days Are Over started playing, I absolutely lost it), this film still slaps. Everything from the performances to the set design to the effects to the dialogue to the action (that hallway one-er is fucking legendary) fits together perfectly… actually, no, I don’t want to say that. After all, this is a film all about embracing the beauty of our imperfections, and how perfection is an ideal that isn’t worth aspiring to in the first place. This film is a shining example of how there are better things to be than perfect, like being yourself. Flaws and all. And between these last two films, I am confident that I can traverse the new year with my head held high, ready to face whatever may come. Whether it’s new filmed garbage for me to rail against, or new sensory delights for me to gush about, bring it all on. And I hope that you’ll join me as the work begins anew in 2024.
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