Evan D.The insidiousness of sex crimes exists not only in the brutality of the moments in which they are committed but also, gruelingly in their refusal to cease. Survivors endure the physical violation by their assailants and then face stigma, shame and dejection from the courts and public in response to coming forward. We’ve seen these dynamics play out across the Me Too movement here in the United States, but the laws around rape in Japan are even more archaic. Standing up against those systems and obstacles is what makes Shiori Ito so brave for documenting her story in Black Box Diaries.
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Evan D.Aging has long been a fascination of cinema as it is the one affliction inescapable from all. Not so equal parts a badge of honor and a sign of weakness, reaching your 80th or 90th decade elicits starkly different treatment. The elderly are targeted by scammers, preying on unfamiliarity with technology and an assumption of mental deterioration. As if that is not bad enough, children and grandchildren begin to treat their elders like they’re fragile. Both of these situations are where the titular Thelma (June Squibb) finds herself in Josh Margolin’s feature debut.
Evan D.Long before the Zoomers and iPad kids, a whole generation of children learned to type through the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing educational game. I have fond memories honing my keyboard credentials during a middle school typing class nearly two decades ago under the tutelage of Mavis Beacon. Similar experience could likely be recalled by many millennials across the United States, including Jazmin Jones, the director of Seeking Mavis Beacon.
Evan D.After a year off we are back with our annual Oscar nomination recap! Last year saw a massive pool of truly phenomenal films, making it difficult to project how Academy voters would winnow down the field of tremendous stories and performances. As always that process picks up some duds and omits some wonderful pieces of art. For the most part, this year was more good than bad and many of the seemingly biggest snubs came in stacked categories. A bit too much attention went to Oscar bait-y Maestro and another film got a baffling pair of acting nominations, but generally it was a day to celebrate in the above the line categories.
As always I will break down the favorites, the potential upsets, the surprises and the snubs in each of the acting categories, Best Director and Best Picture. Surprises can be good or bad so long as the nomination was the most unexpected of the bunch. I will try to highlight as many different films as possible so the snub identified may not be the only one or even the most notable. Finally, and importantly, if you think something has been snubbed, you have to be willing to take something nominated off the board. All of my snub picks will also indicate what picture or performer I would take out to accommodate. Evan D.Finding thematic connection in any given year is always a fools errand, but there is something of a theme to the films that resonated with me in 2023. I found myself latching onto stories about self-determination and definition, especially but not exclusively through art. Some of the most entertaining and moving films this year saw their characters grapple with who they are through their deeds, creations and often destructions. As with most things in film this year, no better example exists than Barbenheimer, half of which made this list with the other half not far behind. Barbie saw a consumerist idea of a woman seek out a life in which she can create ideas for herself, Oppenheimer traced a man whose creation ushered in great and terrible destruction and found himself defined by the devastation he sowed. Whether a through-line truly exists or not, the theme of creation and consequence spoke deeply through my favorite films. Regardless, 2023 was a year of immensely beautiful and wide ranging storytelling on screen. Here are the very best film had to offer this year:
Evan D.Grief has long been one of the most well trodden roads traversed by filmmakers. Cinema loves to look at broken people piecing themselves back together or filling in some loss like the final piece of a healing jigsaw puzzle. Many of the great characters of film history are wounded birds desperate to fly again. Forged in the fire of loss and pain, great heroes emerge stronger for what they have endured.
Hayao Miyazaki’s filmography has explored the deep thematic well of grief, but has often opted to mine deeper. My Neighbor Totoro is a film that leaves the pain on the periphery and focuses on the ability of children to shield themselves from forces that might hurt them. With The Boy and the Heron, Studio Ghibli’s great auteur asks not how a broken child might repair himself, but whether a shattered life is worth resurrecting at all. Evan D.By the time Hunham (Paul Giamatti) and Tully (Dominic Sessa) wander through an ancient art museum in Boston, its already achingly apparent that the yearning for connection felt by the pair is an eternal truth. The Roman Empire was made up of people, and people invariably seek out connection. “There is no new human experience” Hunham declares and perhaps he’s right. The Holdovers is set in the winter of 1970 but in reality the ideas it explores are timeless.
Boys have been sent off to die at war for as long as war has existed and the people left in their wake have always been splintered by loneliness. An early scene sees the graves of a collection of young men killed in World War I and II before expanding out to all the boys of Barton boarding school gathering for the funeral of a young alumnus killed in Vietnam. A long line of carnage that the carefree students step over to get to their winter vacation. Not all of them are so lucky. Evan D.Through a handful of thrilling documentary features Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin have proven themselves extremely capable filmmakers documenting the extremes of human endurance and determination. Their subjects have frequently been willing to risk their lives in pursuit of the impossible and push their bodies to the absolute limit. In some cases — The Rescue — that pursuit is in service of noble heroics, in others — Free Solo — its a vanity to be remembered by history and seen as the hero. Whatever the reason, Vasarhelyi and Chin have become a singular lens through which to see extreme athletes, making Diana Nyad the perfect subject for their first narrative feature.
Nyad is best known as an accomplished marathon swimmer, setting a number of records in the 70s for both distance and speed in open ocean swims of as much as 100 miles. Her failed effort to swim from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida loomed over her other accomplishments and at age 61 she began a series of attempts to finally accomplish the feat. An extreme athlete pushing the boundaries of age and physical achievement, if they were making movies back in 2013, Vasarhelyi and Chin might have followed Nyad’s swims with their documentary cameras. Instead she is the muse of their narrative debut. Evan D.It’s no secret that Sofia Coppola has made a career out of depicting young women and their “gilded cages.” Its a phrase the director uses herself to describe the often opulent locales in which she traps her protagonist. Be it a grand Tokyo hotel, the palace at Versailles or mansions of Beverley Hills, Coppola uses the trappings of beautiful places to accentuate the loneliness of the young women who inhabit them. While Elvis Presley’s massive estate at Graceland may skew more gaudy that gorgeous, it’s halls turns cavernous for the singer’s young paramour in Priscilla.
Evan D.At the AFI Fest screening introduction Hugh Welchman joked that The Peasants was the second, and would probably be the last film animated by hand painting each shot frame by frame. The first, of course, was also made by him and his parter DK, the acclaimed Loving Vincent. A documentary about Van Gogh seems the perfect pair for hand painted animation in the style of its subject. For a follow-up the Welchman’s decided on oil paintings and a nearly 800 page Polish novel, Chlopi or The Peasants.
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