My Best Films of 2023 (ranked)

Ceylan is one of best filmmakers alive and this long, wordy film testifies his maturity further. The allegorical dry grasses in the snow covered landscape only appear in the final 10-15 minutes putting the enigmatic title in perspective. George Bernard Shaw and Emile Durkheim get mentioned in the credits and one can note some connections. The film belongs to the trio of Akin Aksu, Ebru Ceylan (Nuri's wife) and the director, who co-wrote the earlier Ceylan film "The Wild Pear Tree." Merve Dizdar (Best Actress winner at Cannes) and Ece Bagci (Best Supporting Actress winner at Chicago) are indeed enigmatic. Ceylan watchers could miss the camera magic of Gokhan Tiryaki, Ceylan's collaborator on most of his earlier films.

An Australian film in black and white, directed by an immensely talented indigenous Australian who directs, writes his original screenplays, cinematographs, edits, writes the original music.... a veritable Ermanno Olmi. Every aspect of the film is a sheer delight. My full review: https://moviessansfrontiers.blogspot.com/2023/11/282-talented-indigenous-australian.html

This debut film of Vietnamese director Thien An Pham won the Golden Camera award at the Cannes international film festival 2023 for the Best debut film, the Roberto Rossellini award for the Best film at the Pingyao (China) and the Best Asian feature film award at the Singapore international film festival. Surprisingly, this film was not competing in the main section of Cannes put in the parallel section called the Director's Fortnight. However the Golden Camera award asserts its true credentials of quality.

The film is a slow-moving tale on the urban/rural divide in Vietnam, the effects of the Vietnam war on the elders who survived and were soldiers in that war, elderly women who survived near death experiences and can describe them, human interactions with birds, animals and nature, incredible cinematographic sequences that remind you of Weerasethakul's "Memoria," Zvyagintsev's "The Return" and Reygadas' "Post Tenebras Lux" without any direct references. Notably, the lead character in the film has the same name as the director. A film that puts Vietnamese films in the forefront of world cinema.

Definitely, one of the two best films of 2023 seen thus far. In my view, this Vietnamese film outclassed the Cannes winners "Anatomy of a Fall" (main competition) and "Creatura" (Director's Fortnight competition).

My detailed review of the Vietnamese film: https://moviessansfrontiers.blogspot.com/2024/01/283-vietnamese-director-thien-phams.html

The film won the Grand Prize (the 2nd best film award) at the Venice Film Festival. losing the top spot to "Poor Things" (USA). Ought to have won the top prize. It is a slow-burn, environmental film that is sophisticated and possibly alien for most audiences used to Hollywood films. Interesting cinematography and soothing music that blends with the film's theme. Director Ryusuke Hamaguchi was wonderful with his previous work "Drive My Car" and this work, too, makes us appreciate his directorial and screen-writing capabilities again.
The sound of the gun shot sound in this film is comparable to the effectiveness of the sound of the car-crash in Joseph Losey's "Accident."

Bellochio is famous for adding one surreal sequence in each work. A historical film, with stunning performances by Barbara Ronchi and the young Enea Sala (his debut). One of the best 2023 films. Surprised that Ronchi did not win at Cannes for her performance, possibly because the performance could be termed as a supporting role even though there is no other important female character in the film. It was won by the lead actress in Nuri Bilge Ceylan's film that I have yet to watch. (Ronchi did win the Best Actress award of the Italian national syndicate of Film Journalists though.) I was impressed by the choice of music: Arvo Part's "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten" and Rachmaninoff's "Isle of the Dead."

The combination of Wim Wenders (Kings of the Road; Paris Texas; Million Dollar Hotel),and actor Koji Yakusho (Babel; Under the Open Sky) weaves magic. Both are at their peak here. Yakusho deserved the his Best Actor award at Cannes for this performance of an intellectual who finds the world a beautiful place, while leading a seemingly hermit-like, mechanical life of a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo, and reading Faulkner and Highsmith (in the night, before going to sleep) among other wonderful writers. A dash of Zen Buddhism, merely implied by a temple visit. Some similarities here with the lead character of Jim Jarmusch's "Paterson."

The talented quartet of director Ken Loach, scriptwriter Paul Laverty, cinematographer Robbie Ryan, and actor Dave Turner who gave us "I, Daniel Blake" has given us another gem in this film. I consider Loach to be one of the best active filmmakers today. The Loach-Laverty combination is one of the best director-scriptwriter pairings today. This film so beautifully urges us to move beyond our prejudices and love those who have less social security and have faced more traumatic experiences in the recent past than us. So relevant for the Hamas-Israel fervent mutual hatred.

What a good love story! And there is a story beyond the love story. The Polish film is based on a famous Polish novel "Znachor" (The Quack) written by Tadeusz Dolega-Mostowicz. Literary critics are convinced that this book was the original idea for Jerzy Kosinski's book in English called "Being There" which become even more famous when adapted as the 1979 Hollywood film with the same name, starring Peter Sellers. If you buy that argument of plagiarism by the the literary critics, the film Polish film "Forgotten Love" is the original tale that made Kosinski and novel/film "Being There" famous. And there is a third story: the 2023 Polish film is remake of the original 1982 Polish film "Znachor" based on the same original Dolega-Mostowicz novel and directed by Jerzy Hoffman.

Essentially "Forgotten Love," is a great humanist love story with many of the good qualities associated with the best of Polish cinema.

A film that recalls the commitment of an actress groomed in 'method' to understand the character she is playing by interacting with the real living 'evil' subject just as in the 1978 Jules Dassin masterpiece "A Dream of Passion," with Melina Mercouri and Ellen Busrtyn. Though similar in the departments of screenplay, direction and acting, the film is indeed as good as the Dassin product. Another superb performance from Julianne Moore. I hope Ms Moore gets nominated to the Oscars for it. This is Todd Hayne's fourth film to get nominated for the Golden Palm unsuccessfully. Evidently Haynes loves to explore the human psyche in depth ("May December," "Carol." "I'm Not There"). Mr Haynes will surely win at Cannes eventually. The film is about a convicted female pedophile who has been released from prison after serving her sentence. The film is more about how society treats such individuals and how individuals who seem to be empathetic and professional are equally predatory.

Winner of the Golden Palm at Cannes 2023. A good film indeed but was it the best in the competition? Two films that competed with it: Ken Loach's "The Old Oak" and Marco Bellochio's historical film "Kidnapped" (two that I have seen so far) were marginally better but the Cannes Jury thought otherwise.

The top scoring points of "Anatomy of a Fall": the best performance of Sandra Huller to date; a very deserving Palm Dog award for the dog in the film; and a likable edge of the seat courtroom drama that ends well, recalling so many others what we have liked in the past. What was totally over-the-top was a young partly disabled boy emerging as the smart detective outfoxing the police and the lawyers--a part of the film that reminded one of the Disney films of the 50s and 60s.

This is a feature length documentary film that won the Golden Bear award at the 2023 Berlin film festival beating other non-documentary feature length contenders from around the world in the main competition. For those who do not follow awards at Berlin, Cannes and Venice festivals for a documentary feature film to win the top honor in the main competition section is rare indeed. Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" won at Cannes' top honor years ago. It is not easy to watch "On the Adamant." Those who can will certainly appreciate the effort to provide mentally ill persons in Paris an opportunity to live a normal life while acknowledging that they do need to take medication, without which they could be institutionalized. Not many ill persons are able to accept this. Beyond this, the director Nicholas Philibert, connects the subject to films and filmmakers worldwide--a patient on the floating daycare hospital Adamant-mentions Agnes Varda (the film resembles her works), Ava Gardner's real and screen personality in Mankiewicz' "The Barefoot Contessa," Kiarostami's film "Through the Olive Trees" (a film to be screened at the Adamant's film festival chosen by the patients), etc. The film begins with a quote on "the gaps in our lives" and the Adamant experiment seems to be one solution to bridge such gaps. The Berlin jury was brave to make the choice, though I think "Limbo" from Australia was more deserving of the honor.

Winner of the Jury Prize (2nd best film in competition) at Cannes 2023. It sticks to Aki Kaurismaki's favorite subjects: lonely individuals (often a male and female) who are not financially stable, trains (a tram causing accident in this film ), adopted stray dogs, hospital stay, folks with a taste for film classics from around the world, film theatres, etc. The lovers choose to go to a film theatre showing Jim Jarmusch's "The Dead Don't Die." The adopted stray dog is given the name "Chaplin." The poster's of films shown in the film are of classics from around the world.

Martin Scorsese needs to be complimented for two aspects: picking up a historical subject that presents a positive view of indigenous Americans (who are smart and not dumb as often portrayed by Hollywood) and for getting real-life native Americans to portray themselves, rarely done in Hollywood. The rest of the film's credits are basically due to the high budget. Eric Roth's and Scorsese's joint screenplay adapting a non-fiction book is both interesting and amusing, especially the prologue and the epilogue. The prologue seems to ask the God of the Osages' blessing as the Osages integrate with their conquerors as a ceremonial pipe is symbolically and literarily buried. The gushing oil from the ground shown in the following sequence, though factual looks tacky and Hollywoody, Similarly, the epilogue with Scorsese himself reading out details of what actually happened to the accused men, bring relief and irony as some of the jailed persons earn parole while serving life sentences. In reality. the Osages objected to their parole but even then the Osages lost their battle! And yet Scorsese, chooses to end the film with a bird's eye view of the Osages tribal dance with the dancers encircling beating drummers with their drums. Ironical? The bottom line is that most viewers can appreciate Scorsese's heart beating for the Native American along with the drums, negating the traditional Hollywood depiction of 'injuns'.

"Bad Living/Mal Viver' is the first part of a diptych of two films, both made by director Joao Canijo and released in 2023. "Bad Living" won the Silver Bear for the 2nd best film in competition at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival. The second film in the diptych has the mirror title (Living Bad) and was also shown at the same edition of the festival in the parallel Encounters section. Joao Canijo's direction, scriptwriting, and conceptualization of the diptych makes one sit up. Both films have the same actors, with their screen-time inverted. "Bad Living" details an all women cast, of a family spread over three live generations, owning a hotel and their complex relationships. "Living Bad" is about the mirror world of a group of guests arriving at the hotel, with the same hotel owners dealing with their own problems in the periphery. More interestingly, "Bad Living" is loosely based on the director's childhood (ref. IMDB trivia). "Living Bad" relates to the guests' interactions with the hotel owners and their traumas. Most interestingly, director Canijo structures the films on the lines of the works of writer-theosophist August Strindberg--whose works were influenced by his own life that switched from anti-Semitism to free thinking to atheism and, finally, back to religion. While I write this, I have yet to view the second part of the diptych. I will take keen interest henceforth in director/screenplaywriter Canijo's works. Finally, the ensemble cast of "Bad Living" impressed me.

The film's tale blooms at the end and brings to mind Peter Weir's "Dead Poet's Society." The best performance of Paul Giamatti: he was made for the role. One of Alexander Payne's better films ("Nebraska" being his best). The prosthetic eye looked so real! Giamatti should get an Oscar nomination. David Hemingson's script wobbles: e.g., a drunk Mary Lamb being helped to a car suddenly makes a very astute comment to Paul Hunham (Giamatti).

Kore-eda attempts the Rashomon screenplay technique with the original script of Yuji Sakamoto It appears that Kore-eda and Sakamoto are mutual admirers. Sakamoto won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes for this film. As for Kore-eda, this is the second time he has worked with an original script, which he has not written himself--the first such film was "Maboroshi," which won the Golden Lion for the best film at Venice. Curiously, two important films made in 2023 deal with innocent teacher-student relationships in a primary school that ends in causing trouble for the teacher. The other one is the Turkish director Ceylan's "About Dry Grasses" base on an original script of Akin Aksu rather than by the director. Each present a somewhat inverse perspective of the other film's narrative. This is also the first film where homosexuality is presented in a Kore-eda film. The film is dedicated to composer Ryuichi Sakamoto, whose music is used in this film but unfortunately died in 2023. Composer Sakamoto had earlier contributed music to the famous films "The Last Emperor" and "Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence."

A gentle, unconventional love story that unfortunately does not rank among the best of Petzold films though it won the Grand Prize of the Jury (read second best film in competition) at the 2023 Berlin film festival. For Petzold watchers--he continues with actress Paula Beer who has replaced Nina Hoss as his favorite female lead actress in recent films. Hans Fromm continues to be Petzold's cinematographer in ALL his films. This film is dedicated to the casting director Simone Bar (who passed away early in 2023, after doing her job in this film, possibly having introduced Ms Hoss and Ms Beer too Petzold and having helped cast Ms Hoss in Todd Field's "Tar"). Even an important actor in the film, Matthias Brandt, who plays the publisher Helmut, has worked in earlier Petzold films. I am sure Petzold is missing his former, late scriptwriter Harun Farocki of Indian descent that resulted in my opinion the best Petzold films. In this film, too, there is a reference to the swimming rescuer being originally from East Germany, a frequent reference point in most Petzold films.

A gentle love story elegantly told. A medal-winning ice skater leaves the sport and takes on a new life as a tour guide. A Korean cook is smitten by the tour guide who doesn't reciprocate the interest beyond a platonic relationship. A third person with some mental problems stops his medical treatment and wants to visit the Eternal Lake with a suicidal mindset. The outcome of the relationships is unusual and but positive. The film is Singapore's submission to the Oscars, after it was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes festival and its director Anthony Chen won the Best Director award at the Denver International Film Festival.

Interesting film from Canada. Important final scene that can confound many viewers.

"Here" is an interesting film from Belgium that underscores the difference between US and European films in their style. It won the Best Film award and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 2023 Berlin film festival in the Encounters section. It is based on its director Bas Devos' screenplay adapted from a 1988 essay written by the late US science fiction writer Ursula K Le Guin entitled 'The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.' While essentially the film is a tale of love that gently grows between two persons in Brussels--a Romanian construction worker and a Chinese doctoral-student bryologist (a scientist who studies mosses)--the film educates the viewer in science while telescoping moss as a metaphor on organic processes that rarely gain attention in the world today. To an astute viewer, "Here" offers more value than "Poor Things," another film adaptation of a sci-fi literary source. It is amusing to note the original literary work's title includes the words 'carrier bag' while the construction worker is often with a carrier bag containing vessels of soup that he has cooked.

Interesting but not outstanding. The final sequence (stairway, retching) set in the 40s cut to the present day Polish Holocaust museum and back to the stairway descent was really intelligent. Trivia: With all the care for authentic production design, were the door handles in 40s similar to those in the present (specifically those in Hoss's house at Auschwitz)?

Might not be a superb work, but it has a class that is missing in most Hollywood products. The film belongs to Sofia Coppola and the lead actress Cailee Spaeney. Another aspect is the subdued but effective sound management, that one does not associate with Hollywood films based on a music idol. Venice film festival possibly got it right by awarding it the award for the best actress

Victor Erice is a rare filmmaker whose four feature films have been made with long periods in-between where the director goes into limbo. His "Spirit of the Beehive" was made in 1973; "The South" in 1983; "Dream of Light" in 1992; and his fourth feature film "Close Your Eyes" in 2023, which premiered at Cannes out of the Competition Section, to the chagrin of the talented filmmaker. Even though it was deprived of a chance to win an award, it apparently got a 7-minute standing ovation. There are some obvious and some not-so-obvious reasons. Erice had made a film after a gap of 20 years and this time the story is Erice's own original work, with a collaborator on the resulting screenplay. Three male characters in the film suffer from 'loss' of near ones for almost 20 years. The medium of connection is cinema--a film in which one is a director and two are actors. Somewhere in the film a fictional film archivist states that miracles in cinema stopped with Carl Dreyer. There is familial loss, there is memory loss, there are photographs and celluloid films in cans that can produce a miracle decades after Dreyer in a disused movie hall with a conventional projector and audience seats. Slow burn with connections to Hollywood (the 1959 western "Rio Bravo" and its Dean Martin/Ricky Nelson song "My Rifle, My Pony and Me") thrown in. The importance of friendship among humans and of dogs for humans give myriad reasons for a cineaste to love this work where every minute of the two hour forty-five minute film is crafted with love and will reward any viewer who loves international cinema beyond geographical borders.

A film on individuals in Balochistan (a part of Pakistan), Afghanistan, and Iran wanting a better life elsewhere because of intolerance in their own countries, Dedicated to imprisoned Iranian filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof. It won the Golden Peacock (Best Film) award and the Best Actor award at the International Film Festival of India, Goa. It also won the Big Screen award at the Rotterdam film festival. The beautiful actress Minoo Sharifi, who plays Niloufer, a political activist out on bail from the notorious Evin prison in Iran, gives a subtle and endearing performance. Ms Sharifi has earned a postgraduate degree in Civil Engineering.

Very important tale, poorly presented using Hollywoody music on the soundtrack, giving away what is to follow. I am convinced Nolan directs films for the masses--there is little art here, only craft. Robert Downey, Jr.
was impressive, though his character was a negative one.