Top 10 Films of 2023
We don’t get good film years like 2023 very often. While big franchise movies floundered critically and commercially, people made an event out of Barbenheimer. Watching so many legendary filmmakers add worthy additions to their filmographies was a treat, but the exciting newcomers gave me hope for the future with their fresh debuts. I don’t know if we have COVID to blame for pushing all of these great movies into one year, but if so, I won’t thank it, but I’ll accept it. I’d honestly be satisfied writing a top 25 list, but I’m too lazy for that. I’m more excited to highlight these 10 films because they stood out in such a great year. I hope I uncover some hidden gems for you, at the very least.
Honorable mentions: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Past Lives, The Zone of Interest, Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, The Iron Claw, Rye Lane, Monster, Theater Camp, Bottoms, May December, The Holdovers
10. Showing Up
As gloomy, neurotic sculptor Lizzy (Michelle Williams) prepares to open her latest showing, she tries to keep her relationships intact in her quaint Portland art community. Heavy topics are left unspoken, and any conflict devolves into passive-aggressive criticism. This lack of communication leaves Lizzie with her art as the only outlet for her frustration and jealousy, which makes the patient sculpting scenes all the more hypnotic. Showing Up embraces this subdued tone as it never dips into heavy drama and keeps its tension under the surface. By the end of the film, you feel like things will continue business as usual, but the knob is turned two degrees in the right direction. It’s gentle and therapeutic, like most of Kelly Reichart’s films, and it leaves you feeling that while some things are out of your control, you always have the choice to show up.
9. How to Blow Up a Pipeline
I can’t help but compare the creators of How to Blow Up a Pipeline to the film’s scrappy group of protagonists. They’re both small, efficient outfits that use their limited resources to make their messages stick. Using the skin of a heist film, director Daniel Goldhaber and his team make an urgent case for their point with this film while never forgetting the number one priority of entertainment. The rag-tag team feels out of their depth as they face off against a goliath-sized problem, which fuels the tension of scenes where they handle catastrophic homemade explosives. The film never loses this thrilling momentum, even when it pauses to elaborate on why these characters are risking everything for such a dangerous undertaking. When you dive into their backstories, you’re reminded that no one is safe from climate change, regardless of background or beliefs.
8. Anatomy of a Fall
For a film that lives in ambiguity and subjectivity, Anatomy of a Fall is no less effective as a character study of Sandra (2023’s international film queen Sandra Huller). After her husband takes a fatal fall from their isolated chalet in the French Alps, the aggrieved widow becomes the prime suspect. Once forensic evidence is thrown out the window (no pun intended), the case ultimately boils down to the nature of the marriage—which we can only guess at—and our thoughts on Sandra. Huller deftly walks the tightrope between an icy, inscrutable defendant and a desperate mother reliving the trauma of her strained marriage. The film dives into her backstory while barring us from her inner thoughts, leaving us only with a lonely woman fighting for her freedom. By withholding an objective view of the truth, the film asks you to decide what’s true and does so in a way that’s more satisfying than most true crime docs.
7. BlackBerry
In a year with utter misses like Tetris, Flamin’ Hot, and The Beanie Bubble, Canadian film punk Matt Johnson showed us how you can do these corporate biopics right. Using his fly-on-the-wall, guerilla-style filmmaking, he turns the birth of the first smartphone into an entertaining mix of a workplace comedy and corporate thriller. You feel like you’re along for the ride as the camera charges alongside meek inventor Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and borderline psychotic Co-CEO Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) as they innovate, strong-arm and wheel and deal their way to the top. While the film reminds you why the BlackBerry took the world by storm, it’s Baruchel and Howerton’s movie as the toxic dream team. It’s bracing to watch as their combined strengths launch them to meteoric success, and their glaring flaws bring it all crashing down.
6. Asteroid City
On an aesthetic level, it’s just fun to watch Wes Anderson assemble another brilliant ensemble to play around in a gorgeous pastel diorama of the 1950s southwest. With lovingly-rendered old technology and a stop-motion alien, what’s not to like? The surface-level story is satisfying enough as an unlikely collection of characters dig into the relationships we make in times of uncertainty and our desire to look to the stars for answers to our pain. But once Anderson establishes the inspired show within a show framing device, he gives each character a backstory in the form of an actor trying to understand the text. Anderson’s always been at home tackling heavy subjects through his whimsical, picturesque lens. With Asteroid City, he finds a new metatextual way to explore how we process our grief through arts and entertainment.
5. The Killer
David Fincher takes a simple hitman revenge story—something he could do in his sleep—and injects it with Fight Club energy. He trades a backstory for Michael Fassbender’s unnamed robotic assassin for a sardonic inner monologue that contradicts his onscreen actions. When the Smiths-obsessed killer spends the entire opening methodically outlining his proficiency and misses his mark by a country mile, The Killer sets its nihilistic comedic tone. While Fincher embraces the tropes of beloved action thrillers with his own expertly crafted stakeouts, chases, fights, and kills, he uses them to build a satire on the gig economy and consumer culture. As Fassbender makes his way into places he shouldn’t using modern conveniences like Amazon and Uber Eats, the film blurs the line between ordering takeout and ordering a hit through a third party.
4. Killers of the Flower Moon
In Killers of the Flower Moon, we get both sides of Scorsese. The dumb criminals and corrupt officials are out of an old west version of Goodfellas, and the tragic beauty of the Osage culture recalls the meditative, epic scope of Kundun and Silence. But when Scorsese merges these two halves, he produces the raw, colossal, devastating power of sitting with the perpetrators of racist violence for three-plus hours. As morally bankrupt, dirt-stupid Ernest (Leo) pledges his love to Mollie (Lily Gladstone) while taking part in systematically eliminating her wealthy family, we feel both complicit and powerless to do anything about it. I will always defend the runtime because you’d lose that helpless sense of resigned dread if the film was any shorter. The film may be an imperfect depiction of the Osage story, and Scorsese admits as much in the powerful epilogue. But at least he gives you a glimpse into the insidious evil that allows awful things like this to happen throughout history.
3. The Boy and the Heron
The Boy and the Heron is so dense visually and thematically that I have a hard time organizing my thoughts on it. Hayao Miyazaki’s always been an intuitive storyteller, so it’s best to just soak in the tear-inducing beauty of the animation and follow along with the emotional journey of a young boy coming to grips with his mother’s death. As young Mahito descends into a whimsical wonderland full of Miyazaki staples like cute little creatures, big dopey freaks, and scrumptious-looking food, he comes across as much chaos and cruelty as in the real world. There’s a looming mastermind in the form of a wizened, flawed creator, and I can’t help but see this as Miyazaki commenting on himself and his body of work. Regardless of the man’s faults, he makes it easier for us to accept the inherent malice in our world when we see Mahito work through it in this unforgettable new creation.
2. Poor Things
With the literal mind of a child and the body of Emma Stone, Bella Baxter experiences the world in a way no one else can. Her grown-up body allows her to converse in adult spaces while her child brain frees her to challenge norms without the fear of standing out in polite society. Poor Things may shock and offend with its crass humor and abundant sex scenes, but it shows us how we can enjoy life a little more in the absence of adult inhibitions. Yorgos Lanthimos mines the absurd comedy from this premise and injects it into every frame, giving the game ensemble similar freedom to fly their freak flags. Stone wears every stage of Bella’s development perfectly, and Lanthimos beautifully renders her perspective through the wondrous production design and vibrant color palette. We fall in love with the world as Bella does, and while it turns out to be imperfect and cruel, the experiences we gain from it are invaluable.
1. Oppenheimer
It amazes me how Christopher Nolan continues to break the limits of filmmaking. If you can juggle the wide-ranging scope of one of the most notable figures of the 20th century while making 3 hours of people talking in rooms feel like a breeze, you’ve got the goods. He separates Oppenheimer from the boring historical biopic genre by making the man a vessel for a beautiful but chaotic world trying to break through. The inspired visuals from this hidden world drive Oppenheimer on his destructive path, and the fractured timeline highlights the repercussions of his choices. Much like how his stubborn determination to birth the nuclear bomb has had a negative influence on the world, his reckless decisions in his personal life light several fuses that eventually trigger explosive consequences for himself and his loved ones. This is a consequential man, and Cillian Murphy does an excellent job encompassing his brilliance, faults, and numerous contradictions. Neither he nor Nolan make a judgment call on the man or solve the question of who he is; they merely let you take in his life and consider whether the world is better off with or without his contributions.