Best film I watched in December turned out to be one of the best of 2023. Godzilla Minus One was a shining ray of light in a mostly depressing year in cinema. Before any triggered cinéaste's blood boils over that statement, I'll double down on my claim with a fresh load of critical and popular darlings listed below which all had me never wanting to watch them ever again.
Lewis Teague's gangster drama The Lady in Red was the only other notable discovery for me this month.
Other than Paul Giamatti's wonky glass eye, the best thing about The Holdovers was it inadvertently sending me on a slasher binge and inspiring me to blog about should've been final girls.
Finally, I watched an obscene amount of old and new Doctor Who episodes this month; way too many to name individually.
Film:
Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red Barn (Milton Rosmer, 1935)*
Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (George King, 1936)*
Follow That Skirt (Richard W. Bomont, 1965)*
Carry on at Your Convenience (Gerald Thomas, 1971)
Crucible of Terror (Ted Hooker, 1971)
Carry on Abroad (Gerald Thomas, 1972)
Disciple of Death (Tom Parkinson, 1972)*
Messiah of Evil (William Huyck & Gloria Katz•, 1973)
The Lady in Red (Lewis Teague, 1979)*
Happy Birthday to Me (J. Lee Thompson, 1981)
The House on Sorority Row (Mark Rosman, 1982)
The Mutilator AKA Fall Break (Buddy Cooper & John Douglass, 1984)
Cheerleader Camp AKA Bloody Pom Poms (John Quinn, 1988)
Popcorn (Mark Herrier & Alan Ormsby•, 1991)
Cut (Kimble Rendall, 2000)*
Husk (Brett Simmons, 2011)*
Christmas Bloody Christmas (Joe Begos, 2022)*
The Sadness (Rob Jabbaz, 2021/2022)
Asteroid City (Wes Anderson, 2023)*
Ballerina (Chung-Hyun Lee, 2023)*
Dream Scenario (Kristoffer Borgli, 2023)*
The Exorcist: Believer (David Gordon Green, 2023)*
Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, 2023)*
The Holdovers (Alexander Payne, 2023)*
It’s a Wonderful Knife (Tyler MacIntyre, 2023)*
Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese, 2023)*
Leave the World Behind (Sam Esmail, 2023)*
Lion-Girl (Kurando Mitsutake, 2023)*
May December (Todd Haynes, 2023)*
Nefarious (Chuck Konzelman & Cary Solomon, 2023)*
Priscilla (Sofia Coppola, 2023)*
Saltburn (Emerald Fennell, 2023)*
Thanksgiving (Eli Roth, 2023)*
Television:
Doctor Who - Various Episodes (Donald B. Wilson & Sidney Newman, 1963 - 2023)*
Mastermind - Episodes 15 - 18 (Bill Wright, 2023/2024)*
Only Connect - Series 19 - Episode 23 (Chris Stuart, 2023)*
* First time viewing.
• Uncredited.
Dada Debaser Notes:
- Stumbled across Cut on Plex, an Australian slasher starring Molly Ringwald and Kylie Minongue. Nowhere near as potentially entertaining as that sounds. Goes from a meta film à la Scream to Freddy Krueger rip-off and falls flat on its arse.
- Best thing about Todd Haynes's critically overrated drama May December is its recycling of the The Go-Between (1971) soundtrack, which in turn made me rediscover Ill Advised's Through the Eye this month.
- Negative review bombing of Nefarious by angry atheists was the reason I even checked it out in the first place. The whiners were right about it, however - below average film.
- Turns out third time really is a charm as I ended up enjoying Popcorn much more after a recent viewing of it. Reggae music doesn't really fit in a slasher, however.
- Some great creative kills in Thanksgiving and bonus points for the fictional fantasy of modern teens listening to The Pharcyde's Oh Shit, but I can't help thinking how potentially great the film might’ve been if it was made around ten years earlier in the vein of the 2007 fake trailer.
- Priscilla was another nice looking snoozefest. Luhrmann's Elvis (2022) was way more entertaining.
- File Killers of the Flower Moon under the list of Scorsese's films where once is enough, like Silence (2017).
- Saltburn is essentially Letterboxd-core Brideshead Revisited x The Talented Mr. Ripley.
- Really enjoyed Mitsutake's erotic giallo Maniac Driver (2020), but Lion-Girl is atrocious. Posthumously added to my Worst Films of 2023 list.
- With Disciple of Death ticked off the list, I've finally watched all four films featuring pirate radio deejay turned actor turned sculptor Mike Raven AKA Bootleg Christopher Lee. A weak film, but immensely fun, regardless.
Other notable highlights this month were: Ashton's Tales That Witness Madness and Black Christmas reviews; Unpopped Cinema's Top 25 Best Discs of 2023; and The Martorialist's Best Movies and TV of 2023.
8 comments:
**Jay-Z voice** Spartan sat through The Exorcist: Believer and Killers Of The Flower Moon so we wouldn't have to.
I rewatched Carry On Up The Khyber last night. Peter Butterworth possibly has my fave line in the movie with "poor old Will, why do they always fire at him?"
Speaking of whom, was The Time Meddler one of the Who stories you watched?
The dialogue between Butterworth and Castlle after their cart ride cracks me up:
Brother Belcher: I've never ridden in a cart pulled by cows before.
Captain Keene: Bullocks, Mr Belcher!
Brother Belcher: No, I haven't, honestly.
Didn't get to see The Time Meddler sadly, will check it out during the January doldrums, though. Watched a bunch of Pertwee and T. Baker episodes, along with Eccleston's entire run. "Dalek" episode legit hit me in the feels.
That and Father's Day are the Eccelston episodes for real.
Butterworth might just be the best stooge in Carry On history.
Movies I watched:
13 Ghosts
Tales That Witness Madness
Die Hard (cinema)
No One Will Save You
Godzilla Minus One (cinema)
TV I watched:
Ghosts finale
Various Doctor Who old and new
Jury Duty (season 1)
The Bear (season 1 and 2)
Planet Earth III (last episodes)
Only Connect
Match Of The Day 1 and 2
Have you seen that video of Eccleston going around recently going off on RTD?
Only watched the first episode of the final season of Ghosts. Got sidetracked by all the films and Doctor Who episodes. Kind of funny seeing the actress who plays Kitty in Saltburn and acting posh again.
Eccelston caught Ian Paisley's holy ghost there.
Does Saltburn suck? Everything I've seen about it has been either overwhelmingly negative or overwhelmingly positive.
Don't hate Saltburn, but it isn't a good film either.
Barry Keoghan notching up another weirdo kid performance. Both he and Jacob Elordi do their best with Emerald Fennell's surface level character writing. All the posh folk appear to be based on Harry Enfield's Tim-Nice-But-Dim template.
I liked the first act set in Oxford, that was the most interesting and entertaining part of the film.
Gorgeous cinematography throughout.
The disturbing scenes felt like they were engineered as talking points rather than essential components to the film.
The final act is really dumb and obvious spoiler territory if I explained why.
Better than Promising Young Woman, but it's mediocre at best.
One I'll avoid then I think.
Like many of last year’s major releases.
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