In-Review: November 2023
One last push until the new year with new reviews, home video recommendations, links, and a new podcast
Have you seen your most anticipated movie of 2023 yet? There’s a few weeks left for the year to finish out and while some projects got moved due to the strikes over the summer (I’m looking at you Dune: Part Two), we’ve had new movies from Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig, Todd Haynes, Ridley Scott, David Fincher, Hayao Miyazaki, Wes Anderson, Yorgos Lanthimos, Sofia Coppola, and Michael Mann. While I loved some of these more than others, there’s no question that there was a bounty of great movies to watch this year. Two of the best movies of 2023 come to theaters this weekend with Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron and Lanthimos’ Poor Things.
What movies are you looking forward to watching in December?
Mini-Review: Poor Things
If you’re unfamiliar with Lanthimos’ previous movies like The Lobster or The Favourite, let it be known that his movies usually suit a particular taste. They are often bizarre and usually quite funny if you enjoy your comedy as black as the darkest coffee. Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest, stars Emma Stone as an experiment known as Bella. Her outward appearance is that of a quiet young woman, but Bella’s mind isn’t as developed as her body. She’s been cobbled together like Frankenstein by the mad genius Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe), and she needs constant care almost as though she’s an infant. Soon one of Baxter’s students, Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef) joins the experiment and bonds with Bella despite her infantile mind. Bella begins to learn at an alarming pace, even being shown the power of sex by the cunning Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Once she’s able to expand her surroundings, Bella determines what she ultimately wants to pursue wholeheartedly.
Not too much unlike Barbie, Poor Things shows the growth of a woman outside of her imposed minuscule worldview. Once she finds that freedom she craves more knowledge and can toss aside many of the structures that have controlled her. In another way, Poor Things is very different from Barbie, in that this is a very adult movie. It’s almost as if Yorgos Lanthimos heard about how audiences aren’t interested in sex being depicted in movies and then put even more sex in his feature. What’s great about how sex is depicted in Poor Things is that it’s not there to be titillating, but rather it leads to the empowerment and growth of the protagonist.
None of it would work without the full commitment of Emma Stone. The character of Bella calls for a physical performance from the way Bella speaks and moves, to even how she adjusts to the world around her. It’s way up there with some of her very best performances.
I admit I have a hard time recommending Poor Things to everyone. I can imagine friends and relatives trying this for about three minutes until something happens that offends or upsets them. For everyone else, Poor Things is ingenious and you owe it to yourself to give it a try. [A]
Poor Things opens in limited release on December 8th before expanding in theaters nationwide on December 22nd.
New Releases on Home Video:
Titanic (4K)
One of the biggest movies of all time comes home in a new stunning 4K restoration. It’s a beautiful image and although I didn’t finish my viewing, Titanic still works. Given that the movie is 25 years old, I’m sure there are people in your life who have never seen it or can’t wait to watch it again. It’s a must-have.
Columbo: The 1970s (Blu-ray)
Kino Lorber’s box set of the essential Columbo episodes doesn’t hit the marketplace until December 19th, but if you pre-order from their website you’ll probably get it before Christmas. That would be a great idea because the Columbo has never looked better, as Kino Lorber provided a copy for review. I watched a series favorite, season 3’s “Any Old Port in a Storm,” with Donald Pleasence and I was shocked at how vibrant and clean the image appeared. If you’re a fan or even if you were excited by Poker Face, the new murder of the week series that is inspired by Columbo, you’ll want to add it to your library.
Oppenheimer (4K)
Another essential 4K release for the holiday, Christopher Nolan’s epic Oppenheimer is now available on Home Video. One benefit the home video release has over digital is that the video respects the aspect ratio switching that was prevalent in the IMAX release. If you want to watch Oppenheimer in the closest format to IMAX, the 4K release is well worth the purchase. I’d suggest hurrying on this one because the stock has been fluctuating since its release.
The Fugitive (4K)
Warner Bros. sent me a copy of The Fugitive on 4K to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the movie. I watched it earlier this year and was surprised at how well this action thriller holds up. Maybe I shouldn’t be as it’s one of the only TV-to-movie adaptations to be nominated for Best Picture. Nevertheless, I think it is a great Harrison Ford performance and perhaps an even better Tommy Lee Jones performance.
If you’d like to see some more suggestions for gifts in this holiday season, check out the Gift List below:
Here are the movies I caught up with in November:
As we get closer to the end of the year, I’ve been trying to catch up on some of the bigger 2023 titles that have made their debut. Poor Things and The Taste of Things were my favorites from the month, but I didn’t dislike anything I saw during this period except for Saltburn which is one of my biggest disappointments of the year.
Podcast
Links
The first trailer for Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga came out recently. It’s the eagerly anticipated prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, this time starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth. Fury Road was like lightning in a bottle — spectacular special effects, a miracle of a script, and an all-time leading performance from Charlize Theron. Furiosa looks like more of the same, which is fine, but I’m going into this one with cautious optimism instead of being all-in.
has a new newsletter on Clean Bandit’s “Rather Be,” a song celebrating its tenth anniversary. St. Michel finds the music video emblematic of how Tokyo would be interpreted from abroad. is doing a fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders. A great cause worth donating to.May December, now on Netflix, is loosely based on the Mark Kay Letourneau case from the ‘90s. I found the movie to be captivating with fantastic performances and if you’d like to read more about it after watching, Cady Lang for Time Magazine wrote an article on the topic.
There’s a new Godzilla movie in theaters. It’s not connected to the universe that Legendary has created with Kong and Godzilla, but it’s a Japanese feature from Toho. Godzilla Minus One has been receiving fantastic reviews and I plan on making a trip out to the theaters to see it soon.
The legendary Norman Lear has passed away at 101. He was the creative catalyst for such iconic television as All in the Family, The Jeffersons, One Day at a Time, Maude, and Good Times. Last year, Vulture spoke to some of his collaborators to discuss what it was like working with a legend.
Sony has announced that a licensing deal with Warner Bros Discovery is ending and that users who have purchased content will have that content removed from their library. When you purchase something digitally you are paying for access to that content, rather than the content itself. Luke Plunkett for Aftermath contemplates piracy when products users paid for are stripped from them.