Getting closer to fine cinema: our year in Madison moviegoing

In 2023, Tone Madison‘s film writers went to some interesting places, and unearthed some new favorites.

As has become customary in mid-December, a troupe of our film contributors have gathered to reflect on their year in cinema. Even if you aren’t a film-lover, no doubt you’ve scrolled past the onslaught of top-10 lists from major and minor publications alike on social media in recent weeks. And while those are always fun to admire, fuss over, and pick apart, reserving space for our distinctive array of voices—Sara Batkie, Lewis Peterson, C Nelson-Lifson, Ian Adcock, Jason Fuhrman, Hanna Kohn, Edwanike Harbour, Scott Gordon, and myself—to share deeper thoughts about the medium, their evolving habits and preferences, is a little more interesting and less homogenized. (But don’t worry, those personalized lists are here, too.)

In addition to a recapitulation and celebration of our distinctive year in publishing, hopefully these many paragraphs (and a few replies) impart not only what it’s like to be a cinephile, but the specificity of being one in Madison, Wisconsin, right now with all its challenges and privileges. The commercial theatrical landscape has been somewhat upended in just the past couple years amid the wealth of one-time and sometimes one-off special events downtown on- and off-campus, and the extensive resource of our city’s solitarily standing video rental store endures.

From the soul-stirring to the cuttingly wry, we hope our reflections inspire a new thought or something unexpected in our drive to preserve the art and experience of the movies in any environment. In 2022’s Tone Madison year-end film thread, I saw it fitting to characterize the writing as not only exhaustive, but most significantly, as “a behind-the-scenes compendium of camaraderie.” Here’s to picking up that torch again and carrying it into 2024. —Grant Phipps

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Grant Phipps: 2023 was a trying year, as I felt myself falling further behind my own aspirations to keep up with any sort of published writing. But film was still there for me, and my relationship with the medium broadly meant something in my screen-scrolling and disc-shuffling when I stayed in or when I was an auxiliary group member out at the movies.

It was a challenge to get to commercial theaters, but perhaps a foreseen one. (A problem that also persists in Chicago, as I just read.) Options are limited with notable Marcus and AMC venues beyond city limits, and with public transit crookedly continuing to deteriorate since June’s network redesign, I haven’t figured out a consistently practical alternative. Best I can do is find a time and a movie that works for a friend or friend of a friend with a car. Given the month of June at Marcus Point beset with audience disruptions (during Sanctuary and Past Lives), among the worst I’ve experienced, I had even less incentive to make it a destination during the latter half of the year.

The UW Cinematheque was generally a lot better, though not without some truly bizarre and restless audience behavior on occasion. Maybe among the aftershocks from a post-pandemic return. I tried to cherry-pick from some of their special presentations, and walked away from them with an appreciation for opportunities to see things on celluloid or at least in the setting for which they were created. A space for obscure (and more sparsely attended) gems like Thamp [The Circus Tent] (1978) and The Plot Against Harry (1970/1989) still exists in downtown Madison, and I’m thankful for it. There were periods when I went to five consecutive Cinematheque screenings, too, each with their own unique merits, an initiative I feel like I hadn’t taken since the fall after I moved to Madison. Cinematheque even surprised me with a sneak screening of The Sweet East (2023), which features a time-frozen song that’ll end up on a playlist of my favorites of the year; and it’s just a “blissed-and-kissed” Talia Ryder lip-syncing to herself in the mirror.

As I documented in a personal essay about the privilege of my experience on the Wisconsin Film Festival’s Golden Badger Jury, in late March I started to delve into the depths of the Toronto New Wave (TNW) through Atom Egoyan, compulsively watching Exotica (1994) twice in three days. I found the contributions of Don McKellar as an actor and writer to be integral to that scene in the late ’80s through the late ’90s; but if I’m really being honest with myself, I think I most closely connected with the early films of Patricia Rozema. White Room (1990) is a semi-unknown masterpiece, sitting at not even 160 ratings on Letterboxd (as of December 20, 2023). A queer-coded character drama about sensitivity, identity, and idealism, its deeply moving arc needs to be more widely seen like her equally amazing Laurie Anderson-inspired I’ve Heard The Mermaids Singing (1987), which Kino Lorber restored and released in 2022.

None of these TNW features turned up in a movie theater, so I had to curate myself. By that representation, maybe my year at home was most edifying. Which sort of leads me into pondering, yet again, what the hell’s going on with physical media and streaming, because tensions seem at an all-time high. It’s like studios and the market can’t consider coexistence, but this idea that streaming equates to easier access is now fading amid price hikes. I probably bought fewer but rented more movies this year than I have in a long time, since the late 2000s. I reconnected with a lost part of me in the bombast and zaniness of a new anime series for the first time in like 10 years, Mob Psycho 100, and glued myself to my office chair recent Saturdays for Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie’s The Curse, in its phantom threads to last year’s The Rehearsal. In all that, I feel like I just partly caved to content, and watched too much but wrote too little and lost track of days, especially if fragmented blog drafts kept to myself don’t count. (And they don’t.)

When I wrote something for public eyes, it was a deep and locally focused commitment to Tone. (And separately, I published a rigorous list on the Jenny Hval film canon, which I think has niche value.) As those articles are archived, I hope they’ll provide insight into what the video art and filmmaking community in Madison and Wisconsin was up to at this moment, in 2023. Beyond them, off the (web)page, one meaningful moment stands out to me, and that’s the brief meeting I had with writer/director/actor Courtney Stephens at Arts + Literature Laboratory the night before the film festival in April. There’s something about her demeanor both within and outside the context of narrating her essay film, Terra Femme, that broke through my guarded, cynical air to embrace the notion that there are articulate, inquisitive artists out there who I might fit in with, and who could inspire me to make something multidisciplinary beyond merely writing and talking about art. And after watching Stephens as the muted star of “audiophile tourism ad for the labyrinth of Los Angeles” (as I defined it…lol), Topology Of Sirens, I think I’m overdue for an art gallery- and sound art-centric trip out there.

Top five of 2023, for now:

1. Afire (dir. Christian Petzold)
2. Queens Of The Qing Dynasty (dir. Ashley McKenzie)
3. Ever Deadly (dirs. Chelsea McMullan and Tanya Tagaq)
4. A Human Position (dir. Anders Emblem)
5. Dream Scenario (dir. Kristoffer Borgli)

Two essential shorts: Noise (dir. Julian Castronovo) and Some Tropics Of Cancer (dir. T.J. Blanco)

Sara Batkie: I moved to Madison in May 2022, so this was the first year I was able to truly discover the city’s film community and all it has to offer, including the Wisconsin Film Festival which I both attended and volunteered for. It was such a joy to be among so many enthusiastic movie fans, especially after two-plus years of mostly watching stuff alone on my couch. The sold-out screening of Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up at the Marquee was the best theatrical experience I had this year, and still my favorite film of 2023. I’m a fiction writer rather than a sculptor, but the questions the film poses about how much effort and support to give the creative endeavors of others at the expense of your own work in a time of rapacious capitalism will be relevant to anyone who makes art. The spiky, unpredictable give and take between Michelle Williams and Hong Chau was my favorite frenemy-ship of the year.

The ways that women succeed and fail to make intimate connections in an inhospitable world was a throughline in several of the 2023 films I most enjoyed. The Pakistani movie Joyland, another Film Festival offering, has a cis-man as its central character, but it’s really about his relationships with the various women in his life, particularly his new wife and the trans woman he’s falling in love with, and many of the emotional beats hinge on the expectations of the misogynist society he lives in and whether he’ll conform to or defy them. Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla was another gorgeously composed portrait of a young woman suffocating in the confines of a gilded cage. Terms like “grooming” haven’t traditionally been used to describe Elvis and Priscilla’s relationship, but Coppola is forthright about the insidiously permissive culture that made it possible without villainizing anyone involved. It’s a delicate balance to maintain; Celine Song’s debut Past Lives walks a similar tightrope, though consent isn’t the animating conflict so much as the bone-deep regret that comes with growing older and confronting what your choices have made unchangeable. Greta Lee’s lead performance was my great surprise of 2023 and I hope she gets some awards recognition when the time comes.

I don’t know if any of these films did well enough at the box office to turn the tides towards smaller-scale adult fare again, though I think Past Lives was something of a word-of-mouth hit. Regardless, what was most heartening for me this year was to see firsthand how many people and organizations in the city are dedicated to preserving cinema as a cultural institution locally, whether I was renting videos from Four Star or attending rooftop screenings at MMoCA. Almost as soon as I moved to Madison I googled “independent theaters” and found the UW Cinematheque. Their calendar always has such a diverse array of offerings each season, often stuff that can’t be seen anywhere else. 2023 was a great year for them, and I look forward to seeing what’s in store for 2024. With that in mind, here are the top-five films I saw there over the last 12 months that were completely new to me:

1. The Plot Against Harry (dir. Michael Roemer)
2. Fremont (dir. Babak Jalali)
3. My Little Loves (dir. Jean Eustache)
4. Saint Omer (dir. Alice Diop)
5. I Vitelloni (dir. Federico Fellini)

Scott Gordon: I could write a whole piece about how much I’ve enjoyed copy-editing various Tone Madison film articles in 2023. Suffice it to say that I always come away with rejuvenated curiosity, and with a different perspective on everything from experimental films to the grodiest corners of genre cinema. In this day and age, most locally focused publications are lucky to have a film critic. We have a dedicated Film Editor in Grant and a whole bunch of great freelancers writing about film too.

The best time I had at the movies this year: Seeing Zachary Wigon’s Sanctuary at the Wisconsin Film Festival (WFF). No contest. The film takes place almost entirely within one hotel suite and with a cast of two—Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott—as a dominatrix and her rich client. I can’t imagine any other two actors carrying the power struggle that unfolds in this confined setting. Qualley balances her character on a razor-thin line between playful and threatening. Abbott plays his corporate heir with the gormless squish of a man who can’t quite bring himself to inhabit the power and looks that life has handed to him. I’m glad I got to see it for the first time in a room full of people who knew what they were getting into. Sanctuary holds up on repeat viewings, but it was better hearing its viciously funny dialogue bring down the house a few times. 

Sanctuary is probably the last thing I’ll ever see at the Hilldale movie theater that began as a Sundance Cinemas, became an AMC, and enjoyed one final run as a WFF venue. True, I’ve been almost unconscionably snarky about the theater over the years in its various iterations. But I will miss it. Before it closed, it was, sadly, the easiest first-run theater in town for me to reach without a car. (Flix Brewhouse is actually closer to my home, but Madison Metro, in its wisdom, has made that at least a two-bus trip for me.) On top of the great work programmers are doing at UW Cinematheque, Mills Folly Microcinema, WUD Film, and so forth, is it really so much to ask for a fully operational two- to four-screen cinema somewhere in Central-ish Madison?

I tried to get better about watching movies this year (i.e. balance out my endless binges of streaming horror movies). I renewed my Four Star Video Rental subscription and used it to catch up on so many things old and new. Some highlights of my good old fashioned DVD watching: Phil Tippett’s animated nightmare Mad God (2022), King Hu’s Legend Of The Mountain (1979), Park Chan-Wook’s Stoker (2013) and Decision To Leave (2022).

As of spring 2022, anyone with a Madison Public Library card can use the free streaming service Kanopy, which I’ve also found to be a great resource. A few favorites I watched on Kanopy this year: Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop (somehow I’d never watched it before but what a lot it still has to tell us about austerity, policing, and technological hubris), Orson Welles’ The Stranger (seeing Welles’ The Trial at this year’s Wisconsin Film Festival made me realize how much catching up I have to do on Orson still), Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon (re-watched just a few weeks before Ryan O’Neal died), and Alexandre O. Philippe’s documentary Memory: The Origins Of Alien (Philippe also directed Lynch/Oz, which screened at Cinematheque this summer).

Lewis Peterson: To reflect on the last year of film viewing, I feel like it’s necessary to bring up the two biggest events in the industry at large in 2023, the Writer’s/Actor’s/Director’s strikes and the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon. I think the outcome of both ultimately bodes well for movies, although it seems like the people holding the purse strings for Hollywood movies have more open contempt for the medium than any time in the past (for example, the whole Coyote Vs. Acme debacle). There were definitely a few releases that I was looking forward to as 2023 movies that got delayed (Dune: Part II being the obvious one, but also I walk by the poster for The Bikeriders that promises a December 1 release whenever I’m at AMC Fitchburg and I’m reminded that its theatrical release wasn’t guaranteed for a while, although it now looks to be slated for a June 2024 release).

But “Barbenheimer” provided a counterargument to the cynical received wisdom that all people want is more content to distract them, and reminded us that in fact movies can and should feel like an event, and a communal experience. Most of my own viewing is on my own at home, so I felt like I needed the reminder, too. While I enjoyed both Barbie and Oppenheimer, I do have to continue to sing the praises of UW Cinematheque and say that the theatrical highlight of the year was seeing Ghost World (2001), a movie that meant a lot to me as a young person, in a packed theater with Terry Zwigoff in attendance, where he clearly got to see the significance of the film to the audience (I also got all of Four Star’s copies of Zwigoff’s movies signed by him, and he jokingly said, “I should have brought my LaserDisc,” when I pulled out a copy of Crumb on VHS to sign, which felt a little bit like being roasted by Don Rickles if he collected 78s.) 

I’ve been looking over what I wrote for last year’s wrap-up, and it seems like my viewing habits have stayed pretty consistent. I think I’m going to end up viewing somewhere between 600 and 700 films by the end of the year (including short films). Barring a handful of exceptions, all of those were either on physical media or in a theater. Following Grant’s prompt for a unique list, I’ve got a list that I don’t think anyone else would make, which is my top-five personal favorite physical media releases of the year, along with the labels that put them out:

1. Andrzej Żuławski: Masters Of Cinema box set (Eureka, includes The Third Part Of The Night, The Devil, On The Silver Globe and Escape To The Silver Globe)
2. Fatal Femmes box set (Fun City Editions, includes Neige and The Bitch)
3. Fatal Termination (Error4444)
4. Man On The Roof (Radiance)
5. For The Plasma (Factory 25)

As for a list for top releases of the year, I’m finding it difficult to restrict myself to five, and if the purpose is to shine a light on stuff that may not have received as much attention, I want to cast as wide a berth as possible. The following 10 new releases either gave me hope for the state of the world and the movies, made me laugh really hard, made me cringe in recognition of part of myself, or all three (with the small caveat that there’s still a few likely heaters coming out before the end of the year, chiefly Ferrari):

1. Return To Seoul (dir. Davy Chou)
2. Beau Is Afraid (dir. Ari Aster)
3. Happer’s Comet (dir. Tyler Taormina)
4. The Elephant 6 Recording Company (dir. Chad Stockfleth)
5. Sick Of Myself / Dream Scenario (dir. Kristoffer Borgli)
6. Give Me Pity! (dir. Amanda Kramer)
7. The Sweet East (dir. Sean Price Williams)
8. Holy Spider (dir. Ali Abbasi)
9. The Devil Conspiracy (dir. Nathan Frankowski)
10. The Night Of The 12th (dir. Dominik Moll)

Grant Phipps:

@Lewis: Reading your list of favorite label releases reminded me of one thing I forgot to mention in my encapsulation (thanks for that!), and that’s my lazy tendency to watch random unboxing videos of physical media from collectors on YouTube. Which, in turn, encouraged me to check out some things I otherwise wouldn’t have. I’ll also give credit to a Twitch streamer, whose community’s conversation about the deeply strange Bee Movie (2007) piqued my curiosity enough to just watch it one night. My new roommate has a pretty impressive physical media collection, and recommended a couple things as well. Much appreciation to all of them, regardless of how I felt about the films themselves—Into The Night (John Landis’ After Hours in Los Angeles), Mr. Freedom (absurdist political satire that I see as a direct inspiration for The Simpsons‘ “Citizen Kang“), Rick Sloane’s charmingly bad, no-budget Blood Theatre (in a double feature with the high camp of Theatre Of Blood), and the remake of Desperate Hours from 1990 (atrocious on all fronts, lol).

I wish I had more to say about “Barbenheimer.” I’m still kind of taken aback by the fact that I attended Oppenheimer with a nearly full house at an IMAX on a Monday afternoon of all days/times. As recent as winter 2022 during another wave of Covid, kind of unthinkable; but the social media-driven marketing worked wonders for two films that aren’t sequels or cinematic universe-driven properties. Both flawed to me, but not without merit. (And Barbie is legit a fun movie.)

@Sara: I love your illustration of the character dynamic in Showing Up. I’d like to watch it again down the line, especially as someone who’s seen all of Kelly Reichardt’s films (and holds two of them in especially high regard). I was among your audience at the Marquee; and I’d agree, one of the most engaged during the film festival and the year in general. Showing Up is probably the lightest (and definitely the funniest) film that she’s made, but it’s perhaps not a “ha ha funny” movie that is immediately legible to a general audience. But I think it clicked with the crowd, presumably one with scattered ties to university life who knew what they were getting into. Also, recently speaking of Barbie and Oppenheimer, just want to give a nod to Reichardt’s comments about them from September, with a snarkily supportive endorsement/addendum by a Twitter user that went semi-viral.

C Nelson-Lifson: I had to change my general filmgoing habits this year, as it has become increasingly more expensive to be alive. Also, due to many early morning classes, I had to be more selective with the films I could see in theaters. For example, I had to choose between seeing Barbie and Oppenheimer (I chose Barbie and never regretted my choice for a second). Due to various ailments (the famous disease: the novel Coronavirus, or a weeklong migraine), I spent a number of weeks wasting away like a frail Victorian child. During these weeks, I abstained from taking my ADHD meds, and the only things that were able to hold my hummingbird attention span were some of the worst movies ever committed to celluloid.

The worst one, by far, was a Russian adaptation of Pinocchio (2021) with Pauly Shore as Pinocchio himself, giving a “youthful and spirited” performance (his words). This film took years off my life, made me think about my own mortality, and simultaneously made me feel like I was on drugs while wishing I was on drugs. You might be curious how a film can be so bad it can make one feel all these different things, but heed my warning! Do not watch this film! This film gave me irreparable psychic damage. You can find a video of some of the more hilarious lines of dialogue; watch those instead. Do not be fooled like I was! I thought about sharing a list of the worst movies I saw this year, but I will refrain from bringing my hater energy to this space.

I was incredibly fortunate enough to see 14 feature length films and three shorts at the Wisconsin Film Festival. Of course, because I have amazing taste, I loved almost all of the films I saw. Highlights include The People’s Joker, Ever Deadly, and my surprising favorite, Following Sean (2005). My filmgoing experience is always improved when the filmmaker, or someone involved, is in attendance. What I might have thought was a fairly standard documentary was elevated by getting to hear the background and follow-up questions about the making of Following Sean from director Ralph Arlyck.

I still managed to see quite a few films in theaters, and here are some of my favorite film-going moments from the last year. (I’ll preface this list by saying I am very cool and normal, I know how to behave myself in public, and I actually have really good manners. I promise.):

→ Getting to see the original cut of Heat (1995) at UW Cinematheque. At this screening, I learned (from Programming Director Jim Healy) that Michael Mann frequently makes small changes to every different release of his films, whether it is removing a line of dialogue or changing the color grading. Getting to see the original 35mm theatrical release was really special! As someone with ADHD, three-hour runtime often makes me feel claustrophobic, but Heat is a rare film where every scene and character is necessary, making what could be a standard heist film into a masterpiece.

→ Whispering “family” to my friend whenever Vin Diesel says “family” in Fast X.

→ Driving down to Chicago to see Videodrome (1983) and Crash (1996) during a weekend of Cronenberg films with queer, trans, and kink themes for Pride month at Facets.

→ Getting dressed up to see Barbie, seeing everyone else in their costumes, and laughing my ass off!!

→ Seeing the trailer for the latest Mission: Impossible movie before Asteroid City. When Tom Cruise did a crazy stunt, I went “there he goes!” and the whole family next to me had a good laugh.

→ Seeing Martin (1977) at Cinematheque with my dad, and seeing him cover his eyes during more suspenseful parts. Also in attendance was Tony Buba, who had a cameo in the film and was responsible for the sound. It was delightful to stick around for the Q&A afterwards, where I learned that the house in the movie was Buba’s childhood home where his parents lived during filming, among other fun facts.

→ When my friend and I saw Priscilla, we had the whole theater to ourselves, which meant that when Elvis finally called Priscilla his wife, we turned to each other and said “MY WIFE” in a Borat voice.

Here is my short list of favorite new movies I saw this year, in no particular order:

• Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig)
• Asteroid City (dir. Wes Anderson)
• Killers Of The Flower Moon (dir. Martin Scorsese)
• Priscilla (dir. Sofia Coppola)
• May December (dir. Todd Haynes)

Here is my list of favorite new-to-me movies I saw this year, also in no particular order:

• Martin (1977, dir. George Romero)
• Women In Love (1969, dir. Ken Russell)
• Blow Out (1981, dir. Brian de Palma)
• Mission:Impossible II (2000, dir. John Woo)
• Freaks (1932, dir. Tod Browning)
• Crash (1996, dir. David Cronenberg)
• Tokyo Drifter (1966, dir. Seijun Suzuki)
• Ganja & Hess (1973, dir. Bill Gunn)
• The Addiction (1995, dir. Abel Ferrara)
• School Of The Holy Beast (1974, dir. Norifumi Suzuki)

Grant Phipps:

@CNL: I hear you on the “increasingly more expensive to be alive” sentiment. Or reality. And I appreciate you bringing it up, because it seemed like the barely manageable cost of living here in recent years became inarguably unmanageable in just a matter of a few months into 2023. A movie-divergent subject, maybe, but one that inevitably affects decision-making on whether you can go out on a whim, as you sharply argue in the first couple sentences.

I wish we could’ve featured your expanded take on Vasiliy Rovenskiy’s Pinocchio: A True Story, because that descriptive warning made me laugh. We don’t have enough (entertaining) hater energy in our film coverage, because it’s so often tied to the fact that we’re publishing a piece to say, “Go see this screening that’s happening one-time only!” Lewis gave us a thorough pan of Fool’s Paradise this year, which I quite enjoyed. So, maybe we should aim to do that just slightly more often in 2024. You can lead the way, lol.

Love your lucky-seven list of moviegoing moments, a way to catalog the significance of presentation and environment, and capture those differences between watching a movie with other people and by yourself (or even with a virtual audience / watch party).

Ian Adcock: I would have liked to have gone out to the movies more this year, but financial, time, and health limitations meant most of my movie-watching has been on the couch. The new bus redesign might actually make it *easier* for me to get to the theater though, so I’m looking forward to the opportunity to see more movies in a theater in 2024.

My 2023 home-viewing habits have felt a little more compartmentalized. I watched a lot of 1970s Italian crime movies, screwball comedies, and pre-code films, as well as the weird junky films I find tucked away in the corners of streaming services (discovering the 1975 no-budget Canadian thriller Sudden Fury on Tubi was a highlight). And I continued buying physical media, especially considering the actions of David Zaslav and his friends at Warner Bros. It’s always a good investment to pick up a movie you like at the thrift store or on sale.

My favorite movie theater experiences of 2023: Showing Up at the Wisconsin Film Festival, Drunken Master II at Cinematheque, Heat and Thief at Cinematheque, and The Tough Ones at Wisconsin Film Festival

My favorite new-to-me films of 2023:

• Joint Security Area (2000, dir. Park Chan-wook)
• Decision To Leave (2022, dir. Park Chan-wook)
• The Awful Truth (1937, Leo McCarey)
• After Hours (1985, dir. Martin Scorsese)
• Once Upon A Time In China I-III (1991-1993, dir. Tsui Hark)
• Star 80 (1983, dir. Bob Fosse)
• Breathless (1983, dir. Jim McBride)
• Southern Comfort (1981, dir. Walter Hill)
• The Duelists (1977, dir. Ridley Scott)

Jason Fuhrman: For me, 2023 was an especially prolific and rewarding year for moviegoing. My viewing habits more or less remained the same as I watched fewer films at home than ever. Although I scrapped my car last December, this did not discourage me from indulging my voracious appetite for cinema. I caught what films I could in commercial theaters, while continuing to religiously patronize the UW Cinematheque, which offers the finest ongoing film studies education a cinephile could ask for. As the programmers consistently outdo themselves, they are breathing new life into a dead scene. I also incorporated more experimental film and video art into my diet with Mills Folly Microcinema screenings at Arts + Literature Laboratory. 

Frankly, attempting to distill several hundred cinematic experiences into a concise reflection feels so overwhelming that I don’t even know where to begin. One of the first films I saw this year was Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Broker, a complex, compassionate human trafficking drama that still stands out to me after all the movies I saw in 2023. I’m really looking forward to seeing his latest effort, Monster, at 4070 Vilas Hall in 2024. The popular Thursday Premieres at the Cinematheque has truly been a blessing for cinephiles in Madison. Many of these events have been exceptionally well-attended, and seeing so many people make time for cinema in their lives inspires me and helps me to feel less alone in the world.  

The spring calendar commenced with Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO, an awe-inspiring look at the duality of humankind through the eyes of a donkey. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many people come out for a screening at the Cinematheque. The auditorium was packed, a large queue formed outside the building, and the atmosphere was electric with excitement. Although several people were turned away at the door, it was an unforgettable experience that renewed my faith in the collective emotional power of cinema and left many audience members openly weeping.

The screening of Jafar Panahi’s multilayered metacinematic masterpiece No Bears was all the more poignant in view of the fact that Panahi had just been released from prison, where he was serving a sentence for creating propaganda against the government. (I watched the grisly, manic spectacle Cocaine Bear around the same time as No Bears and thought about what an absurd double feature that would be.)

Being a literal film junkie, I relished the many 35mm presentations this year at the Cinematheque. Since longtime projectionist Rock unexpectedly retired in May after a screening of Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York (1977), opportunities to see films on 35mm have been fewer and further between. As a general rule, I try to take advantage of them whenever I can. I immensely enjoyed the retrospective of films by Milwaukee-born director Michael Schultz at the Chazen Museum of Art, especially The Last Dragon (1985), a blaxploitation kung-fu romantic comedy musical and one of the most ridiculously entertaining films I have ever seen in my life. Of course seeing a print of David Cronenberg’s The Fly (1986) was also a highlight. (Some friends and I went out for Chinese food at Fugu Asian Fusion beforehand and we made sure to order spicy eggplant.)

The summer lineup of films at the Cinematheque was especially eclectic and impressive, and it afforded me an opportunity to watch Béla Tarr’s luminous, apocalyptic arthouse classic Werckmeister Harmonies (2000) for the first time. What a transcendent experience. (What a whale of a film!) After the screening, a friend and I went to McPike Park for La Fête de Marquette, only to find the grounds deserted, which felt particularly eerie in light of the film we had just seen. We later found out La Fête had ended early due to severe weather, but it was uncanny.

One of the most potent and timely films I saw over the summer was Let It Be Morning (2021), which provides a glimpse into the quagmire of Israeli-Palestinian relations and is based on a 2006 novel by Palestinian author and Israeli citizen Sayed Kashua. I ordered a copy of the book online and had incidentally started reading it at the beginning of October. Needless to say, it felt especially prophetic and hard-hitting while I listened to news of the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza every day. Were it not for the Cinematheque, I might never have known either the film or the novel existed. I highly recommend both, by the way.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention this summer’s dual release of Greta Gerwig’s absurdist pink comedy Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s experimental blockbuster biopic Oppenheimer. Although neither of these movies made my top-10 list, I genuinely enjoyed them and watched both of them twice on the big screen. I was also fascinated by how the sustained juxtaposition of these (seemingly) disparate releases became a kind of cultural touchstone, as well as a catalyst for more people to spend significant amounts of time in movie theaters. It was refreshing during that time to observe so many different people lining up to buy concessions and tickets to double features, dressing up in costumes, and hanging around the lobby to engage in animated discussions about what they saw. I haven’t really experienced anything like that at the movies. The collective energy of people excited about cinema and interacting with—rather than just passively consuming—the medium felt more like being at a film festival than a corporatized fantasyland.

Here are my own capsule reviews for Barbie and Oppenheimer, respectively, which I wrote after exiting the theaters:

At once a shiny, high-concept piece of corporate propaganda; a surreal, mind-bending existentialist feminist odyssey; an elaborate postmodern technicolor dream world; and a multilayered commentary on unbridled American consumerism.

At once an epic existential horror film; a complex, mind-boggling moral drama; a multifaceted portrait of an enigmatic, towering figure in American history; and a flashy, flawed experiment in cinematic style.

Lastly, I want to give a shout-out to WUD Film for presenting a DCP of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), my favorite Christmas movie, earlier in December at The Marquee. I’ve always wanted to see that on the big screen.

Top 10 theatrical releases of 2023:

1. Beau Is Afraid (dir. Ari Aster)
2. Anatomy Of A Fall (dir. Justine Triet)
3. Rotting In The Sun (dir. Sebastián Silva)
4. The Sweet East (dir. Sean Price Williams)
5. Sick Of Myself / Dream Scenario (dir. Kristoffer Borgli)
6. Past Lives (dir. Celine Song)
7. Sanctuary (dir. Zachary Wigon)
8. Afire (dir. Christian Petzold)
9. One Fine Morning (dir. Mia Hansen-Løve)
10. Priscilla (dir. Sofia Coppola)

Hanna Kohn: I’ll say it: Barbie inspired me. I posed for my first movie marquee poster photo (since maybe 2009 when 500 Days of Summer came out) in my pink dance leotard, zebra print skirt, pink mules, pink claw clip and pink woven purse that my grandmother purchased specifically for her college graduation from UW-Milwaukee so that she’d stand out in the crowd (not pictured). I did it because I wanted to feel the rush of pink wash over me like it did when I was little playing with Veterinarian Barbie’s accessories and because of the internet.

My bestie Tara is on the left in the photograph, and we posed in our Barbie best after making a last minute trip to Costco for some “girly” things, being pointed at in the Sun Prairie Palace Cinema parking lot for wearing pink and watching the movie and concluding that it was “ok.” Going to Barbie inspired me, because I love being in silly little situations and getting the chance to watch a movie with my friends. Seeing Barbie, however, did not inspire me and that’s ok, y’know?

I started a radio show on 98.7 FM WVMO this year (Playhouse with Hanna K, Monday nights at 8 p.m.) and wound up talking about movies a lot. More than I expected to. I watched Magic Mike XXL (2015) this year and dedicated an entire episode of my show to songs that reminded me of the film. I had a lot of fun making a Halloween episode that took a dive into songs featured in horror movies such as Nope (2022), X (2022), and of course John Carpenter’s original Halloween (1978).

I guess that I would say that, all in all, my film experiences this year became more reflective. The biggest joys for me came from seeing others’ reinterpretations of film concepts or ideas and I’m looking forward to seeing more silly things in 2024 like people photoshopping baby Snoopy into a photo still from Eraserhead.

Edwanike Harbour (A24 Fangirl 4 Life): I definitely slowed down my film consumption this year, but anticipate I will be back in full swing for 2024. Streaming kept me afloat, although I was able to have a slightly more productive fall.

M3GAN was probably one of the first releases of the year for me. As a general rule of thumb, I automatically lower my expectations for anything that’s being released in January or February. I was pleasantly surprised by this as I found the story to be engaging enough while the plot was fairly simple. There were a couple of scenes where I found myself rooting for the doll. My own misanthropy aside, it was a good PG-13 entry that joins other young-adult horror like the Final Destination franchise.

The two highlights for me at this year’s Wisconsin Film Festival were Hollywood 90028 (1973) and I Like Movies. Besides feeling personally attacked by the latter, I could see a lot of similarities between myself and the protagonist. The preoccupation with cinema and hyperfocus on the details of said subject to the point you have little time for other hobbies or social engagements were well captured in Chandler Levack’s black comedy-drama.

My favorite UW Cinematheque entry was a bit of a shocker. Sebastián Silva’s Rotting In The Sun came from out of nowhere. Marketed as a dark comedy taking place at an all-male party island sells it short for its commentary about class, culture, and socio-economic status. I had heard some minimal chatter about it, but the emotional impact that it had in that final frame was a total gut-punch after a lot of raucous laughter from the audience. (It’s still streaming on MUBI.)

Finally, I will leave you with my top 10 for 2023 in addition to the films I am still highly anticipating before the year’s end:

1. Saltburn (dir. Emerald Fennell)
2. May December (dir. Todd Haynes)
3. The Holdovers (dir. Alexander Payne)
4. The Sweet East (dir. Sean Price Williams)
5. Oppenheimer (dir. Christopher Nolan)
6. Godzilla Minus One (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)
7. Reptile (dir. Grant Singer)
8. Killers Of The Flower Moon (dir. Martin Scorsese)
9. Bottoms (dir. Emma Seligman)
10. Theater Camp (dirs. Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman)

Entries I need to see: The Iron Claw, Napoleon, Poor Things, The Zone Of Interest, Maestro