{"id":34655,"date":"2025-04-11T07:01:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-11T06:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/2025\/04\/34655\/2023-films-and-stuff-2\/"},"modified":"2025-04-11T07:01:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T06:01:16","slug":"2023-films-and-stuff-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/2025\/04\/34655\/2023-films-and-stuff-2\/","title":{"rendered":"2023 films and stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>While February 2023 feels like it was only a few weeks ago and I\u2019m sort of wondering what I could have done all year, I also know that I did do some stuff.<\/p>\n<p>I spent Eurovision week in Norfolk and another couple of weeks in Malaysia. I saw Loveless (twice), Asgeir, Dave Hause, Scott Bradlee\u2019s Postmodern Jukebox, Hozier, ThxSoMch and Sleep Token play live (and have already bought tickets for a few gigs next year). I went to the penultimate e-prix of the season in London and saw FE cars whizz about making their souped-up milk float noises (affectionate).<\/p>\n<p>I did not really see that many new films \u2013 last year there were 25 and this year there are only 13. Partly, I feel like there just wasn\u2019t a lot I felt like seeing at the London Film Festival but also, I did have kind of a general meh feeling about going to my local cinema. Was there even anything I might have seen in another year? I can only think of \u201cThe Marvels\u201d and maybe there wasn\u2019t anything else or I just didn\u2019t hear about other films to make me go and see them.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, <a href=\"https:\/\/boxd.it\/jUrAY\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">those 13 films<\/a> in reverse order of how much I liked them, as is customary for such things:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>The Monkey King<\/strong> \u2013 I get that Monkey is kind of annoying, but I\u2019d thought other interpretations had a kind of loveable scamp quality to him on occasion that this one just didn\u2019t have. It was kind of limp.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Unknown: Cosmic Time Machine<\/strong> \u2013 This was just an hour long documentary about the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope, which did its job and told me about that but you can see how The Monkey King had to be poor to be less liked than a film that was merely efficient and functional.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Behind the Mountains<\/strong> \u2013 There\u2019s some weird pacing choices and the main character just kind of gets angry sometimes and doesn\u2019t really seem to talk to anyone about why he does the stuff he does.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny<\/strong> \u2013 Kept things going at a reasonable pace but might have benefitted from reusing stuff from previous films a bit less.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre<\/strong> \u2013 I saw this on the flight back from Malaysia, so I expect I must have seen an edited version but this is the same airline that edited out the word \u201cJew\u201d from Sandman but not the word beginning with C meaning vulva. I don\u2019t think any edits would have made too much difference in all honesty since this film delivers everything  you\u2019d expect from a Jason Statham film directed by Guy Ritchie.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Pigeon Tunnel<\/strong> \u2013 John Le Carr\u00e9 does have a very interesting life story, and is an excellent storyteller as you might expect from someone who has written so many popular books. I\u2019m not sure I\u2019m entirely sold on Errol Morris\u2019 interview technique generally, but the contrast between them was entertaining at least.<\/li>\n<li><strong>One Life<\/strong> \u2013 I already knew about the Kindertransport and Sir Nicholas Winton before I saw this film and I\u2019ve seen the relevant clips on youtube a few times \u2013 so nothing happens in this film that I did not expect but it was still worth seeing how some man just slogging away at paperwork managed to impact so many lives.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Book of Clarence<\/strong> \u2013 Since this one is related to Jesus, I took my Mum to see it at LFF and she had a great time, particularly since the director was there to talk about the film. I liked the choice to make it in that 50s\/60s biblical epic style.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Fingernails<\/strong> \u2013 This was good, but like I\u2019ve said elsewhere, I never want to see it again. I also feel like not everyone in the screening I saw was expecting a science fiction kind-of-dystopia setting. <\/li>\n<li><strong>Barbie<\/strong> \u2013 I mean\u2026she\u2019s everything.<\/li>\n<li><strong>John Wick: Chapter 4<\/strong> \u2013 For a lot of the year, this film was at the top of my 2023 list and it\u2019s only because I saw two outstanding films in October that it\u2019s in third place. Like the previous films, this is full of deeply satisfying action, beautifully shot and exists in a universe where you don\u2019t need to question how John Wick gets to the places around the world that he shows up in, he just does.<\/li>\n<li><strong>COPA 71<\/strong> \u2013 FIFA are literally the worst and these footballers are absolute legends. The amount of archival footage was fantastic, especially since the entire event basically got deleted from football history.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Taste of Things<\/strong> \u2013 I could live in this film. Ok, not literally in that time period because I do enjoy having a microwave, but just put me at those dinner tables. A film about love, that feels like the smoothest, most velvety chocolate ganache and I would absolutely devour it, if you could make the experience of a film tangible.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Definitely see that last one.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align:right;\"><small>Mirrored from <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.herdivineshadow.com\/2023\/12\/2023-films-and-stuff\/\">half girl, half robot<\/a>.<\/small><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.dreamwidth.org\/tools\/commentcount?user=herdivineshadow&amp;ditemid=1081696\" width=\"30\" height=\"12\" alt=\"comment count unavailable\" style=\"vertical-align: middle;\"> comments<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/herdivineshadow.dreamwidth.org\/1081696.html\">Link to the original site<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While February 2023 feels like it was only a few weeks ago and I\u2019m sort of wondering what I could have done all year, I also know that I did do some stuff. I spent Eurovision week in Norfolk and another couple of weeks in Malaysia. I saw Loveless (twice), Asgeir, Dave Hause, Scott Bradlee\u2019s &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/2025\/04\/34655\/2023-films-and-stuff-2\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">2023 films and stuff<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reblogged"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34655\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.herdivineshadow.com\/journals\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}