31 December 2023

This post should have marked the beginning of my yearly roundups of the favourite books and movies I read and watched in 2023. However, due to coming down with a nasty bout of flu recently and other sundry commitments, I wasn't able to undertake writing the necessary four or five blog posts In lieu of this, however, I will simply present my (unordered and unadorned) highlights for now. Do get in touch if this (or any of my previous posts) have spurred you into picking something up yourself

Books

Peter Watts: Blindsight (2006) Reymer Banham: Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (2006) Joanne McNeil: Lurking: How a Person Became a User (2020) J. L. Carr: A Month in the Country (1980) Hilary Mantel: A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing (2023) Adam Higginbotham: Midnight in Chernobyl (2019) Tony Judt: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2005) Tony Judt: Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century (2008) Peter Apps: Show Me the Bodies: How We Let Grenfell Happen (2021) Joan Didion: Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968)Erik Larson: The Devil in the White City (2003)

Films Recent releases

• The Blue Caftan (Maryam Touzani, 2022)
• The Eight Mountains (Felix van Groeningen & Charlotte Vandermeersch, 2022)
• Evil Does Not Exist (Ryusuke Hamaguchi, 2023)
• Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorcese, 2023)
• Monster (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 2023)
• Passages (Ira Sachs, 2023)
• Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2023)
• The Tuba Thieves (Alison O Daniel, 2023)
• Theater Camp (Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman, 2023)
• T R (Todd Field, 2022)

Unenjoyable experiences included Alejandro G mez Monteverde's Sound of Freedom (2023), Alex Garland's Men (2022) and Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans (2022).
Older releases (Films released before 2022, and not including rewatches from previous years.)

• Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
• Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014)
• Daisy Miller (Peter Bogdanovich, 1974)
• First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017)
• Forbidden Games (Ren Cl ment, 1952)
• La Noire de... (Ousmane Semb ne, 1966)
• The Queen of Spades (Thorold Dickinson, 1949)
• The River (Jean Renoir, 1951)
• Topsy-Turvy (Mike Leigh, 1999)
• Le Trou (Jacques Becker, 1960)

Distinctly unenjoyable watches included Ocean's Eleven (1960), El Topo (1970), L olo (1992), Hotel Mumbai (2018), Bulworth (1998) and and The Big Red One (1980).