FAVOURITE FILMS OF 2023
Before I share my list, here’s a run down of my experience as a cinemagoer this year. A record a love/hate relationship I have with the state of cinema in my home city that is inconsistent and thorny. But I also want to say how thankful I am for matinee screenings at the cineplexes I go to in Dubai. Being solo in mostly empty cinemas is my jam.
Barbenheimer, cinema’s biggest summer event worldwide came late to the UAE and the Gulf region. Whilst Oppenheimer was released in July like everywhere else, Barbie was released at the end of August, after much speculation it would be banned. I ended up watching it July in Taipei and left thinking all the speculation and concerns were unnecessary. I couldn’t believe all fuss around it, or for the film itself.
As for Oppenheimer, the nudity was censored in a comically ingenious way, by adding a CGI black dress on Florence Pugh. Another issue was the Arabic subtitles for the words Jew and Jewish, subtitled as غريب / غرباء (ghareeb/ghurabaa) in Arabic, meaning strangers/outsiders. The words “temple” and “anti-semitic” were subtitled correctly.
The word ‘bishop’ wasn’t subtitled for this dialogue, “Son of an orthodox bishop…”
I’ve seen similar subtitling issues in other films. It has never been clear who mandates this, not to mention extremely unnecessary. There is, however, one language related error in the film that I couldn’t understand how it happened, Rabi describing Oppenheihemer’s lecture as Dutch, when it was actually conducted in German.
I was obsessed with Oppenheimer and watched it four times in Dubai. But was very happy I had a chance to watch it on 70mm at the Cineteca in Bologna without the bungled cuts and subtitles.
After being heavily promoted, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse didn’t get released in our cinemas. There was no official statement to explain why (not that we expected it) and I’m not sure if it’s only because of the blink and you will miss it scene with a Protect Trans Lives poster, or because of fan theories about Gwen’s gender identity, or both.
When M Night’s Shymalan’s Knock at the Cabin was released everywhere, I couldn’t understand why it never got released in the Gulf region. I found out after watching it in Berlin.
Paradoxically, two underseen films in cinemas, It’s A Wonderful Knife, a queer adaptation (parody?) of It’s a Wonderful Life (not great but I enjoyed Justin Long channelling Martin Short) was released with an 18+ rating, and Love Again featuring a gay character (and Celine Dion acting herself and being funny at it too) was also released here.
Is queer cinema ok in the region, as long as it’s not mainstream.
On the other had, at the beginning of the year, Magic Mike’s The Last Dance was released with a 21+ rating in the UAE and wasn’t censored, and at the end of the year, May December was released uncut with an 18+ rating (I watched it three times as didn’t waste such an opportunity!).
Jonathan Demme’s remastered Stop Making Sense on IMAX was shown for one night only at VOX in September without any promotion which explained the very low turnout. I regularly check the film line up on the websites of the cinemas here, that is how I keep myself up to date with all the releases. Reading about sold out screenings in other cities, the lack of promotion was a miscalculated decision by whoever was in charge here.
A few classic films screened have at the multiplexes, but it seems the film programmers aren’t interested in showing anything before the 1990s. Roxy Cinema’s Roxy Rewind Movies package their repertory screenings as ‘events’ by charging AED 99 (USD 25) for a package that includes “comfy and reclining Platinum seats, choice of a pizza or a hotdog from our gourmet menu, a soft drink of your choice”.
Not to mention their even more expensive cinema event and outdated concepts like “Roxy Ladies Night” showing films like Notting Hill and Lost in Translation, and “Roxy Boys Night” for films like Fight Club and Diehard.
Vox Cinemas hosted Bollywood Day but only showed two Shah Rukh Khan classics, Chak De (2007) and Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jaaenge (2020) - again, no interest to really go back in time, and the rest were recent releases from the past 10 years - Dhoom 3 (2013), Tiger Zinda Hai (2017), War (2019), Pathaan (2023).
I had missed War when it was first released, so I rushed to see it, just to be able to watch Jai Jai Shivshankar on the big screen. After watching it countless times at home, this musical scene alone was worth the price of the ticket.
Louvre Abu Dhabi had an exhibition titled Bollywood Superstars: A Short Story of Indian Cinema that ran between January and June, I never visited, but one of the reviews I read described it as orientalist and reduces Bollywood to a “simplistic musical-dance spectacle”. An exhibition like this should have at least had regular film screenings during the six months it was on. Instead, only six films were screened in March, that were hardly promoted or even marketed. They were projected outdoors on the museum walls outdoors, viewed by sitting on the “Promenade steps”. The museum has a Jean Nouvel-designed 270-seat auditorium. I say this because I curated and presented film screenings there between 2018-2020.
If the screenings were in the auditorium, I would’ve dropped everything and gone. Sadly, actual “film exhibition” in art institutions in the country still has a very long way to go.
In October, NYUAD Arts Center hosted a screening of Koyaanisqatsi with a live score performed by the Philip Glass Ensemble and I was very glad I went. The centre already has a regular film program called CinemaNa - Contemporary Arab Cinema, but I do wish they can expand by showing a wider selection of films more often, especially since there are spaces that are very suitable for film screenings.
Museum of the Future hosted Climate Future Week and I was looking forward to watching Soylent Green, but walked out after five minutes, the quality of the projection was very poor and it was full of noisy children and parents.
I programmed a few film screenings myself in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, you can find them listed them here.
I’m thankful I could travel several times this year to fill my cinephile needs by attending film festivals in Rotterdam, Berlin, London, Bologna, Venice, Vienna, and to catch up on other classics and new releases in these cities, and not far from home I went to Sharjah + film retrospectives in Taipei and London.
One unforgettable cinema outing for me was the Michael Mannathon at Prince Charles Cinema in London in January. It was Mann-tastic.
Lastly, I want to share The Future is Unwritten: Mark Asch on 2023 in Film which covers the writers and actors strike in Hollywood, and the recent issues related to censorship and film withdrawals at IDFA (you can read more about that here, and this podcast - IDFA 2023 Recap - Corresponding Cinemas’ Refusal to Comply includes very good firsthand accounts about what happened.
And closer to home, Joseph Fahim wrote about the undisclosed ban on wearing the Palestinian Keffiyeh at the Red Sea International Film Festival in Jeddah.
Vive le Cinéma, and may there be less of its bad side in the new year.
Now time for my list.
My top 40 new films of the year, starting with a ranked top 10 followed by the rest in alphabetical order. Below it is my top 30 repertory screenings of the year.
Top new films:
Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)
”When they've punished you enough, they'll serve you salmon and potato salad, make speeches, give you a medal, and pat you in the back telling all is forgiven. Just remember, it won't be for you... it would be for them.”Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)
“They're like buzzards circling our people”May December (Todd Haynes)
“I AM naïve. I always have been. In a way it’s been a gift.”Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismäki)
Would you like to go to the cinema?Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)
”Safety at work”Ferrari (Michael Mann)
”If you get into one of my cars, you get in to win.”The Killer (David Fincher)
“Of the many lies told by the U.S. military-industrial complex, my favorite is still their claim that sleep deprivation didn't qualify as torture.”
Hit Man (Richard Linklater)
“What if your self is a construct?”John Wick: Chapter 4 (Chad Stahelski)
”You and I left a good life behind a long time ago, my friend.”M3GAN (Gerard Johnstone)
”One, two, three I win!”The rest in alphabetical order:
About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
The Adults (Dustin Guy Defa)
Afire (Christian Petzold)
Animalia (Sofia Alaoui)
Asteroid City (Wes Anderson)
Bad Living / Mal Viver (João Canijo)
Bastarden / The Promised Land (Nikolaj Arcel)
The Beast (Bertrand Bonello)
Blackberry (Matt Johnson) - Honorable mention: Air (Ben Affleck)
Celluloid Underground (Ehsan Khoshbakht)
Close Your Eyes (Víctor Erice) - Honourable mention: Pictures of Ghosts (Kleber Mendonça Filho)
The Echo (Tatiana Huezo)
El Chinero, A Phantom Hill (Bani Khoshnoudi)
Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi)
Goodbye Julia (Mohamed Kordofani)
Gran Turismo (Neill Blomkamp)
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (Ariane Louis-Seize)
In the Rear View (Maciek Hamela)
Inshallah A Boy (Amjad Al Rasheed)
La Chimera (Alice Rohrwacher)
Magic Mike’s Last Dance (Steven Soderbergh)
Malqueridas (Tana Gilbert)
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Christopher McQuarrie)
Mother of All Lies (Asmae El Moudir)
The Nature of Love (Mania Chokri)
Napoleon (Ridley Scott)
Plane (Jean-François Richet)
Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos)
Robot Dreams (Pablo Berger) - Honorable mentions: The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki), Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Joel Crawford, Januel Mercado)
The Taste of Things (Tran Anh Hung)
VOY! VOY! VOY! (Omar Hilal)
Honorable mentions:
The Burdened (Amr Gamal)
Being in a Place (Luke Fowler)
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (William Friedkin)
Dream Scenario (Kristoffer Borgl)
Past Lives (Celine Song)
The Pope’s Exorcist (Julius Avery)
Priscilla (Sophia Copolla)
Remembering Every Night (Yui Kiyohara)
Sisu (Jalmari Helander)
The Wrath of Becky (Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote)
Top 30 Repertory Screenings:
My number one repertory screening is Black Narcissus that I saw twice, first in Bologna on a new 35mm print and in London on a vintage nitrate 35mm.
The following is an unranked list of 30 favourites plus honorable mentions.
Powell & Pressburger:
Black Narcissus (Powell & Pressburger, 1947, Nitrate 35mm and new 35mm)
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (Powell & Pressburger, 1943, 35mm)
I Know Where I’m Going! (Powell & Pressburger, 1945, new restoration)
The Red Shoes (Powell & Pressburger, 1948, New 35mm)
Twice Upon a Time (Emeric Pressburger, 1953, new restoration)
The Edge of the World (Michael Powell, 1937)
Rouben Mamoulian:
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1931, Digital)
Love Me Tonight (1932, 35mm)
Queen Christina (1933, 35mm)
Silk Stockings (1957, 35mm)
Edward Yang:
That Day, On the Beach (1983)
Taipei Story (1985)
The Terrorisers (1986)
Lino Brocka:
Manila in the Claws of Light (Lino Brocka, 1975)
Cain at Abel (Lino Brocka, 1982, Philippines)
Others:
Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973)
Goodbye, Dragon Inn (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003)
Mandabi (Ousmane Sembène, 1968)
My Brilliant Career (Gillian Armstrong, 1979, 35mm)
Leila and the Wolves (Heiny Srour, 1984, Restored)
Twilight (György Fehér, 1990)
Rewatch, first time in a cinema and/or on print:
Amadeus (1984 Directed by Miloš Forman, 1984, 35mm)
Dreams of a City (Mohammad Malas, 1984, 35mm)
The Dupes (Tawfiq Saleh, 1973, Restored)
Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945, 35mm)
Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, 2002, 35mm)
The Silences of the Palace (Moufida Tlatli, 1994)
Stop Making Sense 1984 Directed (Jonathan Demme, 1984)
The Swimmer (Frank Perry, 1968, 35mm)
Witness 1985 Directed by Peter Weir, 1985, 35mm)
Honorable mentions:
Dune (David Lynch, 1984)
Die Hard (John McTiernan, 1988) - rewatch
Kara Kafa (Korhan Yurtsever, 1979)
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (D. A. Pennebaker, 1979)