2023 Over

Another year. Another 150 movies or so. Bunch of tat, bunch of ace, the usual blend. Lists;

10 Best Films I Saw On A Big Screen

1. Beau Is Afraid

I'm sorry Mr Scorcese, but you were beaten out by a frazzled non stop three hour anxiety attack that never ceased building on it's own outrageous invention every step of the way. Just the bit where Phoenix walks into a stage play that becomes his reality could be film of the year on its own. Amazing.

2. Killers Of The Flower Moon

Scorcese revelling in every aspect of his visual craft allowing the story to elegantly unfold on screen at its own pace to powerful effect. Idiots complain about it's length, if anything it could have been longer.

3. Oppenheimer

Nolan pretending to make a worthy film, but it's still just all his usual narrative tricks and fascinations with time, Excellent.

4. Infinity Pool

There's sights in this film that I never thought I'd watch on a big screen with a paying audience. The craziest rich people go crazy movie since Society.

5. Godzilla -1.0

A genuinely affecting story and some of the best Godzilla fucking shit up scenes ever all in a movie that has the feel of a live action studio Ghibli flick! Doesn't seem possible, but it is! I saw it.

6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Sometimes you just want something that has oodles of style and a bouncing hip hop soundtrack. This is the best one of those this year.

7. Pearl

Ti West and Mia Goth prove themselves to be no flash in the plan collaboration with this excellent prequel follow up to X. Roll on number three.

8. Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3

What the fuck's going on over at Marvel? No idea, but this one was ace.

9. Talk To Me

Stood out from the overcrowded mass of cookie cutter horror that gets shat out by the film studios due to its use of humour and creeping undertone of nastiness.

10. Asteroid City

Wes Anderson at his best.

5 Notable Small Screen Gems

1. Pink Flamingos

Joefest continues to offer up a dazzling gluttony of insanity but the best of this year by a margin was John Waters' trash classic. Utter depravity communicated in arch camp, an incredible thing to see on the Joefest screen.

2. Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Amongst Thieves

Of all the modern films I watched this year, whether streaming exclusives or filtering down from the big screen like this one, this was the stand out due to the irreverence with which it treated its source material - taking the piss in exactly the right way and highlighting what is so great about an RPG.

3. Venus Of Ille

In all the old Italian cinema that I continue to gorge myself on, the Di Leo movies Blood & Diamonds and Killer Contro Killers both stood out strongly but pipping them to the post is Bava's final movie, a gothic masterpiece in miniature showcasing all of his talents.

4. Magic Cop

It takes something these days to make the old jaw go slack, but the action pieces in this that splice cool mystical bullshit with Hong Kong cinema acrobatics were just awesome. Such a great movie.

5. Messiah Of Evil

It still amazes me that films can still pop out of nowhere and be incredible. This mix of Lovecraft and Romero has been around since the seventies, not heard of it till about a year ago and it's incredible. How does that happen?

5 Things That Wasted My Time

1. Cocaine Bear

There's a lot of just bland old crap swimming round the bottom of the end these days, it takes something to stand out as truly awful and really sink below the rest of the turds in the pack. This does it, like a fucking lead turd.

2. Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts

As I watched, so many questions rose in my mind. All quite desperate questions, that really required an answer. Why is Optimus Prime such a whiny bellend? Why does the hero cry over the death of his new best friend and then wear his corpse? Why do the animal transformers even have robot forms if they never use them? The answer ended up being because this film is utterly, utterly shit.

3. Dungeonmaster/ Demons 3

I purposely watch a lot of old bollocks, and I'll give grace where appropriate - I wasn't expecting Blackenstein to be a classic. But these two are the absolute nadir of this kind of crap, meandering badly put together offal dumps on celluloid, can't win 'em all etc.

4. Wonder Woman 84/ The Flash

Never mind what's going on over at Marvel? What in the flying fuck is going on over at DC? Everybody appears to have entirely lost sight of how to put together a movie without entirely fucking it up.

5. Predestination

In the world of Sci-Fi there's mad shit, and there's 'what the fuck were you thinking putting me through that pile of piss you arseholes?' mad shit. This one's the latter.

The Passions Of Carol

A high-brow hardcore pornographic adaptation of Charles Dickens classic. The highlight was the ghost of Christmas past showing Miss Scrooge how when she was younger her best friend stuffed a dolls arm up her fanny but left the little hand sticking out like it was waving for attention. And that's enough Christmas for me this year.

Game Over [36.15 Code Père Noël/ Deadly Games: Dial Code Santa Claus]

An outright oddity, which when you're stood in the field of psychotic Santa movies is quite the achievement. It's so full of conflicting ideas that it's difficult to settle on whether it's a good film or not. And I think that this is a good thing. But then I'm not sure that it is.

Black Christmas

Apart from being about a killer stalking a sorority house at Christmas, this fucking awful shit bears no resemblance to the original film. This time round the fucking awful killer is the Patriarchy, represented by a frat boy rape cult who get their power from a statue that has been torn down because it was of a racist who hated women and the fucking awful message appears to be that surviving rape once is a good thing because it gives you the skillset to avoid it again. Fucking awful.

Black Christmas

Straight up remake of the original, but with all of the police investigation aspect removed entirely to make room for flashbacks that explain that the killer is a man with yellow skin who was raped by his mother who gave birth to a daughter who also has yellow skin, and is a man, and is also the killer. Not as good as the original.

Black Christmas [Silent Night, Evil Night]

A remarkable early slasher, notable for both the fact that it never reveals its demented killer setting it apart from all the Italian Giallo preceding it and the police presence are actually helpful in trying to solve the mystery as they investigate, setting it apart from nearly all the American slashers that followed.

Campfire Tales

This set of Tales is an anthology of four narrated by a homeless person to a group of children camping in the woods. The first three stories; a hooked killer killing people, weed is bad because you'll rot and die and an evil Santa tearing the still beating heart of a murderer from his chest are pretty good, but unfortunately they only take up the first half of the film with the rest given over to some shitty pirate story that's clearly been filmed down the local beach.

Escort Girls

Not the naughty Christmas Eve sexploitation romp that's promised, instead it's a lot of dour social critique soaked in misery, racism and abuse.

Tales Of The Third Dimension in 3-D [2D]

Anthology movie with segments linked by a talking skeleton showcasing the worst possible 3D effects, the first two stories are shit, but then everything is saved by a gloriously unhinged final Christmas story.

Velvet Buzzsaw

Some good ideas spoiled by an entirely disjointed delivery that couldn't decide if it wanted to be art satire or a horror movie when it had plenty of space to be both.

Cuento de navidad [A Christmas Tale]

Misleadingly titled, there's no reason for the main antagonist to be dressed as Santa, but they are, so it's apparently not a mean spirited, sub Stephen King, kids adventure but a Christmas story. I call bullshit on that.

Godzilla Minus One [Gojira -1.0]

An absolutely superb Godzilla movie, with the beast comfortably straddling both old and modern interpretations of itself whilst pounding his way through a compelling story of post war Japan. Just excellent.

Whoever Slew Auntie Roo

A teeth grindingly British retelling of Hansel & Gretel, only this time the wicked witch is Shelley Winters bringing her full array of staring madness as a benevolent rich lady who throws Christmas parties for orphans.

Santa Claus: A Horror Story [Santa Claus: Serial Rapist]

Soft porn levels of nudity combined with meandering pontification on theology in attempt to suggest that all the tits and fanny on display is actually highbrow. It's really not.

There's Something In The Barn

Aims for Gremlins but doesn't even manage to surpass Critters. And to make matters worse it looks like it was edited with a trowel.

Bad Santa 2

A miserable attempt to replicate the first film, too many years later.