Today I watched three movies in a row, which gave me this beautiful journey through the worlds and mind of Martin McDonagh, and the many faces and fantastic acting of Colin Farrell.
I didn’t look at the release chronology, so I started with Seven Psychopaths (2012) because I was looking for something light and I imagined it to be like that. It’s a little weirdo meta-movie and contrary to what most people might think from the cover, it is absolutely not sold by the ensemble cast. Of course I loved Walken and cheered loudly when Waits appeared, but from a stage charisma point of view I give this one to Sam Rockwell. I partly tried to keep track of how much of what’s told is the story happening, being written, and the overlapping meta layer of both, but in another part I just don’t think I cared that much, and I don’t think it matters a whole lot. It’s a ride, it’s a journey, and I don’t think it’s meant for artistic deep analysis.
Now, In Bruges (2008) is a level deeper in seriousness and perhaps meaning, but it’s also not something that someone can get lost in over analysis. It’s a very simple plot in a simple setting, and it’s just this “point in time” thing where some odd series of events happen and we’re there to witness, and then the world goes on. Since there are fewer characters to focus on and we see more of their points of views it’s so easy to fall in love with them, even though practically everyone having a talking part is an anti-hero to begin with, so I guess I shouldn’t. I think what I loved most in this one is that the movie didn’t actually try to sell me on any of the characters or paint them in a specific way, it just portrayed them for who they are. I wasn’t fed a point of view, just got an amazing display of an odd collection of folks.
And then, The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) is a whole different kind of film with lots of depth and layers and symbolism. Given the context of McDonagh’s above two movies and the fact that Three Billboards came before Banshees, I was not sure what to expect: the dark comedy angle or rather serious cinema. This one was both, and it went from one to the other with quite fast of a switchover. It started quirky, and I wouldn’t say light at all, but it made me laugh, even if in grim ways. And then it ended up as one of the most depressing movies I’ve seen this year. My heart sank deeper and deeper, and I felt genuinely sorry for every single person portrayed. And when I felt bad and uncertain, it just left me there hanging and the movie ended. It was brilliant cinema though, no question about that.
It was a fantastic journey to see McDonagh’s writing and directing go through all these phases through the years. If I wanted to put a narrative to it, I’d guess In Bruges was his breakthrough, then with Psychopaths he got lured into Hollywood, he turned toward a more serious tone with Billboards, and then he went back to his Irish roots and mixed all his dark humor and achieved serious voice to craft Banshees.
It was also a joy to watch Farrell through three movies in a row playing three so distinctively different characters. I had this “recognize a great actor when I see one” feeling all along. Brendan Gleeson was an amazing partner on his side for two-thirds of this ride.
It seems like Zach Braff has a ten year cycle of taking the time to do one of his own movies, when he’s both writing and directing. Garden State, his first one from 2004, is somewhere in my Top 100 of all time; it speaks so much to my heart, with music from my childhood, and the “going back to my little city” vibe that I do myself every once in a while.
Wish I Was Here was on my backlog for a while, and I finally watched it, although it’s nothing even remotely close to his first flick. Honestly, it’s kind of a mess, especially being all over the place from a directing perspective, so not a great credit for Braff. The only thing that saves the movie is the typical Zach Braff heart-and-soul that I can feel all over it, and that makes it likable at least. But likable, as an ugly little dog that I wish the best for.
And after this one did I see that there’s a new movie he did just last year, which totally went past me. Maybe because he was not playing in it, so his face didn’t jump at me from a poster. Anyways, A Good Person is a strong one. It’s personal, intimate, soul-crushing but also heart-warming, with absolutely amazing acting all over. After the series of “idiotic old man comedies” done by Morgan Freeman, this one brings him justice; it’s a fantastic role played well. And Florence Pugh is just close to being my favorite actress in the past ~five years, so she’s brilliant like what I’d expect.
A Good Person also fits into a line of movies I’ve watched this year, all on the topic of someone battling with addiction and trying to overcome some past tragedy. Films like The Way Back and Half Nelson were beautiful gems I discovered with this theme.
This was a huge surprise. I had it on my watchlist for a long time as a catch-up thing, like something I knew I should not miss, but had no actual expectations. I assumed it to be on the level of the Robocop remake (not great).
Now that I finally watched it, I’m blown away. Great directing, interesting visual style, actually good actors doing actually good acting, good music, absolutely no “but why did they do that” moments, and an absolutely top-notch cyberpunk depiction.
It felt like a DLC for the Cyberpunk 2077 game when you’re playing a cop and see the megacity and the run-down future from their point of view. I can actually see how this movie made it to the inspiration list of the game’s artists. (Okay, now I googled this, and yeah, it’s obviously there.)
Such a great premise, it’s hilarious and fun. The lead-up about how the tapes get wiped is so unnecessarily over the top, but already sets the tone for what level of ridiculous one should expect. It’s also funny and full of heart. This is a new entry on my favorites list.
It was interesting how old school, physical-looking, slow-moving kaiju met top-notch, realistic, modern visual effects. Also, great angle to look at the post-war Japan’s life as drama weaved into a monster movie.
I loved to see Aubrey Plaza in a drama role, and both her and Theo Rossi killed it in terms of performance. The movie wasn’t an extremely deep ride but rather a “moment in life” thing, but it’s a really good one for what it is.
There are pros and cons, but it’s easily the best Alien movie in a decade. In my ranking Alien and Aliens are on the high pedestal of 10/10, and then Alien 3 and Resurrection are both 6/10 movies. Romulus fits somewhere on the benchmark of the latter two, perhaps a half mark upwards, and definitely way ahead of any of the prequels or Predator crossovers.
What’s going for it:
I really appreciated ground time, showcasing what a mining colony looks like, streets, a slice of society, struggles outside of the scope of a single mission.
We got glimpse of a new part of alien life: we’ve never before seen them between bursting out as an alien baby and reappearing as a big black monster, and now we saw that there’s an in-between cocoon phase.
The whole movie was beautifully shot: colors, atmosphere, consistency of the retro-futuristic setting. As for props, the scenes were built amazingly well, and the aliens looked bad-ass.
Acting was fairly good, and the writing had no painful “why would you do that?!” moments.
What felt hmm:
The whole cast felt very young, had a bit of a Children of the Corn vibe to it. Although I could think that miners die young, working class has children early, so this is just what this society’s reality looks like.
Sometimes I felt that the retro-futuristic technology to be kinda gimmicky. Like I’d see today’s youngsters playing with old props, well, which is the case. Maybe it’s just a hiccup of my suspension of disbelief.
The alien-human hybrid was creepy but rather in an odd-weirdo than a frightening way. I liked the Newborn version better in Resurrection.
CGI recreation of Ian Holm looked underproduced.
There were a lot of plot vehicles that felt exactly like plot vehicles and not embedded well enough so that I don’t see behind the scenes. For example, “you have 36 hours to pull it off”, so there’s a time pressure; “now you have rather 20 minutes”, so the time pressure is elevated; “there’s no air in there”, so you have some limiting factor to overcome; “the gravity switches on and off every X minutes”, so we can use this later as a physical stunt; etc. I know elements like this are part of a story as it is, but still, I can hear the conversation in the brainstorming session how these ideas came about and what plot needs they answered. It’s just too on the nose, like an exercise at a creative writing class.
I’ve been planning to watch this for a long-long time, finally did, and it was exactly everything I expected and wanted it to be. Beautiful and atmospheric sci-fi chamber drama with a very specific and narrow focus, which it executed and delivered brilliantly. Acting, music, direction, cinematography were all spot-on.
I read the book last year and I know exactly how much of that is in here and what the movie misses, and I have no problem with that. I don’t think this movie misses the science part of the fiction for the sake of delivering a space love drama. I think all the science aspect is in there but portrayed differently, focusing on the protagonist’s journey. The same is in the book too, but with a different focus, so this part is not spelled out that much. I loved both takes on the story: the book is great and fascinating, and the movie is captivating and beautiful.
I have another case of Moon on my hands when I listen to the soundtrack album a million times before seeing the movie. This is the best original score by Reznor and Ross since The Social Network, by far. The mixed version is also a blast.
What I realized thinking back and looking at Last.fm stats is that I relisten albums extremely rarely in the past few years. I keep pouring new music to my “listening todo list”, and it’s like a never ending chore trying to chew threw it. So if I came across something great, I was happy that I did, but still I rushed onwards to the next one. I picked the most listened albums from the past year below that I had some standout memories of, but I’m sure there were at least a hundred that I loved but don’t even remember.
I want to change this next year, and consciously keep some great albums on repeat for longer. Perhaps take more walks or bike rides with just music playing, instead of this year’s podcast and audiobook craze that overtook my on the go listens. I was also toying with the idea of getting a MiniDisc player so that I can have some great albums as physical discs and stick to them like I did in the old days. Btw, I absolutely love the idea of an MD player, I’ve always regarded that as the single best disc format and never had the device itself. Just needs a bluetooth adapter for convenience, but otherwise it would be perfect.
Back to albums, the absolutely clear winner of the year is Strength by Unto Others. This one album got the replay treatment heavily. It spoke to me this year like nothing else.
My top artists in 2023
I didn’t use the Last.fm export for the albums because I had a cyberpunk atmosphere music playlist that I played on repeat a lot and trashed my stats for the year. The playlist was partly playing during some Cyberpunk Red RPG sessions, but I also kept it running a lot on travels, especially when flying (that’s one I always have synced offline). I don’t think it’s representative of album plays, but for artists it makes sense—these were artists I loved to hear all year long.
My top live music in 2023
It wasn’t an extremely packed year for live music, but the standout moments were strong.
When seeing Weval in Paradiso we climbed up to the second level balcony, which was pretty much completely empty at the beginning of the concert. We found a small bench and moved it right to the middle of the stage two stories high, sat down, and this is how we enjoyed the most amazing electronic music live act and visual show from the recent years. It was like some absolute royal treatment, we were literally laughing at how lucky we were. The music was a rollercoaster of genres and moods, building from idm through uptempo electro to breakcore. And the visuals were building with the show, it started from some extremely simple lights, and ended up with a full stage wide, intense animation. It was perfection.
This was the year when I first met Dr Rubinstein, during ADE, at the He.She.They party in Shelter, and it was love at first contact. That level of energy, impeccable taste in selection, perfection in dj technique, and complete control over the audience. It was a benchmark of a dj set on a level that I haven’t heard in years. Funny thing, I originally went there as a fanboy for Ellen Allien, and Rubinstein stole my heart.
My top movies in 2023
I set out for this year with the determination that I want to watch more movies, and I did. I watched 97 movies, which comes down to about one movie every four days on average. All that while watching a couple of series, too, like binging through the entire catalogue of Bosch, and keeping up with some of the currently running shows. So yeah, this was an intense year for film. Now, as for what all those movies were… I wanted to take it easy, took on lots of lighthearted comedies, and went all in for adventure flicks. I guess it was all about compensating and keeping afloat while other parts of life were shit on occasion. Anyways, what it all comes down to is having seen lots of movies, checking off a bunch of Watchlist items, and getting positive energy, so I’m fine with what I had, even if my yearly average rating is not setting records.
Looking at the top list, it was mostly about random surprises. Again it got proven that my hunches work really well: seeing just a few shots from most of these movies I already knew I would love them, and I wasn’t disappointed. The colorful creativity of Three Thousand Years of Longing, the my kind of sci-fi atmosphere of Ad Astra, the nostalgia-infused hilarious entertainment of the Beastie Boys Story, the slowly building space horror of Life, the weirdo humor of They Cloned Tyrone, the jumpscareless gripping thrill of Talk To Me, the stunning art style of Entergalactic, the silent melancholy of The Midnight Sky were the most standing out. Interesting that none of these were well-advertised blockbusters, but they are far from being some kind of art house cinema, so what are these?
The Spidey animation is obviously the big screen one here, so that’s the line of demarcation, after which the complete randomness of my Watchlist kicks in.
My top series in 2023
Bosch had parked on my Watchlist for a few years now, and finally I took a stab at it, and one and a half months later I found myself done with seven seasons plus the Legacy series. I loved the flow of it and the stories, but in terms of art it couldn’t beat those other two.
Mrs Davis is like a spiritual successor to Dirk Gently—absolutely unhinged, every turn unexpected. I would love to say more, but I really can’t. It’s not an experience you describe. It’s something you show, if you want someone else to experience it.
Arcane killed my soul so that I literally had to build back. I actually had to take a pause of like two months at some point because it was just too much. It is an absolutely shockingly strong story that I am sure I have never seen in animation ever in my life (not to mention the surreal good art style), so I just had to finish it, but it literally took a toll. I was willing to pay, still. It’s like speeding to a chasm and you just cannot not be there for the ride if you know it exists.
My top audio dramas in 2023
I started taking walks during the day this year, to stand up from my desk more instead of working through eight hours straight just sitting still. This was when I realized audio dramas exist. These three were actually the first ones I listened to at full length, and I was shocked that this format exists on this level of quality. I also tried some others, but those didn’t stick.
Batman Unburied came out as the top one because it makes use of the format like no other. It is a piece of content specifically crafted for this medium, and since this was a new medium for me, it was extremely exciting to hear how it plays the notes of this format.
The Long Night on the other hand won me out with the atmosphere. It was like a new season of True Detective but audio.
My top game in 2023
Cyberpunk 2007 took me like three tries to get into it, and then suddenly 117 hours passed and I had a hard time getting out of it. I did all quests, side quests, gigs, every content and all endings of the original game. Great story, music, visuals, atmosphere, characters. Two things I loved most: the power fantasy and the open world.
A friend of mine said how much of a power fantasy this game is, and I realized how true that is. Sniping with a rifle, then running into action with parkour moves, dashing in air, splitting heads with a blade, quickhacking people and systems, and hearing your own cyberpsycho laugh, while industrial techno is pumping loud. It’s a mad cyberpunk fantasy dream.
And the world. What I loved most about the side quests and gigs was that they showed such corners of this city and what’s beyond it, that I would probably have never seen otherwise. I could discover depths, heights, entire sprawling micro-universes of their own, within, above, under, and outside the metropolis. The level of detail and the options to discover are insane.
