This Is Not Goodbye

             On August 6^th 2012, after selecting a pre-created blog format offered by Gmail, I uploaded the very first post to this page; a faux-review of Brave, at that time the most recent Pixar release. I examined in, I think, pretty fair fashion what made it the first major (non-Cars) letdown for many fans who had up to then been ride-or-die for Pixar. As was still kosher at the time, I even quoted Rotten Tomatoes!

            11 years and about 9 months have passed, and I am now posting the 400^th article on this site. With one, exceedingly brief exception, I have not changed the page layout at all, and after that initial post I learned very quickly to ignore aggregate review sites. It's been a journey, to be certain. But it's one that must have an end; life and circumstance have been pulling me away from this site for some time, and now that this not-insignificant milestone is finally here, I believe it's time to pause, take a look back, and gather a few thoughts.

            Though much has happened between then and now, I can still recall much of what I thought and hoped at the time I started. I was fresh out of college, having spent four years drenching myself in campus theater, developing my first deep tastes and takes on film, music, and pop culture, and had a circle of friends and contacts with whom I shared these passions. Plus, those years were when many of us came of age in tandem with Youtube and Facebook, producing the first nascent generation of amateur, independent online „celebrities“ dedicated to media criticism, commentary, and comedy. The figures of this first wave- most notably the Walkers and Bob Chipman- had a massive and hard-to-summarize impact on me, though it left its scars as well.

            At the time, all I knew was; I wanted in. I had already begun regularly following traditional critics like Roger Ebert and A.O. Scott, supplemented by the new voices from my generation. The „plan“, such as it was, was to start with amateur reviews posted to my blog, after which I had hazy dreams of somehow going viral or hitting on the right contact to land some kind of official or regular work as either a written critic, or making the leap to Youtube like the growing ranks of video essayists I was already deeply obsessed with.

            Even given the exceedingly volatile and happenstance nature of the modern internet and what does or does not „make it“- something I did not appreciate at the time but very soon came to grasp- there actually was a window where it looked (to me) like it might work out that way. Thanks to the creativity and efforts of some of my best friends, the Cinema Joes podcast was up and running regularly right about when the major podcast boom started, and in 2016 the views on this site started to rise to numbers that maybe, possibly, pointed to something more taking shape. After several years of averaging a few thousand views a month, or or less, October of 2016 saw this number shot up to just shy of 5,000. The very next month shot way over, and for about a calendar year I saw my view count spike to between 10,000 and 15,000 in most months, hitting a high of 17,666 clicks in July of 2017.

            As mysteriously as this spike began- I can't point to any particular post or string of posts at this time that seemed primed to win the algorithm wars- it ended. I last topped 5,000 in November of 2017, after which my views cratered (almost) for good. Here too, I can't see any impetus as to why. My rate of posting was actually increasing at the time- 2013 was the lone year I managed a whole post per week, but in 2018 I came very close with 50 posts over the course of the year. So it's not like I was slowing down at this particular moment. It's something I will never be able to know.

            Nonetheless, the fact that I at least seemed to have something going kept me thinking that, if I can just get my pace back up, another spike was possible.....and then COVID happened. 

            If I'm being honest, the slowdown started before then; life was already pulling me away enough that I dropped from 50 posts in 2018 to just 33 in 2019. But, entering 2020, I had been actively planning to reinvest more time in the site, hoping to get into a stretch where I would watch as many movies as possible and do a full review for literally every single one of them. Up until then, I had been able to top 50 or 60 official new releases per year, so actually committing to that goal would have been a not-insignificant spike in my content output. BUT, suddenly theaters were closed, the amount of new movie content available was reduced to a trickle, and with the world trying to crush us, I very simply had too many more important things to worry about. The rate of new releases I was able (and had the energy) to see collapsed, and to be frank, has never really recovered.

            My work here wasn't dead, not yet. But the blow had been struck. I managed only 46 posts combined for the first two years of the pandemic, before my productivity collapsed even further. As you can see, there are only 9 posts apiece for the past two years. This post will just be my 5^th of 2024. And here I am now. I am not the next Roger Ebert. I am not the successor to the Nostalgia Critic (yes, that was a very explicit goal I had for a not-insignificant amount of time). I don't even have an unpaid gig for a fan site. Cinema Joes is (for the time being) on ice. I am simply me, doing my thing. This will be the 400^th post on a 12-year-old blog. As of this writing, this site has a total view count of 344,000+. Certainly more than nothing, to be fair.

            The weirdest thing, though, is this; after years of ignoring the stats page, when I finally checked back in to do some number-crunching for this post, I found that, somehow.....my views spiked to an all-time high last year???? Out of (seemingly) nowhere, September 2023 saw this page top 22,000 views, and then almost hit 20,000 again a few months later in February. These two huge spikes easily outstrip the best months of my „optimism“ phase. How? Why?

            I suspect- I would very much like to believe- that this was Barbenheimer's doing. I may have gone just a touch nuts last year over the first major, worldwide cultural Movie Moment since probably the first Avengers movie and dedicated no less than 3 massive articles to the Barbenheimer craze. In all honesty, I do think this batch ranks among my best pieces of writing, so I will go to my grave believing that my working thesis is correct, and they offered me one final window of internet glory.

            Interestingly, though, none of those are among my most-viewed posts. This is another fun little well to play in. As of right now, there are exactly 11 out of my 399 posts that have topped a thousand views. The ranking of my most-viewed posts, as of May 2024, are as follows:

My Top 10 Favorite Naruto Arcs and/or Story Moments (3,630)

My 10 Favorite Avatar Fights (2,750)

Reflections: The End of Legend of Korra (2, 610)

The Problem with Naruto (2,380)

Nippon Review: Death Note – Light up the NEW World (2,280)

Review: How To Let Go Of The World (and Love All the Things Climate Can't Change) (1,310)

Review: Queen of Katwe (1,240)

Nippon Reviews: Dear Deer (1,120)

Review: Der Nachtmahr (1,100)

My Top 10 Favorite Naruto Fights (1,090)

Review: Star Wars Rogue One (1,050)

 

            What a delightfully weird mix this is. About half of these, most notably the top four, are the sort of listicle/problems-with sort of articles that I would absolutely expect to top these sorts of statistics. A big part of the mid-2010's was that it saw the end of both Naruto and Bleach, two of Shonen Jump's Big Three, in fairly controversial fashion. For a certain sect of anime fans from my generation, there is no understating Naruto's impact, so I find myself quite pleased to see my 3 main posts on the topic here. Plus, I consider both my Avatar Month series and pretty much all my seasonal reviews of Korra to among by better pieces of media analysis, so again, seeing at least two out of that batch top my view counts is deeply satisfying.

            As for the more typical film reviews that somehow made their way here.....it is beyond me to figure out the how and why. Given that anything Star Wars is potential algorythm bait, Rogue One isn't a shocker. I remain a big fan of Der Nachtmahr, and I may very well be one of the only English-language reviews ever written on this almost entirely unknown German psychadelic sci-fi tribute, so maybe I won points for that. As for the rest? None of these are among either the best nor the worst films I have treated here. They are all perfectly fine movies I enjoyed, but I don't recall ever returning to or recommending any of them after I finished writing my review.

            The fact that my highest-viewed regular review is a Japanese Death Note film- one of many live-action expansions of the universe Japanese cinema has produced- might be the funniest part of this. Important to note, this is NOT the Netflix adaptation, which I also reviewed here and which had the dubious distinction of receiving the worst film rating I have ever put to paper. No, this is simply a mid-level live-action take on a manga property, something that is a dime-a-dozen in Japan and is otherwise of absolutely no importance or note. I truly don't get it, and I do believe I never will.

            Having looked over all 399 past posts, in many cases rereading some for the first time in years, it's fascinating to try and grasp all that has happened in this time. I began writing before Obama's reelection, in the wake of the titanic gamechanger that was the first Avengers movie, meaning I have been writing for what is now the bulk of Marvel's box office dominance. At the same time, it was only a year or so later when the horrifically abortive DCEU was launched, something I only very, very passingly touched on, since I knew to stay well away from that train wreck.

            This is likely to get way out of hand, but I would like to at least try to do a recap of what I consider the most important, interesting, well-written, or significant posts I’ve done over the past 12 years. Here and there I found a few new thoughts on something I wrote about ages ago. Sometimes I found my opinions from them refreshingly relevant and durable, while, of course, there is plenty that has not aged well. I already took myself to task for my first ten Top Ten Films lists, so I won't rehash that here. However, I thought it would be fun to make a „definitive“ list of the best films from each year that I would put on my own iteration of an all-time (and unranked) Great Films list, ala Roger Ebert.

            This will not be an exhausting re-examination, more a collection of thoughts on a loose timeline. 

August 2012:

It all began with Brave New Film, my first-ever post. 

September 2012: End of the Nostalgia Critic

            Yes, this is one of the elephants in the room. The original run of the Nostalgia Critic had slightly preceeded me starting college and first discovering the TGWTG/Channel Awesome site, and the first attempt to retire the character happened right after I graduated. The timing was far too poetic to ingore. Looking at what I said then- noting how the very amateurish style of many of these first-wave Youtube videos made it feel like we were watching close friends, not distant media figures- I can see now I had already fallen into a form of the parasocial trap that has led to a great amount of controversy and pain for many online creators and their fans over the years. I get why I felt this way and can't fault myself for it. But it's clear I did not see the turns coming.

October 2012:

            My first „official“ film review, of PTA's enigmatic The Master.

December 2012:

            The first Hobbit movie comes out and I raved. This has a very strong Before Times vibe now.

January 2013: Return of the Nostalgia Critic

            Oh boy. I was somewhat sceptical at the time and actually wrote, „let's hope he (Doug Walker) doesn't end up regretting this.“ In time, we are all Nostradamus.

February 2013:

            My first ever Top Ten list! I've already done my mea culpa over picking Lincoln, but both it and Cloud Atlas remain my two favorite films from this year. The other keepers; The Secret World of Arrietty, Moonrise Kingdom, and Cabin in the Woods.

March 2013: Top Ten Films Nominated for Animated Feature that DIDN'T win

            This was a great idea and I am very glad I committed to it. Redoing it now would be too much of a chore, since the number of amazing snubs that qualify for this has since doubled and doubled again.

April 2013:

            It was here when Roger Ebert passed, and I wrote one of literally countless tributes that flooded the web over the subsequent weeks. Given all we later experienced with Channel Awesome, I am particularly grateful for the fact that, the more we learn about Roger and who he was, the more we realize that some heroes really do exist.

            It was also in this month that I took a stab at my own Top 20 All-Time Favorite Films list. This was directly inspired by Doug Walker doing the same, and while I like how it turned out, I have come to realize that this is not the sort of thing that should be limited to a set, arbitrary number. Best Of or Favorites lists should grow, deepen, and expand, not remain static to force a kill-your-darlings blood fued.

Summer 2013:

            Alongside Man of Steel, JJ Abrams' 2^nd take on Star Trek with Into Darkness was the season‘s major blockbuster. This was the first time I truly hated a film and went OFF in a review. I stand by everything I said then, and I even commented directly on the concerns I suddenly had about the upcoming Star Wars sequel series. Again, with time, Nostradamus, etc. etc.

October 2013:

This month featured my review of Gone Home. Other than my ranking of the Pokemon Gameboy games, this is the only video game review I ever did. It is unique in this, but I also think I found a great angle to examine this criminally underappreciated gem of an indie. This post remains a personal favorite.

January 2014:

            It was here when I made my „infamous“ defense of the Hobbit movies. I still get why I said this. I did see the warning signs, but it was only after seeing Linday Ellis' documentary examination of the production that I realized I was way too nice and hopeful. Ah well. I know what I intended, and I still feel that the movies didn't HAVE to be the clusterfuck they turned into.

            It was also this month when I began my yearly original Film Awards. I think this was a great idea and I was able to repeat for a few years afterwards. I feel deeply that the „Milkshake Award“ is one of the best ideas I've ever had.

February 2014:

            What stays from my Top Ten List? Wolf of Wall Street, Fruitvale Station, Key of Life, Inside Llewin Davis, and Asura.

            At this time, I still cared about both the Oscars AND the Golden Globes, and made the effort of doing formal picks for both. This also happened to be right in the middle of David Russell's Shit Trilogy of Silver Linings Playbook, American Hustle, and Joy. American Hustle dominated awards nominations and pushed out so many other, better movies, it almost felt like a personal insult. My By The Numbers rant over this, especially the conclusion, is one of the best things I have ever written and will ever write.

 

March 2014:

            I had completely forgotten that I made an argument for Zoe Saldana as Wonder Woman. Gal Godot did fine, but ever since Israel has gone off the genocidal deep end.....yeah, maybe I had the better idea and studios should have listened to me.

 

July 2014:

            The Wind Rises came out and I wrote what was, at that time, the longest and probably most tortured review I ever made. Unlike some, I still do not believe it to be pure, naive apologia for Japanese war crimes. But I get why the movie doesn't get the job done for some. It might be the most cerebral film Miyazaki ever made.

 

September 2014:

            This month included the 100^th post on this site, my review of Cloudburst, a quiet and sweet road trip/hijink film about two retired lesbians.

 

October 2014:

            I had also forgotten that I did a reaction to GamerGate. Once again, in hindsight, SO MUCH of what would definie MAGA and the current wave of right-wing populism sweeping of the globe could be seen in its first creeping manifestations here.

 

December 2014:

            The Legend of Princess Kaguya hit theaters, and it destroyed me. I will always remember breaking down in tears for a solid half-hour after we left the theater. Few movies have ever touched me so deeply and so immediately. 

 

January 2015:

            I got my Top Ten list done early this time around. Kaguya as my top pick is eternal. The other keepers from this year; Boyhood, The Lego Movie, Selma, The Wind Rises, Life Itself, Like Father Like Son, Noah, Inherent Vice, HTTYD 2.

 

February 2015:

            This was the first time I did a Top Scores lists in addition to a straight Top Ten. This is a tradition I plan to continue. 

 

Spring/Summer 2015:

            What followed over the next few months was a huge number of tribute articles. Naruto ended and I did a series of final reflections and Favorite lists, after which I threw myself into Avatar Month. I remain very happy with how both of these projects turned out, and my picks, particularly for Avatar, stand fairly unchanged even after I did a rewatch of both shows a couple years ago.

 

August 2015:

            This was when Jon Stewart stepped away from The Daily Show „for good.“ His final show, essentially a massive tribute party with every single current and past correspondent gathered to celebrate, was incredible emotional, especially in retrospect after it was held right after the first GOP debate for the 2016 presidential election. The shape of The Daily Show and the end of Jon Stewart's tenure was a true watershed moment for me and many others in my generation. I think I said what was most important in my tribute.

 

December 2015:

            The Star Wars sequel trilogy officially began, and it's another Nostradamus point for me; all the concerns I voiced about how the new film series could drop the ball ended up being straight on me the money.

            Sometimes, I genuinely hate being right.

 

January 2016:

            2016 was many things, nearly all of them bad. One of the first things it became was the Year Everybody Died. There were many hard blows, but on a personal level, Alan Rickman was the hardest. I shared my one meeting with him in my tribute post.

            Fury Road topped my Best Films list this time around. The other greats; When Marnie Was There, A Girl Walks Home At Night, Pale Moon, Ex Machina, The Big Short, Brooklyn.

            It was in the Spring and Summer of this year that Bleach, which at one time could be argued to be the best of the Big Three, crashed and burned and ended in spectacular fashion.

 

October 2016:

            With less than a month before Hell Day, I did a joke post assigning a Devil Fruit power from One Piece to each of the prominent presidential candidates from both parties. Absolutely a good idea and I had fun doing it....but after the election it immediately ceased to be funny. I don't know if I would ever feel comfortable trying something like it again.

 

November 2016:

            A rare highlight from this year; November saw my 200^th post go up. Nothing fancy, just my review of the first Doctor Strange film. Very standard Marvel fare, and I haven't thought of it since I posted the review.

 

January 2017:

            In my post discussing then-current „controversy“ over how some A-List celebrities were reacting to the election, I offered something of a mission statement regarding how my thoughts and attitudes towards the mixing of art and politics were already shifting as a result. I hoped, at this time, there would be something of a broader cultural awakening, especially since #MeToo gained traction a short while later. Sadly, this would prove too optimistic a thought on my part.

 

February 2017:

            I topped my Best Films list with 13^th, for overtly political reasons. It still holds water, but as I've said previously, Swiss Army Man or Silence would have been more accurate picks. Other new classics from this year include Censored Voices, The Handmaiden, Der Nachtmahr, Arrival, and Kubo and the Two Strings.

 

March 2017: A Circus, A Camera, and Ryan Gosling

            We had already been subjected to so much that, by the time the Oscars managed to offer up possibly the most insane slip-up of its entire run, it really did feel like God or the Universe really was just punking us. Haha, ok, fine, life is a simulation, can we go back to the Good Place again? Please?

            The most insane part about the La La Land/Moonlight slip up is how, in the sort of coincidental timing capable to provoke a true spiritual crisis, this happened literal weeks before the most famous comedy duo in Germany actually did pull off a major, and hilariously successful, punk of the German equivalent of the Oscars, one that ALSO centered around La La Land and featured a Ryan Gosling „look-alike“ (they don’t really look alike). As a historian I can confirm that this is one of the funniest things to ever happen ever, and I will never get tired of rewatching their mini-documentary following the whole scheme.

 

April 2017:

            Here I officially began Films for the Trump Years. This remains, in my book, one of the most important and meaningful projects I started over the course of the blog. I initially had a massive list of movies, including quite a few documentaries, touching on dozens upon dozens of topics, fields, and eras in history, as well as some fictional and fantastical works I felt were relevant. I had a notion to do maybe one per month, which, had I done so, would have meant a cool 48 entries or so going into Biden's inaugeration.

            In the end, that proved to be too much. I stopped at an even 20 posts (22 films/shows total, since two of them were double features). Nonetheless, I think I was still able to cover quite a lot of ground, and had enough chances to make some nice outside-the-box picks. The entire collection features some of my best and most important writing. The full list is as follows:

Part 1: Selma (April 2017)

Part 2: Good Night and Good Luck (May 2017)

Part 3: 13th (July 2017)

Part 4: Get Out (August 2017)

Part 5: Chasing Ice/Chasing Coral (September 2017)

Part 6: The Big Short (October 2017)

Part 7: Human Flow (November 2017)

Part 8: Moonlight/Winter’s Bone (December 2017)

Part 9: Black Panther (February 2018)

Part 10: Arrested Development (March 2018)

Part 11: Bowling for Columbine (April 2018)

Part 12: [T]error (August 2018)

Part 13: Angels in America (September 2018)

Part 14: Do The Right Thing (March 2019)

Part 15: All The President’s Men (May 2019)

Part 16: Ken Burns‘ The Vietnam War (December 2019)

Part 17: Malcolm X (May 2020)

Part 18: Songs My Brothers Taught Me (August 2020)

Part 19: Totally Under Control (October 2020)

Part 20: The Social Network (December 2020)

            It was also around this time when I wrote about how One Piece was avoiding the traps that felled Naruto and Bleach and was actually even better then than when it had first started. And guess what's happened since then? IT'S ONLY GOTTEN EVEN BETTER, BITCHES.

 

September 2017:

            Ah yes. My review of Netflix's live-action Death Note adaptation. One of the most heinous crimes ever set to film, and receipient of my worst-ever rating. But oh, how it was merited, and oh, how much fun it was shredding this one to pieces.

 

October 2017:

            After 4 years of additional NC material, I returned to the Channel Awesome well to list my favorites of the Walker's post-hiatus work. It is very weird, and somewhat painful, to revisit this one knowing what was coming barely half a year later.

 

January and February 2018:

            When I looked back on 2017, I had the sense that it had been a particularly special year for great action movies. So much so that I made my one and only Top Ten Action Scenes list. I still think my picks are the correct ones, but there was SO MUCH I had to leave on the cutting room floor. As far as the movies themselves, the works from my main list that rank on my all-time list are Wonder Woman, Your Name, The Last Jedi, Lady Bird, Paradise, Thor: Ragnarok, Dunkirk, Human Flow, A Silent Voice, and Get Out.

 

April 2018:

Oh boy. This was a hard month. It started with Isao Takahata passing. It ended with Change the Channel.

            For all that has happened in the world since I became an adult, few things have been as personally jarring. I spent a good decade watching, on average, 1-2 Walker videos per week at minimum. Hurt and torn by the stories coming out, feeling a deep sense of personal betrayal that revealed the extent to which parasociality had infiltrated by consumption of CA content, I have not watched a single piece of content by the Walkers in the 6 years and counting since then. What was once unfathomable became, almost overnight, a forced necessity that soon felt so normal, I stopped questioning it after a year or two. I really did imagining myself making it to Channel Awesome myself one day, and becoming the next Nostalgia Critic, or perhaps the equivalent for a subset like historical films. It felt inevitable around the time I finished college. 

            In the ways that count, I have moved on. The really good stuff on YouTube has gotten even better and deeper than I previously imagined. It’s not what I thought it would be, but at least some of the best content creators do make open and honest efforts to address mistakes, to address parasociality head-on, and to find the right side of history. There is at least some of the support there that I had assumed to be there at Channel Awesome. I am grateful for that. The pain became a dull ache, and then reduced itself to a shadow of regret when I think on it now.

            My decision to neither delete nor alter my previous posts lauding the Walkers was the right one. No sense whitewashing the past, no matter how awkward or disappointing. As such, I felt it was critical to balance the scales by highlighting the content creators that I was able to experience and enjoy specifically as a result of their involvement, however brief, with TGWTG/CA. I am glad that I made the time to highlight these artists. There are plenty of other online personas, especially YouTubers, who have come to match and even exceed the old CA group in their influence on me, but I very quickly realized I would not have the time to devote proper posts to all of them. But this list, as it stands, is a fine one. Even here, though, multiple rounds of drama, harassment, attempts an cancellation, and other „scandals“ around both these and other prominent YouTubers. The wonderful utopia I had believed in, of online content creators mutually supportive of each other and able to unite on the right side of history, has only ever existed in sporadic pieces.

The official timeline of the Producers in Focus series is: 

Lindsay Ellis (April 2018)

Todd in the Shadows (May 2018)

Jacob Chapman (July 2018)

Suede (August 2018)

The Rap Critic (September 2018)

Kyle Kallgren (February 2019)

Weekly Manga Recap (March 2019)

Leon Thomas (July 2019)

 

January 2019:

            Here’s another surprise that hit me when prepping for this; once I narrowed down what post was my 300th post on the site, I found to my great amusement that it was the one- the ONLY- Worst Films list I ever made. I have always taken pride in avoiding enough bad movies to never having the material for a list like this, but enough got around the radar this one time that I took a swing at it. It was fun, sure, but I sure as hell hope I never feel the need to do it again.

            This was directly followed by usual Best list. Into the Spider-Verse remains unassailable as my top pick, but the other all-timers from 2018 include; Passage of Life, Sorry To Bother You, Bad Times at the El Royale, Foxtrot, The Death of Stalin, The Night Is Short Walk On Girl, Black Panther, and Taste of Cement.

 

December 2019:

            This was the year where I clearly started to slow down. But I kept at it, and it was in December of this year when The Rise of Skywalker came out, ending the hashed-up Shit Circle Abrams and Disney made out of everything in the sequel trilogy that isn’t The Last Jedi (which is a masterpiece and if you have an issue with that you can FUCKING FIGHT ME). To this day, TROS remains the only one of the official 9 Star Wars movies I intend to never see again, for as long as I live.

 

2020:

            I truly hit my wall here, in terms of both overall film consumption and my writing capacity. In many ways, I was extremely fortunate; my work was not affected by lockdowns, so while there was little else to do, my work day remained unchanged, so I did not suddenly have entire days to devote to binge watching. I still had way more time than before, but somehow- and I do think this was an effect of the pandemic- my brain seemed to fundamentally shift in some way. I often just couldn’t find the energy or desire to watch movies or TV shows even when I did have time (and I had plenty of time). Instead, I largely survived 2020 by just getting through my workday, and then sinking into Minecraft in the evenings.

            I did keep posting though. 2019 had been normal enough for another Top Ten List. The newbies on my favorites list from that year consist of; I Lost My Body, A Hidden Life, HTTYD 3, Us, John Wick 3, Knives Out, Little Women, The Lighthouse, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and Jupiter’s Moon.

            One major project I took on in the wake of an entire decade ending was to make a massive, Best Of 2010 list. It swelled to 25 films in total, plus two trilogies as honorable mentions, so it was a bit unwieldy. However, this did mean there was very little I had to leave out. The specific order may be something I could eventually quibble with, but the films themselves I selected were all solid, justifiable picks. I absolutely plan to do something like this every decade, I find it a very nice and fun way to look back in regular intervals and really think about what movies will have the most staying power as great works of art.

There was one other significant highlight of 2020, as far as this site is concerned. After bits of design work and storyboard ideas for what the last Star Wars movie may have been started to surface, I started to feel pissed all over again at how much potential had been tossed down the drain in favor of the utter blandness of TROS. And so, I embarked on my first-ever work of fan fiction, a long-running series I was eventually able to finish that is, basically, my own personal Episode IX. I wrote it for myself, me, and I, so it’s okay that no one ever read or will read it.

 

2021:

            It was touch-and-go for a bit, but in the end, I was able to scrape enough titles together that met my criteria to keep on making Top Ten lists. Other than the Hamilton Broadway filming, the best titles of 2020 that stick around in my book are Birds of Prey, Ainu Mosir, Totally Under Control, and Corpus Christi.

            By this time, I really could feel the steam going. I finished Films for the Trump Years, and by 2023 I had my Episode IX take concluded as well. I also pretty much stopped writing „normal“ reviews by this time, instead waiting until I had the inspiration to mash together films or topics into some bigger argument I felt worth making. I kept on at this point mostly because I just wanted to make it here, to #400.

 

January 2022:

            2021 was another pandemic year, but despite this, my film count ticked up again and I had a very solid list of new great movies to celebrate, including Ushiko, West Side Story, Along the Sea, The Green Knight, Dune, Licorice Pizza, Inside, and The Mitchells vs. The Machines.

 

April 2022:

I had a bundle of fun revisiting my first 10 Top Ten picks. A VERY fun and worthy exercise, with a few mea culpas to be had.

 

January 2023:

            The last two years have, for my money, been absolute bangers as far as movies are concerned. The heavies from 2022 were Nope, The Woman King, The Batman, Prey, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Banshees of Inisherin, and of course, my beloved Everything Everywhere All At Once.

            The summer was defined by Barbenheimer, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

 

January 2024:

            I went back to the roots, so to speak, for Miyazaki’s return from „retirement“, to write a classic, formatted review of The Boy and the Heron. That will stand as my last formal review on this site. Fitting, in a way.

            Shortly after that I did my usual Top Ten list. The best of last year, a stunningly good one, are:

John Wick 4

Guardians of the Galaxy 3

Poupelle of Chimney Town

A Haunting in Venice

Godzilla Minus One

Barbie

Perfect Days

The Boy and the Heron

Oppenheimer

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

My Small Land

 

            And now, we are at the end. I have cast a wide net with this blog. Many pieces of myself are to be found here. Much is missing. But it’s all me, even the bad bits. I am happy I started this site. Most of what I hoped to come has not happened. But that is life, and learning that is, in a way, it’s own reward. I don’t know how many people will read this. It doesn’t matter though. I have made an honest effort. That’s all I can ask of myself, I suppose.

            I have put too much effort into these articles to forget or remove them. The site will remain live as long as the internet, or at least Google, exists, though that is hardly a guarantee of anything. I will never stop watching and thinking about movies, so I will absolutely continue to do yearly Top Ten lists. This place is as good as any a spot to store them, at least until another option presents itself.

            And so, this is the end, but it is not goodbye. It’s never goodbye, as long as there are good movies and good art in the world to provide out lives meaning, color, and light. 

A final offering; an unranked list of all the posts here I consider genuinely good writing, ones I hope to preserve whether or not this URL survives:

The Problem With Sequels

Roger Ebert Tribute

Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

Review: First Position

Video Game Review: Gone Home

Review: Gravity

2013 Film Awards

Review: Wolf of Wall Street

American Hustle: By The Numbers

Review: Like Father, Like Son

Review: The Wind Rises

Review: Pheonix

Review: Princess Kaguya

Review: Citizenfour

Review: Inherent Vice-

Reflections: End of Legend of Korra

Reflections: End of Naruto

ALL of Avatar Month

Nippon Reviews: Further Reflections on Princess Kaguya

Nippon Reviews Appleseed Alpha

Nippon Reviews: Kami nu Tsuki

Fare Thee Well, Jon Stewart

Reflections on the Success of WTNV

The Problems with Bleach

The End of Bleach

Review: Swiss Army Man

Now More Than Ever

Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street

A Circus, A Camera, and Ryan Gosling

ALL of Films for the Trump Years

The (Lack of) problems with One Piece

Review: Death Note

Review: mother!

Review: Thor Ragnarok

Top Ten Action Scenes of 2017

Review: Der Hauptmann

In Memoriam: Isao Takahata

A Critic, A Camera, and a Wall

ALL of Producers in Focus (list the names)

Review: Taste of Cement

Review: The Night is Short, Walk On Girl

Review: Bamy

Wasting Time (July 2018)

The Top Five Worst Films (I happened to see) of 2018

Review: Spider Man Into the Spiderverse

Review Avengers Endgame

My Top 5 Favorite Pokemon Games

Review Jupiter's Moon

My Top 25 Movies of the 2010's

ALL of Star Wars: Duel of the Fates

The Underrateds: Genesis

In Memoriam: Chadwick Boseman

Review Matthias & Maxime

The Underrateds: Billy Joel

Review: Ushiku

Review: Bo Burnham's Inside

SDC Season 4 Cutest Moments

SDC Season 4 Best Dances

One Last Time

Decade Look-Back: Ranking My OWN Top Ten Picks

The Untamed and the Neverending Cycle

Barbenheimer: The Aftermath

Barbenheimer: Power and Patriarchy

Hidden Lives

Review: The Boy and the Heron

My Favorite Baseball Experiences

This Is Not Goodbye

 

            Be safe. Be well. 

-Noah

My Top Baseball Experiences

        On the heels of his incredible effort to identify the „best“ 100 baseball players of all time, Joe „Writing Machine“ Posnanski somehow managed to churn out another fantastic work, a collection of over 100 important, influential or inspiring moments in the sport's history that show „Why We Love Baseball“.

        This has inspired me to take on a similar exercise, and to try and think of what the most important baseball moments of my own life are, at least so far. Obviously, this will be a much more limited list than any overall Most Important moments that true masters like Posnanski, Jayson Stark, or Tom Verducci could piece together. I am but a single layperson who can only fit in watching baseball in real time on very select days, so the moments I am able to see live are limited. Plus, even when I lived in the states, I was rarely able to attend more than 1 or 2 games a year, all of them regular-season games and nearly none of them with any immediate relevance to playoff runs. Plus, since when I do get the chance to watch the sport live, I nearly always watch my favorite team, the Atlanta Braves, most of the biggest or most important baseball moments of my lifetime were ones I did not experience in the moment. As we shall see, there are a couple of exceptions, but it bears mentioning beforehand that this will be an overwhelmingly Braves-heavy list.

        Even if that's the case, I still find this worth doing, as it is very much in the spirit of Posnanski's work. These moments are, for me, the biggest reasons why I love baseball.

12. October 1^st, 2013 (NL Wild Card Game): Cueto Drops the Ball

        It broke my Dad's heart a little to see me grow up a Braves fan, because he learned to love the game from the suburbs of Pittsburgh during the heyday of the great Pirates teams of the 60's and 70's, led by Roberto Clemente and Willie Stargell. It didn't help that the rise of the First Atlanta Dynasty in the early 90's was paralleled by the Pirates collapsing into two full decades of stunning irrelevance. I always did feel at least a little bad about that, so when the city saw a brief resergence in the mid-2010's I was surprisingly pleased and made sure to tune into the team's first playoff appearance in 21 years in 2013.

        That first game was a one-off elimination against the Cincinnati Reds, with their then-ace Johnny Cueto on the mound. Even through the television screen, PNC park was hopping, one of the loudest places I ever personally witnessed. Cueto felt it too, and in an early inning, he showed it when he bumbled and dropped the ball between pitches. I recall thinking very clearly at that moment; That's it, game's as good as over. And sure enough the Pirates won easily to advance to the DS. Sadly, that was the extent of it; 3 consequetive playoff appearances brought no further magic, and the franchise has struggled ever since. But it was nice hoping while it lasted.

11. October 1^st, 2016: Game-Saving Double Play in next-to-last Turner Field Game

        The final series ever played at Turner Field was the one time I was able to see regular season games with real playoff stakes. Not for the Braves, unfortunately; 2016 was the midst of the Dark Times and their season had lost all hope long ago. The Tigers, on the other hand, were still mathematically in contention. They'd won the first game of the series easily and, though down by 3 late in the second game, suddenly had a serious late threat going, with the bases loaded, no one out, and Miggy Cabrera himself at the plate.

        After a tense series of pitches, the no-name reliever the Braves had brought in managed to strike Cabrera out. The threat was not fully eliminated until a batter later though, when fresh-faced Dansby Swanson stabbed a shot to left and managed to pull off a double play. Effectively end of the game, and with that, the end of the last serious playoff run the Tigers had.

10. April 5, 2010: „Swing and a drive! Belted right! WELCOME TO THE SHOW!!!“

        Ever since Chipper and Andruw Jones started on the downsides of their careers, I'd been waiting and yearning for the next Braves player to be That Dude, a new supernova that would be unassailably recognized as one of the greatest new talents in the game. There had been false starts and misplaced hope- Brian McCann, Jeff Franceour, Jordan Schafer (oh GOD, Jordan Schafer)- but everything pointed to Jason Heyward being the real deal, especially when, in his very first big-league at-bat, he absolutely murdered this pitch LINK from Carlos Zambrano, prompting one of the best, most spine-tingling calls I've ever heard. I was watching this in my dorm room and literally leaped backward over my chair with joy.

        Sadly, it didn't last long; I also happened to be at the game a few years later when Heyward got hit smack in the jaw by a pitch, and I genuinely believe that was the moment when he just wasn't the same. He's had a great and meaningful career, but he never ended up being That Dude. That would have to wait for Acuna awhile later. But that call for Heyward's first shot will live rent-free in my head forever.

9. July 25^th, 2023: Braves pull off Triple Play in Boston

        The most recent game I was able to attend live, after years of absence from the real deal. The game itself was rough- the Braves lost in pretty brutal fashion- but early on they pulled off a highly unorthodox triple play, the only one I've ever seen live. Since triple plays only happen roughly five times a year on average, that's pretty special and merits a place here.

8. Summer 2012: Chipper Jones' Last Appearances in New York

        Chipper Jones announced during Spring Training that 2012 would be his last season in the bigs. Naturally, that made it top priority to seem him play one last time, and fortunately the summer featured the team visiting both the Mets AND the Yankees.

        I was able to make the second of the 3-game series in June against the Yankees, on June 19^th. Chipper ended up not playing the next day, so the second game of the series was his final on-field appearance against the Yankees. Got to see him barehand a grounder and drive in a run. The second game was on September 9^th, Chipper's last-ever appearance at Citi. Given that he had long been a legend for victimizing the Mets on their home turf, this was a special moment, and it really did mean a lot to see him get two standing ovations, one when he brought out the lineup card before the game, and when he pinch-hit at the end, his final plate appearance visiting the Big Apple.

7. November 4^th, 2001 (World Series, Game 7): Luis Gonzalez Beats the Unbeatable

        I came of age just as the Torre-Jeter Yankees dynasty of the late 90's began to tighten its terrible grip on the sport, winning 4 World Series over 5 years going into the new millenium. As such, I developed the proper and healthy dose of Yankee Hate required of all Real Fans BEFORE my family up and moved to North Jersey, smack-dab in the middle of Axis territory. We arrived just in time to be forced to endure the 3^rd straight WS title in '00, so I knew well in advance who I would be rooting for in 2001, braving the mockery of my schoolmates in doing so.

        Thankfully, the end of that series turned out to be one for the ages; after an incredible first 6 games that had already cemented the series as an all-timer, the 7^th came down to a scrappy, piecemeal D-Backs squad against Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer in history and one who up to then had been virtually untouchable in the postseason.

        It was technically past my bedtime by the time the last game was winding up, but I knew I couldn't miss this, so while my parents were watching downstairs, I snuck into their bedroom-adjacent where the second TV was and turned on the game. I was just in time to catch the final showdown between Luis Gonzalez and Rivera, which ended in a bloop single over the head of Jeter himself to seal the first real blow to finally chink the armor of the Evil Empire. I went to sleep that night dreaming of the taunts I would be able to finally return the next day.

6. May 20^th, 2010: Brooks Conrad Rocks a Walk-Off, Pinch-Hit Grand Slam

        This game was the perfect example of the magical randomness of baseball, and how even the most meaningless early-season game can, out of nowhere, offer up something you've literally never seen before.

        Spring afternoon game, Braves-Reds, not nearly deep enough in the year to have any stakes, and to top it off, the Braves started off by absolutely blowing. They entered the 9^th down 9-3 and I was not a happy camper. And then....some singles, some walks, a choice error, and all of the sudden it's 9-6, the bases are loaded with NO ONE out, and who's coming up but Jason Heyward, rookie sensation. The call from his Opening Day homer (see above) was still ringing in my ears, and I though THIS IS IT. The legend grows!

        The legend did not grow. Heyward struck out on a very good pitch after a tight battle with the new reliever. Now a double play would end it, and with the pitcher's spot up next, the Braves had to go with their last pinch-hitter, career utility man Brooks Conrad.

        And what did this lumpy part-timer do? Oh, only hit a walk-off, PINCH-HIT grand slam to win it all. Not only that, because the Braves were down 3, that qualified it as an Ultimate Grand Slam (yes, that is what it's called). How rare is that? Well, at the time, it was only the 23^rd time one of those had EVER happened (it has since ocurred 9 more times, for a total of 32). Even better, this was only the 5^th PINCH HIT Ultimate Slam, the very first to be seen since 1979. So yeah, after 3 hours of torture, I suddenly got to witness something that had literally not ocurred since before my parents had even met. Baseball!

5. July 5^th, 2010: Chipper Homers, Halladay Goes the Distance

        On surface, this shouldn't be this high, being a mid-summer game I saw live where the Braves lost. And though that would have usually ruined my mood for a bit, this one was an exception, for two reasons.

        First, Roy Halladay himself was pitching for the Phillies and he threw a masterful complete game. So I can say I saw one of the best pitchers of the aughts throw a complete game in the flesh, shortly before the complete game would go the way of the dinosaurs. Can't really complain much about that. Second, and more importantly; this was the only time I was in the stadium when Chipper Jones hit a homer. First inning, right off the bat, straightaway center. When you see your favorite player of all time go yard in person, especially if it's the one time, that's one for the scrapbook, no matter what.

4. November 2^nd, 2016: Miracle Cubs Break the Curse

        Even with the time difference and knowing it would be murder on my sleep schedule for work, I had to catch as much of the 2016 series as possible. Two long-starved teams, with the guarantee that no matter who would, it would be a defining moment in the sports history? Some things simply must be endured.

        And hoo boy, was the final game worth it. All of the games were filled with drama, but the final one of them all lived up to the billing. Multiple plot twists, including a massive shocker of a home run by the ultimale noodle-hitting speedster Rajai Davis, plus an excruciating rain delay, an inspirational clubhouse speech (by Jason Heyward no less!), and then one last come-from-behind drive to secure the end to the oldest championship drought in all of professional sports. This game had it all, and will long stand as one of the greatest moments in sports history.

3. October 2^nd, 2016: The Final Game at Turner Field

        The last ever game at Turner Field, where I went to my first meaningful live ballgames, was always going to be special no matter what. An all-star selection of Atlanta franchise players plus Hank Aaron himself came out to grace the field in pre-game ceremonies, and for a final time, I got to soak in a special place from my youth before it would be gone for good (at least, as far as baseball is concerned).

        Thankfully, the game itself turned out to be pretty damn good too. I got to see another a future inner-circle HOF in Justin Verlander (plus Miggy Cabrera, of course), but the Braves still won in a classic pitcher's duel of a match, with absolutely perfect vibes after Justin Upton went down swinging to end the season, Hank Aaron came back to remove home plate, and everyone danced in the stands. The entire game, and all that came before and after, will remain a cherished memory as long as I live.

2. November 3^rd, 2021: „The Braves! Are WORLD CHAMPIONS!“

        You're shocked, I know. And I get it! This is a weird spot for this one. I, who spent years pining, bitching, and moaning in exquisite terms over the pain of never having been able to enjoy by team topping the dogpile, finally got what I always wanted. And it's only #2 on the list?

        Yes, for a very specific reason, which I will get to. But for this spot, of course it's the entire Game 6 of the '21 World Series. There are loads of individual moments contained within- Fried nearly having his ankle broken, then shutting down the Astros for 6 innings, Sorge literally leaving the yard, Dansby and Freeman (in his last-ever at-bat as a Brave) joining him in the home run department, the final out- but like with the past two picks, it's the whole game's vibe that makes the list, a wonderfully self-contained story of the most unlikely of championship runs.

1. October 23^rd, 2021: Matzek Shuts Down L.A., Secures the Pennant

        And here it is. My top-ever live baseball moment is NOT from the '21 World Series, but rather the NLCS that preceeded it, where the Braves avenged themselves on the Dodgers and dominated in a 6-game series to clinch the pennant. My reasoning for this is very simple; the only reason that World Series happened at all is because of one man, Tyler Matzek, who saved the 6^th game (and in my opinion, the series) from the best chance the Dodgers had to storm back and bury Atlanta once more.

        It had been a top series, and the Braves had pretty much had everything under control, up to the late innings of Game 6, up 4-1 and so, SO close to finally sealing their first pennant in 22 years. Then, genuine disaster suddenly loomed- Luke Jackson, who had been so key the whole season, suddenly couldn't get anyone out, and before anyone could cough, the Dodgers were back a run, had runners on second and third with no one out, and Albert Pujols up at bat (with Mookie Betts waiting in the wings). Granted, Pujols was but a barely-mobile shell of his former self at this point. But baseball has too many examples of injured, old, past-their-timers suddenly getting one more moment of glory LINK at just the right/wrong moment for me to feel safe. There was Capital D 'Danger' in the air and everyone knew it.

        Enter Tyler Matzek. Another journeyman reliever, who briefly fell out of the MLB entirely due to a case of the 'yips', but battled back and found his way into the middle of a pennant race. In the most gripping and tense series of at-bats I have ever watched, he attacked and maneuvered and played every card right, striking out the side (even getting Betts looking!) to save the inning, the game, and the pennant.

        Looking back, this was THE defining inning of that entire playoff run. The World Series itself never felt as tense; there was never that sense of real threat, that Houston was about to take over the series, even when they had a come-from-behind win in Game 5. The NLCS matchup was a whole other level; I remain wholly convinced that, had the Dodgers made out with Game 6, the Braves would have been too thrown off to recover. As such, this is my pick for the best baseball moment I've seen live, even above anything in the WS that followed, for the simple reason that without Matzek in that one inning, the WS would not have happened at all.

        Baseball, man. At it's best, it's magic, pure and simple.

-Noah

My Top Ten Films of 2023

        This list was hard. Possibly the hardest I've yet made.

        There have been some great years for movies since I started this blog, years where multiple movies came out that became instant all-time favorites of mine. We've seen some great triumphs, none more satisfying than my beloved EEAAO sweeping last year's Academy Awards. And I certainly did not see MORE movies this year than I used to; my „new film intake“ continues to remain relatively low compared to when I tried to make it a point to see one new film every week (ah! youth).

        Dakota Johnson was right; the film industry is an utter hellscape in so many ways right now. The major studios and their soulless billionaire owners with more wealth than God seem determined to be as cruel, as narrow-minded, as creatively bankrupt as possible, because that's what post-war Western capitalism rewards. This year saw possibly the biggest and most important strike in my lifetime, and it will certainly not be the last. Problems aplenty in the special effects and animation industries abound, #MeToo ended with less than a whimper, the superhero genre finally started to show cracks, and the cultural Black Death that is live-action adaptations of animated classics remains unsated.

        And yet. The movies I was able to see this year were SO good, and there were SO many of them, that nearly every single film I am about to name, even the honorable mentions, could top other people's lists (and many of them did!!). That this happened in spite of all our troubles was something of a light in the darkness for me; there are still so many unbelievably talented people in every branch of this business, still doing their best to churn art better, more representative, and more worthwhile than ever before, and some are still pulling it off, in spite of it all.

        There was almost no wrong way for me to order these, so of course, that made it all the more stress-inducing to try and do so. So I won't be able to offer much in the way of justifications as to why certain films are higher than others. In the end, all I had was my gut. And here's what my bundle of organs had to say about this year at the movies.

Honorable Mentions: The Holdovers, John Wick 4, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Suzume, Poupelle of Chimney Town

10. A Haunting in Venice (Kenneth Branagh)

        I absolutely, unabashedly love this series. They are old-school campy in the best way possible. This one, however, is the first that I would call a straight-up great movie. Not having read the book, I understanding that his adaption changes a lot to allow for a setting and style that is far more explicitly horror-oriented than the first two films, which were mostly fairly direct whodunnits. The result is the best of both worlds, just enough horror to keep the thrills coming, while still having a compelling and believable mystery with multiple twists and turns right up to the end, with just enough left open to provide discussion fodder afterwards. I hope Branagh keeps making these til he dies.

9. Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)

        Out of the year's major big-name releases, I would rank this as the most ambitious. A massively long and exhaustive adaptation of a little-known book detailing one of the most horrific crimes ever committed against a Native American tribe (and yes, that IS saying something), with a focus on authentic cultural representation and language, plus one of the most open fourth wall breaks Scorsese has ever attempted, there are so many ways this could have not worked, or come off as insensitive. And there are fair criticisms to be made that even if this is the „best version“ of a White man making a movie about Native Americans, it still falls short. I myself did find the length a bit too trying at times, and in the crucial final section- where the evil of it all is finally coming to light- I very much wished for less time with the White criminals and more time with Mollie, seeing her trying to process the depths of her husband's betrayal.

        Nonetheless, I do feel that there is value in having a trio of the most influential figures in American cinema take this story, put in the effort to empower the community it impacted, and to bring awareness of it to an audience that would otherwise have never bothered to learn of the Osage Terror. It does mean something when Lily Gladstone becomes the first Native American to win another major award and gives another speech viewed by millions. Controversial and debatable the film will remain, but the fact that it will have an impact at all is still enough for me to rank it as one of the year's most important works.

8. Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki)

        I can enjoy a good monster flick, but it's never been „my thing“, and the current effort by American studios to revive the genre have left me relatively cold, so that made it an extra special treat to get this quasi-remake of the original that hit in all the right places. The action set pieces maximize every cent of the small budget and leave a greater impact that most recent Marvel movies, but its the humanistic core- a Miyazaki-esque call to live, no matter what- that makes it something truly special. Alongside the OG, this is the Gojira flick everyone should see at least once.

7. Past Lives (Celine Song)

        A majestic, slow-burn story of how each decision we make- or that others make for us- shape our futures just a little bit more, how our identities can be torn between worlds, and how we can suddenly realize that whole potential paths we once considered are now closed off forever. It is a bittersweet sort of beauty, the way we fall in and out of each other's lives, and it's captured so effectively in the way the three leads interact with each other. Beautiful and poignant, this is the sort of experience that leaves a pregnant silence in its wake.

6. Barbie (Greta Gerwig)

        With the passage of time, and some distance from all my Barbenheimer bloviating from last summer, Barbie has ultimately fallen a bit further down the ladder in my mind's eye, while the artistry of Oppenheimer continues to rise. However, this is not meant as a knock on the film itself. This is absolutely the best and most boundary-pushing version of a corporate-approved movie-as-commercial we could have gotten. It will undoubtedly create a whole new bandwagon for toy companies to try and jump on, but I feel safe predicting that this was the lightning strike we will never see happen again.

        Plus, there is a sad irony at play right now in just how desperate the awards circuit is to show us why super on-the-nose lessons like Ferrera's „Feminism 101“ monologue are still necessary. Yeah, maybe the film's feminism is a touch White, and bringing in Will Ferrell way too easily distracts from Mattel's real-world (and genuine piece of shit) CEO. But if „serious“ industry figures are willing to reward the literal joke song over a wonderful Billie Eilish number, or somehow decide that the female director of the most dominant box-office film of the year doesn't merit a Best Director nomination, then it really does start to feel like Ryan Gosling in the only man on Earth who got the actual point of it all.

5. Perfect Days (Wim Wenders)

        Why does this film work so well? A good 90% of it is literally just following a toilet cleaner in Tokyo making his rounds, eating his lunch, tending his plants. That SHOULDN'T work as a beautiful celebration of the small joys that make up daily life, or as a paean to simplicity over shallow materialism, or offer subtle commentary on the trauma of unmet familial expectations, or as a powerful meditation on how to exist in the Now.

        But it does. It works, presenting an old man's singular and somewhat strange version of nirvana, while still allowing us to glimpse some of the cracks in his soul and leaving it to us to guess whether he is truly happy or not. This is a prime example of the unmatched power of cinema to take literally anything, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, and make it a metaphor for life itself.

4. The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki)

        Damnit, he's still got it. No one can mesh together resigned pessimism with determined optimism like Hayao Miyazaki, and I don't know if anyone after him ever will. His latest (I won't say „final“ because WHO KNOWS) combines a fairly direct treatment of childhood trauma in its first half with a fantasy coming-of-age arc in its second part, transitioning seemlessly from one to the other. The fact that Miyazaki permitted himself to hand over the rudder more than usual shows. There is a lot more variety in the animation styles on display than in his earlier works, which very much works in the film's favor. There may be no Studio Ghibli after Miyazaki. But for now, he's still here, and he remains one of humanity's most essential artists.

3. Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)

        There's not much left at this point for me to gush over when it comes to Oppenheimer. I get why some don't like the movie as an experience, or feel too uncomfortable with the subject matter. But like with Dunkirk, there are a lot of ways Nolan is quietly undermining the shallow „Great Men doing Great Things and Making History“ spin that this sort of movie would usually entail. This is not blind hagiography; the film is VERY critical, openly so, about pretty much everyone on screen (except for David Krumholtz, who is a treasure and I love him). A lot of the power the film holds for me, particularly its masterful final sequence, is how 1-1 the fears of uncontrollable nuclear holocaust can be switched over to climate change. I have been plagued for years with the persistant fear I am trappen in a world on fire, and nothing has been able to capture that emotion via pictures and music like this did.

And now.....

Yes! It's a TIE for the #1 spot. I told you this year was hard, so I decided to go easy on myself for once.

1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson)

        I have gone on record multiple times saying that Enter The Spider-Verse is about as perfect a rendition of the classic hero origin story that can be made by human hands. Well, the bastards came back and topped it. Better character development, better dramatic beats, better music, better jokes, phenomenal expansion of this particular multiverse, greater stakes, and a true gut punch of a final twist. If the first movie was the best possible case study of the origin story, this is the best possible case study of the follow-up. Not a single beat is missed. Like its predecessor, this film is a genuine miracle.

        Now, given the MASSIVE cliffhangers this film ends on, unlike the standalone first movie, whether or not this one holds up long-term will depend on how well the final installment ties it all together. Plus, the stories coming out of production have been less than nice, and I am very much hoping that they do NOT push to bring the film out in less than a year as currently planned. I adore this series and want the finale to do it justice. If I have to wait a decade for that to happen, I am young and strong and patient and I will do it.

1. My Small Land (Emma Kawawada)

        I had to. I just had to. The film that hit me, personally, right in the soloplex of my soul and left me a blubbering mess for a solid three-quarters of an hour. There is a reason refugees are regularly mentioned in ancient secular or spiritual texts as the sort of group where how they are treated says worlds about the values of a given society. And most of the time, what it says about us is horrifying.

        My Small Land, based on real-life stories of Kurdish refugees in Tokyo and partially inspired by a documentary, encapsulates so much of the unique travails and pressures that fall on the young when society refuses to lift themselves up. There is a unique psychological burden when children are forced to bear the weight of cold shoulders and closed doors, and the young amateur Kawawada-san found for the lead role manifests this perfectly in one of the year's standout performances. Life will go on- it MUST go on- but films like these force us to once again look in a mirror and ask ourselves how much longer we will continue to do such terrible harm to each other.

-Noah

My Top Film Scores of 2023

        Another year, another round, and we are back to recount the best in music and film of 2023!

        Ultimately, I saw even fewer new movies this year than I used to, but somehow, the average quality of what I did manage to see seemed especially high. Despite the strike and all the failures and struggles and just plain idiocy infecting the film industry, it was still a damn good year at the movies, with a bevy of masterpieces that featured some of the best film music I've ever heard. This year's lists are especially meaningful to me, so let's start it off right with the best in film music!

7. John Wick 4 (Tyler Bates & John Richard)

        The John Wick franchise, one of the best original IPs to come out of the past decade, came to a fittingly grand conclusion before a hilariously empty Sacre Coeur. While I will need to revisit the series once more to decide where each of the films hold up individually in my mind, the score for this final chapter was easily the best of the series to date. I know there are spinoffs and future installments planned, but much like Endgame, this was the organic spiritual end the franchise needed, and I will leave it at that.

6. Suzume (Radwimps & Kazuma Jinnouchi)

        Your Name remains the peak of both Makoto Shinkai and Radwimps' film work, but Suzume is the closest they've managed to come to achieving that sort of emotional height, easily surpassing their interim film, Weathering With You. A great set of music for an excellent adventure-fantasy story about time, loss, and the beauty of first love.

5. Godzilla Minus One (Naoki Sato)

        So few of us saw this one coming, a powerful, creative, and gripping re-emergence of the Godzilla franchise from the doldrums of its American adaptations. Even better, it brought a smashing and raucous score along with it, the perfect accompaniment to a damn-near perfect film. The film didn't miss a beat, and neither did the music.

4. Past Lives (Christopher Bear & Daniel Rossen)

        The production of the music for this deceptively powerful Korean-American drama mirrored the story of the film as well, with distance playing a key role in forming the musical themes of the film and how they interact over the course of an amazing story about how time and chances taken or missed shape the curvature of our selves. This is one of the year's best listens even when divorced from the film it was made for.

3. The Boy and the Heron (Joe Hisaishi)

        While his work on the latest Miyazaki might not be as instantly iconic as the top, top tier of his discography, Hisaishi's score for The Boy and the Heron nonetheless builds itself up in a way that I found quite powerful and affecting. The main piano theme is simple and effective, and even the "big" moments from the orchestra are not as grand-sounding or bombastic as some of Hisaishi's previous highlights. All that is to the film's benefit; both it and the music are works that thrive on just being themselves and denying the expectations or overhype that would otherwise threaten to sink a new work by old masters like these.

2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Daniel Pemberton)

        The first Spider-Verse movie was, to put it bluntly, perfect, as was Pemberton's soundtrack. And this year they came back and did it again, better than before. I will gush more about the film in my next post. As far as the music is concerned, there are so many wonderful moments where original themes are brought back and re-worked into the new score, while still making room for new additions. Gwen's theme is a fucking banger, and Miguel O'Hara gets the year's single best musical motif for a villain. And the main musical theme for the broader and seemingly limitless Spider-Verse the movies are building out gets the same treatment as the franchise as a whole, made bigger, bolder, better, more exciting. I adore this franchise, and I am praying, PRAYING, that the creators get the message and let the foot off the gas enough for the creative teams building these wonderful creations to have the proper time and energy to give Miles' story the sendoff it deserves.

1. Oppenheimer (Ludwig Göransson)

        Göransson is That Dude, there's just no denying it. As fantastic as his work with Ryan Coogler has been- Black Panther remains the single greatest original soundtrack to come out of the entire MCU- he finds a whole other level in Nolan's latest, and arguably, greatest, film to date. The very idea of using the musical motifs themselves, especially the violin theme for Oppenheimer, and breaking them down- making them more violent, clashing, dissonant- as a way to mirror the chaos and unpredictability of the quantum world the rise of the atomic age centers around is an absolutely brilliant concept. Simple to conceive, perhaps, but unimaginably tricky to pull off in practice, and he does here. My personal favorite track is „Destroyer of Worlds“, laid over the haunting visuals of the final scene where a world is imagined to collapse into fire and ash, as a pulse of music builds in its frantic energy. The track is a major reason why this was, for my money, the single greatest concluding scene in any film of 2023.

-Noah