Another wonderful year of cinema has been wrapped up with a bow on it and we are in the middle of Oscar season. 2023 was a great year where my Top 10 was changing films and rankings the past week prior to submitting this piece. That’s why I have my three films which were just outside-looking-in stacked as my 11th film listed below because I couldn’t really decide which film made the cut. It really was a measurement of decimals when I broke down my own grades. Alas, here I have my Top 10 films of 2023.
Honorable Mentions: Beyond Utopia, The Holdovers, The Iron Claw
10. Theater Camp
This is a laugh-a-minute mockumentary with every scene and was one of the big surprises for me and, even for someone who is not big into Broadway musicals, is still absolutely irresistible. Ben Platt, Molly Gordon, Noah Galvin, Jimmy Tatro, and Ayo Edebiri lead an ensemble of musical lovers and wannabe legends who love teaching theater kids but can’t get out of their own egoistical comedy of manners.
9. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part I
The unfortunate victim of being released right before “Barbenheimer ” came out, the next chapter of Ethan Hunt’s missions is another major step forward for Tom Cruise and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie. In what is supposed to be the penultimate film before the end of the franchise, it once again takes grandiose action sequences to the limit and never mails it in. Esai Morales is underrated as the film’s antagonist with a subtle mood in his villainous plans that will perfectly carry over to the final film as the Cruise/McQuarrie pairing does not relent in pushing the suspense to its far edges.
8. Air
Ben Affleck’s return to the director’s chair is nothing but swish (terrible pun) on this true story of the Air Jordan and Nike’s launch to the top. Affleck’s BFF Matt Damon dunks in as Sonny Vaccaro, the lead of strong performances across the board with Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Affleck, and Viola Davis. It is a witty, hilarious underdog story of the American Dream through basketball and the birth of a new financial empire that remains functioning today.
7. Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie
This moving documentary on the Back To The Future star goes deep with his life, career, and battle with Parkinson’s Disease. It is raw and Fox doesn’t sugarcoat anything he has dealt with and still is with the continuing disintegration of his body. Certainly, this is a piece of truth telling that is deeply profound and carries a burden of emotion throughout.
6. American Fiction
Newcomer Cord Jefferson made his directorialdebut with this dynamite satire on race and literature with Jeffrey Wright as frustrated writer Monk Ellison who takes it out on the White-controlled establishment, only to come out with a surprising hit. Between personal turmoil and his conflict over his surprising success at an artistic cost, Monk must be able to balance truth and fiction. It’s a brilliant dramedy which won at TIFF and has a stellar cast including Tracee Ellis Ross, Sterling K. Brown, and Issa Rae.
5. Killers Of The Flower Moon
Martin Scorsese can make his movies as long as he wants because he has the skill to tell a story as gripping as this true crime saga in Osage County. Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro may be the big names up front, but the film is about Lily Gladstone and carrying the burden of emotions of family members dying out as the strength of greed gets stronger. It’s an extraordinary Western about a living injustice and the start of modern law enforcement accompanied by the late Robbie Robertson’s country-infused score.
4. The Killer
David Fincher goes back to his dark style, collaborating again with Se7en writer Andrew Kevin Walker on this highly entertaining piece of a hitman’s routine in going after their kill. Michael Fassbender gives his best performance since 12 Years A Slave as the anonymous gunman who also loves The Smiths and is methodical in his ways. Every beat is meaningful in his work and his cold-bloodedness is both shocking and timely comic as Fincher travels city to city in this tale of revenge by perfect execution.
3. Oppenheimer
Christoper Nolan went and made his first biopic that lived up to the hype and then some about the life and career of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb. Dissecting the book American Prometheus, three storylines of a young Oppenheimer and his work, the infamous security clearance hearing, and the man who took down Oppenheimer are completely in sync intercutting each other and building up the climaxes of all three lanes. The extraordinary ensemble of Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey, Jr, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, and Josh Hartnett, among others carry this consequential piece of history that changed the course of history.
2. The Zone of Interest
Johnathan Glazer had us wait a decade before he returned to the screen with this chilling portrait of life outside of Auschwitz with no worry about the horrors taking place inside of it. Christian Fridel is Rudolf Hoss, the commandant, and Sandra Huller, having a year also with Anatomy Of A Fall, is Oscar-worthy here as his wife, who is devoted to maintaining their family life besides the camp. The banality of evil, as written by Hannah Arendt, is seeded in this lifestyle of a man just doing his job with no concern and his wife who wants to maintain a high level of respect. The surrounding sounds, Lukasz Zal’s haunting cinematography, and Mica Levi’s goosebump-inducing soundtrack add onto Glazer’s mundane story of how evil and its apathy shows its ugly side.
1. Poor Things
Director Yorgos Lanthimos and writer Tony McNamara reunite with Emma Stone to make an even raunchier film than The Favouriteand take this surrealist story into the stratosphere. Alastair Gray’s famous novel follows a reprogramed human who embarks on self-discovery, independence, and sexual gratification. It’s a concept not many could pull for a movie, but Lanthimos brings back his fish-eye lens and gravitas for the unusual thanks to sensational performances by Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, and Ramy Youssef who watch Bella Baxter grow up in front of them, but not like a baby. It is eye-popping, colorful, and consistently hilarious, throwing up all shapes and sizes to satisfy viewers’ delights, not wasting a single moment in its 141 minute runtime.
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