No. 73 - Special King-Sized End of the Year Issue
“Best of the year” lists abound! Film! Books! My personal life! Guest list by Molly Thomas! Also featured are reviews for Poor Things and the latest Studio Ghibli.
Cumming of Age
There are a lot of comparisons one could make between the smash summer hit Barbie (2023) and the bizarre body-horror sex comedy Poor Things (2023). For one thing, both protagonists, the titular Barbie and Poor Things’s Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), physically appear to be adult women, but their respective films chronicle their journeys discovering what it means to be a woman, what it means to be alive, and what one’s place in the world is.
A key difference is that Bella Baxter has a lot more sex than Barbie.
Bella is a Frankenstein’s monster of sorts, a corpse brought to life with the power of mad science, and sheltered the strange and gothic Edward Gorey-esque home of her creator, Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) along with his other creations (a dog-duck, a pig-chicken, a duck-dog.) It is only when Bella discovers the pleasures of the flesh that she grows insatiable and decides an adventure around the globe is in order. This is in part instigated by a roguish lawyer, Duncan Wedderbottom (Mark Ruffalo), who claims to be the best fuck in the world. What results is Bella experiencing everything humanity has to offer, decadent food, philosophy, and lots of sex. She also witnesses cruelty, poverty, sexism, and other dark aspects of mankind. Still, Bella reckons that aspects can be changed, as she herself drastically changes throughout the film.
Director Yorgos Lanthimos, famous for antiseptic and deadpan films like The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, shows a more whimsical side of himself with Poor Things. Sumptuous expressive visuals akin to early Tim Burton and fast-paced witty dialogue exchanges like screwball classics by Ernst Lubistch are a huge departure from the Kubrick comparisons Lanthimos earned with Killing of a Sacred Deer. This shift is largely done to service the wild nature of Bella as her wide eyed and guileless view of the world needs to be depicted as fantastical as possible. Emma Stone is up to match this task as she gives an incredible physical performance portraying Bella. The cast playing the larger than life figures surrounding Bella are similarly up to snuff, especially Mark Ruffalo who almost steals the show as the pompous cad Duncan.
While Bella had been created in a manner taboo to normal society, Bella finds that normal society may not be fit for her ways. Her love of sex is less of the “free love” variety and more of the personal empowerment. She cultivates likeminded individuals into her inner circle who respect her agency and foster inner growth. There is a sense that Bella is creating her own life beyond the one Godwin designed. All it takes is a willingness to look beyond the status quo and seeking what delights and pleases you.
Poor Things is in theaters now.
Flight of Fantasy
Hayao Miyazaki’s triumphant return to the director’s chair after his all too brief retirement features a child lost in a strange world, powerful wizards, and a coterie of talking birds, all beautifully animated and designed as one would expect from a Studio Ghibli film. The Boy and The Heron stands as an excellent addition to Miyazaki and Ghibli’s already excellent body of work.
The titular boy of The Boy and The Heron is Mahito. He’s still grieving the death of his mother as his father has already remarried her sister. Mahito has to relocate to a new home and start a new life. He begins to see a Grey Heron who claims his mother still lives and his presence is requested beyond this world. He denies it, but is forced to give in when his pregnant step-mother is hoodwinked into this magical realm. What follows is a quest beyond time, space, life, and death where Mahito sees strange creatures, meets new friends, and faces off against cataclysmic danger.
What I was most taken with was the character designs. The Grey Heron’s body twists and shifts between its eerie avian form to something more Wario shaped. Both forms are so expressive and are naturally menacing and pathetic respectively. Also featured in the film is a kingdom of parakeets whose vacant expressions and cartoony limbs made me laugh so frequently that I had to stifle myself. There are so many more, little circular guys with baby limbs, terrifying pelicans, and, of course, The Parakeet King.
The whole film has a sort of Wizard of Oz (1939) kind of element to it where Mahito encounters versions of people he knows in the real world, but their personality and appearances are different. It is particularly touching when he says farewell to his late-mother who, in this world, is around his age. Mahito gets to say goodbye to his mother in this dreamlike world. Through this adventure he also gets to reconcile other aspects of himself like his frustration regarding his “new mom” and his responsibilities he will inherit as he grows older. In these ways it is also very similar to Spirited Away (2001) where a child’s anxieties are played out in a dreamlike world of spirits and monsters. It’s been said that films are like a collective dream for audiences, where the lights rise and we wake up. Sometimes it seems easier working through these fears with others and sometimes its easier working through them in the company of talking birds. Miyazaki says, “Why not both?”
The Boy and the Heron is in theaters now.
The Best Films of 2023
The Best Movie That Didn’t Make it into the Top Ten
Much like his previous film, Sick of Myself (2022), Kristoffer Borgli’s latest film, Dream Scenario (2023) touches on the contemporary world’s fixation on fame in the digital age. For some strange reason, Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage), an unremarkable college professor, begins appearing in the dreams of everyone on Earth. At first it catapults him into fame, but soon those dreams turn into nightmares and Matthews feels the repercussions. It is a deeply strange film and a lot of the humor is derived by just how painfully awkward this man is. Cage makes Matthews walk the tightrope between pathetic and contemptible, often landing on the latter side as he uncomfortably navigates his newfound fame and later infamy. One scene, a sex scene, is just about one of the cringiest scenes I’ve seen in a film ever. Still, the film is a remarkable film based on its technique alone. Borgli depicts the inner life of Matthews with such lovely flourish that serves a direct contrast to the film’s Spike Jonze-esque irreverent strangeness. I really did love the film and I am excited for more films by Borgli, but it lies just outside my top ten of the year.
The Best Franchise Blockbuster
I keep finding myself thinking about The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. I ended up seeing it in theaters twice because I enjoyed it so much. It’s an exciting anti-authoritarian work told through a compelling character study. Like the other Hunger Games films, it’s about how spectacle, propaganda, and complacency can easily keep a population under a totalitarian thumb without them even knowing it. That and it’s a fun work of dystopian melodrama with star-crossed lovers, teenagers brutally killing each other, and political intrigue. Again, things found in the original films that helped this deeply political work stealthily find its way into young hearts and minds all over the world.
The Worst Films of the Year
I don’t like to spend much time on things I don’t enjoy and I find “worst of the year” lists tend to be mean spirited and full of easy targets.
That being said, I’d like to be mean spirited to two easy targets: The Flash and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
While I have already written at length about Quantumania, I’d like to take this time to point out some parallels between the two films. Both are emblematic of the waning interest audiences have in superhero films (judging on their box office returns), feature dodgy cgi (likely a result of the horrid conditions visual effects workers are forced into), and prominently feature actors who were found guilty of some abusive and scary things. Unlike The Flash, at least Quantummania didn’t utilize digital technology to revive and animate both living and dead actors without permissive. Worst of all though, both films are flat and boring despite the bombastic subject matter. A real shame I spent valuable time out of my life watching these and I hope by criticizing them here I haven’t devoted too much time on this soulless corporate slop.
The Top Ten
10. Past Lives
Maybe its the holiday season making me feel wistful (I do think this time of year tends to feel the most romantic), but I’ve spent a considerable amount of time thinking about films like In the Mood for Love (2000) and this year’s Past Lives. Films like these are special films that inject a heavy dose of realism into their electrifyingly romantic encounters. Spoilers: Unlike many other romance films, ones where the lovers overcome odds to be united in true love, these films are about those missed connections. The kinds of connections where that the window of opportunity has lapsed. You can feel that tension in the air when the lovers in Past Lives are together, bound together seemingly by fate, but it just can’t happen. You see them try to twist and resist, but that connection is there and you hope maybe, just maybe they can overcome. Its heartbreaking.
9. American Fiction
An absolutely hilarious takedown of how black stories can be twisted into servicing white audiences. Specifically by servicing white-guilt. What’s also remarkable about American Fiction, something that feels stealthily done, is that embedded in its social commentary is an earnest story about a black family that serves as a contrast to the stereotypical stories American Fiction is satirizing.
8. Showing Up
A wonderful sort of slice-of-life that made me nostalgic for my time in college where I would be surrounded by artists who were actively working on their craft. The protagonist of Showing Up is, but she has to balance her own artistic pursuits with her life. She can’t dedicate all day to her art like the students at the school she works at. As a creative, this sort of dynamic feels validating to watch and, by the end of the film, satisfying in a serene sort of way.
7. Evil Dead Rise
Seems out of place here, but I truly loved this mean-spirited schlocky horror film. Evil Dead Rise brings such gleeful violence with substantial panache, despite the familiar set-up. I love a stylized horror film and Evil Dead Rise is one I frequently return to.
6. May December
A uniquely strange film that has shades of Almodovar camp, brilliant irony, and terrifying real-world similarities. While Natalie Portman’s character is investigating the sort of hollow and exploitative relationship at the center of the film, the hollow and exploitative elements of real-world true crime and “based on a true story” crime films are. Still, on the surface May December is director Todd Haynes and an incredible cast all at the top of their game. Shout out to hot dogs.
5. Poor Things
As I have already gushed earlier in this issue, Poor Things depicts a whimsical and feminist version of Frankenstein that takes a more stylized view on dialogue and visuals. Its progressive message, incredible production, and absolute hilarity earns its spot among my favorite films of the year. Again, it’s a feminist body-horror sex comedy.
4. Killers of the Flower Moon
Absolutely haunting. Scorsese’s depiction of such casual evil casts a long shadow across American history. Killers of the Flower Moon feels like a totally necessary film during times like these where cruelty and genocide are being enacted carelessly and with little conscience.
3. Barbie
Probably the film with the best production of the year, Barbie is a luscious masterpiece by one of the most exciting living filmmakers, Greta Gerwig. The film wears its influences on its sleeve, but is primarily a bold and fearless deconstruction of the archetypal American woman - Barbie. As brilliant as it is funny, Barbie is effective as a fun popcorn comedy and work of serious satire. I love this film.
2. Oppenheimer
And yet it is the darker half of the “Barbenheimer” craze that has captured a spot in my lasting memory. Oppenheimer is an incredible feat in storytelling and editing. Christopher Nolan’s penchant for nonlinear storytelling is in total effect to illustrate the cosmic significance of J. Robert “Oppie” Oppenheimer’s actions through time. The creation of the atomic bomb sending reverberations throughout time results in the deaths of millions. Oppie grapples with the paradoxical nature of embracing being the father of the bomb as well as being a voice for nuclear deproliferation. It is telling that the film does not end on Oppenheimer feeling content or finding solace. Oppenheimer is a film shameful of the hubris of those scientists in Los Alamos, horrified by the bloodlust of the American government, and anticipating cataclysm on a massive scale. The film doesn’t let Oppenheimer dodge the blame and instead rests it heavily upon his shoulders.
1. Perfect Days
Unlike some of the other films in the top spots of this list, Perfect Days does not have aims for sweeping statements about the nature of humanity. It does not touch on the evils committed by mankind throughout history nor social inequalities. Nevertheless, Perfect Days touched me in ways the other films could not. It is a much smaller scale, following a toilet cleaner through several days of work. As the film progresses, more of his life is revealed. It is his peaceful and loving nature shown through this character study that I fell in love with and fragments of his past that I was touched by. It is a lovely film that serves as a reminder that, despite the chaos of the world, the evils being perpetrated, the problems in your very own home, that you can persevere. Each day is a new day. You may have your routines. You may have lost. You may even be feeling pain now. The sun still rises and you still can get up and find those little things that bring you joy and happiness. Get in your car, put on some Lou Reed, and live.
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Molly Thomas’s Bests of the Year
Molly Thomas has been a close friend of mine for about ten years. She has contributed to I Liked It! multiple times in the past and recently she asked me why I hadn’t asked her for her “best of the year” list yet. In all honesty, I had forgotten to ask people for submissions and by the time I did remember I figured it would be too late to ask. I am excited to share this exciting list Molly has curated for you all:
Bests of 2023
Best Medication: Celexa (close second: Xanax)
Best Movie That Made Me Sob: Aftersun
Best Book: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami (close second: Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado)
Best Laugh: Summoning Bowser in Mario Party 2 at every possible opportunity
Best Movie That Came Out This Year: Anatomy of a Fall (close second: May December)
Best Job: Sex Toy Packaging Designer
Best Concert: Rubblebucket (close second: Broken Social Scene)
Best Gift Received: A quiet birthday trip for two
Best Meme: “Wow this has just been such a pleasure. I’m such a lucky boy. I can’t wait to….go home” (close second: Stone Toad Steve Austin)
Best Game Played: Pathologic 2
Other Bests of the Year
Best Books I Read
I resolved last year to read 12 books and I managed to read 13. This year I planned to read 13 and I read 21. I don’t think I’ll make it a goal to break my record next year, but I am exceedingly proud of myself. Like any medium, the more I am exposed to, the more I am learning what I like and what I don’t. It’s an exciting process because I ended up reading a lot of books I enjoyed.
Severance by Ling Ma: Strangely prescient about living in the 2020s regarding global pandemics and general feelings toward the amount of seemingly pointless work. Bouncing between two points in time (the early days of a global pandemic and a post apocalyptic zombie wasteland), Ling Ma’s book makes one question: How do you really want to spend your life?
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer: Both a detailed hit list of monstrous artists and an open hearted love letter to their art. Dederer does not decide which artists can be separated from their art, if they can at all, but she does take the time to examine how art affects us, how the image of the artist has changed, how some artists have redeemed themselves, and how some have redeemed their art. Despite its daunting subject, it is a deeply personal work that I truly admire.
In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado: I didn’t know memoirs could be written like this. I didn’t know one could use this kind of lyrical prose in a work of non-fiction. I didn’t know that academic footnotes could be used in such poetic and ironic ways. Somehow, after reading Machado’s excellent short story collection, I didn’t expect to love this even more. A beautiful and totally original piece about entering and surviving an abusive relationship. Possibly one of the best things I’ve ever read.
My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh: After this year, I’m officially in the Otessa Moshfegh fan club. I read Eileen and her short story collection Homesick for Another World, but I really fell in love with My Year of Rest and Relaxation. It follows one of the most compellingly unlikable toxic characters I’ve had the pleasure to read as she tries to medicate herself into a year long state of sleep. Moshfegh gives us her protagonist’s every spiteful thought and it is as fun to read as juicy gossip. So easy to drink up despite how hard some crucial moments are to swallow.
Congo and Sphere by Michael Crichton: I developed a taste for Crichton this year! Something about way he writes science fiction, a genre I’ve had trouble getting into, is so digestible for me. I’ve only read Congo, Sphere, and started Jurassic Park and I understand that his work has a general theme of business and/or the military involving itself in dangerous scientific research/discoveries usually ends in catastrophe because of their blind ambition. It’s great fun.
Best Movies I Hadn’t Seen Before
I watch a lot of movies. According to my Letterboxd account, I watched over 300 films this year. I try to vary my cultural diet as best as I can, but sometimes it’s easier to watch something familiar or something akin to junk food. Still, next year I am resolving to make it a much more concentrated effort to see more of what cinema history has to offer and eliminating some blind spots by making goals based on time periods and regions of the world. We’ll see how that goes. Until then, here are some of the films I saw this year that made the biggest impression on me (that didn’t come out this year.)
On-Gaku: Our Sound (2019): In this animated film, three Japanese high school delinquents decide to start a band despite not knowing how to play instruments. A remarkable film that embraces the very spirit of what being an artist means. It’s also funny as hell.
The Heroic Trio (1993): Johnnie To’s phantasmagorical action-adventure starring three of Hong-Kong’s biggest stars, Anita Mui, Maggie Cheung, and Academy Award winner Michelle Yeoh. The Heroic Trio has some gorgeous sets, immaculate vibes, and sublime wire-work as three superheroines try to foil a demon’s plot to kidnap Hong Kong’s babies.
Ghostwatch (1992): Filmed in the style of a BBC special news broadcast, Ghostwatch slowly transforms into a low-fi nightmare as the haunted house a reporter is investigating turns out to to be much more real than they originally thought. Its unique storytelling and comfy Halloween aesthetics really made it an instant classic for me that I will certainly be showing to people next time October rolls around.
Ultraviolet (2006): Since writing about it in my last issue, I’ve rewatched Ultraviolet two more times. In the audio commentary to the film, the star of this slow-mo sci-fi action mess, Milla Jovovich, directly compares Ultraviolet to Barbarella. This makes sense because both films are terrible despite how memorable they may be. It’s not just the fact they star beautiful women either, it’s their bold visuals and stupid plots. Ultraviolet is seemingly an exercise by its director in cramming all his interests into one film, shooting it and lighting it in the most stylized way possible, and hoping for the best. He did not achieve it, but I’m a bit obsessed with the film anyway.
The Films of Peter Bogdanovich - Targets (1968), The Last Picture Show (1971), What’s Up Doc? (1972), Paper Moon (1973), and Daisy Miller (1974): It was purely happenstance that I ended up watching so many films by Peter Bogdanovich, I just sort of stumbled into finding each film organically. What I found consistently with his films was an admiration of filmmaking of the past. Targets follows an aging horror star (played by the great Boris Karloff) as his life intersects with a crazed shooter. Last Picture Show and Paper Moon are period pieces that have a melodramatic element that feels more in line with films from the 60s than the experimental and verisimilitude being embraced by his contemporaries. What’s Up Doc? is Bogdanovich’s attempt at replicating the screwball comedies that were falling out of fashion. Daisy Miller evokes the same films too, but is particularly memorable in its final moments as it infuses its final moments with that grim reality that contrasts the screwball dialogue throughout the film. I don’t know much about Bogdanovich, but with these four I’ve become an admirer. I can highly recommend all five.
Nearly half of these feature the talents of Ryan O’Neal, a great performer and total asshole who I was never familiar with until this year. He passed away leaving a legacy tarnished by his abusive behavior toward his children, including Tatum O’Neal whom he co-starred with in Paper Moon. Yes, he was an incredible talent, but I would be remiss not to acknowledge his horrific cruelty.
Best Decisions I Made
Not everything in I Liked It! is related to art and culture. The thesis of this newsletter is to be a space for me to do whatever I want, so long as I like it. Some things exist beyond the universal - the personal. 2023 saw many changes and a number of them happened to me personally! An even smaller number of changes were instigated by me! Here are some of the best ones.
Deleting TikTok: A little over halfway through the year I made the decision to delete the TikTok app off of my phone. I was frequently invoking Chris Pine’s rant about smartphones being “crack machines” or that viral post that compares the accursed objects of high fantasy stories to the harmful and addicting nature of smart phones. It was sucking up so much of my time, I found that I couldn’t do anything without TikTok playing in the background. So I deleted the app in an effort to spend less time on my phone and more time doing things I want to do. I do find it has curbed it a little bit, but maybe I need to delete Twitter next. For complete honesty though, I do redownload TikTok every couple of months to see what people have been sending me in my absence. Of course, I promptly delete it once I’ve cleared my inbox.
Road Trips: I took two road trips this year and, as always, they were highly rewarding. While affordability may inhibit the opportunities a little, I encourage spending those vacation days to travel, even if isn’t very far. My travels to both New Mexico and New England offered me such incredible sights, brought me closer with the people I traveled with and visited, and became precious memories that I will cherish.
Bleaching My Hair: There’s this joke with a few of my friends that they’d say “I’m going to be hot by thirty.” To which I’d usually say “Hotness is a state of mind.” One thing that felt like a cheat code to unlock that state of mind was bleaching my hair. I felt more confident. I felt myself noticing others noticing me. I felt good. I still feel good. Bleaching my hair was a good decision.
Yoga: After spending a day at Cedar Point earlier this year, the following days were plagued by a strange pain in my arm. It was a stinging pain that would come and go. I tried putting it in a sling and I tried just powering through it, but it was too much and I ultimately went to Urgent Care. I had injured a rotational cuff and the doctor recommended that I exercise it in order to heal it. It felt like a real wake-up call to return to working-out regularly. I had been a fan of yoga and kickboxing for years, but through, let’s admit it, laziness I had fell off doing those regularly. Since the Urgent Care visit, I have been doing yoga almost every day. I have also gotten prescribed cholesterol medication after a year of trying to diet to lower it. The result of prioritizing my health more is what you’d expect: I feel better! Duh! Obviously!
Getting Permission to YOLO: At one point during therapy, my therapist insisted that, despite years of working on this, I needed to spend more time living for myself. Instead of prioritizing other people’s feelings, I need to do more things for my own well being and enrichment. She didn’t phrase it exactly like that. What she really said was, “For the rest of this year, you need to YOLO.” Since then I have tried my damndest. I have followed my whims, I have felt my feelings, I have spent countless hours playing The Sims. My wants and needs are legitimate and I should recognize them. This space I’ve created here, with I Liked It! continues to be a space where I can emphasize that goal. I can be as indulgent as I need and post as frequently and infrequently as I want. What’s also great is that I appreciate the support I’ve found by doing so here. So thank you for reading! Go forth and YOLO! You have my permission.
Stray Observations
Sad you didn’t see your favorite movie from this year in my top ten? Let me know in the comments what your favorite film of the year was and check out my complete ranking of all the 2023 films I saw on my Letterboxd. Maybe you’ll see your favorite on there.
I wish I had listened to enough new music to create a top music of the year, but I spent most of my time listening cycling between three albums: Carolyn Polachek’s Desire I Want to Turn Into You (2023), Sweet Pill’s Where the Heart Is (2023), and the recently dissolved Screaming Females’s Desire Pathway (2023). The only thing all three groups have in common are that they are female led. Otherwise their sounds are completely different. I highly recommend all three records and I suppose I will call them the best of the year. Honorable mention to Mitski’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We (2023) for coming out right after I had a break-up.
The trailer for the A24 film Love Lies Bleeding was released and I’ve watched it at least dozen times now. It looks like a stylish neo-noir/western following Kristen Stewart and Katy O'Brian through the world of female body building, the criminal underworld, and sweaty hotel rooms. Its directed by Rose Glass who has only one other feature under her belt, Saint Maud (2019), which I did not like. Love Lies Bleeding looks like a significant step up and is one of my most anticipated films for next year.
In an issue that’s all about looking back, I’d like to take this moment here to look forward. I have plenty of goals and plans for next year. It’s my goal to join the Michigan Movie Critics Guild and, in the process, have this newsletter reach a larger audience. My yearly goal to read has a number of books that increases every year. After getting medicated for high cholesterol, I plan to continue my newfound exercise habits. I hope too that I continue to spend time with the people I love and care about, many of whom are probably reading this. Thanks for reading, subscribing, and sharing. Your support means the world to me. Have a happy new year! I leave you with a quote:
“To all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle - may they never give me peace.”
- Patricia Highsmith, "My New Year's Toast", journal entry, 1947