4. Poor Issues
Director Yorgos Lanthimos, screenwriter Tony McNamara, and star Emma Stone’s reunion after The Favorite is the perfect Frankenstein film we’ve had in a long time. Tailored from Alasdair Grey’s novel of the identical identify, Poor Issues is sumptuously decadent and fortunately transgressive because it finds darkish comedy within the following setup: A mad scientist (Willem Dafoe beneath a thick coat of make-up) brings a random suicide he found again from the lifeless… however solely after he’s put the mind of the unborn fetus in her physique into the full-grown lady’s cranium. It’s a macabre setup which the movie nakedly turns right into a satire of the patriarchy as psychological new child Bella Baxter (Stone) breaks away from the boys who created her so as to uncover what it means to dwell, notably as a lady.
The show-stopping draw of the movie is Stone’s electrical efficiency as Bella; it’s fearless, leaping with no web stuff that balances between excessive bodily comedy and tortured emotional complexity. It additionally, frankly, courts offending some audiences given how bluntly it embraces intercourse as a part of the human expertise. However behind all of the perversity is a layered work that’s surprisingly mild for Lanthimos. It doesn’t damage, both, that the movie is a feast for the eyes with jaw-dropping costumes and manufacturing designs, that are captured in exquisitely atonal cinematography by Robbin Ryan. It’s a grimy little freak of a film, and we suspect Mary Shelley could be proud.
![Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling on Barbie Set](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Barbie_Gosling_Robbie_Gerwig.jpeg?w=1024)
3. Barbie
Greta Gerwig‘s Barbie is just not solely probably the most worthwhile film of the 12 months, it’s additionally one of the colourful, nuanced, and purely satisfying experiences you can have in 2023. Powered by super hype, partially associated to sharing a launch date with Oppenheimer, in addition to some extraordinarily shrewd advertising, cinemas had been offered out to audiences carrying pink in solidarity with the titular doll. Cynical product placement? Nope, it is a a lot smarter movie than that. Transformers, it isn’t.
Margot Robbie performs Barbie. Or quite, certainly one of many Barbies who dwell within the candy-colored idyll of Barbieland. In the meantime the Barbieland Kens are considerably superfluous, counting on Barbie for vanity. However when stereotypical Ken and Barbie enter the true world, it’s a impolite awakening for Barbie. Not anti-male, however undoubtedly anti-the-patriarchy, Gerwig’s imaginative and prescient makes for a gently feminist movie that’s additionally very humorous and palatable for children and grown-ups alike. Sporting a large ensemble forged, throwing in cultural references left, proper, and middle, Barbie nearly calls for repeat viewings. We’re assured this’ll be a fan favourite for the ages.
![Cast of Past Lives](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Cast-of-Past-Lives.jpeg?w=1024)
2. Previous Lives
On occasion, a brand new filmmaker emerges with an astonishing quantity of confidence and absolutely shaped imaginative and prescient. Author-director Celine Music is one such filmmaker, and Previous Lives is one such movie—a shimmering and aching love story that has the maturity to ponder concerning the roads not taken and the loves by no means fulfilled.
In a decade the place all the pieces from superhero films to Oscar winners are utilizing the multiverse as an allegory concerning the decisions we make in life, Previous Lives removes the metaphor by inspecting what that anxiousness actually is for 2 folks residing with out artifice. Nora and Hae Sung had been childhood sweethearts whereas rising up on the streets of Seoul, South Korea, however after Nora’s mother and father elect to immigrate to Canada, Nora leaves with out even saying goodbye. She merely takes one street going up the hill on a sunny afternoon, and Hae takes one other that retains him on his degree. The movie then jumps a number of instances into the long run, revisiting the pair first of their early 20s after which 30s after they reconnect repeatedly. In every reunion, they’re painfully interested by how the opposite’s life turned out—and implicitly looking for what would possibly’ve been, might be, and by no means will come.