There is a difference between “favourite” and “best” movie. For me, the former indicates some form of emotional or psychological attachment to something, while “best” attempts to separate those emotions from objectivity. When discussing movies, objectivity is virtually impossible, but it’s at least an attempt to get away from what is familiar to enjoy something that is not.
If I could put it in sports terms, as a hockey fan, it’s like this: the Montreal Canadiens are my favourite team because I followed them as a kid, have continued to follow them into adulthood, and root for them regardless if they’re good or bad. However, they’re not the best team, nor even the team I enjoy watching most right now, given how bad they are. Does that make sense? I hope so.
For a few years now, I have been making an effort to go back and watch acclaimed movies that didn’t see at the time of release or that were released before I was born. It isn’t to say that classic movies weren’t a part of my movie-watching experience – the classic Hitchock movies and the older James Bond films were a staple of my childhood – but there is a whole world of cinema that remained out of my purview. Along with staying current on what is available each new year, taking in revered films from prior years has been part of my cinematic diet.
With that in mind, let’s go over some of my favourite pre-2023 releases that I watched in 2023, focusing on what made them special.
Raging Bull (1980)
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, Cathy Moriarty
It feels embarrassing to say that this was one of the movies missing from my repertoire, but here we are. Raging Bull is in the middle of Scorsese’s early directing run and it’s the best movie I saw in 2023. Based on the memoir of real-life boxing champion Jake LaMotta, is a biographical look at LaMotta’s life in 1940s/1950s New York, his rise to prominence in the boxing world, and his personal life that devolved into violence. Shot in black and white, it feels like a vestige of the Golden Age of moviemaking. It provides commentary on the people we hold up as heroes and the violent environment surrounding violent men. The way Scorsese handles the camera often makes it feel as if we’re the ones about to get their jaw broken by LaMotta, and his use of lighting with the black-and-white choice is truly masterful.
As good as Scorsese is here, it is the three leads (and De Niro, mostly) that are the standouts of the movie. De Niro does a fantastic job at making LaMotta someone the audience can root for, at times, while showing his nature as a person that can’t help but be violent, even towards those that love him most. The jail scene (if you’ve seen the movie, you know what I mean) is one of the best scenes De Niro has ever had on camera.
Raging Bull is cinematic excellence in every aspect and it’s easy to see why this movie is held up on the pantheon of great films post-1970. If you haven’t seen it, rectify that as soon as possible. It is the best movie I saw in 2023.
Some Like It Hot (1959)
Director: Billy Wilder
Starring: Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, Jack Lemmon
In short, Some Like It Hot is a comedy that has Curtis and Lemmon witness a murder which forces them into hiding. To get out of town, they dress up as women and join an all-women’s band en route to Florida. That women’s musical troupe is headed by Monroe’s character and, because this is 1959, the two men start fighting over Monroe. Can’t blame them, honestly.
When thinking about comedies, the one thing that always stands out is absurdity. Taking a somewhat common situation and pushing it to the extreme is a cornerstone of good comedy. In Some Like It Hot, there’s a scene where Lemmon’s character visits Monroe’s character’s bunk on a train at night and convinces her to (quietly) have a drink with him. He’s trying to hit on her, she just wants some company, and then things spiral out of control. One person shows up and climbs into the bunk, and then another, and then more people bring more liquor bottles and what was a quiet one-on-one in a train bunk has turned into a 10-person party while confined to one bed. The absurdity of it all makes for an all-time comedic scene – one of the extra girls brings a giant stick of salami? – and it’s just one of many in the movie.
Golden Age movies aren’t for everyone, but this comedy is legendary. All three leads have fantastic timing and chemistry with each other, and the laughs are there through the whole thing. There isn’t a movie that made me laugh harder more often this year.
Narvik (2022)
Director: Erik Skjoldbjaerg
Starring: Kristine Hartgen, Carl Martin Eggsbø
To put it simply, this is my favourite war movie in quite some time. It is based on the real-life story about Narvik, Norway, which was the biggest port for iron that was under control by Nazi Germany. The amount of ore passing through the town made it a vital resource area for the Nazis, and the film is about the locals (with help from the British Army) in their resistance of the Nazis. Stories of small, over-powered resistance groups making a big difference in the outcome of World War II are always fascinating.
What stands out is that it’s a movie about choices. Whether we like to admit it or not, we always have a choice. There may not be a ‘good’ choice to make, and sometimes we’re choosing the least-bad option, but there are always choices. The highlight scene involves a mother having to choose between her child’s life and exposing the resistance that has built up in Narvik which, if exposed, would lead to the death of hundreds (or thousands) of Narvik villagers and Norwegian/British soldiers, including her husband. That kind of dilemma – the human heart at conflict with itself – is what makes this movie really stand out.
Some audiences can be put off by subtitles, but this was outstanding. Even the handful of action scenes were harrowing as the cinematography was exceptional. It is still on Netflix, for anyone interested.
Police Story (1985)
Director: Jackie Chan
Starring: Jackie Chan, Edward Tang
If I can be a negative for a minute, one thing that really bothers me about most modern movies is the amount of computer-generated images we get, even for scenes that don’t really need them. Rather than doing a real-life stunt, we get someone swinging on a rope against a green screen in an Atlanta warehouse. It just detracts from the moviemaking aspect and turns it into a video game.
Anyway, here’s a scene from Police Story involving two cars barreling through favelas with real people having to jump out of the way as everything gets destroyed:
At one point (the 1:21 mark), two guys are sitting on the roof of a garage as the car goes through it and it starts to collapse on itself just as the camera cuts away. I wonder how they made out.
While we don’t need to endanger lives to make movies, having real action scenes during an action movie is something that separates the recent, great action movies (the John Wick and Mission: Impossible franchises) from the awful ones (just about every Expendables movie). Jackie Chan is both charismatic and thrilling as the lead, and this movie shows off his absolute best. Police Story is in the “will re-watch soon” pile, and likely won’t leave anytime soon.
Hell House LLC (2016)
Director: Stephen Cognetti
Starring: Ryan Jennifer Jones, Danny Bellini, Gore Abrams
This is a found-footage horror movie and while that specific type of horror has been repeatedly visited, few have been able to live up the original The Blair Witch Project. While Hell House LLC doesn’t, either, it is just a step below.
We begin with a group of friends/businesspeople that open a haunted house called Hell House and then things go horrifically wrong at the house’s opening, resulting in the deaths of over a dozen people. One of the survivors had her camera rolling and that footage is what takes us back to the start of the whole ordeal. There are very few horror movies that can make modern audiences afraid of what’s around the corner, but Hell House LLC is tremendous at doing exactly that. There is always something a little off about every scene inside the hotel-turned-haunted house, and all those little things pile up to the aforementioned massacre. It’s a constant barrage of “that mannequin wasn’t there before” moments that make it a thrilling movie from start to finish.
Whether people dig this movie as much as I did is up to the individual. But this was a genuinely scary horror movie that built itself up slowly to its apex, something very few modern horror flicks can pull off. It is up there with Skinamarink for the best horror movies I’ve seen in recent memory.
Cliffy's hell-hole 