2023 Year in Review

 This year I wrote two LARPs, went on more than a few road trips, started Lexapro, went to one con, and otherwise did not accomplish a lot that can be measured, except for watching a truly absurd number of movies. Fortunately Letterboxd makes it a lot easier to record that.

By my count, I watched 464 movies this year. This does not count rewatches. When this counts television, it is only for an entire series counting as one movie. Many of the movies - basically anything 1.5 stars or less - I did not finish because they weren’t worth my time.

The Viewing - 2022 - 4.5 stars

Moonage Daydream - 2022 - 3 stars

White Noise - 2022 - 3 stars

TÁR - 2022 - 4 stars

The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) - 2017 - 3 stars

Triangle of Sadness - 2022 - 3 stars

Bad Lieutenant - 1992 - 3.5 stars

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans - 2009 - 3.5 stars

Bridge of Spies - 2015 - 2.5 stars

The Man Who Wasn't There - 2001 - 3 stars

Twixt - 2011 - 1 stars

Love - 2015 - 1.5 stars

Assassination of a High School President - 2008 - 1 stars

Pearl - 2022 - 3 stars

Maniac - 2012 - 2 stars

Hard to Be a God - 2013 - 1 stars

8MM - 1999 - 4 stars

Logan Lucky - 2017 - 3 stars

Confess, Fletch - 2022 - 1 stars

After Yang - 2021 - 2.5 stars

The Disaster Artist - 2017 - 3 stars

C'mon C'mon - 2021 - 1.5 stars

The Trust - 2016 - 4 stars

The Golden Child - 1986 - 2 stars

Bernie - 2011 - 3.5 stars

Kill the Irishman - 2011 - 1 stars

Black Adam - 2022 - 2 stars

Bodies Bodies Bodies - 2022 - 2.5 stars

Blood Simple - 1984 - 2 stars

Central Station - 1998 - 1.5 stars

Communion - 1989 - 1 stars

Border - 2018 - 3 stars

All These Sleepless Nights - 2016 - 1 stars

Possessor - 2020 - 4 stars

House of Tolerance - 2011 - 2.5 stars

The Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome - 1954 - 3 stars

Silence - 2016 - 3 stars

2046 - 2004 - 2 stars

Caché - 2005 - 1 stars

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl - 2015 - 4 stars

Vox Lux - 2018 - 4.5 stars

The Beach Bum - 2019 - 3 stars

Mute - 2018 - 3 stars

The Beta Test - 2021 - 3 stars

The Godfather: Part III - 1990 - 2.5 stars

Mindhorn - 2016 - 3.5 stars

Elvis - 2022 - 3 stars

To Leslie - 2022 - 2.5 stars

Nancy - 2018 - 3.5 stars

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. - 2022 - 3.5 stars

The Fall - 2019 - 3 stars

The Stylist - 2020 - 3.5 stars

Mass - 2021 - 4.5 stars

Valley of the Gods - 2019 - 3 stars

Tau - 2018 - 2 stars

Kate - 2021 - 3 stars

Compliance - 2012 - 3.5 stars

A Ghost Waits - 2020 - 3.5 stars

Still Processing - 2020 - 3.5 stars

Okja - 2017 - 4 stars

Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You - 2019 - 4.5 stars

Copenhagen Cowboy - 2022 - 4.5 stars

Warriors of Future - 2022 - 1.5 stars

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio - 2022 - 3 stars

Lost in London - 2017 - 3 stars

Duck Butter - 2018 - 3 stars

Sherman's March - 1985 - 4 stars

Scanners - 1981 - 3 stars

Too Old to Die Young - 2019 - 4 stars

Let the Corpses Tan - 2017 - 2.5 stars

Life as a House - 2001 - 3.5 stars

The Wailing - 2016 - 4 stars

Bronson - 2008 - 3 stars

The Painted Lady - 2012 - 4 stars

Only God Forgives - 2013 - 4.5 stars

Pusher - 1996 - 2.5 stars

The Final Girls - 2015 - 4 stars

Bottom of the World - 2017 - 4.5 stars

Moonrise Kingdom - 2012 - 4 stars

Bottle Rocket - 1996 - 3 stars

The Fabelmans - 2022 - 2 stars

All Quiet on the Western Front - 2022 - 3 stars

Foxfur - 2012 - 2 stars

1408 - 2007 - 4 stars

The Damned United - 2009 - 4 stars

Empire of Light - 2022 - 3 stars

Encounter - 2021 - 3.5 stars

Everything Is Illuminated - 2005 - 4 stars

The Encounter - 2010 - 1 stars

The Ritual - 2017 - 3 stars

Valhalla Rising - 2009 - 2.5 stars

Fast Color - 2018 - 3 stars

Kumaré - 2012 - 2.5 stars

The Slammin' Salmon - 2009 - 3 stars

Deep Murder - 2018 - 3 stars

The Invitation - 2022 - 2 stars

Antiviral - 2012 - 4 stars

Jodorowsky's Dune - 2013 - 3 stars

Dark Star - 1974 - 1.5 stars

Pooling to Paradise - 2021 - 3 stars

Bones and All - 2022 - 3 stars

Woodshock - 2017 - 3 stars

Holy Motors - 2012 - 5 stars

We Are Little Zombies - 2019 - 1.5 stars

The Outwaters - 2022 - 2 stars

Incantation - 2022 - 4 stars

We Are Boats - 2018 - 1 stars

The Whale - 2022 - 3.5 stars

Pleasure - 2021 - 4 stars

Margaux - 2022 - 1 stars

Advantageous - 2015 - 1 stars

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish - 2022 - 3 stars

The Pale Blue Eye - 2022 - 4 stars

Infinity Pool - 2023 - 4.5 stars

Nymphomaniac: Vol. II - 2013 - 3 stars

Victoria - 2015 - 1 stars

Horatio's Drive: America's First Road Trip - 2003 - 3.5 stars

The Survivalist - 2015 - 3 stars

Memory 2.0 - 2014 - 2.5 stars

The Living Wake - 2007 - 1 stars

Shirkers - 2018 - 4 stars

Next - 2007 - 2 stars

Into the Wild - 2007 - 3.5 stars

In the Hero - 2014 - 4 stars

A Cure for Wellness - 2016 - 3.5 stars

The Ruins - 2008 - 2.5 stars

Fresh - 2022 - 3 stars

A Cry in the Wild - 1990 - 2 stars

Toad Road - 2012 - 3 stars

In the Tall Grass - 2019 - 1 stars

The Kitchen - 2012 - 1 stars

Pink Hill - 2019 - 1 stars

Strawberry Mansion - 2021 - 3 stars

Chronic - 2015 - 1 stars

Martyrs - 2008 - 3.5 stars

Fantasia - 1940 - 3 stars

Deep Water - 2022 - 1 stars

Modern Whore - 2020 - 3.5 stars

Maniac - 2018 - 2.5 stars

Lucky - 2017 - 1 stars

Love, Death & Robots: The Witness - 2019 - 3.5 stars

Filth - 2013 - 1 stars

Amer - 2009 - 3.5 stars

Dreams - 1990 - 3 stars

Imprint - 2006 - 4 stars

Timelapse of the Future: A Journey to the End of Time - 2019 - 3.5 stars

Last and First Men - 2020 - 3 stars

Lake Mungo - 2008 - 2 stars

Killer Joe - 2011 - 4 stars

Antebellum - 2020 - 5 stars

The Nightmare - 2015 - 3 stars

The Nightmare - 2015 - 1.5 stars

The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears - 2013 - 2 stars

The Innocents - 2021 - 3 stars

Knife+Heart - 2018 - 1 stars

Eden Lake - 2008 - 1 stars

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom - 1975 - 1.5 stars

13 Assassins - 2010 - 2.5 stars

Videodrome - 1983 - 3.5 stars

A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence - 2014 - 1 stars

Kajillionaire - 2020 - 1 stars

The Laughing Woman - 1969 - 3 stars

Sword of Desperation - 2010 - 3.5 stars

Jumbo - 2020 - 1.5 stars

She Dies Tomorrow - 2020 - 3 stars

Belladonna of Sadness - 1973 - 2 stars

Natural Born Killers - 1994 - 3 stars

Lars and the Real Girl - 2007 - 3 stars

Orlando - 1992 - 3 stars

Szamanka - 1996 - 3 stars

I, Tonya - 2017 - 3 stars

Gone Girl - 2014 - 3 stars

Fright Night - 2011 - 3 stars

A Field in England - 2013 - 2 stars

Timecrimes - 2007 - 2.5 stars

Crazy Samurai Musashi - 2020 - 2 stars

Suzume - 2022 - 3.5 stars

John Mulaney: Baby J - 2023 - 3 stars

John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch - 2019 - 1.5 stars

BEEF - 2023 - 1.5 stars

Night Is Short, Walk on Girl - 2017 - 3 stars

Patrick Melrose - 2018 - 3 stars

The Duke of Burgundy - 2014 - 3 stars

Thelma - 2017 - 3.5 stars

After Hours - 1985 - 3 stars

The Rusted - 2015 - 3 stars

Inside Man - 2006 - 2 stars

The Lair of the White Worm - 1988 - 2 stars

American Animals - 2018 - 3.5 stars

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - 2023 - 3 stars

Babylon - 2022 - 3 stars

Unstoppable - 2010 - 2.5 stars

Hurlyburly - 1998 - 1.5 stars

Venus in Fur - 2013 - 3 stars

I'm a Virgo - 2023 - 4.5 stars

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse - 2023 - 4.5 stars

Lux Æterna - 2019 - 3.5 stars

M3GAN - 2022 - 1.5 stars

Asteroid City - 2023 - 4 stars

I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House - 2016 - 2 stars

Barbie - 2023 - 4.5 stars

Oppenheimer - 2023 - 4.5 stars

Like Me - 2017 - 4 stars

Megan Is Missing - 2011 - 4 stars

Selfie from Hell - 2018 - 2 stars

Cutter's Way - 1981 - 3 stars

Marrowbone - 2017 - 3 stars

Polite Society - 2023 - 4 stars

Carmen - 2022 - 4 stars

Splice - 2009 - 3.5 stars

Exiled - 2006 - 4 stars

Cam - 2018 - 4 stars

Pulse - 2001 - 3 stars

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - 2011 - 3 stars

Sunset Boulevard - 1950 - 3 stars

Bug - 2006 - 4 stars

The Signal - 2007 - 3 stars

Thunder Road - 2018 - 1.5 stars

A Scanner Darkly - 2006 - 3 stars

Ratter - 2015 - 3 stars

The Cremator - 1969 - 2 stars

The Forbidden Room - 2015 - 1.5 stars

Joy Ride - 2023 - 3 stars

Barry Lyndon - 1975 - 4.5 stars

Easy Rider - 1969 - 3.5 stars

Hard Candy - 2005 - 1.5 stars

The Last King of Scotland - 2006 - 2 stars

Gotham - 1988 - 3 stars

Some Kind of Heaven - 2020 - 3 stars

Consecration - 2023 - 3 stars

Broadcast Signal Intrusion - 2021 - 4.5 stars

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead - 2007 - 3.5 stars

The Gathering - 2001 - 2.5 stars

Medusa Deluxe - 2022 - 3.5 stars

Run Rabbit Run - 2023 - 3.5 stars

No One Will Save You - 2023 - 3.5 stars

The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart - 2023 - 3.5 stars

A Haunting in Venice - 2023 - 3 stars

Medusa - 2020 - 3.5 stars

Black Medusa - 2021 - 3.5 stars

A Tale of Two Sisters - 2003 - 3 stars

Medusa's Venom - 2023 - 3 stars

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer - 2006 - 2.5 stars

Ms .45 - 1981 - 3.5 stars

Shiva Baby - 2020 - 2.5 stars

Margin Call - 2011 - 4 stars

Unfriended: Dark Web - 2018 - 2.5 stars

The Rapture - 1991 - 4 stars

Demonic - 2021 - 2 stars

The Wolf of Wall Street - 2013 - 2 stars

Take Shelter - 2011 - 2 stars

The Fourth Kind - 2009 - 2.5 stars

Don Jon - 2013 - 4 stars

Deerskin - 2019 - 2 stars

In a World... - 2013 - 3 stars

Let the Right One In - 2008 - 3 stars

Sling Blade - 1996 - 4 stars

Monster's Ball - 2001 - 4 stars

Paranormal Activity - 2007 - 3 stars

The Gift - 2015 - 3 stars

2 Days in New York - 2012 - 1 stars

Glasshouse - 2021 - 3.5 stars

The Countess - 2009 - 2 stars

Have a Good Trip: Adventures in Psychedelics - 2020 - 1.5 stars

The Devil All the Time - 2020 - 2 stars

The Vietnam War - 2017 - 3.5 stars

Stop Making Sense - 1984 - 2.5 stars

Look Away - 2018 - 3 stars

The City and the City - 2018 - 2.5 stars

11.22.63 - 2016 - 2 stars

Nathan for You: Finding Frances - 2017 - 3.5 stars

They Cloned Tyrone - 2023 - 4.5 stars

The Ninth Configuration - 1980 - 1 stars

Deep Rising - 1998 - 2 stars

Mud - 2012 - 4 stars

The Borderlands - 2013 - 2 stars

After Blue - 2021 - 2.5 stars

Ghostbusters: Afterlife - 2021 - 3 stars

Prisoners - 2013 - 3.5 stars

Zodiac - 2007 - 3 stars

The Girl with All the Gifts - 2016 - 3 stars

Rabbit-Proof Fence - 2002 - 3.5 stars

The Fall of the House of Usher - 2023 - 4.5 stars

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar - 2023 - 4 stars

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 - 2023 - 3.5 stars

Poison - 2023 - 3 stars

The Rat Catcher - 2023 - 2.5 stars

The Swan - 2023 - 2.5 stars

Knock at the Cabin - 2023 - 3 stars

The Wait - 2013 - 2 stars

Reptile - 2023 - 1 stars

Ping Pong the Animation - 2014 - 4 stars

Revenge - 2017 - 4 stars

Searching - 2018 - 1.5 stars

Undergods - 2020 - 3.5 stars

Enemy - 2013 - 3.5 stars

The Lego Movie - 2014 - 3 stars

Man of Steel - 2013 - 3.5 stars

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle - 2017 - 3.5 stars

Bound - 1996 - 3 stars

Braid - 2018 - 4.5 stars

The Ghoul - 2016 - 2.5 stars

The House of the Devil - 2009 - 2.5 stars

The Dark Tapes - 2016 - 3 stars

The English - 2022 - 3 stars

Pontypool - 2008 - 3 stars

Antrum - 2018 - 3 stars

The Myth of the American Sleepover - 2010 - 4 stars

The Innkeepers - 2011 - 2 stars

Dallas Buyers Club - 2013 - 4 stars

Green Room - 2015 - 4 stars

Sinister - 2012 - 3 stars

Jacob's Ladder - 1990 - 3 stars

Free Samples - 2012 - 4 stars

Teeth - 2007 - 3 stars

A Time to Kill - 1996 - 3 stars

Two for the Money - 2005 - 3 stars

Source Code - 2011 - 3 stars

A Quiet Place - 2018 - 3 stars

The Royal Hotel - 2023 - 2.5 stars

Naked Singularity - 2021 - 3 stars

Don't Breathe - 2016 - 2.5 stars

Troy - 2004 - 2.5 stars

Morgan - 2016 - 2 stars

The Autopsy of Jane Doe - 2016 - 3 stars

Lot 36 - 2022 - 4 stars

Coraline - 2009 - 2 stars

Listen Up Philip - 2014 - 1 stars

The Book of Henry - 2017 - 2 stars

Talk to Me - 2022 - 3.5 stars

House - 1977 - 3 stars

The Night House - 2020 - 3.5 stars

The Killer - 2023 - 3 stars

Chained for Life - 2018 - 3 stars

Most Beautiful Island - 2017 - 3.5 stars

Dumplings - 2004 - 2 stars

The Burial - 2023 - 2.5 stars

The Social Network - 2010 - 3 stars

The Last Black Man in San Francisco - 2019 - 3 stars

Hidden - 2015 - 3 stars

Red Eye - 2005 - 2 stars

In the Cut - 2003 - 3 stars

Steve Jobs - 2015 - 4 stars

Frailty - 2001 - 3 stars

The Mandela Effect - 2019 - 2 stars

Them - 2021 - 2 stars

Tone-Deaf - 2019 - 3 stars

The Fall - 2006 - 4 stars

Excision - 2012 - 4 stars

American Mary - 2012 - 3.5 stars

My house walk-through - 2016 - 3.5 stars

Swing Girls - 2004 - 3 stars

No Hard Feelings - 2023 - 3 stars

Medusa - 2021 - 4.5 stars

Sin City: A Dame to Kill For - 2014 - 3 stars

Stargate: The Ark of Truth - 2008 - 2.5 stars

Star Trek: Nemesis - 2002 - 2 stars

The Number 23 - 2007 - 2 stars

Emma. - 2020 - 4.5 stars

Cremaster 3 - 2002 - 3 stars

Synchronicity - 2015 - 1 stars

The Brotherhood of Satan - 1971 - 2 stars

Mr. Nobody - 2009 - 1 stars

Inside - 2023 - 2 stars

Terminal - 2018 - 1 stars

Franklyn - 2008 - 1 stars

Mauvais Sang - 1986 - 1 stars

Jennifer's Body - 2009 - 4 stars

The White Room - 1989 - 2 stars

Cosmos - 2019 - 1 stars

Hard Eight - 1996 - 2 stars

Hotel - 2001 - 1 stars

The Lathe of Heaven - 1980 - 1 stars

Lost River - 2014 - 4.5 stars

Passage - 2009 - 3 stars

Spring Breakers - 2012 - 4 stars

Nightbreed - 1990 - 3.5 stars

Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire - 2019 - 2.5 stars

Tell Me Who I Am - 2019 - 3 stars

Vortex - 2021 - 2 stars

His House - 2020 - 3 stars

The Strangers - 2008 - 2.5 stars

The Wonder - 2022 - 3 stars

The Heroic Trio - 1993 - 3.5 stars

Happy as Lazzaro - 2018 - 3 stars

The Last Unicorn - 1982 - 2.5 stars

Under the Shadow - 2016 - 2.5 stars

A Monster Calls - 2016 - 3.5 stars

A.I. Artificial Intelligence - 2001 - 2 stars

Re/Member - 2022 - 4 stars

Class Action Park - 2020 - 3 stars

The Beguiled - 2017 - 4 stars

Burning - 2018 - 4 stars

The House - 2022 - 2.5 stars

Superman II - 1980 - 3.5 stars

Rush - 2013 - 4 stars

Blackhat - 2015 - 2 stars

He Never Died - 2015 - 1.5 stars

6 Underground - 2019 - 1 stars

Hellhole - 2022 - 3 stars

Superbad - 2007 - 3 stars

Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams - 2002 - 1 stars

Sunshine - 2007 - 2.5 stars

Scarface - 1983 - 4.5 stars

Gerald's Game - 2017 - 3 stars

The Bridge Curse - 2020 - 2 stars

Minari - 2020 - 1 stars

Lady Bird - 2017 - 2 stars

The Great Beauty - 2013 - 1 stars

John Dies at the End - 2012 - 2.5 stars

The Tree of Life - 2011 - 2 stars

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - 1984 - 2 stars

The Double - 2013 - 1 stars

Snake Eyes - 1998 - 4 stars

In the Mood for Love - 2000 - 4 stars

Stigma - 1977 - 3 stars

Black Widow - 2021 - 2.5 stars

House of Flying Daggers - 2004 - 4 stars

The Virgin Suicides - 1999 - 3.5 stars

The Square - 2017 - 2.5 stars

Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping - 2016 - 2.5 stars

Black Orpheus - 1959 - 1 stars

Bad Santa - 2003 - 1 stars

Chernobyl Diaries - 2012 - 2 stars

My Neighbor Totoro - 1988 - 3 stars

Tombstone - 1993 - 2.5 stars

Fire of Love - 2022 - 3.5 stars

BLUE EYE SAMURAI - 2023 - 1.5 stars

Poor Things - 2023 - 4.5 stars

Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God - 2023 - 4 stars

Godzilla Minus One - 2023 - 3.5 stars

The Dropout - 2022 - 3 stars

Misery - 1990 - 2 stars

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone - 2013 - 2 stars

PVT Chat - 2020 - 1 stars

The Last Emperor - 1987 - 3.5 stars

Moonlight - 2016 - 3.5 stars

Sanctuary - 2022 - 3 stars

God's Time - 2022 - 2.5 stars

She Will - 2021 - 4.5 stars

See How They Run - 2022 - 3 stars

Breaking the Waves - 1996 - 2 stars

The Woman in Black - 2012 - 1 stars

The Gambler - 2014 - 1 stars

Minor Premise - 2020 - 1.5 stars

The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then the Bigfoot - 2018 - 2 stars

Gaia - 2021 - 3 stars

Upgrade - 2018 - 1 stars

The Mill - 2023 - 2 stars

12 Hour Shift - 2020 - 3.5 stars

Ready or Not - 2019 - 3 stars

The Lost World: Jurassic Park - 1997 - 3.5 stars

Something in the Dirt - 2022 - 3 stars

The Deep End - 2022 - 3 stars

Alita: Battle Angel - 2019 - 1 stars

The Sacrament - 2013 - 2.5 stars

From Here to Eternity - 1953 - 2 stars

The French Connection - 1971 - 1.5 stars

Ordinary People - 1980 - 1 stars

Platoon - 1986 - 3 stars

The Player - 1992 - 4 stars

Saltburn - 2023 - 4.5 stars

Red Cliff - 2008 - 3.5 stars

Stolen Youth: Inside the Cult at Sarah Lawrence - 2023 - 3 stars

The Beyond - 1981 - 2 stars

I would say none of the movies I watched this year were truly great, S-tier movies, compared to last year which had two (EEAAO, and Vengeance.) However, I found this year had a good variety of movies at the A-tier below that (some of which I still need to see.)

But this makes choosing “the best” difficult. Instead I will hand out awards:

• The “Hold a Gun to my Head and Threaten Cronenberg Style Violence on Me to Pick 2023’s Best” Award goes to Infinity Pool, by Brendan Cronenberg.
• The Studio Ghibli Award for “I Meant to See This but my Theater Stopped Showing It” Award goes to How Do You Live AKA the Boy and the Heron.
• The “I Can’t Believe Three Contenders for Best Movie of the Year Were All Released on the Same Day” award goes to Oppenheimer, Barbie, and They Cloned Tyrone.
• The “Dogtooth” Award for Yorgos Lanthimos Sure Does Like Fucked Up Sexuality goes to Poor Things. Also a recipient of the “Cruella award for Damn Emma Stone is Fine” Award.
• The Don Glover Award for “Black Made Movie that Manages to Hugely Offend the Identity-Left” goes to Antebellum.
• The Most French Award goes to Holy Motors.
• The First And Only Time Directing Awards are split. The “I Really Want to Be Nicholas Refn and Everyone Hated It” Award goes to Lost River by Ryan Gosling. The “If You All Liked It So Much Why Hasn’t Anyone Hired Me to Make Another Movie” Award goes to Emma. 2020 by Autumn de Wilde. (Though Don Jon by JGL is a runner up.)
• The Alice Krige “Borg Queen, Controlling Mother of a Cult Leader, Vengeful Hollywood Witch - What Can’t She do?” Award goes to She Will. 
• The Brit Marling “Creates a Cult Following Also a Cult” Award goes to Broadcast Signal Intrusion, by Jacob Gentry.
• And finally, the Zack Snyder “Everyone Hates This but C’mon It is Clearly Amazing Camp” Award goes to Saltburn, by Emerald Fenell.

The Fargo Five: Too Fargo Too Friendly

Fargo Season 5 started this week, and I'm going to give you a thematic summary if you wonder why people like this Coen brother dark crime comedy so much. (Because each season is a separate narrative, there isn't much plot or character to catch up on, though some redditors will definitely become obsessed with the few world-building connections between seasons.) I'm not going to make effort to avoid spoilers, so if you really care about those, go watch the series now.

"In A World" full of meta post titles

 

After enjoying Vengeance (written, directed, and starring BJ Novak) and Don Jon (written, directed, and starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt) so much, I decided to look up other one shot films W/D/S the same person.

Which is how I ran across Lake Bell's "In a World" about a woman breaking into the world of professional voice acting. 

It was okay. Is this a secret gem that breaks down its own genre and come to a new understanding of authenticity like the other two movies I mentioned? No. Is it a fun comedy for killing an afternoon, yeah let's go with that.

But it's so simple that I am really surprised to find how badly people interpret it. By people I mean "reviews on letterboxed" or wherever else I can google them. Even of the reviews that liked it, there are only two main things people can agree on:

"This film has a strong feminist message, showing that women should believe in themselves and acquire power in every ways in life."

and 

What's up with the side plot about her sister's marriage? It doesn't connect to anything?

Which are complete misreadings of a very basic film!

Let's start with the cast. People praise how star studded this is for an indie film, but it's a bunch of comedians (mainly from Bell's sitcom "Children's Hospital.) Rob Courdy, Tig Notaro, Nick Offerman, Ken Marino, Sy Abelman. Who are great, but we should recognize it as the sort of dying breed it is: throw a bunch of comedians together and they them have fun. Sure this was made in 2013, but it's a distinctly 90's genre that lost ground to MCU blockbusters because they don't make money anymore. It's not going to be 21st century progressive feminist, it's going to be 90's "PCU" ideology as defined by the late kontextmaschine.

The climax involved the activists protesting the big frat party (tagline: “Everyone Gets Laid”), but then realizing “holy shit, we’re against drinking, sex, parties, freedom, and fun, we’re the bad guys” and giving up and chilling out and hooking up with the frat members.

(This is not an endorsement or criticism of either ideology (Anyone who reads this blog knows I am more materialist than either.) It's an analysis of what the movie is.)

Now you say, "Blue, you're overreading this again. What is the evidence this comedy movie actually has that pointed an ideological perspective?"

Because the first scene (after the nostalgic Don LaFontaine retrospective) is:

Dymitry Martin: She sounds like a [r-word] pirate, so the studio is paying to have her work with a coach. And I thought of you. Sorry, I never use the word "[r-word]" in a derogatory way. I hate people who do that. Sorry, if you have a cousin or a friend who's [r-word], I didn't mean it that way. So, sorry about that.

Lake Bell: It's fine. I'll come in today.

(Lake Bell sets up her recording equipment and beings practicing her voiceovers.)

Lake Bell (deep voice): In a world... where one woman, must teach another woman... not to sound [r-word.]

This was made in 2013! They're making jokes about how sensitive liberals are neurotic about saying certain words, while down to earth working still-living-with-parents class just makes knowing jokes about it. The value of confidence over insecurity how others see you.

So even though the movie is about one woman breaking through in a male dominated industry (full of people assuming that audiences and executives aren't ready for female voiceovers,) it's going to be from a 90's "colorblind" perspective rather than a 2010's "identity solidarity" perspective.

Which leads us to the climax, not only when Bell wins the competition for voicing the Hunger Games parody quadrilogy "Amazon Girls" against her father and his protege/her fuckboy, she runs into executive Geena Davis who explains why she won.

Carol, let me level with you. Sure, you have perfect tone and a strong sound that's a fitting choice for the genre. But I'm using you for a bigger purpose. This pseudo-feminist fantasy tween chick-lit bullshit is a devolution of the female mission. It's cancerous to the intelligence of young women. You got this job because whether the general public chooses to acknowledge it or not, voice over matters. Everyone in the world watches movie trailers. Everyone in the world sees commercials on television. Or they hear them on the radio. And that is power!

Look, this quadrilogy is going to make billions of dollars and your voice is going to be the one to inspire every girl who hears it. And that's why I chose you. Not because you were the best for the job. Because frankly, you weren't.

And then Lake Bell looks sad and conflicted.

I haven't found a single review that mentions this speech. We are supposed to feel sad and kind of dirty for her, that this character who was trying to become good enough that she could escape identity politics, only won because of them. (And there's definitely ways they could have written that same message to be inspiring. The writer, who is Lake Bell, chose to make it cynical instead.)

I'm not going to say this movie is a 100% consistent diatribe in favor of 90's PCU politics - it has some pretty complicated family dynamics, including a mother who maybe committed suicide - but that is the core of the morality. So when Bell's character attacks SoCal girls for having too much vocal fry[1], it should be understood as consistent with the morality instead of some bizarre mistake in being a good ally (the latter of which, several reviewers bring up.)

So, the meta-analyst might think, this movie is about "who tells your story", and why the identity of voiceovers is not a neutral choice? Eh, not really. I mean that's a very interesting perspective to build a movie on (Birds of Prey for instance does this well), but it's just not what this movie did. Bell does not emphasize the over part of voiceover, but rather the voice.

Because this movie, actually has a lot of interesting things to say about voices! Bell's character's other job is voice coach and her real obsession is recording as many accents as she can find from people she meets. 

 

Which is where the sister's marriage sideplot comes in! Bell asks her sister to record an interview with a guy with a sexy Irish brogue to get his accent, and she gets seduced by him. But her husband hears the recording and it destroys him. (His scene of leaving her is actually really moving, and much more dramatic and subtle that you'd expect from fucking Rob Courdry.) Rob then says he wish he had some way to understand her, in a bubble removed from the nervousness of real interaction and its demands. So Bell asks her despairing sister what she feels, it's very sweet, records it, and gets the tape to Rob. He accepts her back, yadda yadda. But the point is that all of this plot from beginning to end was about the power of voice.

*****

From a later interview, not endorsed but giving insights into her ideology https://www.backstage.com/magazine/article/lake-bell-finds-voice-world-13673/  :

Less controversial is what Bell refers to as the “pandemic” of young women speaking in a baby voice (something memorably skewered in an episode of “30 Rock”). Though Carol practically demands that a young woman stop squeak speaking in “In a World...,” Bell refrains from chastising women on the street.

“I was here earlier,” she says, sipping lemonade in a Brooklyn café after a photo shoot, “and there was a girl who walked in, and I knew she was going to have the voice. She looked lovely, but there was something in her body language where I just knew I was dealing with a live one. And sure enough, she spoke like a 12-year-old girl.” Bell attributes some of the voice’s popularity to the rise of reality TV shows, where women eagerly participate in their own objectification and speak in baby voices to be more feminine and desirable, and bemoans the lack of voices that she grew up considering sexy.

“When I grew up, to be sexual and to be profoundly feminine you would sound like Lauren Bacall or Faye Dunaway. Lauren Bacall was fucking sexy, and she had a normal, big-girl voice,” Bell says. “Sexy baby is an affectation. It’s a dialect. It’s something you put on.”

Money$$$: AKA Vaguely Wading into the Scorsese Debate

Time is a flat circle, and Dr. Manhattan repeats that it is 2023 and Martin Scorsese is dismissing superhero films and Twitter is full of passionate defending the MCU and attacking Scorsese or defending Scorsese and attacking the MCU.

Nothing ever changes. It's still Twitter, not even X.

Here's the thing I don't get though: since when is Martin fucking Scorsese the aesthete who looks down on genre films?

The man's career is built on mob violence, cocaine, and naked prostitutes. That's what his movies are, at least weighted by how much money they made. Goodfellas, Casino, Gangs of New York, the Irishman. Three hours of "a working class man is seduced by a world of crime, claws his way up with ambition and bravo, lives a very high life, gets hubris, comes crashing down with federal investigations." Some variations, but that's the basic arc over and over.

I'm not saying they are bad. The set pieces are entertaining, if repetitive. And he is superlative at filming these. But if you're judging movies just by what genre they are in, comic books are comic books and superheroes aren't much more populist than mafia.

(Sure, Last Temptation is something else but that's half a century ago. Silence is something else but no one even watched that. You're all still talking about Wolf of Wall Street and he won the Oscar for Departed.)

***

So I decided to actually watch Wolf of Wall Street for the first time. (I could say between the DCEU and Scorsese, only one of them has asked Margot Robbie to pose naked, but that's unfair, because she's really one of the more human parts of Wolf.)

It's... not good?

I mean the writing. The cinematography is great, especially for the big set pieces that zoom through a crowded trading floor, or he lingers the camera for far too long to catch the humor and surrealism of being high as fuck.

But the film is like 50% by runtime, dudes doing cocaine and hookers at obscene parties. DiCaprio's arc is "hustles his way up, really loves money and drugs, gets arrogant, gets pursued by the feds, crashes." It's the same damn arc as always, and no, I do not think "what if a stockbroker really liked being rich but was betrayed by his wife who was sick of his crimes" captures the nuances of the human spirit.

Jonah Hill and Jon Bernathal are really funny at least. But it's funny, not touching or revealing.

(I betray myself by pointing out that DiCaprio's real undoing is not desire for money, but twice his genuine love for Stratton-Oakmont. But do I think that is what the director was really trying to investigate?)

The silliest nit to pick is that Wolf... doesn't even say anything about the world of money. Sure it's accurate about the boiler rooms of high pressure sales people trying to push bad stocks onto dumb money, but that's a very tiny slice of financial activity. Even the few times Leo is about to explain an IPO, he lampshades it by saying we don't care about that stuff and just saying "we're gonna make a lot of money!" Everything is a zero-sum game and there's nothing but predatory instinct. This is the world of the Social and Symbolic, and the Real is non-existent.

Quick, who's your favorite female Scorsese character that isn't a victimized housewife turned into plaster saint? I'm sure you thought of one eventually, but it took a bit didn't it?

***

To compare it, I just watched Margin Call, the fictionalized account of a nameless i-bank over 24 hours starting the 2008 crash. It's very theatre-like or writerly, usually two talking head chewing scenery at each other, and half the scenes look like they were shot for television (especially any in an elevator or at a bar.) 

But the writing is a better story, by orders of magnitude. Yes, there are the sharks to whom all of finance is a social game to move blame onto the other guy before you catch it. But they actually have to deal with the Real sometimes, like when someone's model shows all of their mortgage backed securities are about to crash and take their overly-leveraged company with them. You see the canniest minds pivoting from the world of taking credit (and shifting blame) to responding to the world changing under their feet... and then back into the social games the second they've found their footing.

You see a man lay off 80% of his floor one morning, care less about them than his dog's tumor, and yet later sincerely grapple with the moral code of being a salesman, telling his billionaire boss to fuck off on a matter of principle. You see Paul Bettany explain how easy it is for people who earn seven figures a year to spend it all without realizing, and so be unable to give up their job no matter awful it gets.

(You may be appalled at them, but have you ever considered explaining where all your income goes to a family that earns 1/10th what you do?)

... the feminine representation isn't much better, to be fair. Demi Moore's executive is social conniver left holding the back, and that's all we get of women besides a brief snippet from Mary McDonnell. But the movie ain't perfect. It still has a lot less nipples than Wolf.

It's very weird to see Tumblr arguing about sex scenes in movies, as if every boob we've seen on screen was from an intimate coming together of emotional catharsis. And not just a fourth chance to say "look at how many hookers DiCaprio's character hired for company events." We get it, and this is the high priest of cinema? Like yeah, maybe we can have a few less of those scenes.

Sex, Violence, and the Obligation of Real Depictions

Content warning: This post is going to be pretty explicit about portrayals about first violence, and later sex, in four movies. It will probably be unpleasant. You are forewarned.

Spoilers for: Inside Man, American Animals, Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and Megan is Missing.

This post was written in reaction to the choking of Jordan Neely on a subway in New York, some four months late. The event was a rich text with many interpreters and I had nothing to add then I thought could be useful. It was a tragedy, both in the moment and in the preconditions leading up to it. Now maybe I'll say some things, about movies.

***

I recently watched the Spike Lee movie "Inside Man" starring Denzel Washington and Clive Owen. It's a clever thriller about robbers who take a bank hostage, and along the way we discover who the real criminals are - the founder who started the bank with Nazi gold stolen from Jewish victims. 

The con is that Clive and friends take thirty customers and employees of the bank hostage, to break into the founder's deposit box and expose his secrets, and manage to escape by blending into the hostages when they let them go (and not having any money on them when they are leaving.) This "dissolving into the people" is a powerful metaphor about the way revolutionaries should act.

Their violence is swift and effective - they pretend to hurt some compatriots, so the other thirty are cowed into place. They let an old man who is having an attack of some sort go. Their guns only have blanks. They may hold these people against their will overnight, but no one really dies and the cops themselves seem to cause more pain and damage.

It's what we imagine our use of violence would be like. Righteous, and inflicting no more harm than we intended, and no more than they deserved. (The most annoying thing about the movie is just how smug Clive is about his ridiculously complicated plan that went off without a hitch.)

A very slickly made movie, and I hated it.

***

Around then I also watched "American Animals", the biopic about four real college kids who realized their library held several books worth over twelve million dollars, and had no more security than any other suburban state university library. They make a plan to steal and fence the books, it goes horribly wrong, and they all end up in jail.

It has an extremely meta directing style, intercutting interviews with the actual kids (grown up and out of jail now), and scenes of these relatively famous actors pretending to be them as they hatch their scheme (Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan fan club shoutout.) Sometimes we'll get a scene with one character played by the actor and the other played by the real person. Some scenes will be repeated three or four times as they can't agree on the details in their memory. There are scenes that are hypotheticals, and other ones that look real but later we question whether they happened at all.

The movie is pathetic. We get one incredibly slick scene of how they think the heist will go - upbeat music playing, tazing the librarian on watch into unconsciousness with a surprise twist of the wrist, tossing the books perfectly onto their blanket - and then we see how the heist actually went. These kids were terrified of doing actual violence to a person. They put it off to the last second, full of sweat and anxiety. They learn tazing isn't trivial and they only knock down the librarian and scare her, causing her to piss herself. It's just terrible and awful all around, and made me sick watching it. They spend terrified minutes looking for keys, they fuck up getting any of the books but one, they accidentally give their real phone number to their appraiser, and they go into hiding knowing they will be caught. There's nothing they can do but wait for the hammer to drop, and it does.

Even though the acting and the writing and oh god the pacing was so much worse than Inside Man, I loved it.

It was the most realistic depiction of violence I had ever seen. Not something grand and unholy, a tool of the gods. No it was sordid and cowardly and chaotic. It was "all too human."

Violence is chaotic. Once we have started using it, we can't control what happens as a result of it, but we are still responsible. There is no way a team of bank robbers could hold thirty people over night and stage a chaotic release without anyone sustaining harm. In Inside Man, we don't see the scared mother worried she won't get home to her kids or her mother in time. We don't see the assault victim suffer panic attacks as they are retraumatized. We don't see someone who is terrified into senselessness asking over and over again what's going on. We don't see any of the human reaction that could go wrong at all.

I don't doubt that Neely's assailant thought he was using righteous violence, to contain a situation he felt was out of hand. The point is, that any choke hold has a chance of killing someone. 

If you start violence, you have opened the gateway to chaos. It will not go how you think it will. Sometimes you have to pull the trigger anyway, but if your only excuse is "I have the perfect plan where nothing will go wrong", then you are setting yourself up for failure.

***

More recently, I watched the moral panic sensation "Megan is Missing." MiM is a found footage movie about two 14-year-old girls who get kidnapped, violated, and killed. It feels designed to stoke fears of how dangerous the internet is and who you could meet over it. It recently went viral on teen tiktok, and created a counter-outrage by people disgusted at how prurient this movie is.

MiM feels very amateur, and the plot is the simplest and bleakest plot I've ever seen (The plot is two girls meet a guy online, get kidnapped sequentially by him, don't escape, they die, the end.) And yet it has a power in its acting and understanding that is rare in media. It shows a mastery of tension using backgrounds or foreground objects that we dread something is going to happen with, as we wait and wait.

These girls aren't unaware that men want them in unseemly ways. They are very aware, and mock the transparent desires of men. They use cynicism to be above it all. But underneath that they have an insecure need for affection and belonging that convinces them to go along with whatever a sketchy male in their life proposes, telling themselves that if they look unimpressed and resign they are retaining their independence. There is a monologue where one teen even breaks down and describes all of this to her friend, and it is incredibly moving.

(The movie also has a complicated relationship with authenticity. It is based on a story of a drifter kidnapping a 14 year old girl from a sleepover and her body was found the next day. In this version there are two girls, they look well above 14 and participate in a very mature lifestyle, they meet a man over the internet, and after a series of exchanges he just grabs them in broad daylight, and holds them in a prison for weeks.)

The movie is also gross.

We don't see a lot of sex (and no nakedness beneath underwear), but there are without doubt a few extremely sexual shots. They are graphic and disturbing. There is porn for everything on the internet, so one can't deny the accusation that someone gets off on this (the most common target of the accusation is of course this director.) But like, you'd have to be into pretty hardcore fetish to find those shots hot. They are grimy and dirty and lacking in all humanity for the subject.

The climax of the movie is when the kidnapper has taken the second, more innocent girl, and he drags her out of her cell, bends her over a table, and points her camcorder at just her face. He transparently takes her virginity, and we spend several minutes seeing her face scream in agony, before going into shock and her face becomes slack and unresponsive, all hope having been lost. Incredibly powerful scene.

Maybe someone finds this sexy, but it's not possibly erotic. It's disturbing, and that is what makes reviewers uncomfortable. There is no quasi-romantic kidnapping, where the kidnapper tries to accommodate his victim, and the victim plays along to seduce him. There is just pain and suffering and really it doesn't look like either of them is deriving satisfaction from this.

I can not recommend this fucked up movie enough. The final ten minutes are just a shot of a barrel and dirt, and one of the most powerful endings of any movie.

***

Just yesterday, I watched "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", 2011 by David Fincher. It's extremely well done. My generalization about Fincher is that he tells very creative original stories, but sometimes his adaptations are just like "the book, but now it's on film." That's what it felt like - I could not recommend this or Gone Girl to anyone who had read the book, unless you really like seeing the characters you imagined played by Ben Affleck and Daniel Craig. Whatever.

The movie commits the mortal sin of "nominally being about the sexual exploitation of and violence against women, while taking many opportunities to show these women in the struggle, looking very pretty and well made up, or other sexualized, spruced up women that are very erotic to look at." See like, every Law and Order show about a sex crime.

Contra MiM, at some point our protagonist goth heroine has been assaulted by her lecherous social worker. She is handcuffed in a cross pose to his bed, and we see her spread out symmetrically, completely undressed with a well-curved ass sticking in the air, and picture perfect smooth skin with gothy tattoos on her back. She's upset and she struggles but this is infinitely more "hot" than the filthy shots from MiM. 

She later turns the tables, and has her assaulter handcuffed, fucks him with a dildo, tattoos humiliating words on him, and controls his every life decision there after. She even approaches him to threaten him again and let him know she's watching. And honestly, that looked like a scene from an femdom porn and I think the assaulter is even more satisfied with this form of their relationship.

This isn't the only example. There is more consensual fucking, there are polaroids, and skin tight catsuits. It's a very sexy movie. And none of it makes people uncomfortable like MiM did, and there's a nominally "the woman eventually triumphs" story, so it's accepted as quality cinema. Even though way more men - rapists and innocents both - probably got off on it than MiM.

The smooth story is the false one. If we are demanding ethics from our movies, then we should demand the gross realism instead of the comfortable competent sex and violence. Then maybe some would be heroes won't fantasize about how easy the take down will be for them.