La Chimera – Rating Frames

Best of 2023: Darcy’s Picks

December 31, 2023Darcy 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.

MIFF ’23: Darcy’s Notebook Pt.2

September 7, 2023Darcy Read

With another wonderful festival in the books, MIFF 2023 was a surprising mix of emerging artists from home and abroad spotlighting the program that gave the year a distinct flavour. Here, our writer Darcy has dropped part one of his notebook full of notes and thoughts on the many films he was able to catch at the festival, all of which should hopefully be brought to larger audiences throughout the rest of the year.

Sleep (Jason Yu) 2022:

A wonderfully charming but uneven riff on Rosemary’s Baby (1968) dances between comedy and genuine tension throughout, Sleep (2023) will keep the audience teetering on the edge of uncertainty until its delicious final image.

With an entrancing combination of performances by Lee Sun-kyun and Jung Yu-mi as a young couple about to welcome their first child, the stage is set for a tension-filled domestic horror, one that filmmaker Jason Yu is adept in weaving despite it being his first feature. Sleep, however, is more brash and darkly comic in nature, with a tone that will certainly reward the film with a certain cinephilic cult status.

While structurally inventive that should always stay a few steps ahead of even the most adept horror fans, Sleep’s third-act decisions lessen the forceful impact that was delighting and engaging its audience in the delicious tension Yu builds in exciting and unexpected ways. The enjoyment of the film stems from the deft dance between genre formalism and charming diversions, so further exploring these third-act choices will lessen the adventure as a whole.

I’m being deliberately coy about these aspects of the film as Yu has earned the surprise of these revelations on future audiences. This is a proud and confident debut that is sure to elevate Yu as an emerging voice in Korean genre cinema, one that is sure to expand on and improve on his deft filmmaking skills.

The Breaking Ice (Anthony Chen) 2023:

A collection of transitory young people in moments of quiet stagnation that could soon harden into a crisis, Anthony Chen’s first of two films at the festival, the familiar but evocative drama The Breaking Ice (2023), illustrates the filmmaker’s deft hand in crafting relatable and defined characters you can’t help but see yourself in.

The film is an exploration of life’s transitional nature, depicted through the constant theme of ice. Ice is a fascinating property to base a film around, something that is constantly thawing and refreezing, altering its shape when in contact with warmth, only to regain its solidity through its frigid surroundings in a new shape, forever changed by this transition.

Situated in a frozen Chinese town of Yanji on the North Korean border, a town that literally exports and profits from the ice around them, we meet Haofeng (Liu Haoran), a depressed Shanghai financier alone at a destination wedding of a distant college friend. Through happenstance, he wills himself onto —’s () tour bus, a relatively new local who is also in a moment of stagnation and personal crisis. They quickly form a trio with — (), an older local kitchen hand who feels stuck in this small town.

The film brings to mind a more modern and sombre Bande à part (1964) with its young trio traversing a town and experiencing a shifting world. A romantic film depicted with true honesty, Chen has a deep love for these three transitory characters who arrive and depart in different and life-affirming ways. This intense connection between the trio doesn’t change the matter of their being, but they were thawed out enough to emerge in a new shape. These are still the characters who question the value of their life and the purpose moving forward that we are greeted by but are more assured in their sense of self and their place in the world that is deeply moving.

La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher) 2023:

There is no one like Alice Rohrwacher working today, with the Happy as Lazaro (2018) filmmaker consistently producing wry, comic, and deeply felt films that harken back to a stranger and often more interesting period in arthouse cinema. With her new feature, La Chimera (2023), Rohrwacher uses her breezy charm to glance into the world of Italian generational class and history through the lens of an instantly iconic band of lost boys, led by Josh O’Connor in a true star-making performance as the ivory suit wearing tortured archaeologist-slash-graverobber Arthur.

The separation between grave-robbing and archeological profiteering is placed at the centre of this brilliant surrealist tragicomedy, asking us to constantly look downwards and question the rights and possessions of the deceased, especially the impoverished deceased. There is weight to these themes and Rohrwacher’s often allows her characters to linger in their moral ambiguity, but through her virtuosic camera work and editing, La Chimera is full of vitality.

Rohrwacher’s camera is alive with cinematic ideas both profound and charming, exuding both personal character moments as well as a wider filmmaking language that can beguile a full theatre in its motions. She is able to land big ideas in her films through her focus on both cinematic and mythic storytelling styles that are rarely so well blended. Few films look and sound like La Chimera, as Rohrwacher is both patient in showing you her style, and confident enough in the story being told that the audience will be put under its spell.

Drift (Anthony Chen) 2023:

Anthony Chen’s second feature at the festival, Drift centres on a young woman Jacqueline (a captivating Cynthia Erivo) who finds herself houseless on a Greek island, both running from her past and avoiding her future. In a mostly wordless first act, Erivo moves through the town, just managing to survive as she sleeps amongst the crashing waves and rock pools on the coast.

Drift operates across three timelines, showing us her life in London with her girlfriend Helen (a surprising Honor Swinton Bryne appearance), and her trip back to her family in Liberia that precedes her arrival in Greece. Much like Jacqueline, we drift through these moments with little to latch ourselves into. Where The Breaking Ice succeeds is in informing its audience about the characters enough to engage and propel the narrative forward. Here, however, the withholding nature of the storytelling becomes the combustion engine of the film instead of the central characters. This structure works perfectly in thrillers and horror, but in a more contemplative character drama, the results are too slim to be wholly engaging.

Ama Gloria (Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq) 2023:

Featuring one of the best child performances in years, Marie Amachoukeli-Barsacq’s Ama Gloria (2023) follows 6-year-old Cléo, (a charming and captivating Louise Mauroy-Panzani) who spends her summer with her au pair Gloria (Ilça Moreno Zego), who has returned home to Cape Verde to care for her own children after the death of her mother. This tight-focus drama of a young person sharing a final core memory with someone they love is emotionally potent in its simplicity. For two characters that have endured recent untimely loss, there is a genuine warmth in showing this elongated goodbye to a loved one that washes over you like the summer afternoon sun.

The visual highlight of the film is in the gorgeous animated painting sequences that dot the short runtime of Ama Gloria, diving into not just Cleo’s mind, but of Gloria’a, riding an ocean of tears back home. The second painted sequence transforms into a roaring volcano, enacting Cleo’s rage at the sudden departure of her surrogate mother. Both sequences are transitioned with gorgeous sonic match cuts, blending seamlessly into the ether of the 4:3 film stock showing the control and respect Amachoukeli-Barsacq has for her characters and the relationship we have invested in over the efficient runtime of just 83 minutes.

Earth Mama (Savanah Leaf) 2023:

A debut of honest warmth, Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama (2023) is designed to stay with you the next time you pass a stranger on the street. With its captivating 16mm cinematography of Oakland by Jody Lee Lipes and provocative central performance by Tia Nomore as Gia, a pregnant single mother of two trying to get by while battling the US foster care to regain custody of her children, Earth Mama strips away feelings of judgement until only a depth of empathy is left.

Instead of constructing a film with a tight, domineeringly singular perspective of Gia, Leaf opts to move supportingly alongside her. In the opening moments of the film, a pregnant mother tells us matter-of-factly, “You can’t walk in my shoes, feel my experience, but you can walk alongside me, holding my hand.”

The heartbreak and emotionality of Earth Mama stem from Leaf’s tender honesty she exudes in telling Gia’s story. We want the best for her and her family, so when she hits her lowest point, we feel that moment, not as if it were ourselves, but as a dear friend.

The film shines in its unexpected relationships as Gia searches for solid ground inside a world that feels designed to destabilise. On first meeting with the prospective family in a diner, Gia has a beautiful moment with the family’s teenage daughter Amber (Kami Jones), who she immediately strikes a connection with. Earth Mama has quickly demonstrated Leaf’s deft hand as a writer and filmmaker who will only improve as new opportunities arise.