The Year in Movies
And how it could've been better. Plus: Ridley Scott's 'Napoleon.'
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This past week marked the end of November, and all the arts-covering news outlets raced to release their Best Of lists. You’d think they’d wait until the actual end of the year, but some algorithm or sense of competition or adherence to tradition says, no, this is something you do the week after Thanksgiving.
One of said premature lists was written by me. I’d been compiling it all year, releasing monthly updates. Still, the past few weeks I did a lot of cramming—both what I’d missed and what was coming soon. There have been over 500 movies released this year, and regrettably, despite my best efforts, I did not catch all of them. So take my list with a grain of salt. (I also did not include films that premiered at festivals or got a bullshit Oscar-qualifying one-week NYC run but otherwise haven’t been available to the masses.)
Looking back at this year’s releases, I was left with the sense that 2023 wound up being a pretty damn good year for movies. A bunch of the greats did some of their best work, there were a lot of exciting debuts, and M3gan made me laugh.
After my list went live, I checked out some other critics’ lists, and it seems like 2023 being a good one for le cinema was the consensus. But hey, good is boring, isn’t it? There’s always room for improvement, cause for dissatisfaction. Lately, I’ve been reflecting on what the year’s cinema was missing or messing up. Were there not enough compellingly complicated characters? Too few movies set in the present? Was there an overreliance on true stories? Why are there still so few good capital-C Comedies?
I was intrigued by an observation Richard Brody made: “What’s missing from even most of the best American films is a sense of swing.” By “swing,” Brody more or less meant spontaneity—a sense of openness and looseness. In his framing, the lack of swing is the result of A) big auteur-driven movies (like Killers of the Flower Moon or Oppenheimer) being years in the making, and B) smaller indies (like All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt or Earth Mama) having such tight schedules that they require meticulous planning. There are a few notable exceptions—The Sweet East, Showing Up—but on the whole I think Brody is onto something. More American movies could stand to slacken their grip, ramble a little. The question, I guess, is how do you make space for swing if you do have a small budget and tight schedule?
What do you think? What’s missing from this year’s best films? If you’re a filmmaker, what is the old/current guard doing that you think can go to hell? Comment below or in the chat.
Napoleon was a dud, but Ridley Scott’s still feckin’ interesting.
One of the films I made sure to catch before I submitted my Best of 2023 list was Napoleon, Ridley Scott’s $200 million biopic about those sweet, creamy layered pastries.
It turns out I could’ve skipped it. Not only was it not about pastries, its depiction of France’s most infamous diminutive emperor was under baked—at least, when it wasn’t overbaked. Napoleon is not so much a movie that does not have swing as one that simply can’t swing. It’s so stiff and scattershot in tone that the goofy jokes never quite land, and I, at least, never felt like I got a sense for Napoleon or Josephine or what Ridley Scott wanted to say. Adam Nayman wrote a great review of the film—and why it doesn’t work—for The Ringer, in which he pointed out that:
It’s not that Scott lacks a sense of irony about his work but that he’s a hostage to his maniacal, virtuoso professionalism. The same irrepressible drive that allowed him to prepare and release four movies in the time it took Martin Scorsese to complete Killers of the Flower Moon is what keeps him from arriving at something comparably profound and self-reflexive, or confrontational.
Scott has done a bunch of press for the film, and I’ve found him to be a more interesting character than his Napoleon—gruff and boorish, but also hard to pin down, with a body of work that runs the gamut. In a recent New Yorker profile, he’s compared to Logan Roy. The piece elaborates on his “irrepressible drive,” with Napoleon screenwriter David Scarpa saying: “You send him pages while he’s shooting, he shoots twelve hours a day, he then goes out to dinner with the actors, then he works on editing what he’s shot that day. After that, he reads your pages, and the next day you get the e-mail from Europe, and he’s storyboarded them.” Behind Scott’s recent relentlessness, the story argues, is the loss of his brother Tony, who committed suicide in 2012. Since then, he has more or less worked nonstop, a shield against what he calls “the black dog” (depression). “If I stop, I find myself sinking,” a source says he’s said.
How Scott pulled off the battle sequences
Though I was not a fan of Napoleon on the whole, I was enamored with some of the battle sequences—how closely they resemble the grand oil paintings of the period—and I’ve enjoyed reading Scott break down how he pulled them off.
In a Vulture piece about the making of the film, Scott detailed how he minimized shoot days by working with as many as 11 cameras at a time.
According to Scott, the Battle of Austerlitz shoot was scheduled to last six days, “but we did it in three and a half.” One secret to the director’s efficiency is that he shoots with multiple cameras simultaneously — for Napoleon, usually four but sometimes as many as 11 — requiring fewer takes and less time between them to reset. “In the morning, I’ll tell my brilliant cinematographer, Dariusz Wolski, ‘I want a camera there and there and there and there. How long to set them up?’ He’ll say, ‘40 minutes,’ and I’m shooting by 9 a.m.,” Scott says. “Other directors use one camera and they go on forever, but this literally allows me to shoot 4-to-11 times faster.”
He also discussed using CGI to fill out the extensive armies:
For Napoleon’s battles, 400 human soldiers and 100 horses were positioned on the front lines, and CGI was used to expand their ranks behind them.
And he shared some of his storyboards:
And now…
The Listings
Gabriel Guzman is looking for Black/Afro Latinx female mid-20s actors for a debut supporting role in a feature film. Location: NYC. Dates: TBD in spring 2024. Singing is preferred, nothing operatic but more lullaby/tranquil like. It’s an open call! No acting experience required but is preferred. Email gabrielguzmannyc.97@yahoo.com.
Alex Cottle can offer script notes/analysis (TV, podcasting, short films, feature films), experience is 8 years in professional creative roles. Rates depend on depth of feedback, whether feedback is given in writing/in meeting, etc. Email alexandrakcottle@gmail.com.
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