Andrew Italia is a Quince Orchard High School graduate and MoCo resident. When he was in college at the University of Maryland, he was the movie critic for The Maryland Diamondback. During his time as the movie critic, he began making Oscar predictions for all 24 categories. His all-time record is 21 out of 24, but he usually falls in the 18-20 range. Below is his Top 12 movie list for 2023. For more movies on Twitter/X, see @italia_budo
Roman emperor and thinker of great thoughts Marcus Aurelius once mused “[h]ow ridiculous and how strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life?” Family man and taker of great vacations Clark W. Griswold observed that if he “woke up tomorrow with my head sewn to the carpet, I wouldn’t be more surprised than I am right now.” Lawyer and trier of great trials Marcia Clark famously noted “[w]itnesses surprise you” (do you think she was talking about any witness in particular?) All three might have something to say about the past year. If it was nothing else, 2023 was surprising. The Orioles surprised us by winning. The sun surprised us by losing (https://www.npr.org/2023/02/15/1157114226/an-explanation-of-reports-that-part-of-the-sun-has-broken-off). Jon Jones surprisingly became a heavyweight. Twitter became an X. And Warren Beatty became…well…whatever the hell this is…(https://www.polygon.com/23594837/dick-tracy-warren-beatty-zoom-tcm-special-2023).
Hollywood still managed a few surprises too. The superhero film finally flopped. The Super Mario film finally scored. The courtroom came back to the movies (The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, The Burial, Anatomy of a Fall), and movie stars came back to the courtroom (Gwyneth, Leo, Alec Baldwin’s Colt .45). Universal took down Disney. Taylor Swift took down The Exorcist. The biggest weekend at the box office didn’t feature Peter Parker or Tom Cruise. Instead, it showcased a 64-year-old Mattel toy and a 119-year-old physicist.
After all, the biggest surprises are the ones you don’t see coming.
Just ask Travis Kelce.
I think he found a new girlfriend this year, right?
12. How to Blow Up a Pipeline: Gen-Z. Going by the nom de guerre “Zoomers,” they touch via TikTok, place influencers on pedestals above poet laureates, and imbibe Insta like Italian Ice. They also hold together this provocative firecracker of a film, ham handed activist agitprop strong enough for Rachel Carson, but made for Danny Ocean. The verdict? One sick burn. Bruh. Watch it Now On: Hulu. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Steal this Book by Abbie Hoffman (1970).
11. Barbie: A no-sh*t iconoclastic auteur (one Greta Gerwig) molds a no-sh*t IP marvel (one Barbie) into a meta-commentary catharsis that my wife claims is a glimpse into modern womanhood (…no sh*t!) In doing so, Gerwig also created a billion dollar box office behemoth that became the highest grosser of the year and slid the slang Barbenheimer into the colloquial lexicon. Meanwhile, in an alternate reality, the usually caustic and constantly constipated killjoy Ben Shapiro sagely mansplained, “[t]he repeat business on this movie is going to be non-existent.” Some men make Ken look like Clausewitz. Watch it Now On: Max. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Circe by Madeline Miller (2018).
10. Ferrari: In this 1957-set throwback to 90’s cinema about a (Michael) Mann’s man, we catch Enzo Ferrari sliding out of his mistress’ bed and dodging his wife’s gunfire over coffee, before visiting the grave of his recently deceased son and witnessing the fiery death of his recently live racer. He’s a man who sells cars to race, and doesn’t race to sell cars. A man for whom racing is a “deadly passion” and “terrible joy.” A man whose brutal determination to win forces him to build a wall between his heart and his ambition…or do something else. Spoiler alert: He didn’t do something else. Watch it Now On: VOD. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love by Dava Sobel (1999).
9. Poor Things: In Voltaire’s 1759 barnstormer Candide, our protagonist is punted from his castle to encounter every shade of savagery under the sun, from slaughter to shipwrecks to slavery to pre-Lecter cannibalism. Two and a half centuries hence, Bella, the Frankenstein-adjacent anti-heroine of Yorgos Lanthimos’ latest lipsmacker, goes for a parallel Walkabout in a world sharper than all of Britney Spears’ knives combined. One chalk full of cynical attorneys, chauvinist’s lobotomies, and cunnilingus (…the latter of which being legal in Maryland for the first time since the Calverts arrived – https://cnsmaryland.org/2023/03/31/general-assembly-approves-decriminalizing-oral-sex/). May she be fortunate enough to cultivate her own garden. Just don’t ask her position on punching babies. Watch it Now On: PVOD. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1922).
8. Air: Ben Affleck is home. After ascending to Oscar winning peaks, collapsing to stints-in-rehab valleys, and even partnering with Zack “Scargiver” Snyder, Affleck finally returned to his soul mate…Matt Damon. The Boston-born duo stormed the stage with their sublime script for Good Willing Hunting back when the Notorious B.I.G. was bougier than Applebees on a date night. They subsequently took two wildly different paths through the desert of stardom before reuniting in 2021’s underrated gem The Last Duel. For a breezier affair this time, they pull back the curtain on Michael Jordan’s groundbreaking deal with Nike in a walk-and-talk whimsy to shame Sorkin. Is it successful? Just ask my seven year old. In his shiny new Jordans. Watch it Now On: Amazon Prime. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: When the Game Was War by Rich Cohen (2023).
7. Spider-man: Across the Spider-Verse: Some things that are built to last – Timex, cockroaches, and McDonalds’ french fries (https://www.today.com/food/mcdonalds-burger-fries-shows-no-sign-rot-after-6-years-t60026). Others are destined to fail – Moviepass, dodos, and McDonalds’ McLean Deluxe. Then there are those once thought unsinkable that nevertheless end up at the bottom of the Atlantic – the Titanic, the Titan visiting the Titanic, and Billy Zane’s career post-Titanic. This year an arrow finally found the seemingly invincible superhero genre’s Achilles, and it fared no better than Aaron Rodgers.’ But amidst the corpses of Flash, The Marvels, and other franchise fratricides, a favorite wall crawler still Coco Gauffed the sh*t out of it. Proving a Pacific of potential, the sophomore installment of Spidey’s animated series somehow managed to go gloriously against the grain in its own estimable Empire Strikes Back. Maybe poor Billy Z could feature in the threequel? Watch it Now On: Netflix. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Twenty-Year Death by Ariel S. Winter (2012).
6. Anatomy of a Fall: From the charisma of seasoned attorney Atticus Finch, to the swagger of young Lt. Daniel Kaffee, to the intuition of law student extraordinaire Elle Woods, trial lawyers on the silver screen ordinarily operate with the subtlety of a cast iron skillet to the shinbone. You won’t find one here. The courtroom drama in this vigorous, valiant, and at times vulgar French whodunit is painted with an acidic coat of ambiguity instead. Its central question – whether a couple’s domestic dispute turned lethal – is fundamentally a story of the breakdown in language. The couple speaks different native ones, but communicate in a third. The only potential witness, their blind son, reads in yet another. What happens when even the attempt to hurdle these linguistic barriers goes tango uniform is left for the jury. In an age where IP is king, a legal procedural this cagey begs for a sequel. It could involve Gwyneth Paltrow. And skiing. Watch it Now On: In Theaters. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942).
5. Killers of the Flower Moon: After decades in the limelight and a remarkably successful run, a flinty octogenarian plunges back into the arena for one final campaign. At times unwieldy in his opinions, prone to speaking out of turn, and looking a bit worse for wear, is this elder statesman still up to the task with so much on the line? I’m referring to Martin Scorsese, of course – who did you think I was talking about? If you were really looking for the OG gangster of OG gangsters, it’s pretty tough to top Manifest Destiny. So who better to tell the tale of its putrid legacy than the OG of gangster movies himself? Marty didn’t disappoint, spinning the sinister story of the systematic murder of the Osage sublimely. Unsparing, unseemly, and almost unwatchable throughout its gluttonous 226 minutes, it’s a brass balled, blood soaked coda for a bloke who really is the bees knees. Can’t wait to see what he does in his nineties. Watch it Now On: Apple TV+. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: The Wager by David Grann (2023).
4. John Wick: Chapter 4: The average life expectancy of a person born in the United States today is 76.4 years. That’s 916.8 months. 3,972.8 weeks. 27,809.6 days. 667,430.4 hours. 40,045,824 minutes. Consider yourself fortunate that you can spend 169 of your 40 mil adventuring with the soft-spoken savage John Wick. Handsier than Congresswoman Boebert at Beetlejuice and more golden than Senator Mendez’s basement, this Gun Fu guru nudges the art form into the near sublime yet again. His fourth outing opens with the old school opera of Lawrence of Arabia, roars to the kinetics of Kurosawa’s Samurai, bounces to the comedic beats of Buster Keaton, and capstones with a shoot-out at sunrise bearing Sergio Leonean synergy. With Punk AF cameos (Donnie Yen! Hiroyuki MF Sanada!), jiu-jitsu fit for the Gracies (Koso-gakis! 2 big ass Berimbolos!), Travel Channel-esque locales (Berlin! Paris!), and more ninjas than Noda, it curtains the series in savory Spaghetti Western style. Feel free to call him The Man with No Dog. But for the love of St. Peter, just don’t hurt his puppy. Watch it Now On: Starz. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike & Goseki Kojima (1970).
3. The Holdovers: The boomers have It’s a Wonderful Life. Gen-X claim The Christmas Story. Millennials routinely elect Elf. You’d need a heart the size of the Grinch not to shed a tear when John Williams’ seasonal score swells in Home Alone. I’m a sucker for Scrooged and Die Hard. Beyond padding Hallmark execs’ 401(k)s and accompanying your annual Cuban eggnog, the cinematic Christmas cannon has its own myriad of myrmidons, but is most delectable when embracing its inner schadenfreude. Its most recent text is a throwback to 1970s cinema, from its period piece opening to the bittersweet bravado of its leads. Far from the sea of swirly-twirly gumdrops, we meet a trio thrown together for Christmas at a ghosted New England boarding school. The cantankerous professor who lost his way, the virtuous cook who lost her son, and the mercurial ruffian who lost a parent become an unlikely family in a heavy-handed holiday parable. More Meet Me in St. Louis than Miracle on 34th Street, it examines the melancholy on the other side of the mistletoe and leaves no easy answers under the tree. Even Uncle Eddie would dig it. Watch it Now On: Peacock. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005).
2. The Killer: “Stick to your plan. Anticipate. Don’t improvise. Trust no one. Never yield an advantage. Fight only the battle you’re paid to fight. Forbid empathy. Empathy is weakness. Weakness is vulnerability.” So says the killer. A killer-for-hire like no other. One who 86s the tuxes of 007 to dress as casual as Fetterman on a Friday. One who is armed with countless credit cards, a handful of Glocks, and a single Fitbit to herd his heartbeat into the 60s for a killshot. He performs sun salutations to stay fit. He eats his Egg McMuffins sans bread and his hard-boiled eggs whole. He listens to his “work play list,” composed only of songs by the Smiths, on his Ipod Nano. Barely uttering a word to others, he spits koans by Aleister Crowley (“do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”) and even Popeye the Sailor (“I am what I Am”) at us. Unlike your average Bourne, he can’t pull off a Mata Leáo to finish a fight. Unlike your average Wick, he can’t pull off a decent revenge to finish a film (…the woman he “avenges” receives less face time than JW’s ill fated pup). Is this unlikeliest of unlikely alphas an apt anagram of a perfectionist coming apart when faced with failure? A testament to the fallacy of control in our inherently uncontrollable world? Or a morbid metaphor for our coldly anonymous consumerist culture encased in a coal black comedy? What does it all mean? Better yet, who cares? To quote our unnamed antihero – “Keep calm. Keep Moving.” Roger. That. Watch it Now On: Netflix. If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: Rogue Male by Geoffrey Household (1939).
1. Oppenheimer: A retired Admiral with a mean case of RBF played by a career high RDJ watches two freethinking figures face off by a pond at Princeton. In one corner is Robert J. Oppenheimer, the fedora wearing, poison apple bearing, and world-destroying father of the atomic bomb. In the other is Albert Einstein, he of the 1915 theory of general relativity and the 1994 diuretic so-called comedy I.Q. Admiral Strauss fears that these two men, arguably the smartest alive, are gossiping about him. They must be. What could Oppie possibly be saying to turn E Money against him?
Said riddle travels the arteries of this epic torn from the pages of the literary doorstop American Prometheus until its haunting summation. The ultimate cautionary tale about how we all learned to stop worrying and love the bomb meets its match in its canny creator Chris Nolan. Cooler than the other side of your pillow, Nolan is the ubermaestro who tamed Batman, invaded Leo’s dreams, and turned a palindrome into Covid’s greatest hit. Abhorring smart phones and canceling Uggs, he balances a mastery of spectacle with the precision of the details in his greatest opus. Just as Robbie O formed his own band of scientific misfits at Los Alamos, Nolan is the glue that binds his merry crew of marauding cinematic masters and their varying contributions, from Goransson’s denture splintering score to Van Hoytema’s rendering of the night New Mexico went BOOM. He also suggests an exhilarating way to enjoy your Bhagavad Gita.
Nolan performs this three-hour exercise mostly analog in a three-part structure. Amidst the narrative plates juggled is an oater heist film about getting the crew together. An operatic trial procedural with a Jessup-ready third act. But ultimately a coming of age tale for its titular stand in for Shiva.
As our own doomsday clock ticks down startling close to midnight, the global temperature ticks steadily upwards, and AI threatens to go full Jimmy Cameron on our asses, it’s only fitting that this year’s likely Best Picture winner both epitomizes the moment when humanity learned to destroy itself and holds a mirror up to our own. After all, despite Admiral Strauss’ social paranoia about petty gossip, we learn that the two scientists facing off in Princeton weren’t focused on anything so venal.
While lilliputian men pettifogged, these two giants were discussing something else entirely.
The end of the world.
One can sympathize.
Watch it Now On: Peacock
If you Liked this Film, Try this Book: G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century by Beverly Gage (2022).
The rest of the list…
13. American Fiction (PVOD)
14. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (Paramount +)
15. May December (Netflix)
16. Past Lives (Showtime)
17. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Paramount +)
18. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial (Paramount +)
19. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Disney +)
20. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (Paramount +)
21. The Deepest Breath (Netflix)
22. Iron Claw (PVOD)
23. Creed III (Amazon Prime)
24. The Zone of Interest (PVOD)
25. Extraction 2 (Netflix)
26. Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant (Amazon Prime)
27. The Burial (Amazon Prime)
28. The Guardians of the Galaxy III (Disney +)
29. Saltburn (Amazon Prime)
30. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (Starz)
31. Sisu (Starz)
32. No Hard Feelings (Netflix)
33. Rye Lane (Hulu)
34. Fair Play (Netflix)
35. The Boy and the Heron (In Theaters)
36. Joy Ride (Starz)
37. Godzilla Minus One (In Theaters)
38. Priscilla (Max)
39. Reality (Max)
40. The River Wild (2023) (Netflix)
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FREE Shred Day
Join us at Lafayette Federal Credit Union for a Free Community Shred Day, an event dedicated to helping you protect your privacy and the environment! Bring your old bank statements, bills, medical records, and any other paper documents that need secure disposal, and we'll take care of them on the spot.
Why You Should Come:
Protect Your Privacy: Safely shred sensitive documents to help prevent identity theft.
Eco-Friendly: All shredded material will be recycled, supporting our commitment to sustainability.
Complimentary Breakfast: Enjoy a free breakfast on us--start your day right with good food and good company!
Exciting Giveaways & Prizes: Don't miss out on giveaways and be sure to enter our drawing for a chance to win one of four $100 gift cards.
This event is open to all! It's a fantastic opportunity to clean out those old documents cluttering up your home, safe in the knowledge that they will be disposed of securely. Plus, it's completely free!
Don't miss out on this chance to declutter safely, enjoy some free treats, and possibly win a great prize. We look forward to seeing you there, rain or shine!
For more information, contact us at www.lfcu.events/shred.
FEST OF SPRING Caribbean Wine Food & Music Festival
Get ready to experience the vibrant colors, tantalizing flavors, and infectious rhythms of the Caribbean at the FEST OF SPRING Caribbean Wine Food & Music Festival! Hosted by RHU LLC, this exciting festival is set to take place on May 18, 2024, at the picturesque 16700 Barnesville Rd in Boyds, MD.
Step into a world where the Caribbean spirit comes alive! From 12:00 PM onwards, immerse yourself in a sensory journey that celebrates the unique culture, cuisine, and music of the Caribbean. Whether you're an African American, a Reggae or Soca music enthusiast, a wine lover, or part of the vibrant Caribbean diaspora, this festival promises to delight and captivate you in every way.
Let the enticing aromas of mouthwatering Caribbean dishes tantalize your taste buds. Feast on traditional delicacies prepared by expert chefs, showcasing the rich and diverse culinary heritage of the Caribbean. Indulge in flavorful jerk chicken, succulent seafood, and delectable plantain dishes that will transport you straight to the islands.
Accompanying the culinary extravaganza is a carefully curated selection of premium wines, ensuring the perfect pairing for your palate. Sip on fine wines from renowned vineyards, each sip a reflection of the Caribbean's vibrant spirit. Discover new flavors, expand your wine knowledge, and savor unforgettable moments with every glass.
As the sun sets, get ready to groove to the infectious rhythms of Caribbean music. Feel the pulsating beats of reggae, soca, dancehall, and calypso, moving your body to the lively melodies. Live performances by talented musicians and performers will keep the energy high, ensuring a night of unforgettable entertainment.
Don't miss this opportunity to embrace the Caribbean spirit and celebrate the arrival of spring in style! Tickets are available on AllEvents, so secure your spot today. Join us at the FEST OF SPRING Caribbean Wine Food & Music Festival, where cultures collide and unforgettable memories are made.
LIVE PERFORMANCES By: CULTURE Feat. Kenyatta Hill, EXCO LEVI, IMAGE BAND, RAS LIDJ REGG'GO with Special Guest SUGAR BEAR FROM E.U. & MORE! & MORE!
MUSIC By: DJ ABLAZE, DJ SMALLY & NAJ SUPREME
2 NIGHT Camping packages available: RV/CAMPER $200 | TENTS $150 Starting on Friday May 17 @ 5pm | 30 RV SPACES | 30+ TENT SPACES
KIDS 12 & UNDER FREE!!!
