Best Movies of 2023!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s almost the end of 2023 — good riddance! — so it’s time for my annual best movies of the year. Since I see so many movies every year, in order to keep my “best of” list to a manageable size, I don’t include animated films — such as the amazing The Boy and His Heron, and the very good Spiderman Across the Spiderverse. Nor do I include short films, or documentaries or TV movies, many of which are great. And I’m only including films that played either theatrically or as part of a film festival, and, of course, only films I’ve actually seen.
I am trying to include both indie and big-budget films, as well as genre films — comedy, romance, sci-fi, horror and fantasy — which are often given short shrift in lists like these.
The films I choose have to have be a good movie, but also have something special about them — shock value, surprise, novelty, great acting, important stories, or beautiful production values. Also keep in mind I always forget to include some films I love, and only remember after I record this — so my apologies in advance for leaving out some great movies. (I realized, immediately after taping, that I accidentally left out Monster from the first list, and Rotting in the Sun and May December from the second list; see below).
Some of these are already available on streaming sites, others are still playing in theatres, and a few have not yet opened.
Ok, with no further ado, here is my list of the best movies of 2023, in no particular order:
1 Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret,
Dir: Kelly Fremon Craig
is a nostalgic, coming-of- age story about a pre-teen girl who moves from New York to a small town in New Jersey. Based on the YA novel by Judy Blume.
2 Beau is Afraid
Dir Ari Aster
…is a complex, psychological fantasy about a man named Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) trying to leave the hell-hole he lives in to attend his rich but controlling mother’s funeral (Patti Lupone). Some people find this movie overwhelming, but that’s part of its attraction.
Talk to Me
Dir: Danny and Michael Philippou
Is a Australian horror movie about a teenager party game involving a mummified hand that takes users into a world between the living and the dead. This is one of the scariest movies I’ve seen in years.
4 The Holdovers
Dir: Alexander Payne
is a drama set in a New England prep school in 1969, where some students, a teacher and the cook are staying there over the Christmas holidays.It’s a compelling story with superb acting by Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph — primarily a stage actress — and Dominic Sessa in his first role.
5 The Movie Teller (La Contadora de Películas)
Dir: Lone Scherfig
…is a wonderful romantic melodrama set in a company town in a Chilean desert in the 1960s. It’s about a family who need to find a new source of income when their father is injured in a mining accident.
6 The Promised Land
Dir: Nikolaj Arcel
…is an epic, historical drama about a former soldier (Mads Mikkeksen) who is trying to tame the soil of unsettled Jutland, Denmark, but has to deal with a cruel aristocrat who wants total control.
7 Poor Things
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
… is a brilliant picaresque fable about an adult woman (Emma Stone) with an infant’s brain transplanted in her head, as she discovers sex, morality and economics in Victorian Europe.
8 The Anatomy of a Fall
Dir: Justine Triet
…is a gripping courtroom drama set in the French Alps about a middle aged writer (Sandra Hüller) who is accused of killing her husband who fell out of a window. It’s also an intensely moving story about a mother and her young, blind son.
9 The Nature of Love (Simple comme Sylvain)
Dir: Monia Chokri
…is a delightful comedy/drama about a married, bourgeois intellectual from Montreal who falls in love with a redneck building contractor who is renovating her cottage.
10 Green Border
Dir: Agnieszka Holland
… is a harrowing drama about a group of asylum seekers caught in a hellish cycle of deportation and abuse in the area between Poland and Belarus. A moving and intricate story told through the eyes of very different characters.
11 Showing Up
Dir Kelly Reichardt
…is a deceptively simple comedy about an irritable sculptor at an art college in Portland Oregon (Michelle Williams) who is trying to put on a one-woman show at a local gallery.
12 Killers of the Flower Moon
Dir: Martin Scorsese
…is an historical drama set in Oklahoma in the 1920s where the Osage nation discovers oil, but have to fight off the swindlers, criminals and murderers looking for their piece of the pie. This one stars Robert De Niro, Leonardo Dicaprio, and Lily Gladstone.
13 Fallen Leaves
Dir: Aki Kaurismaki
…is a dark romantic comedy about a working class man and woman in Helsinki whose paths keep crossing but — because a series of accidents — can’t seem to realize their destiny as lovers and soulmates.
14 Monster
Dir: Kore-eda Hirokazu
And here are the runners-up, which are more or less as good as the list I just finished:
1 Godland — a moving historical drama about Danish settlers in a remote part of Iceland
2 Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
A fantasy action/adventure based on the game
3 The Eight Mountains
A story of friendship in Piedmont Italy
4 Blackberry
The rise and fall of the Canadian cel phone company
5 Afire
A tragicomedy about a struggling writer in a summer home in Germany
6 Oppenheimer
Historical drama about the Manhattan Project and its aftermath
7 After the Fire
A Parisian-Arab family reacting to the police after the death of their brother.
8 Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World
A biting social satire about workplace injuries in Bucharest
9 Kidnapped
A melodramatic retelling of Pope Pius IX’s kidnapping of a 5-year-old boy in 19th century Bologna
10 Perfect Days
A simple story about a kind and loving man who works as a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo
11 Evil Does Not Exist
A remote town fighting back against a developer who wants to build a glamping spa — by the director of Drive my Car.
12 The Iron Claw
A biopic about the Von Erichs —a family of pro-wrestling brothers — plagued with misfortune.
13. May December
14 Rotting in the Sun
Once again, my top movies off the year:
Monster
Fallen Leaves
Killers of the Flower Moon
Showing Up
Green Border
The Nature of Love
The Anatomy of a Fall
Poor Things
The Promised Land
The Movie Teller
The Holdovers
Talk to Me
Beau is Afraid
Are you there, God? It’s Me, Margaret
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.
Films reviewed: Orlando: My Political Biography, Fallen Leaves
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Toronto’s Fall film festival season continues in December with the Jayu Human Rights film festival showing insightful documentaries on pertinent issues, along with a slam poetry competition at the Ace Hotel.
But this week, I’m looking at two new European movies that played at TIFF this year and are now in cinemas. There are trans shape-shifters in France and lonely job-seekers in Finland.
Orlando: My Political Biography
Wri/Dir: Paul B. Preciado
It’s 17th century, Elizabethan England. Orlando is a teenaged boy, a handsome courtier in the Queen’s castle. He’s also an aspiring writer, waxing lyrical on oak trees and winter frosts. He falls in love with Sasha, a blonde, Russian aristocrat. But at the age of 30, he wakes from a deep sleep transformed into a woman. Orlando’s life takes her (and him) through various guises over hundreds of years, to capitals as far away as Constantinople, until finally returning by ship to 20th century London, where they finally complete and publish their book. Such is the “biography” of Orlando in Virginia Woolf’s famous novel. So what’s different about this film?
For one thing, the entire cast is trans or non-binary, as is Preciado, the director. And the cast is huge. Each version of Orlando is played by another actor, their sex, gender and sexuality presented in a myriad of ways. Orlando is plural in this incarnation. Not just that, Orlando’s race, colour and language also shifts, with the actors ages ranging from small children to the elderly. Some characters wear chainmail like Joan of Arc, while others recline, luxuriantly, in an Ottoman seraglio. The one common factor is their Elizabethan white 
neck ruffs, the fashion of the day.
Orlando, My Political Biography is not the first film version of the novel — far from it. It seems to attract the most experimental and avant garde filmmakers out there. German director Ulrike Ottinger made Freak Orlando in 1981 which entirely rejects the conventions of both narrative and art movies. English director Sally Potter (see: The Roads Not Taken, The Party, Ginger and Rosa)’s Orlando of 1992 starred Tilda Swinton as the various Orlandos and featured Jimmy Sommerville singing up in a tree.
But this French political biography adopts Bertolt Brecht’s (and Jean-Luc Godard’s) method of deliberately alienating the audience to promote a political stand. Each Orlando introduces their scene by announcing directly to the camera their real /adopted name and personal history, followed by their Orlando passage, often reading directly from a copy of Woolf’s book. But it remains engaging because of the beauty of the photography and costumes and the sincerity of the players in the film. Settings vary from deliberately artificial backdrops to an exquisite forest and a grotesque Parisian catacomb.
The political stance is complex, and involves a rejection of the accepted binary. Some take issue with psychiatrists, surgeons and pharmacists having control of their identities and bodies. 
Says one young Orlando: you must hate your genitals if you want the doctor to give you hormones… but I don’t hate my genitals. Says another: I adopted a ridiculous caricature of masculinity for a year after transitioning before realizing I shouldn’t erase my personal history just because I’m trans.
Orlando, My Political Biography is equal parts intellectual lecture, political diatribe, performance art, and cinematic experiment, and, most surprisingly… it works.
Fallen Leaves
Wri/Dir: Aki Kaurismaki
It’s typical day in Helsinki, Finland.
Ansa (Alma Pöysti), a single woman in her thirties, works at a low-paying job in a supermarket. She lives in a small apartment and subsists on frozen microwave dinners. She likes listening to relaxing music, but her bakelite radio only plays bad news from the Ukrainian war these days. She does go out occasionally to a local karaoke bar, with her best friend Liisa (Nuppu Koivu). There she encounters — but doesn’t actually meet — Holappa (Jussi Vatanen). Holappa is a depressed guy who works as a welder at a small factory. He lives in the company dorm, along with acquaintances and his best friend and confident Huotari (Janne Hyytiäinen). He handles his depression with constant drinking, which only gets him more depressed. After a few near misses they finally meet face to face. Their first date? A zombie movie at a local rep cinema. Sparks fly and they vow to meet again soon. But various unfortunate coincidences seem destined to keep these soulmates far apart. Can they ever find happiness together? Or is this a relationship that can never happen?
Fallen Leaves is a tragicomic proletarian love story par 
excellence. Its also a deadpan comedy, which despite it’s nearly tragic atmosphere, will have you laughing and crying all the way through. If you’ve ever seen an Aki Kaurismaki movie before you’ll instantly recognize his style: seedy bars, bearded bikers, dark rock n roll, and a noir-ish, retro feel. Similar to Jim Jarmusch, but much funnier. It also deals with real-life issues like alcoholism and poverty. Ansa loses her job for taking home an expired cookie instead of throwing it away, while Holappa is driven close to self- destruction by his constant boozing. If you haven’t seen his movies before, Fallen Leaves is a great one to start.
Everything in this film is retro. Finland is the high-tech home of Nokia and Supercell, but in Kaurismaki’s world the characters use avocado coloured landlines, with cel phones or video games 
nowhere to be seen. Computers seem relegated to internet cafes. Phone numbers are written on slips of paper, blown away with the wind. Movie theatres only play classics, and every bar is on skid row.
At the same time, there’s always a niceness and sweetness burbling just below the surface of the humdrum futility of everyday life. Fallen Leaves is a wonderfully depressing movie with a feel-good atmosphere. I love this movie.
Fallen Leaves and Orlando My Political Biography are both playing now at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, and at other theatres across Canada — check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.
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