My Year in Lists, 2023 — Movies Edition
My twenty favorite movies of 2023, plus some bonus lists. Just pretend I published this in December.
It's a common sentiment that last year was very good for the cinema. The COVID-compromised film shoots of 2020 and 2021 have largely faded away, and it seems like auteurist movies are starting to regain primacy in the cultural consciousness, as prestige television and the Marvel machine backslide into a recession. But the biggest event of the year in movies was related to good ol’ Hollywood blockbusters. Of course, I’m referring to Barbenheimer, and I still smile when I recall how everyone wore pink the weekend that those movies came out, and had too much fun scrolling through all the memes that underscored the yin-yang of it all: a plastic doll and the creator of the atomic bomb.
I don’t disagree that there were a lot of very good movies last year, and even some great ones. But none of the movies I saw altered my consciousness. There wasn’t a Drive My Car, Aftersun, Portrait of a Lady on Fire, or RRR, to name a few pictures from recent years that changed me.
In 2023, I watched 218 feature films and 40 shorts or video installations (including new releases and older films). Here’s my list of the twenty best feature films of 2023.
Also: I sent out my prior post of new film reviews without including my customary dinner & drink pairings. Ironic considering one of the movies is explicitly about cooking… I’ve edited the web version to add these sections, so you can head over there to get some dining inspo for The Taste of Things, Perfect Days, and The Monk and the Gun.
Notes
Any links on film titles will go to a review from this newsletter or a Letterboxd entry (which tend to be more off the cuff and typo-ridden than what I publish here).
I saw two films in 2023 that I would have placed at the very top of this list, but they only received a cursory one-week awards qualifying run. Unlike other publications, I’m considering them to be 2024 movies. The Taste of Things and Perfect Days will be on next year’s list.
Also, I saw Hit Man, Evil Does Not Exist, and Last Summer at various film festivals. They will be out this year, so keep an eye out for ‘em!
Finally, there are always movies that I just can’t get around to before having to eventually publish this list. I might have slotted in You Hurt My Feelings, They Cloned Tyrone, Love Live, or Waiting for the Light to Change but I haven’t seen them yet.
My Favorite Movies of 2023
20. Rotting In The Sun
19. Anatomy of a Fall
18. The Zone of Interest
The tightly plotted Anatomy of a Fall and the haunting The Zone of Interest share a cast member in Sandra Hüller, who is excellent in very different roles. Anatomy and Rotting In The Sun have very good movie dogs, though they are very different movies. One is a legal thriller that examines the dissolution of a heterosexual marriage in the French Alps; the other is a satirical romp about gay influencers and the gentrification of Mexico City. But they share a very important plot development, which would be a spoiler to reveal. (Rotting and Zone have absolutely nothing in common.)
17. Fremont
16. Kokomo City
An indie dramedy about an Afghan refugee in California, a vibrant documentary about trans sex workers: both shot in striking black and white. They shine a light on underrepresented communities, but are valuable not just as paragons of media representation, but as beautiful works of art.
15. Monster
14. Theater Camp
Beautifully renders the spaces that children create to protect themselves from a harsh world. Both films made me cry, but for very different reasons. Ben Platt has redeemed himself for that awful Dear Evan Hansen movie, and Hirokazu Kore-eda remains the most consistently great director around.
13. Past Lives
12. All of Us Strangers
A friend said that All of Us Strangers is to gay men what Past Lives is to straight women. But there really are connections between the movies. They feature career-best performances from their lead actors (and the Actors on Actors interview between Greta Lee and Andrew Scott is delightful.) The protagonists are excavating childhood memories to make sense of their present, reckoning with the future lives long since lost. That the writer-directors, Andrew Haigh and Celine Song, mined so much of their own pasts in telling these stories makes their films all the more beautifully devastating.
11. Poor Things
10. Beau Is Afraid
9. The Sweet East
Although the picaresque narrative — “an episodic style of fiction dealing with the adventures of a rough and dishonest but appealing hero” — is typically reserved for male semi-heroes, Poor Things and The Sweet East are both led by young women, a refreshing spin on the category. All three of these movies can be described as “bonkers” or “a wild ride” or “batshit crazy.” You can also call them the greatest cinematic journeys of the year.
8. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Gwen’s pastel, watercolor universe is the most beautiful world I saw on screens in 2023. The third movie in this series has a lot to live up to.
7. The Holdovers
6. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Both of these films are period pieces and heartwarming, character-driven stories about dysfunctional families. But only the underseen Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, in which the main character would really love to menstruate and begin womanhood, is literally a period piece.
5. Godzilla Minus One
4. Oppenheimer
Viewed together, you’ll understand the psychic toll the atomic bomb had on its creator and its victims. I really did not expect to cry during a Godzilla movie in 2023 but here we are. And I’m no contrarian on Oppenheimer. It’s going to stand the test of time.
3. Remembering Every Night
2. Showing Up
Gorgeously rendered portraits of women who are just trying to make it through their day. Devoid of any melodrama or histrionics, these slices of life are rewarding for patient viewers. Great vibes all the way through.
1. Rye Lane
Stunning, stylish, cute, charming, and FUNNY — both visually and dramatically. Raine Allen-Miller stirs together parts of Before Sunrise, Dope, and Scott Pilgrim vs The World, all transformative films for me. I sorely wish this had gotten a theatrical release in the US. Romantic comedies are back! Absolutely head over heels for this movie, and it’s undoubtedly my favorite of 2023.
Some Other Film Related Lists
Favorite First Watches
Older movies that I saw for the first time in 2023. (Yes, it took me this long to see Titanic. I am a fool.)
Biggest disappointment
Magic Mike’s Last Dance. The second movie in the trilogy, Magic Mike XXL, is genuinely one of the greatest movies ever made, so the third part was a huge letdown. A critic’s roundtable in Film Comment offers a surprisingly eloquent discussion on why Last Dance failed where the prior two Magics Mike films succeeded.
Biggest surprise
I had no idea Godzilla Minus One existed until the week it was released and it’s one of my top five films of the year.
Best Boy
Messi, Anatomy of a Fall
Earwormiest Needle Drops
M3GAN: “Titanium”
Beau Is Afraid - “Always Be My Baby”
Anatomy of a Fall - “PIMP”
Barbie - “Push”
Saltburn - “Murder on the Dancefloor”
Best Fashions
Passages
Barbie
The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
Rye Lane
Movies that made me 😭 in a movie theater
Ranked by amount of tears
Titanic
Yi Yi
Monster
Suzume
The Boy and the Heron
Godzilla Minus One
All Of Us Strangers
Barbie