End of the Year Wrap Up

It's that time, when we look back at the last year and consider our accomplishments and our failures. Everyone has high and low points that make up their lives, and some of us feel the necessity of sharing that information with others. This blog is focused on movies, so you won't read about car troubles, health issues, tax problems or insurance frustrations. There are other venues for that. Here, we talk about movies and the experiences in our lives that surround our movie going. As a blogger/podcaster , it is easy for me to inventory some of these things that I do each year, because there is a record of them. 

So, here we go.

Top Ten Films of the year. Look for the video for this at the end of this post.

10. Godzilla Minus One

I would never have thought I'd have a Godzilla movie on a "Best Of" List, but here it is. It narrowly beat out "Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse", and it may have done so because of recency bias. This was a great Kaiju film that shows all those "Transformer/Pacific Rim/Monarch based Godzilla" films, how this should be done. Give us characters we care about before you start killing them of making them just plot devices for the destruction of the big monster. This is a film from Japan, with all Japanese actors and I had to read subtitles, but it was still more engaging to me than "Godzilla vs. Kong". 

The special effects seem to combine the traditional man in a suit wit some CGI to make Godzilla come to life. There are a couple of scenes of mass destruction, which mix the actors with the CGI work pretty effectively. There is a nice sense of Japanese  redemption after the war, and there is no real finger-pointing about the atomic weapons, making this a non-political but still philosophical story.

9.  Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

There seems to be a lull in the love of comic book movies. The DCEU has never taken off the way it might be expected to, but even the vaunted MCU has petered out. "Ant-Man and the WASP :Quantumania" fell flat, and "The Marvels" was a huge financial flop, and did not do much better critically. Fortunately we got this final entry in the Guardians franchise, wrapping up loose story lines, but more importantly exploring the origins of our favorite misanthropic marsupial. 

Although the soundtrack selections are not as familiar as the other entries, there are still several awesome needle drops. The set pieces in the movie are inventive, but the passageway battle leading to the conclusion is the best. "No Sleep til Brooklyn" was a great choice and I am not a Beastie Boys fan. 

The film also contains the most emotionally wrenching scene in all of the MCU. Make sure you have Kleenex handy.

8. SISU

 This is a second non-English language film on my list. It is a simple story of retribution and revenge against Nazis, so there is no equivocation about who the bad guys are. This film contains some of the most over the top violence on screen this year, which is precisely why it ended up on my list. It is always satisfying to see the injustices of the evil, being corrected in the most direct way possible.

Our hero is hardly heroic, he has no dialogue until the very final moment of the movie. Still, he made us laugh a few times at his determination and brutality. If all of Finland had been like him, the Nazis might have decided to skip the rest of the war and go home and hide. 

The score for the film is almost as brutal and is a nice counterpunch to the laughs that some of the violence provokes.   I may not be a good person, I loved this too much.

7.  Sound of Freedom

The brutality of "SISU" is imaginary, the story in this film is equally brutal, but it hits home in a completely different way, one that will not make you laugh, and certainly not comfortable. This movie sat on a shelf for three years because the studio was timid. The producers bought back the rights, released it in an innovative way, and hit paydirt financially but also artistically. 

Let me warn you, the opening scenes of the movie will make you sick, especially if you are a parent. Nightmares begin this way and the truly terrible truth is that these stories are real. Jim Caviezel looked so different to me, that I did not realize he was the star until halfway through the film.  That may also be a function of the suspense that this movie manages to build as well. The final segment may have been invented for the movie, but it plays very realistically and will tighten your sphincter. 

6. Maestro

Netflix does not always make it's films available to theaters. One of the reasons that the AMC Best Picture Showcase has vanished is that the theater chain won't play a film that was not offered to it for screening. This year, Netflix did make the film available to exhibitors, for one week. 

That is a ridiculous window for fans who want to see a movie, and I was fortunate that I had a local theater that made the effort to get the movie, otherwise it would not have been included on my list. Bradley Cooper, co-wrote, directed and stars in this unusual biopic about a towering cultural figure of the 20th Century.

This is not a greatest hits, by the numbers story. I focuses more on the relationship of Leonard Bernstein to his wife than on his compositions and conducting. Carey Mulligan is fantastic as Felicia Montealegre, the actress married to bi-sexual Bernstein.

5.  Wonka

I did not have high hopes for this film. I did not think that we needed another version of Roald Dahl's famous chocolate maker. I was wrong. This was exactly what we needed at this holiday season. A well made, beautiful story that families can enjoy together.

Add on top of everything else, it is a musical, and the songs are great. There is not a show stopper that you will be whistling on your way out of the theater, but the songs are tuneful, utilitarian for the story, and you can actually understand the amusing lyrics.

The other thing that is great about the movie is that it respects the 1971 Gene Wilder film, while still being it's own movie. There are subtle nods to the production design of that fifty year old movie and to the performance of it's star. 

Oh yeah, we also get the cranky Hugh Grant as a cranky Oompa Loompa. 

4. Air

This is a movie about a shoe. 

Okay, it's really a movie about how the Nike Company became the biggest firm in shoe business, by nabbing Michael Jordan at the start of his career. It's about how the shoe came about, how it was marketed and how consumer demands are both met and created by clever people in the industries that they work in. 

Matt Damon, Jason Bateman and Ben Affleck portray the key men behind the scenes at the biggest marketing coup since Evian filled a plastic bottle with water. Viola Davis shows up as the iron-willed mother of the future superstar, and we can see where he gets his determination from

3.  The Holdovers

The grown ups are still here, and they are still making quality films that are not aimed at teen aged boys. Alexander Payne bounces back from the underwhelming "Downsizing" to score with another entry into the private schools boarding genre. Dead Poets Society", The Emperor's Club" and ""Scent of a Woman" have a companion, and it features the formidable Paul Giamatti. 

Mr. Hunham is not warm and fuzzy like Robin William's Mr. Keating. He is prickly, demanding and he smells bad. Da'vine Joy Randolph  provides a little warmth, and she is likely to win the supporting actress Academy Award, but in the end, the movie reflects the times, sometimes bitter and cynical. 

This will be a Christmas movie to add to your annual viewing pleasure, and it will add pleasure to your annual holiday viewing. 

2. Oppenheimer

The good half of last summers Barbenheimer phenomenon. This is another biopic, but it is not just about Robert Oppenheimer, but also about his progeny, the atomic age. It is a WWII movie without combat, a spy film without spies, and a heroic scientist who ends up being treated like anything but a hero.

Christopher Nolan should be polishing up his speaking skills, he will be giving a multitude of acceptance speeches this winter as he collects award for writing, producing and directing this film. 

Cillian Murphy is hypnotic as the title character and will give Bradley Cooper and Paul Giamatti all they can handle in competition for acting honors.

This is a film that justifies the existence of the more high end theaters out there, with IMAX/XD/70MM. The sound design on it's own might be enough to justify seeing the movie

1. Guy Ritchie's The Covenant 

Originally called "The Interpreter", the film's title was changed to "The Covenant", and then because there is a 2006 film with that title, the director's name was added to the title. Regardless, it is certainly a change of pace from the kinds of films Ritchie is known for. He had another film out in March, and both of them were largely ignored. The fate of "Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre" was deserved, but the neglect of this film is unfathomable. 

This is a gritty war film, set in Afghanistan, and reflects the shameful way we treated many of our allies in that conflict. This is based on a real story, one that is harrowing for both of the individuals at it's center. It is also a great piece of suspenseful film making, that kept my body tense for two hours. 

The performances by Jake Gyllenhaal and Dar Salim will go unrecognized by Awards groups but they will be remembered by you.  

Film Breakdown

I saw 120 films in theaters this year, what is truly amazing to me is how they divided up.

I was perfectly divided between new films and those that were revisits. As a fairly recent transplant to the Austin Area, I needed to find a supplier of classic films, living in Southern California made finding screenings easy. Fortunately, I found a dealer for my addiction pretty quickly. In addition to the Fathom Events at the chain theaters, Alamo Drafthouse provided some excellent opportunities to see older films on the big screen. All of that however was dwarfed by my new favorite place, The Paramount Theater in downtown Austin. 

In fact, we were at the Paramount so often, that Erin, from their outreach program, reached out to us to interview and included us in the latest fundraising e-mail update.

 

I can hardly wait for the 50th Summer Season at the Paramount this coming Summer.

Throwback Thursday Project

My plan had been to post weekly on this project, but I was at so many movies during the week, I fell behind by October. The 1975 project will continue for the next few months, bit here is a piece of data for the films I did cover.

There were six 1975 films that I had not seen before, including an obscure Robert Shaw film that I had to buy on VHS thru ebay to be able to own it. Also, the same year he won the Academy Award for Cuckoo's Nest, Jack Nicolson appeared in the hard to locate "The Passenger".

The Lambcast Podcast

I'm the host of the LAMBcast, the official podcast of the Large Association of Movie Blogs (The LAMB). Each week we have guests on the show who talk about movie related subjects. Of the fifty shows we did this year, I hosted forty six, and guest hosts covered the rest. The shows broke down like this:

Obviously we had twelve Movies of the Month, but we also averaged one new movie each month. There are several theme shows that included doing lists like :Off the Beaten Path, Roll Your Own Top 5, and Blindspot Alley. We had two draft shows, including a very fun 1980s Fantasy Film Draft. If you have not listened, you can find the shows on most of the services, i-tunes, Spotify etc. The easiest is Podamatic.  

YouTube Channel

Starting last April, I also began posting the Lambcast on YouTube. Instead of five talking heads, each show features images from the movies we are talking about and some connective illustrations as well. 

 

It is a time consuming process, but I am picking up some tech skills as I try to make the content as interesting as I can.

Top Ten Favorite Films 2023  The Video