"Baby Reindeer" Scares Me

I watched "Baby Reindeer" because of the impressive level of hype around it when it premiered.  I normally would have steered clear of  a semi-autobiographical show about a stalker, especially one that keeps getting compared to "I May Destroy You."  I'm not great with anxiety-inducing media, and stalkers definitely qualify as anxiety-inducing.  However, "Baby Reindeer" isn't just about a case of stalking.  It turns out to be a very dark and disturbing character drama, where the stalking is just the jumping off point for a lot of other issues the main character is facing.  

Donny Dunn (Richard Gadd) is an aspiring comedian who works in a London pub.  One day, a woman named Martha Scott (Jessica Gunning) comes in, upset, so Donny gives her a free drink.  This innocuous act of kindness sparks Martha's obsession with Donny, and years of escalating stalking incidents.  She sends him dozens of E-mails a day, often sexually explicit and very intense.  She calls him nicknames, including Baby Reindeer.  She's clearly mentally ill, but Donny can't seem to just cut her off.  Eventually Martha is affecting Donny's relationships and comedy career, and forcing him to face some uncomfortable truths about himself.  Other characters include Donny's ex Keeley (Shalom Brune-Franklin), her mother Liz (Nina Sosanya), Donny's old mentor Darrien (Tom Goodman-Hill), and a new potential love interest, Teri (Nava Mau).

Victim blaming is generally discouraged when talking about  stalking situations, but Richard Gadd purposely turns the spotlight on himself, highlighting all the ways that he made the situation with his stalker worse, before digging into the emotional and psychological traumas behind his behavior.  It's both impressive and maybe a little worrying that Gadd chose to play Donny himself, and reenact some very dark and disturbing incidents in his life - not just the stalking, but prior instances of drug use and sexual assault.  There's an unnerving authenticity and rawness to Gadd's performance, and the content warnings aren't just there for show.  And I suspect it's only by being so personal that Gadd is able to talk about some of the more complicated aspects of abusive relationships we don't usually see in stalker stories, along with his own addiction and identity struggles. 

And then there's Jessica Gunning.  "Baby Reindeer" was originally a one-man performance piece, but I can't imagine that it could have possibly been as affecting as the dramatization, because of the incredible presence of Gunning as Martha Scott.  The depiction of this poor, sad, desperate woman rings so true to life, it's no wonder Martha has become instantly iconic.  We all know sad sacks like her who are down on their luck, lonely, and ready to latch on to the first person they meet who displays the smallest amount of interest.  And as Donny makes it clear, Martha is far from all bad.  He's initially nice to her because he genuinely enjoys her company and the emotional validation she gives him.  However, Martha has no boundaries.  And Martha isn't afraid of causing a scene in public.  And Martha only hears what she wants to.  And Martha is a bigot, horrible to other women, and dangerous when threatened.  And Martha will not go away.  Gunning wonderfully balances all of these sides of the character, including her unnerving ability to change her moods instantaneously.  

There's a lot of emphasis on the use of social media and online communication as part of Martha's stalking behavior.  Reportedly, many of the messages we see in the show from Martha were sent by Gadd's real stalker, complete with constant misspellings, baby talk, and increasingly wild fantasizing.  While Martha can control herself to some extent when meeting Donny face to face, she's totally unhinged in text, and the sheer amount of E-mails she sends is staggering.  It also establishes "Baby Reindeer" in a very particular point in time, in the 2010s, when texts hadn't yet supplanted E-mails as the primary form of mobile communication.  As we get deeper and deeper into Donny's head, and follow him through extended tangents with other relationships and long flashbacks, the E-mails become an important anchoring device, reminding us that Martha is still out there, and still a looming threat.           

Despite the title of this post, I never found "Baby Reindeer" or any of its characters frightening.  The show is not set up as a thriller or horror piece, but instead a serious, sobering piece of self-examination that is remarkably honest about very uncomfortable subject matter.  What scared me about it was how I saw parts of my own psyche reflected by Donny and Martha, and where their worst impulses took them.  I've got plenty of my own obsessions, and it's not hard to imagine that in other circumstances, without the support system that I'm lucky to have, I might find myself in the shoes of either character.   

---

"Love Lies Bleeding" Will Pump You Up

I love it when a promising actor gets a breakout role, and Katy O'Brien has a fantastic one in "Love Lies Bleeding," a crime thriller featuring a lesbian couple.  O'Brien plays Jackie, a female bodybuilder who shows up one day at the gym managed by Lou (Kristen Stewart), with big dreams of winning a bodybuilding competition in Las Vegas and moving to the coast.  The two start a relationship and move in together, but their troubles soon begin to pile up.  Lou's sister Beth (Jena Malone) is married to an abusive lout named JJ (Dave Franco), who is on the verge of going too far.  Jackie unwittingly becomes addicted to steroids.  An overeager admirer of Lou's named Daisy (Anna Baryshnikov) refuses to go away.  Then there's the looming presence of Lou's criminal father Lou Sr. (Ed Harris), who runs the shooting range where Jackie works, and starts pointing her down a dark path.

"Love Lies Bleeding" takes place in 1989, and oozes '80s body worship.  The neo noir plotting may follow the Coen brothers' example, but there's an intense physicality to all the depictions of the characters, especially in the sex and bodybuilding scenes, that's much more of the school of Paul Verhoven and Adrian Lyne.  Jackie is a rare female film character who is incredibly buff, and depicted as attractive and desirable because of this.  And because we're in a dead end town somewhere in New Mexico, nearly everyone else looks a little scummy , perpetually strung-out, and half of the cast sport mullets.  Everyone keeps falling in love with the wrong people and resorting to violence.  Director Rose Glass is not afraid to show gore, and is not afraid to get surreal, though the imagery is considerably less horrific than what appeared in her last feature, the horror movie "Saint Maud."

I enjoyed "Saint Maud," but "Love Lies Bleeding" is a significant step up.  The characters and their moral quandaries are far more complex, and the performances are fantastic all around.  I love that we're in the middle of a minor wave of lesbian crime films, but this time around the lesbian characters are so much richer and more interesting than we got in the past.  Katy O'Brien as Jackie is so magnetic onscreen, it's easy to see why Lou ignores all the warning signs about Jackie's troubled background to pursue a relationship with her.  Likewise, Kristen Stewart's screen persona is a great match for the dissatisfied, impulsive Lou.  Her family situation is much more thorny than it seems at first glance, and there's some real ambiguity as to how much of Lou's rift with her father is due to fear of him, and how much is from fear of her own dark impulses.   

More than anything, I love the way that Rose Glass juggles different tones here, how Jackie's bodybuilding scenes go from joyous to horror-tinged as her addiction takes hold, and how Lou's intense confrontations scenes with her sister and father will frequently have notes of humor.  Dave Franco, as awful as his character is, can't not be funny.  And then there's the romance, which is as steamy and erotic as you could possibly want, while still being awfully sweet at times, and occasionally a train wreck you can't look away from.  I've seen a few negative reactions to the ending, which features a moment of Lynchian surrealism that was a step too far for some viewers.  I thought it was perfect, a glimpse of shared fantasy and madness that creates a fantastic metaphor for the characters' destructive mutual attraction. 

It's incredibly satisfying to watch a genre film like this that takes some big chances - on subject matter, on talent, on aesthetics - and to see it all pay off.  Before "Love Lies Bleeding," I saw Katy O'Brien pop up in several other pretty high profile projects, including recent MCU and "Star Wars" titles.  She never got to do anything nearly as interesting onscreen as she did here.  I left the movie absolutely enthused for whatever she wants to do next.  And if Rose Glass stays on this trajectory, I'll happily watch everything she ever makes.    

---

The 2023-2024 Television I Didn't Watch

In advance of my 2023-2024 television top ten list (I use the Emmy eligibility calendar), I want to talk about some of the shows I didn't watch this year, for various reasons.  There are far, far more shows being produced there than anyone can possibly keep up with, so this is not an exhaustive list.  The titles discussed below are only the most high profile ones that I want to talk about why I skipped. 

I reserve the right to revisit these choices in the future, because I did eventually cave and watch a few episodes of "Succession."

A Small Light - A holocaust drama starring Bel Powley as Miep Gies, the woman who helped hide Anne Frank's family during WWII.  This is the series I feel the worst about skipping, but it came out back in May of 2023, when I was completely overwhelmed trying to keep up with other prestige titles, and I never got back to it.  I've also been pretty burned out on WWII media lately, and have skipped anything that looked like an obvious WWII tearjerker, including "All the Light We Cannot See."  Maybe one day.

The Traitors - "The Traitors" didn't make much of a splash when it started in 2022, but this year, the second season of the UK version blew up in the US, and even I heard about it.  I'm not in the habit of watching reality shows, and Peacock hasn't been in my streaming service rotation in a while.  However, I want to acknowledge that "The Traitors" has definitely been having a pop culture moment, and I'm aware of it.  This just won't ever be something that I'm interested in watching. 

The Curse - To date, I haven't watched any of Nathan Fielder's shows, and I don't think I ever will.  Even the participation of Emma Stone and a Safdie brother wasn't enough to grab my interest.  While I like the idea of Fielder's work in theory, after reading a couple of breakdowns of what he's actually doing in his shows, none of this actually sounds entertaining to watch.  I like to think that I'm pretty aware of how media works already, and don't need to see it deconstructed in the way that he's doing it.  

Gen V - I'm glad the show is getting good notices, and the truly tragic death of one of the lead actors is terrible, but I made the decision pretty early not to watch "Gen V."  Frankly, the blame goes to "The Boys," which I've now watched through three seasons, and have completely lost interest in.  I've seen enough of this dystopian superhero world, thank you, and it's not interesting enough for me to want to try out a spinoff with different characters.  Best of luck, but no thanks.  

Shrinking - Harrison Ford playing a therapist in an Apple TV+ dramedy?  Okay, that sounds fun.  Jessica Williams is in this too?  Great.  Oh, but the actual main character is played by Jason Segel, who is grief stricken over the loss of his wife?  That's a lot less appealing.  And the whole thing hinges on Segel's therapist character losing his cool and telling his patients what he really thinks of them?  Uh, this is starting to sound cringy.  Maybe I'll wait a few seasons and check back in with you guys.

Expats - Nicole Kidman stars in Lulu Wang's miniseries about an American expat community in Hong Kong during the recent social upheaval.  I've been waiting for more from Lulu Wang, but Kidman being the lead here gives me pause.  Frankly, I haven't seen her in anything I've really liked in a few years, and her work in "Expats" has gotten a very mixed response from critics.  Maybe I'll circle back around at some point, but I probably won't.

Star Wars: Ahsoka - I made a point of skipping several of the recent MCU and "Star Wars" series on Disney+ after "Loki" ended.  "Ahsoka" holds almost no appeal for me, because it follows characters from the "Star Wars" animated series that I never watched.  Several actors I like, including Rosario Dawson and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, are in the cast, but "Star Wars" has wasted too many other good actors on bad material.  

---

Sleuthing With the "Dead Boy Detectives"

"Dead Boy Detectives" is part of the "Sandman" universe, specifically based on a pair of ghost characters who were introduced in one of my least favorite issues of the comic.  I didn't have any particular beef with the characters, but the story itself was bleak and unpleasant, and it was a digression from a really interesting main storyline that I was anxious to get back to.  Fortunately the ghosts, Edwin and Charles, went on to have more adventures in other comics, eventually becoming the self-proclaimed Dead Boy Detectives, who help other ghosts with their unfinished business.  

Because I never read anything about these two beyond that introductory comic, I'm not sure how faithful the new show is.  There seem to be a lot of liberties taken.  Charles (Jayden Revri) and Edwin (George Rexstrew) are supposed to be teenagers, but are played by actors in their mid-20s who clearly don't pass.  The actors also look oddly alike, which is initially very distracting.  Their detective agency is based out of London in the first episode, but after an amnesiac psychic, Crystal Palace (Kassius Nelson), ends up in their care, they pursue a case to Port Townsend, Washington, and get stuck there for the rest of the season.  Lots of interesting characters come into their orbit, including a manga-loving shut-in named Niko (Yuyu Kitamura), their Goth landlord Jenny (Briana Cuoco), and a troublesome Cat King (Lukas Gage) who likes to take human form to hit on Edwin.  Antagonists include a local witch, Esther (Jenn Lyon), her crow Monty (Joshua Colley), Crystal's demon ex-boyfriend David (David Iacono), and the Night Nurse (Ruth Connell), an agent of the Afterlife's Lost and Found Department.

Created by Steve Yockey and Beth Schwartz, and produced by Greg Berlanti's outfit, it's no surprise that this feels like one of the CW's DC shows, albeit with better production values than most.  "Dead Boy Detectives" is aimed at the young adult crowd, with all the main characters juggling crushes and traumatic pasts, and a lot of showy supernatural powers.  The nice thing here is that the pace is very quick and the mood is very light.  Nothing ever feels dragged out, with every episode closing out its own individual mystery, and the whole season wrapping up the bigger storylines nicely by the end of the last episode.  The characters are also appealing, though the quality of the writing has some significant ups and downs.  This is the kind of show where people have a bad habit of shouting exposition at each other in a crisis, and you're expected to just accept ridiculous things like giant killer mushrooms and an Indian guy living in the stomach of a sea monster.  Because of the high degree of comic book absurdity, the show I kept wanting to compare "Dead Boy Detectives" to was "Legion," though they have almost nothing in common.  

If you're a "Sandman" fan, there are minimal ties between the two shows aside from a couple of cameos.  I don't think some of the rules for supernatural business quite match up either.  If you're not a "Sandman" fan, and not familiar with the universe, "Dead Boy Detectives" sticks close enough to well-worn detective tropes that most viewers shouldn't have too much trouble keeping up.  The young cast is very talented, and able to compensate for some of the iffier dialogue.  Kassius Nelson and Jenn Lyon get my votes for MVPs, because they both manage to add some shadings to characters who are built out of very stale tropes.  Briana Cuoco and Yuyu Kitamura also help make a good case for why this show would probably do just fine without its title characters.  That said, these versions of Charles and Edwin did grow on me eventually, and I was able to appreciate Jayden Revri's and George Rexstrew's efforts.  They still look way too much alike for a ghost boy from the Edwardian era and his best friend from the 1980s, but maybe that can be fixed if "Dead Boy Detectives" gets a second season.        

I say "if," because the show is very niche, and I'm not sure it would have become a series at all if it weren't part of the "Sandman" universe.  The humor is very specific and the romantic sensibilities are aimed at a young, LGBT-friendly, probably more female audience.  It also takes a few episodes to get through some bumpy introductory material, and for the show to find a pleasant working status quo for its characters.  Edwin's initial hostility toward Crystal, for instance, takes some patience to see him through.  However, the back half of the series is legitimately a great watch, and all the payoffs are worth waiting for.  

And I just can't help rooting for the weird ones.    

---

Up With "Late Night With the Devil"

It's strange watching a film on the big screen that was obviously intended to be watched on the small one.  "Late Night With the Devil," written and directed by the Cairnes brothers, is a found footage feature, designed to look like a lost episode of an old '70s late night talk show, "Night Owls with Jack Delroy."  The show and its guests are fictional, but loosely based on real figures from the era.  The budget was clearly low, but the filmmakers succeeded in capturing the feeling of watching a piece of live television from the '70s, back when late night was a little weirder, the public was more easily fooled, and you could imagine a guy might really kill to be the next Johnny Carson.

The footage is preceded by a brief introductory biography of Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian), who at the time of the taping has suffered the recent loss of his lovely wife Madeline (Georgina Haig) to cancer.  "Night Owls" is in its sixth season and declining in ratings, but Delroy is hopeful that his Halloween show and its very special guests will be able to turn things around.  These guests include the psychic Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), a skeptic named Carmichael (Ian Bliss) who debunks claims of supernatural powers, and a parapsychologist, Dr. June Ross-Mitchell (Laura Gordon), with her teenage patient Lilly (Ingrid Torelli).  Lilly is the only survivor of a demon-worshiping cult that committed mass suicide, and Dr. Ross-Mitchell claims that she is possessed by the demon Abraxas.  The footage from the show is intercut with behind the scenes material that reveal what's taking place during the commercial breaks.  

And it was the first behind the scenes segment where I knew the movie wasn't going to work for me as intended.  Up until that point the movie had kept up the found footage gimmick pretty well, but there's no attempt to explain why someone was filming the behind the scenes interactions, and why the results didn't look like footage from the '70s.  There's more format-breaking near the end of the movie, which took me out of the "Late Night" reality in a way that I thought was completely unnecessary.  The "Night Owls" episode itself is put together so well, I'm curious to see if a cut of the film that removes everything else might work better.  Because despite my nitpicking about the structure, there's plenty here to like.     

The whole movie is one big buildup to a grand finale, and leans heavily on the performers.  This is one of David Dastmachian's first significant lead roles, and he's great.  He has the talk show patter down, and keeps the audience's sympathies despite continuously making bad calls all night.  A lot of the work of generating tension is done by Rhys Auteri, who plays Jack Delroy's schlubby sidekick Gus, the most visibly nervous person onscreen throughout the show.  I think the MVP, however, may be Ian Bliss as the skeptic Carmichael, loosely based on magician/skeptic James Randi. Carmichael's a little too mean as he goes about debunking the other guests, and is nicely set up as a secondary antagonist.  Then there's Ingrid Torelli as Lilly, who's a sweet kid excited to be on television one minute, and something far more sinister the next.  Her habit of staring into the cameras might be the most unnerving thing in the picture. 

There's been a little controversy around the filmmakers' use of generative AI for some of the artwork in the film, specifically interstitials and intro graphics.  I doubt most people would notice, but the corner cutting points to how low budget "Late Night With the Devil" is.  You can tell the vast majority of the effects money was used up in two big scenes, and the rest are barely scraping by with a lot of old school trickery and misdirection.  It's been a while since I've seen a production with this many of the seams showing, and I wish I could say that it didn't impact my enjoyment of the movie, but it did.  I applaud the filmmakers for their ambitiousness, but some of the ideas flat out don't work. Enough of them did that I still found "Late Night With the Devil" a fun watch, but I can't help wishing that more experienced hands were involved.

If you're an aficionado of horror films, however, there are far worse viewing choices.  "Late Night With the Devil" is novel, it's nostalgic, and it's perfect Halloween viewing.  I consider it entirely my own fault that I'm too nitpicky to enjoy its kitschy charms as much as I'd hoped. 

---

How Did "Rebel Moon" Happen?

Having subjected myself to both of the "Rebel Moon" movies, written and directed by Zack Snyder, I'm left aghast that these movies got made.  These are Snyder's tenth and eleventh films, and display all of his worst filmmaking habits - bad use of slow motion, stiff acting, dull characters, and self-serious narratives.  In addition to co-writing and directing the films, he replaced longtime cinematographer Larry Fong with himself when he started working for Netflix, which did not help anything.  Both "Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire" and "Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver" are terrible, and made by a filmmaker we've known makes terrible films for at least a decade.  

I don't intend to spend much time here actually reviewing these two movies, because there's not much to say.  "Rebel Moon"is transparently "Seven Samurai" set in a "Star Wars" style universe.  Snyder reportedly even pitched it to Lucasfilm as a "Star Wars" project first, but the focus on original characters put them off.  Snyder then took the project to Netflix, where it was split up into two parts.  The split was totally unnecessary, but because Snyder didn't want to cut anything, the climactic third act was turned into its own feature.  In the end it took Snyder over four hours and $166 million to tell the same story that it took Roger Corman, Jimmy Murakami, and John Sayles 105 minutes to tell in 1980 with a fraction of the budget, in "Battle Beyond the Stars."  And Snyder's version is worse.

It's hard to stomach how much worse it really is.  The actors are decent, and the production design and effects work manage to create a reasonable facsimile of a sector of the "Star Wars" galaxy we haven't stumbled across yet.  However, the storytelling choices and the internal logic of the characters and their actions is incredibly poor.  The tone is somber and humorless, exposition and backstory are shoehorned in willy-nilly, and every time an interesting character shows up, they're almost immediately sent off to do something else.  The leads played by Sofia Boutella and Michael Huisman are painfully bland, angst-ridden, and pretty miserable to watch.  There are some spiffy images, and a few good action beats, but too much is undercut by the crummy cinematography and leaden pacing.  There's a lot of ambition and vision here, and an utter lack of ability to execute it.  

Zack Snyder really has one of the most fascinating directorial careers.  He's made two good zombie films.  He's made some decent films based on comic books, including the one that kicked off the DCEU.  He got an unlikely boost in visibility and goodwill when he was allowed to make the "Snyder Cut" of the troubled "Justice League" movie that he originally had to abandon mid-production due to a family tragedy.  Of course the "Snyder Cut" was better than the theatrical version of "Justice League," because it couldn't have gotten any worse.  Zack Snyder is also responsible for some truly terrible movies, including both versions of "Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice," and his first wholly original feature, "Sucker Punch," which I had the misfortune of seeing in theaters back in 2011.  The more control and input Snyder has on his features, the worse they tend to come out. 

That doesn't seem to phase Snyder, however.  He's already announced his intentions to turn "Rebel Moon" into a franchise, with plans for four more films.  He's also hoping to release R-rated versions of the two existing films, though I can't imagine that there's any demand for them.  Snyder sounds an awful lot like "Kingsman" director Matthew Vaughn earlier this year, when he was promoting his action film "Argylle."  Vaughn was also trying to kick off a big franchise, with lots of plans for "Argylle" sequels and crossovers, but the movie was a bust.  I have no reason to believe that either "Argylle" or "Rebel Moon" were negatively affected by expectations to turn them into franchises, but I do question why either of these directors, with their very mixed track records, were put in a position to make such wretched attempts.       

The "Rebel Moon" movies are only the latest of Netflix's sorry collection of disposable action films, along with "Red Notice," "The Gray Man," and "6 Underground," which tend to feature big names and deliver very little actual entertainment.  Zack Snyder is responsible for creating "Rebel Moon," but Netflix paid for its creation, so I hold them equally guilty.  Whatever algorithmic nonsense gets films greenlit over there these days, it's clearly gone very wrong, enabling movies that are so incompetent, it almost defies belief.  We don't have very good viewing figures for Netflix, but clearly "Rebel Moon" has made less of a cultural splash than they were hoping for.     

If a third rate nobody blogger like me could tell you that "Rebel Moon" was a terrible bet from the outset, why couldn't Netflix figure it out?

---

And What Didn't Make My Top Ten List of 2023

As a companion piece to my Top Ten list, every year I write a post to discuss some of the other major films that got a lot of positive attention. I find this exercise helpful in proving some context for my own choices and how I feel about the year in film as a whole. It's also a lot of fun. Please note that I will not be writing about films listed among my honorable mentions, including Killers of the Flower Moon.

So, let's get down to business.  Right off, what happened with Barbenheimer?  I enjoyed parts of both "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," but they just weren't as good as I was hoping they would be.  I found "Barbie" too beholden to its corporate interests to be as subversive as I wanted.  Meanwhile, "Oppenheimer" was so self-serious and so concerned with narrative complications that it was a struggle to stay invested in the film.  I know my expectations were off with both of these titles - "Oppenheimer" is far more about the politics of war than scientific discovery, for instance - which probably contributed to my inability to connect.

Looking at the other award season contenders, I continue to maintain that "Maestro" didn't do enough to make its Leonard Bernstein recognizably Leonard Bernstein, and Bradley Cooper seemed to have no interest in his subject as a composer or conductor.  "Past Lives" is another of those quiet, low stakes melodramas that went over my head, like "Aftersun" and "Drive My Car."  I had a terrible time trying to reconcile the tragic epiphanies and stylistic conceits of "May, December," and frankly the performances of both lead actresses didn't do anything for me.  "The Color Purple" was a noble effort, but didn't get anywhere close to matching the Steven Spielberg version.  "American Fiction" was daring, but a bit of a mess.  I think I actually liked "Rustin" and "Nyad" more than most, but the performances were all that really stood out.     

Among the smaller films, I was a little mystified at the response to "Are You There God?  It's Me Margaret."  It's a fine adaptation, but not nearly as interesting as a lot of similar recent coming-of-age films that made this version possible.  Honesty, besides McAdams' and Safdie's performances, I found it a little bland.  "Showing Up" with Kelly Reichardt didn't disappoint, but it's also the most conventional of her projects in a long while.  Conversely, "All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt" was a beautiful film but featured an experimental narrative that left me cold.  "Eileen" had a great setup and whiffed with the ending.  "A Thousand and One" had a great performance by Teyana Taylor, but I don't feel the rest of the film lived up to her.  "How to Blow Up a Pipeline" was compelling, but at the same time weirdly anodyne and apolitical for a film that should be all about provocation.  Finally, "Passages" was fascinating and Franz Rogowski's performance made me squirm, which isn't quite the same as being good.

Foreign films are my Achilles heel again.  "The Taste of Things" was absolutely captivating whenever it was in the kitchen, but the sensibilities of the romance lost me.  Alice Rohrwacher's "La Chimera" had some interesting things in it, but I couldn't follow the narrative.  Ditto "The Eight Mountains," which does a great job of conveying the beauty of the natural world, but left me unmoved when it came to its interpersonal relationships.  There were a lot of films about teachers facing moral dilemmas this year - "About Dry Grasses," "Monster," and "The Teachers' Lounge" among them.  The first two are far from their directors' better efforts, while "The Teachers' Lounge" was great but felt unfinished.  Finally, I've never been much of an Aki Kaurismaki fan, and "Fallen Leaves" didn't do anything to change that.  

Animated films had a great year.  I've disqualified "Spider-man: Across the Spiderverse" for being a Part One film that literally ends on a cliffhanger.  I loved a lot of its parts, especially Spider-Punk, but I don't feel right handing out the kudos until I see how things resolve.  "Mutant Mayhem" gets full marks for being the best piece of Ninja Turtles media I've ever seen, with a great visual style.  It's just a little too slight.  "Elemental" is a legitimately solid romantic comedy and immigrant narrative wrapped up in Ghibli-inspired visuals.  However, it was rightly called out for being very derivative.  

Among the blockbusters, "The Super Mario Bros." movie is the one I've watched the most times so far, because that film's hold on small children is a little terrifying.  No complaints, but it doesn't deserve much praise either.  I give "Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3" and "John Wick Chapter 4" all due credit for landing their franchise finales, but only up to a point.  Oh, and I respect the very hardworking Taylor Swift, but her music - and her epic concert film - are not for me.  

Films that got squeezed out of the honorable mentions include "Priscilla," "BlackBerry," "Pinball: the Man Who Saved the Game," "Perfect Days," "Landscape With Invisible Hand," "Robot Dreams," "Dungeons and Dragons," and "You Hurt My Feelings." 

And that's my 2023 in film.

---