Film Technica: Our favorite movies of 2023

John Wick: Chapter 4 

tour de force of balletic violence.”>

Enlarge / Keanu Reeves’ canine-loving assassin is back for another tour de force of balletic violence.

Lionsgate

Let’s get one thing straight: No sequel is likely to match the lean, mean, revenge-filled fury of the original John Wick, and each subsequent film in the franchise has admittedly become more elaborate, broader in scope, and frankly bloated. But director Chad Stahelski knows exactly what his audience wants, and he delivers time and again: a thin plot and colorful characters that exist solely to showcase a series of spectacularly choreographed fight sequences with the finest stuntwork you’re likely to see on-screen. They’re stylish, intense, inventive, and occasionally witty, and Stahelski doesn’t limit his repertoire to so-called “Gun-Fu.” There are plenty of knives, assorted antique weaponry, “found object fu,” and numerous styles of martial arts, all put to creative use.

In that regard, Chapter 4 is next-level. The film picks up where John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum left off. John survived his fall from the roof of the NYC Continental after its manager, Winston (Ian McShane), betrayed and shot him. He travels to Morocco and kills the Elder, and High Table member Marquis Vincent Bisset de Gramont (Bill Skarsgård) sends his right-hand man, Chidi (Marko Zaror) and a blind retired assassin named Caine (the legendary Donnie Yen) after John in revenge. A dog-loving bounty hunter named Mr. Nobody (Shamier Anderson) is also on the scent, along with hordes of other assassins.

We get a magnificent extended fight scene at Japan’s Osaka Continental, which is run by John’s friend Koji (Hiroyuki Sanada) and Koji’s daughter Akira (Rina Sawayama), both of whom have formidable fighting skills, of course. There’s some impressively inventive cinematography as John fights his way out of a rundown building, featuring a long continuous shot of the bloody action from above, like a birds-eye view into a dollhouse of murder.  John must fight his way through more hordes of assassins in Paris to reach Sacré-Cœur in time for his climactic duel against the Marquis—a nod to the classic gunslinger trope. The weakest of the bunch is a set piece at a Berlin nightclub to take out a heavyset German crime lord named Killa (Scott Adkins). It’s an unnecessary digression from the main narrative that breaks the forward momentum, but it still features dazzlingly creative choreography, so true John Wick fans won’t mind so much. We know what we came for.

—Jennifer Ouellette

The Three Musketeers Part 1: D’Artagnan

There have been many adaptations (of varying quality) of Alexandre Dumas’ 1844 novel The Three Musketeers and many incarnations of the plucky Gascon, D’Artagnan, who longs to become a King’s Musketeer like his buddies Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Director Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974) is the definitive version, showcasing plenty of campy slapstick humor, light political intrigue, and classic Hollywood swashbuckling swordplay. Lester’s version(s) influenced most of the subsequent American remakes. But there hasn’t really been an equivalent quintessential French version until now.

Director Martin Bourboulon is a fan of the Lester films but deliberately eschews the bawdy slapstick in his own adaptation in favor of a darker, grittier tone—although the swashbuckling sword fights remain intact. It’s more in the vein of a period thriller, and it’s virtually free of any special effects. François Civil plays D’Artagnan—a role he dreamed of taking on since childhood, insisting on doing most of his own stunts—with Vincent Cassel, Pio Marmaï, and Romain Duris playing Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, respectively, to perfection. We can also credit Civil with asking the screenwriters to make the pretty seamstress Constance Bonacieux (Lyna Khoudri) less passive and her budding romance with D’Artagnan a bit more in keeping with modern sensibilities. Like Lester, Bourboulon split his adaptation into two parts, which were shot back-to-back. Part 2: Milady, due out in the US early next year, will give us more of Eva Green’s delightfully conniving countess as the story marches to its well-known end.

—Jennifer Ouellette

A Haunting in Venice

Not everyone is a fan of Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptations featuring Agatha Christie’s famed fictional detective Hercule Poirot, played by Branagh himself. I very much enjoy them (although nobody will ever surpass David Suchet’s quintessential portrayal). Branagh started big with new adaptations of Christie’s most famous works: Murder on the Orient Express (2017) and last year’s Death on the Nile. A Haunting in Venice is a different beast altogether, based on one of Christie’s lesser-known novels, 1969’s Hallowe’en Party. It still takes place in an exotic locale (Venice), but the setting is limited to a rumored haunted palazzo owned by an opera singer named Rowena Drake (Kelly Reilly).

Rowena holds a seance one night to contact her dead daughter, with Hercule Poirot on-site to debunk the proceedings at the invitation of his mystery novelist friend Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey). Then, the medium (Michelle Yeoh) is brutally murdered, and Poirot must solve the case before the killer strikes again and maintain his trademark skepticism in a spookily surreal environment. It’s part horror, part clever whodunnit, with the usual all-star cast giving strong performances. And thematically it explores the emotional and psychological toll on people (Poirot included) in the aftermath of World War II. This is a darker Poirot who must find his way back to the light. The film’s nimble 103-minute runtime makes for a brisk, entertaining film with the requisite surprising twists and satisfying conclusion that marks all the best mysteries.

—Jennifer Ouellette

The Holdovers

Sideways star Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers.”>

Enlarge / Director Alexander Payne reunited with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti for The Holdovers.

Focus Features

Director Alexander Payne’s Oscar-winning 2004 satirical road comedy Sideways singlehandedly made pinot noir the hot new varietal while arguably spurring a decline in sales of merlot. That was a reflection of the preferences of Paul Giamatti’s failed novelist who loved pinot and flat-out refused to drink the latter. The Holdovers reunites Giamatti and Payne in a comedy-drama set in 1970—tonally reminiscent of the films of Hal Ashby—at a fictional New England boarding school. Giamatti plays Paul Hunham, a bitterly disillusioned and grumpy classics teacher at Barton Academy whose general unpopularity lands him with the unenviable job of looking after the handful of students remaining at the school over the Christmas holiday. Ultimately, it’s just Hunham, cafeteria manager Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) and a sullen troublemaker named Angus (Dominic Sessa) stuck together for a dreary Christmas.

Mary is mourning the recent death of her son (once a star Barton pupil) in Vietnam, while Angus struggles with abandonment issues when his mother and new stepfather decide to turn the traditional family Christmas trip into a delayed honeymoon for just the two of them. Like so many of Payne’s films, The Holdovers takes its time to develop the central characters and their respective relationships. Giamatti gives an exquisite performance as Hunham, whose rigid isolation slowly gives way to grudging warmth and growing fondness for his fellow travelers. But it’s Sessa’s strong turn in his feature film debut as Angus that’s the nicest surprise. He brings out the character’s underlying vulnerability and hurt, letting us see the humanity behind the obnoxious, spoiled rich kid exterior.

—Jennifer Ouellette

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

As the film’s credits rolled, I told my fellow viewer, “We’re on a watchlist now.” How to Blow up a Pipeline isn’t content to just tell you a story; it’s a manifesto whose details become clear as you come to learn about the hardships of several young people whose personal motivations bring them together to take out an oil pipeline in Texas.

While each person’s reason for activism is a source of empathy, it’s the planning and execution that were the most gripping and suspenseful scenes I’ve seen in a movie this year. The expert editing that splices between an activist’s backstory and their actions in real time only ratchets up the tension for each character. And have you ever watched an amateur demolitionist assemble a bomb and its detonator? That scene alone is the most tense few minutes I’ve experienced in any fictional setting in years.

The film ends on an optimistic note (unless you’re an oil baron) and clearly wants people to get involved in solving our oil dependency—just hopefully not via explosives. By the film’s end, you’ll be left rattled and questioning whether you’ve done enough to help solve the climate crisis or whether you’ve perpetuated it.

—Jacob May

Dream Scenario

The “Cage-aissance” continues for veteran actor Nicolas Cage, who made our list just last year for the sly action comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which he played a loose caricature of himself opposite Pedro Pascal’s fanboy crime lord. This year, he gave us entertaining turns as a campy Count Dracula in the horror comedy Renfield, as well as an aging hitman who comes out of retirement to defend his family in The Retirement Plan. But our pick for the best Cage-centric film of 2023 is Dream Scenario, a surreal dark comedy/fantasy in the vein of Being John Malkovich (1999).

Cage stars as Paul Matthews, a schlubby, unassuming biology professor who inexplicably starts making unannounced cameos in people’s dreams all over the world. His presence is innocuous and unassuming at first, but Paul’s inner emotional state gets darker and more complicated in response to all the attention, thanks to media coverage and viral marketing expert Trent (Michael Cera). His dream self gets more violent, transferring in turn into more real-world confrontations and the unraveling of his marriage and career. Ultimately, Dream Scenario is a smart, acerbically funny satirical exploration of the fickle nature of viral fame and its effects on those who find themselves caught up in it.

—Jennifer Ouellette

She Came to Me

Peter Dinklage (best known as Tyrion on Game of Thrones) stars in this charming romantic drama about a composer, Steven, who finds himself creatively blocked after a nervous breakdown with a new opera due in mere weeks. He’s married to Patricia (Anne Hathaway), a controlling psychiatrist with OCD who urges him to go outside and talk to people rather than moping around the house. That’s when he meets a tugboat captain named Katrina (Marisa Tomei) who is addicted to romance and seduces Steven—and then becomes obsessed with him when their encounter inspires his opera. (She’s never been anyone’s “muse” before.)

She Came to Me could have devolved into a cliched Fatal Attraction scenario in lesser hands, but director Rebecca Miller is an accomplished novelist as well as a filmmaker. That’s just not her style and the film reflects her literary sensibility. Instead, Miller takes us on a surprising journey of self-discovery for all three main characters that ends not in bitter recriminations or violence but personal enlightenment. It’s refreshingly sweet without being cloying. And it’s so nice to see Dinklage—who has been delivering standout performances in smaller films for decades, long before Game of Thrones—back as a romantic lead on the heels of his stellar performance in last year’s Cyrano (the latter was only marred by the inexplicable decision to make the film a musical).

—Jennifer Ouellette

Bottoms

Bottoms is an amusing, occasionally outrageous satirical teen comedy about two unpopular lesbian BFFs, Josie (Ayo Edebiri) and PJ (Rachel Sennott), who end up founding a women’s fight club at their high school, ostensibly as a form of female empowerment. But really, they’re just hoping to have sex with cheerleaders Isabel (Havana Rose Liu) and Brittany (Kaia Gerber). They convince their history teacher, Mr. G (former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch), to sign on as their advisor. But the club soon comes into conflict with members of the football team, and matters escalate rapidly, getting wilder and weirder, including a violent free-for-all during a football game against the school’s longtime arch-rivals.

Director Emma Seligman co-wrote the film with Sennott; they previously collaborated on 2020’s Shiva Baby. This time around, the pair wanted to make a queer high school comedy along the lines of Wet Hot American Summer but faced rejection from multiple studios because of the “controversial” premise until Orion greenlit the film. The result is a unique, often bloody but quite funny comedy that pushes the boundaries and works in spite of an uneven tone. That’s to the credit of its gifted, very likable cast, which also includes Ruby Cruz as Hazel, Josie and PJ’s loyal friend who is a closet budding anarchist despite her privileged upbringing. Cruz and Lynch—who revealed his gift for improvisational comedy in last year’s Murderville—almost walk away with the whole movie. Almost.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Stop Making Sense (remastered)

For decades now, I’ve been hearing about how Stop Making Sense is the best concert film ever made, a life-changing experience you have to see on the big screen, a chance to see a small guy wearing a really big suit, etc. So, as a casual fan of Talking Heads and David Byrne, my expectations going into this remastered theatrical release were pretty darn high. Amazingly enough, I left the theater feeling those high expectations had been met.

Stop Making Sense is a masterful slow build, starting with Byrne alone on stage and then carefully portioning out bandmates and backup signers and dancers song by song, one at a time. Before you know it, the stage is a teeming mass of sound and life, with Byrne and friends literally dripping sweat as they run around with a sort of manic joy that hammers home the impact of songs both new and unfamiliar. My wife and I left the theater after Stop Making Sense with wide grins on our faces, chatting over favorite moments and singing the catchiest bits happily all the way home. What more can you ask for from a concert film?

—Kyle Orland 

Poor Things 

The first of our two Frankenstein-themed films is Poor Things, based on a 1992 novel by Alasdair Gray. The film reunites Director Yorgos Lanthimos with Emma Stone; they worked together on 2018’s period dark comedy The Favourite. Stone plays Bella Baxter, a young Victorian woman who commits suicide and is then brought back to life by her mad scientist guardian, Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe). But Bella comes back radically changed, having to relearn how to move, speak, and behave in public. And she finds the Victorian notion of femininity far too restrictive, rebelling against all efforts to control her wild new temperament and running off with a womanizing lawyer (Mark Ruffalo).

The entire cast is great, but this film belongs to Stone, who expertly captures Bella’s initial physical and social awkwardness and her gradual awareness of her own agency, wants, and needs, not to mention her unabashed burgeoning sexuality. Stone has a knack for physical humor and rapid-fire witty banter, both put to excellent use in what amounts to a genuinely fearless performance—that dance scene alone is one for the cinematic ages. Lanthimos has created a strange, satirical steampunk fairy tale of a woman reborn who uses that gift to reinvent herself on her terms.

—Jennifer Ouellette

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster

While Poor Things is a comedic take on the Frankenstein legend, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster goes for outright horror, tinged with social commentary. High school student Vicaria (Laya DeLeon Hayes) is a scientific genius whose home life is in tatters after losing her mother and her brother Chris (Edem Atsu-Swanzy) to gang violence. As her grieving father Donald (Chad L. Coleman, who played Cutty on The Wire) falls back into drug use, Vicaria resolves to find a cure for death and bring Chris back to life. She succeeds, with predictably tragic consequences, because what comes back is a mindless, murderous monster intent on taking vengeance. Or is Chris/The Creature merely acting in accordance with how society has chosen to see him?

Writer/director Bomani J. Story is a longtime fan of monster movies who read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in high school and found himself deeply moved by the novel’s themes and fascinated by the character of Victor Frankenstein. He wanted to create an adaptation of Frankenstein as seen through a Black lens for his directorial debut. The script went through multiple rejections before finding a home during the pandemic with horror media company Crypt TV. The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster has its flaws, but compelling performances by Hays, Coleman, and Denzel Whitaker as neighborhood drug dealer Kango—plus Bomani’s socially conscious twist on a horror classic—set this film apart.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Killers of the Flower Moon

It’s a tale director Martin Scorsese has told for decades, but some of us have only recently gotten the message: Human greed tends to override everything else. Maybe viewers were having too much fun watching the exploits of Henry Hill (Goodfellas) and Jordan Belfort (The Wolf of Wall Street) to recognize the theme in past films, but Scorsese ensures there is no confusion with Killers of the Flower Moon.

There’s nothing to glamorize about Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), who primarily serves as an avatar in his uncle William Hale’s (Robert DeNiro) scheme to snatch the wealth of Osage Nation. While Burkhart may exhibit some redeeming qualities, his greed (“I do love that money”) reflects Scorsese’s overarching thesis in his best films. And the famed director has never better shown the high human and societal cost of the perpetual chase of capital.

—Jacob May

Saltburn

Director Emerald Fennell snagged an Oscar (Best Original Screenplay) for her 2020 feature film, Promising Young Woman, about a med school dropout (Carey Mulligan) who seeks revenge for the rape and subsequent suicide of her best friend years before. Saltburn is a similar blend of dark humor, pointed satire, and psychological thriller, starring Barry Keoghan as a misfit college student, Oliver Quick, who shrewdly charms his way into a summer stay at the titular family estate of classmate Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). As his obsession with Felix grows, Oliver becomes a family favorite but earns the enmity of Felix’s malicious cousin, Farleigh (Archie Madekwe). The Catton family’s fortunes mysteriously turn sour after Oliver’s arrival, with tragedy striking not once, but twice. So maybe Farleigh’s dislike is justified.

The estate setting is glorious, and Fennell brings disquieting undertones of subtle menace to her tale of excess and obsession—even to a seemingly innocuous scene featuring a regrettable karaoke performance of Rent. And she’s assembled a gifted cast, all of whom give strong performances that make what might otherwise be unsavory characters at least slightly likable. But it’s Rosamund Pike who dominates every scene she’s in as Elspeth, equal parts regal, vulnerable, and deliciously rude, particularly evidenced by the dripping condescension directed at her supposed friend Pamela (Mulligan), aka “Poor Dear.”

—Jennifer Ouellette

The Boy and the Heron

Hayao Miyazaki is the internationally acclaimed master of a host of hugely influential Japanese animated feature films: My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Princess Mononoke (1997), Spirited Away (2001), and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), to name a few of his best-known films. He’s tried to retire on numerous occasions, most recently after the release of 2013’s The Wind Rises. Fortunately for us, Miyazaki decided he had one more story to tell with The Boy and the Heron. The film refers to a 1937 novel of the same name, although Miyazaki was also inspired by a children’s book by Irish author John Connolly called The Book of Lost Things.

Set during World War II, our protagonist is a boy named Mahito who lost his mother in a hospital fire the year before. His father remarries the mother’s younger sister, Natsuko, and evacuates the family to a countryside estate. That’s where Mahito runs into a pesky gray heron that leads him into a tower on the estate—the stone inner structure of which formed after a meteorite fell to the ground at the site, we later learn—and from there into a magical parallel world ruled by a powerful wizard. He’s befriended by a fire maiden; encounters adorable bubble-like spirits called warawara; and must fend off ravenous pelicans and giant man-eating parakeets led by a Parakeet King to find his missing stepmother.

The Boy and the Heron is quintessential Miyazaki in many ways, involving a young child on a solitary quest who is aided by a spiritual guide (the blue heron). And, of course, the exquisite hand-drawn animation is simply breathtaking. But the tone is more somber, dream-like, almost elegiac than the filmmaker’s earlier, lighter fare like My Neighbor Totoro, and the story incorporates certain elements from the director’s own childhood, including losing his mother and evacuating to the countryside during the war. It’s almost as it Miyazaki is bidding us and his imaginary worlds farewell. That seems appropriate for what may (or may not) be Miyazaki’s last film.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse

The first Spider-Verse movie was an almost perfect animated take on Spider-Man, mixing equal parts humor, action, and pathos in a madcap concoction that felt true to the comic. Across the Spider-Verse manages to capture that same mix, even as it starts to get a bit weighed down by the density of its multiverse.

Across the Spider-Verse is at its strongest when it focuses on Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld), who becomes a fleshed-out character here after more of a shallow appearance in the first movie. Gwen’s struggles with responsibility and grief resonate amid some wacky hijinx with antagonists like the Spot (Jason Schwartzman), who, for most of the movie, serves as comic relief more than a believable threat.

Gwen’s multiversal relationship with Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) provides an important anchor as the movie transitions to the Spider-Society and its organizational hub world of near-infinite versions of Spider-Man spread across near-infinite multiverses. The movie threatens to come apart at the seams a little here with a lot of expositional talk about how all this government of Spider-Men actually works. Still, it holds itself together thanks largely to some visually arresting action scenes and some strong performances from a few of the wackier multiverse Spider-variants (Daniel Kaluuya’s Spider-Punk is a standout).

By the time you reach the movie’s “To Be Continued” cliffhanger ending, it’s hard not to feel like some tighter editing could have condensed a pair of two-hour-plus films into a single, less padded-out movie. Still, when it comes to madcap, comic book-style action and humor, Across the Spider-verse delivers.

—Kyle Orland

Barbie

What can we say about the box office juggernaut that is Barbie, a slyly subversive comic fantasy film directed by Greta Gerwig and based on Mattel’s iconic fashion doll? It has grossed over $1.4 billion at the global box office, making it the highest-grossing film of 2023. Visually, the film is a dazzling homage to classic Technicolor musicals like 1951’s An American in Paris, combined with the surreality of campier fare like Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. (Fun fact: The set designs required so much of a specific shade of pink paint that the supplier’s stock was utterly depleted.) And let’s not forget those eye-popping costume designs, which run the gamut from Chanel’s archives to 1980s sports leisure wear.

Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) lives in Barbieland with Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling) and all the other Barbies, Kens, and discontinued models like Allan (Michael Cera), Skipper (Erica Ford), and Midge (Emerald Fennell). Barbieland is a matriarchy, with the Barbies assuming all the leadership roles: president, writer, physicist, doctor, lawyer, judge, journalist, and so forth, and every night is Girl’s Night. The Kens mostly hang out at the beach and wait for the Barbies to pay attention to them. But then, Stereotypical Barbie is struck by disturbing thoughts of death, develops flat feet, bad breath, and cellulite. Resident guru Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) tells her she must venture into the Real World and find the child playing with her to fix the problem. Beach Ken tags along, and the two soon discover just how different the Real World is from their naive expectations.

This is obviously Barbie’s story, and she is rightly the central figure. But Gosling’s Ken—suffering from unrequited love that drives him to base his entire self-worth on Barbie’s sporadic attentions—embarks on his own existential journey as he discovers patriarchy (he thinks it’s mostly about horses) and tries to implement it back in Barbieland. His character arc is just as moving as Barbie’s. Gerwig acknowledges the equal importance of Ken’s story by giving him the only show-stopping power ballad in the film (“I’m Just Ken”), in which Ken finds his inner “Kenergy” and realizes that he is “Kenough.” (Plus, he’s great at doing stuff!)

Those kinds of moments lift Barbie to a whole different meta-level in terms of its character development, themes, and storytelling. This could have been just another silly comedy, and the film is genuinely funny and entertaining. But as Ken’s story demonstrates, there’s also a bit of thoughtful social commentary lurking beneath the glittery surface, although Gerwig mostly avoids the trap of didacticism (America Ferrera’s big speech being the sole exception, although even that is very much in service of the plot). In short, Barbie is much, much better than your average IP-inspired summer fare and is destined to become a classic comedy for the ages.

—Jennifer Ouellette

Oppenheimer

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With Oppenheimer, director Christopher Nolan has gifted us a unique, unflinching, nuanced portrait of the enigmatic, complicated man who spearheaded the Manhattan Project and subsequently ran afoul of the “red-baiting” politics of the McCarthy era. Technically, it’s a biopic, but it doesn’t play like one. It’s more like Nolan carefully selected various threads running through Oppenheimer’s life and wove them into a richly textured tapestry that somehow transcends those raw materials. The result is pure visual poetry.

Nolan’s film is largely based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2005 biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin (which I highly recommend). There are two basic storylines, and the film shifts back and forth between them. “Fission” is shot in color and follows Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) through his early years as a graduate student and college professor; the Manhattan Project and the Trinity Test; his simultaneous triumph and torment in the wake of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the eventual loss of his security clearance due in large part to early communist connections and his outspoken opposition to developing a hydrogen bomb.

“Fusion” is shot in IMAX black-and-white analog photography and follows the 1959 Senate confirmation hearing of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), former chair of the Atomic Energy Commission who—as the film gradually reveals—played a critical role in stripping away Oppenheimer’s security clearance five years earlier, angering many in the physics community.

Nolan brings an impressive degree of historical accuracy to the film without resorting to a slavish recitation of facts, seeding it with oodles of throwaway details and characters as ornamental flourishes. That said, this is not a documentary, and naturally a few liberties were taken. Most notably, the powerful final conversation between Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein (Tom Conti), referencing a conversation they’d had in the past, is entirely fictional. Nor is the actual physics front and center, since thematically, Nolan is far more interested in exploring questions of power, politics, patriotism, and personal internal paradoxes. Still, the film handily captures the world of physics and physicists, and Nolan’s skill in telling the story is such that this three-hour film never seems to drag. It’s our pick for the best film of 2023.

—Jennifer Ouellette