SUPERSTAR is my favorite new-to-me film of 2023. What's yours?
As the year draws to a close, it's time for reflection and hopes for the year to come. All over film publications, lists dominate, cataloging the best pictures of 2023, rushing to proclaim their champions before the ball drops. Here, however, let's do another exercise. Looking back at the past twelve months, I like to think about my favorite first-time watches of years gone by, classics and other sorts that were new to me, even if they were well known to everybody else.
I think of Brian De Palma's Body Double, a perverse predilection I discovered on my travails through Erotic Thrillers. Then, there was Labyrinth of Cinema, Nobuhiko Obayashi's swan song, and a wild counterpoint to Nolan's Oppenheimer. While I wrote about those two, I have yet to mention my affection for Jafar Panahi's rebellious Offside or how Jan Svankmajer's Food seemed to synthesize its auteur's visceral cinema in one bite-sized grotesque. However, no flick inspired as much adoration as Todd Haynes' long-banned Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story. In the year when Barbie reigned supreme, his was still the superior plastic picture, nightmarish and moving, a song on biopic limitations and truth at 24 frames per second.
New or old, may 2024 bring more cinema triumphs. Happy New Year!