Looking back at the full slate of 2023 releases, we had a lot of really good movies this year. But personally, I burnt myself out watching way too many terrible films pretty early on and so even though I'm sure movies like Fast X, Blood and Honey or The Expendables 4 probably deserve to be down here as well - I just didn't have it in me to force feed myself more bad movies than I really needed to. These movies, however, I at least had enough interest in to seek out and finish. So I guess that's saying something? But overall, I'd still treat them like they're a gas station toilet - which is to avoid them whenever possible.
#96. Suitable Flesh
Chances are, if you're a guy that hit puberty around the turn of the millennium, you've got a soft spot in your heart for Heather Graham. Which is why I was excited to see her re-emerge here in her first leading role in what feels like forever. But this ultra sleazy H.P. Lovecraft adaptation hardly feels Lovecraftian at all. It's a stupid horny Tales from the Crypt episode at best and a softcore 90's skin-amax mystery at it's worst. Even if you try to sell this as some kind of half-assed erotic thriller; the horrendous acting, melodramatic music and laughable dialogue make what I was hoping would serve as a comeback vehicle for Graham into more of a sad, late career exhibition of desperation. It's the kind of shamelessly smutty direct to DVD stinker you wouldn't be surprised to find a young actress like Heather Graham take an easy paycheck for in the early 2000s - but it's 2023 and she's over 50. You're better than this Heather...
#95. Fool's Paradise
I'm not the biggest It's Always Sunny fan but I was excited to see what Charlie Day would do with this rare opportunity to write, direct and star in his own original feature. However, without his high pitched voice and rapid-fire line delivery, Day takes away his biggest comedic asset in playing a mute character (who's idiotically named "Latte Pronto") for the entirety of the film. Even worse here is Day's writing, which turns the potentially fertile ground of a Hollywood industry satire into a painfully stupid, 98 minute MadTV sketch that was too dumb to air. It's utterly embarrassing to watch this many talented people trapped in such a stunningly moronic premise. I held on thinking maybe it'd find it's footing but from the overt Wesley Snipes caricature to the horrendous political non-sequitur in the final act - it's just a total train wreck that only gets worse as it goes on. Just an absolute waste.
#94. Monsters of California
Blink-182 guitarist turned UFO truther Tom DeLonge finally reunited with Travis Barker and Mark Hoppus this year to put out a surprisingly decent record. But in the same month Blink dropped "One More Time...", Tom also dumped his dopey, sci-fi directorial debut (inexplicably produced by Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment?) where a group of skateboarding stoner teens hunt for fringe science relics like aliens, ghosts and even Bigfoot - who appears on screen in the cheapest Spirit Halloween monkey suit you could imagine just to take a piss in one of the kids' mouths. Which sounds like it could be funny, if it weren't so utterly stupid while trying to sell itself as enlightened. Kinda like Tom himself. The film desperately reaches for some kind of allegorical dissection of beliefs - whether they be religious, supernatural or conspiratorially based - but can't even deliver storytelling essentials like writing dialogue for any character that isn't a teenage boy (which makes sense as that seems to be the only voice that Tom knows how to communicate with).
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#93. Sanctuary
Between Possessor and On The Count of Three, Christopher Abbott has become a name that will hook me into just about any project he's attached to. That is until I watched this. And it's not really his fault, it's the incredibly limited premise of an ultra wealthy client attempting to end his relationship with a high-end sex worker. She predictably doesn't take the split well, threatens to blackmail him, blah blah blah - you can basically fill in the rest. But the whole thing drags out for the longest 90 minutes you'll experience watching a movie this year. And the entire film centers on these two characters alone in their single confrontation, confined exclusively to a hotel room - where despite Margaret Qualley's best efforts to overact her ass off and fill this movie with ANYTHING to keep you watching - you can't help but feel it's limitations bearing down on you the entire time. It asks way too much of these two performers to try and keep this thing afloat because there is NOTHING here.
#92. Master Gardener
As a massive fan of his early collaborations with Martin Scorsese, I keep finding myself wanting to like the films of this First Reformed era of Paul Schrader more than I actually do. But Master Gardner is the first instance where I couldn't find ANYTHING to like. The film is painfully overwritten and paced like a poorly adapted book, as if he's a writer trying to hit an arbitrary word-count by focusing on unnecessary details rather than developing any semblance of character or plot. The stiff dialogue, antiseptic atmosphere, and boring central character that both looks and acts like the villain from a Lisbeth Salander novel make this a painfully dull viewing experience; highlighted most prominently in the cold and lifeless exchange of sexual gratification in the film's awkward "romance". But don't worry, it's a Paul Schrader flick, so you still get the trademark scenes of a deranged loner narrating his thoughts while writing at a dimly lit desk.
#91. You People
I've never seen director Kenya Barris' hit sitcom Black-ish but any movie that pairs Eddie Murphy with Jonah Hill is gonna grab my attention. Unfortunately though, Barris' feature film directorial debut is an absolute dud and even though Eddie Murphy is technically here - he's completely miscast and underutilized as a threatening black father, trying to intimidate his daughter's white fiance. He's not imposing whatsoever and he doesn't get to utilize his comedic talents at all. I don't think he gets a single joke thrown his way. The awkward cultural/race clash moments aren't enough to buoy this lifeless comedy, although Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny as Jonah Hill's parents do their damnedest. But it doesn't help matters that there is absolutely ZERO chemistry between Jonah Hill and Lauren London which makes the entire romance the film is centered on feel even more flat than the comedic moments do. Toss in some hella dated editing that makes this look like a 2011 made for Nickelodeon movie and a shockingly abrupt ending (with an unconvincing kiss that may have even been deepfaked into the movie!?) and you've got the recipe for one hell of a bad movie.
#90. Strays
I feel like anybody who's ever owned a pet has given them a goofy voice over at some point, right? There's a whole sector of Instagram reels doing this and hell, Bob Saget made quite the career out of this technique hosting America's Funniest Home Videos for a while. But it gets old. Even at 90 minutes, this feels way too long of a movie. You'd think this simple comedic premise provided with the voices of such hilarious figures as Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Randall Park, Isla Fisher, Rob Riggle, Josh Gad, and Jimmy Tatro would be pretty hard to screw up. But the weird mix of cutesy pet-owner sentiment and shock value vulgarity just doesn't mesh. The level of stupid humor leaning on lazy animal sex and poop jokes lands almost exclusively on the stupid side rather than the humorous. I hate seeing how far Will Ferrell has fallen because for a guy that was once the funniest dude on the planet, his involvement in a comedy has almost become a red flag at this point.
#89. Totally Killer
As great as horror has been in recent years, there wasn't much to get excited about in 2023. But I was hoping this time-traveling construct of a modern day high schooler transporting herself into an 1980's slasher movie might serve up some Happy Death Day style horror/comedy bits. However, the 80's tinged mash-up of Back to the Future and Final Girls is way too fixated on the time traveling aspect of the story and not enough on the horror. There's a big chunk of exposition that feels like you're watching your favorite slasher movie with an annoying gen-z commentary track pointing out how problematic everything is but for the most part this movie surprisingly plays things straight, missing a lot of potentially comedic setups. Except the weird need to emphasize how girls used to proclaim their refusal for offering up BJs. They have no problem revisiting that bit. Other than that, the comedy is all but abandoned after the first 20 minutes.
#88. Five Nights At Freddy's
One of the most highly anticipated video game adaptations stewing away in development hell, this year the world finally got it's Five Nights at Freddy's movie and if you're asking me, I'd rather spend 90 minutes at Willy's Wonderland. This movie opens incredibly slowly with a ton of dream sequences and hardly any time spent at Freddy's. You'd think a movie about killer animatronic mascots in an abandoned Chuck-E-Cheese style kids' restaurant would be a slam dunk but this film opts to create a more mystical aura around Freddy and his band mates instead of turning them into obvious horror mascots. There's no real threat or suspense, they just casually come to life and befriend the film's protagonist. I don't get it. Fittingly enough, you can sense the tortured spirit of the source material trapped inside this film, just like Freddy Fazbear himself, who inexplicably performs musical routines instead of offering up any real scares. Maybe they'll figure something out in the inevitable sequel(s).
#87. The Pope's Exorcist
It's kind of stunning to see an A-list Oscar winner like Russell Crowe have such a massive drop off to the point where he's headlining second rate horror flicks like this. But he seems to be enjoying himself here, cruising around on his Vespa spouting witty one-liners in between slugs of whiskey like some kind of Italian folk hero. The best way I can think to describe this film is to format it like an SAT-style simile: The Pope's Exorcist is to the Exorcist what National Treasure 2 is to Raiders of the Lost Ark. From the overly-saturated color palette to the abysmal CGI effects to the out of place one-liner's from our former marquee talent slumming it in material far below his weight class - this thing feels like a time capsule for watered down, mainstream modernizations of the early 2000's. Not to mention the awful performance from Peter DeSouza-Freighoney, who's unfairly tasked with carrying the film's horror all on his own. But he's hardly the worst thing about this film that seems to be setting out to launch a franchise around Russell Crowe's Father Gabriel Amorth and his globe trotting, demon fighting priest. Although I strongly doubt this is going to inspire an entire franchise - maybe just read the books instead. It's a joke even deployed throughout the movie, as if the filmmakers know they're not doing the source material justice. "The books are good". This - not so much.
#86. The Haunted Mansion
I never got around to the Eddie Murphy adaptation but the Haunted Mansion ride at DisneyWorld has always been one of my favorites, seemingly begging for a feature length origin story to bolster the lore behind the attraction. But yet again, Disney has failed to translate their theme park ride into a viable film property. There are some cool set pieces to be found and the art direction (most notably in the ghost realm - which we spend far too little time exploring) is on point but the blathering backstory that spends nearly 80 minutes setting up the premise and introducing the unnecessarily long roll call of characters is way too bloated to ever get off the ground. Did they sign contracts with all of these actors before they even had a script? Otherwise, what were Winona Ryder and Dan Levy doing in such throwaway roles? It's a convoluted mess that really should have focused more on the family in the house and the themes of grief briefly touched upon in the last 20 minutes rather than the forced storylines around Lakeith Stanfield, Danny DeVito, or Tiffany Haddish. As much as I love all of those performers, their characters didn't warrant that much screen time and only further bogged down the film.
#85. M3GAN
I can't wrap my head around why this film blew up like it did. But I also hated Akela Cooper's previous writing collaboration with James Wan, Malignant, as well so maybe they're just not my cup of tea. As an AI update on Chucky (which they already did in the Child's Play remake), this film is nowhere nearly as effective in the horror department. Even in the R-rated cut, we get some pretty weak kills epitomized in the film's signature scene where M3GAN performs some weird TikTok dance like a slutty American Girl Doll before chasing a dude down with the blade from a paper cutter. Which elicits more laughter than anything else. It's just not scary or funny enough for me to really get behind. There's definitely room for growth here whenever we get the unavoidable M3GAN 2.0 or possibly even a M3GAN v.s. Chucky crossover. I'm just a little shocked that this is the film that Blumhouse keeps stacking at the top of their resume when promoting their new projects.
#84. The Exorcist: Believer
As much as I hated what they did with Halloween Ends, watching David Gordon Green and Danny McBride's latest season of The Righteous Gemstones over the summer made me a believer again. But I should have known better. David Gordon Green attempts to recapture the dramatic, parental struggle of the original film but it never even comes close to the intensity or emotional depth explored in William Friedkin's 50 year old masterpiece. This is a clunky, religious drama with jump scares. And the reach to connect this film to the original through Ellen Burstyn is so nonsensical that her involvement detracts from the movie more than it enhances it. What expertise could her character possibly offer regarding exorcisms? Although, the fact that she showed up for this just to get her eyes stabbed out may have been the only shocking moment the entire film offered up. That and Linda Blair popping in for the final 10 seconds like she's Mark Hammil at the end of The Force Awakens. The exorcism scene itself is an ugly CGI clusterfuck and probably the weakest section of the entire picture. But I will say that unlike the original film, this movie is paced incredibly well. It moves along almost suspiciously quickly, like David Gordon Green is rushing you through this embarrassing mess he's made by cutting the only salvageable material he was able to produce and giving you the bare minimum to tell a full story. So at least it's over fairly quickly. Except for the fact that this is only the first film in a proposed trilogy of Exorcist legacy sequels. Hopefully the power of Christ compels Universal to reconsider but with the massive 400 million dollars they spent just to acquire the exclusive rights to the Exorcist franchise - I don't think we've seen the last of this series, regardless of David Gordon Green's involvement from here on out.
#83. 80 for Brady
I'm probably the only straight male sports fan in America that saw this for Lilly Tomlin & Jane Fonda and NOT because of Tom Brady. Honestly, fuck that dude. But he's hardly in this. It could just as well be about a bunch of old ladies trying to get into any Super Bowl, really. Tom Brady's not essential to the plot. Tomlin and Fonda feel like they're basically just playing Grace and Frankie again (which I'm also probably the only straight male sports fan that watched that series in it's entirety prior to watching this). So this wasn't nearly as terrible as it should have been. The 4 leading ladies are pretty funny together and the onslaught of celebrity cameos (highlighted by Guy Fieri) make this much more tolerable than the 90 minute NFL commercial it's intended to be. And holy shit, even though he's got like 5 lines in the entire movie, Tom Brady is a horrendous actor. Which is surprising given all of his experience selling hits to get a flag on the football field. I never would have guessed that Gronk would outshine him in the acting department.
#82. Quiz Lady
What the hell happened to Awkwafina? She was the breakout star of Crazy Rich Asians, nominated for an Oscar for The Farewell and now she's relegated to this? A poorly written, painfully dated road-trip, odd couple, buddy comedy that can't quite decide if it wants to be a drama? But it's most dramatic moment is centered on burying your own shit in the back yard? The whole thing feels cheap and amateur-ish with uneven pacing, a confounding tone and atrocious music. At least now we have an answer to the question: what if somebody tried to make a modern day version of a 90's comedy like Tommy Boy but as an indie dramedy where every character is written with the least amount of charisma imaginable - specifically the two leads. Quiz Lady is the answer. Seriously, somehow Tony Hale as a Ben Franklin impersonator is the most interesting character in this movie.
#81. Leave the World Behind
Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail feels a lot like the second coming of M. Night Shyamalan to me, but in the absolute worst ways. Painfully overwritten dialogue, inhuman characters, and illogical plot twists plague Leave the World Behind which definitely feels like it would have been more interesting to experience as Rumaan Alam's novel. The idea of a large scale, foreign cyber attack on America is interesting to unpack but watching these characters sit around and try to piece together what's happening without a definitive answer until the final 15 minutes of the film is quite the test of patience; despite all of the spinning camera angles, tense musical cues and random CGI deer Esmail throws at you to keep things moving along. A tech-invasion survival thriller should be more fun than this. Like a modern day Maximum Overdrive. Not The Happening.
View the Rest of the 2023 Year in Tiers Here:
#movies #films #filmreview #bestof2023 #quizlady #leavetheworldbehind #comedy #indie #dramedy #horror #scifi #thriller #SuitableFlesh #FoolsParadise #MonstersofCalifornia #Sanctuary #MasterGardener #YouPeople #Strays #TotallyKiller #FiveNightsAtFreddys #ThePopesExorcist #HauntedMansion #M3GAN #TheExorcistBeliever #80forBrady #internetkilledthevideostore
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