"I'm here to see my projectionist!" - the 2023 ILX Film Poll Results Thread

In the interests of bipartisanship, we'd like to congratulate all the winners and capitulate to their every whim.

157 movie-shaped objects nominated by 21 voters. No comic-book adaptations in the top half of the finals.

anyone ready to open their presents?

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do it

you think it's a lovely time to do so?

yes, the perfect time

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=49 Un beau matin (One Fine Morning)
Hansen-Løve ⸱ FR/DE 2022
52 points, 2 votes

this was enjoyable. it felt a lot like a particular genre of films from France today, but it was subtle I thought. I have liked all of Mia Hansen-Løve's films

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=49 All Of Us Strangers
Haigh, Yamada ⸱ UK 2023 (barely)
52 points, 3 votes

Nice, but very somber. To me still, the best thing Andrew Haigh has done was the show Looking on HBO which went for two seasons only

Really felt the ending let it down.

It turned out to be an elegant puzzle, but felt distant. Another somewhat sober film that seemed like a puzzle was Aftersun (2022), but that had a bombshell ending in retrospect and I really want to see that again

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48. Retour à Séoul [All The People I'll Never Be]
Chou ⸱ FR/KH/QA/BE/DE 2022
54 points, 2 votes

still haven't seen this

Really felt the ending let it down.

What?! Where they turn into a star while "The Power of Love" plays?!!

I felt the whole "reveal" really undercut the emotional work of the whole thing. I was thinking too much about the reality of it. The parents, ok, that all worked and I got it and it was beautiful but to add the extra thing (being vague) at the end was too much.

Aftersun is pure emotion and memory so that ending for me just works as it's of a piece. It's a reveal that gives weight to what came before, whereas in Strangers it just made me question it.

Gukbe!

has no longer left the world of ilx film polls behind

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=46 Leave the World Behind
Esmail, Alam ⸱ US 2023
56 points, 2 votes

Doesn't come together but I actually really liked several scenes. My friend refused to watch because it was "Obama propaganda".

Pretty good; not as good as Mr. Robot at its best.

I thought the book was better. I made my family watch this and they were too unnerved by it, but I thought is was great, there were so many eerie scenes, and I liked the skepticism of the Julia Roberts character and character arc of the two kids

I wasn't expecting the ending of Aftersun to be a nightclub as a vision of suicide

xxp The Power of Love is a great song

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=46 Polite Society
Manzoor ⸱ UK 2023
56 points, 3 votes

Saved that on my Peacock app at some point last year and never got around to it.

really fun. the action and comedy probably not just play better in a crowd/big, but there's such a thread of the characters' shifting relations throughout that on home viewing it probably reads just as a low-key family drama with extra seasoning

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45. Pacifiction
Serra ⸱ FR/ES 2022
57 points, 2 votes

Placed at 33 in 2023, with 81 points from 3 votes.

Pacifiction will be on my 2023 list

― Dan S, Sunday, 10 December 2023 00:04 (eleven months ago)

Return To Seoul I found really remarkable, a troubled, difficult protagonist that avoids anti-hero clichés while leaving you rooting for her. The wife and I were looking into adopting when I saw it and let's just say it gave me a lot to chew over.

I liked Polite Society quite a bit but, to indulge in one of this thread's refrains, her tv work is better.

been a rough couple of months so didn't get to submit a ballot in time. mostly experimental so wouldn't have impacted much:

Music (Shanelec)
You're Dancing This Dance All Wrong (Wooden)
Fluid Fragments (Proctor)
Ashes By Name Is Man (Rosinska)
Trailer of a film that will never exist (Godard)
Intersection (Tuohyy, Barrie)
The Secret Garden (Ouyada)
Menu Plaisirs (Wiseman)
Yaagna Plays Itself (Piron)
Pillow Bowl Rose Tree (Todd)
Souvenir D'Athenes (Rousseau)
Being in a Place (Fowler)
Godzilla Minus One (Yamazaki)
FuegoFocFire (Vasquez Mendes, Alvarado Matos)
Pacification (Serra)
El Juicio (De La Orden)

should be: You're Dancing This Dance All Wrong (Worden)*

One Fine Morning came close to topping my 2023 list.

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44. River
Yamaguchi, Ueda ⸱ JP 2023
60 points, 2 votes

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43. BlackBerry
Johnson & Miller after McNish & Silcoff ⸱ CA 2023
61 points, 3 votes

I really liked Blackberry. Never saw whatever that extended cut they did to make a TV mini-series.

Same and same. Got the impression that the additions were primarily in order to restructure it as episodic, so I'd guess that whichever version someone sees first will feel definitive, rather than that stuff feels missing from the feature / padded in the miniseries.

Love River a lot. That troupe just does time loop films again and again and it never gets old.

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42. Under The Light
Zhang, Chen ⸱ CN 2023
63 points, 2 votes

Intermission now. Later: ENTER THE QUORUMZONE

hadn't heard of River until now, it sounds interesting

45. Pacifiction
Serra ⸱ FR/ES 2022
57 points, 2 votes

― no, uh, bombast (sic), Thursday, December 12, 2024 9:38 PM (yesterday)

Placed at 33 in 2023, with 81 points from 3 votes.

so wait - it got 81 points last year and 57 points this year, totaling 138, and you aren't adding them? that is very un-Pazz and Jop of you

I know nobody cares, I just like posting in this thread

milms and foovies

I believe a decade or so I tried to advocate for Academy Rules but that was too US-centric. Well look where we are now! First Brexit and now this.

no wrong year to watch a movie

I'll admit that at my age I'm solidly a year behind anyway so this is gonna be my watch guide for the next six months.

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41. بنات ألفة [Les Filles d'Olfa]
Ben Hania ⸱ TN/FR 2023
64 points, 3 votes

I'll add this to my Netflix list for when I subscribe for a month.

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40. Rotting In The Sun
Silva, Peirano ⸱ MX 2023
68 points, 3 votes

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39. TMNT: Mutant Mayhem
Rowe, Rogen, Goldberg, Hernandez, Samit, O'Brien, Eastman, Laird ⸱ US 2023
75 points, 3 votes

X-post: Did you mean to use an image from Falling Leaves (Guy-Blache, 1912)?

sic likes to pepper the images in his polls with jokes

I loved Monster and I liked Fallen Leaves. Haven't seen a lot of this last batch yet

Past Lives and American Fiction were just ok to me, and as much as I like Ira Sachs I hated Passages

🤗🖼️

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12. Barbie
Gerwig, Baumbach ⸱ US 2023
188 points, 7 votes

I liked Rye Lane a lot but a friend did point out the structure's a bit wonky in that most of it is very kinetic and theatreish but then the bit after the fight seems much more sedate BritRomCom.

Loved Fallen Leaves, dunno if I have an argument for why THIS feels like the best out of Kaurismaki's very dependable output but I think it might be.

Barbie was cool.

I had a fun day doing the Barbenheimer thing. 70mm Opp and then down to a different theater for Barbie. Good times. Fun film. Haven't revisited either. Very quickly had to shut out the discourse.

there are a lot of good things about barbie but overall it's significantly worse than gerwig's other films imo

it’s the only one with an incumbent dr who in it

I remember some real carnage seeing a packed theater full of ppl going to see Barbie and/or Oppenheimer. I myself was going to see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, as I am Not Like Other Girls.

there are a lot of good things about barbie but overall it's significantly worse than gerwig's other films imo

This is true, but as far as indie directors going mainstream it beats getting swallowed up by the mcu.

Loved Fallen Leaves, dunno if I have an argument for why THIS feels like the best out of Kaurismaki's very dependable output but I think it might be.

Im of the same mind too. Its a perfect encapsulation of what he does best imo

everybody's talking about BARBENHERON

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11. 君たちはどう生きるか / How Do You Live?
Miyazaki ⸱ JP 2023
198 points, 7 votes, 1 #1

top ten tomorrow

I haven't caught up with that yet, but I'm hearing the doc on its making is really good as well.

I didn't realize that The Boy and the Heron was based on the 1937 novel How Do You Live? and that that is its title in Japan. I still haven't seen it

the intended/proper title is central to the film itself, but the change feels additionally inappropriate given Miyazaki’s return from retirement to mortgage the studio in order to spend seven years grappling with its themes

I don't think my favorite film Showing Up will feature in the top ten, but I am fully expecting May December and The Zone of Interest to be near the top of the list

I love Jessica Hausner, but still haven't seen Club Zero

I guess we are also going with Anatomy of a Fall (good but overrated), and Poor Things (which I thought was just so off-putting)

I'd be shocked if Showing Up isn't in the top 10, it was in my top 5 and I think widely liked on ilx.

I love the Miyazaki film, I think I was the #1 voter. It's very strange and personal, and it has some of his most vivid ideas. I want to see it again.

My #1, so it will definitely be Top 10.

Miyazaki's losing interest in coherent narrative as his imagery gets more beautiful and strange. Kudos.

Title + picture just made me think of the "men really live like this" meme

I didn't realize that The Boy and the Heron was based on the 1937 novel How Do You Live? and that that is its title in Japan. I still haven't seen it

it's not really based on the novel at all, though you can if you like discern very broad, non explicit thematic resemblances.

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10. Perfect Days
Wenders, Takasaki ⸱ JP/DE 2023
206 points, 7 votes

Loved this, thought of it as a 2024 film though.

Got a US release in 2023. Would have been my number one. That or Showing Up.

US release was Feb/March 2024 to tie in with the Oscars but it played a bunch of festivals in 2023

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9. The Holdovers 
Payne, Hemingson ⸱ US 2023
213 points, 8 votes

Surprised how much I enjoyed it. It's entered Christmas canon for a lot of people. I keep meaning to revisit it this month but haven't gotten around to it. We should probably retire using Cat Stevens' "The Wind" in movies though.

Yeah I also liked it more than I expected. I've been blah on Payne for so long that my enthusiasm was low. Giamatti predictably good even if I'd rather see him play other kinds of roles, I feel like grumpy lonely smart guy is a little rote for him. Da'Vine Joy Randolph was good, the kid was good — and I love that they hired him from one of the schools they shot at. The setting was great, or maybe I'm just a sucker for Yankee winter bleakness. (See also Nobody's Fool, e.g.)

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8. Oppenheimer
Nolan, Bird, Sherwin ⸱ US 2023
252 points, 10 votes

We are FUCKING.

I heard you like films about explosive events in an American desert

I thought the Wile E Coyote movie got killed by Zaslav?

Not a Nolan fan but I thought it was about as good a film about Oppenheimer as Nolan could make. His Very Seriousness was at scale to the story at least. Too long, didn't need so much Robert Downey Jr.

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7. Asteroid City
Anderson, Coppola fils ⸱ US 2023
261 points, 9 votes, 2 #1s

Almost too distancing but it got better on rewatch. And the Margot Robbie scene delivered something I didn't think it was capable of until that point. I'll be interested to see how its reputation develops after whatever he does next.

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6. Showing Up
Reichardt, Raymond ⸱ US 2023 (2022 festivals)
270 points, 9 votes, 2 #1s

we could do the top five tomorrow if people are out watching movies tonight

I'm up and down on Reichardt but I really loved this one. That passive aggressive Hong Chau relationship is rough.

Famously didn't get a theatrical release in the UK, causing much discourse on the Death of Cinema(s).

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5. Poor Things
Lanthimos, McNamara, Gray ⸱ IE/UK/US 2023
285 points, 9 votes, 2 #1s

A divisive one on this board

I really liked it but have never considered revisiting it. A little schematic maybe, but a good watch. I'm a Yorgos-skeptic though.

no more divisive choices: from here on, everything got over 50% of the vote

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4. Killers Of The Flower Moon
Scorsese, Roth, Grann ⸱ US 2023
312 points, 12 votes, 1 #1

Didn't get the masterpiece vibes others got from it but def a very strong film.

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3. Anatomy Of A Fall
Triet, Harari ⸱ FR 2023
328 points, 12 votes

Better and a little more ambiguous than the procedural courtroom drama tone, but suffered greatly for me because I saw it a month or two after I saw Saint Omer, the vastly superior film from that view that involved the batshit French legal system.

Are we concerning ourselves with spoilers at this date?

I wanted to tell Samuel "Get off that cross; you need the wood to refinish the attic.

Much love to Messi as Snoop.

I was pretty disappointed by Anatomy of a Fall. Maybe partly because I saw it late, after awards buzz and hype, I expected something different from it. At some basic level I didn’t buy the premise.