Let’s be honest: 2023 was not the best year for Hollywood, which dealt with its first dual actors/writers strike since 1960—with a string of mega-budget blockbusters flopping, independent and international cinema flourished. For me, 2023 will be remembered as the year of Shah Rukh Khan, where the Baadshah of Bollywood came back to the screen four times (!!!) and reclaimed his throne as the King he has been since starring in 1993’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. That alone made going to the movies worth it. A few movies didn’t quite make the top ten, including Magic Mike’s Last Dance, Barbie, Extraction 2, The Zone of Interest, Pathaan, All of Us Strangers, American Fiction, Poor Things, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 3, but should be lauded for their attempt to break against the mold and deliver some of the most singular moviegoing experiences of 2023.
10. Beau is Afraid
Ari Aster’s third feature film is a total hoot, even if it might not be everyone’s cup of tea. With a career-best performance from Joaquin Phoenix, who descends into total and often nightmarish amounts of madness for 179 minutes, Aster continuously assaults your patience into something that never once materializes into anything tangible but is so riotously entertaining and absurd that you can’t help but love it. Just know this: if I ever were to make a feature film and given carte blanche from a studio, I would do something like Beau is Afraid. Take that as you will.
9. How to Blow Up a Pipeline
With all of this Oscar talk, I am surprised no one is talking about Daniel Goldhaber’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline, one of the most important movies of 2023. Goldhaber’s environmentalist thriller couldn’t have arrived at a better time in a year that will be remembered as the hottest on record (until the summer of 2024). Oil lobbying groups even attempted to campaign against it when the consensus is clear: fossil fuel-driven burning is the cause of our environmental woes. Goldhaber thrillingly paints this message with the manic energy of a Safdie brothers film through its handheld camera and incessant shouting from its leads, punctuated by Gavin Brivik’s distressing Daniel Lopatin-esque score. Unfortunately, it’s a highly essential movie that isn’t being talked about enough. Here’s hoping it gets brought back into the conversation soon.
8. Bottoms
In just 91 minutes, Emma Seligman and Rachel Sennott keep the laughs coming in breakneck fashion, with each massive setpiece as gut-bustingly hilarious as the last. Sennott and Ayo Edebiri have incredible chemistry, making their script feel alive and highly energetic. It was the big-screen comedy event of the year, and I’m glad to have seen it that way with a massively packed crowd.
7. Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan’s latest is also his best-ever film. Fully at the height of his large-format artistic powers, he crafts a towering and monumental achievement that is highly difficult to watch but continuously thrilling through its career-best performances from Cillian Murphy and Robert Downey Jr. I may never watch Oppenheimer ever again, but I’m glad I witnessed Nolan’s biggest triumph on an IMAX screen as one of the most important cinematic documents of our time.
6. Leo
No, I’m not talking about the Adam Sandler Lizard movie, although it was highly entertaining and better than most animated offerings released in 2023. I’m talking about Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Vijay-starred character study on how a person’s penchant for violence can never be extinguished if they are born and raised out of violence. Parthiban says he is an ordinary person who wants to live an ordinary life, but the threat of Antony Das (Sanjay Dutt) leads him back into his old (bloody sweet) past. What’s most striking about Kanagaraj’s pictures is how he elevates his action from scene to scene and visually represents Parthiban’s psychological shift. Look at how his camera movements evolve within 164 minutes, and it’ll tell you everything you need to know about his visual-first approach and why he’s one of the best Tamil filmmakers working today.
5. John Wick: Chapter 4
Chad Stahelski’s opera of violence is one of the most artistically stirring movies of 2023, yet there isn’t a single Awards body even nominating it for its craft. Dan Laustsen arguably delivers the best cinematography of any movie released in 2023, giving John Wick: Chapter 4 the visual palette it needs to set it apart from literally any action movie ever released. I remain convinced it’s one of the greatest American action films ever made, which will hopefully change Hollywood’s approach to action and pave the way for stuntwork to finally be recognized as the craft it is.
4. Anatomy of a Fall
Justine Triet’s latest collaboration with Sandra Hüller saw her win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and it’s the decade’s most deserving win. Patiently revealing the drama, Triet brilliantly shoots the film in a vérité-like fashion, giving an authentic look and feel to a lead character who we aren’t sure to trust. At the end of the film, we will all have different interpretations of what we’ve seen and whether or not Sandra is guilty, but that’s the beauty of ambiguity: it’s a far better and more intelligent way of making art than spoon-feeding the audience, preventing them from thinking. Triet makes us all reflect.
3. The Nature of Love
Since her feature directorial debut in A Brother’s Love, Monia Chokri has single-handedly saved Québec cinema’s reputation internationally (Denis Villeneuve is currently working in the Hollywood ecosystem, mind you), with movies that are not only terrifically written but are masterclasses in visual storytelling. Collaborating for the first time with cinematographer André Turpin, the two create a rich visual language inspired by some of the greatest filmmakers for a traditionally paced but emotionally enveloping love story with two impassioned performances from Magalie Lépine-Blondeau and Pierre-Yves Cardinal. It’s the best piece of Québec cinema I’ve seen this year and sets Monia Chokri apart as one of the few singular auteurs in our cultural ecosystem.
2. Jawan
Shah Rukh Khan’s return to Masala filmmaking perfectly showcases his acting talents for the uninitiated. Playing the dual role of Azad and Vikram Rathore, Khan exudes glorious charisma and pitch-perfect comedic timing as he continuously plays with his look and façade in front of the camera. Winking at the audience and quasi-breaking the fourth wall to deliver his most fearless monologue on the power of voting, Khan’s screen presence remains unmatched, and with the aid of Tamil director Atlee and musical director Anirudh Ravichander (who also worked on Lokesh’s Leo), he stars in his best movie since Chennai Express and will hopefully pave the way for more spectacles involving the King sooner than later.
1. Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé
No work of art has been more powerful in 2023 than Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé. Not so much a concert film but a deeply personal look at Beyoncé Knowles-Carter beyond the public façade she has constructed for over twenty years. Yes, it could be considered a piece of hagiography, but when the music she creates is this resonating and her cinematic approach to representing the highs and lows of the Renaissance tour is so striking and evocative, it’s hard not to be emotionally swelled by how, at times, grand and operatic the concert sequences are represented, but also in how soulful the film’s quiet moments are shot. Some of the film’s purest moments do happen on stage (Diana Ross showing up to sing Happy Birthday to Beyoncé), but most of them occur when she opens herself up to the world through her relationship with daughter Blue Ivy and parents Tina and Mathew. The fact is unequivocal: no one expresses herself like Beyoncé or can even make a movie like her. Taylor Swift tried with The Eras Tour but doesn’t have the cinematic vision that Beyoncé had with her Renaissance Tour picture. It’s, in my opinion, the strongest and most powerful movie of 2023 and is still making me cry as I write these words. That’s the mark of something truly special.
