The State of the Movies 2023 -- What We Learned And Where We're Headed
#255: The State of the Movies, "Beyond Utopia," "Backdraft," "The Next Three Days"
Edition 255:
Hey movie lovers!
As always, you can find a podcast version of this newsletter on Apple or Spotify. Thank you so much for listening and spreading the word!
This week: It’s not just a recap of the year in movies, it’s a big picture essay about where we’re headed and what we learned. Hopefully you enjoy. Then an incredibly moving documentary about North Korea, a shameless 90s Ron Howard special, and a Russell Crowe prison escape movie. In this week’s “Trailer Watch,” Jake Johnson jumps behind the camera in a straight-to-streaming heater.
The Year In Movies That Was 2023
We’ve watched them. We’ve ranked them. We’ve drilled down on the individual merits of more than 70 movies that were released this year. Now the only question that remains is, what does it all mean?
Firstly, it needs to be said that 2023 was a very good year for movies, the best since 2019. It was pacing toward being a great year, with Spider-Verse and Past Lives and a total of nine movies that would finish in my top 15 for the year being released before what we at this newsletter call “Movie SZN.” But unfortunately, I found the awards slate to be somewhat disappointing. I realize this is very subjective — I’ve heard convincing cases for the brilliance of a Poor Things, or The Zone of Interest, and even The Holdovers — but to me these movies were a mixed bag of incomplete promise, and failed to elbow their way into the top of my rankings.
More exciting than the quality of this year’s movies was their relevance. The ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon brought the form into the mainstream in a way that really hasn’t been done in years, because both Barbie and Oppenheimer were labeled and thought of as “movies” rather than comic book “theme park rides” (to borrow a term from Mr. Scorcese).
It’s wishful thinking to look at this anomaly of the three highest-grossing movies of the year not being remakes or sequels and think the tables have turned on the IP era. Nine of the next 10 on the list of top grossers don’t qualify, and the 2024 slate is once again full of them. This is no artistic renaissance — if anything, the success of Barbie will bring on even more movies-as-product-marketing, and the success of Five Nights at Freddy’s and “The Last of Us” will launch a bajillion video game adaptations.
But my glimmer of hope lies in the holes pierced through the blockbuster armor. This year, more than the last several, huge movies that were considered ‘bad’ underperformed (some even bombed) and big movies that were considered ‘good’ overperformed. It seems you can no longer slot in “Unnamed Super Hero Movie Fall 2023” into a slideshow five years out, package some three-hour slop of movie stars and CGI, and expect everyone to gobble it up. That’s all I can hope for! Next year we have Dune 2, Gladiator 2, Furiosa and Joker: Folie à Deux — all sequels, all big box office plays, and yet all conceived and created (we think) FIRST to be good and second to make money.
I’m choosing to be optimistic, armed with the recent wobble of the streaming business and the announcement that box office receipts totaled its highest amount since pre-pandemic 2019. Undoubtedly, studios are still tightening their belts, cutting down on number of projects and budgets. Indies are really struggling to do good business. But if 2023 proved anything, it’s that the cinematic art form (eye roll) remains an essential part of popular culture. May it ever be thus!
Other 2023 trends:
Just like everywhere else in society (*steps on soap box*), boomers in the movie biz are using the money and prestige accumulated over 80+ years to do…whatever the hell they want, whether that means a 3.5-hour condemnation like Martin Scorcese, a movie about an Italian legend in which none of the principal actors are Italian like Michael Mann, or piece together themes and images from your entire career into a self-obituary like Hiyao Miyazaki.
Movies with political and societal messaging are nothing new, but this year there were a bunch of movies that felt like more of the movie was happening off of the screen than on it (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Zone of Interest, Leave The World Behind). It was about the viewer, not the story. I don’t know how many times in this newsletter I’ve quoted Cold War German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbiner, but here’s one more: "The revolution doesn't belong on the screen."
If Hollywood is going to insist on pumping out tons of historical dramas and biopics, this year proved you have to do more than use beautiful images to faithfully reproduce a Wikipedia entry. Looking at you Napoleon, Maestro, and The Boys In The Boat. They can work if the filmmaker has a take or an angle, as proven by Blackberry, Ferrari or Oppenheimer.
After the massive success of Oppenheimer, which might still pass $1 billion at the box office and is a huge favorite to win Best Picture, Christopher Nolan is the most powerful filmmaker in Hollywood. He might be the new Steven Spielberg.
I’ll just keep saying it until it’s true. Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott are going to be big movie stars in the next couple of years. Book it. (In fact, Qualley’s next movie is Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls…it’s like it was designed in a lab for me to love).
Tik Tok is a kingmaker for movie openings, as proven by M3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s. Distributors are going to be increasingly desperate to game it, but so far it’s proven to be unpredictable. Get ready for some embarrassing marketing campaigns.
The other kingmaker right now is IMAX. It’s one of the few true differentiators for moviegoers, especially for event movies, and distributors were in giant fights over which of these select screens would play their titles (they chose Oppenheimer one week after Mission: Impossible and basically tanked it…even after Tom Cruise was calling theater owners personally to reconsider).
As long as we’re talking year-end wrap-ups, I’ve been encouraged by friends to put together my own ‘awards’ for the year, and I think it’s a good idea so I’ll be putting it out closer to the Oscars.. Best performance etc etc., but also quirkier awards like funniest moment, coolest kill, those kinds of things. If you have any ideas for award categories let me know between now and then!
Something New
Beyond Utopia ($VOD): There weren’t as many headline-grabbing documentaries this year, and I regret not seeking more out. Because when you find a good one, it’s hard for any fiction storytelling to live up. That’s certainly the case with Beyond Utopia, a breathtaking story about people defecting from North Korea and the incredibly dangerous journey they must navigate past a guarded border and through communist China.
There is zero recreations in the film, and amazingly live footage of escape attempts and life behind the border is being seen for the first time. The movie does an excellent job educating us on the sociopolitical factors that have set up the situation we’re seeing unfold, and balancing that with some of the most tense vérité footage you’ll ever see. It’s heartbreaking but also fascinating, and there’s a true hero at the center of it: a South Korean pastor who risks his life to operate an underground railroad-style network. I cannot recommend this documentary more highly.
Something Old
Backdraft (1991): We love the 1990s as a movie decade because of how earnest and un-self-aware (a positive, in comparison to the meta, self-referential irony of today) they were. In that category, this would be a first ballot hall of famer. Kurt Russell, Billy Baldwin and Robert De Niro star as firefighters in Chicago, who all wax poetic about how firefighting is the most important, most honorable calling a man (and yes, always a man) could possibly achieve.
If you buy in, this movie has a lot to offer, whether it’s a conspiracy plot about an arsonist blowing up suspiciously linked targets or the relationship story of two brothers trying to find their way out of their father’s shadow (or the fact that those two plotlines don’t really connect…). Donald Sutherland, Scott Glenn and Jennifer Jason Leigh round out a strong cast, and director Ron Howard is one of the most reliable pair of hands of the era, giving the fire scenes more than enough flare (pun intended) to satisfy any viewer.
Something to Stream
The Next Three Days (Netflix): This is very much my kind of movie — a pure, plot-centric thriller about a woman (Elizabeth Banks) who gets accused of murder and sent to jail, and her husband (Russell Crowe) who, after extinguishing all legal options, decides to break her out and escape. Directed by Paul Haggis (best known as the director of controversial Best Picture winner Crash), he does the ol’ Steven Soderbergh trick of not giving you all the puzzle pieces so you’re kept in the dark, upping the mystery and suspense as Crowe somehow goes from meek college professor to hardened mastermind criminal in the span of a few weeks.
Yes, the details are exaggerated in that Hollywood-y sort of way, but isn’t that kind of what you’re hoping for in a movie that delivers on its promise for action and suspense? Besides, Crowe is movie star incarnate here, holding the screen with his presence and his charisma in a way that makes it easy to overlook any other flaws. If you’re looking for a movie that’s fun and takes itself seriously, but isn’t that serious, this is the perfect streamer.
Trailer Watch: Self-Reliance
Jake Johnson has always said that he used his successful sitcom career (“New Girl”) to make money so that he could do ambitious little indie movies (Drinking Buddies and Win It All being great examples). Now for the first time he’s written and directed a feature, with a fun little premise: survive for 30 days while people hunt you and you win $1 million dollars, BUT they can’t touch you when you’re with other people. It’s a pretty obvious metaphor for codependence in a relationship, but it looks charming, especially with the already proven chemistry between Johnson and Drinking Buddies co-star Anna Kendrick. It’s hard to imagine this movie making a big splash on Hulu, but it looks like something I could really like and recommend around Valentine’s Day. Stay tuned!
Great summary of 2023. The awards thing is a great idea! I think it would be fun to include some negative awards (like the Razzies). Things like “Worst Performance,” “Worst Script,” etc. But maybe that’s too mean-spirited...