Listomania! My Favourite Films of 2023

"Everyone keeps telling me how my story is supposed to go. Nah. Im'ma do my own thing." - Miles Morales, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Sight and Sound magazine polls its contributors for their Films of the Year in October. That leaves three months worth of movies hanging. I understand print lead times and the desire to get this stuff out in time for December publication. And yet...

Art is not a competition or click-bait fodder. Which is why I wait until the movie year is receding in the rear view mirror before slapping together my list of personal favourites. Obviously, I wasn't planning to post my list this far into the year. Let’s get this moving before 2025 rolls around…

The Beasts (As bestas) (Rodrigo Sorogoyen)

Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World (Nu astepta prea mult de la sfârsitul lumii) (Radu Jude)

Evil Dead Rise (Lee Cronin)

And the award for most chilling line of dialogue of the year goes to “Mommy’s with the maggots now”. The trailer for this alone petrified me.

Godland (Vanskabte land) (Hlynur Pálmason)

“It’s terribly beautiful here.”

“Terrible. And beautiful.”

Reminiscent of Bergman, Bresson and Herzog at their most austere, Pálmason displays exquisite mastery of every element of his terribly beautiful 35mm Academy ratio frames. Shout out to cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff.

Godzilla Minus One (Gojira -1.0) (Takashi Yamazaki)

When you have this level of craft, wit and invention, who needs the bloated budgets?

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (James Gunn)

John Wick: Chapter 4 (Chad Stahelski)

Pearl (Ti West) 

My favourite closing shot of the year. Counting the days until MaXXXine drops.

Poundcake (Onur Tukel)

Return to Seoul (Retour à Séoul) (Davy Chou)

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Joaquim Dos Santos / Kemp Powers / Justin K. Thompson)

Listomania! My Favourite Films of 2022

“The only thing I do know is that we have to be kind. Please, be kind. Especially when we don’t know what’s going on.” – Waymond Wang, Everything Everywhere All at Once 

Better late than never. Sticking this here for the sake of posterity and completeness more than anything. Also worth pointing out that I can be found on Letterboxd.

Barbarian (Zach Cregger) 

Decision to Leave (Heojil kyolshim) (Park Chan-wook) 

Everything Everywhere All at Once (Dan Kwan / Daniel Scheinert) 

Men (Alex Garland) 

No Bears (Jafar Panahi) 

Nope (Jordan Peele) 

The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin) (Colm Bairéad) 

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (Tom Gormican) 

Vortex (Gaspar Noé) 

X (Ti West)

Listomania! My Favourite Films of 2021

“The lion, while hunting, doesn't roar.” 

Which is my fortune cookie way of saying that my public facing writing is virtually zero at the moment, and I am more than OK with that, but one little tradition that I didn’t want to drop was this: a roundup of my favourite films of the year.

2020 was tough, but in many ways 2021 was tougher. At least in 2020, we recognised that we were living in strange, uncertain and scary times and reacted accordingly. This year, our goldfish hivemind has us all acting like everything is normal, when it manifestly isn’t. These are still strange, uncertain and scary times. The cognitive whiplash of Orwellian doublethink is headache-inducing but, hey, the pubs are open.

Fortunately, we still had the manifold pleasures of film and the ability to run open armed toward escapism: “the tendency to seek distraction and relief from unpleasant realities, especially by seeking entertainment or engaging in fantasy”. Below, in no particular order, are the sixteen films that, above all others, gave me refuge from our unpleasant realities. 

Another Round (Druk) (Thomas Vinterberg)

Mads Mikkelsen and friends tackle mid-life ennui by microdosing with booze. An intoxicating, life-affirming and even-handed look at the joys and perils of alcohol consumption, plus I have a soft spot for films that end with an impromptu dance number.

Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc) (Radu Jude)

Never the film that you expect it to be from one segment to the next, beginning with history teacher Emi’s explicit homemade sex tape that kickstarts the meandering narrative, to barbed observations about contemporary and historical social mores in both Romania and the wider world, to the prurient judgmental hypocrisy and sexism of a group of parents, Jude never stops asking the question about what in this world is truly vulgar, and he never loses his sense of humour whilst doing it.

Candyman (Nia DaCosta)

One of those rarities where you can’t truly appreciate what the film has achieved until the end credits roll. Smart, stylish social commentary with visually striking kills and scares, this is a very worthy successor to Bernard Rose’s 1992 original.

Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond)

Set during the UK’s Video Nasty era, this would make for a killer double-bill with Peter Strickland's Berberian Sound Studio - a fetishistic, scrungy, nostalgic, tactile billet-doux to the obsolete audio-visual artefacts of a bygone age and the horrors contained therein.

Copshop (Joe Carnahan)

Gun Creek would have been a far better title for this than Copshop. It doesn’t wear its influences lightly, from the rousing funk of Lalo Schifrin’s Magnum Force theme tune at the beginning to the overarching riff on John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13. This doesn’t make it any less fun. Toby Huss is a shotgun blast of fresh air when he arrives, and Alexis Louder is an absolute badass standing muzzle-to-muzzle against a menagerie of scumbags. Also, as a general life rule, you can never have too much Curtis Mayfield.

The Harder They Fall (Jeymes Samuel)

A Western that has more style than substance, but Samuel pulls it all off with such infectious elan.

Inexorable (Fabrice du Welz)

Shot on Kodak Super 16mm, this murky “Nanny from Hell” thriller gleefully swims in the slipstream of the great Hollywood films noir (there’s a “thanks to” credit to John M. Stahl and Gene Tierney at the end) and Benoît Poelvoorde is always a pleasure to watch.

The Medium (Banjong Pisanthanakun)

This slow-burn Thai faux-documentary horror about a family curse and the malevolent creature that comes with it is slathered in creeping dread that escalates incrementally with delicate, never dull, pacing. 

Minari (Lee Isaac Chung)

A Korean family fight to build a life in the Ozarks in this beautifully told story anchored by charming performances from Steven Yeun, Youn Yuh-jung, Alan Kim and Will Patton.

The Mitchells vs. The Machines (Michael Rianda / Jeff Rowe)

As smart and sassy as this is, the thing that earns it a spot on my Favourites of the Year list is the endlessly rewatchable Attack of the Furbys sequence. "Behold! The twilight of man".

Nobody (Ilya Naishuller)

Bob Odenkirk's fantastically fucked-up face is one of my favourite images of 2021. Arguably, this is John Wick without the puppy, but I’ve watched this twice now and it remains a brutal, bone-crunching, badass blast. 

Palm Springs (Max Barbakow)

A riff on Groundhog Day’s infinite time loop premise that isn’t afraid to take it further to even darker places, all dressed up as an Andy Samberg comedy as it vacillates between the playful and the profound. 

Riders of Justice (Retfærdighedens ryttere) (Anders Thomas Jensen)

The second excellent Mads Mikkelsen picture of the year. A deconstruction of the revenge thriller, with added ruminations on causality, coincidence and camaraderie, and the bloodletting is leavened with hearty helpings of humour and heart. Mikkelsen is that rare performer who can convey vulnerability and stoicism simultaneously. Every bit as good as Another Round.

Spider-Man No Way Home (Jon Watts)

The word “crowd-pleaser” is both overused and underrated. It has become fashionable in some quarters to bash the Marvel movies and their ongoing success (which, amongst other things, shows a lack of understanding that a rising tide lifts all boats), but it is genuinely exhilarating to sit in a full house on opening night hearing the whoops, weeping and applause because the crowd has been pleased. And in 2021, 148 minutes of the shared experience of unalloyed joy was something to celebrate. It puts me in mind of the words of Joel McCrea in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels: “There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that's all some people have? It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan.” Most big budget studio films fail to achieve this (how often have we walked out of a weightless, consequence-free visual effects spectacular with a mild shrug?), but Marvel’s hit rate is impressive. Up with Kevin Feige, up with Martin Scorsese, and down with divisive clickbaity sound-bite scavengers who keep stoking the fraudulent flames of bullshit pop culture wars.

The Suicide Squad (James Gunn)

On the other end of the spandex spectrum, I saw this on opening night in the almost empty art deco environs of the Curzon Mayfair. It takes a particular set of skills to put your authorial stamp and sensibilities on pre-existing characters at this budget level, but Gunn has nailed it more than once now, getting large studios to shell out millions so that he can cast Sylvester Stallone as a monosyllabic shark god in a film that ends with a starfish kaiju. Lots of fun.

Ultrasound (Rob Schroeder)

My highlight of this year’s FrightFest, and I don’t really want to say anything about it. You need to see this one cold. It may or may not be sci-fi. Or horror. And it is creepy, kooky, mysterious and spooky. And it’s got Vincent Kartheiser out of Mad Men in it. And it’s great. But that’s all you are getting out of me. 

That’s all for 2021. 2022 beckons. We made it!

Listomania! My Favourite Films of 2020

My only blogpost of 2020. This has been a “writing with the door closed” kind of a year for me. No regrets. 

Once upon a time, this sceptered isle was disparaged as a “nation of shopkeepers” (and, despite ardent Googling, the precise provenance and etymology of that phrase eludes me). In 2020, under the tightening pincer attack of Brexit and COVID, we have rapidly mutated into a nation of delivery drivers. Absolutely no-one needs me to tell them that this has been a helluva year. 

But we still had the movies to get us through the rollercoaster of lockdowns and ever-shifting tiers, even if we didn’t always have cinemas open in which to view them. To paraphrase Norma Desmond: the pictures got small. An unintended consequence of our Plague Year was the hibernation of the studio tentpoles and blockbusters, which allowed some more interesting films to creep out of the margins. In 2020, it was worth holding the words of Henri Matisse close by: “Il y a des fleurs partout pour qui veut bien les voir.” There are always flowers for those who want to see them. 

So let’s grab a colourful bouquet of the year’s most fragrant blooms, as I unveil my Top Ten favourite films of 2020. The first two films listed are my absolute favourites of the year, from way back in those halcyon days of January. The rest are in No Particular Order. Here we go! 

Parasite (Gisaengchung) (Bong Joon Ho) 

Representing two of my favourite shared cultural experiences of the year: the film itself and Director Bong’s generous, heart-swelling Oscar acceptance speech. 

Uncut Gems (Benny Safdie / Josh Safdie) 

135 minutes of exhilarating defibrillation that hurt so good. Sandler was robbed!

About Endlessness (Om det oändliga) (Roy Andersson) 

Precise, deadpan, sensitive and melancholy, Andersson’s humanistic gallows humour implored us to “be content about being alive” whilst emphatically declaring that “everything is fantastic!”. If this really is his swansong, then he’s going out on a high. 

Bacurau (Juliano Dornelles / Kleber Mendonça Filho) 

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Marielle Heller) 

A film that has continued to grow in my estimation and affection as I’ve navigated the treacherous terrain of 2020. A quiet and powerful paean to kindness, both to ourselves and others. “Anything mentionable is manageable.” 

Being A Human Person (Fred Scott) 

A companion piece to About Endlessness, Scott’s documentary follows twinkly-eyed septuagenarian Roy Andersson over a three-year period and captures his bons mots about the value and importance of art. Roy proclaims that “We should be grateful that art exists”. And I am. “Art is defending the human being.” We are fortunate that we have a human being like Roy Andersson around to defend art in a world where it feels increasingly under siege. 

The Hunt (Craig Zobel) 

Lovers Rock (Steve McQueen) 

The entirety of McQueen’s Small Axe quintet is an astonishing, evocative achievement, but was there a more deliriously joyous ten minutes of film this year than the Silly Games sequence of Lovers Rock?

My parents and grandparents came over to the UK on a boat in the 1950s looking to build a better life and settled in North-West London. But they weren’t West Indian. My lot came over from Cyprus, and assimilation is somewhat easier if your skin tone more closely matches that of the locals. And yet we were fellow travelers. My grandparents had a café similar to the Mangrove not that far away. (They weren’t subjected to the same levels of abuse and harassment as Frank Crichlow and his patrons.) The Small Axe films aren’t about my family, but they are about my neighbours. My grandparents lived in Harlesden. I grew up on the blurry line between Wembley and Harrow. I could pick up the pirate radio stations coming out of Harlesden and Willesden - they came and went all the time. Little explosions of static that resolved into beautiful, crackly transmissions of soul and reggae into my young ears. Janet Kay’s Silly Games was a staple of my childhood. It is and always has been a certified banger. Lovers Rock is a Proustian madeleine that I'll be revisiting again and again in 2021 and beyond.

Rocks (Sarah Gavron) 

Saint Maud (Rose Glass) 

As always, there’s more. Here’s another killer selection of the “just as good”s and the “not quite”s: 

Close But No Cigar 

#Alive (#Saraitda) (Il Cho) 

Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (Cathy Yan) 

Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee) 

Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi) 

Little Women (Greta Gerwig) 

Mangrove (Steve McQueen) 

Moffie (Oliver Hermanus) 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Portrait de la jeune fille en feu) (Céline Sciamma) 

Soul (Peter Docter)

Swallow (Carlo Mirabella-Davis) 

And that’s me done for another year. I wish the most Happy New Year to all of us. Like Wile E. Coyote, we take a licking, then get back up, brush off the burnt hair and gunpowder residue, and start plotting how to catch that pesky Road Runner all over again. Whatever 2021 brings, we got this.