By Eleanor Ringel Cater
With so much going on in the world, the problems of one aging movie critic trying to fill up a 10 Best List shouldn’t amount to a hill of beans.
Still, it is the end of the year, and what is it they say about old dogs and new tricks?
So here, in no particular order, are the films that struck me as the finest of 2023. Please keep in mind that I haven’t had a chance to see several pictures, including potential Academy Award nominees like “Maestro,” “Napoleon,” “Poor Things” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” (I absolutely refuse to spend over three hours in a movie theater watching Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro go Oscar-hunting under the guise of helping Native Americans; I’ll catch it at home with my husband and my dog).
Anyway….
1) “Oppenheimer”: It was also three-plus hours and, yes, I would’ve probably enjoyed it more at 2 ½. But I didn’t know a lot of what the movie had to tell me – especially about the downfall of its title character – and I would watch Cillian Murphy in anything. You should, too.
2) “Barbie”: As my husband put it, it’s very pink and very silly. But it was an original with a mildly subversive reminder that all is still not right, gender-wise, in this supposedly best of all possible worlds. Odd, though, that it left out the part about Barbie being based on a German sex doll…
3) “American Fiction”: A slyly sharp takedown of both racial attitudes and the insular insanity of the literary world. Jeffrey Wright is wonderful as a Black novelist/professor tired of seeing his work featured in the African-American book section just because of the color of his skin rather than the content of its chapters.
4) “Past Lives”: A delicate and delightful love story that’s a love story with a difference. Childhood friends are separated when one of them moves with her family from South Korea to Canada. The pair reunites as adults. And Fate takes a hand. But not as you’d expect.
5) “Anatomy of a Fall”: Death intrudes on a seemingly idyllic isolated chalet where a successful novelist lives with her 11-year-old son and less-celebrated writer-husband. But the bulk of the movie is a complex courtroom thriller, set after “the fall,” so to speak.
6) “Fair Play”: Co-workers at a highly competitive hedge fund are secretly a couple. Things get complicated – very – when she gets a promotion they both expected would go to him. If “Barbie’s” gender politics struck you as too chirpy, try this.
7) “The Burial”: Terrible title. Good movie. Tommy Lee Jones is the owner of a small chain of funeral homes in rural Mississippi who’s being done wrong by a much larger Canadian corporation. Jamie Foxx gives us his best Johnny Cochran impersonation as the lawyer Jones hires to help him.
8) “Defending My Life”: An affectionate and offbeat documentary about Albert Brooks, the actor/writer/director whose work includes “Lost in America,” Broadcast News” and “Defending Your Life” (with Meryl Streep). The director/interviewer is Brooks’ old pal, Rob Reiner.
Well, I don’t have a Number 9 or a Number 10. Check out “The Godfather” and “Lawrence of Arabia.” They’d be on my 10-Best list anytime.
Thanks for sharing