2023 in Review: Movies

At first, I thought I would arrange the list of films I saw this past year alphabetically, by film name.  But that would obscure the fact that most of the films I saw were at festivals.  I didn’t see that many current films. Maybe that’s because there weren’t that many films being released (to theaters; I have to admit I’m biased towards seeing a film on a big screen in a theater rather than on a TV screen in a living room, I don’t care how big the TV screen is.) Or maybe it’s because I didn’t see that many films that appealed.  (I’m not a big fantasy or super-hero fan.)

The Film Festivals I got to were:

• Capitolfest (silent films and early sound movies) at the Capitol Theater in Rome NY. The featured actor at this year’s Capitolfest was Mary Astor. Her best known film is probably The Maltese Falcon, but she was in many sound films (some of which I had seen before the festival) as well as silent films (none of which I had seen.) The festival didn’t make me a bigger fan, but I did enjoy discovering additional Mary Astor films.
• Noir City DC at the AFI Silver in Silver Spring MD. Noir City celebrated the 75^th anniversary of films made in 1948, one of the best years for classic film noir.  Eddie Muller was a guest speaker, introducing many shows. I re-saw Road House (the 1948 version, not the 1989 version with Patrick Swayze, but… hmm… they do have lots in common, including a psychopathic villain.) But the 1948 version has Ida Lupino as a woman-on-her-own in a fantastic plot. The saloon is Jeffty’s. Another standout was Night has a 1000 Eyes – it’s a suspense film starring Edward G. Robinson where it really is difficult to predict the ending.
• Silent Cinema Showcase, also at AFI. I didn’t go to that many films in the showcase because, I have to admit, I’m not a big fan of Laurel & Hardy (or silent film physical comedy) and they were the featured performers. I saw (for at least the second time) The Ancient Law. I loved Lady Windemere’s Fan so much (a 1925 updating of a 19^th century play) that I read the Oscar Wilde play; I prefer the Lubitsch movie.
• French Embassy Women Pioneers of Cinema. Alice Guy, a true motion picture pioneer, who wrote and directed pictures back in the early 1900s, has recently been rediscovered. I had seen Barbie a few days before I say Guy’s The Consequences of Feminism.  As I said in the discussion, “The Consequences of Feminism was the Barbie of 1906.” See it!
• Library of Congress Film & Sound Festival, at AFI.  This was the first year for this festival, which celebrates both film and the sound effects and music that go into making the films.  Informative and sometimes amusing guest speakers introduced the films and talked about how sounds that we recognize (hoof beats, Star Trek phasers, many more) got that way as well as the work of sound designers.

The films I saw are listed below, with my favorites highlighted.

Movies_2023Download