2023 Year in Review: Filmish Edition

Last week I put up the bookish edition of my 2023 year in review. That was so long that I thought it made more sense to talk about my films of 2023 in a separate post. So, here is that post – my 2023 year in review: filmish edition.

1. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936)

“It’s like I’m out in a big boat, and I see one fellow in a rowboat who’s tired of rowing and wants a free ride, and another fellow who’s drowning. Who would you expect me to rescue? Mr. Cedar – who’s just tired of rowing and wants a free ride? Or those men out there who are drowning? Any ten-year-old child will give you the answer to that.”

~

I enjoyed this one, but I didn’t love it. It didn’t move me the way Mr. Smith Goes to Washington did the first time I watched it (though, speaking of Mr. Smith, it is funny that Jean Arthur plays pretty much exactly the same part in both movies). I think part of it may be that Gary Cooper doesn’t quite work as well for that sort of part as Jimmy Stewart does…I also think the plot of Mr. Deeds just isn’t quite as compelling as that of Mr. Smith.

2. Brigadoon (1954)

“Why do people have to lose things to find out what they really mean?”

~

I didn’t care for this one. I mean, Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse dancing was cool (although I didn’t find the dances as fun as they are in, say, Singing in the Rain), but the plot bothered me rather. First off, the very premise seems messed up to me. The idea that living cut off from the rest of humanity will necessarily prevent sin is a pretty inherently flawed idea, I think, and the idea that people are prevented from leaving does not sit right with me at ALL. Free will is a good thing, people. I felt so bad for the fellow who wanted to leave. Doesn’t it seem pretty cruel that he was forced to just stand there and watch the woman he loved marry somebody else, and not even be allowed to try to forget her by getting more than, say, a few yards away from her? (It was a pretty small place, y’all.)

Also, the Jeff-fellow randomly deciding to start shooting at just the time that he did seemed extremely contrived, and the ending was very deus ex machina.

But the thing that bothered me the most? Why, why did they give the Jeff-fellow much more of a personality and interesting development and arc than the main character, THEN JUST LEAVE HIM STANDING THERE ON THE BRIDGE AT THE END?? WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM? I NEED TO KNOW.

3. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1988 BBC version)

“Is he… safe?”

“Safe? Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Of course he isn’t safe… but… he’s GOOD… He’s the King.”

~

I fear that I didn’t care for this one, either. It was nice that the kids were played by actual kids (although I always pictured Peter a little older than that). But other than that…well, I suppose the cheesiness of old BBC mini-serieses is pretty well-established, and I’m afraid this wasn’t really an exception. (The White Witch, though…lady. Lady. We love you, but. Subtlety is a good thing.)

Oh, and also…the script mostly stuck very close to the book, but they tampered about with it in a very strange way SPOILER after Aslan comes back to life. They have it so that Lucy seems annoyed, because she and Susan had to go through being so sad about Aslan dying when, as it turned out, he was going to come back anyway…and then Aslan says some weird thing to the effect of, “well, the Deep Magic had never been tested,” which I’m assuming is supposed to imply that maybe it wouldn’t have worked? That completely ruins the Christian imagery. END SPOILER

4. The Happiest Millionaire (1967)

“To have your alligators thaw out and your daughter forgive you all in the same bright morning, that’s fortuosity!”

~

This was quite cute. At first we were a little unsure about it, but once you accept that there’s a certain level of randomness involved – you can easily go from an extended song-and-dance sequence in one scene to family drama in the next to alligators freezing in the next – it’s a lot of fun. (And I challenge you to watch this and not find yourself humming “Let’s Have a Drink On It” at random intervals.)

I did find it a little strange that Cordy apparently went to school solely to catch a man (notice how she just left after she got engaged?), but hey. We’re probably not supposed to think about it too deeply. (I also found it a little strange that the millionaire himself was one of the least happy people in the movie. But “The Happiest Irish Butler” or “The Happiest Young Man Obsessed with Cars” wouldn’t have quite the same ring, I admit.)

5. Sense and Sensibility (1971)

“You cannot know what I suffer.”

“If only you knew!”

~

Didn’t like it very much, I fear. I reviewed it in full here.

6. Jane Eyre (2011)

“I offer you my hand, my heart. Jane, I ask you to pass through life at my side. You are my equal and my likeness… Will you marry me?”
“Are you mocking me?”
“Do you doubt me?”
“Entirely.”

~

I sort of liked it, but not as much as I wanted to. I reviewed it here.

7. Waterloo (1970)

“Next to a battle lost, the saddest thing is a battle won.”

~

I think this was very well-done, but I admit it didn’t engage me a huge amount. I’m not a huge battle-movie sort of person, you see – I can like movies like Gettysburg because you really get to know and become emotionally attached to the characters, but I didn’t feel that you get to do that as much in Waterloo. It seemed to me that we became just attached enough to everybody to feel sorry for everyone, but not enough to actually like anybody.

That being said, Rod Steiger was sort of absolutely perfect as Napoleon.

8. Pickpocket (1959)

“I know those who’ve done these things usually keep quiet, and those who talk haven’t done them. Yet I have done them.”

~

(This movie is in French, so we watched it with English subtitles. My French isn’t that good.)

I watched this at the instigation of my brother Mortimer, who is “the film guy” in our family. I quite liked it…it’s one of those movies that you really need to process and think about. Since lack of subtlety is something that can really annoy me, I really appreciated the subdued style of filming and acting (which Mortimer tells me is characteristic of the director, Robert Bresson). It made me feel that I had to piece together and dig into what was really happening, and I like that. As for the plot itself, a couple of my brothers said it reminded them of Crime and Punishment…which I myself have not read, but I trust them.

SPOILER I sort of wish the ending had made it more explicit that Michel had had a true change of heart, but I do see how that might spoil the restrained feel of the entire rest of the film. I suppose that Jeanne does represent goodness throughout the movie, so his acceptance of her love is really a symbol of his acceptance of goodness in general. END SPOILER

9. Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

“No, no, no, no, no! ‘Responstible’ is not a word!”

“We made it up.”

“Well, un-make it up.”

~

This movie had so much potential. I went into it wanting very much to like it – I’d read a glowing (and very well-written) review of it from the former queen of period drama blogging which made me very excited to see it. While I still maintain that it’s a very good review (which, when last tested, still makes me tear up), I didn’t…quite…like the movie itself.

I want to write a full review of this one sometime, so I won’t say too much about it now. Suffice it to say that I think it was a very interesting premise, but that its theme had problems and didn’t completely work for me.

10. Under the Greenwood Tree (2005)

“For a while I was blinded by your beauty but I now see you for what you are.”
“And what, pray, is that?”
“I would marry the lowliest maid in the county if I loved her. Nor money, nor learning, nor opinion of others would force me from loving her.”

~

I didn’t care for this one, I fear. Keeley Hawes was good – she was one of the reasons I wanted to see this, as I had yet to see her in anything – but I didn’t care for the story itself. I can’t speak for the book, not having read it, but this movie perpetrates one of my least favorite romantic tropes – namely, that if he gives you warm fuzzy feelings, it must be True Love, even if he’s actually kind of a jerk who sulks and doesn’t respect boundaries…and even if there’s a much nicer fellow who cares about you and doesn’t push himself on you or get passive aggressive at you but who’s old and unromantic, it can’t be True Love, because he’s not young and cute.

Also, the obligatory shirtless scene? Puh-LEEZE. It was so obviously just there for the sake of there being a shirtless scene.

11. Great Expectations (1946)

“In trying to become a gentleman, I had succeeded in becoming a snob.”

~

This was a fairly solid – if highly condensed – adaptation of the book. I didn’t care for all of the acting; I didn’t really like this interpretation of Joe, grown-up Estella seemed much too smiley and cheery and – this sounds so mean, but – I kind of didn’t think she was as beautiful as Estella is supposed to be, and while Pip’s acting was fine, he was just plain too old for the part. But the screenplay was good, on the whole, although they had to cut out some plot points due to time. The one badly-done bit, which stuck out like a sore thumb, was the last scene. It was quite bad and Hollywood-ized and un-subtle.

(Cool fun fact: this features a very young Alec Guinness as Herbert Pocket!)

12. Great Expectations (1989)

“You’re part of my existence. Part of my self. To the last hour of my life you cannot choose but to remain part of my character. Part of the little good in me. Part of the evil. You’re in every line I’ve ever read. Every prospect I’ve seen since I’ve been here. In the river. The sails of the ships. The marshes. The clouds. The wind. The woods. The sea. The streets. In light and darkness, you’re there. The embodiment of all that’s beautiful and graceful…”

~

I kind of fell in love with this one. I reviewed it in full here.

13. Babette’s Feast (1987)

“Throughout the world sounds one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me the chance to do my very best.”

~

(Watched this one with subtitles too. My Danish is even worse than my French…as in, non-existent.)

This is one that I feel sort of silly even trying to review. For one thing, I’m still processing the story and my thoughts on it and what it really means. (The style of it reminded me of Pickpocket, actually, in its beautiful restraint and subtlety.) For another thing, Babette’s Feast was so deep, so sophisticated, so subtle, that I’d feel like a doofus going all “I liked this part but such-and-such could have been better” etc. It’s kind of out of my depth.

Anyway. This was good. Watch it.

14. Great Expectations (1999)

“You cold, cold heart!”
“Do you reproach ME of being cold? I learned your lessons. I am what you have made me.”
“So proud!”
“Who taught me to be proud? Who told me that daylight would blight me, that I may not go out in it and now I cannot? I have never once been unfaithful to you or to your schooling. I have never shown any weakness that I can charge myself with!”

~

This was my least favorite Great Expectations that I’ve seen (I haven’t yet seen any of the more recent ones; I’ve been a little scared off by what I’ve seen/heard, truth be told). The strange artsy filming style was…interesting. If that were the only weird thing about this version, maybe I could have lived with it. But that was not the only weird thing about it. This one changed the original words/characterizations by far the most of the three versions I watched, sometimes in really strange ways. I hated the last scene with Pip and Miss Havisham, and SPOILER Abel Magwitch’s death scene was just weird, not moving. And the whole Orlick thing was just why? What was wrong with the much more climactic way it happened in the book which in fact made a lot more sense? END SPOILER And Wemmick and the Aged P were nowhere near as endearing and cute as they were supposed to be.

SPOILER And the ending did not meet with my approval. Not only does kissing one bloke while being married to another not sit well with me, but the way they tried to blend the two endings totally ruined what I think is a large point of the story: namely, that Pip’s feeling for Estella was not true love. Actual love should lead the self to higher things. Pip’s ‘love’ for Estella led him to lower things, to ingratitude and selfishness and superficial ideas of worth. And yet, in this movie, the ending seems to be saying that Pip truly loved Estella all along…I am not convinced, movie-makers. Infatuation does not equal love. END SPOILER

15. Stuart Little (1999)

“Mr. and Mrs. Little, we try to discourage couples from adopting outside of their own… species. It rarely works out.”

~

This was actually pretty cute. It had a lot of good ingredients – good actors (well, except for Jonathan Lipnicki, but since he was just a kid we can cut him some slack), impressive blending of live-action and CGI, a very interesting premise, and a not half-bad storyline. Its main problem, I think, was its screenplay. While there were definitely some cute lines, there were also definitely some lame and/or stiff bits.

I did appreciate that the parents were not portrayed as the comic relief or as stupider than the kids. Those are both phenomena which I think we have far too much of in children’s entertainment.

Also, I kind of want the Littles’ house.

That dining room?

That hidden door??

YES PLEASE.

16. The Prince of Egypt (1998)

“Pharaoh has the power. He can take away your food, your home, your freedom. He can take away your sons and daughters. With one word, Pharaoh can take away your very lives. But there is one thing he cannot take away from you: your faith. Believe, for we will see God’s wonders.”

~

I wanted to like this one. I liked bits of it…the plagues scene was quite well done, for instance. I guess part of it is that I wanted it to reach a level of gravitas and epicness which I don’t think it ever quite reached…if you’re going to have Moses be this goofy comic relief for the first half of the movie (which I’m not sure how I feel about, actually), that should be compensated by his dignity and gravity as God’s messenger in the second half of the movie. I guess they did that to an extent…but not enough of an extent.

Also, the characterizations of Aaron and Tzipporah were pretty wonky, and I wish they could have done something differently with the Moses and Rameses relationship…the way they played it, it almost felt like if Moses just explained things a bit better, Rameses would see he was right. It just felt Frustrating.

Do not read this line if you are attached to the way this portrayal of Moses looks and don’t want it spoiled. This isn’t exactly The Prince of Egypt’s fault, since it came before Tangled, but my mom pointed out that Moses in this version looks like Flynn Rider AND I CANNOT UN-SEE IT NOW.

17. Bleak House (2005)

“You don’t happen to know why they killed the pig, do you?”

“No.”

“On account of his having too much cheek.”

~

Mixed thoughts. I was glad it was so long, since even at eight hours (without much added fluff) I couldn’t help but notice things that were cut. Just imagine if they’d tried to keep it to three hours!

Nearly all the acting was quite good. Some of the characterization was excellent (like Lady Dedlock and Mr. Guppy), some Annoyed me (like Ada and Mr. George), and some was different from the book and sort of interesting and I’m not sure how much I liked it (like Mr. Jarndyce and Esther). Most of the screenplay was good, but there were not-so-great bits – for instance, SPOILERS in the book, I think that bit where they’re trying to find Lady Dedlock is kind of the climax of the story – and it was hugely suspenseful and engrossing. Then, in the mini-series, that part was cut down to pretty much nothing. It was strange. Not to mention there’s really nothing in the way of processing or recovery on Esther’s part after Lady Dedlock is found dead. END SPOILERS

Oh, and also, what was up with the weird camera technique and whooshing sounds? You got used to it after awhile, but it was honestly rather distracting.

This is another one I’d like to write a full post on sometime, so I’ll say no more about it now.

18. The Kid Brother (1927)

“Harold, the youngest Hickory, was born on April Fool’s Day. The stork that brought him could hardly fly for laughing.”

~

I saw this movie recommended in such glowing terms that I decided to give it a go. It was the first full-length silent film I’ve seen…and I loved it! It was really cute and funny and not at all boring or uninteresting. There was a lot of slapstick and physical comedy, but the comedy was often quite clever, and it wasn’t the sort of film where the plot was purely a vehicle for the comedy. You can actually care about the characters, and there was an actual plot which really got quite intense. We were all (figuratively) glued to the screen for the last half hour.

19. All Creatures Great and Small Season 3 (2023)

“Is something on fire?”
“Just dinner.”

~

You see, I enjoy the James Herriot books, and I enjoy the James Herriot show, but as completely separate entities. If you try to compare the show to the books, you have to start admitting that Siegfried and Tristan have been stripped of about 90% of their endearingness, and that show-Mrs. Hall has been pretty much completely fabricated, since book-Mrs. Hall was an extremely minor character, and that Helen was nowhere near as bossy in the books (or at least, she was quieter about it), and that about 75% of the events that happen in the show never even remotely came close to happening in the books. But that’s no fun. So we’ll just pretend that they’re two completely different stories instead.

In any case, ACGS is a fun show, though I certainly wouldn’t say it’s perfect. Season 3 was fun…though except for the totally wacky first episode, James himself was a bit of a minor character throughout. There were definitely things that didn’t make sense to me (for instance, Florence honey, maybe if you didn’t want him to propose you should have made that clear before flirting like there’s no tomorrow and inviting him to meet your parents and generally leading him to assume that you’d receive a proposal favorably?), but Such is Life.

That being said, the last episode actually made me get on the verge of tearing up, which I can’t remember the show of ACGS ever doing before. (Also, you could hear the Al Bowlly song “Blue Moon” in the background at the beginning of the last episode, and that made me ridiculously excited since I love that song. Random fact of the day for you.)

20. Arthur Christmas (2011)

“But there’s a child without a present!”
“Arthur, Christmas is not a time for emotion.”

~

This was pretty cute, actually. My mom described it as a sort of mix of Rudolph and The Incredibles…try to imagine that and you’ve got a decent idea of Arthur Christmas.

The technological aspect was pretty cool. I rather liked the twist of making Santa a hereditary thing (though, if I may nitpick, how could it be in a direct line from St. Nick, as Gandsanta says? St. Nicholas was a Catholic bishop and thusly had no kids…perhaps he just appointed someone, and it was hereditary from then on?). Although this was definitely a secular Christmas movie (which seems to work on the same premise as Rudolph, that no Santa=no Christmas, which is Not How That Works), I think its moral is in fact a very good, solid, wholesome moral: every single child is important and unique, and cannot be viewed as just a number or a statistic. That’s why the idea of one child being missed was such a travesty to Arthur – where Santa and Steve just saw a nearly perfect mission, Arthur saw a unique human being feeling disappointed and left out.

(Also, it’s fun that there are so many big names as voice actors – James McAvoy, Bill Nighy, the always fantastic Hugh Laurie, James Broadbent, Imelda Staunton, even Andy Serkis in a minor role.)

Whew, that’s it! There you have my 2023 year in review: filmish edition. (Now I rather want to write full-length reviews of a lot of these!) What films did you discover in 2023? Have you seen any of my new finds of 2023?