Goodbye, 2023...
Sunday, December 31, 2023 at 3:00PM 
SUPERSTAR is my favorite new-to-me film of 2023. What's yours?
As the year draws to a close, it's time for reflection and hopes for the year to come. All over film publications, lists dominate, cataloging the best pictures of 2023, rushing to proclaim their champions before the ball drops. Here, however, let's do another exercise. Looking back at the past twelve months, I like to think about my favorite first-time watches of years gone by, classics and other sorts that were new to me, even if they were well known to everybody else.
I think of Brian De Palma's Body Double, a perverse predilection I discovered on my travails through Erotic Thrillers. Then, there was Labyrinth of Cinema, Nobuhiko Obayashi's swan song, and a wild counterpoint to Nolan's Oppenheimer. While I wrote about those two, I have yet to mention my affection for Jafar Panahi's rebellious Offside or how Jan Svankmajer's Food seemed to synthesize its auteur's visceral cinema in one bite-sized grotesque. However, no flick inspired as much adoration as Todd Haynes' long-banned Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. In the year when Barbie reigned supreme, his was still the superior plastic picture, nightmarish and moving, a song on biopic limitations and truth at 24 frames per second.
New or old, may 2024 bring more cinema triumphs. Happy New Year!
Reader Comments (13)
Well, at this point, it's very hard to find a new-to-me movie.
So, I go with:
The best movies of 2023: "Oppenheimer", by Christopher Nolan and "Maestro", by Bradley Cooper.
The movie that made me love Cinema when I was a kid, that made me a film historian and the man I am: "Ghost", by Jerry Zucker, 1990.
And the greatest achievement on Motion Picture in Film History and my favorite movie: "Gone with the Wind", by Victor Fleming, 1939.
Happy New Year!
Happy 2024! 🍾🥂✨️
#happynewyear #happy2024 #allisfulloflove #allisfulloflight #allisfulloflife
The best new-to-me films I watched in 2023:
Seven Beauties
The Long Goodbye
The Secret of Roan Inish
Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance
White Hunter, Black Heart
Hardcore
Stealing Beauty
…and for Halloween season, a new classic for me: Trick r Treat
I decided to watch some Kaurismaki to prepare for Fallen Leaves, and I'm so glad that Drifting Clouds is imprinted on me now.
Happy new year!
The best thing I saw this year is one of my Blind Spots in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Eight Hours Don't Make a Day as it was a massive surprise while I saw some post-new wave films by Godard though I didn't get to see as many films as I did last year. 278 films in one year still isn't bad but I had things to do in my life as it relates to a 4-year old nephew and a 2-year old niece.
Of the 326 films I watched last year, the best new discoveries:
DEADLOCK - sauerkraut Western from 1970 that should be hunted down by everyone if you haven't seen it already
METROPOLITAN - now I am complete when it comes to Whit Stillman feature films, and I am the better for it
WELCOME II THE TERRORDOME - a forgotten 90s movie that was before its time
THE INNOCENTS - Deborah Kerr at her most weird. Amazing that this got made in its time
TOUTE UN NUIT - I can love and hate Chantal Akerman films in equal measure. This was closer to the former.
And my favourite retro cinema experience - POLYESTER with scratch'n'sniff cards. (My nostrils are still recovering from Number 2!)
I wish i could say I keep a 'new to me' movies list each year. Bu I guess I do have it due to Letterboxed. Turns out 2023 was my most disconnected year in terms of watching older films (because i was struggling to keep up with the new stuff more than in the past decade plus and wasn't doing retrospective pieceswhich is how I've felt in crucial gaps before). But here are the old movies I did randomly see in 2023 that I somehow hadn't before...
SAFETY LAST! (1923) on Criterion
EASY LIVING (1937) on Criterion
GOOD NEWS (1947) on Max
DUEL (1971) on Criterion
FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN (1973) on Criterion
NIGHTHAWKS (1978) on Criterion
THE VERDICT (1982) on Max
FALLEN ANGELS (1995) on Max
UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN (2003) in theaters
Of those the best were easily the screwball comedy Easy Living and the Paul Newman legal drama The Verdict but basically I'm glad to have seen all of them in different ways. I largely never regret seeing movies whether they're great or terrible. The dud of this crop was the musical Good News (which has a Best Original Song nomination which would absolutely freak out current audiences with its racism). And the most enjoyable of the list was Under the Tuscan Sun but that's because I saw it with friends in a repertory house as celebration of our then-impending trip to Italy.
Here were my favorite new-to-me films from the past year:
The Women (1939)
How Green Was My Valley (1941)
Dial M for Murder (1954)
Marty (1955)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964)
Black Girl (1966)
The Piano (1993)
Central Station (1998)
Hard to pick a favorite from this bunch. Perhaps Dial M for Murder and Central Station. But special shout out to Marty -- would a film like that nowadays win Best Picture? I'm doubtful.
I always love reading these lists because they are so diverse. A lot of the yearly top 10s inevitably feel repetitive for awhile, but these are always fresh. I am particularly glad to see Offside mentioned - Panahi is one of my favorite directors. Metropolitan and The Verdict are favorites of mine as well.
My favorite “first views” of 2023. All were viewed on Criterion Channel unless otherwise noted:
1. Mr. Klein (Losey)
2. Cria Cuervos (Saura)
3. The Damned (Visconti) - viewed on TCM
4. Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg) - viewed on Max
5. Red Beard (Kurosawa)
6. Grown-ups (Leigh) - but really, this is a placeholder for all the Mike Leigh BBC films Criterion added to the Channel this year
7. The Story of a Three-Day Pass (Van Peebles)
8. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Coppola)
9. Thirst (Park) - Amazon rental
10. Ordet (Dreyer)
My new-to-me films from 2023:
And Justice for All (1979)
They Don't Wear Black Tie (1981)
The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981)
True Lies (1994)
House of Flying Daggers (2004)
Primal Fear (1996)
Mephisto (1981)
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)
The Age of Innocence (1993)
The Game (1997)
House of Sand and Fog (2003)
Cala a Boca, Etelvina (1958)
Barton Fink (1991)
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Interiors (1978)
Balto (1995)
Amistad (1997)
The Accused (1988)
They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969)
Young Frankenstein (1974)
The Pawnbroker (1964)
Gone with the Wind (1939)
Born on the Fourth of July (1989)
The Grifters (1990)
Reds (1981)
Leaving Las Vegas (1995)
In 2023, I rewatched and reassessed several movies and significantly upped my opinion of them. I also saw a few new-to-me "classics" that I disliked.
My best discovery was 2020's SHIVA BABY.
I too saw Superstar and it came across as David Lynchian in it's look and feel,I cann see why it was controversial.
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