2023 was a truly great year for cinema, the best since 2019. We got so many gifts, even if those weren’t reflected in the top-grossing movies of the year. Read on as I celebrate my favorites.
10. Past Lives (dir. Celine Song)
A beautiful movie that refuses to make its characters heroes or villains. The paths we take unfold in different ways. Wondering if a different path – in the past or the future – could be better (or just different) is all too human. But few movies have ever captured such inexpressible feelings. It might have the ending of the year, too. (Though it faces stiff competition from my top two films.)
9. All of Us Strangers (dir. Andrew Haigh)
The first film in several years that made me cry big, ugly tears. Andrew Scott finally gets a lead role worthy of his talents as Adam, a writer still grappling with his parents’ deaths. A new love (Paul Mescal) brings some light into his melancholy existence, but the lines between reality, fiction and hallucination begin to blur, and Adam must grab onto what’s real. Of all the new movies I wish I could have talked about with my late uncle – who passed away in 2020 – this is easily No. 1.
8. How to Blow Up a Pipeline (dir. Daniel Goldhaber)
Once you accept the reality that fossil fuel companies commit crimes against all of us every single day, any crimes committed against them are absolutely justified. This sort of radical thinking might be completely foreign to most people, but it’s in the bones of the ragtag group of saboteurs in this thrilling adaptation of a philosophical manifesto. It’s rare for a scripted American movie with politics this far left to ever see the light of day. That would be cause for celebration on its own, but the movie also Trojan horses its POV inside a crackerjack heist movie. You could easily show this to a relative and get a good discussion going.
7. Godzilla Minus One (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)
The year’s best blockbuster came not from Hollywood, but from Japan. While U.S. audiences mostly rejected the slate of hideous, flat comic book adaptations, they embraced this astonishingly good prequel. Everything missing from our big tentpoles could be found here: a compelling story, characters we care about, and thoughtfully deployed VFX. Hopefully the filmmakers working on the next batch of big movies takes note.
6. Oppenheimer (dir. Christopher Nolan)
When you give a director like Nolan carte blanche to make a historical film, he’s going to go all out. No boring History Channel storytelling. He’s going to take inspiration from Oliver Stone’s JFK and make three hours go by in a snap. Similar to that epic, exacting accuracy is not the goal but dramatic heft and narrative movement. Hopping back and forth in time, he gives us a portrait of one of the most important yet unknowable figures of the 20th Century. Or at least as complete a portrait as possible.
