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.