Tag: best films

Best of 2024: Arnie’s Picks

Best of 2024: Arnie’s Picks

Arnel Duracak

With 2024 having drawn to a close, Rating Frames is looking back at the past twelve months of cinema and streaming releases that have come our way. In the first of our series of articles, Arnel Duracak is taking a look at his ten favourite films of the year that was.

While my 2024 viewings came in just short (36 new releases) compared to my 2023 viewings (37), there were a few titles that I had anticipated for a while and that really delivered to land on my top 10 list. Comparatively, I do think my 2023 top 10 was a stronger one overall, however I was pleasantly surprised to see what titles rounded off my ranking. I was also rather disappointed that I didn’t manage to catch some films at the cinema like The Brutalist, Didi and I Saw the TV Glow, however I’m hoping that 2025 will be a bigger year for my cinema viewings.

10. Blink Twice

As far as compact thrillers go, you’ll be hard pressed to find one as spicy, twisty and horny as Blink Twice.

Zoë Kravitz manages to blend just the right amount of suspense and teasing while bringing plenty of edginess and humour about through her script — and this is her directorial debut, mind you!

Channing Tatum also flips the charming sex appeal he’s come to be known for on its head by using it as a means to deliver a punchy, sometimes intense, performance.

While the film didn’t blow me away in ways that a similarly paced and executed film like Get Out (2017) did, Kravitz never lost my attention, even if the ending rounded off rather cheesily.

9. Challengers

Speaking of spicy and horny, Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers saw the phrase “sexy tennis” circulate all over social media.

It’s his second film of 2024 along with Queer (he’s had a busy year!) and it served up a hot and heavy treat, with Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O’Connor acting out a love triangle both on and off the court.

I don’t remember too much from the film which is probably why it’s lower on my list, but one thing that did stick in my mind was Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ pulsating techno score which was stuck in my head for at least a week after seeing the film.

The final sequence did also stick in my mind as being one of the most creative, well executed from last year, with zany camerawork and all around clever direction.

The film is worth a watch, especially when you hear that the great Andy Murray admitted he “didn’t really understand it.”

8. Gladiator II

Almost 25 years have passed since Gladiator (2000) took the world by storm, and Ridley Scott finally delivered his much anticipated sequel.

To Paramount’s relief, it proved to be a success, both at the box office (grossing over $400 million) and in its reviews and ratings.

As a massive Ridley fan, Gladiator II more than makes up for the sloppiness of Napoleon (2023) as it picks up some years after the first film and brings a level of freshness to the blockbuster scene now that Marvel’s reign has slowed down.

While the film does play it a bit too safe by essentially treading similar ground in terms of plot and structure to the first film, it rounds off the original with flashier set pieces and just… more… everything. I mean, sure, John Mathieson bitched about Ridley’s abruptness with shooting things without properly lighting a scene while on a podcast (no doubt a big reason he’s been able to churn out as many big films in recent years as he ever has), and sure there might be some historical inaccuracies (was the Colosseum really that flooded and filled with sharks?), but it’s Ridley Scott so that’s got to count for something?

7. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

If you thought the length of time between Gladiator and its sequel was long, it’s been almost 40 years since Beetlejuice (1988) came out, but alas, Tim Burton’s long awaited follow up to his classic proved a success as well, raking in over $400 million at the box office.

Beetlejuice Bettlejuice takes all of the quirkiness of the first film and goes bigger at every turn. While the plot isn’t as refined as the original, Burton takes audiences deeper into the ‘Afterlife’, with production designer Mark Scruton creating a world teeming with tangible sets and props. It’s a testament to how Burton likes to work which is very much by not taking shortcuts, building out sets and staying true to the practicality from his beginnings.

Frequent collaborators Danny Elfman and Colleen Atwood are also back and do a great job reinvigorating the world through their craft. Of course, what is a Beetlejuice sequel without the man himself; Michael Keaton, while noticeably older and wrinklier, still delivers his all in just as whacky a performance as in the original.

Burton’s latest muse, Winona Ryder successor (but not replacer), Jenna Ortega, fits the bill of the director’s artistic vision and really takes her learning’s on Netflix hit, Wednesday, to deliver a sound performance.

6. The Wild Robot

With some big titles in animation popping up in the last year ranging from Inside Out 2, Moana 2, Flow and Memoir of a Snail, it was the beached service robot who took the cake for me.

While I’m yet to see the latter two of those animations, Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot is a wholesome animation that doesn’t ram woke messaging down your throat and undercut genuine storytelling with political agendas. The film is enveloped in a coat of warmth and lets its heartfelt story of companionship do the talking.

The animation is equally unique and has a Bob Ross quality to it in how the environment is presented, with a scratchy, paint-brushy style that gives it its own flavour among some of those aforementioned films.

When a film can make you care about whether a young goose will be able to learn how to fly, I think that’s a winner.

5. Megalopolis

For anyone that has tried to review Megalopolis out there, I commend you but I don’t envy you.

Francis Ford Coppolla’s self-funded, futuristic epic became an unexpected comedy at the screening I attended along with fellow Rating Frames colleague, Darcy.

Many have written off the film as being a nonsensical, convoluted mess, but in that sentiment lies the very foundation of the film’s angle which is that shit just doesn’t make sense and the more we try to make sense of the world around us while ignoring its structural flaws, the more we fail to see the bigger picture and prevent our own demise.

That interpretation may well fall on deaf ears and others may simply say “whatever Coppolla was smoking, I’ll have some of that”, but Megalopolis is a trip in and of itself and beckons to be experienced.

4. Anora

After the success of The Florida Project (2017) and Red Rocket (2021), Sean Baker’s Anora hits like a freight train and some more. In what is an emotional roller coaster with a clever script that’s at once humorous and full of anguish, Anora caught me off guard and left me in limbo with its final shot.

Sean Baker has a knack for showing people that deserve better in life go through the motions, often coming agonizingly close to some form of a “break” from the difficult lives they lead only to have it all snatched away in the blink of an eye.

He’s a real actors director, with those helming his productions being laid bare (sometimes literally) as he gets the most from their performances. Whether that’s Simon Rex struggling as an actor before Baker gave him the reigns to struggle as a washed-up pornstar or Mikey Madison this time around as a struggling stripper who thinks she’s hit the lottery with a Russian billionaire’s son — the central performance is the make or break aspect to his films.

Anora will make you laugh, cry, laugh some more and then break you by the end, and it just leaves me craving Baker’s next work.

3. Ferrari

As a Michael Mann diehard, watching Ferrari was like a wet dream.

Mann’s films are characterised by their brash, uncompromising antiheroes, figures who are driven and work oriented, who struggle to balance the personal with the professional. It’s why when his film about automotive titan Enzo Ferrari was announced, it just made perfect sense as the next obsession for him.

While Ferrari is less brazen in terms of its set pieces, playing out more as a melodrama that’s focused on a period of Ferrari’s life, Mann’s ability to build out and showcase Ferrari’s larger-than-life status and the constant tension he manages to build until that final harrowing sequence, is just vintage Mann.

2. Dune: Part Two

Denis Villenueve’s Dune: Part Two took the learnings of the first film and doubled down on them even more to create a bigger, more expansive world from Herbert’s writing.

The fact that more happens in the second half of the book compared to the first is represented on-screen, with greater scale, jaw dropping set-pieces and just more oomph compared to the first film which prioritised more methodical, patient worldbuilding and establishing.

The Arrakis of Part Two looks incredible, with Greig Fraser once again using his eye for macro detail to shoot the deceptively beautiful sandy vistas at a high quality — earning him a deserved Best Cinematography nomination at the Oscars. That Villeneuve once again didn’t receive a Best Director nomination at this year’s Oscars is a massive miss on the Academy’s part, but Part Two‘s success at the box office and critical acclaim hopefully make up for that.

1. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

In what was my perhaps my most anticipated film of 2024, George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga blew me away, coming close to the perfection of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).

No one understands this world better than Miller, and with Furiosa he’s gone for bigger and better at almost every turn. Looking back, my biggest fault with a pretty faultless film is that it’s still anchoring itself to the quasi-mythological Max character as its selling point (at least in the title, and towards the end). It’s hardly an issue, but Furiosa is very much a standalone piece from Miller’s original trilogy, with Fury Road even being a standalone given Mel Gibson obviously wasn’t involved in that film, and the screentime Hardy did have rendered him more a side-character to Charlize Theron’s Furiosa.

If any of that can be viewed as a shortcoming (and even I’m hardly convinced of it as I’m writing this), then Furiosa‘s high-points just took the cake for me ahead of anything else in 2024. It might be that seeing this in IMAX and hearing the roaring V8 engines in that soundscape was the cinema experience I’d be craving, but more than that, Miller’s prequel doesn’t compromise on creating a unique, new experience amidst all of the familiarity it’s bringing back to entice lovers of the previous films — Fury Road, especially.

From every car flip, gun shot and extraordinary set-piece, Furiosa is a ride worth taking and proves that taking a practical route to filmmaking wherever possible is what really creates the authentic, lived-in atmosphere that a post-apocalyptic film like this is striving to achieve.

Honourable mentions: Inside Out 2 and Monkey Man

All We Imagine as Light is Unforgettable

All We Imagine as Light is Unforgettable

Darcy Read

Rating: 4.5 out of 5.

Screener provided by Rialto Pictures.

“I’ve lived here maybe 23 years. But I feel afraid to call it home. There’s always the feeling that I’ll have to leave.” These opening words, by a nameless individual, ring out throughout Payal Kapadia’s extraordinary film All We Imagine as Light (2024), shot against the backdrop of Mumbai, focusing on the women who inhabit it.

The most soulful film in years is also perhaps the best feature of the year, documentarian turned fiction filmmaker Kapadia exploding onto the scene with an honest and poetic portrait of humanity in modern India. A powerful blend of personal womanhood inside the political sprawled across modern Mumbai, Kapadia’s gorgeous and lyrical film centres on three multigenerational nurses navigating a world unwilling to accommodate their lives.

Centring on a pair of nurses, seasoned veteran Prabha (Kani Kusruti), and the youthful and expressive Anu (Divya Prabha), navigate an economically and politically uncertain time in Mumbai, along with older nurse Parvarty (Chhaya Kadam), who is facing eviction after the death of her husband. Prabha is dealing with the extended absence of her husband. This arranged marriage almost immediately left Mumbai to work in Germany, sending gestures to her home like a European rice cooker that only highlights the void he has left. On the other hand, Anu is attempting to balance her life while forming an interfaith romance with Muslim boy Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), an increasingly contentious issue in current-day India.

Kani Kusruti as Prabha in All We Imagine as Light.

We first see Anu and Prabha on public transport on their way to work, inside the lyrical six-minute opening sequence that guides you immediately into the world Kapadia is sharing with us. Anu is asleep on her side on a train seat, demonstrating her naive sense of safety in her position while also telling the audience her level of preparedness to arrive at work. In the immediate next shot, we see Prabha, gracefully shown in a medium closeup holding onto the pole of the same train for stability (seen above). By only showing Prabha from the shoulders up here, Cinematographer and frequent collaborator Ranabir Das portrays the battle-hardened nurse in grace with the world around her, yet never settled into one place.

There is a fear this remarkable film will be lost in the awards race shuffle due to India’s increasingly conservative film body and government not submitting it for the Academy Awards, even with the film winning the Grand Prix at Cannes. This is a sad but unsurprising occurrence after Kapadia emerged onto the film scene with her 2021 documentary A Night of Knowing Nothing, also critical of India’s patriarchal system.

The sweet centre of the film lies in the blossoming romance between Anu and Shiaz, a relationship that blends religion and the modern political moment in the city. In a series of push-pull romantic moments which includes a heartbreaking yet comedic booty call where Anu must purchase a hijab to visit him in the Muslim district where he lives. Kapadia avoids easy exits with this romance, concluding powerfully with an honest and poetic moment of acceptance and beauty, tied into an honest moment of private security.

In contrast to this romance, Prabha and her complicated relationship with her absent husband fills the remaining emotional bandwidth. Born of an arranged marriage that ties her to the city she does not call her own. In the opening prologue, a resident tells us, “That’s life. You better get used to the impermanence”. In a film centred on the relationship between people and the places they inhabit, this line pangs with an honest awareness.

Divya Prabha as Anu in All We Imagine as Light.

A film that comes to mind while watching Kapadia’s film is Steve McQueen’s Lover’s Rock (2020) from his Small Axe series, and not just because composers Dhritiman Das and Topshe’s playful piano score could’ve fallen out of one of his films. The short and sweet feature is in contention for the film of the decade, a complicated work of desire and connection inside a wealth of sumptuous visual storytelling and guile that simply overwhelms you. Both films use colour and vivid travelogue-styled cinematography to embrace the human connection of place. What separates the two films is Kapadia’s deceptively critical eye when depicting modern Mumbai, especially the three women’s place within it. 

The slow, simmering drama underneath the film’s central pair is the wrongful eviction of a third nurse at the hospital, the older woman Parvaty. Her husband has died, removing her right to live in her own home. The potency of the feminist politics that simmer underneath All We Imagine as Light is in the grounded reality of the characters’ situation, one they are helpless to improve, finding solace in their own uneasy but accepting companionship.

The film operates within two acts, the first within the city that flows downstream into its latter half as the trio of women go to the beachside village that Parvaty grew up in. Kapadia, through her documentary lens, views characters as people who have been steeped in a certain place like tea, becoming more like a place the longer you inhabit it. While Mumbai is described as a place of impermanence and instability for the characters we meet, it is only in venturing out of the rapid city do they begin to view their life and their wants more clearly. In its final moments, would Anu and Shiaz ever have the courage to meet Prabha without this opportunity outside the city? And would Prabha’s spiritual exchange with her husband which opened her eyes to what she is holding onto and what she needs to give up to change have occurred in the melancholy that followed her throughout Mumbai?

Kapadia, with a refined hand through documentary work, flourishes in small moments. Whether it’s the embrace of a rice cooker given by a distant-slash-estranged husband working in Germany, or the small gesture of helping an older colleague move her things back to her old home after being wrongfully evicted, All We Imagine as Light embraces the aching emotionality of the quotidian, knowing these fleeting moments create a mosaic that reflects the light of human experience.

All We Imagine as Light is in select theatres now.

Best of 2023: Arnie’s Picks

Best of 2023: Arnie’s Picks

Arnel Duracak

With 2023 drawing to a close, Rating Frames is looking back at the past twelve months of cinema and streaming releases that have come our way. In the third of our series of articles, Arnel Duracak is taking a look at his ten favourite films of the year that was.

In what was a year jam-packed with incredible film titles, a myriad of legendary directors continuing to deliver the goods, newcomers making their mark, and strikes that led to several delays for other anticipated releases, I only wish that I had spent more time in front of a silver screen.

Alas, I ventured to Europe for a good few months which limited my access to key titles early on in the year (though I did see Michael Mann’s 1995 classic Heat at London’s Prince Charles Cinema), but I was lucky to be able to witness some of the year’s best films at the cinema in the second half of 2023. There have been multiple other titles that I wish I had seen before the end of 2023 –––The Holdovers, Poor Things, Ferrari (which I will be reviewing for the site soon), to name a few––– but nonetheless I am satisfied with what I was able to see. Here’s to a 2024 with more of the same, happy watching!

10. Wonka

As I was looking at my ongoing 2023 ranking list, it turns out Wonka made the cut.

While I am a bit surprised, this film felt like the most deserving 3.5 star film from 2023 for me. It neither rocked my socks nor did it live up to the brilliance of Paul King’s modern classic Paddington 2 (2017), but my bar was set rather low for this title if not for the fact that it felt like an unnecessary foray into the background of one of cinema’s strangest characters, then definitely because I just wasn’t all that interested (Darcy will attest to that).

But being a King and Simon Farnaby screenplay, Wonka felt both fresh and unique, owing to the fact that it was imbued with the zany British humour that Paddington 2 excelled at, had an all-star cast who thrive as misfits and are just a joy to be around, contained some catchy musical set pieces (‘Scrub Scrub’ being a particular highlight), and never felt like it was trying to follow in the footsteps of the other two Willy Wonka films.

My only gripe would be that Wonka himself was less interesting as a character than any of the side characters. Whether or not that was because Chalamet’s performance was a bit overly boisterous or because 90% of the core cast meshed well with the British comedy by comparison, but Chalamet’s no Gene Wilder here (maybe for the best).

9. Oppenheimer

In what is perhaps Christopher Nolan’s most accomplished film for many (2008’s The Dark Knight still takes the cake for me), Oppenheimer is a magnetic feat in filmmaking that only Nolan could deliver at such a scale.

I’ve never been a big fan of the way that he writes dialogue, and Oppenheimer isn’t different in that regard for me as it tries to balance more heartfelt, interpersonal connections with more heavy handed themes and technical language (ultimately tailspinning into some less than convincing, at times eye-rolly back-and-forths). However, for a three hour film that is about one of history’s darkest periods, it flows rather well with crisp editing, excellent performances all around, a moody but effective score, and direction from Nolan at the peak of his powers. The film’s climax is one of the most cinematic this year and once cements Nolan’s status as the king of IMAX.

At the time of writing, it’s been about an hour since Oppenheimer swept up the Golden Globes, and if that isn’t a testament to just how deserving this film is to be on anyone’s top 10 list, then I’m sure the Oscars will have something to say about that.

8. Asteroid City

In what is a film of layer upon layer upon layer, Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City is a film I’ve accepted I just have a love-hate relationship with.

Anderson, of course, probably has the most identifiable visual style of any working director at the moment, and he once again delivers incredible vistas in this desert doll-house diorama showcase. Asteroid City is also his most self-reflexive film, both on the art of being a storyteller and on the process leading up to the camera rolling.

Artifice and reality intersect on multiple occasions, with the film playing out through a series of chapters that pull you into the world itself, and then pull you back out to take a glance at how everything is coming together. At times the film can be beguiling, especially if you aren’t familiar with his previous stuff, but it’s also a rewarding insight into art of being a storyteller.

7. The Killer

Many (and by many, I mean Letterboxd users) have called David Fincher’s The Killer his most introspective, meditative film on the craft of doing your job, taking pride in your work and thinking you’re doing it so well to the point of perfection. I just think it’s his most comedic.

Michael Fassbender stars as the straight-faced, emotionless hitman who screws up a hit and now has to clean up his tracks and those that might wish to take him out for his shortcoming.

The Killer is a great study on the dissolution of identity, of a man coping with his inner thoughts and dismissing all empathy for those that don’t deserve it because he knows the game he’s playing and the players involved. As mentioned, I also think it’s a comedy or at the very least, unintentionally funny especially with various internal monologues by the character, describing what he sees and feels, that are followed by sharp interruptions.

While this isn’t Fincher’s best film or even in his top three, it’s a safe but well executed crime thriller that will satiate the desire of hardcore Finchonians who would wish to see him return to similar stories.

6. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

I’ve continually been surprised by just how good each Mission Impossible film has gotten.

Christopher McQuarrie and Tom Cruise are like each other’s yin and yang as they seem to have found common ground since their first collaboration on Jack Reacher (2012) to the point where they’re willing to push the boundaries of what’s achievable on film at such a scale. Cruise especially is no stranger to putting his body and life on the line for an awesome shot, and in Dead Reckoning Part One there is everything from that iconic plummeting bike sequence off the top of a cliff to the creation and destruction of a whole train.

While Dead Reckoning Part One is pipped only by Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018) in the franchise in terms of scale and death defying moments, it is pure action cinema that knows no bounds. I’m keen to see what Part Two will have to offer.

5. Past Lives

Celine Song’s debut feature is the sort of film that sneaks up and catches you off guard if you’re not prepared for its candid depictions of everyday people doing this thing we call life, and it leaves you feeling either optimistic or a tad wrecked by the time it’s over. 

I generally gravitate towards fantasy, action and romance films, and I was pleasantly surprised that while this is a film about young love and looking back to move forward, it’s ultimately a film about reconciliation and friendship.

Song’s film cleverly captures how time passes in an instant; we try to hold on to the high points as much as we can, we’d put them in a bottle if we could, but that’s not how life works. In other words, things happen for a reason, but that doesn’t mean we have to forget the past, but rather learn to live with the present reality that we’ve been given.

The film is ultimately anchored by Greta Lee, Teo Yoo and John Magaro who form the emotional centre that allows Song to deliver this story as effectively as she does.

4. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Across the Spider-Verse was one of the releases that I missed on the big-screen after going to Europe and only saw towards the close of the year on Prime Video.

I say that with a degree of sadness as this sequel to the Oscar winning hook-out-of-nowhere, Into the Spider-Verse (2018), absolutely floored me in just how creative it was in utilising the key moments of past Spider-man films and flipping them on their head to deliver an original, engaging, emotional and downright fun two and a half hours. The trio of writers, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham clearly understand this world and its characters, and it shows in all of its vibrancy.

Much has been said on the animation style of these films, and it once agains results in a colourful and unique display. Another Part Two I am ever so keen to see.

3. Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese has been there, done that and gone back again, but even I couldn’t believe the brilliance I was seeing with Killers of the Flower Moon ––– even though brilliance is what we’ve always known with this cinematic titan.

Killers of the Flower Moon is another film that passes the three hour mark this year, but if it went for another three, I don’t think there would be many complaints. And that’s owed largely to just how precise Thelma Schoonmaker’s editing is, which paces the film very tidily with no loose moments that don’t add up to a wider whole.

It’s also a testament to Scorsese’s brilliant direction and he and Eric Roth’s approach to the screenplay which they flipped on its head and decided to tackle from an inside point around the film’s perpetrators. The result is one where we still see all of Scorsese’s signature mobster embellishments and themes of betrayal, ambition and greed, but they’re repurposed in a more Western setting and allowed to simmer for the film’s lengthy runtime.

I’ve said it elsewhere, but Killers of the Flower Moon feels like the sum of all the best parts of Scorsese’s oeuvre. By that I mean not just in the little tell-tales and visual cues that scream Scorsese, but more in terms of how this film balances tension, develops character, incorporates louder moments with more muted ones, communicates more heavy handed themes like greed and corruption in a digestible way, and all while feeling fresh in the process. 

The fact that this isn’t his magnum opus tells you everything you need to know about him, so let’s enjoy this legend while he’s still around.

2. (How Do You Live?) The Boy and the Heron

From one legend to another, Hayao Miyazaki’s decision to un-retire and make The Boy and the Heron was met with wide gasps, especially since The Wind Rises (2013) felt like the perfect capstone to his illustrious career.

Yet there was clearly some unfinished business in the director’s life that he no doubt felt compelled to express, and in his latest he once again takes a deep dive into the phantasmagorical through various creatures, concoctions and imagery, but with existentialism at the forefront.

The Boy and the Heron might well be seen as Miyazaki coming to terms with the limitations of the physical form and seeking out answers, or at least seeking to provide certain tools that might lead to the answers around what this thing called life is all about. Darcy has described the film as a “deep meditation on life and grief” and I think that’s the basis for what Miyazaki is going for here, along with the idea of carving something from nothing and doing your best to hold it together for as long as you can.

For the young character Mahito at the centre of it all, he is there to try and help take this bleakness and turn it into something redeemable now that his uncle (a very obvious injection of self from Miyazaki), cannot. It’s almost a futile request as everything around him crumbles, but it’s enough to believe he will take this with him in his own life and attempt to bring some order to it that way.

1. John Wick: Chapter 4

It feels like a millennium ago that I saw the fourth instalment in Chad Stahleski’s thriving John Wick franchise, and yet nothing this year has toppled it from the peak of my list.

Don’t get me wrong, any of my top three could just as easily be sitting in pole position, but Stahelski’s final John Wick film is a sensory overload that I feel like was made for me. Shay Hatten and Michael Finch’s ability to up the ante and deliver a screenplay that not only ties everything from the first three films together, but adds some more and then blows everything out of the water in the third act is truly mind-boggling (it’s a crime they weren’t nominated at the Golden Globes for Best Screenplay).

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve long praised Stahelski for his understanding of actors and his ability to stage fight scenes, but in John Wick Chapter 4 he has once again managed to blend hand-to-hand combat and bullets galore with an appreciation for more grounded storytelling and the recognition that John Wick is the emotional anchor of this film even when he’s engaged in tense situations.

He’s not just a two-dimensional assassin or someone simply out for revenge, and Chapter 4 makes it clear that moving forward requires sacrifice. And this franchise has always been able to introduce anti-heroes and antagonists that are just as layered as Wick because they occupy the same space, under the same oversight, guided by the same principles ––– Wick just has the courage to stand against the system that has nurtured him and recognise the virus its rotten roots are spreading.

It feels like a fairytale ending that echoes the practicality and originality of Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) while standing out from anything else that has been released since Fury Road in the action genre. I can safely say I am eagerly anticipating Stahelski’s adaptation of Ghost of Tsushima.

Honourable mentions: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Babylon (a 2023 release in Australia)

Best of 2023: Darcy’s Picks

Best of 2023: Darcy’s Picks

Darcy Read

With 2023 drawing to a close, Rating Frames is looking back at the past twelve months of cinema and streaming releases that have come our way. In the first of our series of articles, Darcy Read is taking a look at his ten favourite films of the year that was.

2023 has been a bizarre but ultimately wonderful year in cinema. A film year that felt like a genuine rebound after multiple years of roadblocks — and that’s with long-running SAG and WGA strikes with impacts felt in the latter stages of the year but will impact next year more on the ledger — through the success of ‘Barbenheimer’ and the return of some of the best veteran filmmakers we have working. While none of these storied filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Hayao Miyazaki, or Wes Anderson delivered a film that will be the first project referenced in their obituary, all have produced work that will contend for the best cinema has to offer this decade.

As 2023 draws to a close, it is clear this year has the potential to enter legend status alongside calendar years like 1999 or 2019, with its combination of peaks and depth by creators both established and emerging, gifting us deeply personal works that have clearly resonated with audiences around the world. 2023 has been a wonderful year to write about for the site, and 2024 looks to be a fascinating year with the return of incredible artists like Bong Joon-ho, Steve McQueen, and Barry Jenkins to name a few. But before we get ahead of ourselves, here is my list of the best of cinema this year.

10. Oppenheimer

A vicious knife fight to land on the 10th spot on this list with a collection of wonderful films by veteran auteurs like Hirokazu Kore-eda and David Fincher, but the scale and power of the fleeting moments in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023) proved too difficult to ignore. Nolan has been on a manic kick in recent years, adopting a sound-focused filmmaking pursuit that is just catnip for me. Combining an all-time score by Ludwig Göransson with an elastic soundscape that never lacks emotional or narrative potency by the legendary Richard King, Nolan and emerging editor Jennifer Lame throw you into the subjective war zone that is J. Robert Oppenheimer.

The film is littered with flaws and strange moments that threaten to derail the three-hour tirade through the scientific pursuit of unprecedented destruction, but the rigorous nature of the film allows for some transcendent sequences that stack up amongst Nolan’s very best work.

9. The Eight Mountains

A serene indie film shot across stunning vistas of the Italian Alps centred on two men building a house in a plot of land owned by one of their recently deceased fathers, Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s The Eight Mountains (2022) plays out like a contemplative short story across two and a half hours, a personal favourite flavour that is not a universal palette.

The earnestness of the storytelling about two complicated men seeking purpose through their past and into their present transcends into a reflective pool of emotion and intimacy with a mesmerisingly natural performance by Alessandro Borghi as Bruno. Grab some tea and warm up by the fire of this enchanting Italian epic that would work as a perfect double feature with Past Lives (2023), a film we will get to.

8. May December

A sticky, chewy meal of a film, May December (2023) is less interested in the central scandal of the story (echoing the story of Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau) than in the modern societal structures around a tabloid scandal, with the insidious media ecosystem that invades lives for an increasingly uncertain gain and the human impact that ripples out decades later, as the scandal itself.

Casting director turned screenwriter Samy Burch is perfectly matched on the screen by the brilliant Todd Haynes, a filmmaker most comfortable getting into the weeds of a dark, complicated story and emerging with something equally compelling and repugnant. The trio of performances from Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, and the emergence of Charles Melton present this knotty and potently transgressive story with a heightened tension of melodrama whilst never losing the humanity at its core that allows the film to shine.

7. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

It took months for me to embrace the ‘to be continued’ nature of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023), but once that hurdle is vaulted, the Jackson Pollock-styled explosion of creativity and narrative inventiveness on display in this sequel to the hit animated superhero film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) took hold.

Across the Spider-Verse’s first 20 minutes is the greatest example of riotous, shotgun blast openings to come across in years, miraculously blending art styles with raw emotion and vulnerability that created an avalanche of ideas to cascade from beginning to end.

6. Asteroid City

“Am I doing it right?” Anderson has long been known for his extensive production designs and air-tight dialogue, but what stands out in Asteroid City (2023) is the attention placed on the act of looking. These looks of longing and understanding permeate every moment and every character of the film. From June (Maya Hawke) and Montana’s (Rupert Friend) longing looks of romance tinged with the desire for understanding in an increasingly incomprehensible world, to the gazing scenes of Jason Schwartzman as both Augie in the play with Midge (Scarlett Johansson), and as the actor Jones Hall with the actress of his wife that was ultimately cut played by Margot Robbie – in one of the scenes of the year – Anderson reflects the modern world’s unease and uncertainty by displaying these feelings across the extended ensemble.

Schwartzman — who has never been better — wears layers upon layers of uncertainty about the future and how to feel in the present across his face, opening up like a flower in the final act. By penetrating the hermetically sealed world that Anderson and his crew craft here in Asteroid City with touchingly modern feelings of uncertainty and fear, the potency of the message burrows its way into the soul, where it has remained all year. “Am I doing it right?”

5. The Zone of Interest

The normalisation of genocide as a collection of active, domestic choices, Jonathan Glazer’s attentive formalism is a perfect match for this profound piece of art on the naturalism that real evil lives within. Based on a slither of Martin Ames’ book of the same name, The Zone of Interest centres on the young family of Höss, mass murderer and commandant of Auschwitz, as they live day to day alongside unimaginable horror. Glazer avoids almost all iconography of the camp and world inside of the walls, tightly focusing on the family mundanity through scenes of pool parties, teatime chats, and grandmothers coming over for a weekend as the black smoke billows constantly above them.

Glazer, alongside sonic collaborators Johnnie Burn and Mica Levi as sound designer and composer has crafted a piece of cinema that transcends the formal exercise it easily could’ve become, instead striving for an art film that lands close to a Nazi-based Jeanne Dielman (1975). There is no, and may never be, another experience like it.

4. La chimera

One of the great pleasures of following the career of an emerging artist is seeing them put it all together. In La chimera (2023), Italian filmmaker Alice Rohrwacher perfectly blends the rich, textured grounds of Tuscan farm life of The Wonders (2014) with the magical realism and whimsy from her revered film Happy as Lazzaro (2018) to create one of the year’s best and most creatively rich films.

Set in 1980s Tuscany, we follow Arthur (an extraordinary Josh O’Connor) and his band of tombaroli — Italian looters archaeological heritage — as he returns to his long lost love Beniamina’s local town after a stint in jail. Rohrwacher’s seemingly limitless filmmaking inventiveness wraps around a knotty and evocative story of local heritage and ownership of the past shot gloriously on 16 and 35mm.

3. (How Do You Live?) The Boy and the Heron

Went with the original title for this entrancing and engaging gift of cinema, as it so perfectly captures the film in many ways compared to a seemingly rushed decision to rename this endlessly compelling feature from another old master Hayao Miyazaki. Not only is the title How Do You Live? (2023) taken from a beloved Japanese novel that Miyazaki has called an ur-text for him creatively — heightened by having the book play a crucial story beat with it being gifted to our protagonist Mahito by his recently deceased mother — but it works as the central thesis question for the film Miyazaki came out of retirement to ask. A question he gives no answer to, understanding that a life’s purpose is in the pursuit. The film operates as a deep meditation on life and grief from a world-weary filmmaker and as a goofy, playful Ghibli movie with its eccentric parakeets and Warawara’s that are sure to make their way into the heart of the recently opened Ghibli park.

What allows these larger ideas and themes to flow freely across this entrancing film is the work of longtime collaborator Joe Hisaishi’s score, somehow in career-best form after all these years, echoing these thematic questions through his delicate strings, tense orchestrations, and loving piano melodies that wash over a crowded audience like an emotional wave. No film on this list has better potential to leapfrog up to number one than this film, probing for questions on day-to-day existence than any piece of art released in 2023, like only a true master storyteller can.

2. Past Lives

Saw this treasure of a film back in June at the Sydney Film Festival and remained top of this list for months, Past Lives (2023), the best debut feature of the year by Celine Song, has stayed top of mind for 6 months through its unique mixture of personal and romantic longing with a powerful trio of performances by Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro.

In Past Lives, the present is framed in a unique liminal space, an uncertain future result of past decisions and indecisions, more so than a real time experience, like watching Richard Linklater’s miraculous Before trilogy simultaneously across three screens. How Song is able to merge these ideas inside a tight 105-minute narrative feature is not to be understated, crafting the best screenplay of 2023 and one that will only expand and mature moving forward.

1. Killers of the Flower Moon

From my review for the film: “Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), a sprawling period crime epic based on the incredible best-selling nonfiction book of the same name by David Grann tracking the 1921 Osage Nation murders (potentially hundreds even though the reported count reached only 20), is the best film to arrive in theatres in years. An astonishing work, capturing the clashing worlds of empathy and cruelty, the legendary director Martin Scorsese alongside veteran screenwriter Eric Roth, set out to explore and probe the original sins of white exploitation and destruction that dismantled a once thriving community in the Osage Nation.

With a task as grave and serious about a community unfamiliar to their own, Scorsese and Roth’s script remarkably lands at a point of empathy and understanding they can reach as outsiders to this world. Scorsese’s self-reflective limitations as the person to tell this story are palpable throughout the film. This crime film’s capacity to tell a story of a community not his own arrives at a peak in a final sequence that may not evoke the same emotions in audience members as personal opinions of this vary. However, it is disingenuous to wholly dismiss this remarkable film on those grounds, just as it is disingenuous to wholly dismiss the air of white guilt and limitations as storytellers that frame Killers.”

My only five-star film of the year, Killers of the Flower Moon may not reach the Mount Rushmore of Scorsese’s career but is more than worthy of entering the discussion once the greatest living American director decides to hang it up.

Honourable Mentions: The Killer, Monster, How to Blow Up a Pipeline, Barbie, Showing Up.