We’ve just passed the halfway point of the year and I wanted to share my 2023 top 5 so far!
HM’s: Spider-Man: Across the Spider Verse; BARBIE; Mission: Impossible 7; Creed III
#5: BLACKBERRY, dir. Matthew Johnson
This isn’t a movie I thought would make it onto the list — on paper, it seemed like a typical rise and fall corporate story, nothing we haven’t seen before à la The Founder (2016), Tetris (2023), Air (2023), etc.
But I really loved Blackberry. So much so that I watched it twice in the same week. I’m still not too sure why – it’s not like it subverts the genre in any meaningful way, it’s not that it has anything new to say. Maybe it’s the effortless execution. Maybe it’s the meteoric story of Blackberry itself, one that actually intersects with my own life (I remember growing up playing brickbreaker on my dad’s Blackberry). Maybe it’s the performances (especially Glenn Howerton’s). Maybe it’s the timing, as I witness the rapid denigration of once-great tech companies all around me everyday.
Maybe it’s all of those, and it culminates in a tight, crisp movie that packs a punch.
#4: A THOUSAND AND ONE, dir. A.V. Rockwell
AV Rockwell’s directorial debut hit me in a way that I didn’t expect at all. A Thousand and One is a movie about one central premise: how do shitty circumstances affect how we love one another? Told over the course of two decades, we see Inez (played phenomenally by Teyana Taylor) struggle with love – for her husband, for her child, for herself. “Damaged people don’t know how to love each other” is the conclusion Inez comes to at one point in the film, a harsh and cynical outlook but one that you can’t really fault her for having.
But the ways in which that conclusion changes, even when things are at their bleakest for everyone involved, are what makes this worth watching. This won best dramatic feature at Sundance and it certainly deserved it, it’s a powerful work of art.
#3: HOW TO BLOW UP A PIPELINE, dir. Daniel Goldhaber
There’s something about climate-related film that’s usually toothless. Movies cost a lot of money to make, and the intertwinement of corporate interests with that production cost means that these movies rarely have anything meaningful to say. Maybe they’re satirical trash like Don’t Look Up, or they accept a forgone conclusion of an apocalyptic world. And if there’s a call to action, it feels like the film equivalent of “Reduce reuse recycle”. As a young person, I’ve never felt a film tap into the existential dread that actually comes with climate change.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline rips that wide open. This is a heist movie at its core – one where every second of screen time is ratcheting up the stakes, where every character is compelling and feels genuinely connected to the climate crisis, where there’s a message that genuinely makes the audience uncomfortable and doesn’t pander. And despite a tiny budget, it dwarfs the average blockbuster action thrillers in scale.
#2: OPPENHEIMER, dir. Christopher Nolan
A second watch in theaters last week cements this for me as one of the bests of the year by miles.
I know I’m adding to the millions of other voices talking about this, so I’ll be brief (and you can see my more detailed thoughts here). When you watch this movie you get the sense that you’re coming into contact with something far greater than yourself. A friend referred to it as a ‘tour-de-force’. It’s the scale that’s really breathtaking, the ways in which Nolan conveys the monumental nature of what happened at and after Los Alamos. There’s a profound sorrow that underpins it all — knowing what Oppenheimer’s work would lead to, how it would irrevocably change the world — that ripples forwards and backwards through the 3 hours just like the Trinity test itself does.
#1: PAST LIVES, dir. Celine Song
A million things make up a good movie. But a great movie just requires one: did it make you feel something? And if that’s the case, Past Lives must be phenomenal because it emotionally ran me right into the ground.
There’s nothing remarkable about this story. Two people wonder what could have been under different circumstances. Perhaps it’s because this question is so elemental, something maybe we all have wondered, that it makes the movie feel viscerally real. And that the question is never really resolved. Nor do you want it to resolve – you never really root for them to get together. It’s a ‘what-if’ that you know will always remain a hypothetical. The beauty of it disappears with whatever answer is at the end of the road.
Everything about Past Lives is stunning – its music, its performances, its setting (big year for New York movies). There’s no urgency, no ultimate goal we’re headed towards. It’s just a slice of two people’s lives, and how lucky are we to witness that? And maybe even see a little bit of ourselves reflected back on the screen?
GRID GAME
Answers from last newsletter:
Grid for this week:
WEEKEND STREAMING RECOMMENDATION
Of these 5 movies, A Thousand and One is the only one available on streaming (Peacock). But if you can get your hands on any of the others, by renting or in-theater, or whatever else, that’s what I’d recommend most strongly!
See you all again next week. Until then, please get in touch if you have any thoughts or suggestions you’d like to share. If you want to keep up with what I’m watching, follow me on Letterboxd @atharv_gupta.
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