Civil War (2024): What Kind of Americans Are We?

The film sensation, Civil War, has been in theaters for about three weeks now, but I just got to see it last week. As you probably have heard, it’s about a second American civil war, taking place in the not-too-distant future. We are told little about who is fighting, and virtually nothing about how the war started or what they are fighting about, a storytelling strategy by British writer-director Alex Garland that’s become one of the most the controversial aspects of the picture. 

We quickly do learn that a few states known as the Western Forces, headed by Texas and California, have broken away from the US and that their armies are currently in central Virginia, advancing toward Washington. It is suggested without any specifics that the war is a reaction to an authoritarian president, now in his third term, and that’s about it.   This lack of specificity did not dim my appreciation of the film, and I doubt it will shade yours.  What does matter is that we become witnesses to an all-out war, Americans fighting and killing other Americans - in a conflict as ugly and horrifying as the war between the Union and the Confederacy in the 1860s.

By the end of the film, I was emotionally drained and could not move from my seat for several minutes - overwhelmed with awe, dismay, and an overload of other feelings. So, I sat and watched the end credits, accompanied by Suicide’s 1979 song Dream Baby Dream, appropriately smirking, or so it seemed, at the idea of an American dream. When I got out onto the street, I texted my wife “Movie just ended. OMG!” Then I pulled up the NY Times, just to make sure that the world was still in one piece.  Pretty melodramatic, but true.  It took a few more moments to shake off the thrall of Civil War.  

Garland knows how to develop a story and keep us interested. The stories that seem to attract him are rarely what one would call ordinary. Among other accomplishments in a varied career, he wrote the screenplay for Never Let Me Go (2010), adapting Nobel prize winner Kazuo MIshiguro’s novel. He wrote and directed the fabulous 2015 film Ex Machina, and more recently the quirky, queasy drama Men (2022), starring Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear.  Civil War starts out interesting and soon becomes compelling. 

As the movie begins, the war has been ongoing for some time already. The President [Nick Offerman - Parks and Recreation (2009-15); Dumb Money (2023)], is rehearsing a critical line for a speech he is about to broadcast – declaring a major battlefield victory and reiterating that once the secessionist leaders are deposed, the citizenry of Western Forces will be welcomed back into the bosom of the American family. But his nervousness belies the confidence of his words.  

Next, we are in Manhattan where two experienced war photographers, Lee [Kirsten Dunst - The Virgin Suicides (1999); Spider Man 1, 2 and 3 (2002 – 2007)] and Joel [Wagner Moura - Narcos (2015-16)] are making plans to get back into the action. They want to make their way to Washington, DC hoping for an interview with the beleaguered President. A revered elder journalist, Sammy [Stephen McKinley Henderson - Fences (2016); Lady Bird (2017)] warns that this is far too dangerous – “a suicide mission”. When Lee and Joel reject his advice, he asks to join them; he does not want to miss out on history. Along the way, the group also picks up a rookie photographer, Jessie, who idolizes Lee and hopes to learn from her while kick-starting her own career. Jessie is played by a sympathetic Cailee Spaeny - On the Basis of Sex (2018); Priscilla (2023). These four – representing different generations, genders and worldly experience – are our protagonists on a road trip through an America unlike any we’ve seen before.

 

Along the way we see beautiful countryside and a seemingly idyllic small town. We also witness bloody firefights, wearily determined soldiers, refugee camps, dangerous brigands, rocket attacks on unnamed US cities and devastated urban landscapes eerily resembling current-day Gaza City. Capping this off there’s the incredible, tense, awe-full finale in DC – including shockers at the Lincoln Memorial and the White House. 

Like any road trip movie, their journey offers the opportunity for the characters to reveal something of
themselves and to form bonds of friendship. Hanging out with these guys also offers us a riveting close-up look at the gritty environments in which war-zone photographers and reporters work and a bit of insight into what impels them to do such a patently dangerous job. Garland obviously admires the dedication of the fourth estate. Yet Civil War also questions whether we’ve crossed some sort of line, and whether unbiased reportage actually matters any more. As Garland recently noted in an interview with the New York Times, if the function of a free press is to act as a check on the power of a democratic government, the press needs to be trusted. But in recent times, the public trust has been undermined by external forces like social media and internal forces - specifically including big, heavily biased news organizations.  

Lee, Joel, Sammy and Jessie in Civil War are old school: they aim to record and publish the unvarnished facts of what’s happening. These four heroes (for that’s what they are, each in their own way) serve as our guides and proxies; through them we experience the world they are travelling in, the world of America’s second civil war, seeing what they see, hearing what they hear, and – because we are in the hands of excellent actors - feeling what they feel. When Jessie notes at one point, “I’ve never been so scared in my life. And I’ve never felt so alive,” we know exactly what she’s talking about.

 

In one gripping scene, our protagonists are held up at gunpoint by a band of soldiers disposing of a truckload of dead bodies. They’ve clearly been on a killing spree, and our team is justifiably terrified. Joel pleads with the warriors’ leader, a menacingly nonchalant Jesse Plemons [uncredited], explaining that they are American journalists, not combatants. “OK...”, he responds after a pause, without lowering his automatic weapon. “But what kind of American are you?”

One of the reasons the film works so well and left me so numb is that, while it is about many things, at its heart Civil War is a not-so-subtle warning about where our escalating political rhetoric – positing an existential war between your America (bunch of traitors) and my America (patriots) - may be leading us. Even without explicitly referencing our current polarizing national issues or personalities, the warning seems clear enough. And timely. 

As noted, Civil War does not take sides in the current red-state/blue-state, woke/anti-woke, MAGA/Never-
Trump divides; and while that decision has been derided by some (including Kyle Smith in the WSJ), I think it’s a strength. Were it to be otherwise, roughly half the country would shun the movie as a propaganda piece without seeing it. The fact that it’s a dystopian action-thriller, not a documentary, makes it more, not less potent. People will and should see it because it is entertaining and provocative, not because it is a pep rally for their “side”. But Garland’s hope, and mine, is that the message of the picture will not be lost, but rather will resonate with most – or at least some - viewers, irrespective of their politics.   

Civil War is dramatic, emotionally stirring, exciting and thought provoking. The acting is topnotch, as is the cinematography. As a war movie it is of course violent, but the wartime killing and barbarity are essential to the film’s themes, neither gratuitous nor prurient. Although not always an easy watch, the picture is very watchable. More than that, it is essential viewing IMHO. For those willing to see it on the big screen, that would be the format I recommend. 

1 hour 49 minutes Rated R

Grade: A

In wide theatrical release

Streaming date and availability have not yet been announced.

La Vérité (1960): The Naked Truth

La Vérité [The Truth] is a classic French courtroom drama written and directed by the auteur Henri-Georges Clouzot and starring the one and only Brigitte Bardot.

Clouzot was, for a time considered a competitor to Alfred Hitchcock for his interest in and aptitude for making films with an element of suspense. Before La Vérité, some of Clouzot’s other films included Le Corbeau [The Raven] (1943) – a psychological thriller about a small town torn apart by a series of mysterious poison pen letters; The Wages of Fear (1953)  - a seat of the pants action-thriller about a group of desperate guys on a highly hazardous mission driving a couple of trucks loaded with the volatile explosive nitrogycerin across three hundred miles of treacherous terrain; and Les Diabolique (1955) [aka Diabolique, or The Devils] – a psychological horror thriller in which the aggrieved wife and mistress of a wicked schoolmaster team up to plot his murder, only to find that something has gone mysteriously wrong.

Bardot hit the big time in the public imagination with her role in the 1956 film “… And God Created Woman” when she was just 21. She plays Juliette, a coquettish, free spirited orphan in her late teens in sleepy St Tropez. Juliette loves flirting and having a good time. Their patience exhausted, her foster family gives up on her. To avoid a return to the orphanage, she needs to marry a decent man who can support her and treat her right. Soon, she gets caught up in a love triangle, wherein lies the drama. The story - decent, not great - is clearly secondary to the natural beauty and sexuality exuded by its star.  

Juliette knows what she’s about. Clothes are such a bother, the less she wears them the better. When we first meet her, she’s sunbathing nude on a rooftop, behind a white sheet hung on a clothesline. She prefers to go about barefoot. Writes film columnist and historian, Chuck Stephens, “Super-abundant and extraterrestrial, Bardot was far too human, yet far beyond ‘real’. Once seen, she could not be unseen, and in And God Created Woman, she was seen as never before. …  [Her Juliette is] an entity so natural that shoes seem to betray her feet, and on whom nothing seems as pornographic as a wedding dress.” 

Anyway, on to La Vérité - which is a far better movie, considered by many Bardot’s best film. Here, Bardot plays Dominique Marceau, a girl not unlike Juliette in her wildness. Dominique is not an orphan – she has an actual family in the small, parochial town where she has been raised, but her parents are just as disapproving of her free-spirited ways as were Juliette’s.  She flees not into marriage, but to the promise of freedom and adventure offered by the big city, Paris, there to live a counter-cultural life among the bohemians of the day. She’s not there for the poets, the writers, or the painters, but for the absence of discipline and the fun - the cafes and bars, the dancing, the free sex. Eventually, she falls tragically in love. 

La Vérité opens at the apartment of Dominique’s former lover, Gilbert (Sami Frey), a promising young orchestral conductor, who is engaged to marry Dominique’s strait-laced sister, Annie (Marie-José Nat). Gilbert has been shot dead. In the adjacent kitchen, there’s a strong smell of natural gas, along with the unconscious body of Dominique, an apparent suicide.  Although Dominique survives, the next time we see her she is on trial for murder. 

From here, film devolves into a top-notch courtroom drama, with the story leading up to the deadly event unfolding via trial testimony that is illustrated by dramatic flashbacks much in the style of last year’s Anatomy of a Fall or, for that matter, Anatomy of a Murder (1960) which was produced at about the same time as La Vérité. There courtroom jockeying between the counsel for the prosecution and for the defense is also quite riveting.

For the lawyers among us, one interesting aspect of the case is procedural: effectively, there are two prosecutors: one representing the state [L'avocat général], another representing the victim’s family.  The prosecutors narrate the (mostly) uncontroverted facts of the case without resorting to the tedious exercise of extracting this stuff from in-court witnesses.  The account is peppered now and then with suppositions about what must have happened, bolstered on occasions by direct questions put to Dominique herself. The prosecutors’ own moral judgments are not infrequently given voice during these recitations as well.

For example, describing Dominique’s life before she left home, the avocat general tells the court that whereas Annie was a good child, diligent at school, excelling at her violin lessons, and respectful of her parents; Dominique was disobedient, was expelled from school for bringing in a scandalous book, ran around with boys, frequented cafes, and went to the movies several times a week - in short, she was living, in his words, a “life of dissipation”.

It is not disputed that Dominique shot Gilbert. The issue at trial is her intent. Was this a cold-blooded murder or a crime of passion? The defense attorney (Charles Venel) argues that she acted without any intent, overcome by sudden anger when the man she loved rejected her. The lawyer for Gilbert’s family (Paul Meurisse, terrific) seeks to portray Dominique as an amoral seductress, incapable of love, who killed for revenge. Given Gilbert’s background, his sophistication and accomplishment, neither side believes that he could possibly have truly loved someone like Dominique other than sexually. Dominique’s truth is different. “We loved each other,” she tearfully insists, “just not at the same time.” That was the tragedy. Whichever way you read it, their story is compellingly passionate and operatic. 

Bardot gives an amazing performance as Dominique that’s sexy, sympathetic, and remarkably fresh nearly 65 years later.  Even in our much more liberated era, it still registers as shockingly brazen. Bardot has that indefinable “it” quality – with a mesmerizing sexual presence affecting male and female viewers alike. More than that, though, the lady can act.  Whatever Dominique’s situation, we are in the moment with her. She is equally convincing as the tearful, grief-stricken defendant we see in the courtroom dock, as when Gilbert first sees her in Annie’s apartment – an uninhibited girl, nude in bed, under the sheets, listening to music and doing the rhumba with her butt. 

La Vérité aims to underscore the hypocrisy of applying different attitudes and sexual mores to men and to women, and it does so somewhat successfully.  But seen with hindsight more than six decades after the film was produced, it is clear that Clouzot was trying to have it both ways.  On the one hand, we are encouraged to see Dominique as a real person, rather than as just a sexual object; and thanks to Bardot’s sympathetic performance, we do.  

On the other hand, La Vérité not only shows the objectification of attractive women but itself continues the commodification of Bardot as a sex kitten, all the while playing into the moral disapprobation of liberated female sexuality – through the reactions she provokes in her parents and sister, and even Gilbert when he’s not besotted, as well as through the lawyers’ attitudes - prosecutors and defense both. Times have definitely changed, but as recognized in Anatomy of a Fall, not as much as we pretend to believe. 

La Vérité is a real classic, folks, and that’s the truth! If you have never seen it or haven’t done for a long while, I heartily recommend that you check it out. And it’s easy to do (see below). Note: This is the 1960 movie – not to be confused with another French La Verite from 2019. That one, which stars Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche is a completely different story, also pretty good, but not a hall of famer like this one.

2 hours 7 minutes in French with English subtitles

Grade: A

Free to stream on YouTube [an excellent print, by the way]. Also available to buy from The Criterion Collection – and occasionally available to stream on The Criterion Channel, but not at this time. 

Wicked Little Letters (2023): Sticks and Stones and #!%#!

What a treat it is to watch two of our best actresses, Olivia Coleman and Jessie Buckley, do battle in the new British comedy-drama, Wicked Little Letters! Yes, they both appeared in 2021’s The Lost Daughter, but there, playing the same character at different ages, they had no scenes together. Here, they are antagonists – and very distinctly different sorts of people.  Both give shining performances.

The film is based on an incredible true story about a scandal that rocked the parochial little UK seaside town of Littlehampton in the early 1920s. What happened resembles an extreme case of what we now call trolling, excepting that in this instance – in the absence of social media - the harassment was conducted by a flurry of profane, hand-written letters sent by post, rather than via tweets and other such digital postings; and further excepting that, unlike today, back in that era there was a broadly accepted understanding about the impropriety of such tawdry and malicious behavior, which made “poison pen letters” a rare occurrence. (Yet apparently frequent enough that there was a commonly understood name for it.) In any event, the Littlehampton Letters Scandal drew national attention for a time. Initially, it was the obscene contents of the libelous letters that seemed shocking and titillating to the reading public; but when it was revealed sometime later that false testimony in the first court proceeding had resulted in a wrongful conviction and a miscarriage of justice, there was a public outcry once again 

Wicked Little Letters is set at the same time and in the same town. Coleman plays the recipient of the vulgar letters, Edith Swan. Like the real Ms. Swan, Coleman’s Edith is a repressed, middle-aged, middle-class spinster, still living with her pious parents – Edward, her irascible, controlling father (Timothy Spall) and her very proper mother, aptly named Victoria (Gemma Jones). Buckley plays their newly arrived next door neighbor, Rose Gooding – a free spirited, uncouth, much younger Irish-born woman. Rose is unmarried; her husband, she says, died in the World War. She lives with her young daughter Nancy (Alisha Weir) and with her boyfriend Bill (Malachi Kirby). 

The movie is being marketed as a rip-roaring comedy. One poster proclaims it’s “Fantastically Funny!”, “A Hoot!” and “Wickedly Entertaining”. The trailers proclaim that Wicked Little Letters is “Gloriously Profane”, “The British Comedy of the Year” and “Funny as F***”.  And there’s no denying that the movie IS often quite comedic - sometimes screwball, other times droll, and much in between. First off, there is the truly glorious profanity of the letters [samples upcoming shortly]. Competing with this are numerous other comic examples of colorful cussing, especially by the otherwise upright Edward and the regularly outspoken Rose.   Secondary characters in the film too may evoke a smile or even a chuckle simply because of their quaint, unsophisticated remarks about the situation.  But there’s also a not inconsiderable dark side to the narrative, much of which mirrors the century-old true story.  It’s a comedy, but with dramatic bones. 

The film begins as Edith receives another poison pen letter, the 19th one, we are told. Outraged, Edward immediately dashes off to the police station demanding action: “You better do something about it, before there’s a hurley-baloo!” he fulminates. Young, but none-too-bright Constable Papperwick (Hugh Skinner) trots behind Edward back to the Swans’ residence, where Edward insists on giving him a dramatic reading of the offending material. [As noted, the letters are quite vulgar, so if you are under the age of 12, or fearful of being offended, you should probably skip the rest of this paragraph.]  Edward reads aloud in a stentorian voice that would do Shakespeare proud: 

    “Dear Edith, you fucksy-ass old whore. You really are a tricksy old fuck,” goes one letter. 

    “Edith Swan takes it up the swanie, and she loves it more than Christmas day,” declares another. 

There are more, but you get the gist. Watching Spall perform this bit, I wished that the actor had paused a bit more between letters, like a good comedian would, to let the audience laughter die down. [Incidentally, the obscenity-laced letters we hear in the movie are real – taken directly from the original articles.] 

Papperwick asks who might be responsible. Edward, speaking on his daughter Edith’s behalf (she’s just a woman, after all) declares that it’s surely their neighbor, the foulmouthed Rose. “She curses like a fish and has got scraggly hair all the time. And she marches around on the Sabbath with feet as bare as goose eggs!” Circumstantial evidence to be sure, but plenty enough for Papperwick to arrest Rose. He finds her at the local pub, rowdy, the center of attention, beer mug in one hand, a dart in the other in a classic William tell moment.

Soon, however, she finds herself in a jail cell, charged with criminal libel. Although Rose denies the charges, the judge sets her case for trial several months hence and remands her to jail until then, as she has no money to post bail. She is Irish, after all. The police see no need for further investigation. “Everyone knows it’s her – ever since she got off that boat,” says the chief constable. Well – not quite everyone.  Woman Police Officer Gladys Moss (that’s her actual title), senses that the case is not so open and shut. But as the chief has no interest in what a Woman Police Officer has to say, it doesn’t look good.

That’s more than enough to give you a general sense of the narrative; but Wicked Little Letters is as much or more about the characters as it is about the quirky, dramatic story and its satirical look at themes of false piety, and class or gender prejudice. And it’s with these characters where the film really shines, thanks to a sterling group of supporting actors like Anjana Vasan as the disrespected but persevering Gladys, Gemma Jones as Victoria (Edith’s browbeaten mother), veterans Eileen Atkins, Joanna Scanlan and Lolly Adefope as some of Rose’s friends who step up and go to bat for her, and, of course Timothy Spall as pompous Edward (Edith’s dad). 

But it’s Coleman and Buckley, fully inhabiting and enlivening their opposite characters, that carry the film - Coleman doing her trademark hesitant, self-effacing bit as the outwardly pious, unhappily repressed and dour Edith, and Buckley, whose sparkling, life-affirming performance as Rose ranges from wildly and profanely outspoken to quietly maternal, loving and, come what may, always honest.  It was Coleman, also a producer of the picture, who sent the script to Buckley. “I just wanted us to work together … and also, I realized there was no one who would have been better at swearing in this way than Jessie.” Says Buckley, “It was really a no brainer [to take on the part]. I thought it was such a tonic. … These women were just like the kind of women I know in my life who are really desperately trying to be able to say the things that they're not meant to say and then have no other way to keep it in.”

Wicked Little Letters is not perfect.  The tale sags a bit here and there, and the delicate balance between drama and humor is occasionally lost. Also, I had some trouble catching every word of the dialogue. In certain indoor scenes, it seemed to me that the voice recording had a slight echo effect, and that - along with the parochial British dialect of most of the characters, got in my way. Then too, Timothy Spall is a known mumbler.  In any case, these are minor quibbles about an otherwise fine film. 

In sum, Wicked Little Letters is a charming, funny movie with an entertaining blend of heart and humor. And as I said at the outset, it features wonderful acting by two great actresses that’s definitely worth seeing. It’s not one of the greats that you absolutely must rush out for, but it is certainly fun and diverting. So you may want to check it out. 

1 hour 40 minutes

Grade: B+

Now playing in New York City and L.A.; In theaters nationwide beginning April 5, 2024, including more than twenty theaters throughout Northern California, including San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Alameda, San Jose, Santa Rosa, Sacramento and more. Click HERE to find a theater near you. No streaming date has yet been announced. 

Shayda (2024): Sheltering Down Under

Once upon a time, for about forty years, I was a practicing lawyer specializing in family law (i.e. divorce and related stuff). Even so, despite my desire to help clients through tough circumstances, there was one subset of cases that I did not at all relish: those involving frustratingly intractable disputes over custody of young children,. Oftentimes at least one of the parents was so angry and/or narcissistic that they were totally incapable of considering the best interests of their child(ren), a situation that made any sort of negotiated resolution virtually impossible. Among the worst was the parent (typically a man) whose sense of entitlement was rooted in a cultural or religious viewpoint sharply at odds with Western norms and law. If these custody disputes were tough on me, the experience was always far worse for the person I was representing in such cases (typically a woman) – terrified for their child’s well-being and of a very real threat of physical violence to themselves from the disturbed former partner.  Their courage and determination always impressed me. 

Which brings me to Shayda, an excellent new movie about this subject  that's opening this weekend. It’s a story told not from the lawyer’s POV (thankfully) but through the experience of a mother and, remarkably and quite evocatively, sometimes through the eyes of her six-year-old daughter. And it sure rings true, both as a drama and a story of resilience and hope. The film premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival and won the audience award in the World Dramatic Competition. It was Australia’s official submission for this year’s Academy Awards in the Best International Feature category.  

Shayda is written and directed by Noora Niasari, born in Tehran but from a young age raised in Australia. Niasari recently won the 2023 award for Best Direction in a Feature Film from the Australian Directors’ Guild for this, her first feature film. All of these awards attest to the considerable strength and appeal of this movie. Its story is based to a considerable degree, on Niasari’s own childhood experiences. Here’s an excerpt from some of her  remarks on this:

    When I was five years old my first experience of freedom was inside an Australian women's shelter living alongside other women and children seeking a life without fear. 

    Despite being a world away from our family in Iran, my mother taught me how to speak Farsi, how to celebrate Nowruz [Persian New Year], how to Persian dance, read poetry and above all, she taught me about the resilience and strength of Iranian women.

    Women like my mother were ostracized [in Iran and the Iranian diaspora] for seeking basic human rights. The right to ask for divorce, to have custody over their children, to choose how they dress, to dance in the streets, to let their hair flow in the wind and exhale.  That's all my mother wanted, these basic freedoms, for herself and for her daughter. 

The mother in the film is Shayda, an Iranian woman who, along with daughter Mona, has accompanied her husband Hossein to Australia, where he is training to become an M.D.. Things have not gone well in their marriage, and by the time the film commences, Shayda and Mona are living in a women’s shelter. Over the course of the film, we will gain a better understanding of why.

Shayda’s fervent hope is to be free from her estranged husband and to make a better life for her daughter. But Hossein has other ideas.  

As the film opens, we meet Shayda (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) and Mona (Selina Zahednia, amazing) in an airport with an Australian lady, who is leading the two of them around. She tells Mona (through Shayda) to look carefully at where they are at that moment and remember this place. Later we learn that the lady is Joyce (Leah Purcell), the director of the women’s shelter. Joyce tells Mona that if her father ever brings her here, she should run to one of the officers and ask for help.  She tells Shayda that if that were to happen Mona’s name is on a protected minors’ list, and the officers will detain her while they search this watchlist and then immediately contact the shelter when they find her name. They are at the airport because just the day before Hossein had suggested to Mona in a phone call that she would soon get to go on an airplane ride with him back “home” to see her beloved grandma – notwithstanding an apparent court restraining order prohibiting this. Shayda’s attempt to act calm and reassuring for a very worried looking Mona immediately crumbles, and she collapses in tears on a nearby bench. Without knowing much about their past, we are already drawn to both mother and daughter.

Only then are we introduced to the shelter. Eventually, we will learn why Shayda has fled there. At the shelter, we begin to see how both mother and child are anxiously and yet hopefully beginning a new life there - as are other women in a variety of analogous situations. Shayda has filed for divorce (which she never could have done in Iran). Although the legal proceedings are not shown, we soon learn, along with Shayda, that despite pleas from her representatives to limit Hossein’s contact with Mona, the court has allowed him unsupervised visitation rights of four hours a week with his daughter. This is disappointing to Shayda, but it gives us an opportunity to meet the guy, when she brings Mona to the designated meeting place in a shopping mall. 

At the first custody exchange, Hossein (Osamah Sami) looks nice and sincere. But he is thirty minutes late, an issue he shrugs off. And it soon becomes clear that Hossein‘s first priority is convincing his wife to drop the whole thing, reconcile with him and move back to Iran. He promises to change. He insists he still loves Shayda and that deep down she loves him back. Life together in Iran will be so much better and won’t it be great to be among family again? Oh, and by the way, you should know that people back home are talking about how shameful your actions have been, he adds. 

This sort of gambit happens all the time with controlling, abusive men in such situations. They truly believe the crap they are spieling. Shayda knows better, of course, and doesn’t bite. She departs as fast as she can. 

The shelter location is not known to Hossein, and Shayda is fearful of going out, even to the local bodega,  for fear of being seen by him or anyone who might know him. Eventually, like director Niasari’s mother, she does begin to explore, tentatively, the possibilities of her new freedom, dancing, letting her hair flow in the wind, meeting new people, exhaling. But with Hossein out there somewhere, it is still frightening. While initially Hossein presented as a possibly decent guy to us, with each succeeding custody exchange, he gets more insistent and scarier; and while we root for Shayda and Mona, we also worry for them. 

As Shayda, the award-winning Ebrahimi gives a nuanced, credible reading - expressing the character’s fear and distress, hope and joy, maternal love, concern and vigilance, together with remarkable courage and strength - all very naturally without a hint of affectation. It’s a poignant, sympathetic, ultimately uplifting bravura performance. All of the other key actors are very fine, as well.

Like the best international and cross-cultural films - films like Monsoon Wedding (2001), A Separation (2011), Roma (2018), The Farewell (2019) - Shayda has another dimension that adds to its interest. It gives us a chance to see aspects of another culture - with customs, attitudes and expectations quite different from, and sometimes surprisingly congruent with, our own – through the very human eyes and soul of a very relatable protagonist. Not anonymous members of a labelled group in some press report, not a stereotype, but rather someone not unlike ourselves, whose life may touch us.  

And in the person of Shayda, we get not just her relief in escaping a society that oppresses women like her, but a nostalgia and pride in the Persian heritage she has carried with her to Australia, represented by the songs and poetry she is passing on to Mona and the traditional celebration of Nahruz, the Persian New Year, in which they participate with other Iranian emigres.

In its portrayal of a woman trying not only to survive but to make a new life and thrive in the shadow of a breakup with a malevolent ex, Shayda brings to mind another memorable movie, the Irish film Herself (2020) starring the brilliant Clare Dunne - which is also well worth checking out, if you haven’t seen it. 

As a first feature, Shayda has a few weaknesses, most notably in the way we are just dropped into the opening scenes, which was a bit confusing at first. But overall it is an assured work - a fascinating, provocative, engaging, emotionally riveting picture with strong performances and characters you will not soon forget. You should check it out. 

1 hour 57 minutes Rated PG-13

Grade:  B+

Shayda has just commenced a rolling release – It opened in New York and L.A. on March 1; and is opening in San Francisco, Chicago, Washington DC. and several other cities this weekend (March 8), with more towns and venues added weekly.   To find the opening date for this film at a theater near you check Shayda’s official website HERE.  

My Year In Movies 2023

by Larry Lee

I.

Was 2023 a good year for movies?  Many people have told me that it was, but perhaps they  are experiencing a “Barbenheimer” hangover.  For me, I think every year is a good year for movies.  That makes whittling things down to a “ten best” list a daunting and, really, impossible task.  To illustrate the problem, here are the top ten (or so) lists from four top film reviewers in the legacy print media, with some random comments:

Manohla Dargis, New York Times

• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Oppenheimer
• Menus-plaisirs - Les Troisgros
• Occupied City
• A Thousand and One
• Asteroid City
• May December
• Showing Up
• Orlando, My Political Biography
• Stonewalling

Comments:  This list includes just two movies that garnered Oscar nominations for Best Picture.  Oppenheimer is a good choice and will perhaps win the statuette in a few weeks.  Regarding Killers of the Flower Moon:  Ms. Dargis is the only one of my four selected professional film critics to name this film to their end-of-year list.  Its nomination was predictable given its production pedigree, its director (Martin Scorsese), its famous cast (DiCaprio, DeNiro), its subject matter, the publicity machine at its back; in short, its overall heft.  Many reviewers and critics have omitted Killers from their top ten lists, and readers patient enough to get to the end of this essay will note that it fails to make the grade from me as well.  I found Killers much, much too long, too repetitive, and given the confused, amoral simpleton at its center (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), not nearly as engaging as it should have been.  For those interested in

seeing a tight, engaging thriller about a different but very real problem affecting Native Americans with characters you care about, I recommend the outstanding Wind River (Prime rental) from 2017, with Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen.  You will be moved, informed, entertained, and spend almost two hours less in front of your TV than had you watched Killers of the Flower Moon. 

But back to Ms. Dargis’s list:  I don’t think it’s helpful to include movies that are not available to the general public, like Menus-plaisirs - Les Troisgros or Orlando, My Political Biography.  Sure, Ms. Dargis is in New York, enviable for its abundance of art house and repertory theaters, but inclusion of these movies on her list feels like some arty egghead, showing off.  Although some critics were impressed with Todd Haynes’ May December, I found it overrated, depressing and slightly boring, an unfortunate deviation from his previous efforts Far From Heaven (2002), Carol (2015), or even Dark Waters (2019).  Showing Up, the latest from “slow cinema” auteur Kelly Reichardt (Wendy and Lucy (2008), First Cow (2019)), boasted an A-list cast (Michelle Willians, Hong Chau), but seemed pointless.  And slow.

Justin Chang, Los Angeles Times

• All of Us Strangers
• The Boy and the Heron
• The Zone of Interest
• Oppenheimer
• Showing Up
• Afire
• Past Lives
• The Eight Mountains
• De Humani Corporis Fabrica
• Poor Things 

Comments:  This list, from a major newspaper in America’s second media center, is subject to the same access/availability criticism noted above (has anyone heard of, or seen De Humani Corporis Fabrica?  How could I even see that?) and repeats Ms. Dargis’s questionable admiration for the numbingly slow Showing Up.  But Mr. Chang’s list includes Past Lives and The Eight Mountains, two very good movies that appeared on my 2023 Half-Oscars™ list.  (See below.)  They slid out of my year-end top ten, but are well worth seeing.  Afire, Christian Petzold’s latest, was also a fine movie, and adds to his admirable recent oeuvre (Barbara (2012), Transit (2018), and Undine (2020)). 

Mr. Chang’s list also includes two films that have garnered much end-of-year, Oscar-season, praise: 

Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron and Yorgos Lanthimos’s Poor Things.  I understand the impulse to honor what is likely Miyazaki’s final work — he just turned 83 years old — after an enviable career of amazing animated features.  He won an Oscar for Spirited Away in 2003, was nominated for Howl’s Moving Castle in 2006 and (my favorite) The Wind Rises in 2014.  He also won an Honorary Oscar in 2015.  But the animation in Heron is much like all of his previous works and the story felt random and borderline pointless.  Although Heron is nominated for the Animated Feature Film Oscar, a better choice would be Spider-Man: Across the SpiderVerse: more creative animation and a much more engaging story. 

Poor Things, nominated for Best Picture, also deserves comment.  Although admittedly a movie of great visual creativity, this fractured take on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein took, for me, an unfortunate turn when Emma Stone’s Bella Baxter character, who has a child’s brain in a full-grown woman’s body, discovers carnal pleasure.  Although I admire the commitment Stone, as an actor, showed this character, as well as her trust in director Lanthimos, I felt the movie at that point became overly prurient, and thus less interesting and less enjoyable.  Although I understand the Bella character is learning about everything the world, being a human, and a woman for the first time, I felt the movie devolved into Bella just learning about, and enjoying, sex.  One struggles to recall a nominee for the Academy’s top prize that had as much sex and nudity.  

Barbie (not on Mr. Chang’s list) was the year’s most audacious movie, calling out mindless patriarchy and pervasive misogyny in a most unique and entertaining way.  But in a year where the director/creator (Greta Gerwig) and star (Margot Robbie) were inexplicably left on the outside of Oscar looking in, that Poor Things, a movie where a woman toys with a man using her sexual availability and then survives in the world by having sex for money, received multiple nominations is extremely disappointing.   

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

• American Fiction
• The Holdovers
• You Hurt My Feelings
• Anatomy of a Fall
• Barbie
• Oppenheimer
• Joan Baez: I Am a Noise
• Past Lives
• Reality
• Air
• Origin

Comment: Ms. Hornaday, WaPo’s lead movie critic, has a much more conventional top ten list, though it runs to 11 titles.   Five of her listed movies (American Fiction, The Holdovers, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie, and Oppenheimer) were all nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.  Indeed, she is the only one of these four

critics to include Barbie.  Two of her movies (You Hurt My Feelings, Past Lives) were on my 2023 Half-Oscars™ list and thus understandable choices.  Air is a enjoyable look back to recent history — the development of the first Air Jordan shoe by Nike — but not really top ten stuff unless you’re a sneakerhead. (Google it.)    

Origins, also on Ms. Hornaday’s list, is director Ava DuVernay’s admirable film based on author Isabel Wilkerson’s bestseller "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," published in 2020.  Although theoretically eligible for an Oscar nomination (according to the Academy’s website), it was not actually released generally into theaters in the U.S. until the middle of January 2024.  So I, admittedly rather randomly, have decided that this movie belongs to the present year and is therefore not eligible for my top ten list for 2023.  But the movie is wonderful and thought-provoking, a creative globe-trotting mix of fictional narrative and documentary, and will almost definitely make my Half-Oscar™ list for 2024.

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

• Maestro
• Oppenheimer
• One Fine Morning
• The Quiet Girl
• May December
• Dream Scenario
• Asteroid City
• A Good Person
• The Disappearance of Shere Hite
• Nyad
• What Happens Later

Comment:  Mr. LaSalle, a quirky Bay Area critic known for his affinity for French movies, Pre-Code Hollywood movies, and actresses in general, has an odd list for 2023.  Maestro and Oppenheimer were both honored by the Academy (and make my top ten list as well).  The Quiet Girl, nominated for an Oscar last year for International Feature Film, is a quiet yet wonderful movie you definitely should see (stream on Hulu, rent on Amazon Prime), but is from 2022.  One Fine Morning, a French movie directed by Mia Hansen-Love and starring Lea Seydoux (stream on Amazon Prime), is also worthy of your attention but also from 2022.  A Good Person, starring Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman, is a touching and realistic portrayal of a normal person who, due to personal tragedy, falls into addiction.  It nearly made my 2023 Half-Oscars™ list and, needless to say, it is worth seeing.  For fans of Pugh, she has much more to do here than lounge around naked, as she does in Oppenheimer.  You can stream it on Amazon Prime.  I have more to say about Dream Scenario below.

Asteroid City, on Mr. LaSalle’s list, shows us that director Wes Anderson is continuing his journey into highly stylized filmmaking (see 2021’s The French Dispatch), with actors delivering lines unemotionally while standing in two-dimensional sets that are obviously sets.  It feels more and more like fans of Anderson’s movies (his live action ones, anyway) are in some sort of weird and exclusive club, so this movie is definitely worth seeing if you feel that you are in the club.  And maybe not, if you let your club membership lapse after The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Three of Mr. LaSalle’s top eleven choices feature actresses of a certain age:  May December (Julianne

Moore), Nyad (Annette Benning), and What Happens Later (Meg Ryan).  As previously mentioned, I was disappointed by May December.  Nyad, about long-distance ocean swimmer Diana Nyad’s multiple attempts, when in her 60s, to swim from Havana, Cuba to Florida, is a well-acted, true life drama about an obsessive, fairly unlikeable athlete.  Both Annette Benning and Jodie Foster have been nominated for Oscars and, in another year, Nyad might have been considered for Best Picture nomination.  That the movie lacked a theatrical release and went straight to Netflix probably hurt its chances for that.  But although it doesn’t make my top ten, it is worth seeing.  

I’ll wager readers have not seen (or even heard of) What Happens Later.  Meg Ryan, who also produced and directed, probably intended the movie to return her to her rom-com pinnacle (When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle).  But while the film had its amusing moments (like when the airport PA announcer begins speaking to her like the voice of God), and it was nice to see her in a movie again, I’m afraid the emotional impact of her cute head-tilt and hair toss live forever in the past, much like her original face before plastic surgery.  You can rent What Happens Later on Amazon Prime. 

II.

Before getting to my top ten list, let’s revisit my Half-Oscar™ list from earlier in 2023.

10. Emily  (Showtime, Prime rental, Kanopy)  
  9. Past Lives  (Prime rental) 
  8. The Eight Mountains  (Prime rental)

  7. You Hurt My Feelings (Prime rental) 
  6. Rise (En Corps)  (Kanopy) 
  5. Hilma (Prime rental) 
  4. Chevalier  (Hulu, Prime rental) 
  3. Other People’s Children  (MUBI, Prime rental) 
  2. The Lost King  (AcornTV, Hulu, AMC+, Prime rental) 

  1. How to Blow Up a Pipeline  (Hulu, Prime rental, Kanopy)

I realize many of these movies were released almost 12 months ago and memories of them are fading.  And as in most years, there were many good movies released in the second half of the year, surpassing most of the entries on my Half-Oscar™ list.  By going on record with these films, however, I created a kind of presumption of quality, and later-released movies have to overcome that presumption.  Fortunately, as noted, it was a good year for movies.  

Still, two films (How to Blow Up a Pipeline, The Lost King) have staying power in my mind.  Perhaps a suspense/thriller like Pipeline is an uncomfortable fit for Oscar — it’s unusual for the Academy to reward genre pictures (comedies, action, sci-fi, etc.) — but Oscar compatibility is not a criterion for a top ten list.  That said, The Lost King slots comfortably into a category of past honorees of quirky British stories with plucky heroines, like 2013’s Philomena (Judi Dench), 2009’s An Education (Carey Mulligan), and 1983’s Educating Rita (Julie Walters). 

A Word About Kanopy:  Three movies from my 2023 Half-Oscar™ list can be seen, free of charge, on Kanopy.  If you’ve never heard of Kanopy, well, now you have, and you can thank me later.  Kanopy is a free streaming service affiliated with your public library.  All you need is the app—either on your phone, tablet, computer, or smart TV—and a library card from your local public library.  I access Kanopy on Roku.  Register for Kanopy with your card and an amazing library of movies is at your disposal for free streaming, limited only to 10 per month.  Mostly foreign, classic, indie, and documentaries, but there is some oddball stuff in there as well.  You can see Emily, Rise (En Corps) and How to Blow Up a Pipeline on Kanopy and save a few bucks as well.  [Editor's note: some libraries do not subscribe to Kanopy, but prefer an alternate free streaming site called Hoopla. If your library is one of those, Hoopla is also worth checking out. Hoopla also offeres e-books and other downloadable material in addition to movies and videos.]

My Top Ten for 2023

10.  The Teachers’ Lounge  I originally had a three-way tie for 10th, between this movie, The Holdovers and Other People’s Children.  The Holdovers is a fine, if conventional, movie, the kind they used to make.  I especially loved how director Alexander Payne made the movie look like one from the 1970s, right down to the font of the titles.  It’s the odds on favorite to win two acting Oscars (Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph) which, by itself, is a reason to see the movie.  Other People’s Children, from France and starring Virginie Efira, is a tender and touching movie about modern family relationships.  But let’s face it, a three-way tie for tenth place is cheating, and ten is ten.  So after some thought, I think The Teachers’ Lounge sneaks into my top ten.

A German film nominated for the International Feature Film Oscar, The Teachers’ Lounge is a taut, realistic thriller that has, at its origin, a situation that happens all the time in public schools.  (Indeed, I heard the director Ilker Çatak speak and he said a similar thing happened to his class when he was in middle school in Istanbul.)  When the grownups, largely but not entirely people of good conscience, respond thoughtfully to the events, things nevertheless spin out of control in fairly realistic ways.  Small grievances are magnified, lines are drawn, enemies identified, and it feels like there is no way out.  Although The Zone of Interest will likely win the Best International Film Oscar (based on pre-ceremony hype and its nomination for Best Picture), The Teachers’ Lounge would be a worthy choice.  As of this writing, it is still in theaters.

9.  Rustin  I’m so sad Rustin was not nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, for the possibility, however remote, of seeing Barack and Michelle Obama onstage as executive producers is an intoxicating one.  But that delicious fantasy aside, Rustin is a moving and admirable retelling of a pivotal period in the life of a great American whose life story, and critical role in 1963’s March on Washington For Jobs and Freedom, had until now been lost to history.  Bayard Rustin was a gay Black man who faced down so many detractors and those who sought to undermine him for that reason, including (depressingly) the leadership of the NAACP, and eventually achieved an important step on our nation’s road to racial justice.  Because of Bayard Rustin, we have a collective memory of Dr. King telling us “I Have a Dream. . . .”  Stream it on Netflix, and think about what ex-Presidents can do with their free time once they are out of office.  Compare and contrast.

8.  Perfect Days  This movie, from 2023 but currently in theaters, is unlike all the other movies on this list.  Quiet and gentle, repetitive, even meditative, it tells the story of a man who cleans public toilets in Tokyo.  Every day.  Over and over.  But he has managed to find personal satisfaction in his life, a measure of grace, even joy.  There are hints of his backstory suggesting he is, or was, a man of greater conventional substance.  But the beauty of the film is that it is not about who he was, or could be, where his life is headed, or not headed.  Instead, we see someone who is satisfied with himself, his seemingly simple life, and his place in the universe.  Others with whom he comes into contact are affected by his serenity, and project their concerns on him.  In that way, the movie is a little like 1979’s Being There, with Peter Sellers.  Directed by acclaimed German director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire (1987), Buena Vista Social Club (1999), Salt of the Earth (2014)), Perfect Days was submitted for Oscar consideration by Japan, and is the first submission from that country not directed by a Japanese person.  If you’re interested in a gentle yet satisfying movie, with no violence, sex, aliens or weird deviant behaviors, this is it. 

7.  The Lost King  This is just one of two movies that survive from my 2023 Half-Oscar™ list, so I’ll just repeat my views from six month ago:  this wonderful tale, based on a true story, tells the story of Phillippa Langley, a middle-aged woman who is just being worn down by life.  “After her latest setback, she is at a complete loss where to turn but, somehow, gets the idea that she can find the final resting place of King Richard III, the location of whose mortal remains has been a mystery for hundreds of years.  Richard has been tarred as a child-killing, hump-backed usurper to the English throne by none other than William Shakespeare.  But was he?  Langley (Sally Hawkins) is, of course, dismissed as a crank if not a crazy lady.  But is she?  Even a broken clock is right twice a day (to repeat an aphorism from pre-digital, analog days).  Hawkins portrays Langley with intelligence, pathos, and vulnerability, and her focus and nervous energy undergird an impressive performance.  Directed by Stephen Frears (Florence Foster Jenkins, Philomena, High Fidelity), and costarring Steve Coogan as her admirably supportive ex-husband.” 

6.  How to Blow Up a Pipeline  This movie topped my 2023 Half-Oscar™ list, and remains—to me—one of the best movies of 2023.  Although not on Oscar’s radar, it seems that every year, a movie no one else is talking about gets its hooks in me and simply won’t let go.  Last year, it was Montana Story, with Haley Lu Richardson.  The year before:  Ad Astra, with Brad Pitt.  In 2020:  director Paul Greengrass’s News of the World with Tom Hanks.  In Pipeline, we are confronted with a disparate group of young people who firmly and sincerely believe that the United States, and the world, are not moving fast enough to avert a climate catastrophe.  So they hit upon a plan to draw attention to the problem and hopefully achieve some course correction.  Can we say they are wrong?  Clever and thrilling, with unpredictable twists and turns, the movie addresses as timely a topic as Barbie (mysogyny, toxic masculinity), American Fiction (racial prejudice, cancel culture), or Oppenheimer (nuclear annihilation, government duplicity) do.  It also stars a group of young up-and-comers that need no computer-generated de-aging to appear onscreen.  

5.  Maestro   Following 2018’s A Star is Born, Bradley Cooper is now two for two as a director, and rarely

has an actor moved into the director’s chair with more immediate and sustained success.  (Another recent example:  Greta Gerwig, although her acting career did not have the same wattage as Cooper’s.)  Maestro is a fascinating examination of the life of a giant of the American creative world of the mid-twentieth century, whose life was much more complicated than we ever knew.  Leonard Bernstein was a creative genius who would not be contained by socially accepted limits of music or personal relationships.  Thus, not only did he conduct classical music, he composed it as well.  And not only did he compose classical music, he also composed popular music (see West Side Story).  Not only did he have a fabulous wife and family, but he also had a succession of male lovers.  Cooper is wonderful as Bernstein, and Carey Mulligan is deserving of her nomination for Best Actress nomination as his extremely tolerant wife, Felicia Montealegre.   

4.  American Fiction  There have been moments lately, when things are quiet, that I feel in my bones thatAmerican Fiction was the best movie of the year.  There is something about the tone of the movie, the wry humor, the humanity, and subject matter, that spoke to me.  How to deal with racial injustice?  Cancel culture?  Snowflake college students?  Performative anti-racism?  The difficulty of maintaining one’s integrity and true self when financial temptations abound.  Aging and increasingly infirm parents.  Troublesome, selfish siblings.  The movie has it all, and handles it with dry, glancing humor.  Jeffrey Wright is wonderful in the lead and his Oscar nomination is gratifying, although he likely will not win against a group of stellar co-nominees:  Bradley Cooper for Maestro, Cillian Murphy for Oppenheimer, Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers, and Coleman Domingo for Rustin.  It was never a truer statement than that it was an honor for Wright just to be nominated.    

3.  Barbie  By now, we all know about Barbie.  Had it been released in October, we would still be in full-on Barbie-mania.  But enough time has passed that we now have the backlash to the Barbie craze, and people feel comfortable informing their friends that, by the way, they did not like, nay, hated Barbie.  Hence the Oscar “snubs” for Margot Robbie (Best Actress) and Greta Gerwig (Director).  Perhaps there is still enough time for a backlash to the backlash.  A double feature with Barbie and Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022) would be interesting, for many of the same people I know disliked both films, and both movies had a certain look, a certain sensibility, and women in their centers.  Is it an age thing?  An intolerance of this kind of satire or storytelling?  Maybe make it a film festival with JoJo Rabbit (2019) and Promising Young Woman (2020).  Do we sense a trend?

I think Barbie and these other movies indicate, if not a sea change, something like a ripple in The Force or a tear in The Matrix, indicating that a new style of moviemaking is upon us, one that is popular with young audiences.  And these movies draw people into theaters, hungry for a communal cinematic experience and not just the feeling one gets, sitting alone, streaming a movie at home.  

2.  Oppenheimer  Christopher Nolan has crafted a monumental adaptation of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winning biography “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, creating an immersive movie that is the odds on favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar, and may sweep the major awards.  Indeed, the movie is so immersive that the viewer can easily get lost in the crowd of physicists working at Los Alamos, but the story of the creation of the first atomic bomb in human history is, nevertheless, strangely thrilling.  The nuts and bolts of the massive endeavor, the personalities of the various scientists, the life or death stakes, the morality of introducing the world to the nuclear age, the political fallout after the war was over, this is a complex and important story made comprehensible by Nolan’s script and direction.

Considering the thing almost 80 years later, it is easy to forget that it was never a given that Oppenheimer and his team would succeed in his quest to manipulate atomic fission to the point where the U.S. could deliver a controlled nuclear explosion in a distant land.  Who knows when World War II would have ended had Oppenheimer failed?  How many more Americans would have died?  And who knows what would have happened if Hitler had created the bomb first?  (On this point, I recommend the six-episode Norwegian series called The Heavy Water War:  Stopping Hitler’s Atomic Bomb on MHz Choice, or rentable on Prime.)  With so much at stake, seeing Nolan’s depiction of the bomb exploding for the first time is, as I said, strangely thrilling, if for no other reason that we realize that nothing would ever be the same.    

1.  Anatomy of a Fall   The Academy has shown remarkable acumen in nominating not one but two movies that are not in English (and Past Lives is partially in Korean).  I wonder if this is part of a happy trend.  The other non-English speaking nominee, The Zone of Interest, is a very interesting movie and surprisingly experimental for a Best Picture nominee.  But Anatomy of a Fall is head and shoulders above Zone (and Past Lives).  French director Justine Triet has given us a remarkable movie that presents as a traditional, old fashioned courtroom drama.  Did the wife kill her husband by pushing him out of a high window?  Did he slip?  Or did he jump?  The movie gives us plausible alternatives in the style of Rashomon, but it is a tribute to the clever writing and standout performances that we don’t really know the answer, even after the movie ends.  Gripping from the opening scenes, actress Sandra Hüller is remarkable and should (but likely won’t) win the Oscar.  (Remarkably, she played a very different character in The Zone of Interest.)  Although there was no pre-nomination Oscar buzz, French actor Swann Arlaud, who played the prosecutor, was simply remarkable.  

Much like other courtroom dramas, there is potential deception baked into the story, as we the audience must decide who is telling the truth and who is not.  But Hüller’s character, Sandra Voyter, is a complicated character with whom we identify.  A published writer, she is remarkably self-aware and hyper-verbal, to the point where her husband feels left behind.  There are hidden family traumas that must be brought to the surface, but who is to blame, and who blames whom, may be key to the proper resolution of the case.  Highly recommended. 

Worth a Look

In addition to my top ten, every year brings many other worthwhile movies.  Here are some small ones that flew under the radar that I quite enjoyed:

Landscape With Invisible Hand  (Prime)  What would life be like under a benevolent alien occupation? 

Even if our new overlords were not violent or physically aggressive, our society would change in so many ways.  Landscape is a sometimes-amusing, often-thought provoking look at one possible scenario, with sly comments on our present influencer culture, the fleeting, ethereal nature of teenage love, the need to learn the language of one’s occupiers, and the sometimes context-dependent nature and value of art.  And I love how the alien overlords are portrayed:  not humanoid (like in E.T. The Extraterrestrial or Star Wars), not big bugs (like in District 9 or Starship Troopers), not weird blobs (like in Arrival).  No, they are . . . something else.  (Scratch, scratch)  Certainly not for everybody (full disclosure: my wife did not like it), but there weren’t many films from 2023 that were more original.     

Dream Scenario  (Prime rental)  Nicholas Cage extends his remarkably varied career (Moonstruck (1987), Leaving Las Vegas (1995), The Rock (1996), Adaptation (2003), Pig (2021)), with this slow-burning, ever-evolving tale based on an a single intriguing premise:  How would your life change if you suddenly, inexplicably, involuntarily, began appearing in other people’s dreams?  Could that be a good thing?  More to the point:  Should you hire an agent and try and monetize the situation?  A sly and funny comment on our society’s celebrity culture, but be forewarned, the movie morphs into something much, much darker.  Cage would easily qualify as a dark horse candidate for a Best Actor nomination this year were the field not already so strong.    

Eileen  (Prime rental)  This is an old fashioned film noir starring Thomasin McKenzie as a young woman in a dead-end life.  Her mother has suddenly passed away, so she left college to return to her boring hometown to care for her father, a down-spiraling alcoholic.  She’s stuck in a depressing clerical job in the state prison sited in her drab little town.  It would appear there is no hope for her.  But then a bolt of lightning flashes into her life in the form of Anne Hathaway as a strange and charismatic new prison psychiatrist.  But, as I said, this is an old fashioned film noir, and when it hits you, I doubt you will have seen it coming.  

The Origin of Evil  (AMC+, Prime rental)  It seems we can’t get enough of stories involving smart but crazy poor people insinuating themselves into the families of the superrich.  2022 brought us Anya Taylor-Joy’s character in The Menu.  This year, Emerald Ferrell’s Saltburn is the latest to mine The Talented Mr. Ripley motherlode, but I enjoyed The Origin of Evil much more.  In French and starring Laure Calamy (My Donkey, My Lover and I, Two Tickets to Greece, Call My Agent!), this enjoyable flick keeps you guessing until the final scene, and the beverages were much less icky than in Saltburn.  (If you’ve seen Saltburn, you’ll know what I mean.)

Flora and Son  (Apple TV+)  Two of the songs from the movie were shortlisted for the Best Song Oscar, and either one could easily have made the grade over some that were eventually nominated.  (They are “High Life” and “Meet in the Middle”; you can find them on YouTube.)  But even if you are not a Best Song Oscar aficionado (and why would you be?), the movie is quite enjoyable.  Starring Eve Hewson (daughter of U2 frontman Bono) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, this gritty look at the Irish working class still manages a give us some lush romance amid the graffiti-filled empty lots.  If you liked 2018’s Wild Rose with Jessie Buckley (and why wouldn’t you?), you’ll like this movie.