My 20 Favorite Films of 2023

It took some people a while to come around to something I've felt since the middle of the year: 2023 was a fantastic year for film, certainly the best since 2019.  Maybe I've just become more lenient of a watcher, but it seemed like I was giving five-star ratings out to films left and right this year.  (The actual numbers: six versus last year's four.)  Speaking of numbers being up, I also watched more new releases than I did last year, having seen 76 this year compared to my 65 in 2022.  Can I one day get to 100?  Stay tuned for 2024.

Let's take a look at some of my favorites from this bountiful year.

The rules: Any film that got their first non-festival release in 2023 -- whether that's theatrically, on VOD, or exclusively on a streaming service -- qualifies for this list.

Honorable Mentions (25-21)

Overly abstract plotting aside, Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning Part One is another rollicking setpiece generator from our most reliable action series.  A movie like Air is bound to become a cable classic, thanks to a sharp script and brisk pacing that encourages rewatching.  R.M.N., the latest from Romanian arthouse favorite Cristian Mungiu, is a timely and riveting look at a small-town community plagued by a hateful fear of outsiders.  You won't find a studio comedy from this year more zany and fun than Bottoms.  Kitty Green remixes some of the themes from her excellent The Assistant in The Royal Hotel, another patient film about women contending with uncomfortable power dynamics.

20. Afire (Directed by Christian Petzold)

Though not about anything aquatic like his previous film Undine, the word that keeps coming to mind regarding Christian Petzold's latest is "slippery."  Tapping into the languid, character-focused style of Rohmer, Afire unfolds at an unhurried pace as it follows discontent writer Leon (Thomas Schubert) trying to finish his latest manuscript while on a holiday retreat with his friend and an unexpected guest (played by recent Petzold favorite, Paula Beer).  Petzold is laser-focused in his characterization of Leon, who's not only constantly agitated and unpleasant, but seems to become more annoyed in the presence of everyone else able to let themselves enjoy life.  That specificity is excellently contrasted with Beer's Nadja, a character whose beguiling mystique makes it so that you always feel like there are two things hidden for every one thing you learn about her.  Unfolding with Petzold's signature elliptical storytelling style, Afire is light on major incident, but fascinating nonetheless.

19. Poor Things (Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos)

From the beginning, the films of Yorgos Lanthimos have mined dry humor from their grotesque peculiarity, but not until he started working from a Tony McNamara script on The Favourite did his work have an electric comedic energy coursing through it.  In their second collaboration together they've concocted another strange brew, centered around Bella Baxter (Emma Stone), a woman who goes on a journey of growing sentience after she's resurrected with a baby's brain by a mad scientist.  Like Frankenstein as a bawdy comedy, or a Tim Burton film with way more cunnilingus, Poor Things is everything but boring.  Nothing it does is conventional, from its fantastical gothic production design to its alien lens work.  And Emma Stone holds it all together in her role, a performance so fearless and committed to Lanthimos' odd vision that she's able to wring every ounce of comedy and pathos out of the writing with ease.  In keeping with the whole film's mission statement, it's the last move you'd expect a movie star of her caliber to make.

18. Return to Seoul (Directed by Davy Chou)

Feelings of displacement and diaspora abound in Return to Seoul, a film about an adopted woman raised in France who decides to travel to South Korea on a whim to try to find her birth parents.  It's a story both intimate and epic, eschewing conventional drama plotting to tell a wandering tale that spans chunks of time and digs into its main character, Freddie.  She's a fascinating protagonist, often so caustic in the way she approaches people and situations, but the film never tries to make easy explanations for why she is the way that she is.  Answers to those questions, along with ones about identity and fate, are implied rather than said, and in the eliding of big moments of catharsis, Return to Seoul arrives at even richer emotions.

17. The Holdovers (Directed by Alexander Payne)

You can almost hear the phantom lamentations of "They don't make 'em like this anymore" as soon as the credits roll on The Holdovers, a film that, right from the old school version of the Focus Features logo that appears in the beginning, announces itself as a throwback to 70s dramas.  And it replicates that vibe well, patiently spending time with its characters who are forced to stay at a barren New England boarding school while everyone else is on Christmas break.  It's a simple story with complex emotions, and it doles out information about its main trio in a fashion that endears you to them just as they start to let their guards down around each other.  Holiday classics tend to be the ones that embrace the optimism of the season, but The Holdovers is the perfect pick for those who want a little more melancholy in their Christmas cinema.

16. Barbie (Directed by Greta Gerwig)

For those of us who rightfully regard Lady Bird and Little Women (2019) as five-star bangers, and Greta Gerwig as one of this generation's most promising filmmakers, the prospect of her doing an IP film like Barbie was frightening.  Little did anybody know that it would save cinema.  Not only that, it's as much of a personal auteurist vision as something made under such commercial circumstances can be.  Idiosyncratic in both its design and comedic sensibility, Barbie is a perverse blend of high culture (its Tati-esque world) and low culture (daffy references to Matchbox 20 songs) that's a delight to behold.  And in the midst of all the fun is an earnest examination of personhood and living up to the societal expectations that come with being women and men.  After having to put up with an increasingly vanilla slate of superhero films dominating the culture, it's downright moving to know that films can be this creative and still make a billion dollars.

15. Anatomy of a Fall (Directed by Justine Triet)

Anatomy of a Fall is the rare kind of movie that only gets richer every time you think and talk about it.  That goes beyond the central question of whether the main character (Sandra Hüller) is responsible for her husband's mysterious death as well.  It's a film that's concerned with whether or not any outsider can ever truly understand the closed system that is a marriage, the court system's usefulness in excavating the truth in moments of ambiguity, and how humanity's complications look different depending on what they're reflected off of.  That Anatomy is able to tackle those cerebral ideas while also being an exhilarating courtroom drama is an astonishing achievement.

14. May December (Directed by Todd Haynes)

If you were alive during the time, you most likely remember the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal, in which the 34 year old teacher engaged in a sexual relationship with her sixth grade student and eventually married him once he became of legal age.  May December dredges up our cultural memories with its psychologically rich story inspired by that affair, where Julianne Moore and Charles Melton play Letourneau/Villi Fualaau analogues, and Natalie Portman comes into their orbit as an actress researching for a film based on their lives.  Endlessly layered and constantly turning in on itself, May December is as much an interrogation of method acting and the ethics of retelling real stories as it is about this queasy affair.  In the end, no amount of research and imitation in the world will ever get at the heart of who any of us are.  Haynes presents it all with his typical formal distance and debt to classic melodrama, which only adds to the discomfiting nature of the story.  It's definitely not a film you can shake any time soon after you watch it.

13. Palm Trees and Power Lines (Directed by Jamie Dack)

Warning: Palm Trees and Power Lines is not for the faint of heart.  As a story about a teenage girl (Lily McInerny) who gets groomed by an older man (Jonathan Tucker), it's almost too effective, granting you a fly-on-the-wall perspective to the process, in all of its unease and discomfort.  Yet it never makes the easy stumble into exploitation, always taking the protagonist's point of view to show how easily something insidious can take hold.  It's unflinching, but always done with grace and care.  Ultimately, Palm Trees and Power Lines makes a strong case for the instructive, illuminating value of provocative art.

12. The Killer (Directed by David Fincher)

"If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"  So goes the classic Anton Chigurh quote from No Country For Old Men, and it's one to think about while watching David Fincher's latest too.  Through serene narration, the titular killer constantly tells the audience the rules he follows to ensure success and survival in his line of work as an assassin for hire, and yet for all of his strict adherences to a set of principles, for all of his self-assurances to "anticipate and not improvise," things still go awry.  It's easy to read The Killer as an expression of self from David Fincher, a man notorious for his exacting nature and love of repetition, but even without recognizing the meta angle, it's a gripping watch.  That precision of his allows for an aerodynamic experience, where nothing is astray and everything glides along beautifully.  In its obsession with process and observation, the film allows the viewer to do the same, trusting them to understand how the dots of plot that mark each chapter are connected without needing a line drawn between them.  It's much more rewarding for doing so too, adding up to a film that's a tense, darkly humorous, existential delight.

11. John Wick: Chapter 4 (Directed by Chad Stahelski)

It's rare, and maybe even unprecedented, for an action series to improve with each installment, but that's exactly what the John Wick franchise had been doing, and Chapter 4 is no different.  Had it only rested on recruiting the legendary Donnie Yen to play a blind assassin, that would have been enough, but the latest installment goes bigger and better in every regard.  Its globetrotting adventure makes the lore that had been threatening to weigh down the series the most fun and engaging it has ever been.  And of course, there's the action, which doles out one jaw-dropping sequence after another.  With an unparalleled variety, ingenuity, and rhythm, the Wick franchise points to a way forward for blockbuster action filmmaking.  Though its mythic ending has beautiful poetry as a conclusion to the franchise, the prospect of seeing how they can top themselves again is awfully enticing.

10. Roald Dahl Shorts (Directed by Wes Anderson)

Wes Anderson has never been a filmmaker who works for me.  It's a source of great shame and frustration, both because people I respect love his work and also due to the fact that many of his detractors tend to be very irritating about it.  But try I as might, his manicured style that calls attention to the artifice of moviemaking always gets in the way of me responding to the emotional moments that clearly move others.  Even Asteroid City, his full-length film that also came out this year, was unsuccessful.  But something clicked with his adaptation of four Roald Dahl shorts -- The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, The Swan, The Rat Catcher, and Poison -- which also came out this year.  It might be that Dahl's prose, which gets included largely unaltered, is better.  The love of language is palpable here, and the stories are carried by their rhythmic, rapid dialogue.  Anderson's visual sense has never been an issue, and the length of these shorts means that he can dispense with his usual emotional falseness and deliver a full-on style assault.  It's almost disorienting how these shorts pull you through a whirlwind of moving sets, formally dazzling compositions, and imaginative strategies to keep every tale down to their bare essentials.  What Wes Anderson pulls off is simply astonishing.  Maybe he should work from Dahl source material forever.

9. Leave the World Behind (Directed by Sam Esmail)

There's too much expectation these days for a movie to be "about" something.  Is it not enough anymore to have your face blasted off by the power of pure cinema?  If you squint enough, you could make the argument that Leave the World Behind has cogent things to say about America's deep fracture leaving us unprepared to deal with a crisis, or humanity at large's tendency to close ranks and think only of themselves when it comes down to it, but that's not really what's compelling here.  Instead, the film uses its story -- the details of which are best kept under wraps -- to foment chaos and paranoia, creating an experience that's always entertaining and disorienting.  It's an excellently directed movie, with a little bit of Shyamalan in the way it uses the camera to create tension and a hint of Spielberg in the pop filmmaking of its setpieces.  Those are obviously pretty lofty comparisons, but Leave the World Behind is impressive enough to earn them.

8. You Hurt My Feelings (Directed by Nicole Holofcener)

It often can be gratifying to watch the new work of a filmmaker you love simply because of the way it's in conversation with everything else in their oeuvre.  You Hurt My Feelings, like pretty much all of Nicole Holofcener's work, is largely about what it is that we owe to others.  What's the best way to support the ones we love?  If you don't like the new book your wife is writing, do you pretend that you do or just tell the truth?  Holofcener uses these questions, along with the general dejection her four middle-aged protagonists feel with their careers, to tell a funny, knowing tale about the little lies we tell to minimize friction in our lives.  There are all these little motifs -- self-image issues and cosmetic surgery, the ways parents relate to their children, characters subconsciously projecting their anxieties outward -- for longtime fans to chew on as well.  You Hurt My Feelings is another meaty film in the guise of a lightweight trifle from one of cinema's most unsung filmmakers.

7. Priscilla (Directed by Sofia Coppola)

Sometimes a director has a thing that they do better than anyone else.  For Sofia Coppola, it's crafting gauzy, hermetically sealed little wonders that are so delicate they might crumble at the slightest touch.  And when you have a unique gift, it's best not to run away from it, as she tried to do with The Bling Ring, The Beguiled, and On the Rocks.  Those are all good-to-great films, but they aren't major works.  Priscilla is.  Coppola keeps the film so locked into Priscilla Presley's perspective with immense close-ups of her face, and even when the camera is not on her, it's concerned with evoking how things feel and appear to her.  And she uses the camera and graceful writing to display all the ways that Elvis treats Priscilla like a doll to dress up and play with whenever he sees fit, always reminding you of the latter's girlhood through details in the costuming, and by frequently blocking her in a manner that's subordinate to Elvis.  It's a muted film, but always hypnotizing thanks to Sofia Coppola's habit of making you feel like there's no screen between you and what you're seeing.  If Baz Luhrmann's meretricious style was the perfect fit for last year's vacuous, exhausting Elvis, then there's no better director for this much superior sister film.

6. Showing Up (Directed by Kelly Reichardt)

Deliberately paced though they may be, the films of Kelly Reichardt often have high-stakes plots attached to them.  The Oregon Trail trek of Meek's Cutoff, the lost dog search in Wendy & Lucy, the eco-terrorism that makes up Night Moves; that mixture of tense and low-key make a potent concoction.  It's not like Showing Up, about the quotidian drama in the life of a sculptor in Oregon, is the first Reichardt flick that's plot-light, but her ability to make simple matters rewarding continues to astound.  Helped by a perfectly-pitched lead performance from Michelle Williams, who's comfortable in her fourth collaboration with the filmmaker, Showing Up marinates in the joys and difficulties that come from the day-to-day process of making art.

5. Oppenheimer (Directed by Christopher Nolan)

Oppenheimer is a deeply mournful film.  Mournful about the circumstances that "necessitated" the creation of the atomic bomb, mournful about the thousands of lives lost as a result of dropping them on Japan, mournful about the negative implications that have only exponentiated since then.  And yet, thanks to a combination of Christopher Nolan's heady script and Jennifer Lame's rhythmic editing, it's never a slog.  It ponders theory vs. action, and how one can only take you so far, in a way that's always engrossing.  And its exploration of the varying degrees of guilt people feel in their involvement in ringing a bell that can't be unrung is fascinating.  Oppenheimer will wring you dry, and no amount of Barbenheimer memeing can make you feel better.

4. Knock at the Cabin (Directed by M. Night Shyamalan)

The days of M. Night Shyamalan being a laughing stock amongst cinephiles feels like a distant memory, as he's now made his second best-of-the-year candidate in a row.  Knock at the Cabin is another exquisite thriller from the man once dubbed the new master of suspense.  Shyamalan's visual talent makes it so that the film is always tense and arresting, even as it largely takes place in a single room.  And it also ends up being one of the director's most emotional films, pondering faith and what it means to be asked to sacrifice yourself for a world that's hostile to you.  Films released earlier in the year tend to get glossed over when list-making season comes around, but the pressure cooker intensity of Knock at the Cabin still resonates after all these months.

3. Past Lives (Directed by Celine Song)

As you go through life, the accumulation of choices you make continue to pile up, which means there's also an accumulation of choices not made, a byzantine network of roads not taken that lie in the rearview mirror.  Past Lives protagonist Nora has to wrestle with that concept when she reconnects with her childhood love, with whom she lost touch when her family moved from Korea to Canada in 2000, and then again after they found each other on Facebook in 2012.  Now married and in her mid-30s, Nora being presented with this part of her past forces her to ponder what it means to have these two distinct selves, and how difficult it can be to reconcile what is with what could've been.  The film plays out in a manner much less dramatic than its premise might promise, but its subtlety and interiority starts to overwhelm your emotions by the time that gorgeous final scene arrives.  

2. Are You There God?  It's Me, Margaret. (Directed by Kelly Fremon Craig)

Judy Blume's 1970 novel Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. is such a cherished cultural touchstone that even those who have never read it are probably intimately familiar with it from how frequently it comes up in other media.  It's a mystery why it took over 50 years for the story to be adapted to the big screen, but thankfully it landed in the right hands with writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig, whose 2016 debut The Edge of Seventeen was not just the best coming-of-age film in a long time, but one of the best films of its decade, period.  Fremon Craig sharpened her teeth under James L. Brooks' production company, and his spirit lives on in Seventeen and Margaret alike, both exhibiting writing that's perfectly attuned to the emotions and inner lives of its characters.  It feels like the whole world is contained in Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret., a film that's deeply humane and filled with moments of deft emotional honesty.  The scene where Margaret's mother (played in the best performance of the year by Rachel McAdams) explains to her why her grandparents aren't in their lives is particularly breathtaking in that regard.  In a perfect world, a film like this would be a huge hit, but like its source material, it's bound to make an impact on those who do experience it anyway.

1. Killers of the Flower Moon (Directed by Martin Scorsese)

Killers of the Flower Moon is an American epic, with everything that entails.  It's a film that uses the language and signifiers of that classification to tell what's always been the real story of our nation: the taking of what isn't ours and killing anyone who gets in the way.  Over its mammoth 206-minute runtime, the film recounts the Osage murders in the 1920s and the actions of the men who conspired to commit them in stark, unblinking detail.  Well into his sixth decade as a filmmaker, Martin Scorsese exhibits a mastery of tone and image in the telling of this story.  Genuine humor and grisly horrors arrive in quick succession.  There are juxtapositions of images and sequences that are so powerful in their communication of ideas that words could never do so elegantly.  And in its interrogation of William Hale, Ernest Burkhart, and the men who conducted such unfathomable evil, the film arrives at a surprising and graceful self-interrogation about the way real tragedy is often re-rendered as entertainment.  Elder statesmen directors can sometimes get handled with kid gloves because we're just happy that they're still making films at all.  That isn't the case with Killers of the Flower Moon, some of the most vital and potent work of Scorsese's long career.

Well, that wraps things up for my best films of 2023 list.  I love reading other lists, so feel free to share yours in the comments.  Or if you have any thoughts on my list, then you can do that too.  To see a complete ranked list of all the 2023 films I've seen this year, along with a list of my favorite performances and some other data, you can find them on this Google Doc.

Previous lists
2022

2021

2020

2019

2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013