I think I may have set my record for eligible films watched in advance of putting my list together. I have seen 52 films from 2023 (though a couple of those are 2022 films that those of us who aren’t professional critics didn’t have access to in time, and they’ll be balanced out by 2023 films next year that I don’t yet have access to). I guess 52 is just one a week over the course of a year, but it was more like one or two in the first half the year, then five or six a week in the last couple months. This led to tons of honorable mentions that didn’t quite make the cut: American Fiction, All of Us Strangers, Barbie, Nyad, Return to Seoul, Nimona, Close, A Thousand and One, and The Blue Caftan. They were all great and there were another dozen I’d highly recommend if you asked me.
I also recorded a couple podcast episodes discussing the best of 2023 with a couple friends. Part One. Part Two.
But here’s what I came up with:
10. Killers of the Flower Moon – My hopes weren’t super high after being pretty disappointed in Scorsese’s last film The Irishman. But great performances (DiCaprio was actually the weakest performance in it), a true story, and Scorsese’s wonderful use of music and sound all make this an incredibly powerful and memorable film. It might be a hard one to revisit, however, just because it’s pretty depressing; but it’s a must-watch.
9. The Quiet Girl – Technically a 2022 film that wasn’t available until well into 2023 for most of the US. Just a small, simple story of an Irish girl from a big family who goes to live with an older, childless couple for the summer so her parents have one less mouth to feed. The story itself isn’t necessarily that special, but the execution is near-perfect and the beautiful sentimentality leaves you wrecked by the end.
8. Bottoms – Possibly the opposite of The Quiet Girl in every way – a couple of gay high school girls start a self-defense fight club to get closer to the hot girls at their school. It’s intentionally outlandish with the football players wearing their pads 24/7 and Marshawn Lynch as their supportive teacher who could not care less about keeping his job. An absolutely ridiculous movie that accomplishes exactly what it’s going for.
7. Tetris – This was a unique behind-the-scenes sort of movie for events that were happening during my childhood and not long before I began playing Tetris myself, completely unaware of what went into it. I haven’t fact checked the story we get here, but the way it’s presented essentially makes it a combination between The Social Network and Argo. We get battles over contracts and distribution rights combined with trips to the Soviet Union at great risk to our characters. I was not expecting it to be this compelling.
6. Flora and Son – I almost skipped this one entirely and only watched it because I had paid for a month of Apple TV+. So I was delighted to learn it was a John Carney film (Once, Sing Street) and also featured Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Flora is her own worst enemy, but online music lessons promise to change her life for the better – not in any overly dramatic way, just in the way that a new hobby can change your perspective. So it’s just a solid character film that isn’t overly ambitious. It could help anyway reexamine their own life for the better.
5. Poor Things – One of the most original and bizarre movies I’ve ever seen. I keep saying it’s as if Wes Anderson and Tim Burton had a baby… and then that baby took acid and made this movie. I’m sure there are layers of meaning that could be unraveled forever, but the key point is that our protagonist, Bella, is a character without shame exploring the world and herself. It forces the viewer to question societal norms and his or her own issues with fitting into the world.
4. Oppenheimer – A very well-crafted story of the Manhattan Project focusing specifically on Robert Oppenheimer’s life story and role in leading the project. Despite being a lot of just people talking at chalkboards and in boardrooms, it keeps you engaged by jumping all over the timeline of the story. Just a top-notch production from every angle and almost certain to win Best Picture.
3. Godzilla Minus One – An action movie that gets it right. This is hardly even a Godzilla story. This is the story of a would-be kamikaze pilot who chickened out of his mission and is trying to rebuild his life as Japan itself attempts to rebuild following WWII. It’s visually stunning while always remaining character focused. It’s about Godzilla only in the way that Titanic is about the ship (or the iceberg). This is a redemption story, and an excellent one.
2. Past Lives – I won’t give anything away, but this movie has the best ending of the year. Just know that you’ll be crying soon after the Uber arrives. The story gives us a glimpse into the lives of two friends at the ages of 12, 24, and 36. There’s a sort of spiritual idea in it that we all have past lives and that if you bump into someone on the subway maybe it means you knew each other in a past life centuries ago, etc. It’s a story that could have gone into the inevitability of destiny, but chooses instead to highlight essentially the power of the mundane – that our connections to each other can be profound and ordinary at the same time.
1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – Like Godzilla Minus One, this is an action movie that remembers to focus on character first. A common principle of the Hero’s Journey is that the hero must at some point go on alone with all ties to his friends and mentors severed. This film manages to take that to a whole new level. Not only is our protagonist Miles Morales alone as Spider-Man in our world, he is separated from the larger community of Spider-Men across the Spider-Verse. The whole film is brilliantly fast-paced and a blast from start to finish. There’s quick-witted humor, touching character movements, and eye-popping action sequences. I had to sit down to rewatch this one after convincing myself that there was no way it should be at the top of my list. Instead of causing me to reconsider, the rewatch erased my doubts and solidified my opinion that this is the best film of the year. I think it’s simply a matter of being underrated as not only an animated movie, but as the, what, tenth Spider-Man movie in the last twenty-one years? I think that caused it to be dismissed by both those who have and haven’t seen it. A lot of the time I think I rate movies based on how many things I might change or areas where it could have improved. With Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse I think it’s as simple as saying, “You nailed it. A+. No notes.”