Issue 127: Best of 2023 Archives - Bright Wall/Dark Room

Throughout May December, graduation (as event, as trope; moving from one degree to the next, successful completion, training) competes with maturation for best overall conceit; each is more than window dressing to the present drama of Elizabeth’s unwelcome investigations. What Todd Haynes builds is less a trick mirror than a kaleidoscope, to refract a thought in all directions.

“You Are Not Serious People”: On Succession‘s Resonant Satire

Dorothy Bendel·

Issue 127: Best of 2023

Looking back from the cusp of a new year—newsrooms gutted, another election looming, and the ultra-rich profiting—Succession’s acid satire burns deeper than ever.

Episode #39: Maestro (with Nicholas Russell)

Veronica Fitzpatrick & Chad Perman·

Issue 127: Best of 2023 Podcast

This month we’re joined by writer, critic, and editor Nicholas Russell to chat about Maestro. We get into: what makes a Bradley Cooper Film, when weird voices work, that epigraph, tension as structure and provocation, what’s going on with the ending, getting moved by Mahler, and more.

White-Sand Brain Death: Infinity Pool’s Travel Guide to the Death Drive

Travis Woods·

Issue 127: Best of 2023

Infinity Pool is a synesthetic kaleidoscopia of narcotic dread, a mesmeric tour map into the nature of human identity and the death drive that motors it, defines it, obliterates it.

That Moment is Burned Into My Brain: Looking at Looking in Monica

Eric Langberg·

Issue 127: Best of 2023

Andrea Pallaoro’s Monica is a slow, careful film, one that trusts the audience to interpret the expressions of its actors rather than feeding us meaning through dialogue and plot.

An illustration of Cillian Murphy's Oppenheimer against a red background.

Take in the Sheets

Brendan Hodges·

Issue 127: Best of 2023

History, Oppenheimer suggests, is made up of agendas and counter-agendas, narratives and counter-narratives, fictions imposed onto a reality where truth has diminishing relevance if it ever mattered at all. Nolan’s films have always had a double-edged relationship with truth, full of noble lies and spiraling self-delusions, their characters manipulating themselves and each other as much as the reality around them.

BW/DR Picks: The Best of 2023

Bright Wall/Dark Room·

Issue 127: Best of 2023

For those of us who love nothing more than to lose ourselves in a movie for a couple of hours, well, there was a whole lot to get lost in last year. So without further ado, here are some thoughts, lists, and reflections on what got us through 2023.

My Roman Empire

Fran Hoepfner·

Issue 127: Best of 2023

La Chimera feels like a dream, talking to and over and under my sense of understanding. It feels like I made it up. It was the film of my year—the year when there was so much lost.

Something Dramatic and Unusual

Frank Falisi·

Issue 127: Best of 2023

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar finds Wes Anderson at his most rigorously experimental, committing to Anderson’s curational ‘style as form’ strategy not as a means of ferrying feeling but as its very manifestation.

A black and white illustration of a scene in the courtroom from the film Anatomy of a Fall

A Fall, A Leap

Micah Rickard·

Issue 127: Best of 2023

Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall is simple on the surface, but conceals a devilishly complex critique beneath its unadorned setup.

Needles & Boxcutters

Nicholas Russell·

Issue 127: Best of 2023

More than any other film in 2023, Evil Dead Rise served as the most astute tribute to the democratic, unfussy glory of the cinema experience, one of those true communal events that are so often fetishized yet elusive.

An illustration of Michelle Williams's Lizzy, her head center in frame, an expression on her face that appears ponderous or troubled. The illustration has visible brushstrokes. A transparent, drawn-in pigeon perches on her shoulder.

Making Peace With Our Distractions

Sarah Welch-Larson·

Issue 127: Best of 2023

Kelly Reichardt's Showing Up pays attention in the measured way that someone might stand before a painting they admire. But instead of showing the finished work, it watches the work being made: long, slow takes of an artist in her garage studio, carving away at clay.