Overstreet's Favorite Films of 2023 — Part Two: Runners-Up (Top-Ten Worthy)
A musical comedy. Rom-coms. Big movies likely to win many Oscars. A movie that takes place almost entirely in a car. And a Judy Blume adaptation. And these aren't even my Top Ten!
I started listing my favorite films of the year when I was a teenager because I was fascinated by the lists of professional critics and I wanted to play along.
I could not have imagined that this would become a routine lasting for decades, and that I would end up sharing such lists in magazines, in journals, in live events (like The Kindlings Muse, a dinner-and-discussion event I used to participate in each year), and on podcasts for a variety of audiences.
This year, I’ve been invited once again to count down my 2023 Top Ten on a podcast. Check back — I’ll share the details soon.
If you missed Part One of this huge list, check it out. There were so many films worth seeing on big screens this year that my three-part list can barely contain them! That first list stars Ayo Edibiri, Adam Driver, Rachel Sennott, Chris Pine, Hayley Atwell, Paul Giamatti, Pom Klementieff, Hugh Grant, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Cailee Spaeny, John Boyega, Jamie Foxx, and Teyonah Parris… just to name a few.
This second list is even stronger.
I’m not ranking all of these films in order — only the top ten. Everything else qualifies as “too close to call,” so I’m splitting them into two groups: Part One was a batch of “Honorable Mentions.” Today’s post contains Part Two’s “Runners-Up.” This second group is full of movies that, if you catch me on the right day, I might decide belong in the Top Ten. It just seems unfair that I can’t find room for all of these on the short list. Each one has given me so much to enjoy and contemplate. Each one gave me the sense that a second viewing will be even more rewarding than the first.
If you have thoughts about any of them, or if you want to link to your own reviews, post them in the Comments! I want to learn more.
Disclaimer: A few of these films — Return to Seoul, for example — played in festivals and in NY/LA awards-qualifying runs in 2022. But I’m counting them as 2023 releases because that’s when they came off of the festival circuit and gained a wide release — either in theaters or streaming — so that I, in the cinema-savvy city of Seattle, could access them without getting them on a plane. I think it’s safe to say that the vast majority of American moviegoers couldn’t have seen these films before 2023, and thus they became a part of the common cinephile conversation in 2023. That’s how I rationalize my standards on a subject that is always maddeningly subjective.
Earth Mama
Writer and director: Savanah Leaf
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “A pregnant single mother, with two children in foster care, embraces her Bay Area community as she fights to reclaim her family.”
From my Letterboxd notes:
An unmarried woman is pregnant. Hard times all around. She does not feel worthy to bring this new life into the world, and she does not have the resources or support she would need to raise the child safely. Some assail her with judgment; others give her moments of angelic mercy. Hope is hard to come by.(In that sense, I think I found a Christmas movie.)
Quiet. Observant. Modest. Lovely. Earth Mama would make a heavy double feature with One Thousand and One. But this one doesn’t feel compelled to stun us with a “twist.” It's just a movingly intimate portrait that tunes our attention not only to the needs of our neighbors but also their inherent beauty.More notes:
The naturalism of this film keeps fooling me into thinking I’m watching one of the most intimate documentaries. And there’s no doubt that some of the people we see onscreen, testifying about addiction and poverty and longing, are speaking from experience. But then we’ll realize that a scene has been playing out as a long take, the camera somehow absorbing magic-hour light and the buzz of a community without giving any evidence that they’re aware of its presence.
If this is due to the directorial talents of Savanah Leaf—and I have to assume that it is—can we please give her more resources to make many more movies? I’m eager to see what she does next.
Like my favorite documentary of the year, Four Daughters, this film is a captivating hybrid, blending staged drama and real-world tragedy in ways that make suspension of disbelief almost entirely unnecessary.What They Said:
Michael Asmus: “… [W]e are always connected to our Mom, even if we forget her. As children of dust, we are formed from her, even if we might call others ‘mom.’ Savanah Leaf presents an idea that mothers are forever connected to their children, even if estranged. It taps into one of those universal truths we want to believe in, that there is an inherent bond between mother and child, that all they do flows from their love.”
Michael Clawson: “Every frame is rewarding, thanks to Leaf’s great eye for color, composition, and the lines of bodies and faces. Just when the story might have slipped into melodramatics or miserabilism, Leaf has the restraint to stick to her low-key approach, and it pays off.”
Adam Graff: “It is extremely difficult when a racist system has, for generations, stripped many Black women of their motherly positions, creating more generations of women who are unsupported when becoming mothers themselves. It's all just another one of the many ways that the United States makes it illegal to be poor and perpetuates a cycle of poverty, especially for minorities.”
A Thousand and One
Writer and director: A.V. Rockwell
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “Struggling but unapologetically living on her own terms, Inez is moving from shelter to shelter in mid-1990s New York City. With her 6-year-old son Terry in foster care and unable to leave him again, she kidnaps him so they can build their life together. As the years go by, their family grows and Terry becomes a smart yet quiet teenager, but the secret that has defined their lives threatens to destroy the home they have so improbably built.”
I wrote about this film in an earlier post here.
What They Said:
Michael Asmus: “When a graphic of ‘2001’ is superimposed over a New York setting, a little jolt of dread hit me that this was going to turn into a 9/11 movie. Thankfully, and smartly, the movie skips that day and instead lets the effect of it weave into the story. Soundbites of Giuliani and Bloomberg underscore the Bush-era politics that took hold, politics build on othering non-WASPy and non-American people. It's about a New York being rebuilt in the aftermath, but a rebuilding that threatens their home street by falling into the hands of white gentrifiers.”
Elijah Drake: “The system bleeds into the struggling life of Inez’s family. No one in power is life-giving. The police and the landlords are forces of violence. New York City exists in constant flux, and even when some people try to plant their feet they soon realize the ever-changing river has washed way the world they once knew. Against all broken and fractured odds Terri experiences the love of a father and the love of a mother.”
Berry: “Some call the film messy and undeveloped at times. What better way to put this film together and have it strike the way it does than to make it appear cluttered? It’s putting us into the world as it is, as we know it, and with someone who could easily be our closest neighbor.”
The Unknown Country
Writer and director: Morrisa Maltz
Story: Lily Gladstone, Morrisa Maltz, Lainey Bearkiller Shangreaux, Vanara Taing
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “A grieving woman embarks on an unexpected road trip from the Midwest toward the Texas-Mexico border as she grapples with the pain of her recent loss and seeks to understand her place in the world.”
Fallen Leaves
Writer and director: Aki Kaurismäki
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “The film tells the story of Ansa, a supermarket shelf-stocker on a zero-hour contract, later a recyclable plastic sorter, and Holappa, a sandblaster, an alcoholic, later an ex-alcoholic, whose paths have accidentally crossed and who, despite adversity and misunderstandings, try to build some kind of relationship on the harsher side of the welfare state.”
I haven’t reviewed this one yet. But here are my Letterboxd notes:
Coming 22 years later — good heavens, it's been that long? — it's remarkable how closely Fallen Leaves hews closely to the narrative arc of The Man Without a Past, right down to the dog and the head bandages.
But I don't mind. As my favorite character in the film quips, "Honest talk is so seldom heard, it makes me happy."
One of the things that makes this distinctly interesting is Kaurismäki's insistence on etching into big-screen stone some accounts of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, something he subtly answers later by giving his wounded and almost-down-for-the-count dreamers a scene in blue and yellow. And yet, it seems no time at all has passed in this director's cinematic universe. The textures are the same. The faces are the same. And the songs being sung at the bar seem the same, even if the jukeboxes are digital now.
The cinematic love affair between Aki Kaurismäki and Jim Jarmusch remains undimmed after more than two decades. The inclusion of a clip from one of Jarmusch's films, followed soon after with a scene that is a direct homage to Paterson? Get a room, you two. Preferably one full of vintage Italian and French movie posters, equipped with an old radio, and painted in vivid colors in spite of its scarred, dilapidated state.What They Said:
Josh Larsen on Letterboxd: “From the cinematography by Timo Salminen—which favors greens and blues that are on just the right side of sickly—to the sensitive, stalwart performances by Alma Poysti and Jussi Vatanen, the movie never gives in to despair (despite the constant and increasingly grim radio reports in the background detailing Russia’s war on Ukraine).”
Scott D’Agostino on Letterboxd: “Several decades into his career, Aki Kaurismäki is still making absolute masterpieces. One of the best movies in recent memory, it not getting any Oscar nominations is one of the true tragedies of this year's nominations.”
Angelica Jade Bastién on Letterboxd: “So far and away from the algorithmically defined, poreless beauty and hollow lust masking as true romanticism that define Hollywood approaches to romantic longing subject matter. I was deeply moved by this. We need more filmmakers interested in people on the ground, the working class and the yearning.”
Kinotherapy on Letterboxd: “It was this film, however, that got me started thinking, why we love Kaurismaki so much? There’s many contradictions in his bare films despite how we may feel. They’re detached, yet sincere. His characters hardly ever emote, yet we fall in love and root for them. His stories are mundane, but you’d be scoffed at if you referred to his film as ‘not complex enough’. As cinema seems to progress with experimentation or lugubrious effects, Kaurismaki turns inward with projects that aren’t concerned with showing off.”
Rye Lane
Director: Raine Allen-Miller
Writers: Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “Two twenty-somethings, both reeling from bad break-ups, connect over the course of an eventful day in South London – helping each other deal with their nightmare exes, and potentially restoring their faith in romance.”
The Quiet Girl
Writer and director: Colm Bairéad
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “A quiet, neglected girl is sent away from her dysfunctional family to live with relatives for the summer. She blossoms in their care, but in this house where there are meant to be no secrets, she discovers one.”
Monster
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Writer: Yuji Sakamoto
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “When her young son Minato starts to behave strangely, his mother feels that there is something wrong. Discovering that a teacher is responsible, she storms into the school demanding to know what’s going on. But as the story unfolds through the eyes of mother, teacher and child, the truth gradually emerges.”
I posted my first impressions of this in an earlier post here.
The Plains
Writer and director: David Easteal
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “At 17:00 every day, Andrew, a middle-aged man, drives home from work through Melbourne’s outer suburbs in peak-hour traffic. Occasionally, he offers a lift home to a younger colleague, David. Over a year, their tentative small talk gives way to a warm friendship and open conversation within the confines of the vehicle, incrementally revealing their lives.”
"I like to drive. But I don’t like traffic." I feel this.
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Doesn't just hit close to home right now. It's a direct hit. The fact that this film turns out to focus on a middle-aged man's struggle to navigate the challenges of having a parent in decline from dementia makes this a film I would have avoided if I'd known, as those challenges are weighing on me every day. But the fact that this film allows Silence to become a Presence, and to be the most eloquent "speaker" on the subject, somehow made the whole experience useful and helpful — an opportunity to ride along with and grieve with a fellow sufferer.
It doesn't hurt that the vehicle in which we spend the most of the movie is a quiet one, so that hearing the road is like hearing the surf outside the window of a private beach cabin.- - -
This is going to be one of those "Nothing happens" movies that makes me nod and say, "Yes, isn't it marvelous?"
The gift of time, of patient observation, of revealing a complicated human being in details and nuances that can only become real to us by spending "quality time" with them.
This is "slow cinema" in which the parameters that have been set are bold and constraining, and sure to alienate many (if not most) moviegoers, but they create a sort of "pressure cooker" in which rare and wonderful things become possible.
Maybe the best thing I can say about it is that I felt like a healthier human being for having seen it.
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When we move and pay attention at the pace that humans are designed to move and pay attention, what might have seemed tedious starts to become interesting, even enthralling. And we start to see human-sized problems that human beings can do something about, rather than constantly being stimulated by the shock-and-awe of bone-jarring crises that require superhuman responses and leave us entertained but also exhausted and no stronger or wiser than we were when we started.What They Said:
Luke Buckmaster, The Guardian:
“In his hugely influential book Expanded Cinema, Gene Youngblood observed that commercial entertainment 'exploits the alienation and boredom of the public, by perpetuating a system of conditioned response to formulas.' The Marvel Cinematic Universe is the most obvious contemporary example of this: a profit-motivated form of cultural decay, viewing audiences as objects to manipulate.“Great outside-the-square films like The Plains, rare though they may be, exist on a different frequency, reminding us there is no 'right' or 'true' motion picture experience — only different scales of convention and experimentation."
Chloe Lizotte, Cinema Scope:
“The Plains’ visual and narrative defiance in refusing to give the viewer a complete picture of Andrew helps it to subvert the clichés of setting a film in a car, a confined space that quickly sparks a confessional dynamic between strangers. Easteal has mentioned the influence of Abbas Kiarostami, and the way that a film like Taste of Cherry (1997) bypasses conventional backstory while still plumbing intimate, life-or-death depths might throw some of The Plains’ strategies into relief. Andrew and David’s exchanges may hint at the substance of their lives outside the car, but they also capture the dependable beauty of a routine, which is easy to take for granted until it disappears.”
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt
Writer and director: Raven Jackson
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “Tender caresses and enveloping embraces are portals into the life of Mack, a Black woman in Mississippi. Winding through the anticipation, love, and heartbreak she experiences from childhood to adulthood, the expressionist journey is an ode to connection — with loved ones and with place.”
I haven’t reviewed this film yet. But here are my Letterboxd notes:
The human face has always been the main event, the primary subject of cinema.
I wonder if Raven Jackson might want to show us that the camera can tell stories in other ways, and show us other aspects of the human experience, by giving just as much attention to hands, feet, bellies, shoulders. As I watched All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, I found myself more conscious of textures, colors, aromas — it was easily the most immersive sensory experience of my year at the movies. Further, she asks us to listen more closely than usual, and listen to much, much more than dialogue. The silences, the rains, the birds and the insects — I feel as if I have been to this Mississippi neighborhood, soaked in these monsoons, baked in this sunshine.
This is an eloquent approach for a film about grief. I'm also enchanted by Jackson's non-linear storytelling, which invites us to observe these long, shared silences and learn from subtle details. I really love how an early scene between a grown man and woman quietly teases us with details about their history, and then as we visit moments from previous chapters of their lives we discover that our first guesses have been way off. The story that slowly comes into focus is unexpected, with a question at the center that I don't think is ever explicitly answered (which suggests that a second viewing might be very revealing).Such a beautiful film. Such reverent attention to the beauty of bodies. Breathtaking and tactile intimacy in wordless exchanges unlike anything I've seen since McQueen's Lovers Rock.
This is a movie that's going to drive a lot of moviegoers mad with its extraordinary patience. They're going to think that there's nothing to see here. And it does indeed ask as much of us with its stillnesses as anything I've seen since Kiarostami's 21 Frames. But, as Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio reminded us in the trailer for the restoration of The Abyss that immediately preceded this screening, we "have to look with better eyes than that."
I'm looking forward to seeing what Jackson does next.
Killers of the Flower Moon
Before we get to the details, I’ve gotta say — these posters with the close-ups of DiCaprio strike me as a gross misrepresentation of the film. Images that focuses on the furrows in his brow and the scowl on De Niro’s face are designed simply to attract sheep who follow movie stars. They’re ugly, artless posters. And they only exacerbate the things that bother me about the film and the rest of its marketing. I much prefer the poster I’ve added below from artist Neetesh Kumar, for reasons that should be obvious: Lily Gladstone’s character and performance are the heart of the film. And there is a subtlety and a humility in her that is the opposite of the Oscar-focused extremes of every choice DiCaprio makes in his performance.
Do I think it’s a great film? In some ways, yes — and that’s why it’s on this list. It’s an important contribution to one of the most important conversations that Americans can have: a confession of our genocidal crimes against this continent’s indigenous peoples.
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writers: Scorsese and Eric Roth
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one—until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.”
Oppenheimer
Writer and director: Christopher Nolan
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “The story of J. Robert Oppenheimer’s role in the development of the atomic bomb during World War II.” (Gee… thanks, Letterboxd.)
My two-part reflection on Oppenheimer and its relationship with Raiders of the Lost Ark was published here earlier this year.
Return to Seoul
Writer and director: Davy Chou
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “After an impulsive travel decision to visit friends, Freddie, 25, returns to South Korea for the first time, where she was born before being adopted and raised in France. Freddie suddenly finds herself embarking on an unexpected journey in a country she knows so little about, taking her life in new and unexpected directions. Based on the true story of Laure Badufle.”
Past Lives
Writer and director: Celine Song
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “Nora and Hae Sung, two childhood friends, are reunited in New York for one fateful week as they confront notions of destiny, love, and the choices that make a life.”
I haven’t reviewed this film yet, but here are my Letterboxd notes:
A movie just grown-up enough to know that there's a difference between following your heart and aspiring to wisdom. And thank God for that. (Those who are moved by this movie's conclusion are going to be torn to pieces if they reach the last act of Malick's The New World.)
A more interesting movie would have taken an interest in what the heck Nora and Arthur are writing. I mean, come on — you're going to make Nora's dedication to rehearsals this important, but you're not going to give us a glimpse of that work? I feel a sudden need to watch Frances Ha and Drive My Car again. And, for crying out loud, you're going to tease us with that book cover for Arthur (people looked at me when I laughed out loud) and give us absolutely nothing?
Here's to you, Arthur! Yeah, I see you sitting there at the end of the bar. I have, to some extent, experienced something of all three of these torturous human experiences: the sullen guy left behind who has to see his dreamgirl marrying someone else; the spouse sharing awkward glances with someone who was the primary focus for their earlier self; and the other spouse well aware that there was and still is chemistry between their partner and the person across the table. And, well, dude... I think you've got the most complex and discomforting challenge of all — even though the movie is (unfortunately) too narrowly focused on the Pathos of Nora and Hae Sung. For you, Arthur, I'm giving this movie an extra half star.
Can you imagine what it would have been like if Arthur had gifted Hae Sung a copy of his book in the closing minutes? I would have absolutely lost it.
Here's also to the 70-something husband who, walking very slowly in front of me out of the theater, turns to his wife after a long and ponderous silence and says, "Well, at least she got a green card." It's a shame you couldn't taste or even smell what Celine Song was cooking. Still, it was kind of you to sit quietly all the way through the credits while your wife worked through her feelings. Now you can go home, crack open a Bud Light, and watch the game.
Falcon Lake
Director: Charlotte Le Bon
Writers: Le Bon and François Choquet, adapting the graphic novel Une sœur by Bastien Vivès
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “A shy teenager on a summer vacation experiences the joy and pain of young adulthood when he forges an unlikely bond with an older girl.”
I haven’t reviewed this yet, but here are my Letterboxd notes:
There's a scene in Falcon Lake in which 13-year-old Bastien and 16-year-old Chloe, forming a friendship of necessity during their families' shared cabin-in-the-woods vacation, dare each other to reveal their worst fears. And the differences between those revelations — his is a sophomoric case of "locker-room" humor, hers is an existential crisis — remind us that the gap between a boy Bastien's age and a girl Chloe's age is, in fact, enormous. This is nothing like the pre-adolescent "romance" of Sam and Suzy in Moonrise Kingdom. When it comes to sexual knowledge and maturity, Chloe has already experienced more than Bastien has enough information to imagine. That's what makes their budding friendship so unlikely, so fraught... and probably doomed.
And watching them, I realized one of my own worst fears: What a nightmare it would be to be my 13-year-old self again, as awkward around girls as Bastien is (which I was), and yet longing like Bastien for a luminous girl to return his adoration and affection (which I did).
This film gets a particular kind of boy's experience so right that I found it almost unbearable to watch. I hated being around the guys that girls my age were attracted to — and not just because they intimidated me (sheltered and naive as I was) with their testosterone-fueled brashness and bullying confidence (although that was a big part of it). But even more than that, I'd witnessed the way those boys would speak with such cruelty and predatory arrogance about those same girls who adored them when they weren't around. I hadn't heard the word misogyny yet, but I had seen it in action.
The multiple scenes of Bastien beginning a cautious conversation with a girl only to be squashed by the arrival of a brutish older boy — those were rough. Even worse are the scenes of him trying to feel comfortable at parties, awkwardly saying really stupid things to try to fit in, slowly becoming distraught by the sexual dynamics all around him, and then despairing and walking away alone — I have lived those scenes. And it wasn't fun to rediscover those long-repressed memories. I was that kid, wanting so desperately to be accepted in those circles, and at the same time feeling repulsed by the guys' attitudes, their arrogance, their predation. I would feel sick to my stomach watching certain girls I admired drawn toward guys I knew were trouble. And I would walk away, unobserved, and end up back home, alone, where I would sit at my typewriter and write my way into worlds that I wanted to live in. As a reader (and thus an early romantic), my growing idealization of Capital-L Love clashed with the world I found myself living in. It all seemed so impossible.
I have a vivid memory of a school event where I found myself unexpectedly alone for a few moments with the father of a girl I desperately "loved." He was a man who many sought out for counsel. And he somehow saw me in one of those moments of turmoil — and he really, really saw me. He nodded and, out of the clear blue, he said, "Fourteen is a really, really hard age. All you can do is survive. You'll get through this. Trust me. You'll get through it."
I did.
And the hold this movie has on me — as powerful as any horror movie — all the way through is how it makes me yearn to see Bastien get through this: a season of such wonder, terror, awkwardness, shame, and longing.
The movie's finale takes a turn I didn't see coming, even though I probably should have. I was so captivated by Bastien's emotional and psychological turmoil that it felt jarring to realize that the storyteller was going to deliver what some might call a "surprise twist." I didn't need that at all. Rather, I would have been happier if the film had faded to black during a prolonged, tense shot of a figure in the lake at twilight. That moment captures such a resonant emotional truth of what life can be like for any adolescent during their moments of deepest uncertainty. That's the moment I'll remember most, while others argue about "what the last shots really mean."
Know somebody who might enjoy discovering Overstreet’s film recommendations?
Theater Camp
Directors: Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman
Writers: Gordon, Lieberman, Noah Galvin, Ben Platt
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “After the indomitable and beloved founder of a scrappy theater camp in upstate New York falls into a coma, the eccentric staff must band together with her clueless “crypto-bro” son to keep the thespian paradise afloat.”
I haven’t reviewed this yet, but here are my Letterboxd notes:
Saw this in a very small theater tonight in which most of the crowd knew each other and were very clearly former theater-camp kids. And I'm so glad. There was so much joy in the room.
If I'd had some kind of Scale of 1–10 Laugh Meter running over the course of the film, the results would have been something like: 7 - 6 - 5 - 5 - 5 - 5 - 6 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 9 - 10! - 10! - 10!
This is a comedy that makes up for its so-so choices along the way, and its cringe-worthy reliance on the old “They're going to close the theater!”* crisis template, by building to a finale so unexpectedly strong that I want to see it again with any theater-loving friends who haven't seen it yet. In the course of about 15 minutes, I went from thinking “Well, it's been a pleasant 90 minutes of air conditioning” to "I'm going to tell everyone they'd better hurry up and see this with an audience before it leaves the big screen." Seriously, I haven't experienced a sequence that produced such sustained waves of full-audience laughter since, well... nothing's coming to mind. Maybe you can think of something?
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*Somebody should make a Letterboxd list of "They're going to shut down the theater!" crisis films. The most recent example that actually worked for me was The Muppets back in 2011.
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Second viewing notes:
A big test for any comedy: Is it more satisfying the second time?
This one is. The first time, the joy came from not knowing what was coming, and then being blown away by just how the last act surpassed all expectations to become one of the most surprisingly funny finales since the glory days of Christopher Guest.
The second time, when you know what's coming? Somehow, it just makes the climactic revelations that much sweeter.
I was confident — I bought the film for this second viewing, and now I can't wait to explore all of the deleted scenes, outtakes, and extended scenes.
Every year, I hope for a comedy that I can recommend freely to just about everybody, and one that I can play with confidence for parties when people want to stay late. For 2023, this is that movie.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Writer and director: Kelly Fremon Craig, adapting the novel by Judy Blume
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “When her family moves from the city to the suburbs, 11-year-old Margaret navigates new friends, feelings, and the beginning of adolescence.”
I love the independent, art house theme throughout and then drop OppenKillerFlowers right in the middle. Consciously or subconsciously, it made me chuckle. I just can't believe there are so many movies here that I've never heard of as I thought I paid close attention. Thanks for the reliable guidance, as always. (Btw, your synopsis of Unknown Country is mistakenly the synopsis of One Thousand and One, fyi. I've got your back!👍🏼)
So Jeffrey, this is my annual "expose my ignorance of film" post. I almost exclusively watch movies to disengage, not to be taught lessons (though sometimes I am pleasantly taught lessons). This is going to hurt your heart, for that I apologize, but given that lens, how should I filter this list?