As the summer brings some extra time to catch up on films, July also marks the middle of the year, the halfway point of the respective film year. So I have selected a handful of options worth your time (not in any particular order). All these picks are available in theaters or on demand.
‘Past Lives’
An anti-rom com with a pair of outstanding performances and unique directing choices from first timer Celine Song. A surprisingly effective character piece that’s as “American” as any Top Gun movie aims to be.
‘Skinamarink’
Now streaming and available to rent/buy on most major platforms.
A unnerving, artfully rendered nightmare. I was entranced by this film’s confounding spell and unusual filmmaking choices. This is challenging cinema, that will put some viewers off. But for those that have the patience to relinquish their bodies to the eerie dark corners of Skinamarink, they will find something beautiful — and terrifying to the core. The uniting fear that this film creates will ensure this small little indie will be remembered as an unparalleled achievement in horror cinema in how it paints a portrait of oblivion that takes us to places in which there is no escape.
My favorite horror film of 2023 so far. And the fact that we’re getting bold, experimental horror films like this out in the world (and making profit), is a good sign for this type of filmmaking.
‘Return to Seoul’
Available to rent or buy on most major platforms.
From the opening shot I was engrossed by the mood, sound and images of Return to Seoul. Its riveting score only enhances the substance; an intimate and visceral character study covering almost a decade of a young French woman’s return to South Korea in search of her biological parents. No action feels useless, every minute of this staggering film matters.
‘Showing Up’
Available to rent or buy on most major platforms.
Showing Up is a fresh slice of humanist cinema. A quiet film that finds drama and comedy in the every day struggle to pursue your passions and well pay your bills. Mundane in its normalcy but profound in it specificity. This film’s sense of time and place is captivating, like in all of Kelly Reichardt’s films. It’s hard not to get sucked in, as I did with her last film, the masterstroke that is First Cow. Bring on the vibes no plot police.
Also look out for the kitty menace and pigeon with a broken wing— they nearly steals the show.
‘Pacifiction’
Now streaming and available to rent/buy.
Think David Lynch but through a queer gaze. For fans of Lynchian, apocalyptic dread, you’ll be pleased to get lost in Albert Serra’s feverish and nightmarish rumination on power and secrecy. Though it moves as slowly and confidently as a sleep walker, and its pace, length, and beautiful widescreen panoramic framings – in which conventional drama is almost non existent – may divide opinion (and attention spans).
Pacifiction is ultimately quite passive went it comes to obvious action, yet the world building in which several characters interact and exist in their own quirks (ala Lynch’s Twin Peaks) is the reason why I was entranced by Serra’s last film: the provocative Liberté — whichdisturbed and excited me in equal measure and had even less plot and more vibes than this film.
So while I wasn’t as reactive compared to his previous film, Pacifiction is a daring art film that had me lost in its images and ideas — and affirms Serra as an uncompromising, original voice in contemporary cinema and whose work I will anticipate in the future.
‘Sick of Myself’
Millennials, this one is for us.
A seething, downward spiral into the hellish depths of narcissism. Sick of Myself might just be the comedy of 2023 for me; it’s peak cringe comedy, equally funny as it is terrifying as a body horror film, aka blood vomit. This is an arthouse film that could appeal to so many mainstream moviegoers if they gave subtitles a chance. This shit is funny, brutal and artful!
Beyond the two hilariously self obsessed characters, Sick of Myself illustrates and exposes a vain ecosystem, a culture of “showing and telling” — whether it’s actually happening or playing out inside someone’s head. The brutal repulsion for the main characters are viscerally clear and realized through arresting filmmaking (editing and visual language are near perfect) and sobering truths about a generation of culturally inept and depressed brats that need to be told they’re special.
‘Reality’
Reality is a mesmerizing, eerie and deceptively layered work of cinema-vérité. A film that will shake you; one that redefines both the documentary and narrative medium. Been wanting to see this film since it premiered at Berlin FF this year.
Writer/Director Tina Satter + star Sydney Sweeney’s take on what happened to Reality Winner is nothing short of extraordinary to experience. Do not miss this vital and innovative film.
‘The Five Devils’
Now streaming and available to rent/buy.
A time traveling, genre jumping psychodrama: The Five Devils uses lush visual language and magical realism to explore one family’s dark past. It’s made like a slow burn horror film overflowing with ideas and a bewitching queer romance.
Featuring another great 2023 performance from Adele Exarchopoulos (excellent in Ira Sachs’ Passages, coming to theaters Aug 2023). And yes, she will be eating food at some point in this film.
‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’
Expectations were high, since Into the Spider-Verse made my top 10 list in 2018 and hailed by me as a masterstroke in animated cinema.
Across the Spider-Verse expands upon its predecessor in inspired, impressionistic style and emotional scope. Another knockout from this fresh Spider-Man franchise.
‘Enys Men’
Available to rent or buy on most major platforms.
“What happens if tomorrow isn’t another day…what happens if tomorrow is the same day…that’s true horror for me when time doesn’t make any sense.”
— Writer/Director/DP Mark Jenkin
Never has staring at rock been so terrifying. Enys Men, which in Cornish means “Rock Island,” is a mesmerizing and confounding mind fuck of a film about a wildlife volunteer desceding into grief-stricken madness while alone on a remote island in 1973. Shot on 16mm color negative with a 1970s clockwork Bolex and scored with post-synch sound recordings, where image and sound are disconnected, creating an abstract and disquieting atmosphere. Especially when there’s dialogue. The tension created between these two senses is cinema; it’s transcending reality by pulling the viewer into a surreal nightmare of sorts. A whole essay can be written about the sound design alone.
We’re in the present, past and future all at once through the subject’s deep grief, strangely showing how when one is left completely alone, they might spiral inwards into their own memories, dreams and fears.
Is this dark, folky mind bender for everyone? Definitely not. This is challenging cinema that gives no answers. Logic must be left at the door, and you must surrender yourself to the rhythms of sublime, endless time and the nameless dread of existence. This is an hypnotic and singular time warping horror film that left me ravished in its cosmic energy and oceanic terrain.
Another bold experimental horror film that ranks up there with Skinamarink.
Other notable films I saw that were released during the first half of 2023 include: Beau is Afraid, Joyland, Revoir Paris, M3GAN, Sanctuary, Tori and Lokita, A Thousand and One, Polite Society, Blue Jean, Air, Infinity Pool, Are you there God? It’s Me, Margaret, Cocaine Bear, Astroid City How to Blow Up a Pipeline and Rye Lane.
I’ve seen even more dope films in 2023 but they either aren’t getting released until the second half of the year or are currently seeking distribution while screening across the festival circuit. They include: Earth Mama, Passages, Rotting in the Sun, Kokomo City, Divinity, Mami Wata, All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Milisuthando, Bad Press, The Arc of Oblivion and Smoke Sauna Sisterhood.
Happy movie watching this summer!
Cinema 4 Culture 