Michael Phillips | Chicago Tribune

So many good and even great films this year! It’s nice to use an unironic exclamation point for the movie year that was, amid a year soaked in political dread and menace, in America and beyond.

The Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes fought back against the studios and streaming giants, gaining some meaningful financial ground and some roadblocks, at least, to de-accelerate the artificial intelligence encroachments in an industry barely, chaotically recognizable from a few years ago.

The summer of 2023 drew audiences as if COVID wasn’t a thing anymore. Millions responded to the weirdest, simplest, happiest ad hoc marketing coup of recent movie times: Barbenheimer! The “barb” half was based on a toy, the “enheimer” half told the story of the man behind the weapon that stripped our planet of any future certainty. Both were verifiable and remarkable eyefuls. And “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” ended up making nearly $2.5 billion as a double act.

Meantime, the corporate consolidation riddle of Warner Bros. Discovery is such that “Barbie” can gross $1.4 billion and it’s a gnat on the elephant of debt now vexing CEO David Zaslav.

Money can market hits, and sometimes make them, but this year’s highlights — lavishly budgeted in some cases, micro-budgeted in others — worked closer to an artistic impulse. We take heart from the year’s signs of cinematic life. In some cases, the titles included in my list premiered on the 2023 festival circuit and will become available commercially in 2024. In one or two cases I’m deliberately withholding a movie or two from inclusion until next year. There’s more than enough to contend with as is!

Again, with the unironic exclamation point. Never thought I’d see the day, or type the punctuation.

Best movies

10. “May December”: Dueling, intertwining portraits in damaged and damaging women, with an extraordinarily tricky tonal range and sterling work from Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore. Directed by Todd Haynes.

9. “Oppenheimer”: Propulsive almost to a fault, but a genuine feat of intelligent showmanship in the service of legitimately sticky and eternally troubling moral complexity. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan.

8. “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar,” “The Rat Catcher,” “The Swan” and “Poison”: For Netflix, Wes Anderson adapted four Roald Dahl stories, adding up to a nearly perfect 90-minute experience. Comparisons are cheap, but I prefer this project to Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” even if I’m still singing “Dear Alien (Who Art in Heaven).”

7. “Return to Seoul”: A Korean-born wanderer returns to Seoul, three different times in her life, in search of her long-buried origin story. This one lingers in mysterious ways. Written and directed by Davy Chou.

6: “The Zone of Interest”: Using only the horrific Auschwitz setting of Martin Amis’ novel, writer-director Jonathan Glazer’s razor-sharp exercise in sustained and brutal irony is unlike anything else on, or even near, the subject. Premieres in Chicago Jan. 12.

5. “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret”: Judy Blume’s evergreen charmer of a bestseller gets the film version it deserves, even if it didn’t get the audience. Written and directed by Kelly Fremon Craig, with wonderful work from everyone, none better than Rachel McAdams.

4. “Barbie”: Director/co-writer Greta Gerwig takes Mattel on a quest of existential inquiry, funny first, reflective and touching when it counted. Not what the toy company wanted, probably, until the money rolled in. But Gerwig wanted it, and we did.

3. “Killers of the Flower Moon”: Martin Scorsese’s mournful elegy is an Old West gangster movie about American might, right and murderous racism. Though it didn’t go deeply enough into the lives of the Osage Nation characters, this was a near-miss, saved and elevated by late-stage rewrites. It’ll last a long time.

2. “The Boy”: All of 25 minutes, this singular portrait of one broken Israeli soldier’s life at home, in perpetual wartime — filmmaker Yahav Winner was killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre — has zero interest in anti-Palestine propaganda. Streaming on YouTube.

1. “Past Lives”: “Brief Encounter,” chronologically expanded, and told through the eyes and heart of a Korean woman (Greta Lee) reconnecting in New York with her childhood friend (Teo Yoo). Written and directed by Celine Song with exquisite observational acumen.

Top 11-20, in alphabetical order: “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt”; “Fair Play”; “Four Daughters”; “I’m a Virgo” Amazon limited series; “In the Rearview”; “Poor Things”; “The Royal Hotel”; “Showing Up”; “A Thousand and One”; “The Unknown Country.”

Worst movies

The bummer list, in alphabetical order:

“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania”
“Cocaine Bear”
“Fast X”
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3″
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny”
“The Killer”
“Meg 2: The Trench”
“Renfield”
“Saltburn”
“Strays”

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

mjphillips@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @phillipstribune

©2023 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

An officer in St. Paul was shot and wounded in the leg Thursday and a suspect was reported to be “down” with CPR being performed, according to initial emergency radio dispatches.

The incident happened before 2:30 p.m. in the area of Cretin and Marshall avenues. Police recovered a gun at the scene, according to a police radio dispatch.

Additional information wasn’t immediately available.

Related Articles

25 schools, 9 Jewish facilities ‘swatted’ with threats about bombings, shootings, says MN law enforcement

In final budget vote, St. Paul council approves mayor’s plan to erase $100M in medical debt

Man found dead in wreckage of South St. Paul house explosion was owner’s son, family says

Copper thefts darken St. Paul streets … and now also hamper phone, Internet service

St. Paul firefighter raises coming after arbitrator called in to settle contract

Ferring Pharmaceuticals has informed the state that it will lay off 55 employees — all or most of the workers at its Roseville manufacturing, research and development plant.

The plant at 2660 Patton Road in Roseville is home to Rebiotix Inc, which was acquired by the Ferring Pharmaceuticals Group in 2018 and specializes in clinical-stage biotechnology for the treatment of gastrointestinal diseases.

Ferring, a Swiss-based multinational company with offices and plants in more than 120 countries, produces medicines for reproductive and maternal health, as well as the fields of gastroenterology and urology.

According to a WARN notice issued by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development’s rapid response team on Thursday, the 55 workers who will be permanently laid off on Feb. 5 include a manufacturing technician, quality control technician, marketing manager, stool donor engagement associate, senior materials and supply planner, microbiologist, project engineer and others.

A spokesman for DEED said it was unclear if the layoffs constituted a full plant closure. Calls and emails to Ferris were not immediately returned on Thursday.

The employees are non-unionized and do not have bumping rights, according to DEED.

Related Articles

Charges: Barber started Shoreview fire to get owner to move barbershop to Columbia Heights

Teen pleads guilty to role in St. Paul homicide that prompted ‘no knock’ warrant at Amir Locke’s apartment complex

Public meeting scheduled for Wednesday on two proposed specialty hospitals in St. Paul, Roseville

Woman who threw puppy during Ramsey County pursuit given probation, banned from owning animals

Man found dead in wreckage of South St. Paul house explosion was owner’s son, family says

Claire Bidwell Smith is no stranger to grief. She lost both of her parents to cancer at a young age — her mother when she was 18, and her father when she was 25.

“I entered into my adult life with a lot of grief and was just trying to figure out everything that had happened to me. After my mom died, everybody was like ‘You’ll be fine. You’re an adult, just go forward into your life.’ And I wasn’t fine. It was really, really hard.”

While struggling with anxiety and grief in her 20s, Smith also stoked her passion for writing.

“I’ve always been a writer. I worked for magazines and newspapers, and wanted to write books someday. But my parents’ deaths skewed me into a different direction. When I began to come through it, I ended up getting my master’s degree in clinical psychology.”

Based in Santa Monica, Smith initially worked in hospice before starting a private practice as a grief therapist, now facilitating online grief support groups and in-person retreats. And she never stopped writing. Smith has published three nonfiction books about grief; her new book, “Conscious Grieving,” comes out in March 2024.

Where did the idea of conscious grieving come from?

The idea behind conscious grieving is about leaning into grief, embracing it, really working with it. It’s something that we all go through, we will all experience grief and loss — we do throughout our lifetimes, whether it’s for moves, divorces, illnesses, pandemics, loss of people, pets. And when we can lean into it and learn from it, I think we can really grow from it. The problem is we resist it, because it’s hard. But when we can work with it, I think a lot of transformation is possible.

Why did you decide to write “Conscious Grieving”?

“Conscious Grieving” is like the synthesis of everything I’ve learned about grief. And it has been hard-won, because we live in a grief-illiterate society. When I was younger, and going through it myself, I had to piece a lot of things together, undoing a lot of messages I received. I had a lot of trauma from my parents being sick all through my high school years; their losses were huge. And I had to work to understand my own grief process and heal from it. But then, as I began to work with others, I saw grief in such a big three-dimensional way that I hadn’t understood. I’ve written about pieces of the grief journey in my other books; the afterlife, anxiety, my own story.

You mentioned a “grief-illiterate society.” How does the way we deal with grief as a society differ from other cultures?

We don’t honor it as much as other cultures. And we don’t respect people’s time and space around loss as much. We have a lot of toxic positivity in this country, which I think lends to people being like, “Oh, you’re okay, could be worse.” Well no, let’s just validate and honor that this person is grieving.

With that in mind, what is the best way to support someone who is grieving?

I like to say if we’re grief-illiterate, let’s try to be grief-curious instead. Meet that person with some kind of curiosity, with an openness to listen and to hold space for what they’re going through. We can’t know. Often, people trip up when they’re around somebody who’s grieving because they’re worried they’re going to say the wrong thing. But then they end up not saying anything at all, which I think is more hurtful. And so just show up and hold that space. It’s a hard space to hold, because it’s painful for us. We like to fix things for people and grief is not something we can fix.

What is one of the most surprising things about grief that you have discovered?

I think grief can really be transformative, like in a beautiful way. There’s this idea of post-traumatic growth, and I think there’s something similar within grief. There’s a growth that happens. It takes a while to get there. But grief asks so much of us, it asks us to really evaluate what matters. What’s meaningful to us? What people do we want in our lives? What kind of life do we want to live? Because so much doesn’t matter after we lose one of our most important people. And there’s this amazing opportunity to live a more meaningful life than you ever did before, in light of that loss.

More ‘Vitality Now’

7 things I’ve learned about how to live happily in retirement
12 things to help you find community and combat loneliness
What some caregivers have learned caring for ill loved ones
Here’s help for deciding who should make end-of-life healthcare decisions
Read more ‘Vitality Now ’
More SCNG Premium content

Related Articles

MDH to host virtual hearing on Allina moving adolescent mental health beds from St. Paul to Minneapolis

Nurse shortages are set to get even worse with mass US visa delays

Here’s help for deciding who should make end-of-life healthcare decisions

Many would-be kidney donors are ineligible because of their weight or smoking habits. This project helps them qualify

Desperate families seek affordable home care