My Top 10 Movies of 2023
It’s a new year, which means I’m back writing in my poor, neglected newsletter about my favorite movies from the past year. You can watch my thoughts up above in video format. Or, if you prefer words in your eyeballs, you can find the written version down below.
Special Awards:
The "Not Really A Movie" Award:
Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Dir. Sam Wrench)
Okay, it is technically a movie, but I typically just don't include concert movies or documentaries when I'm making these lists for myself. It helps narrow things down. Still, I'm a poptimist and a Swiftie on the low, but even non-Swifties will have to acknowledge the power of The Eras Tour movie. it's a 3 hour long tour de force (which I think means forceful tour in French) running through all of Taylor's album history and looking good while doing it. It's also worth mentioning as one of the biggest box office movies of the year. It's not, you know, traditional scripted entertainment, but as far as Taylor Swift concert movies go, I can't imagine someone watching this and not getting something they want out of it (unless it's 1989's Wildest Dreams).
The “I Love This Movie But I Think It’s Actually Bad” Award:
The Super Mario Bros. Movie (Dir. Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic)
I love this movie but I think it's actually bad. As a massive Nintendo fan since I was but a babe, I was both excited and frightened to witness what the team behind the Minions movies was going to do with Mario. As it turns out, I had an amazing time watching this in the theater. I was there with a crowd full of mostly ten year olds and their parents, plus the odd aging video game fan like myself. Hearing kids' reactions and excitement to everything happening on screen was infectious. The movie is loaded with Easter eggs for fans, and I found that I had a huge smile on my face the entire time I was watching it. I teared up several times throughout, not because the movie is really emotionally affecting on its own, but just from the sheer realization of this cornerstone of my childhood being brought to life in such a massive way and the fact that it was still resonating with kids growing up now.
All that said, the plot basically doesn't exist, the characters are thin, the jokes are stupid, the pop songs are cheesy, and there's just kind of nothing of substance here at all. It's a big ball of cotton candy. I haven't re-watched the movie since, and I'm kind of afraid to, because I'd just rather live in the memory of the experience and not have to come to terms with how lazy and dumb the movie actually is.
The “How Do You Even Classify What This Is, I Don’t Know” Award:
Skinamarink (Dir. Kyle Edward Ball)
Skinamarink is technically listed as 2022 movie, even though it didn't actually get a theatrical release until 2023, which makes it one of these annoying movies that lives in limbo between two years, and as a result, doesn't always get the attention it deserves when people are talking about their favorites of the year. Another reason this one won't get the attention it deserves is because it's an extremely off-putting, unfriendly viewing experience. This is a horror movie which is, yes, primarily made up of grainy shots of hallways and closets while nothing really happens. If someone tells me they think Skinamarink is a terrible movie or that they had a terrible time watching it, I can't really argue with them. Of all the "not for everyones" out there, this one is really not for everyone. But it does a very specific thing that I think resonates with very specific people, and if you're one of those, it could very well terrify you the way it did me.
This was one of my favorite movie theater experiences of the year, unlike the people in my audience who got up and walked out after 30 minutes. I thought it was one of the scariest things I've seen in recent memory, but it does require you to truly give yourself to the experience without any distractions. A truly original film, and one that's become a part of my everyday vernacular, when I'm always talking about getting Skinamarinked or Skinamarinking somebody.
10.
Bottoms (Dir. Emma Seligman)
Appropriately rounding out the bottom of my list, is Bottoms. At first glance this looks like a modern take on the high school comedy we don't really get anymore. Basically something like Superbad, but more relevant to today, and aimed at audiences that aren't necessarily straight white boys (although at least one of them is). And that would be enough for a fun movie, which Bottoms is, but gradually as you watch, it starts to creep more and more into the realm of the absurd. I'd compare the humor in this to something like 30 Rock. The jokes come at you fast, and reality as it exists in this universe is nebulous at best.
It's a hyper exaggerated version of the high school experience. Everyone doesn't just act like they worship the football players, they literally sacrifice everything else as a priority to meet their needs. The uncool kids aren't just neglected and bullied a little, they're referred to as "the ugly and untalented gays" over the school loudspeaker. We don't get a ton of great comedies in theaters anymore these days, but this is one of them. Like the best comedies it never gives you what you expect, and feels like something that's entirely its own. Put Marshawn Lynch in more movies.
9.
Past Lives (Dir. Celine Song)
Okay, now it's time to get serious, with movies that are about real people, and heartbreak and loss… you know, the shit that actually wins Oscars, which brings me to Past Lives. Past Lives follows the trajectory of a Korean woman and her relationship with a boy she knew from her hometown before she moved to America and lost touch with him. It isn't flashy, it isn't complicated. It's a simple, beautiful story that gets to the heart of what everyone on the planet has wrestled with at one point or another: Who am I? Why am I like this? What choices did I make that led me here? How would my life be different if I had taken one path instead of another? In a weird way, this is kind of like the "adult" version of all the multiverse stories that are happening in media these days, the non-sci-fi exploration of why those themes resonate with so many of us. Another thing that's great about Past Lives is that it doesn't create drama and conflict for the sake of it. There are no evil husbands or petty, scheming exes mucking things up. There are just adults talking about their lives and hashing things out, wondering why they are the way they are.
8.
All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh)
Boy, exploring your past is HOT this year, as it's a major theme of my next movie, All of Us Strangers. Unlike Past Lives, Strangers actually gives us a literal exploration of the past, as in the movie, the central character interacts with past versions of his now deceased parents. I love a movie that's not afraid to play around with reality, and if there's not really a literal explanation for it, all the better. Is this a Field of Dreams type situation, and we're supposed to believe he's seeing his parents as actual ghosts? Is he just crazy and everything's in his head? Doesn't matter, don't ask these questions. Instead, just enjoy the movie for the moving, dreamlike poem that it is.
The story deals with two kinds of love essentially, romantic, and the love between parents and their children. It's a rare thing to see both in one movie I think, although we get plenty of romantic dramas every year, parent-child relationships are usually saved for teen comedies or maybe aging Judd Apatow movies. But in Strangers, it's not important what kind of love it is, just that it's love. Sounds pretty trite when I say it like that, but it's anything but in this movie, which is serenely sad, yet manages to find enough hope in the tragedy that it isn't just misery porn. For a navigation of loneliness, grief, and loss, you can't do much better than this.
7.
No One Will Save You (Dir. Brian Duffield)
Switching gears, next on my list is No One Will Save You, a sci-fi thriller that is very much up my alley. It's about a woman who lives isolated from the rest of society and has to deal with some alien encounters. The big gimmick of this movie is that there is no spoken dialogue. Most of the movie only focuses on her character in any given scene, and even when there are other people around, nobody says anything. This makes No One Will Save You the epitome of the old adage, “show don't tell”. No one talks so there is no ‘telling’, it's literally all just ‘show’. That means you do away with any tedious spoken exposition and explanations. Everything about the protagonist's backstory is revealed to you naturally over the course of the film via things you see and learn about organically, and how she's feeling is conveyed by her actions and her reactions to what's going on. It's an impressive feat to be able to carry a movie basically all on your own without any conversations to lean on.
The movie would still be great however, even if you axed the no talking gimmick completely. It's a super tense and original thriller, and if you're someone like me who has a mild phobia of alien abductions ever since I saw Signs as a child, you'll find the opening scenes effectively freaky. Then, the movie continues to evolve and open up and reveal new layers about the characters as well as the science fiction elements. I just had such a fantastic time watching No One Will Save You, and because it was straight to Hulu, I think it's an easy one for people to miss, so I'm recommending it every chance I get.
6.
Saltburn (Dir. Emerald Fennell)
At this point, I'll see pretty much anything Barry Keoghan is in. He seems to have a knack for picking extremely interesting, off-kilter art films, and this is probably his biggest and best role yet. He plays a kid who's invited to stay at Saltburn, his more popular friend's big fat classical mansion in the countryside over school break. This is a polarizing film, which I can understand to some extent. There are some, shall we say, shocking scenes of a weird and sexual nature that definitely made for some interesting reactions in my screening. I don't think it's played just for shock value though.
In my opinion, this is a fascinating character study of Barry Keoghan’s character, who just has this little twinkle in his eye that's making you constantly wonder exactly what's going on in his head, and by the end of the movie you'll have a completely different idea from the two or three other ideas you had of him before. This is a movie about the disparity between social classes, in this case one of those classes being the extreme elite. Are they terrible people? Yeah. Are they misunderstood? Not really. They're given enough depth to be sympathetic but my reading of this movie is staunchly a critique of the upper class. On the other hand, Keoghan's character is certainly no hero. It's a messy, complicated, and weird movie that doesn't give easy answers, and is a hell of a lot of fun to watch.
5.
Poor Things (Dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
On the subject of weird and messy, we have Yorgos Lanthimos' latest, Poor Things. This one stars Emma Stone as a sort of Frankenstein's Monster, a grown adult with the mind of a child who now has to learn and experience the outside world for the first time. First off, I think this is the funniest movie of the year. It's packed wall to wall with quotable lines. Yorgos Lanthimos has a gift for making strange worlds come to life, and especially for making insane dialogue come out of his bizarre characters' mouths sounding like Shakespeare. It's almost Coen Brothers-esque, and I want to memorize every line in this movie so I can use it when relevant in real life.
I've seen Poor Things compared to Barbie, and along those lines I've also seen it criticized for its' perhaps less than thorough understanding of feminism. As I am not a woman, I will not comment on that too precisely except to say that it seemed to me an empowering and cunning critique of a male driven society. Beyond that, I think the movie speaks to everyone and isn't solely about women's experiences even though that's obviously a major component. The aspect that resonated most with me was watching Bella's journey through life, starting out as a simple child, and rapidly undergoing the changes we all undergo from naivety to cynicism, and beyond. I see it as a sort of microcosm of the human experience, which is... you know, kind of a lot to fit into one movie, but this one does a stellar job, and it's funny as hell too.
4.
Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (Dir. Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson, Kemp Powers)
Is this the greatest superhero movie ever made? It's up there. As a massive Spider-Man fan, I don't think any movie has gotten as close to the spirit, heart and soul of the comics as the two Spider-Verses have. Across takes everything that was established in Into and improves on it. The story is deeper, the animation is better, and the characters get more time to shine. Plus, the Easter eggs and references are even Easter eggier and referencier. Again, as a Spider-Man fan, seeing what they put on screen was a dream come true. Like the Mario movie, it's a celebration of everything in this franchise's history, except that underneath it all there's actually a great movie, and with great movie comes great substance.
It's another one delving into the idea of who we are, and whether or not it would be worth it go back and change the past to have a potentially better future. Do we have to suffer great losses in order to realize our potential? It's a weighty subject that meshes perfectly with Spider-Man's backstory, and because everyone is so familiar with it, the filmmakers are free to play with those notes and rearrange them in spectacular and amazing ways. This isn't just a kids movie or a superhero movie, with all the negative connotations that idea now has attached to it. It's a movie movie that everybody should watch.
I'm agonizing over the fact that we're probably far longer out from the next movie than we initially thought, but even with this one's open ending, I'm not mad. I can't be mad at a movie that's 2 1/2 hours long, ends on a cliffhanger, and just leaves me excited for more, wishing I could sit down and watch the next installment immediately.
3.
The Holdovers (Dir. Alexander Payne)
I think this is Alexander Payne's best work in years. Paul Giamatti stars as a curmudgeonly teacher who's forced to spend Christmas break watching over the "holdovers", the kids who have nowhere else to go for the holidays. If you think you can see where this one is headed, you're probably right for the most part, but it's the execution that makes it so enjoyable to watch. Paul Giamatti is such a wonderful actor, and I really think his screen presence doesn't get the credit it deserves. He's so effortlessly charming and interesting even when he's acting like a complete jackass, and he has awesome chemistry with younger co-star in the movie.
The whole thing is more or less a tribute to movies of the 70s in its look and tone, and it's the kind of movie they really don't make too many of these days. Your mileage may vary, but I'm a movie cryer, and this one made me cry or tear up several times throughout, not because it's sad necessarily, but because it's touching, poignant, and relatable. I guess I'm a sucker for heartwarming Christmas time movies, but this one really exemplifies the idealized version of that holiday without strictly being about Christmas. It's about going through tough times and learning to find a family in the surroundings you've been forced into.
It's just such a cozy, pleasant film, with its snowy New England setting, and this big old fashioned empty school building, I only wanted to curl up and spend time in this place. I could've watched another hour of the movie just showing scenes from their day to day activities without any plot progression. The Holdovers is going to be one I return to during the holidays for the rest of my life.
2.
Anatomy of a Fall (Dir. Justine Triet)
This is a French film about a woman whose husband has died from a fall, and now has to defend herself in court to prove that she isn't the one who murdered him. From that plot summary and from the movie's trailer, this sounds like a true crime-esque thriller concerned with the whodunit of whether or not the main character actually was driven to murder. A big chunk of the movie does take place in courtrooms, and how the evidence does or doesn't shake out is a supremely compelling aspect of the film. But that's also short changing what I think is a much deeper, more interesting narrative than that. It's an examination of the relationship this woman had with her husband and is trying to cling to now with her son, and how easily the perception of that relationship can be altered by an outsider's perspective.
The most memorable scenes from this movie to me are the brief glimpses we get via flashback of the husband when he was alive, and how complicated and real those scenes play out. The acting is incredible, and the main character is never portrayed in a really negative or positive light. There's no cheap, lurid side to this movie about society's fascination with killers or anything like that. It's all played very fairly, and very sympathetically, and it's entirely up to the audience to decide what they think based on their own life experiences. Gripping and compelling from start to finish.
1.
Beau Is Afraid (Dir. Ari Aster)
Ari Aster has become one of my favorite working directors. After giving us Hereditary and Midsommar, he proves that the line between horror and comedy is a very thin one with Beau Is Afraid, and when you play with that line a little, amazing things can happen. This movie follows Beau, played by the always incredible Joaquin Phoenix, as he navigates a life full of fear and anxiety. Talk about playing with reality, this one holds nothing back when it comes to creating a reality that's more reflective of how some people see the world than others. The world is a terrible and frightening place to inhabit, and this movie proves why. As someone who has had feelings of anxiety before, here we see what the worst possible outcome of some of those scenarios can be. What if everything really was as awful and stressful as we think it is? I mean, isn't it? Is it really that different from this depiction?
Oh yeah and by the way, this movie is also uproariously funny. Aster knows how to display the absurdities of life in an exaggerated way that can either be hilarious or horrifying depending on the lens you view it through. Often, it's both. It's not always an easy movie to parse, and I'm not gonna pretend that I've fully absorbed everything it has to offer, but the parts that hit me, hit me, from the horrors of everyday life, to the trauma put upon us by our families. It's an audacious, transformative work, the kind that a lot of people will look at and call pretentious, and maybe they're right, but it's catnip for me. If you want to laugh, get your heart racing, and experience something unlike just about any other movie you've ever seen, Beau Is Afraid is the one to do it with.
Honorable Mentions:
Barbie (Dir. Greta Gerwig)
Blackberry (Dir. Matt Johnson)
The Boy and the Heron (Dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
Dicks: The Musical (Dir. Larry Charles)
Dream Scenario (Dir. Kristoffer Borgli)
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Dir. James Gunn)
Oppenheimer (Dir. Christopher Nolan)
Raging Grace (Dir. Paris Zarcilla)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Dir. Jeff Rowe)
The Zone of Interest (Dir. Jonathan Glazer)