Hey, everyone! I don’t know if you were able to tell—given my amount of blog posts this year—but 2023 was a lot. That being said, it was an immensely impactful media year, especially for movies, and I had the privilege of getting in my share of travel, concerts, and shows before my world turned upside-down. I am taking a hesitant step into 2024, reexamining my place not only physically but mentally. Great stories will always be a part of that, and I am so glad to be able to think and reflect upon the many different stories that helped me change my perspective on life, on living, and on the world around us! Picking five was as tough as ever, but there were some absolute standouts and some fiercely competitive runners-up.
As usual, this is a list of stories I experienced in 2023, not necessarily works published or released this year. Though, I think most are!
5- A Desolation Called Peace, Arkady Martine
Martine’s first novel, A Memory Called Empire (this one’s prequel), immediately captured my imagination and interest last year, deeply inspired my own writing, and so I was absolutely thrilled to seek this one out after reading the prior. We return to wily Teixcalaani space and beyond—learning lessons of personhood, romance, survival, and politics. Martine’s deep love of words shines through in beautiful depictions of the pride of a military (The battle cry “go, go, go. Go now, and if you die, you die star-brilliant!” described as a ‘delicious vibration in the marrow of her bones’ will forever stay with me), to the ways in which fighting friends and lovers are uniquely positioned to hurt one another. She uses these tools to draw you first into the human conflict of Desolation, and then to sweep through the inhuman (but still personable—an important distinction, yes?). This is a grand piece of science fiction that does everything the genre does perfectly while elevating the questions and ideas science fiction helps us analyze. It wound up being more timely than I could have imagined, discussions of artificial intelligence, war, and climate and migrant crises ever-present in our minds. In the end, I can only offer my second favorite line as an answer: “Good citizenship in the face of existential threats extends beyond the boundaries of sovereignty.”
Favorite Quote: “Language is not so transparent, but we are sometimes known, even so. If we are lucky.”
4- Godzilla Minus One, Takashi Yamazaki
Okay, I love Godzilla. In truth a lot of my love of Godzilla is nostalgic—fueled by the Rule of Cool and memories of cheering the great kaiju of my youth on in battle and of playing video games as those monsters against my brothers and friends. Motha is my favorite, both in the video games (she has an extra life), and in the movies (Hail, Queen of Monsters!). But Godzilla was first and foremost a response to the utter devastation Japan suffered through the atomic bombings—a uniquely cultural way of discussing an unfathomably horrific topic. Takashi Yamazaki’s film manages to capture that original essence while somehow pushing past it to untold profundity. Yes, there is a giant heat-ray breathing lizard immune to shells, mines, and the best-laid plans of a desperately war-weary world. But there is also that war-weary world, the desire to rebuild and move on, the shame of defeat, and the guilt of survivors. I had not expected a Godzilla movie to ever really make me cry, and I am forever glad that it did.
Favorite Quote: “Is your war finally over?”
3- One For My Enemy, Olivie Blake
This one snuck up on me! I had bought it out of sheer curiosity at a bookstore with a friend, amused by its premise. There’s no real secret surrounding my love of Slavic mythology (I wrote in my NaNo project this year a Russian character speaking to an English one something to the effect of: “Your stories tell you that you can kill dragons, and mine tell you that you can survive the cold and the dark. Tell me which is more inspiring.”) So a Russian witch gangster family retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in modern New York City was an obvious must-have impulse by. What Blake manages to do with that premise is nothing short of stunning. One For My Enemy is at once charmingly modern and cliché while deeply steeped in all the dark wonder of its source material (the families are headed by Baba Yaga and Koschei the Deathless). What is more, her prose is intoxicatingly romantic and the twists she weaves into the story—familiar to those who know a little something of Shakespeare—feel organic and still manage an element of surprise. I highly encourage everyone to leave any snootiness and prejudice at the door and dive into a world where fae are lawyers, the shadows have allegiances, and two houses alike in dignity war for a magic New York City underworld.
Favorite Quote: “Hate and love were so very similar. Both were intestinal, visceral. Both left scars, vestiges of pain. Hate could not be born from a place of indifference. Hate was only born from opposite sides of the same coin.”
2- Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese
This is hard. There are few times I have been so absolutely blown away by a piece of media that I cannot necessarily say I enjoyed. But this is not a film to be enjoyed, it is one to be experienced and to have wash over one’s mind and soul like a tsunami. There are no flaws that I can see—it fully justifies its runtime, its rating, its topic, and its story. It is art, and it is immaculate. Everything, from the performances to the music to the sudden and careful cuts to and away, serve to drive this behemoth of grandeur and emotion forward. What is more, there is a note of artfully placed optimism throughout and especially near the end that make it a triumph. To emerge from Killers of the Flower Moon is to be changed, and to be more reflective and respectful of the world we inhabit and the ground we walk upon. There is little else I can say in so short a summation, but there is boundless praise yet to be said of this film.
Favorite Quote: “There might be some insurrection for a while. But then people forget that. They don't remember and they don't care. It will be another ordinary everyday tragedy.”
1- Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan
Oppenheimer is a movie in two parts. What sticks with me the most are two incredibly timely and immeasurably important lessons each part dissects in different ways. First is its discussion of legacy—of the relation between creator and creation and how we are remembered. This is important, and it forms the basis of my favorite quote. It means a great deal to understand what has long been one of my base philosophies: that intentions mean very little next to results. The culpability for the atomic bombings, the arms race, the way in which we interact with other nations and our own nuclear futures weigh heavy over every decision made. Except when they are approached to what I consider to be the most profound aspect of Oppenheimer’s story: its relationship to theory. I view this as an appropriate response to an age of alternative facts, of the language of “I was only kidding,” and of just asking questions. Ideas are dangerous and powerful things, and where Oppenheimer excels is in removing the illusions that they are themselves harmless. When you hear time and again of the justification in the film of it only being a theory, of the dismissive way Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) asks what more one could want of theory, and of how characters casually dismiss the thought of apocalyptic destruction with that shield of distance and removal, it stays with you. It did with me, anyway, and helped push Oppenheimer to the top of this list of my favorite stories for 2023. It’s important, and as timely as it is timeless, and it weaves a rich and through examination of the types of people who wield power, why they do, and how we remember them for better and for worse.
Favorite quote: “J. Robert Oppenheimer—the martyr. I gave him exactly what he wanted. To be remembered for Trinity, not Hiroshima, not Nagasaki. He should be thanking me!”
Runners-Up (in no particular order): Suzume, Barbie, Remarkably Bright Creatures, The Troop, Nothing to See Here, Pachinko