what a fun year of lots of silly and crazy films. i was, as i am most years, able to discover many new masterpieces to me and i am once again lucky enough to share them with anyone reading. i will switch things up a little bit this time and instead just talk about films in the order in which i saw them, and then provide a rough ranking of them at the end.
something that caught me completely by surprise was I Like It Like That, the debut film by director darnell martin. i suppose there are a lot of narrative beats and thematic elements afoot here that you could claim are ripped off (successfully or not) from fellow black NYer spike lee, but i think there’s more than enough to differentiate the film. for one, it has a deep tenderness and care for its characters – even those it rightfully lambasts – and this is not always the case with lee’s work. it also seems much more concerned with its narrative than its contemporaries; it’s hard to predict storylines leave it fulfilling on this basis, in such an effortless way that it’s shocking that it’s a debut. and, of course, it’s pretty funny as well.
next up is, crazily enough, another debut feature, this one being Nancy (Choe, 2018). like the darnell film, it also has heart for days, although while I Like It Like That sets its moods and characters firmly within a bronx environment, Nancy‘s setting and emotions are frigid by comparison. but choe’s flick is no less unpredictable – set up as a mystery with no happy ending, it’s a navigation of shared trauma and dissatisfaction with norms (genetic norms in this case); a calm, tender, sad film that makes me curious as to what else the director has in store for us next time.
it’s hardly a novel idea that kiyoshi kurosawa’s work outside of the horror genre oftentimes matches or even exceeds his j-horror work, a notion i could get behind half-heartedly, but after i saw Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa, 2008) this year i felt more convinced than ever. oftentimes reminds me of peak edward yang in its execution, though with a dark comic streak not often present in his works. it’s a really beautiful, moving picture – the kind of stuff that makes you want to check out everything the director has ever done, and something i hope to do more of in 2023.
basically on a whim, i decided to see RRR (Rajamouli, 2022) at an amc the weekend it came out. i came out of the theater stunned, energized, and hopeful not only for cinema as a medium, but for people. there’s a raw human energy that propels every frame of this bombastic 3 hour action flick, something that oftentimes only happens in cameron or snyder movies, but this one’s over-the-top theatrics are plenty to differentiate it from the other masters. i am keen on checking out what rajamouli has done in the past, and eagerly awaiting his next offerings for the future – if there are more anti-imperialist musicals, i will be there for them surely.
a tricky director for me is assayas. from the few films i’ve seen of his, he seems to be pulled in two directions: one being a boomercore arthouse-y director for the older audiences, and one being an experimental grandrieux-esque horror director. it’s a truly bizarre push and pull, no more exemplified than in Demonlover (Assayas, 2002) – an evil, grimy, disgusting work of digital. not since pasolini has pleasure been treated so much as a transaction, though this is perhaps even more grim than Salo at times, every conversation a sale, every touch coming with some kind of a price. i really hope he returns to making films like this, though this sort of digipunk energy is perhaps better left to the younger auteurs.
it’s extremely difficult to distill Eniaios (Markopoulos, ????) into words, and it admittedly looks quite silly here surrounded by a bunch of narrative features for the most part when it’s about as far as you can get from conventional cinema in more ways than one. is Eniaios not only the film, but also the food i had during my stay in greece? i think markopoulos (and robert beavers) would certainly say yes. can i even say i’ve “seen” the film when i’ve “only” seen a dozen or so hours of it? ultimately, not something that is good for this sort of snappy presentation to discuss at length, but i will say it made me a believer of flicker films, relaxed and calmed me for extended periods of time, and also has (in one of the early cycles) some of the most beautiful imagery i have ever seen of anything in my life, so suffice to say that it’s a positive experience overall.
speaking of the avant-garde, i also was lucky enough to discover jordan belson this year, and his short film Creation (Belson, 1984) is full of beauty and wonder. in the era of CGI and digital mayhem, it becomes less and less likely that one sees something and they genuinely wonder “how was this done?” because image manipulation is so prevalent and simple. but this film has images that i have no idea how they were created – perhaps the title itself hammering down on this, as it could refer to not only a hypothetical creation of the cosmos, but also the fundamental creation of images and how these two things are not so distant from each other. i hope to see more of belson’s lovely images in the next year.
and speaking of, well not quite all-out a-g but still pretty out there, we have Immortal (Bilal, 2004). not even sure what to say about this one really. it brings to mind, idk, toonami imagery from around its release, and has an appropriately killer soundtrack from the same era. the look of it is totally unique, this sort of ugly CGI/animation/live action hybrid; it is a shame that these sort of images were neglected as uncanny valley and not explored more for the value they could produce. luckily bilal did in this, a film about something relating to spiritualism and transhumanism taking cues from egyption mythology and futurist settings. no idea how this was made but i am glad it exists.
every year i painfully knock another unseen rivette off of the list, and now i only have one feature and a few curiosities left that i haven’t watched. this year it was the sweet and gentle The Story of Marie and Julien (Rivette, 2003), which for rivette standards is on the upper but not top tier echelon, but for film standards it obviously puts most things out there to shame. perhaps the most romantic of all of his works, this one is the most straightforward in the passion it shows between its leads, though it’s got the ever-present sidewinding narrative structure that he always has a penchant for. as they say, rivette never feels like he’s trying to sell you something, and even in this two and a half hour ghost story romance fable where barely anything “happens” you still get the feeling that every single portion is completely earned.
while not quite as bittersweet as rivette, i have a similar feeling as i shoot down more orson welles pictures, knowing the end is growing near. still, the master always finds a way to have another masterpiece buried in his filmography, and Mr. Arkadin (Welles, 1955) is one of them. a globetrotting, schizo bill clinton esque biopic way before all of that ever happened, it’s got scenes that show absolute power and ways that power reacts when refuted. it’s also very funny, looks incredible, sounds great, and, like most welles flicks, has a dynamic editing style that never calms down. highly recommend checking this one out, have no idea why it’s considered a lesser welles.
on the complete opposite of the high end auteur picture is the low end kind-of-auteur picture, this one being Debbie Does Damnation (Brummer, 1999). making a Debbie Does Dallas horror ripoff is perhaps not the most creative of suggestions in the softcore era, but this one fully commits to the bit, shooting on 8mm in black and white on a full (cardboard) set of hell using stop motion demons as supporting characters. it’s absolutely wild, and one of the funniest movies i’ve seen in a long time. between me and the twins we’ve seen a ton of down and dirty DIY horror flicks so trust me when i say this is one of the best in that subgenre.
another low budget horror classic is, of course, Skinamarink (Ball, 2022), a film which paralyzed me with fear during many segments. as others have somewhat discovered, it seems that ball is more interested in internet horror and happened to make an experimental film as opposed to the other way around – a bit disappointing when it comes to the potential followup. but for now, ball has cemented himself as someone with clear enough talent to make a masterpiece, which not everyone can claim. i hope i am able to somehow catch it in theaters now.
about once a year i decide to throw another rohmer flick on the vlc, with mixed feelings oftentimes, but this year i landed on the wonderful breezy Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (Rohmer, 1987), a film which often resembles one of rivette’s rather than rohmer’s. i love the structure in this primarily, being four little fables of the two titular characters, mostly devoid of romance (or is it?) and focusing on their platonic relationships. none of the stories are especially consequential or grand, but all of them are moving and graceful. i hope that more rivette films are up to this admittedly high standard.
and finally, the last masterpiece i saw for the first time this year is none other than, what else, the sixth Guinea Pig movie. i didn’t even realize until this year that one of those was supposedly “good” compared to the rest, but suffice it to say that Guinea Pig 6: Mermaid in the Manhole (Hino, 1988) is phenomenal. once you get past the bile, body horror, and disgust, it’s a surprisingly loving movie, one that acts more like a fairytale than a gross out faux-snuff film. at only an hour long, with probably 20 minutes plus being focused entirely on the gore, there are just enough story elements to provide for a compelling narrative filled with questions about art versus representation, the fleetingness of beauty, misery at having to watch a loved one die slowly, and all sorts of other things i never would have anticipated from such a movie. if you’re up to the gore challenge, give it a shot.
and there you have it. another year, another several masterpieces that i was lucky enough to discover. i hope next year’s batch are as good as these are. and for anyone obsessed enough for an exact ranking, it would probably go like:
- RRR (Rajamouli, 2022)
- Mr. Arkadin (Welles, 1955)
- Creation (Belson, 1984)
- Tokyo Sonata (Kurosawa, 2008)
- Demonlover (Assayas, 2002)
- Nancy (Choe, 2018)
- Skinamarink (Ball, 2022)
- Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle (Rohmer, 1987)
- The Story of Marie and Julien (Rivette, 2003)
- Debbie Does Damnation (Brummer, 1999)
- Eniaios (Markopoulos, ????)
- I Like It Like That (Martin, 1994)
- Guinea Pig 6: Mermaid in the Manhole (Hino, 1988)
- Immortal (Bilal, 2004)
core enforcer 