Top 10 Films of 2023
It looked as though 2023 would finally be a return to normal for the film industry after being rocked by the COVID-19 pandemic. Alas, studios were reluctant to pay writers and actors what they’re worth, resulting in months-long strikes and a shuffling of the release schedule that left the end of the summer and the fall largely barren. (To say nothing of the gross trend of studio heads canning finished films for tax write-offs.) So what was the last hurrah for theatrical releases? Barbenheimer of course! Yes indeed, if 2022 was saved by James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” and Tom Cruise in “Top Gun: Maverick,” we give thanks to Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig for, quite by happenstance, creating a once in a lifetime theatrical event.
Spoiler alert: both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” made my top 10. Let’s get to that list right now!
10.) SUZUME
In this animated film, a high school student named Suzume (Nanoka Hara) gets whisked along on the adventures of a young man, Souta (Hokuto Matsumura). He’s a “Closer” – someone who locates interdimensional gateways to prevent celestial worms from entering our world and causing massive earthquakes. I’d be doing you and the movie a disservice to delve much further into the plot, suffice it to say it also involves talking cats and a human-turned-three-legged chair.
In my experience – I’ve only seen a few of his titles – writer-director Makoto Shinkai makes heavily plotted films but not ones terribly concerned with the machinations and logic of plot. His stories are driven by emotion, which can be a red flag, except he tells them with the utmost conviction and visual splendor. (I’d highly recommend “Your Name!” It’s a body-swapping teen romance – also animated – with visuals so grand, they’ll make your eyes go wide and misty.) And oh my goodness, the animation here is wonderful! I especially loved how the animators brought so much life and personality to a three-legged chair. Come to “Suzume” for the YA romance, stay for the deeply affecting rumination on loss.
9.) THE HOLDOVERS
Directed by Alexander Payne and written by David Hemingson, “The Holdovers” begins in December 1970. An ornery prep school teacher, Paul (Paul Giamatti), weathers winter break on campus and watches over Angus (Dominic Sessa), a rebellious student whose mother canceled family vacation so she could honeymoon with her new husband. Paul and Angus are joined by a school cook, Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), who’s grieving the death of her son.
It’s nice to see Payne making movies again – this is his first since 2017’s “Downsizing.” He’s a director who tells funny yet melancholy stories with strong characters and great performances. His films are filled with wisdom and rich with emotion. Here he’s got a trio of outstanding actors. Paul Giamatti, his second collaboration with Payne after “Sideways,” threads that needle between funny and melancholy beautifully. Dominic Sessa is a great find, capturing the roiling dissatisfaction of teenage years. And Da’Vine Joy Randolph is the bruised heart of the story. Payne and his cinematographer Eigil Bryld adopt a ‘70s aesthetic with muted colors and film grain. The movie, which features the music of Cat Stevens, recalls “Harold and Maude” and the work of Hal Ashby (minus the cross-generations romance). “The Holdovers” feels like a new holiday classic.
8.) BARBIE
Only Greta Gerwig could take a movie about Barbie – a premise that sets off every passionless-Hollywood-cash-grab alarm bell – and deliver a thoughtful, hilarious story about feminism and self-worth. Things go topsy-turvy in Barbie Land when Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) has thoughts about death and begins to lose her special abilities, like perpetually arched feet. She and Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling) travel to the real world to find the source of her troubles.
This is a delightful throwback to technicolor musicals – yes, there is a musical number. It features bright colors and practical sets with DIY touches, like fan-powered campfires made from strips of yellow and orange cellophane. Robbie and Gosling give sensational performances, bringing a deadpan sincerity to even the silliest moments (It was a hell of a year for comedy!) But as Greta Gerwig proved on her previous two features – “Lady Bird” and “Little Women” – she’s a master of both humor and drama. Here, amidst all the goofiness, she achieves real pathos during the film’s final stretch…before reverting back to comedy and closing with an all-timer of a last line. Joel Coen said that directing is tone management, to which I like to imagine Gerwig responding, “hold my beer.”
7.) THE ZONE OF INTEREST
A Holocaust drama like no other. Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest” is almost completely devoid of narrative, there’s little conflict on screen save for the domestic variety, and virtually no character growth. Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), a Nazi commandant at Auschwitz, strives for promotion while his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller), attends to family visits and gardening at their picturesque estate, which happens to be just outside the concentration camp. You’ve heard of workplace comedies, this is a workplace horror.
Maybe in response to a question often asked about the Holocaust – how do you film the unfilmable? – Glazer doesn’t show any of the atrocities. Through setting and camera placement, they’re always just out of sight. A column of smoke in the corner of the frame, the camp wall in the background as the Höss children play in the foreground. But thanks to the stunning sound work by Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn, these horrors are never out of earshot. (The pair is aided by composer Mica Levi’s guttural and, at times, hellishly carnival score.) Screams, barking orders, and gunshots permeate the soundscape. And yet, the characters go about their business, completely unfazed – save for one striking late night moment involving Hedwig’s visiting mother. Speaking of striking, in its final moments, the movie pulls the viewer out of time in a provocative coda. “The Zone of Interest” is the embodiment of the banality of evil and how easily humans accept the unacceptable and are even quick to participate in it.
6.) SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE
Just as “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” pushed the boundaries of what was possible in commercial animation, its sequel – “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” – goes even further as Mile Morales (Shameik Moore) and Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) struggle with balancing their personal lives with their Spider-person alter egos. The two pursue a portal-creating villain named Spot (Jason Schwartzman) across the multiverse while Spider-Man 2099 (a deathly serious Oscar Isaac) tries to stop Miles from breaking “the canon” and causing said multiverse to collapse. That Spider-Man 2099 is a humorless jagoff obsessed with preserving canon is a nice bit of meta-commentary on fan culture.
Directed by Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson, and Kemp Powers, the film combines varying animation styles and even frame rates, often in the same scene and sometimes in the same shot. It doesn’t just make for an exciting visual experience, it’s also in keeping with the film’s broader theme that heroism comes in different shapes, sizes, colors, and backgrounds. Daniel Pemberton brings a wonderfully eccentric score. Though I still struggle with the flagrantly audience-baiting cliffhanger ending, I have to give props to a movie that shows me something I’ve never seen before and probably won’t see again. Unless it’s in the sequel.
5.) ANATOMY OF A FALL
Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” – a courtroom drama about a woman, Sandra (Sandra Hüller), who may or may not have pushed her husband (Samuel Theis) to his death – is scarcely concerned with whether or not a murder took place. What it is concerned with is excavating a marriage and, more broadly, examining what we – the public, friends, family, passersby – see on the surface of a couple’s relationship, unaware of the roiling emotions and history underneath. “It’s just a small piece,” Sandra tells the courtroom after unflattering details about her relationship with her husband have been revealed.
The MVP of this film, apart from Triet, who directed it and co-wrote it, is undoubtedly Hüller, who had a great year between this and “The Zone of Interest.” Were her performance here not so precisely calibrated, it’d throw the entire movie off its tracks. Her chilly exterior enables the actress to thread the did-she-or-didn’t-she needle gloriously. Her performance is all the more impressive under Triet’s unyielding close-ups. I wanted to pour over every expression and facial tic to find a sign of…something. Another cast highlight is Milo Machado-Graner as Sandra’s blind young son, who gets caught up in the legal drama. This is an endlessly captivating film despite its two and a half hour runtime.
4.) KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
The marketing for “Killers of the Flower Moon” positioned it as another Scorsese-as-rockstar outing, but if you’re expecting a propulsive and energetic movie like “The Departed” or “The Wolf of Wall Street,” you’ll be disappointed. Based on David Grann’s book, it tells the story of a couple – a caucasian man named Ernest (Leonardo DiCaprio) and an indigenous woman Mollie (Lily Gladstone) – set against the backdrop of the systematic murder of the Osage in 1920s Oklahoma. Stylistically, this is in line with Scorsese’s previous two films – “Silence” and “The Irishman.” It’s methodically paced, filled with despair, and quiet as a grave. The director and his long-time collaborator, editor Thelma Schoonmaker, allow atrocities to play out in wide shots instead of their more familiar, and more titillating, whizz-bang approach.
DiCaprio jettisons his movie star charisma and plays the most contemptible oaf – malleable, greedy, and complicit. Robert DeNiro, as William King Hale, hasn’t been this good in decades. He brings a grandfatherly affection to a truly diabolical man. But it’s Lily Gladstone who’s received the lion’s share of the laurels and deservedly so. She has the eyes of a silent film performer. Mollie doesn’t always have a lot of dialogue, but you can always read her face. (Fans of Gladstone’s work here should seek out “Certain Women” from 2016.)
The film ends with a daring and devastating epilogue, one that functions as a commentary on how tragic events are often consumed by the public and includes a bit of introspection on the part of the 81 year old filmmaker, a man who has made many movies about real-life violence. The last several years have been a fascinating gear shift for Scorsese.
3.) GODZILLA MINUS ONE
In a year that offered up a lot of underwhelming blockbusters, the Oscar-nominated “Godzilla Minus One” succeeds in ways that Hollywood could only dream of. Takashi Yamazaki’s film – he’s the writer, director, and the visual effects supervisor – is the first live-action Godzilla movie produced in Japan since 2016. Viewers don’t need to know the big reptile’s previous work – this is a reboot that returns Godzilla to his national anxiety roots. It takes place during the years immediately following World War II. Koichi (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot who chose not to sacrifice himself for a war that was all but over, returns to Tokyo as a pariah – he’s told by neighbors that people like him are why Japan lost. Amidst the literal and emotional rubble, he creates a makeshift family with Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and an orphaned infant, Akiko (Sae Nagatani – adorable and a born cryer). Here’s a man – and a country – at rock bottom. Enter Godzilla to show that things can get much worse (hence the title’s “Minus One”).
For a franchise often maligned for its human characters, Yamazaki imbues the film with kaiju-sized heart and a likable cast – the movie would work even without the king of the monsters, as a story about post-war Japan trying to pick up the pieces. The filmmaker exhibits remarkable tonal control. There’s a sequence that pays homage to “Jaws,” where Koichi and a band of minesweepers hunt and are ultimately hunted by Godzilla. Yamazaki elicits dread, humor, terror, and excitement in the span of a few moments. (Naoki Satô’s score mirrors air raid sirens in the lead-up to the skirmish, though elsewhere he expertly employs Akira Ifukube’s fist-pumping original Godzilla theme.) One of the remarkable things about this movie is, despite its heavy themes of sacrifice and survivor’s guilt, it’s incredibly entertaining. Indeed, “Godzilla Minus One” finds that classic Spielberg sweet spot – compelling melodrama with terrifying yet awe-inspiring setpieces and rousing crowd-pleasing moments.
2.) PAST LIVES
“Past Lives” is the first feature from writer/director Celine Song. It tells the story of Nora Moon (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), two childhood friends from South Korea before they lost touch when Nora immigrated with her family to Toronto. Years later, she reconnects with Hae Sung via social media – Nora’s in New York City and he’s finished military service and is moving to China. The two have undeniable chemistry, but Nora puts their video rendezvous on hold to focus on writing. At a retreat, she meets and later marries Arthur (John Magaro). Hae Sung connects with Nora – and Arthur – in New York years later and things get complicated.
This is an incredibly assured debut. I love how Song uses NYC. Her background is as a playwright, and while you certainly could imagine this story on the stage, Nora and Hae Sung are often framed in wide shots against the city which not only makes the movie feel big but serves to heighten their intimacy against this expansive backdrop. Dramatically, there isn’t a bad guy to be found. It’s easy to imagine, in less capable hands, Arthur as an antagonist, but thanks to Magaro’s sensitive performance and Song’s empathy for her characters, this is never the case. So much of what happens hinges on the unspoken, and the director – along with her cast and editor Keith Fraase – fill those silences with such longing. Greta Lee in particular is one of my discoveries of the year. I was unfamiliar with her work, but folks might recognize her from shows like “Russian Doll.” She brings so much nuance to Nora, and her final moments in the film – aided by Song’s striking use of a long take – will forever be etched in my memory.
1.) OPPENHEIMER
From the son of the atomic bomb at #3 to its father at #1. Christopher Nolan, with his penchant for serious storytelling, tackling J. Robert Oppenheimer just feels like it was destined to work. Spanning decades, the film follows Robert (a remarkable Cillian Murphy) from his days as a doctoral student through his tumultuous relationship with his wife, Kitty (Emily Blunt), to his development of the atomic bomb and his run-ins with high-ranking AEC member Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.), and finally to the fallout (no pun intended) of his grave invention. If that sounds like a lot, it is! But Nolan is operating on a level that he hasn’t in years. Heady conversations in science labs and committee hearings have never been more thrilling, thanks also to Jennifer Lame’s whirlwind editing and Ludwig Göransson’s driving score.
While the other half of Barbenheimer – Greta Gerwig’s pop confection – incurred the wrath of the Fox Newses of the world for its supposedly “woke” agenda, “Oppenheimer” went unscathed despite its bracing cynicism for US policymaking. The film starts out as a Great Man Biopic with some Nolan flourishes. (Those familiar with the director’s work won’t be surprised to learn that the story isn’t told chronologically). It’s got the speeches, the historical significance, and cameos of important figures – all the things we expect from this kind of movie. But something curdles with the Trinity test – the world’s first nuclear explosion. Trinity is one of the most arresting, sweaty-palmed sequences I’ve seen recently, which is all the more remarkable because it’s not like we don’t know what happens next. It’s hard to imagine a more contemptuous view of mid-century US history than the final hour – politicians, scientists, and bureaucrats shivving each other (sometimes with a handshake) to take ownership of Pandora’s Box. Robert isn’t let off the hook for his creation – see his chilling final line – but the movie suggests that the men occupying the corridors of power were far more insidious. “Oppenheimer” is an American masterpiece – unbridled ambition and exceptionalism will lead to our doom.
On a lighter note, some honorable mentions: “American Fiction,” “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” “The Boy and the Heron,” “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,” “John Wick: Chapter 4,” “Nimona,” and “Poor Things.”
What were your top films of 2023?
