First Viewings of 2023 — June

8 min readJul 3, 2023

181 DAYS IN / 236 FILMS WATCHED

Wait a minute, How to Talk to Girls at Parties wasn’t an instructional video — MAX, YOU LIED TO ME!!

Anyway, I saw The Flash on the Sunday of its opening weekend with my brother. Not that you would’ve guessed it was the opening weekend based on all of the empty seats around us. It was about as good as I expected, which is to say it was fine. I don’t care about The Flash as a character (though I heard Flashpoint is good), and I care even less for Ezra Miller’s performance as The Flash (Barry Allen is annoying in both versions of the Justice League). Like everyone else, I watched it to see Michael Keaton as Batman again, and…eh.

Vengeance was a massive surprise. I’ve been meaning to watch it ever since it started streaming on Prime Video, but I kept pushing it back because B.J. Novak’s face is in it, and that posed an issue for me. He’s a talented actor, and I’m sure he’s a good guy, but holy shit, what a remarkably punchable face he has. But as it turns out, he’s a talented filmmaker.

I went in expecting the fish-out-of-water normal guy surrounded by wacky characters in a bizarre setting trope, which… it is, but what’s surprising was the empathetic perspective of the characters. It wasn’t an elitist asshole surrounded by hicks; it’s…well, an asshole surrounded by people who live in an environment that’s foreign to him. The movie did a great job of showing that these are weird characters, but they’re not stupid. In fact, most of the humor comes from subversion.

Prime Video describes the film as a “darkly comic thriller,” but I didn’t get that. In a weird way, it was thoughtful and heartwarming. It was also hilarious. I owe the best moments to Boyd Holbrook’s performance as the dead girl’s brother. I don’t know what it was; something about his complete sincerity and straightforwardness was charming and amusing to me. He needs to be in more stuff because he’s charismatic as hell and all-around just a solid actor. I can’t wait to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny utterly waste him in whatever thankless role he plays.

If you have a keen eye, you may notice that the list this month consists of many films in the Criterion Collection. That’s because Barnes & Noble (or Full-Price Books, as I like to call it) has a bi-annual Criterion sale throughout July, and I wanted to potentially add a few more movies to my grocery list. One of them was The Great Escape, and I have to ask, is that name supposed to be ironic? It wasn’t that great of an escape. A handful of guys break out of the camp, and of that handful, about half or more get killed; I think one successfully gets away, and Steve McQueen is sent back and put back in solitary confinement. What a glorious exodus that was [he said with heavy sarcasm]. Though I will admit, how they edited McQueen into the Rick Dalton role was impressive.

I saw Renfield, and I know it got some flak, but I thought it was fun. It’s not the greatest movie ever by any means, and I’m not even sure if it’s in the running for my top 10 movies of the year so far, but the dynamic between Nicholas Hoult and Nicolas Cage is so great it warrants the film’s existence. Cage as Dracula is as amazing as you would hope it would be. The performance wouldn’t fit in a more traditional rendition of Dracula, like the adaption that Cage’s uncle did (Google it, you’ll get there), but in this, it’s glorious.

What sucks (pun intended) about the movie is the lame police procedural subplot with Awkwafina fighting against a corrupt police force. Because when I heard about this film, my first thought was, “You know what would make this horror-comedy about Dracula even better? If it was also Serpico.” Whatever. The Dracula/Renfield relationship was the point of the movie, and they nailed it, so I’m happy.

Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse was (obviously) amazing. I have nothing to add that everyone hasn’t already said about the movie. Every good thing you’ve heard about it is correct. However, what was unintentionally funny to me was Jason Schwartzman as Spot. As great as he is in the role, whenever he’s yelling and supposed to be intimidating, all I could hear was Mr. Fox’s son, Ash, having another temper tantrum about being little and [sporadic handwaving] different.

I found another scene Tarantino blatantly ripped off. The moment in question was from The Last House on the Left (Fun Fact: The movie sucks ass, watch Ms .45 instead). This time, it involves using the song “Now You’re All Alone” by David Hess to convey a character’s impending doom, which cuts abruptly when the character gets shot and executed. It’s the same song and scenario as when Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) kills Charly (Keith Jefferson) in the shed behind Minnie’s Haberdashery in The Hateful Eight.

Speaking of Tarantino, this month, I cracked down and finished his book Cinema Speculation, which was great. I love hearing Tarantino talk about movies because his evident love for them is just infectious. It’s even better in print form because you don’t have to audibly hear him speak. I love Tarantino, but sometimes his loudmouth routine is the aural equivalent of a glass of orange juice after brushing your teeth (That being said, I love his episode of The Joe Rogan Experience).

I noticed he has this weird desire for movies to be cynical. He has this bullshit dislike of 80s movies, which I don’t get. Specifically, he points out that he hates how 80s movies wanted lead characters to be likable, and it annoys him how even when they’re unlikable, they grow and change by the end of the movie to be more sympathetic…so, he hates when characters have character arcs? The fuck kind of complaint is that?! I’ll add that to the record of ludicrous things he’s said (the gold medal still goes to his lack of respect for Roger Deakins, but that’s a whole other story). However, the biggest takeaway for me is that he thinks Dr. No is boring. Thank God, I thought I was the only one. Anyway, onto the list:

(NB: Bold — 2023 Films / Title* — Movies I watched for reviews for Slay Away)

194. 1984 (1984)