The top 10 movies of 2023
Let’s start counting this year out.
I was going to save this until next week, but wanted to keep the momentum going from the Michigan Movie Critics Guild Awards and because I discuss my list a bit in the next episode of We’re Watching Here, which will post Monday.
Plus, it’s probably time to release this before I start nitpicking and changing my mind. I’ve spent the last few weeks catching up on films from throughout 2023 and, as I’ve done so, I’ve kept shuffling titles back and forth on my list. I hit a point about a week ago where my rankings were pretty firmly entrenched, and while I haven’t seen everything yet – I wasn’t able to make it to screenings of The Color Purple and Wonka – I feel confident that I’ve seen the majority of the films worth talking about in 2023…until it becomes 2024 and I start catching up again and find a gem or two that I’ll slap my head over not including. But that’s just a critic’s life.
It was a good year for film. Not the greatest – it wasn’t one of those years where I had 10 films jostling for the top spot – but solid enough that there are films I really wish I could have put on this list that just didn’t make the cut (I’ll save them for my runners up list next week). And as I look through this list, I’m happy that this isn’t one of those years that was loaded with all its greatest movies in the final month; this list includes films released throughout the year, from as far back as March and with several summer entries. I’m also glad that it’s diverse in terms of genre; there’s a pure action flick, some out-and-out comedies, a smattering of sci-fi/fantasy, and the usual dramas. I wish there was an animated film or a doc on here, but sometimes that’s just how the years shake out.
Mostly, it’s a year that proves that whatever struggles the box office may have, there is still great cinema being made. There are artists making great personal statements, directors experimenting with the form, and even studios willing to take risks with giant IP. It was a year of memorable movies, and I’m excited to share with you my 10 favorites.
So, let’s start this off with a bang…and a kick…and a crash…and maybe some nunchucks…
10. John Wick: Chapter 4
I’ve long enjoyed the pulpy pleasures and convoluted mythology of the Wick franchise, but the series topped itself here. A nearly three-hour marathon of set pieces vying to each be the greatest action sequence ever – and often succeeding – Chad Stahelski’s love letter to stunts is one of the best pure action films since Mad Max: Fury Road. From a nunchuck battle in a Japanese hotel to a God’s-eye firefight in a French villa to a bone-crushing, Sisyphean trudge up an unending staircase, the film delivers the goods, with each fight filmed in long, wide takes to let us marvel at their dizzying grace and speed. It brought to mind Singin’ in the Rain just as often as it did any other big-screen brawler. Reeves has firmly established Wick as his most iconic role, and he’s joined this time by Bill Skarsgard, Scott Adkins and Donnie Yen – who steals the entire film out from under Reeves as a blind assassin. If film, at its essence, is about light, sound and movement, is there anything more purely cinematic than John Wick: Chapter 4?
9. Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan turned a three-hour movie about physics and nuclear proliferation into a $1 billion, can’t-miss hit. Oppenheimer is largely a film of conversations taking place in classrooms, courtrooms and laboratories – with a big bang at its center – and it’s to Nolan’s credit that it’s completely riveting. Fueled by one of the year’s best ensembles – including career-best work from Cillian Murphy and an Oscar-worthy performance from Robert Downey Jr. – the film examines a man whose brilliance may one day be the cause of our destruction. Nolan makes discussions about quantum physics, wartime ethics and national security completely riveting, and ends the film on one of the most disquieting final notes I’ve seen in a long time. It’s one of his best.
8. The Zone of Interest
Jonathan Glazer’s follow-up to Under the Skin exists in a more realistic world, but one no less horrifying. Based on Martin Amis’ 2014 novel, the film examines the daily life of the Commandant of Auschwitz and his family. The family gardens, entertains and goes about their daily lives, oblivious to the sounds of suffering filtering over their garden wall. If Roger Ebert claimed that movies were machines that generate empathy, Glazer’s machine does just the opposite, as the family appears more monstrous the longer they sit in apathy. After my screening, a fellow critic tried to come up with something less cliché than “the banality of evil” to describe this movie – I don’t think one is needed. It’s rarely fit better.
7. The Holdovers
Alexander Payne grows a heart in this Hal Ashby-inspired winner. With The Holdovers, the director seems genuinely affectionate of his broken characters and invested in the possibility that these hurt people might help each other. Paul Giamatti is at his prickly best as a teacher whose crusty demeanor belies deep loneliness and shame, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Dominic Sessa deliver attention-grabbing performances. Payne navigates the humor and the heartache without falling into schmaltz or cynicism, creating a film that should become an annual holiday favorite as more people discover it. And its 70s setting looks even better in grainy, beautiful 35mm.
6. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
It’s hard to balance wholesomeness and frankness, but Kelly Fremon Craig’s adaptation of Judy Blume’s beloved novel is warm and fuzzy while also remaining honest about the awkwardness and complications of growing up. Abby Ryder Fortson is wonderful as the titular character (Margaret, not God), and handles both the comedy and soul-searching wonderfully. She’s surrounded by an amazing supporting cast, including Rachel McAdams in a career-best performance, Kathy Bates predictably stealing her scenes, Benny Safdie in dad mode, and Elle Graham bringing nuance to the usually thankless mean girl role. It’s a funny, warm movie about a specific time and place, but its thoughts on family, spirituality and the messiness of life are universal. I’m so happy my daughter will have this movie to turn to in a few years.
5. Barbie
If you told me one year ago that Greta Gerwig’s Barbie would be great…I would have believed you. Gerwig is an immense talent, and it would have been more surprising if she churned out a brand celebration a la The Super Mario Bros. Movie. What’s astonishing, though, is the ways in which Barbie succeeds. More than a brand celebration, it’s brand interrogation, examining why Barbie is so popular, what she stands for and whether that’s a good thing. Margot Robbie brings humanity to a plastic character and Ryan Gosling again proves himself an adept comedian. The film gleefully needles the patriarchy and celebrates womanhood, while being so skillful at doling out Easter eggs that Marvel should take notes. But the main reason Barbie is on the list? Gerwig – working from a script she co-wrote with partner Noah Baumbach – weaves all this into a film that is also funny as hell. Sublime!
4. Killers of the Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese finishes a decade-long run of films that rivals his 1970s output, exploring big themes like toxic masculinity and steroidal capitalism, suffering and apostasy, and mortality and guilt. Killers of the Flower Moon stands alongside those towering works, a mournful and horrific story of white nationalism and American greed. Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro deliver performances that stand among the best of their careers, but they’re dwarfed by the quiet power and intensity of Lily Gladstone. Scorsese’s filmmaking is muscular as ever; at 3.5 hours, the film moves with purpose and focus. And while Scorsese was probably not the right person to tell this story of Native Americans victimized by white folk, he agrees with that assessment, and the film’s final 10 minutes offer him the chance for confession and apology. Rather than go quietly into retirement, his voice is vital as ever.
3. Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos’ twisted steampunk fantasy is one of the weirdest films I’ve ever seen, and it’s so beautifully composed that I gasped several times even while watching on a laptop. Deeply surreal and extremely horny, Poor Things is a dark fairy tale about female empowerment and men’s attempts to control and repress. Yet, far from being a suffering-obsessed slog, it’s tremendously funny. In woman-child Bella, Emma Stone creates one of the strangest, fullest and most compelling protagonists of the year. Mark Ruffalo is hilarious as a dandy driven mad by his insecurities, and Willem Dafoe makes the film’s mad scientist one of its few sources of warmth. It isn’t for everyone; its story is too weird, its sexuality too brazen, its style too free-wheeling. But for those on its wavelength, it’s a hell of a ride. Every year, I ask for one film to show me something I’ve never seen before; Poor Things does that several times.
2. Past Lives
Writer-director Celine Song makes an astounding debut with this story of a relationship stretching 24 years, following Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) as they navigate childhood romance, a long-distance relationship and a reconciliation years later, when one of them is married. An insightful and specific look at the complexities of the immigrant experience, Song also delivers a universal and emotionally complex examination of how we change with the decades and how our former selves never fully go away. Gorgeously written and shot, it’s moving even while showing immense restraint, and it possesses a remarkable emotional maturity. At its center is Lee, giving one of the most deeply felt, nuanced performances of the last few years. I cannot wait to see what Song does next.
1. Anatomy of a Fall
Justine Triet’s examination of a marriage is the best film of 2023. A meticulously structured courtroom drama, it moves with the pacing and urgency of a thriller, but it’s more interested in the complexities of relationships and mysteries that can never be solved. Sandra Hüller gives the performance of the year as Susan, a woman on trial for her husband’s death. Did she murder him, or did he kill himself? While Triet lays out one of the most gripping and entertaining big-screen trials in ages, she is less interested in the truth behind that question and more invested in the complexities of marital relationships, which bring out our deepest loves and worst selves, and which can be completely unknowable to all but those involved, even if all their secrets are seemingly laid bare. A gripping and surprising drama that reminds us we can never know what’s happening in another’s relationship, this is masterful filmmaking.