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It wasn’t just the behemoth of Barbenheimer that had critics and film nerds alike wearing out every variation of the maxim “Movies are back, baby!” While a glance at any of our past year-end film roundups easily puts the lie to the notion that the movies ever meaningfully “went away,” it’s also true that 2023 had something to offer just about everyone with a generosity that feels like a throwback. The idea of movies as a zeitgeisty, mass-appeal art form didn’t just get a stay of execution in 2023—it flourished with the vibrancy of a brand-new medium, even as most of those heralding cinema’s resurgence to cultural dominance were subconsciously doing so under the regressive guise of returning to “the way things used to be.”

The buy-in came not only from the perpetually undernourished Marvel fanboys, but also from those of us who, thanks to a series of high-profile financial wipeouts,...

John Waters muse Jean Hill once said that she was well-known for “shaking hands with the dick,” and in Sebastián Silva’s Rotting in the Sun, influencer Jordan Firstman certainly takes the baton. At once an excoriating satire of the performativity of homosexuality within a social media-addled community as well as a seemingly earnest lament for the total loss of collectivity, the film minces neither words nor bodily appendages.

Silva plants tongue deep in cheek as a hopelessly depressed caricature of himself, dodging promotional commitments, slapping his shit-eating dog across the face in full view of horrified passersby, watching people watch him page through E.M. Cioran’s The Trouble with Being Born, and getting lost in a K-hole as often as he can manage. It’s not that Silva’s on-screen alter ego is out of ideas—in fact, he spends much of his time slashing away at his...