- I was underwhelmed by almost all the food on this visit. Thanh Long’s garlic noodles aren’t as special as one is led to believe (and certainly not worth the price); Rose Pizzeria is fine but doesn’t hold a candle to basically any pizzeria in NYC or Chicago; La Taqueria and Hang Ah Tea Room are both fine but nothing special; and Tartine’s cakes are actively disappointing. At normal prices this would all have been tolerable; at SF prices it feels like robbery.
- I thought Escape from NY, Woodhouse Fish Co. and Las Cabanas were all decent and not ridiculously priced, though.
- The big exception to this is the superb Arsicault. My friend described their pain au chocolat to me as the most delicious thing he’s ever eaten; it’s hard to disagree with that assessment. The croissants are superb, too.
- I’ve been to SF MOMA before, but enjoyed it even more this time round. The Visitors is particularly special — I went in expecting to stay for 5 minutes, and ended up remaining for over an hour.
- Berkeley has some really excellent book shops. Half-Price Books has, as the name implies, very good prices (especially by American standards), while Moe’s has an exceptional selection of second-hand film books (an oddly small history of technology section for the region, though).
- Golden Gate Park is absolutely stunning. Smells great, too.
- If only the same could be said for Market Street, which is still an absolute disaster.
- Waymo taxis, now omnipresent in the city, are very obviously the future. A faultless journey, aside from the end: it dropped me off down an alleyway next to someone high on fentanyl, which sounds so absurd I’m sure you think I made it up.
- The De Young is a pretty middling museum (certainly not worth the admission fee), and it ought to be criminal to own a Turrell Skyspace but not allow access at sunset.
- The Musée Mecanique, on the other hand, is an absolute delight — an obvious labour of love, and a fascinating one at that. Cheap, too!
- It continues to be very odd that a broadly quite average city (at least in terms of museums, food, theatre, transport) is the most important place on earth.
Paris 2024 Opening Ceremony review: an absolute disaster
Paris 2024 made a big deal of being the first Olympics to not use a stadium for the opening ceremony. Instead, the city would be the stage, the ceremony opened up to the masses via a procession down the Seine. If they pulled it off, it would be a logistical and creative marvel.
They didn’t.
Paris’s opening ceremony was instead the worst in recent memory, an interminably boring display which undermined itself at every turn. One would never have known it was directed by a theatre director: the concepts of pacing and narrative structure were completely absent, with the show feeling more like a tacky variety TV extravaganza than anything theatrical.
The biggest mistake revealed itself early. Typically, the athletes’ parade is saved for a lull in the middle: long and repetitive, it’s the moment for audiences to take a break. Paris, for some reason, decided instead to interweave it with the main show. That choice robbed the event of all momentum: just as it was about to gain some steam, everything ground to a halt as we cut to a slow procession of ugly barges.
No one appears to have considered the scale of the parade either — or how long it would take to get from point A to point B. That led to some farcical scenes: while watching the torch bearer zoom down the Seine on a mechanical horse was at first thrilling, by the time the background music looped for a second time it was instead excruciating. Twenty minutes later, while watching a now-real horse slowly shuffle down the Trocadero, one started looking up recipes for tartare de cheval.
The sloppiness and lack of planning was visible throughout. The woefully out of sync cancan dancers seemed to have never rehearsed. The barges, instead of being wrapped in Paris 2024 branding, were kept bare and drab. The TV direction cut from one bad angle to another, often choosing to abandon a genuinely interesting spectacle to instead show us a boring pre-recorded video. The sound mixing was awful. And it was obvious that no preparation had been made for the possibility of rain — which made everything all the worse.
To be sure, there were some beautiful moments. The water-splashing dancers outside Notre Dame were very talented. The blood soaked and heavy metal soundtracked recreation of revolution was thrilling. Celine Dion and Aya Nakamura were excellent. And the hot air balloon cauldron was unforgettable. But these moments were brief and fleeting, struggling to make their mark amid the slowness of everything else.
There was a good show lurking in this four hour behemoth. If only the organisers had found it.
Twisters (4DX) review
This, in 4DX, was genuinely the experience of a lifetime. My heart rate was still elevated a good 20 minutes after it finished. The combination of wind, rain and movement means this is probably as close as it gets to actually being in a tornado. That, in turn, makes the emotional beat of the film work that much better: when you’re in the storm, you’re every bit as terrified as the characters; when it passes you’re every bit as relieved to have made it through.
The film itself isn’t particularly good — Powell excepted — but the effects allow it to transcend itself and become a truly exhilarating, unforgettable experience.
Glastonbury 2024
I went to Glastonbury Festival for the first time; here are some scattered thoughts and best-ofs.
- Everyone tells you how massive it is, but nothing can prepare you for how absolutely massive it is. It’s less a “festival” and more a pop-up theme park, or even a city. It’s one of the most remarkable places I’ve ever been.
- There is so much stuff beyond the headline music acts. Without even going near a stage, you stumble across all sorts of exceptional art: gigantic sand sculptures, roving Rajasthani brass bands, angels on stilts, an installation about immigration, a woman in a bird cage above a bar twirling a flaming sword … the list goes on, and on, and on. The Theatre and Circus stages have some really impressive performers too (I popped into an outstanding arial acrobatics show at one point). And that’s just the acts: there are also two gigantic fields full of activities and workshops, where you can learn anything from woodworking to metal forging, willow weaving to guitar making. You could very easily spend the entire festival without seeing a single musical act, and you’d still have a phenomenal time.
- The sheer diversity of available entertainment is amazing, too. I think I had a completely different experience to most of my friends; I expect there are some people with whom I didn’t overlap at all. The size and breadth means you can tailor your experience to your tastes — there really is something for everyone.
- Even if you don’t love their music, the big-name musicians are almost universally great. I’m not a particularly big fan of Dua Lipa, Little Simz, Coldplay, or Janelle Monae, but all delivered really fun and memorable shows, and I’m really glad I saw them. Justice, who I like but don’t love, were particularly incredible, with the best lighting rig I’ve ever seen (absenting U2 at the Sphere, which doesn’t really count).
- The slightly-less-famous acts were even better, in my opinion. Sampha and Michael Kiwanuka performed two of the best sets of the whole weekend, with absolutely rapt audiences and stunning music.
- And it was particularly wonderful to see acts from around the world that I’d otherwise never see. Artists like Ustad Noor Baksh (who I’ve previously written about here), Arooj Aftab, and Mdou Moctar all completely blew me away — and it was very special to watch them with a big crowd of other (mostly English) people absolutely loving it too.
- While I did plan my schedule quite meticulously, some of the festival’s best moments came from randomly stumbling across stuff, whether it was a New Age DJ and flautist playing to a tiny crowd under a mushroom in the woods or a former-TfL-worker-turned-comic-accordionist playing in Rimski’s Yard, one of the most baffling spaces I’ve ever been in. And because of the aforementioned size and density, moments like that come along constantly.
- The Tree Stage, which I gather is new, was absolutely lovely — baffling, but fascinating, ambient sets that you could lie down to. Listening to Jon Hopkins’ new album on its 360-degree sound system was a real treat.
- Everyone was remarkably nice and kind, staff and fellow attendees alike. And it all felt blissfully uncommercial and relaxed (almost no ads in sight, anywhere!). Though the hippiness comes with its downsides: I was particularly irked by the number of anti-nuclear-energy signs and pro-homeopathy tents.
- It certainly wasn’t perfect: it was too busy, especially at night, and queues made moving around pretty unpleasant at times. I suspect the organisers need to cut capacity by about 10% (around 20,000 people). That will result in higher ticket prices, but frankly at the current price it’s an absolute bargain, and you could easily charge double and have people feel they’re getting their money’s worth. They also need to better match stages to artists: some overcrowding, such as Bicep and Avril Lavigne, was completely predictable and avoidable, while others were put on stages that were too big for them. With a bit of reshuffling and smaller crowds, it’d be close to perfect.
My favourite performances, in chronological order: Jeanie White, Dar Disku B2B Nabihah Iqbal, Sampha, Dua Lipa, Ustad Noor Baksh, Arooj Aftab, Michael Kiwanuka, Mdou Moctar, Hagop Tchaparian B2B Anish Kumar, Justice.
2024 Culture Roundup (so far)
Here’s a quick rundown of everything I’ve seen/read that’s worth talking about so far this year.
GIGS
Fortuitous timing meant that I saw Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo one week after each other, providing an excellent opportunity to compare the two superstars of our age.
Swift, who I saw first, certainly offers value for money, especially at Parisian prices. Her three hour show cycles through all the hits (and makes you realise just how many she’s got). And a very flashy lighting setup, coupled with computer-controlled flashing wristbands on every audience member and a stage floor that doubles up as a screen of its own, certainly delivers a sensory overload.
But despite the glamour, the whole thing felt oddly unemotional and detached. Some of that comes from Swift’s over-reliance on screens, with little-to-no physical staging throughout the entire show, and a surprisingly small group of dancers who struggle to fill such a massive stage. Those staging decisions make the show feel intangible and distant. Another problem is that the show is, surprisingly, quite unpolished: many of the on-screen visuals use poor quality CGI, and the costume-change breaks are much too long and poorly executed, occurring after a song has finished instead of (as is more often the case) during an outro. Both choices ruin the immersion Swift’s clearly aiming for, taking audiences out of the show and ruining its pacing.
But much of the problem comes from Swift herself, who is so over-polished and tightly scripted that she never feels truly present. There’s very little audience interaction, and even while performing there’s little real emotion — it often feels like she’s just going through the motions. There was only one point where I felt like I saw the real Swift, right at the start of the show. Clearly feeding off the crowd’s adoration, she said “I want to see what happens if I do … this”, before pointing her finger at a section of the crowd, which predictably burst into screams. Beaming, she swept her finger across the arena, the ear-splitting scream moving perfectly in sync. It was the closest thing I’ve ever seen to someone being truly drunk on power, and cemented this idea of Swift-as-otherly-god-figure, as opposed to Swift-as-relatable-human: certainly a spectacle to witness, but not something that makes for a thrilling show.
Contrast, then, with Olivia Rodrigo, a performer overflowing with humanity from the minute she appeared. Throughout a tight, under two hour set, Rodrigo performed each song as if she really, really felt it, bopping around stage and having the time of her life. Watching her felt like watching a real, complicated, funny human being; a perfect fit for her raw and funny songs. And she was a natural performer, too, with a stunning voice and impeccable audience banter. And despite having a considerably smaller budget than Swift, it was much better spent: one sequence, with Rodrigo sitting on a moon that floats out over the crowd, surrounding by glowing stars, provided more memorable imagery than anything in Swift’s three-hour behemoth. A truly five star show.
But despite that, it still wasn’t the best show I’ve seen this year! That honour goes, unexpectedly, to Ustad Noor Bakhsh, for a thrilling performance at the Southbank Centre back in March. The 79 year old benju player from rural Balochistan is a virtuoso in and of himself, playing all sorts of gorgeous compositions; but the true magic came from a largely South Asian crowd with an uncontainable energy. My heart goes out to the poor security guard who unsuccessfully kept trying to stop people from coming to the stage and dancing; but I’m very glad he failed. Bakhsh is playing Glastonbury next month; he’s easily the performer I’m most excited to see.
THEATRE
So far, this has mostly been a year of disappointments. I had high hopes for Machinal, Hadestown, Enemy of the People, Player Kings, and Boys from the Blackstuff; all underwhelmed (especially the latter). Thankfully there was only one truly dire production: Simon Godwin’s abysmal Macbeth, which misleadingly used “site-specific” marketing to disguise a bog standard, dull production, pointlessly staged in a warehouse with awful acoustics and terrible seating. Everyone involved with that should be ashamed of themselves.
That said, a couple of highlights. Port of Entry in Chicago has the best immersive set design I’ve ever seen, bar none, and was an unforgettable and moving production (despite some at-times-ropey storytelling). Yael Farber’s King Lear was wonderful (making up for an underwhelming Branagh production last year), with an incredible cast (Danny Sapani and Clarke Peters in particular) really bringing the text to life. The Portrait of Dorian Gray was a wonderful showcase of how to effectively use cameras and video on stage, and Sarah Snook was superb throughout. And The Hills of California, though lacking the profundity of other Butterworths, was still a thrilling evening.
Other things I saw: The Comeuppance; Nachtland; Double Feature; Collaborator; The Gods The Gods The Gods; The Last Show Before We Die.
ART/EXHIBITIONS
I travelled to Paris in January to see the Rothko retrospective, and I am so glad I did. It was an absolutely stunning exhibition; full of emotion and pain that hit you on a really visceral level. I spent several hours just absorbing it all. It wasn’t perfect — some of the lighting was surprisingly shoddy and Fondation Louis Vuitton is a logistical mess — but it’s definitely an exhibition I’ll never forget.
While in Paris, I also saw Parfums d’Orient at the Institut du Monde Arabe, which was a real gem. Clever use of scent boxes and interactivity made an otherwise hard to exhibit topic come to life, and the curation (which took you through different spaces where scent is used, like the home, the mosque, and the baths) was quite lovely.
And although I’m biased, my dear friend Surya Bowyer’s exhibition Paper Cuts (still on at the Peltz Gallery) was really wonderful — a thoughtfully chosen selection of images of Indians filtered through the colonial-gaze, paired with some gorgeous new commissions and really insightful wall text. Infuriating and beautiful, all at once.
Some duds, of course; most notably UVA Synchronicity which was the clearest example of “shallow Instagram bait” I’ve seen in some time. And Entangled Pasts at the RA had all the potential of a good show, but was let down by a number of stupid curatorial decisions.
GAMES
I finally got round to playing Disco Elysium, which is not quite as good as everyone makes out, but is still really special. Norco, too, was an interesting play. And I liked Botany Manor more than I expected to. Inscryption starts off really strong, but deteriorates annoyingly quickly. Doki Doki Literature Club! is batshit, but it’s free and certainly worth playing. And I’m hopelessly addicted to Hades, despite being quite bad at it.
My standout, though, is not a video game but a cooperative tabletop escape-style game called Threads of Fate. It’s an absolutely genius puzzle game, combining real-life props and diaries with Wikipedia trawling, and all held together by a surprisingly affecting story. It’s so satisfactorily designed, with really thoughtful and tricky puzzles that never make you feel cheated, and gorgeous physical materials. So good, in fact, that as soon as I finished it I went out and bought all of the company’s other games (which you can, and should, do here).
MOVIES
Film is easily the medium where I’ve had the most luck this year; perhaps that’s because it’s also what I’ve most-consumed. Basically all the Oscars entrants were superb. I’m still thinking about Zone of Interest, and Poor Things, The Holdovers and The Iron Claw were all great too.
Of other new releases, Dune: Part Two was stunning (the changes from the book might all be improvements!), particularly in dual-laser IMAX (70mm left something to be desired). Challengers was an absolute riot; that final scene is one of the best things ever committed to film. Perfect Days, Past Lives, How to Have Sex, and Monster were all great too. And I really liked Civil War, which is much more politically interesting than people give it credit for.
I saw a bunch of excellent older releases for the first time, too: Psycho, Cleo from 5 to 7, Paris, Texas, Carrie, The Wicker Man, and Days of Heaven all wildly live up to the hyper, particularly the latter. Hereditary and Four Lions still delighted on rewatch, too. (The Phantom Menace, less so.)
The only “bad” thing I’ve seen was Fungi: Web of Life (a shallow, dull documentary). Plenty of good-not-great flicks, though, including Mad Max 2, La Chimera, Hoard, Galliano: High and Low, Love Lies Bleeding, Evil Does Not Exist, Room 666, The Funhouse, The Searchers, American Fiction, Hoop Dreams, Side by Side, Jodorowsky’s Dune, and The Boy and the Heron.
BOOKS
I’ve not finished nearly as much as I’d have liked; instead I’m midway through a bunch of middling books.
The two standouts came from authors I’ve previously read and loved: RF Kuang’s Yellowface and David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green. The former is brilliantly funny, very gripping, and almost Nabokovian in its use of a detestable narrator. The latter perfectly captures a very specific time of life, and is full of drop-dead gorgeous lines that permanently change the way you think.
I also enjoyed the Three Body Problem and its sequels; the writing (in translation) is pretty dire but the story and ideas are interesting. Circe was good, too. And I liked, but didn’t love, Cinema Speculation, Rendezvous with Rama, I’m A Fan, The Secret History of Twin Peaks, and Rebecca.
Civil War
At no point in Civil War, Alex Garland’s new film about a second American civil war, do we learn why anyone is fighting or what they’re fighting for. We are given absolutely no sense of who is good or who is bad; no sense of who we should be rooting for.
Many have used this to criticise the film. They argue that it takes a dangerous both-sides-have-a-point approach that’s inappropriate in a post-Trump America. But I think that’s missing the point. The film is itself a critique of impartiality and both-sidesism, and in particular a critique of the kind of journalism that leans that way.
(the rest of this contains spoilers)
The reason we never learn who’s in the right is because our protagonists — all of whom are journalists — do not care who is in the right. Their politics are completely opaque to us, and it’s heavily implied that they don’t have any at all (beyond “war is bad”). For the entire movie, the only thing these people care about is getting a good story and a good picture. The journalists are just in this for the drama; what’s actually at stake is irrelevant to them.
I view this as a damning indictment of horse-race, so-called “objective” journalism: journalism which refuses to stand for anything, which just sits back and documents what’s happening without making any claims on what should be happening. Civil War goes out of its way to to show us just how repellant this approach is — whether it’s the glee in Jessie’s eyes as people get murdered on every side, or the psychopathic Joel losing his mind when it appears the war might have finished before they’ve had the chance to report its conclusion.
I’ve seen some people describe this film as a love letter to journalism (particularly war journalism), but I think that couldn’t be further from the truth. Civil War is, in my view, the most anti-journalism film since Nightcrawler. One thing that’s particularly telling is that it never makes any attempt to show that the journalists’ work actually matters. In fact, it goes out of the way to show the sheer absurdity of the work, at one point showing us a live broadcast in the middle of a firefight which is clearly not in any way journalistically valuable beyond the shock value. The implication we’re left with is that these people’s work does not matter. Towards the start of the film Kirsten Dunst’s character explicitly spells this out, musing out loud on how, despite her hopes, her work photographing atrocities abroad has failed to deter violence at home. Her entire career, she realises, has been for nothing. And by the end of the film, her pursuit of the shot has still achieved nothing — other than her death. (That death is caused by Jessie, who starts the film off as almost-human but by the end has morphed into a unfeeling psycho utterly unaffected by the death of her mentor.)
Civil War is, on my reading, a film that despises journalism-as-entertainment, and especially despises it when it masquerades as something highbrow. It argues that journalism which treats politics as a game or a contest does everyone a disservice by ignoring the substantive issues — not just whether one side is winning, but whether one side ought to win, morally speaking. It shows us, viscerally, how journalism is all too willing to chase drama and lurid details, despite how little any of that matters (beyond titillating us). And it shows how such an approach is terrible not just for the wider world, but for the journalists who end up debasing themselves for it.
Notes on Seville
It’s probably got the highest average quality of food of anywhere I’ve been in Europe. Every meal I had was good; several were very good; and I felt very confident walking off the street into anywhere. It’s all incredibly cheap, too.
The Catholic architecture is incredibly mediocre. The cathedral in particular is a disaster: a terrible layout, horribly gaudy chapels and altarpieces, and a total lack of aesthetic harmony. Cordoba’s mesquita is another example; the Catholics ruined what was probably once a gorgeous building.
But the Islamic architecture is stunning; some of the best in the world. Importantly, this remained the case even post-Reconquista: my personal interpretation of the Mudéjar era is that it seems even the Catholics realised Muslim craftsmen and designers were much more talented than them.
The synagogue in Cordoba is very beautiful and very moving, too.
The Three Kings parade had much more blackface than I expected — dozens, probably over a hundred, people. It’s disgraceful and embarrassing, and a good reminder of how intolerant much of mainland Europe still is.
It’s a lovely city to wander around, if a little small. The narrow streets are atmospheric, and in orange season it’s really beautiful. Great landscaping, too (thanks to the Moors, of course).
It’s surprising, and a little confusing, how bad Renaissance/Golden Age era Spanish art was. De Vargas, Vazquez, Pacheco, Velasquez, Murillo — all their works felt flat and lifeless to me, and the Museo de Bellas Artes didn’t contain a single piece that moved me. Considering these painters came after da Vinci, Caravaggio, Raphael etc., it’s particularly odd.
Spanish trains are pretty great.
Recommendations
- Eslava
- El Rinconcillo
- Alcázar
- Castizo
- Ceramics Museum
Best of 2023: Books
I only read 15 books last year; some of them were quite good though.
Arabia: Through The Looking Glass; Jonathan Raban
Eland’s a very underrated publisher, resurfacing books you’d never otherwise find but are still well worth reading. This is one example: a lovely time capsule of the Middle East of 50 years ago, with plenty of lessons for today too.
The Remains of the Day; Kazuo Ishiguro
Probably my favourite of Ishiguro’s now — a slow burner but, if you bear with it, a brutally bleak critique of mid-century Britain.
Parfit: A Philosopher and His Mission to Save Morality; David Edmonds
The only book from this year to make my favourites. A pacy book about a very important thinker, with a wealth of personal anecdotes that help you really understand Parfit’s character — and how that influenced his (and by proxy your) ideas.
Small Things Like These; Claire Keegan
It’s incredible how much power Keegan manages to cram into such a short book. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so moved, so quickly.
Honourable mentions: Devil In The White City, The Maniac, The English Understand Wool, Our Wives Under The Sea, This Is Not America, Chip War, Biography of X, Trust, The Alignment Problem, Babel, The Glass Hotel
Best of 2023: Film
I watched ~53 movies last year; these were the best (in no particular order).
New films
Oppenheimer
A Nolan movie, shot in IMAX, about nukes: I was always going to love this. But I really, really did love it. Despite its straightforward subject matter, it’s much more experimental than his other films (the frequent snippets of atoms and fire, the incredible auditorium scene) and it really shines for it. It’s a compelling story about an absolutely terrible person, and the ending is so devastating that I cried both times I watched it. And, of course, it’s visually stunning in 70mm IMAX. It’s not a perfect film — the third act does drag a bit — but it’s very, very good.
Asteroid City / Poison
Wes Anderson might be at the peak of his game. Asteroid City blends every element of what makes his films great (comedy, production design, melancholy) into a near-perfect composition, offering a meta-commentary on Anderson’s work at the same time. And Anderson’s short film anthology is equally good — particularly Poison, a fun thriller that takes a sharp left turn into a damning indictment of colonialism (which in turn reframes the shorts that precede it).
Red Rooms
By far my favourite of this year’s London Film Festival. A tense and compelling thriller that never goes quite where you expect, with a superb score to boot. Truly astonishing how disturbing it manages to be without ever showing you the atrocities it’s about.
Killers of the Flower Moon
I adored this, despite it being really hard to stomach. Scorcese, De Niro and DiCaprio being great is par for the course; what’s really special about this is just how brutal the story is, and how Scorcese’s narrative choices make that brutality feel so much more visceral and plausible. It’s rare that a historical drama feels quite this alive and relevant.
Samsara
The majority of this film was good, but not great — a slow and ponderous exploration of daily life and religion, not dissimilar to many many other films. But the middle section — in which you’re instructed to close your eyes for several minutes, while colours flash in front of your eyelids and a soundtrack blares — is revelatory. Designed to mimic the soul migration experience laid out in the Tibetan Book of the Dead, it’s by far the most innovative thing I’ve ever seen in film, and it works beautifully.
Honourable mentions: Godzilla Minus One (shockingly emotional!), Anselm (stunning in IMAX 3D, though it doesn’t have enough to say), John Wick: Chapter 4 (worse than the others, but still great), Anatomy of a Fall (too long, but very thought provoking), Across the Spider-Verse (not quite as good as its predecessor, but still good), Barbie (has very little to say, but the production design is great and it’s funny), The Mission (insightful documentary about religious fanaticism, colonialism and hubris), Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 (great set pieces, and surprisingly good discussion of AI).
Dishonourable mention: The Creator (an utterly pointless movie with nothing interesting to say — and that’s coming from someone who does care about the rights of conscious AI).
New to me films
Mulholland Drive / Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me / Inland Empire / Twin Peaks: The Return
I am very, very late to the works of David Lynch, and I am so glad to have finally dived in. More than anything else, this year for me will be defined by the many hours I spent watching Twin Peaks. Something about Lynch’s particular brand of surrealism just clicks with me — the fact that the “true” meaning is just out of reach, but the emotional effect is still so powerful, and that it’s all paired with a truly sincere heart and love for humanity. If I had to pick a favourite of what I’ve seen so far, it’s probably The Return Part 8 (watching this so soon after Oppenheimer was interesting); of the movies, Inland Empire is going to stick with me for a very long time.
In the Mood for Love
There’s not really anything to say about this that hasn’t already been said. A close to perfect, devastating, movie.
Hiroshima Mon Amour
Very much in the same vein, though with even more to say about the world — a really beautiful film.
Casablanca
A rare example of a classic film that surpasses the hype! It’s more than stood the test of time; if it was released tomorrow it’d still be a hit. And god the cinematography is good.
Apocalypse Now
I liked everything about this except Brando, which feels heretical to write but just is true. I think I possibly prefer Full Metal Jacket as a Vietnam film, though.
The Seventh Seal
Not sure I entirely “got” this, but very much enjoyed what I did take away. Warrants a rewatch.
Tokyo Story
This hasn’t aged quite as well as some of the others on this list, in my opinion; the themes are a bit too spelled out for modern audiences. But it’s still a very lovely piece.
Blade Runner: 2049
Technically a rewatch, though seeing this in IMAX for the first time felt like seeing it anew. Deakins says the 2.39:1 version is the better, but I think he’s wrong: the expanded aspect ratio makes the film’s atmosphere so much more overpowering, and it really benefits from it.
Honourable mentions: Decision to Leave, La Dolce Vita, Ford vs Ferrari, Scream, Cure, Peeping Tom, My Neighbour Totoro, The Thing, Tripping With Nils Frahm, Vertigo, The Dark Knight (IMAX rewatch), When Harry Met Sally
Best of 2023: Theatre
I watched 44 (possibly more) theatre/dance/comedy things this year; these were the best (in chronological order):
Woolf Works, Royal Opera House
I’m not particularly familiar with Virginia Woolf’s works — I’ve read Orlando, but that’s it. But the beauty of Wayne McGregor’s Woolf Works is that I could enjoy it regardless: the choreography was so perfect that at every moment I knew exactly what was happening. Paired with an absolutely devastating soundtrack from Max Richter (which I’ve listened to on repeat since) and gorgeous set design, this was really unforgettable.
Phaedra, National Theatre
Simon Stone’s good at just about everything, and this was no exception. Everything just felt very real — the overlapping dialogue, the naturalistic set, even the way the cast moved around the space. And it’s a very good story, about a very terrible person.
A Morte do Corvo, Lisbon
Putting together good immersive theatre is hard. Two of the duds I list below are testament to just how badly things can go when the creators miss. Happily, A Morte do Corvo was a hit. The heavily Punchdrunk-inspired Lisbon show grabs you right from the start with a funeral parlour waiting room, setting the mood for the show to come. Once let out, you’re loose in a surprisingly huge set, full of wonderfully detailed sets (complete with hidden areas), terrifying 1:1s, and excellent sound design. The story didn’t quite cohere for me, but the atmosphere more than made up for it.
Romeo and Juliet, Almeida Theatre
I produced an adaptation of Romeo and Juliet at university, which made me pretty sick of the play (seeing something over and over again has a habit of doing that). But this was lovely nonetheless. There was real, tangible chemistry between the leads; the whole thing moved at a breakneck speed towards the horrifying end; and the candle-lit finale was just stunning.
Oklahoma, Wyndham’s Theatre
Patrick Vaill’s performance in this was probably the best I saw this year. It was the highlight of an impeccable production: I’ve not seen Oklahoma before, but my understanding is that this version radically reinterprets it, turning a fun and folksy musical into a genuinely disturbing story about terrible men and terrible America. It had the best use of on-stage camera work and projections I’ve seen outside of van Hove’s work, and that blood-spattered finale will haunt me forever.
Marina Abramovic Institute, Southbank Centre
Was this theatre? I don’t know. But it was excellent. While crowds flocked to Abramovic’s exhibition at the RA, this was a showcase of her legacy — the artists working at her institute who have been inspired by her, now let loose over both the stages and backstage areas of the Southbank Centre. They were uniformly excellent. As you wandered around the building’s corridors, time seemed to move differently — everything was slower, more purposeful, more meditative. And the performances transfixed: whether it was the astonishing physical control of Sandra Johnston, the terrifying policeman patrolling a corridor and smashing his stick against the wall right next to you, or the artist in a metal suit having nails violently thrown at her. Truly unforgettable.
The Burnt City, One Cartridge Place
I went to The Burnt City three times this year, and each time returning to Troy and Mycenae was a delight: three hours of near perfect immersion in a world filled with the most tender, heartbreaking moments you can imagine. Two moments from this year’s visits particularly stand out: the incredible energy of the final show, with the cast swapping roles mid-show and a tangible feeling of celebration and mourning suffusing the characteristically excellent choreography; and the intimate 2:1 I experienced with Hades and Persephone, the perfect culmination to a mesmerising three loops spent with the couple (including a jawdropping experience in a hidden part of the set). While The Burnt City never quite got me the way The Drowned Man did, it was still a magical show. I’m sad it’s over, but very excited to see what Punchdrunk do next.
Ahir Shah: Ends, Soho Theatre
I didn’t see much comedy this year, and I’m sort of glad I didn’t — because nothing would have been able to top this show. A deeply moving and inspiring show about immigration, the South Asian experience in Britain, and historical trends, it somehow still managed to be very funny. Mostly, though, I was impressed that it was a political show which bravely pushed against mainstream leftist opinion about the world getting worse — and did so thoughtfully, leaving me with a renewed sense of optimism for the country and the world.
Bacchanalia, Crypt
Yes, this is the third immersive show on this list. And I think that’s telling! While the continued COVID-recovery has normal theatres increasingly defaulting to fairly bland crowd-pleasers, immersive companies are now leading the charge of interesting and innovative theatre. Bacchanalia is a perfect example: the debut production from Sleepwalk, a new theatre company, it was a small but perfectly assembled show. Led by an almost unbelievably charismatic cast, it took an age-old story and transformed it into something that felt fresh and alive. I’m very glad I saw this, and suspect Sleepwalk will soon be a very big deal.
Infinite Life, National Theatre
Something about Annie Baker’s writing is really special. She manages to make plays where very little happens feel utterly engrossing, mostly thanks to better-than-realistic dialogue and pitch perfect pacing. More than almost any other writer, she manages to get to the heart of what it means to be human, I think, and the thematic swirl that was Infinite Life was a wonderful demonstration of that.
Kind-of-cheating bonus #1: Heresy: 1897, Future Proof
Heresy: 1897 is not quite a theatre show. It’s an escape room, with a theatre component — actors that pop up throughout your experience, steering you in certain directions and shaping your story. And it’s also a choose-your-own-adventure puzzle: unlike a normal escape room, there are branching paths depending on choices you make, such that you won’t experience every puzzle or even every room in a single session. And, if that weren’t enough, the choices you make in this experience carry over to Doors of Divergence’s second show, Madness: 1917. It’s a stunningly ambitious project, and it’s incredible that they pulled it off. With unbelievably high production qualities (the sets felt real!), clever puzzle design and really great acting, it was one of the best experiences I’ve had this year.
Kind-of-cheating bonus #2: Richard III, Schaubühne
It’s a little depressing that in a year where I saw 44 shows, one of the best was a recording of a show from 2015. But, here we are. Thomas Ostermeier’s Richard III was both terrifying and tragic, utterly vile and surprisingly tender. Anchored by Lars Eidinger, it was a show that reminded me of just how good continental European theatre is at its best — and how rarely the Anglophone world manages to produce anything nearly as good.
Honourable mentions, opera and dance: Akhnaten, Creature, Valse a Newton, Resurgam, Free Your Mind
Honourable mentions, theatre: All of It, Patriots, Dear England, Dr Semmelweis, Cabaret, The Effect, Blue Mist, American Ulster, One Night Long Ago
Honourable mentions, other: Derren Brown, Phantom Peak
Middle of the road: Medea, Women Beware The Devil, Peaky Blinders: The Rise, The Motive and the Cue, Penn & Teller, Untitled Wayne McGregor, Return of Benjamin Lay, The Pillowman, A Mirror, Cirque du Soleil: O, King Lear, The House of Bernarda Alba
Dishonourable mentions: Traces of the Wind, The Grim, Untitled Fuck Miss Saigon Play, Rumble in the Jungle Rematch, The Dante Project
Essayant 