The Worst Films of 2023

PLUS: short films I liked, 2024's most anticipated movies

As I said in my Best Of intro, 2023 was a bad year for motion pictures. Although I ended up really liking a lot of what I saw, I disliked basically every film I was hoping to really like, from big tentpoles to smaller indies. I try to keep my palette broad, my hopes high, my eyes wide, innocent, childlike. There is a weird mormon guy I love to follow on Letterboxd. He hates most arthouse cinema, but despite hating The Thin Red Line and Tree Of Life, he still watched every Malick in hopes that one would connect with him (none did), because he simply loves movies in a way that most cinephiles could only dream of. I try to be like him— A director I hate may still surprise me, etc… In 2023, this mentality burned me more times than I can count.

But First Something Good : Shorts I Loved

• Annihilator (Dir. Mangione-Smith)
  This is my favorite short of the year, easily. It’s experimental, fucked up, playful, and proves that, despite the overwhelming retromanic historydeath that pervades every facet of our culture, there is still something aesthetically fresh in the ether that can be tapped into if you’re talented and paying attention. I am not joking when I say that basically filmmaker I know has been trying and failing to make this short for years.

• Laberint Sequences (Dir. Williams)
  Blake Williams is singular, not just in his novel approach to 3-D, but in his use of the medium to create new, ludic experiences that expand the literal, physical possibilities of film. Laberint Sequences is a film you feel, literally, like it did something to my eyeballs that I’ve never felt before.

• Circles (Dir. Stammiti)

  Like Rob’s other films, there is something so immediate and tangible about what is at play on screen— textures, framerates, text overlays, picture-in-picture, threshhold filters, it’s all done with a sense of personal truth and craft-forward clarity that is totally uninterested in magic tricks. Unlike Rob’s other films, the extended length (25 minutes) allows him to explore psychohistoriography inside a durational framework, which positions this uniquely amongst it’s core aesthetic influences (KJE, Brackhage, etc.). I loved watching this, and I have loved thinking about it so much that I put off logging it on LB because I have a thousand-ish words on it that I need to finish writing.

• Low Tide: a Newly Restored Work by Thomas Wright (Dir. Matthews)
  This is my movie. It’s technically a 2022 release, but it held its theatrical premiere in San Francisco earlier this year so I’m counting it. This isn’t just self promo, I really believe I made an excellent film with interesting things to say about memory, film restoration and the structures of found footage horror.

And now…

The Worst Films of 2023

Napoleon (Dir. Scott)

What is there to say about this movie? It’s dull and very stupid, but I really do see potential in a four hour version of the film that feels more like the directors cut of Kingdom Of Heaven (masterpiece) and less like Gotti starring John Travolta.

John Wick: Chapter 4 (Dir. Stahelski)

In retrospect, this movie’s dog-ass nature was inevitable as soon as they announced a streaming spin-off series. The John Wick franchise has never been smart, we’ve never asked for it to be smart: the sort of cringe dad rockabilly cyberpunk charm of it all was the main feature not directly related to action choreography, but here we see Stahelski and co. drinking their own Kool-Aid by the gallon. This thing is three hours long and most of it is painfully dull: It is visually exhausting, too stupid even for me, Keanu is doing a bad impression of himself. I don’t understand how this could be so dull! There are several instances of choreography feeling very sloppy and weightless— much of the final product here comes across like behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage— and, (I said this in my letterboxd review but it bears repeating) if you consider “The Orient” to encompass all of the Middle East, Russia and East Asia, this is literally the most orientalist movie ever made. Stinker!!

Los Colonos (Dir. Haberle)

I have grown so incredibly weary of precocious, vision-oriented filmmakers choosing an unconventional (usually 4:3) aspect ratio for their films, only to have no idea how to make a movie in that aspect ratio. This suffers from a host of problems (the script is underbaked, one of the lead performances sucks shit, stupid title cards, unnecessary chapter format), but Los Colonos makes this list because of how painfully clear it is that no one gave any consideration to how a boxier frame would effect blocking and composition in any of the minute scenes that don’t make it in the trailer. First Reformed and Cold War are right there! You’re already ripping them off, why can you not learn from them as well? I spent most of this film thinking about how I was clearly watching footage shot in 16:9 and cropped in post, which is the greatest sin a 4:3 film can commit.

Asteroid City (Dir. Anderson)

For the last several years I thought I didn’t like Wes Anderson’s post-Life Aquatic output because it was simply very bad. I was actually kind of excited for Asteroid City because so many people I know seemed to like it and think it was an evolution for Anderson, a refresh/reset on his tried-and-true style that brought new depth and meaning to “his whole deal.” And you know what? They were right! It is a serious evolution for him as a filmmaker, so I must now contend with the fact that, even when he makes a very good movie, I find the shit Wes Anderson does to be utterly loathsome. Asteroid City is a technical marvel (in the same way that Barbie is a technical marvel, though Anderson has much more advanced and refined visual grammar than Gerwig), and even though it’s hard to fault anything about this movie, I found Asteroid City to be miserable, impenetrable, smug, trite, ugly, annoying and tiresome. I just don’t fucking care! It’s not the worst film on this list, but it is the one I dread rewatching the most.

Also, I know it’s supposed to have something to do with, uh, postcards, but the color grade of this film can only call to mind the works of right wing conspiracy artist David Dees:

Bottoms (Dir. Seligman)

Lesbian teens tried (and failed) to doxx and cancel me for having correct opinions about this bland and swagless movie that sucks.

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning: Part One (Dir. McQuarrie)

*hoooooooonk*
*mimimimimimimimi*
*hooooo-hork-hork-sniff-hoooooonk*
*mimimimimimimimi*

I am impressed that I was able to stay awake long enough to be totally unimpressed by the stuntwork in this entirely CGI picture. They deepfake young Tom Cruise’s face onto old Tom Cruise’s body in every shot, the script has no stakes, they killed Rebecca Ferguson and replaced her with yet another brunette. The most compelling sequence of this entire film is ripping off Now You See Me 2!! Yikes! This (along with John Wick: Chapter 4) was one of my most anticipated theater experiences of the year, and it dropped with a dull, wet thud and I barely remember anything about it. At least we’ll always have Fallout, Ghost Protocol and MI:III.

Oppenheimer (Dir. Nolan)

It is hard to fathom the magnitude of Oppenheimer’s failure. The film takes several large swings, all of which are clean, in-the-box whiffs. Nolan strikes out again and again, and by the third hour it’s hard to even watch him step up to the plate. Much of this film is laugh-out-loud funny, never on purpose, and one could find charm in all of Nolan’s hubris and stupid naïveté (see: Florence Pugh, titties out, grabbing the Bagvad Gita (printed in the original Sanskrit) off the shelf and miraculously turning to the “I am death destroyer of worlds page” and asking Oppy to read it to her) but it is crucially the single ugliest film I’ve seen all year. The insanely shallow depth of field, the inconsistent color correction across different shots in a single scene… Oppenheimer is an unmitigated disaster, and, unlike Asteroid City, I genuinely don’t understand how anyone could watch this movie and see anything but an ugly mess.

Operation Fortune: Ruse Du Guerre (Dir. Ritchie)

Guy Ritchie’s worst film and it’s not even close. Miserable, unfunny, antisemitic, exhausting. Feels like a film adaptation of a AA, M-Rated Gamecube exclusive, void of any of charm some of those titles held. They had to postpone this film a year because the bad guys were originally Ukranian paramilitary force, which is basically the only funny or interesting thing about it. Crazy how the Bri’ish government is ostensibly concerned enough with antisemitism to censure Jeremy Corbyn for literally nothing but let Guy Ritchie walk around as a proud bri’ish citizen despite being the most obvious Jew-hating director this side of the NSDAP Film Commission. Anyways.

NYAD (Dir. Vasarhelyi, Chin)

Annett Benning is a fucking clown, and her clownish, utterly degrading performance in this dog shit movie is an embarrassment, not only to what little dignity she may still cling to, but to Jodie Foster and Rhys Ifans who really give their all to try and take this film out of clown-town. This film is mystifying, like how you might be mystified by walking out of your house and seeing a big, greasy human shit coiled on the roof of your car. How did it get there? Why would anyone do this? Did no one see this happening and try to stop it? Just an utterly repugnant and artless failure. There is not enough water in any ocean (let alone the stretch between Cuba and Key Largo or whatever) to wash away the stench of psychotic, dead-eyed award desire that emanates from every frame of this picture. The worst film, and worst performance, of the year. I would be shocked if Benning doesn’t walk away with Best Actress for it.

Slouching Towards 2024

There’s a lot to look forward to next year: Dune: Part 2 and The Bikeriders both promise to be films I give five stars, and everyone who missed About Dry Grasses (my #1 film of the year) at NYFF will be able to sit through all four hours when it goes wide at the end of February. I’ll be seeing it at least two more times.

Deborah Stratman’s Last Things (my other #1 film of the year)will be doing a limited run at Anthology before going to digital somewhere (this is still in the works), and I encourage everyone I know to see it on as strong an edible as they can withstand.

I’m still holding out hope for a (real) new Pedro Costa, and some kind of James Benning remaster/retrospective deal to happen, but….

the hotly anticipated….

can’t miss………

biggest movie event of 2024…………..

PUSHPA 2: THE RULE

Do you see that poster???? ICON STAR ALLU ARJUN!!! SO TRUE! If this movie isn’t good i’m going to k*ll m*self!!!!!!!!!!!! That’s how much is riding on it! I love Pushpa: The Rise, a completely insane Tollywood crime saga. I’ve seen it four times now. I’ll probably watch it another two in the buildup to Pushpa 2. It’s not a “good” film like RRR or Eega or even Sukumar’s other big film, Rangasthalam, but Pushpa is, and I mean this very, very seriously, the most swag movie of all time. No one has more swag than Pushpa. Pushpa loves to smoke cigs, he loves to disrespect authority, he loves to have a glow up, he loves to be one step ahead of his enemies, trapping them in hairbrained Rube Goldberg schemes that always go off without a hitch. I love Pushpa (the guy) and Pushpa (the movie). All five songs on the Pushpa soundtrack made it to my spotify wrapped. They all rock.

Check this one out:

And this one:

And then go watch Pushpa: The Rise so you can join me on the Pushpa 2: The Rule hype train.

When this trailer came out last easter, I watched it on my phone after church and SCREAMED like a K-Pop stan, right there on the street. This movie is going to fix me.

Okay, that’s all! Be sure to check out my Best of 2023 List Here :)