Best Movies of 2023
After watching over a hundred new movies in 2023, I've narrowed down the list to the 10 best movies of 2023. Well, perhaps not the best movies, but the ones that have stayed with me in one way or another. This year found a comfortable place in the uncomfortable, where filmmakers felt that they were able to tackle themes and stories that were once taboo in ways that are increasingly tailored to our ever-evolving hunger for unique perspectives and bizarre storytelling. My list reflects that.
To see every movie I watched in 2023 racked, go over to Letterboxd.
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To explain Bottoms, I need to spoil it just a tiny bit. The final shot of the movie, a baroque painting if I've ever seen one, pulls from a classic 90s / early aughts high school comedy trope. The school football team triumphantly raises the school's quarterback. Students rush the field dancing with joy. Our best friend protagonists make up and hold each other. However, a few added details make this unlike any high school comedy we've seen. The field is littered with incapacitated (and possibly dead) players and our ragtag group of protagonists are covered in blood (both their own and others'). In the background, a tree burns after recently being blown up with a homemade device. Welcome to the wonderfully weird and wacky world of writer/director Emma Seligman‘s Bottoms.
Seligman's vision of high school in Bottoms is equal parts satiric and surreal. Like if Luis Buñel directed The Breakfast Club or Andrei Tarkovsky directed Clueless. It's a tricky tone that Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri nail with perfectly pitched performances as woefully lame high schoolers PJ and Josie. All they need is a mission. And like any good high school raunchy comedy, this mission involves getting laid: “Do you want to be the only girl virgin at Sarah Lawrence?” Best friends that stick together get laid together. At least that's their prerogative. The absolute absurdity never relents, yet Bottoms manages to pull at the heart strings. That's what makes it the best comedy of the year and one of the best movies of 2023.
Read my full review of Bottoms →
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Hey, Hollywood? This is how you do a blockbuster. Just when we thought the action blockbuster was dead in 2023, Godzilla Minus One came roaring in at the final moment to save the genre. And while the spectacular giant monster destruction in the forefront has you leaning forward in your seat with bated breath — like a remix of Jaws where our ragtag group of heroes is dealing with a much much larger shark — the character drama grabs for your heart and makes the action all the more tense.
Though it's a prequel to Shin Godzilla, the first film in Toho Studios' reboot of the franchise, Minus One is more like a drama that happens to have a giant monster than a full-blown Kaiju movie as it follows failed Kamikaze pilot Kōichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki) coping with the fallout of the war. While some deal with the grief and trauma by looking to the future — like young suddenly-single mother Kimiko (Minami Hamabe) — Kōichi constantly looks to the past with regret. He gets the chance to right his perceived wrongs when Godzilla takes aim at the already battered country. Part-war epic, part-classic Kaiju, part-found family drama, Minus One is the perfect crowd-pleasing action movie we were craving this year.
Writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos has always played in magical realism, but with his first foray into full fantasy he is able to flex his world-building like never before — and the result is as magnificent and deeply weird as we hoped. Cribbing the tale of Frankenstein, Poor Things takes place in our world (with familiar locations like Victorian-era London and Portugal), but Lanthimos imagines it as a colorful storybook full of childlike wonder that mirrors protagonist Bella's (Emma Stone) state of mind as she comes of age after being created by Dr. Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) whom she affectionally calls “God.” In classic Lanthimos fashion, Bella's creation is deeply disturbing as Dr. Baxter uses the brain of an infant to reanimate the corpse of an adult woman. Of course, that disturbing premise isn't without reason.
Poor Things spins up a tale of discovery both of the self and the world. As Bella comes into herself and into her sexuality, the movie doesn't shy away from the ugliness of the patriarchal world — represented by a devilishly delightful villain turn by Mark Ruffalo — but also the pure joy it can bring to live a life unburdened by societal norms. The result is a wonderfully batshit epic that is as heartbreaking as it is uplifting.
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When we first meet German filmmaker Tomas (Franz Rogowski), he is directing the final scene of his latest movie. We watch him as he instructs an actor to enter the scene down a flight of stairs. Then he makes him do it again… and again. Each time he notices something else wrong with the way he enters the scene. We'll see Tomas do something similar throughout Passages, except this time to the people in his life — specifically his long-suffering husband (Ben Whishaw) and new lover (Adèle Exarchopoulos). That is expecting them to act one way— the way that is best for him and his wants — and getting frustrated when they don't follow the script he's written for them in his head.
Eventually, the magnetism that draws people to Tomas begins to repulse them and the gravity that kept them in orbit becomes weaker. Essentially, his life goes off script and he's not good at improv. While Passages could have easily relied to melodramatics, Sachs keeps each character and interaction grounded. Writer-director Ira Sachs introduces us to the characters of Passages when their lives intersect and tangle into a mess of complications. By the end, Whishaw, whose remarkable portrayal of a gay man finding his strength and independence, untangles the knot and leaves us (and Tomas) flooded with emotion.
In recent years, Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda has been interested in stories about misunderstood people from the found families of Shoplifters and Broker or the complicated parents of The Truth or After the Storm. He continues that trend with the three points-of-view that make up his latest feature Monster as he plays with our expectations of each of the characters. The core story seems straightforward. We start from the perspective of a single mother (Sakura Ando) concerned about her son's (Sōya Kurokawa) increasingly erratic behavior who goes on a warpath when she discovers his teacher (Eita Nagayama) may be responsible.
Kore-eda is so skilled at presenting his characters with so much depth that it's almost impossible not to see the story from their point-of-view and think their actions are justified. In the mother's chapter, for example, seethe with the same anger that she feels when the school brushes off her initial complaints — in a surprising bit of dark humor. But then, when we discover more through the next chapter, the seemingly uncaring school administration becomes human. Through each chapter of the triptych, our own allegiances shift, but especially in the final perspective that is as heartwarming as it is heartbreaking. Taken as three individual stories, Monster is already impressive. As a whole, it's a gorgeous tapestry of mystery, suspense, drama and romance that begs to be rewatched.
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The brilliance of Renaissance: A Flim by Beyoncé, a nearly three-hour epic concert documentary, becomes clear just 25 minutes in. And despite the reputation (say hey) Ms. Carter has made for herself as a perfectionist, a moment of imperfection stands out. As we catapult from “Cozy” into Beyhive-favorite “Alien Superstar” the audio suddenly cuts out — and no, it's not yet time for the mute challenge. We see as the crew, donned in shimmering silver jumpsuits jump into action. Beyoncé is unphased and even decides to gag the crowd by changing her outfit during the short three-minute interruption.
However, because we watched a vignette of the crew putting the stage together with a voiceover by Bey herself explaining the complexity of the show, we know exactly the stakes involved and the people that ultimately save the day. It's this structure where we're treated to some background about the tour, the album or Beyoncé herself followed by a part of the show that is directly inspired or impacted by it that makes Renaissance such a satisfying documentary. Oh yeah, and Beyoncé is the performer of our generation. There's that too.
Don't blink. You're not going to want to miss a thing in Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall. While the movie sets itself up as an episode of Law & Order: French Edition as we unravel the case of the mysterious fall of a husband and father. Was it an accident? Or did his wife Sandra (Sandra Hüller) or young son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) have something to do with it? As we sweep from investigation to trial, Triet gives us nearly all the clues to solve the case. However, it is still up to the audience to decide who to believe. Hüller's remarkable performance will sway you in either direction with the smallest inflection or glance.
While structured like a standard procedural, Anatomy of a Fall pays attention to every detail. There is never a shot or line that doesn't have a purpose, which makes the robust runtime fly by. More impressively, though, Triet is also able to throw in astute observations about marriage, parenthood and even the French judicial system — which if you don't know is messy messy — that add to the richness of the movie. While the movie has a definitive end, rewatches can uncover something you missed that might change your interpretation of the case. It's that staying power that makes it one of the best movies of 2023.
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The subgenre of day-in-the-life movies where nothing really happens yet everything is happening will get me every time — and Wim Wenders' Perfect Days is… well, a perfect example. The way Wenders shows us Hirayama's (Kōji Yakusho) daily routine is so comforting — the cinematic equivalent of a weighted blanket. Each morning, he wakes up in his modest apartment, makes his bed, carefully waters his plants, steps out donning blue coveralls with “The Tokyo Toilet” scrawled on the back, grabs his morning coffee and sets out on his job cleaning the city's vast network of public toilets.
However, the magic of Perfect Days comes in the little diversions from his routine like when Mama (revered enka singer Sayuri Ishikawa) trills out a Japanese rendition of “House of the Rising Sun” or his niece arriving at his tiny apartment unannounced. These detours give us a small insight into Hirayama's interior life, which he seems to have locked away behind his quiet contentment. We may not know much more about his world by the movie's stunning ending, but we do learn his philosophy. And that may be the greater gift.
From the second Julianne Moore's Gracie opens a refrigerator and dramatically says over a discordant chord, “I don't think we have enough hot dogs” you understand exactly what kind of movie May December is. However, while it is a 70s melodrama on its surface filled with darkly comedic verbal and psychological sparring between Natalie Portman's B-list actress Elizabeth and Moore's notorious tabloid subject, it never shies away from the darkness of its story.
On the surface, May December shouldn't work with its contrasting tones of dark comedy mixed with near-parody satirical elements and sentimental dramatics that deal with trauma, grooming and sensationalism. Still it manages to find balance in a way that allows you to enjoy it without letting you get too comfortable with the sensitive situation.
Like with all of his movies, writer-director Todd Haynes allows his characters to show you their character rather than telling you. While there are emotionally resonant moments of insight like Charles Melton's performance as a young father having a heart to hear with his own son, something as small as the way Melton carries himself that is just as affecting.
Read my full review of May December →
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Celine Song's Past Lives has held the top spot on my best movies of 2023 list since seeing it back in January at the Sundance Film Festival — and that's partially the movie's own intention. Though the movie is rich in its story and characters as it follows old childhood crushes that reconnect twelve and then twenty-four years later, it's the memories of it that linger.
While Nora and Hae Sung's story, brought to life with stellar performances by Greta Lee and Teo Yoo, is presented as a decades-long “will-they-won't-they” romance — complete with swoon-worthy conversations and charmingly comical banter, it's really a story about one person stubbornly chasing a future she's decided for herself and another avoiding a future by constantly looking back. And while the dialogue Song uses to communicate their feelings is poetic (she is a playwright after all), it's the visual language that is the most impressive.
Song doesn't present any easy answers, which is why the movie stays with you long after its stunning heart-wrenching but cathartic final scene. Is looking to the past avoiding the future? Is staying resolute on your future ignoring your inner child? The answer is perhaps hidden in a line from the third member of the trio Arthur (John Magaro), “You make my life so much bigger. I'm just wondering if I do the same.” Past Lives somehow achieves the same effect on its audience and that's why it is the best movie of 2023.
Read my full review of Past Lives →
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Hey! I'm Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I'm also a Tomatometer-approved critic.
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