My fav films of the year were Poor Things, Asteroid City, The Boy and the Heron, and The Holdovers. By your rankings I’d give Poor Things 4.5 and the rest 3.5.
After seeing Poor Things I texted someone to strongly recommend they watch the film, and I wrote:
My one line slightly-exaggerated summary would be “autistic superhero woman coming-of-age story where she keeps winning via the mechanism of being autistic” including her special superpower of “accurately describing the current social subtext”.
Also a lot of treating death, love and sex in un-sacred ways.
Zvi and I have fairly different tastes in peak films; Spiderverse was extremely visually creative and an enjoyable experience but it’s story and characters left no imprint on me, so I would have preferred to watch any of those I listed above over it.
I get my film suggestions from Scaruffi (who ranks every film annually by reading reviews and generally has pretty discerning taste) and Top 10 lists by the YouTube Channel CineFix, who have a great ability to convey they love about many different particular films very quickly and with great excitement. Their best of 2023 is a good example of how they do film reviews.
Is it? I don’t expect new films to be that good compared to “the best films in history”.
The only other three I watched (from this year) were Napoleon, Oppenheimer, and Spiderverse. I also watched older films for the first time including Oldboy, My Neighbor Totoro, Wargames, and The Mirror, but I wasn’t comparing those.
(I’d say My Neighbor Totoro is a 4, the others I’m not sure about; also I fell asleep during The Mirror, but in my defense I had covid at the time.)
I’m thinking of watching Anatomy of a Fall and May December based on your recs and those you link to.
On my scale, if I went 1 for 7 on finding 4.0+ films in a year, then yeah I’d find that a disappointing year.
In other news, I tried out Scaruffi. I figured I’d watch the top pick. Number was Citizen Kane which I’d already watched (5.0 so that was a good sign), which was Repulsion. And… yeah, that was not a good selection method. Critics and I do NOT see eye to eye.
I also scanned their ratings of various other films, which generally seemed reasonable for films I’d seen, although with a very clear ‘look at me I am a movie critic’ bias, including one towards older films. I don’t know how to correct for that properly.
It’s plausible that you are closer to asking “how much would I recommend this to a copy of myself” and I am trying more to ask “how much would I recommend this to other people”. I personally got a lot out of each of the 3 films I gave a 3.5 to and for a copy of myself they would be a 4. The Boy and the Heron was very upsetting to me in a way that was new and rich (the first half an unrelenting depiction of a boy ruined by the death of his mother, in such contrast to what Miyazaki had set me up to anticipate in his films of childhood wonder and joy), and Asteroid City and The Holdovers in their own very different ways helped me see a lot of magic in the world that I normally miss.
In retrospect I quite enjoyed my year of films.
Oops, sorry to hear Scaruffi’s recs took you down a wrong alley. I also no longer go through Scaruffi’s best-ever list straightforwardly, those films can get strange (and a bit boring) very quickly. If I hear about a film being good I’ll often check his rating, and if I see that it’s above like 7.2, I take it as a sign that something artistically genuine and ambitious occurred (for the time, at least) in the film. It was a strong sign to me this year that Poor Things was 7.4 (and best-of-year), and that was a very accurate sign in retrospect.
In other news I watched Anatomy of a Fall this weekend. It’s ultimately a very simple film (with a lot of complicated emotions) and I’m glad I watched it; I will leave at 3.5 though, even for a copy of myself. Sumner’s review is basically right.
Sounds like your scale is stingier than mine is a lot of it. And it makes sense that the recommendations come apart at the extreme high end, especially for older films. The ‘for the time’ here is telling.
My fav films of the year were Poor Things, Asteroid City, The Boy and the Heron, and The Holdovers. By your rankings I’d give Poor Things 4.5 and the rest 3.5.
After seeing Poor Things I texted someone to strongly recommend they watch the film, and I wrote:
Zvi and I have fairly different tastes in peak films; Spiderverse was extremely visually creative and an enjoyable experience but it’s story and characters left no imprint on me, so I would have preferred to watch any of those I listed above over it.
I get my film suggestions from Scaruffi (who ranks every film annually by reading reviews and generally has pretty discerning taste) and Top 10 lists by the YouTube Channel CineFix, who have a great ability to convey they love about many different particular films very quickly and with great excitement. Their best of 2023 is a good example of how they do film reviews.
I’m curious how many films you saw—having only one above 3.5 on that scale seems highly disappointing.
Is it? I don’t expect new films to be that good compared to “the best films in history”.
The only other three I watched (from this year) were Napoleon, Oppenheimer, and Spiderverse. I also watched older films for the first time including Oldboy, My Neighbor Totoro, Wargames, and The Mirror, but I wasn’t comparing those.
(I’d say My Neighbor Totoro is a 4, the others I’m not sure about; also I fell asleep during The Mirror, but in my defense I had covid at the time.)
I’m thinking of watching Anatomy of a Fall and May December based on your recs and those you link to.
On my scale, if I went 1 for 7 on finding 4.0+ films in a year, then yeah I’d find that a disappointing year.
In other news, I tried out Scaruffi. I figured I’d watch the top pick. Number was Citizen Kane which I’d already watched (5.0 so that was a good sign), which was Repulsion. And… yeah, that was not a good selection method. Critics and I do NOT see eye to eye.
I also scanned their ratings of various other films, which generally seemed reasonable for films I’d seen, although with a very clear ‘look at me I am a movie critic’ bias, including one towards older films. I don’t know how to correct for that properly.
It’s plausible that you are closer to asking “how much would I recommend this to a copy of myself” and I am trying more to ask “how much would I recommend this to other people”. I personally got a lot out of each of the 3 films I gave a 3.5 to and for a copy of myself they would be a 4. The Boy and the Heron was very upsetting to me in a way that was new and rich (the first half an unrelenting depiction of a boy ruined by the death of his mother, in such contrast to what Miyazaki had set me up to anticipate in his films of childhood wonder and joy), and Asteroid City and The Holdovers in their own very different ways helped me see a lot of magic in the world that I normally miss.
In retrospect I quite enjoyed my year of films.
Oops, sorry to hear Scaruffi’s recs took you down a wrong alley. I also no longer go through Scaruffi’s best-ever list straightforwardly, those films can get strange (and a bit boring) very quickly. If I hear about a film being good I’ll often check his rating, and if I see that it’s above like 7.2, I take it as a sign that something artistically genuine and ambitious occurred (for the time, at least) in the film. It was a strong sign to me this year that Poor Things was 7.4 (and best-of-year), and that was a very accurate sign in retrospect.
In other news I watched Anatomy of a Fall this weekend. It’s ultimately a very simple film (with a lot of complicated emotions) and I’m glad I watched it; I will leave at 3.5 though, even for a copy of myself. Sumner’s review is basically right.
Sounds like your scale is stingier than mine is a lot of it. And it makes sense that the recommendations come apart at the extreme high end, especially for older films. The ‘for the time’ here is telling.