Three years after "lockdown" and "social distancing" became household terms, 2023's best pop culture offerings all contemplated what it means to connect with others - or reconnect, as the case may be. Whether it's the rekindled spark of long-forgotten love, or the incipient bond between two survivors thrust together at the end of all things, the best film, television, and video games of the year all found ways to interrogate the (fraught, complex, beautiful, tragic) ways we have learned to relate to, and rely upon, those around us.
FILM
The filmmaking debut of Markham’s Celine Song, PAST LIVES is an intelligent, insightful rumination on the human condition. What does it mean to have been close to someone, only to have been separated by time and distance? What happens when there’s an opportunity to reconnect? The film's refusal to provide easy answers, and its keen insight on the effects our actions have on others - in this case, the central trio of playwright Nora (Greta Lee), her childhood crush Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), and Nora's husband Arthur (John Magaro, who also starred in my favourite film of 2020) - makes for one of the most honest and accurate portrayals of relationships in recent memory.
There are not, in fact, eight mountains in THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS (LE OTTO MONTAGNE), but there is a lot of striking footage of cold, windswept hills and valleys in this tale of the lifelong (if halting, habitually interrupted) friendship between Pietro (played by, in order, Lupo Barbiero, Andrea Palma, and Luca Marinelli) and Bruno (Cristiano Sassella, Francesco Palombelli, Alessandro Borghi), whose chance encounter during a childhood vacation - one is a country boy, the other a city slicker - establishes an unexpected bond that persists across decades. Shades of Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend are unmistakeable.
Master filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan returns with another low-key masterpiece in ABOUT DRY GRASSES (KURU OTLAR ÜSTÜNE), which follows the trials and tribulations of one of cinema's least likeable protagonists, the solipsistic, cynical teacher Samet (Deniz Celiloğlu), who has been deployed to a remote, backwater village in frigid Eastern Turkey. As the film gets underway, Samet's ill-advised, though not precisely improper, favouritism of a female student (Ece Bağcı) begets a professional and personal crisis once he is accused of serious misconduct. As much about the consequences of self-serving behaviour as it is about the ways we justify ourselves to others - in this case, Samet's friend/roommate Kenan (Musab Ekici) and potential love interest Nuray (a striking Merve Dizdar) - the film plays out like a forgotten Dostoevsky story, even as it centers on very modern problems and sensibilities.
In nearly every conceivable way - writing, acting, visuals - THE LAST OF US is an improvement over the 2013 video game from which it is adapted. Pedro Pascal’s Joel and Bella Ramsey’s Ellie are the father-daughter combo we didn’t know we needed, and the world they inhabit - a near-future wasteland where the cordyceps fungus has evolved to infect human brains, leading to societal collapse - is the setting for the most human zombie story ever told. The episode three side-story "Long, Long Time", lovingly referred to by fans as the ballad of Bill and Frank, is one of the finest hours of television.
It takes a couple episodes before SCOTT PILGRIM TAKES OFF well, takes off, but once it does, this maddeningly offbeat reimagining of the beloved Toronto-set comic book/film more than proves its worth. Reuniting the entire cast of Edgar Wright’s 2010 cult classic film - with a few fun cameos thrown in for good measure - the Netflix anime is relentlessly silly (vegan powers!), very funny, and so extremely self-aware that it almost reaches the point of self-parody, before circling all the way back around again into something altogether weirder. More self-indulgent cartoon remakes of cult Canadian classics please!
The gloriously goofy CUNK ON EARTH is what happens when you take the lunatic brilliance of Monty Python, pair it with the faux-gonzo journalism of The Daily Show or Sacha Baron Cohen, and wrap the whole thing up in an Attenborough/Schamaesque mockumentary anchored by the perfect deadpan delivery of comedian Diane Morgan as the title character, reporter/interviewer Philomena Cunk. The short-lived series (all six half-hour episodes are available on Netflix) has its hits and misses, but standout moments - Cunk's po-faced pronouncement that "Europe wasn't the only country having a history back then"; Cunk weeping mid-interview when she suddenly realizes that nuclear weapons remain an existential threat - will have you laughing out loud in spite of yourself.
GAMING
The only thing missing from Insomniac's SPIDER-MAN 2 (PS5) is a Stan Lee cameo, and then only because the legendary Stan the Man passed away a couple years before it went into development. An everything-but-the-kitchen-sink video game romp that stars not one but two Spiders-Man, this latest and greatest superhero game ably balances humour with tragedy, impeccable gameplay with amazing graphics (including a beautifully rendered New York City), and fantastic performances with a story that serves its performers. That said, the core of Spider-Man 2 is its relationships - between classic Spider-Man Peter Parker and newbie Miles Morales of Spider-Verse fame, between Miles and his mom, between Peter and Mary-Jane, and so on - making the personal stakes - how one friend reacts to another's betrayal, the clashes between children and their parents - just as compelling as the globe-spanning, world-ending stakes that Marvel is known for.
There are better Mario games - Super Mario 64 remains a perennial classic - and better multiplayer Mario games - I remain partial to the original Mario Party - but for a contemporary, easy-to-pick-up, hard-to-put-down party jam, few games compare with SUPER MARIO BROS. WONDER (Switch), the four-player(!) side-scrolling romp which once again showcases Nintendo at the top of its game. Whether galumphing across a classic 2.5D stage as Elephant Luigi, or blasting across one of the game's deviously intricate expert challenges, it's never anything less than a joy to play.
It's been a while since the VR space had a truly killer app, but KAYAK VR: MIRAGE (PSVR2/PS5) is certainly among the best of the current crop of VR "non-games" (a category which also includes The Line, Nature Treks, and the PSVR Shark Attack). No more and no less than a virtual kayaking simulator, Mirage combines the relaxation of a nature tour with the real-world thrills - a whale breaching, penguins wobbling along an ice floe, the discovery of a hidden jungle river - you'd normally travel a great distance to (maybe) be lucky enough to encounter.
AWKWARD CANUCK AWARD, 2023 EDITION
Every year, I save the final spot on this list for a Canadian or Canadian-adjacent project that stood out amongst the latest crop of maple-blooded talent. This year, I found myself uncannily, inescapably drawn towards THE CURSE, product of the comically depraved mind of Nathan Fielder, who graduated from one of Canada's top business schools with really good grades.
For the uninitiated - hoo boy, the uninitiated may want to pass this one up, let's be honest here - Fielder has carved out a very specific, darkly comic persona over the past decade or so, first as an uncomfortably weird correspondent on This Hour Has 22 Minutes, then as the even more uncomfortably weird host of faux-reality show Nathan For You, which saw him, among other things, open a viral "Dumb Starbucks" store in Los Angeles. (Last year's The Rehearsal, another faux-reality series featurning an even odder version of the Fielder persona, was a bit of a misfire, a bit to cruel for my liking though it had its moments.)
All of which brings us to vantablack comedy The Curse, co-produced, because of course it is, by the Safdie Brothers of Uncut Gems fame. This painfully uncomfortable series - the first purely fictional work in Fielder's oeuvre - stars Fielder and Emma Stone as husband-wife reality TV hosts Asher and Whitney, whose "Fliplanthropy" - god, what a name - is a misguided, hilariously inept effort to make gentrification "woke". Watching Stone's Whitney and Fielder's Asher break down in very different ways - Whitney all smiles and buzzwords even as she becomes increasingly desperate in her bid to please all parties at all times; Asher's deranged obsession with a family he is convinced has placed a curse on him - results in some of the most excruciatingly funny viewing of the year. (Benny Safdie is also excellent in a supporting role as scumbag TV producer Dougie.)
It's hard to pick a favourite moment, but Fielder, who has always had a knack for playing a person only pretending to be human, probably has the year's funniest scene, during the closing moments of the fourth episode. Having been forcibly enrolled in an improv class by his wife so he can "learn to be relatable", Asher fails a simple improv game when, in a moment of panic, he emits a stream of hysterical nonsense. Intending to come off as whacky, he instead looks as if he's just been possessed by a particularly awkward (and possibly sarcastic?) demon. It's bizarre, horrible, cringe-worthy television, and unlike anything else out there.
