Flasz On Film

Having compiled my personal Top 10 Films I watched together with a supplementary list of 10 Films That Took Me By Surprise, which is a de facto a stand-in for “movies that maybe could have made my list had I had the foresight to rank them higher,” I thought it might be a good idea to offer some context to those lists.

One of the reasons why I don’t particularly like making end-of-year rankings of any kind is that I don’t think I see enough films to make such statements with enough confidence. I’m not a critic. I don’t receive for-your-consideration Blu Rays from distributors. I’m not RT-certified. I actually don’t aspire to any of those, to be perfectly frank. Therefore, I never feel that my list, regardless of the effort I’d put in watching new releases, would always feel based on sufficient data.

Now, as I said, I’m not a full-time critic. It’s not my job, but a hobby, so I will naturally omit movies you might think would belong on a list like this. But I don’t go to cinemas to actively self-flagellate and I only have so much time to go out and see new things. So, choices have to be made and as a result, I haven’t seen Wonka, Across the Spiderverse or Wish. I have successfully dodged all Marvel and DC movies this year and I don’t think I’ll catch up with Maestro any time soon. Actually, I might do that, but no promises.

Additionally, as a consequence of living in the UK, the theatrical release calendar tends to differ from the one in the US, upon which many best-of lists found in the press are based. Moreover, the discrepancies tend to compound towards the end of each calendar year and only later do I end up having the opportunity to see all those Awards contenders people in the Twitter-verse lose their minds over in time to make a list of my own. For instance, I only saw Babylon, The Fabelmans, Tár and The Whale this year because that’s when they were released theatrically in the UK. I could in theory include them on my 2023 list, but it somehow feels inappropriate so in a way they end up sidelined because of those differences in how these movies roll out across the globe. I don’t have a good answer to this issue.

Therefore, here’s a list of ten 2023 Releases I didn’t get to see, all of which could have stood a chance of messing with my end-of-year ranking.

1. Priscilla (dir. Sofia Coppola)
2. Poor Things (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
3. May December (dir. Todd Haynes)
4. The Zone of Interest (dir. Jonathan Glazer)
5. Memory (dir. Michel Franco)
6. The Boy and the Heron (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
7. Showing Up (dir. Kelly Reichardt)
8. Fallen Leaves (dir. Aki Kaurismaki)
9. Anatomy of a Fall (dir. Justine Triet)
10. El Conde (dir. Pablo Larraín)

So, there we have it. If you are wondering why any of the listed movies never made it to my own list and if I even know what I’m doing (I’m not sure I do), it might be because I didn’t get a chance to see them. Now, at least two of those (Anatomy of a Fall and El Conde) have been released in the UK this year; however, Anatomy of a Fall didn’t play anywhere near me. Not seeing El Conde, on the other hand, is entirely on me because it is available on Netflix and I just didn’t get round to watching it. Which is bizarre because I love Pablo Larraín’s movies. In fact, Spencer was probably my favourite movie of its year. So, I suppose I should get over myself and watch it. Other listed titles feature mostly work of directors I hold in extremely high regard (like Sofia Coppola, Yorgos Lanthimos and Kelly Reichardt) and I will honestly walk into the cinema to watch them – whenever I get the opportunity to do so – expecting to love them. But I think you’d have to wait a little bit for that to happen. I can only promise to write something about them when the time comes.