In July 2023, my friend Adam Nightingale and I released the first episode of our new podcast:
PUNCHING UP THE MOVIE PODCAST

Adam and I have known each other for 33 years.
We met in 1990 at drama school and have remained firm friends ever since.
We love films and have been writing emails about cinema to each other dating back to 2000. The emails got longer and longer and I had the idea that it might make a good book (edited obv) and Adam proposed we start a podcast.

The idea behind Punching Up is that each episode we choose a classic, cult or beloved film from the treasure trove of cinema that one or both of us have a problem with and then we discuss, dissect, debate, discover and sometimes disassemble the perceived classic.

So far, we have released 7 official full episodes.
You can find the pod where you get your usual podcasts (Spotify, Apple Podcasts etc) or click the links below to jump to an episode of your liking:

2001:A Space Odyssey
Raging Bull
Young Frankenstein
Once upon a Time in the West
Cat Ballou
Inception
Shaft

We have a few in the bag coming soon and will get back to recording more in a few weeks so keep an eye out and please email us with any comments or questions at:
punchingupmoviepodcast@gmail.com

AND NOW………………

THE MOMENT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR
Adam Nightingale’s best (and worst) films of 2023, this is a bit of a continuation of our email correspondence, a bitesize edition if you will…..

IT’S TIME FOR THE ADDZIES:
Over to my Punching Up co-host, Adam…….

Prepare to be delighted and utterly outraged in equal measure. 

The Addzies 2023 (based on movies I have seen in the cinema in 2023)

Best Films

Tar 
Obviously Blanchett is brilliant but there is something very Kubrickian about the way this is filmed that I think you would like, Damian.

Unwelcome  
This was my B horror movie of the year. It mashes up urban and rural horror wonderfully and alternates between three contrasting types of monster, (a terrifying London street gang, a family of Irish rural gangster led by Colm Meany and tiny Irish leprechaun monsters). It narrowly edged out Talk to Me (a better movie) and Suitable Flesh. It has stuck in my mind all these months more than those two arguably superior films.   

Women Talking  
Best ensemble of the year. I go to church and would love to show this in church in a series of movies about faith that I doubt many Christians have seen. So pleased that Sarah Polley nabbed the Oscar for her screenplay on this.

Pearl  
Only film on the list I’ve seen twice at the cinema this year. Only film on the list I’ve bought. There’s nothing out there quite like it. My film of the year and the apex of A24’s female centric horror cycle. 

John Wick 4  
Reeves vs Yen vs Adkins and Sanada. Who could ask for anything more. Best action film of 23.

Strays*  
So sorry Damian, but I had to put it in. It was the film that made me laugh the most in 2023.
Go to the bottom of the list and look at what I excluded to put this in and hate the movie even more.

Maigret 
Exceedingly low key gentle period police procedural but it lingered.
Great, weary, weight of the world performance by Gerard D.

Past Lives  
I’ve never seen such an intimate film that looks so stunning on a large screen. I loved that this beautiful movie didn’t take sides. Its resolution was beautiful, right and fair to all three parties with the supernatural intimation of closure for two of the three characters.
Were it not for Pearl being released in the UK in 23, this would have been my film of the year.

The Eternal Daughter  
The twin Tilda Swinton show. Damian, as a Hogg agnostic, why not give this one a go?

Eileen 
Again, of the rush of movies seen to round out the year, this one was the one I thought about the most. Second best ensemble of the year.

Godzilla Minus One 
Best blockbuster of the year. Delivers spectacle equally matched by heart breaking family drama.
An example to all western makers of big budget franchise movies. Aquaman take note.

Wonka  
Damian, you’ll never see this, but it is wonderful. Included as much for the great time I had watching it with my nephew and niece as for the movie itself (which is wonderful). Chalamet out Wonkers Wilder. 

The Boy and the Heron 
First Miyazaki I’ve seen since The Wind Rises. Beautiful, so imaginative, heart breaking and deeply elliptical. Shades of The Tempest and Alice in Wonderland but all Miyazaki.
No one else could make parrots threatening.

Apologies to The Fablemans, Anatomy of a Fall, Barbie and The Killer that almost made it in, but I loved the others just a little bit more.

Worst Films

Empire of Light  
So many people I like delivering incredulous and sometimes down-right bad work. A big blot in Sam Mendes copy book completely erased by the amazing work he did on on stage I witnessed in the shape of The Motive and the Cue at the National Theatre.

Cocaine Bear  
Should have been a great work of supreme bad taste. Settled on being simply bad.

Creed 3   
Good set up squandered by weird crassly metaphoric visually arthouse pretensions in the final fight (and an annoyingly conciliatory ending that wastes a great villain) that undermines all that has gone before.

Elvis 
First film in years I’ve ever walked out of.

Chevalier 

Indiana Jones of the Dial of Destiny 

The Blackening  

Five Nights at Freddy’s 
Horrible film. Equally horrible audience.

Exped4bles

Saltburn 
Never has so much great work been so utterly undone by a horrible and witless last 20 mins.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom 
I was tired when I saw this and didn’t try too hard to stop the sleepy dust from settling.

Best Cinema Experience

Nosferatu at Nottingham Contemporary

Blood and Sand-silver nitrate 35mm screening at the National Film Theatre in London

Best Reissue 

Stop Making Sense 
Second time I’ve seen this in a cinema. Pure joy and weird invention. Might be on its way to being a favourite. Certainly, now my favourite concert movie and Jonathan Demme movie.

Enter the Dragon 
Bruce Lee on the big screen is something to behold.

John Carpenter’s Christine 

Most Disappointing Re-issue

Le Mepris  
It’s now official. I don’t like Godard (but I do like Bardot). Our next Punching Up episode ought to be a Godard. I suggest again Bande a Part.

Best Guilty Pleasure

Rise of the Footsoldier: Vengeance.  Craig Fairbrass is the British Charles Bronson.

Tiger 3   

Saw X

Best Performances

David Lynch (The Fablemans)
Best cameo of the year. Who would have ever thought to cast him as John Ford.

Cate Blanchett (Tar)

Zahra Amir Ebrahimi and Mehdi Bajestani (Holy Spider)

Claire Foy and Jesse Buckley (Women Talking)

Mia Goth (Pearl and Infinity Pool)
Actress of the year for me. There isn’t a performance out there like Pearl. The monologue, the audition dance piece, the rictus grin over the end credits. Add to that her incredible turn in the otherwise disappointing Infinity Pool, utilising her normal posh English baby voice to terrifying effect. The scene where she taunts Alexander Skarsgard at gunpoint while he cowers in a bus is on a par with her work in Pearl.

Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jnr (Oppenheimer)

Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling (Barbie)

Gerard Depardieu (Maigret)

Greta Lee, Tao Yoo, John Magaro (Past Lives)

Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall)

Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan and Paul Rhys (Saltburn)

Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby (Napoleon)

Tilda Swinton (The Eternal Daughter and The Killer)

Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, Shia Whigham and Marin Ireland (Eileen)
Shia Whigham is my favourite supporting actor of the year.  Marin Ireland also does great work on tv this year in Justified City Primeval.

Penelope Cruz (Ferrari)

Above and Beyond Award
Tobin Bell in Saw X 
I feel that actors that are so good in movies like this are the true deserving recipients of Academy Awards.

So, there you have the Addzies of 2023.

Do you agree? Disagree?

*I loathed this film by the way.

All emails or comments will be forwarded on to him for him to retort.

Here’s to 2024, y’all. Let’s punch up together.

Be good, be gentle and remember:
“In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities.
In the expert’s mind, there are few”
Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki (1904-1971)