2023 Wrap Up: My Top 10 And More.
2023 Wrap Up: My Top 10 And More.
Big screen reflections of 2023, including best-ofs and the bust-outs.
Another year gone, and good riddance to it. Not that 2023 was all bad, but let’s just say that it’s been a strange and difficult year on a personal front, filled with misfortune, stress and thousands of cuts.
For better or worse, I’ll always remember 2023 as the year I moved to the UK. And since this is the country I call home now, it’s only right to switch from US to UK for the theatrical release benchmark of my year-end lists.
Before I go through my Top 10 UK releases of the year, and talk about some disappointments, I want to start off by rolling back the film to see what happened with the films I was looking forward to the most at the start of the year…
Expectation VS. Reality
Of the 23 films I was anticipating most for 2023, seven got their releases pushed back into 2024 due to the actors and writers strikes that made a permanent stain on the year. Nighbitch (No.23), Spaceman (No.19), Argylle (No.17), Challengers (No.14), Havoc (No.8), The Bikeriders (No.7) and - much to my dismay - Dune Part Two (No.1) all felt the effects of the strike. I did manage to see The Bikeriders at the London Film Festival, but since it got pushed to a Summer 2024 release, I’ll write about it later in the year.
Of the 16 films remaining on the list, three were released in the US or had festival runs, but will only grace UK screens in 2024. I’ll just have to wait and see The Iron Claw (No. 15), Poor Things (No. 11) and About Dry Grasses (a.k.a On Barren Weeds, No. 4). The same is true of films like The Zone of Interest and All of Us Strangers, which were mentioned as potential 2023 releases that would’ve been mentioned in my list had their release dates been more firm.
That leaves 13, of which I’ve successfully seen 11. Life just keeps getting in the way of me seeing Infinity Pool (No. 16) and Ferrari (No. 18), the latter only getting released a few days before the New Year.
Of the 11 I did manage to see, some made it into my Top 10, others disappointed me, and a four did exactly what they said they would on the tin and are hanging out in the purgatorial middle between best and bust.
Neither Best Nor Bust
David Fincher’s The Killer (No. 3) is an expectedly sleek, meticulous piece of work from a master craftsman, with one particular fight ranking among Fincher’s greatest work. As watchable and enjoyable as it is, though, it ultimately plays out like a skin deep assignment, lacking the thematic and artistic gravitas of recent Fincher projects for Netflix (Mank, Mindhunter).
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1 (No. 13) is undoubtedly as great of a time at the cinemas as you’d expect the biggest Tom Cruise franchise to be in terms of action, but once the adrenaline runs out, you forget the whole thing.
Maestro (No. 20) is not the typical Oscar bait movie I feared it would be, and Bradley Cooper may well direct a masterpiece one day with how sophisticated his sophomore directorial feature is, but it took a whole hour to grab my full attention.
And, finally, Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse (No. 23) will likely rank among the Top 5 superhero films I’ve ever seen, and it was the closest out of all of these middleweights to feature in my Top 10. It’s gobsmackingly creative and alive in many ways but it’s cursed with a couple of genetic anomalies:
It’s a superhero film and I’ve developed an aggressive allergy to anything superhero-except-Batman related.
It’s half a story, with the release of its second half, Spider-Man Beyond the Spider-Verse, originally slated for this year but now uncertain due to the strikes. If the second half is as good as the first it may well end up getting featured on a future best-of list.
Speaking of which…
My Top 10 Films of 2023
Given how weird my 2023 was, it fits that three films featured on my Top 10 were films I saw in 2022, at the Vienna Film Festival (Viennale). That’s because I’ve decided to qualify films for year-end lists based on their theatrical runs on British soil, which feels right especially since my press screening days are most likely over.
And because it’s been a while since I saw some of those films, I’m throwing another twist into my list. Apart from the Number 1, which is a few noticeable degrees above the rest, the films are ranked alphabetically, not in order of preference. All of the unranked nine are more-or-less equally impactful and I value each one as much as the next.
So, without further ado…the 10 subjectively best1 films of the 2023 theatrical UK year that I’ve seen2 are, in alphabetical order (for the most part)…
Anatomy of a Fall
Easily the best Palme d’Or winner since Parasite (2019), Justine Triet’s masterful and suspenseful courtroom-family drama is captivating from first frame to last. Sandra Huller gives the best female performance of the year, mesmerizing in its multi-dimensional portrayal of career woman, wife and mother. The family dog also plays a pivotal role, which always deserves extra brownie points.
Beau is Afraid*
Critics get a lot wrong, a lot of the time. Beau is Afraid is an introspective epic, filled with anxiety and dread of living life in a man-made hell. Joaquin Phoenix gives one of the performances of his career as a man-child riddled with neurosis, taking a journey of Odyssean proportions that will, I hope, be revisited in years to come as Ari Aster’s most cinematically creative and terrifying film.
*No. 6 on my most anticipated 2023 list.
BlackBerry
Matt Johnson’s true story of the rise and fall of the world’s first smartphone outperforms its potential in every respect. From Glenn Howerton’s Oscar-worthy performance as a cutthroat asshole, to the terrific screenplay and laugh-out-loud humor, BlackBerry doesn’t waste a single beat. Easily one of the most entertaining films of the year, hiding a deep message about the dark side of corporate culture.
The Boy and the Heron*
I’ve enjoyed several BFI IMAX experiences in 2023, but none were quite as transportive as Hayao Miyazaki’s (most likely) final film. His latest tale of a boy who tumbles not unlike Alice into a hidden, fantastical world is filled with the spirit, magic, emotion and humanity that’s on par with the director’s greatest works. Transcendent stuff from the greatest animation director of all time.
*No. 12 on my most anticipated list.
The Eternal Daughter
Joanna Hogg’s ghostly Gothic chamber piece makes a second appearance on my Top 10 list. The double mention is very apropos given that the film has two marvelous Tilda Swinton performances. A solo mother-daughter duet would be ingenious in and of itself but the film packs a myriad of ideas about memory and the creative process while subverting a genre.
Read my capsule review from Viennale.
Godzilla Minus One
Watching Takashi Yamazaki’s Godzilla Minus One in IMAX made me feel like a kid again. From the throwback visual effects of the original post-WWII Japanese monster to the unapologetically thick heartstrings that wrap themselves around us and our main protagonists, this is pure spectacle of the grandest scale. A soap monster opera made for the biggest canvas, elevating a cinematic legacy beyond expectation.
Oppenheimer*
Christopher Nolan continues to keep his filmography as pristine as the steely, metallic surface of an atomic missile with Oppenheimer, the story of the father of the nuclear bomb, destroyer of worlds (a career-defining performance for Cillian Murphy). It’s a 3-hour film with more talking than a political debate on election night that whizzes by with all of Nolan’s signature elements immaculately orchestrated.
Read my Ultimate Guide to Christopher Nolan.
*No. 2 on my most anticipated 2023 list.
Past Lives
Celine Song’s slice-of-life transatlantic affair of the heart, soul and human connection is the film I felt most deeply in 2023. It’s The Quiet Girl of 2023, minus the uncontrollable howling, even though I certainly shed a tear for the story of Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) - childhood sweethearts in Korea who get separated after Nora’s parents move to New York.
We observe their lives, as they connect, disconnect and reconnect, experiencing the pangs of regrets and the bittersweet affair of what-could’ve-been. Effortlessly profound in its simplicity.
Saint Omer
I saw Saint Omer more than a year ago, at the Viennale, but it has held on to its position among the 10 best films of the year because - like most of the other films on this list - it’s an unpretentious “cinematic excavation of the human spirit” to quote myself.
Alice Diop’s direction is extraordinary, using subtle camera moves, musical queues and beautiful composition to pull us into Laurence Coly’s story, portrayed by an unforgettable Guslagie Malanga.
Read my capsule review from Viennale.
1. Pacifiction
My unbridled surrender to the mystical power of Albert Serra’s strange and beautiful Pacifiction coloured my entire Viennale in 2022. And it feels like I’ve spent all of my 2023 searching for that same high.
Serra’s film is very Thomas Pynchon in manner (with a dash of Graham Greene thrown in for some tropical measure) because it’s so mercurial and challenging and yet so soul-satsifying. The malleable plot morphs along by following the High Commissioner of Tahiti called De Roller (a wonderful Benoit Magimel), who is trying to get to the bottom of an absurd rumour about nuclear testing.
It’s a truly special, one-of-a-kind film specimen, unlike anything else I’ve seen in quite some time, ticking all the boxes, creating new ones and ticking those as well.3
Read my capsule review from Viennale.
My Top 5 Letdowns of 2023
As much as I’d love ending on a positive note, I want to wrap my 2023 article up the same way the 2023 year wrapped up for me: on a less positive one.
I won’t use the term “worst” - I’ll leave that to the reputable trades - simply because I haven’t seen enough terrible movies to call the five below the worst. In fact, I’d stake my life on them 100% not being the worst (after all, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is a 2023 movie and, unfortunately, I did see that steaming pile of hot garbage).
The movies below are the ones that let me down the most, given how high my expectations were for them. Most were on my anticipated list (one of which is very much in the “what the fuck was I thinking” category), at least two will be major awards contenders, three have critics fawning all over them, and all had the mark of greatness but ended up missing it.
Barbie
The only way to excuse Barbie’s grotesque misandry is to call it satire but then the challenge becomes defending it as a good satire. Completely unbalanced in its commentary on gender politics, the movie’s sledgehammered humor beats its messages into the audience to the point of causing blunt force trauma. It raked in a billion at the box office, and brought respected critics to their knees, all of which pleases the 45% female / 55% male Mattel Board of Directors very much, I’m sure.
Cocaine Bear*
With the benefit of hindsight I’d go back in time and slap myself silly for even thinking of putting Elizabeth Banks’ Cocaine Bear on my anticipated list for 2023. Even though Banks doesn’t have the pedigree to pull off a seriously funny movie, the cast and crazy true-story premise of the movie really fooled me into thinking this was going to be great B-movie campy fun. And it is, for about 10 minutes.
*No.21 on my most anticipated 2023 list.
Killers of the Flower Moon*
It pains me to add a Martin Scorsese movie on this side of the fence, especially one with both Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro in it, but, to quote Joe Pesci in The Irishman, it’s what it is. Killers is painfully mid-tier Scorsese, whose octogenarian wrinkles are sadly beginning to show.
Tonally off with a second act that gives off unwelcomed Goodfellas vibes, as its fulcrum it has a love story that raises a lot of questions (why exactly does she love a person like him?), and the ending downgrades the movie from art to identity politics, with the director himself delivering the message. To see a cinema giant like Scorsese stoop so low is nothing if not at least a little sad.
*No.5 on my most anticipated 2023 list.
May December*
I’ll concede that a second viewing of Todd Haynes’ purposefully melodramatic May December may change my mind, but I walked out of the LFF screening feeling barely moved. Apart from Charles Melton’s touching performance as a man who never got the chance to be a boy, I did not connect with either Portman’s or Moore’s characters, both of whom are gratingly unlikeable.
The story - loosely based on real events and a real victim who isn’t very happy with the movie - promised much but delivered tonally off-kilter mediocrity.
*No.10 on my most anticipated 2023 list.
Napoleon*
Another film I couldn’t wait to see, and another half-baked good-but-should’ve-been-great disappointment. The parallels between Ridley Scott’s Napoleon and Scorsese’s Killers are alarming; both octogenarian legends directing period pieces steeped in violent chapters of history, both putting a lot of focus on their anti-hero’s love interests without developing said love through any emotional resonance.
The battle scenes are some of the greatest Scott has ever pulled off, so I can only hope the purported 4-hour Director’s Cut for TV will be more balanced.
*No.9 on my most anticipated 2023 list.
Here’s hoping for a more balanced 2024, with expectations kept in check for movies and in life.
A reminder of my definition of “best” from my 2022 Top 10 post:
A movie that strays as far away as possible from the beaten path, avoiding the cardinal sin of art - obviousness.
A movie that teaches you something new, makes you feel a strong feeling or two.
A movie that allows the politically-untainted tentacles of cinema to wrap themselves around you and immerse you into an entertaining story.
A visually-captivating, thought-provoking transportation and, with any lucky, transformation.
Of course there are many, many 2023 UK releases which I haven’t seen and which would probably shake up my Top 10. These include R.M.N., Trenque Lauquen, Fallen Leaves, Return to Seoul, The Eight Mountains, Afire, One Fine Morning, Broker, Holy Spider, Polite Society, and more.
See Footnote 1.