Top 10 Books of 2023
Yesterday I shared by Top 10 films of 2023 – here is a list of my Top 10 books, for the readers in the room! Not every book here is a 2023 release, but these were the particularly formative reads (or re-reads) from my 44 books read this last year). In no particular order: 1.…
LeavittLens’ Top 10 Films of 2023
From a cinematic perspective, 2023 is wrapping up as one of the most “mixed-bag” years in recent memory. On the one hand, we have been gifted with terrific work from some of our creative masters, both veterans–Scorsese, Nolan, Scott, Fincher, Lanthimos, Payne, Mann–and other recently established rising stars–Gerwig, Anderson, Esmail, Jefferson. Yet in the midst…
Killers of the Flower Moon
Release Date: October 20, 2023 Director: Martin Scorsese | MPAA Rating: R | LeavittLens Rating: 9/10 “You like women?” William Hale (Robert De Niro) inquires of Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo Dicaprio), his nephew newly returned from fighting overseas in WWI. Following a resounding yes–with a caveat that the women he had met overseas were all white…
The Silence of the Lambs
Release Date: February 14, 1991 Director: Jonathan Demme | MPAA Rating: R | LeavittLens Rating: 8.5/10 “Almost nothing need be said when you have eyes.” -Tarjei Vesaas It seems fitting that, in a film whose central characters are obsessed with human bodies (for consumption and for wearing), we would find a body part play a…
No One Will Save You
Release Date: September 23, 2023 Director: Brian Duffield | MPAA Rating: PG-13 | LeavittLens Rating: 7/10 Throughout film history, the genres of horror and thriller have served as uniquely provocative vehicles for socially resonant themes. Take The Night of the Living Dead and its allegorical critiques of rampant social injustice in the 1960’s, Carrie and…
The Witch
Release Date: February 19th, 2016 Director: Robert Eggers | MPAA Rating: R | LeavittLens Rating: 8/10 To kick off my 2023 “scary season,” I decided to travel back in time: not only to 2016 to revisit Robert Eggers’ debut feature, The Witch, but also to 17th century New England, the setting of the film. Using…
Barbie
Release Date: July 21st, 2023 Director: Greta Gerwig | MPAA Rating: PG-13 | LeavittLens Rating: 8/10 It’s an utter cultural phenomenon. It’s an internet sensation, filling social media threads everywhere with memes upon memes. It’s the dynamite to a consumeristic gold mine. It’s immediately (and expectedly) become weaponized for culture warring – both in seemingly…
Oppenheimer
Release Date: July 21st, 2023 Director: Christopher Nolan | MPAA Rating: R | LeavittLens Rating: 9/10 For decades Christopher Nolan has seemed intent on telling the stories of men composed of atoms at once aspirational and haughty, brilliant and haunted. For as much as these effectively tortured portraits of the brokenness and beauty of man’s…
LeavittLens’ Top 10 Films of 2022
In a post-2020 world, the landscape of the film industry continues to evolve: streaming remains the dominant form of film consumption, with many of our most accomplished filmmakers opting for straight-to-VOD releases all year long; theatres have nearly fully transformed into event-hubs, centers for a few large-scale, theme-park like experiences rather than for the discovery…
The Banshees of Inisherin
Release Date: October 21st, 2022 Director: Martin McDonagh | MPAA Rating: R | LeavittLens Rating: 9/10 “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good…
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