Category: Movies 2023

With the exception of only seeing 65 films in theaters in 2020 due to theater shutdowns caused by the China Virus (still more than your average film goer sees in any given year), I have been able to slowly but surely increase the number of films viewed in theaters since at least 2018. 2023 saw … Continue reading The Best/Worst of Film in 2023: A Year in Review

https://youtu.be/fNYepvUtYGA?si=XzlccjfXJEtYfrsx 5.5/10 Emerald Fennell’s directorial debut, 2020’s “Promising Young Woman” (8.5/10) came in as the 10th best film of 2020 for me. She unfortunately falls into a sophomore slump simply because “Saltburn” ends up being a total rip off of another, better film from 1999. Despite many technical accomplishments and a stellar cast, “Saltburn” ends … Continue reading #150 Film in 2023: Saltburn

https://youtu.be/zU6GbM5c9aE?si=JI1C-fP_z06SdnOE 7/10 Co-writer/director/actor Bradley Cooper’s sophomore directorial effort following 2018’s “A Star is Born” (8/10), “Maestro” has a synopsis which reads, “This love story chronicles the lifelong relationship of conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein and actress Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein.” While the film has some of the best performances of 2023 and is a solid film, I … Continue reading #149 Film in 2023: Maestro

https://youtu.be/fozskMtdwI8?si=-f0NrXDX19PnenE5 7/10 “After meeting a mysterious stranger, a man must escape a "dystopian" world to return to his wife.” While the logline is rather generic and you wouldn’t be able to tell just from reading it, “The Shift” is actually a science fiction/romance take on the Biblical story of Job. Despite some budgetary constraints and … Continue reading #148 Film in 2023: The Shift

https://youtu.be/NFH-59oOCpk?si=7omVPeFhcR3Dvq-c 5/10 “In 400 A.D., in a forgotten time in ancient America, a lone Hebraic fugitive must preserve the history of his fallen nation while being hunted by a ruthless tyrant.” My interested was peaked before I knew about that log line and heard this was a Christian movie, so I automatically wanted to go … Continue reading #147 Film in 2023: The Oath

https://youtu.be/OAZWXUkrjPc?si=jxrbn4kjI4Pcog3Q 6.5/10 My 5th most anticipated film of 2023, “Napoleon” was always going to be highly anticipated for me due to one of my favorite directors at the helm. Ridley Scott is the king of large scope, action epics across a vast and diverse filmography with films like “Black Hawk Down”, “Gladiator”, “Alien”, “Blade Runner”, … Continue reading #146 Film in 2023: Napoleon

https://youtu.be/BwXjg47r-HU?si=xjRRu9RFpKTwAYae 3.5/10 A rather predictable and unnecessary movie, “Paint” had potential (I would have rather seen a straight up Bob Ross biopic) but falls short due to its lackluster screenplay. How the script made it to the Black List is beyond me but the fact that it was written 13 years ago and was only … Continue reading #145 Film in 2023: Paint

https://youtu.be/ctlz0R1tSZE?si=VMyV3bDchCxwtJpq 3/10 What was supposed to be the culmination of 100 years of animated Disney classics, “Wish” embodies almost everything wrong with the current state of Disney, how far they’ve fallen and why I highly doubt they will ever achieve the level of quality they once had which peaked in the 1990s and carried on … Continue reading #144 Film in 2023: Wish

https://youtu.be/DBWk6BohVXk?si=l99hRr_mVnh_0UWm 4/10 Based off of the book “Elvis and Me” by Priscilla Presley, producer/writer/director Sofia Coppola’s movie is easy on the eyes and is aesthetically pleasing, yet provides absolutely nothing new that we didn’t already know about the story of Elvis Presley and his wife of six years. Solid from a film making stand point … Continue reading #143 Film in 2023: Priscilla

https://youtu.be/KbU50SdL8zA?si=v3sXmStxQbwgPF6q 8/10 2007’s “Grindhouse” gave us the double feature of Robert Rodriguez’s “Planet Terror” and Quentin Tarantino’s “Death Proof”. Sandwiched in between these two films were multiple fake trailers from various film makers. “Machete” and “Hobo with a Shotgun” were turned into feature length films in 2010 and 2011, respectively. 16 years after “Grindhouse”, we … Continue reading #142 Film in 2023: Thanksgiving