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2023 was a ripe year for cinema—one need only look at the truly all-consuming cultural event that was Barbenheimmer to see that. Both films offered two entirely different experiences that somehow shared much of the same existential heart and seemed slated to be the contenders for best film of the year. But just as the year came to its close, along came an offering that has turned heads—and opinions—with its truly unique experience: Poor Things.

Poor Things, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Killing of a Sacred Deer) and both produced by and starring Emma Stone, is an absolutely electric affair of joy, loss, sex, and introspection. Its story—whose screenplay was written by Tony McNamara based on the novel of the same name by Alasdair Gray—is an exploration within the framework of Frankenstein. We follow the creation Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a woman reanimated by Godwin “God” Baxter (Willem Dafoe) after a suicide attempt. As Bella’s mind grows rapidly, so too does her interest in the world’s offerings. Across her globe-trotting journey her mind becomes sharper and her experiences more broad, but all still centre around growing questions of humanity, love, purpose, mortality, and sexuality.

Willem Dafoe in POOR THINGS. Photo by Yorgos Lanthimos. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

What is most thematically striking first in Poor Things is the bluntness of its sexual content. A key component from the start, it is handled in a manner that is all at once erotic, mundane, absurd, and humorous. With a recurrent theme of womanhood and parenthood, it is a logical concept to recur, but it is rare to see it handled in such an evocative manner without existing for cheap thrills. Bella navigates the entire spectrum of understanding one’s own sexual being from (metaphorical) inception through to a point of contemplation few allow themselves, using the pitifully wretched playboy of Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) and a rotating door of individuals as a mirror to knowing herself.

Equal in surprise and delight is the film’s use of a fantastical history and anachronistic elements. It is subtly and slowly revealed that this is not the Victorian age with minor technological wonders sequestered to the Doctor we come to expect of our Frankenstein stories; steampunk-like inventions soon emerge—a motorized carriage with horse figurehead, city-wide gondola systems, fantastical luxury cruisers—that paint an uncanny world just different enough from history to captivate with great ease.

Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo in POOR THINGS. Photo by Atsushi Nishijima. Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures. © 2023 Searchlight Pictures All Rights Reserved.

These seemingly out-of-place surprises are truly the magical blood flowing through Poor Things and are by no means contained only to visual world-building elements. In the script and many of the actors’ performances there are modern turns of phrase—most notably Wedderburn’s near-constant swears and cries of frustration—that pull one deeper into each conversation. Stone and Ruffalo wield these modern flares with ease and intrigue, and the film’s setting and events cater beautifully to them, a furious, impassioned, and timeless ballroom dance scene exemplifying this tactic.

There are aspects of these surprise stylized elements that at times can jar further than feels necessary. Godwin burps up massive, floating bubbles of self-inserted bodily fluids. The horizon is a lurid collection of contrived colours. Bella’s outfits often resemble flamboyant anime costumes brought to life in the wrong genre. Yet each of these elements works so splendidly in the context of this twisting reimagining of a classic tale that it is hard to find fault in their use. It is the journey of an innocent into a strange new world, and Lanthimos has found myriad ways to make it feel as such and to remind us just how odd, frightening, and beautiful our world can be to new eyes.

Courtesy of Searchlight Pictures.

Poor Things is not a revolutionary film. It is not doing something entirely unheard of within the forum it presents itself. It is not changing how we will do and view film from now on. But despite that, it feels so entirely new, a spectral breath of fresh air that sits somewhere between the spectacle of modern blockbusters and the claustrophobic indies. One can’t help but feel a similar adoration and appreciation to the sleeper hit of Everything Everywhere All at Once—we are being given the gift of profound and absurd existential entertainment in our cinema, and it is a gift most enthusiastically accepted.

We have been no stranger to gruesome conflicts at borders these past years. But the Israel-Palestine conflict that still rages on has been a much more divisive matter of public opinion than the likes of the war in Ukraine. This conflict has of course been longstanding, so it is unsurprising that an artist may have attempted to capture an aspect of it even a year ago. But with tensions heightening across the sea and at home, it has been decided that there’s no room for The Runner at The Belfry.

The Belfry is a theatre company based in a refurbished church in Victoria, BC. Running since 1976, it has become a cultural institution in Victoria throughout its nearly half-century existence. One of its recurrent offerings is its SPARK Festival, an annual exhibition of “innovative and alternative work from across Canada.” The Runner was selected as part of this year’s lineup, but as of this week the company has made the decision to withdraw the play from its run.

The Runner is a play written by Toronto-based playwright and actor Christopher Morris that has been circulating over the past several years. The synopsis on its physical release reads: “Z.A.K.A is an Orthodox Jewish volunteer force in Israel that collects the remains of Jews killed in accidents. When Jacob, a Z.A.K.A volunteer, makes the split-second decision to treat a young woman — instead of the soldier she may have killed — his world is changed forever.”

There is clearly a wealth of positive intent and examination of humanity in Morris’ work, but The Belfry has been the target of multiple protests by both sides of the conflict and has begun to be vandalized in the process. Comments on their social media have been vitriolic and presume much of the values of those in charge, and, unfortunately, it seems their aim to avoid conflict through this decision has done little of that desired goal.

While the debate rages on around The Belfry about both the importance of art as an exploration of pertinent, sensitive topics as well as the Israel-Palestine war itself, Morris appears to be understanding of the decision. Despite disappointment at the absence of his work as a dialogue, he states: “I hope theatre companies and playwrights do all they can to give audiences the opportunity for dialogue and to build bridges between our silos.”

One of the primary arguments that comes up in relation to the overwhelming tide of AI-generated art is the way these programs are trained. Some skim the web based on pre-determined restrictions, while others are fed specific artists to copy throughout their training—but the pressing issue has to do with the lack of consent of the artists. In this first week of January, a list of artists has come to light that were used to train Midjourney AI.

Midjourney is a text-to-image generator that has been at the forefront of this boom of individuals churning out images, often aping the styles of beloved artists such as Van Gogh or Hayao Miyazaki. What seemed like a new digital toy to many at first was quickly understood to be a tool for corporations to devalue artists, utilizing a cheap program instead of paying a creator a suitable wage, and has even resulted in individuals selling works specifically generated to look like real artists’ work.

The list that began circulation this past week has over 16,000 names on it, from legendary masters to iconic modern artists to prolific designers and illustrators in popular culture. One such segment is the works of Magic The Gathering artists, and bizarrely enough, the work of children that was commissioned as part of the Extra Life fundraising campaign for children’s hospitals.

Online artists are being urged to check for their name on the list to train Midjourney and encouraged to seek legal representation in the matter. While some still claim that the scraping of these programs and their utilization is no different from a human seeking inspiration, it is apples and oranges wherein this machine mind cannot help but at times verbatim reproduce the work of non-consenting artists. Legal battles continue in this strange field of modern art, but a tool has already been given to show a profound lack of care towards artists, and unfortunately can’t easily be put back in the box.

It’s at times hard to tell what holiday movies will remain in people’s annual cues for long. With a plethora of events across the long, dark winter months to inspire narratives, there’s a wealth of avenues for cinema to take and—more often than not—they’re backed up with cheap and formulaic entertainment. One holiday anime film in particular seems like such an underdog in the grand scheme of offerings but with its unique charms and emotionally raw exploration, Tokyo Godfathers has endured and thrived over the last twenty years.

Tokyo Godfathers is the brainchild of iconic director Satoshi Kon, the late creator behind the psychological thriller hits of Perfect Blue and Paprika. While one might not expect a film straddling Christmas and New Years to come out of such a mind, Kon somehow struck gold with this endearing exploration of humanity inspired by the 1948 Western 3 Godfathers. Its popularity has endured strongly enough that the film even received a new dub in 2020, seventeen years after its original release.

Courtesy of GKIDS.

The film follows a homeless trio in the streets of Japan—an alcoholic and absent father named Gin, a former drag performer named Hana, and a teenage runaway named Miyuki—as they find a baby abandoned in the trash on Christmas Eve night. As the group desperately tries to follow the thread back to her birth parents, the group ends up falling into the depths of their pasts, grappling with the families they have run from, and doing the best they can with their own abrasive chosen family. A strikingly detailed depiction of grime and glamour with truly cinematic animation, it is a visual and narrative feast of a film.

Tokyo Godfathers is a raucous affair to say the very least. There is a shocking level of action packed into its runtime, the majority of it infused with a realistic tension that keeps the momentum charging forward. This high-octane, high-stakes energy is matched beat for beat with profound periods of connection. In a truly humanizing portrayal of people suffering through homelessness, we are subject to very real horrors and societal prejudices directed at this hard-luck trio. Tactfully and artfully veering from bizarre misfortunes on their journey to gutting encounters of mental illness to hilarious odd-couple shenanigans, it’s a film that races across a fine line with exceptional skill.

Courtesy of GKIDS.

Without a doubt, there are aspects of Tokyo Godfathers that are dated (though mercifully they are mostly front-loaded). Particularly, Gin’s transphobic comments to Hana are an immediate speed bump at the start for a character we’re meant to empathize with. But it’s not wrong that Gin is certainly no paragon of virtue in the start, and in no way does it feel we’re meant to agree with his hate speech. It also feels like the studios understood this need for an update in casting an actual trans actor (Shakina Nayfack) as Hana in the new English dub, whose performance adds a rich depth to the character. The truly mind-boggling and jarringly incongruous score, however, has received no update—but one can’t deny it is part of the film’s charm.

While it may not receive the same mainstream idolization that Western animated holiday films get, Tokyo Godfathers offers something that few of those can grasp—true heart. Not heart in the idea of care and warmth for the sake of care and warmth; heart in the purest sense of humanity, showing all of its rough and bleeding aspects but still beating despite it all. There is a tenderness and vulnerability in this film that speaks to the ideals and ills of this season, and it is no wonder that this strange little offering has persisted as a beloved snapshot of life among a pile of, well, trash.