DUBAI: Box-office blockbusters, masterful animation and low-key masterpieces, we round up the year’s finest films.
‘Oppenheimer’
Director: Christopher Nolan
Starring: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr.
When we look back on 2023, this will mark the year that one era of cinema ended, and another began. One after another, audiences are shunning the mindless blockbusters. The executive formulas have stopped working. And a new generation, hungry for genuine substance, have latched on to an unlikely blockbuster, a historical biopic of a scientist sung to the tune of a pulse-pounding political thriller. While Nolan’s hypnotic style may be what brought the masses in, it’s the multitudes the film contains that has kept them enamored even after the initial spell wore off. No film has put more of the best and worst of the human condition under its microscope this year than “Oppenheimer,” and few ever have. And if this spawns a new generation of imitators trying to match this feat, we’ll be all the better for it.
‘Monster’
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Starring: Sakura Ando, Eita Nagayama, Soya Kurokawa
Some have compared the latest masterpiece of renowned Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda (“Shoplifters,” “Afterlife”) to Akira Kurasawa’s legendary 1950 film “Rashomon,” which shows the same event from multiple perspectives in order to explore the different ways we can each remember the same event. But that comparison misses the mark. Rather, this extraordinary mystery, which follows a mother, her son, and the boy’s teacher, is about the way our limited perspectives cause us to cast judgment on others when we cannot possibly know what those people are going through. It is something of a slow burn, but builds into one of the most powerful films in recent memory. A supreme work of empathy from a master of depicting life as it is lived.
‘Anatomy of a Fall’
Director: Justine Triet
Starring: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner
Filmmaker Justine Triet’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner, co-written by Egyptian-French writer Arthur Harari, is the best whodunnit of the decade, but would be better classified as a ‘did-she-do-it?’ It follows an author named Sandra who gets in an argument with her husband, only for her husband to be found dead in their driveway not long after. An investigation ensues that quickly turns the film into a captivating courtroom thriller, with performances so good and characters so layered and nuanced that you’ll be changing your mind on what you actually think happened with nearly every scene. So many films have felt adolescent and half-baked in recent years — here is something that feels genuinely mature, in every way.
‘The Holdovers’
Director: Alexander Payne
Starring: Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, Da’Vine Joy Randolph
Alexander Payne, the director behind the acclaimed films “Sideways,” “About Schmidt,” and “Election,” has always felt strongly influenced by the off-beat, humanist films of the ‘New Hollywood’ movement of the 1970s. It makes sense, then, that in order to recapture his mojo after the disastrous last decade (his Wikipedia even has an entire “Career Slump” section) he would make what feels like a lost Hal Ashby movie — a hilarious and heartfelt film about a teacher no one likes and a student no one can stand trapped together over their school’s winter holidays. And because its characters are so well-drawn and the writing is so restrained, it somehow avoids becoming saccharine, which only deepens the emotions with each rewatch, which will surely become a yearly tradition for many.
‘The Boy and the Heron’
Director: Hayao Miyazaki
Voice cast: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Aimyon
Master filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki — the sorcerer supreme of Japanese animation — was supposed to be retired. His last film, “The Wind Rises,” came out in 2013, and was deemed at the time to be the perfect send off. But the 82-year-old has returned with an even better one; perhaps the greatest achievement of his storied career. Fittingly, it feels like a sister film to his 2001 masterpiece “Spirited Away,” this time following a young boy whose story closely resembles his own real-life origins. The boy moves to his family’s country house to escape the horrors of World War II, only to find himself transported to another world in his backyard. Describing the plot, of course, does little to capture the film, which finds Miyazaki wrestling with the same themes that have defined much of his work, and coming to powerful conclusions.
‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro
Like Hayao Miyazaki, Martin Scorsese is now an octogenarian doing some of the best work of his career, delving ever deeper into the themes that have defined it. “Killers of the Flower Moon,” though, differs from his past work in a number of fascinating ways. For one, the film is constantly wrestling with what it means to be documenting the story of this real-life tragedy at all, doing its best to honor the victims from the indigenous-American Osage Nation by refusing to glamourize their murders. There are no thrills here, only matter-of-fact horror, and sometimes a grim sense of humor mined in the banal evil of its hapless leads. In the film’s most powerful scene, Scorsese indicts all those that have exploited the deaths of these people — even himself. I won’t tell you how, as it’s one of the best moments in modern film.
‘Beau is Afraid’
Director: Ari Aster
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti Lupone, Parker Posey
The latest from the troubled mind that brought the world both “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” feels at times like you’re watching another Ari Aster horror movie. If that’s what you’re watching it for, though, you’ll be disappointed — which perhaps explains the initial mixed reaction to the movie. Instead, watch this as a pure comedy, one that follows a hapless man paralyzed by his own indecision, whose passivity leads to grander and grander horrors beyond his comprehension. Phoenix may be one of our finest dramatic actors, but with both “Beau is Afraid” and another misunderstood 2023 film, Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon,” he’s proven to be an even better comedy actor, harnessing humanity at its most pathetic somehow without cruelty.
‘Showing Up’
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Starring: Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, André 3000
It would be easy to dismiss “Showing Up,” the latest from one of the best living directors, Kelly Reichardt (“Meek’s Cutoff,” “First Cow”). It is, after all, very small. Most of it takes place in the tiny home studio of a sculptor as she readies her latest work for a gallery showing. The biggest conflict of the film follows the aftermath of her cat attacking a pigeon, whose survival she then becomes unexpectedly invested in. Still, by its end, after we’ve witnessed another masterful turn from another of the best actors working today — Michelle Williams. This character portrait ends up surprisingly moving, and lingers long after you’d expect it to fade. A tiny triumph.
