Fran Magazine: Issue #88

Year-end list season begins

Nov 29, 2023

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Maestro moment

Maestro said he’d rather see the Eagles win the Super Bowl than win an Oscar for Maestro. He’s lying, but I’m laughing!!!

Here’s an early year-end list on my favorite first-time watches

It’s November 29th, which is practically December 1st. Everywhere you look, best-of lists are popping up, everyone having made up their mind about the year in content and culture. Well, listen, I still haven’t seen The Holdovers, so you won’t hear anything from me about anything new until the last possible second.

December is usually a month that consists of frantic, last-minute year-of catching up (on the docket: Priscilla, The Killer, The Holdovers, Ferrari, Rotting in the Sun, A Thousand and One, The Taste of Things) and for indulgent rewatches (on the docket: the LOTR movies… again, the Souvenirs… again, The Beatles: Get Back… again). By this point in the year, most of the new things I watch are for professional obligation, but I’d much rather be letting my exhausted brain luxuriate in the feeling of seeing something I already know.

I made it a goal several years ago, however, to make sure that I was always watching more movies (and books!) from not-the-year-that-it-currently-is, in part to maintain a consistent self-education in film and in part because keeping up with the zeitgeist is often not pleasurable and meaningless outside of the poster’s economy. When I look back on year-end lists, it’s usually my first-time, non-contemporary watches that come to define the year far more than the new releases. A number or ranking system is totally arbitrary here. Usually I choose one less film than the number year it is, for a reason that makes no sense to anyone, including myself. Here are 22 of my favorite new-to-me movies I watched this year. Hopefully you’ll find that movies that you enjoy here too.

Presented in chronological order by release year…

The Awful Truth, Leo McCarey (1937)

My friend Jo watched this and sent me several frantic texts about Cary Grant.

Fan fiction was really onto something when they invented “enemies to lovers” in 2004. It’s crazy how romantic, funny, and modern this feels, nearly a century later. Anyone who is any age would love this movie!

Jaws, Steven Spielberg (1975)

Oh, what — you’re going to be mad I’d never seen Jaws before? Sometimes I put off seeing completely accessible old movies because I know a rep theater will screen it within proximity of where I live and I can see it on the big screen like I live in the past. It might not surprise you to learn that Jaws is great: funny, scary, thrilling. I jumped! Way more fun to see with a packed audience than to see on my own on my beautiful Roku TV.

Abigail’s Party, Mike Leigh (1977)

I wanted to limit myself to one film per director in this list, though I often saw multiple films by some of the people who appear on this list. I had a ball with the early Mike Leigh BBC films that cropped up on Criterion over the summer. Nuts in May and Grown-Ups (not that Grown-Ups) were close runners up to Abigail’s Party, the stage show-turned-TV movie that really launched Leigh into public consciousness. Obviously it’s a miracle of writing, but Alison Steadman — one of Leigh’s best assets from the 70s thru the 90s — plays one of the most deranged characters ever committed to stage or screen. We have been saying “yeah” like “[posh voice] nya” around the house ever since watching with no plans of stopping soon.

Reds, Warren Beatty (1981)

Every… hmmm… let’s say seventeen months… the Criterion Channel (the most consistently worthwhile streaming service) will put Reds up on the site. For a Beatty series? Sure. For a communist series? Whatever. For a throuple series1? That would be fun! All of which is to say that, any time this movie is available on Criterion, it feels like everyone — and I mean everyone — watches this movie and gets way too horny. That’s fine, but that’s not why I watched it. I watched Reds when it was on Criterion Channel in an attempt to watch all the Beatty flicks so I could understand why everyone likes it so much when he pretends to be Dick Tracy every ten years on YouTube.

This makes no sense to me, ultimately, but some of you love it. That said, Reds was a blast: the best movie about what it’s like to live in Brooklyn in 2023 without having to engage in what living in Brooklyn in 2023 is actually like. Who would you pick in a love triangle — Jack Nicholson or Warren Beatty?

The Green Ray, Éric Rohmer (1986)

It was hard to watch and not feel like Claire Denis’s Let the Sunshine In is in direct conversation with what Rohmer is doing. (Has Denis gone on the record about Rohmer? I bet she said something mean and/or insane, as is her way…) This movie is often praised by my peers for being relatable. I don’t disagree, but I think that’s maybe like… the fifth or sixth most interesting thing going on.

The Exorcist III, William Peter Blatty (1990)

I can’t get over how Hollywood this is. What works about the great horror I’ve seen is that it has an outsider quality; this is true of comedy too, and why the “studio comedy” struggles to make a significant comeback. But The Exorcist III is so Hollywood. It’s basically tentpole franchise. It has callbacks, but you don’t really need to know them. It has George C. Scott. It has big music and relatively minimal on-screen gore. Part of working through my brave era is also figuring out what I like about horror, not only not being afraid of it. What I like about The Exorcist III is that it feels like a musical.

Deep Cover, Bill Duke (1992)

Probably the coolest movie I saw all year.

Barcelona, Whit Stillman (1996)

I go back and forth on Stillman movies: I love Metropolitan, but Last Days of Disco makes my teeth hurt though I admire its quality. Love & Friendship is great, but that’s kind of its own thing. Barcelona felt, to me, like the Stillman of Stillmans — dripping with arch jokes, glib asides. I laughed and laughed. Maybe my secret favorite of his.

The Daytrippers, Greg Mottola (1996)

Phil got me the blu-ray of this for my birthday this past year on a general hunch that I would love it. Well, he was right! Reminded me of Nicole Holofcener’s Walking & Talking, a movie I think about nearly every week.

Mission: Impossible, Brian De Palma (1996)

I am not interested in going long on how truly bad I thought this past year’s Mission: Impossible was. I am interested, however, in how good the franchise’s first entry is. Prior to this year, I’d never seen this movie or its sequel (which I really did not enjoy, though there seems to have been something of a critical reappraisal of it) — I’d convinced myself, maybe, that neither was very good, that Brad Bird, of all people, had revived a dead format. Not so. This is a great movie, and what feels special about it is that despite its franchise/serialization origins, it has the urgency and tension of a standalone work. I don’t think the next Mission: Impossible movie will be very good either, but at least I don’t have to worry about that until 2025.

Ginger Snaps, John Fawcett (2000)

Forgive me: I was raised on WB programming, so when I say something reminds me of a Buffy episode, I mean that with the highest praise.

Birth, Jonathan Glazer (2004)

The best score of this year is Mica Levi’s score for Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest, a movie I don’t like. The best score of 2004 was Alexandre Desplat’s score for Jonathan Glazer’s Birth, a movie I loved.

Caché, Michael Haneke (2005)

This summer, everyone had Caché fever! I was lucky enough to catch this at the Quad’s Binoche retrospective (along with Damage). Less of La Binoche than I wanted, but still great. I was pleased to go into this mostly blind to what would happen — shocking, indulging, infuriating.

Syndromes and a Century, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul (2006)

I was similarly happy to catch a few films at Lincoln Center’s Weerasethakul retrospective. I expected, perhaps, to prefer Cemetery of Splendor to this film, but I was moved and lulled by his loving portrait of his not-parents meeting, and re-meeting, and walking and talking, and the sound of wind. I won’t ever knock watching movies on a laptop — how I watched most movies up until, hmm, let’s say 2021 — but I will say that I did myself a disservice seeing Uncle Boonmee on a laptop all those years ago. At times I found myself uncertain as to whether the movie was breathing, the theater, or just me.

My Blueberry Nights, Wong Kar-wai (2007)

This is regarded as a kind of noble failure of a director everyone goes nuts for. My two cents? If Jude Law is doing “Harry Styles voice,” I am going to call it an “underrated classic”…

Manakamana, Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez (2013)

I prefer the form here to the movie as a whole, but it’s a great exercise in observation, stillness, and beauty. Spray and Velez set up a camera in a cable car that transports visitors up a mountain to a temple in Nepal. What follows are nine, maybe ten? maybe eight?, 12-ish minute shots of people sitting the cable car, either on their way up or on their way down. Some chat, some sit in silence. A mother and daughter can’t stop laughing trying to eat quickly-melting ice cream. Very, very watchable.

The Spirit of ‘45, Ken Loach (2013)

I consider myself more or less familiar with Loach’s output, but this one had otherwise escaped me. We saw this during a limited run at Film Forum, a talking heads-style documentary about the English Labor and union movement after the Second World War leading up to Thatcher’s election. A totally inspiring and infuriating viewing experience, but most importantly, maybe, a grounding frame through which to take in the year’s events. It’s all slow, until it’s not.

Classical Period, Ted Fendt (2018)

The ultimate grad school filmmaker. There are two films I spent the year “jbol”ing during: this and the new Hunger Games movie.

Taming the Garden, Salomé Jashi (2021)

I imagine the pace of this film might be too slow for some, but Jashi’s documentary — about a wealthy Georgian man who collects centuries-old trees and has them transported to his property — bubbles over with rage. Who is anyone to dig up a tree! Who is anyone to own a tree! Come for the crazy images; leave feeling as bad as you can about anything.

Wrath of Man, Guy Ritchie (2021)

Fran Magazine readers will remember how much I hated Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre earlier this year. Fran Magazine readers may, however, be excited to learn how much I loved Wrath of Man. What a stupid (endorsement!!!!!) movie!

Fabian: Going to the Dogs, Dominik Graf (2021)

Friend of Fran Magazine Brendan Boyle recommended this film to me, and it is one of the few films on my watchlist that I actually got to this year. I loved it! Maybe my very favorite new-to-me watch of the year.

How to score 10 runs in the first inning and lose, Jon Bois (2022)

I watched this three or four times over the course of the year. I’ve liked Jon Bois’s work for a long time, and I’m sure this is not even close to the best thing he’s made (I’ve yet to set aside the time for the Mariners documentary). I could go long on what makes this particular short great, but let’s just say this here above is what my 2023 felt like, basically the whole year minus when I was watching Maestro. Here’s hoping 2024 feels like something else.

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