2023 was a year of extremes. We had the crushing lows with box-office bombs like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and The Marvels and glorious highs like the cinematic triumph that was Barbenheimer. We had big stretches of nothing in the summer and then a boss rush of awards darlings all crammed into December.
As usual there are more than a few movies I wish I’d made the time to see before making this list. This year’s collection of neglected hopefuls includes;
Past Lives
Priscilla
May December (ya know, a lot of Colin movies)
And some Sean movies like John Wick 4 and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.
Also, The Iron Claw, (which feels like a real John movie). Otherwise I’m happy with my list. Aw, here it goes….
Honorable Mention
Dream Scenario
Poor Things
Killers of the Flower Moon
There’s a lot wrong with this movie. It’s too long. There are too many unanswered questions. But man, there is some crazy shit in Sam Esmail’s adaptation of Rumaan Alam’s twisted 2020 book of the same name.
Julia Roberts plays a real Karen of a mom married to a cool dad (Ethan Hawke) who rents an Airbnb with their family in a secluded area just as the world appears to be ending. Or is it? An oil tanker crashes on a beach, drones drop cryptic messages from the sky, deer are gathering, and there’s a really gross scene with teeth.
Leave the World Behind is messy but it has the same allure of Black Mirror or Lost with all its secrets and its commentary on our relationship to technology. There is even a bit of “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” energy when people start to turn against each other in the face of uncertainty.
Bonus Points for including the Friends’ theme song.
As puzzling as it is sumptuous, Miyazaki doesn’t disappoint with another layered fable about life and death. Miyazaki loves to challenge his viewers (and himself) by pouring his life experiences into a young boy dealing with loss and his journey into a world of whimsy that rivals any of his best works. I don’t know what it all means but I love to ponder and I know I will continue to ponder as I revisit this film time and time again for the rest of my life.
This is how you do a monster movie. Not with big apes punching big lizards in the core of the Earth for two hours, but with small people dealing with big problems. A good monster movie isn’t so much about the monster but that monster’s relationship to humanity.
The idea to follow a WWII kamikaze pilot (Ryunosuke Kamiki) with survivors guilt is an inspired one. Honestly, it makes Godzilla way scarier. The opening sequence on that beach? Terrifying. Godzilla chasing that minesweeper boat? Unsettling as Hell. Godzilla looks great. The effects are solid and the fact they include Akira Ifukube original theme? Chef Kiss. I might just have to full-on make out with the Chef after this one.
2023 was a bad year for horror. Exorcist: Believer, Five Nights at Freddy’s, The Last Voyage of the Demeter all belong in Hell. Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey belongs in SUPER Hell. I liked Evil Dead Rise and Saw X, but great horror movies were far and few between. Which makes Talk to Me extra special.
Aussie Youtubers the Philippou Brothers deliver a taut and reserved metaphor for drugs via an embalmed hand. The lore is creepy, the message powerful, and the cast believable with a star-making performance from Sophie Wilde. I have to HAND it to those boys, they know how to TALK the TALK. Sorry.
Bottoms? More like the top of my list! Well, sort of. The audacity to make a surreal comedy, bordering on Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker territory, in this day and age? Hell yeah. Ayo Edebiri making 2023 her bitch by being in everything? Hell yeah. Seahawks Legend Marshawn Lynch becoming a feminist? Hell yeah. It’s not the follow-up I expected from Emma Seligman but it’s the one I needed. Fuck yeah.
I don’t know what to make of Spanish filmmaker J.A. Bayona. He kicked off his career with one of my favorite horror movies of the 2000s, The Orphanage, made the fine but forgettable disaster drama, The Impossible, the weepy dark fantasy tale, A Monster Calls, a movie that was my most anticipated film of 2016 (I never saw it. I chickened out cuz the book is SO SAD), Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom, one of the biggest tonal catastrophes I’ve ever seen, and now Society of the Snow, one of the best survival films I’ve ever seen.
Retelling the story of the infamous 1972 plane crash that left a Uruguayan rugby team stranded in the Andes mountains (the story was already adapted in 1993 with all white people as Alive), Society of the Snow is the harrowing account of what these people had to do to survive in the harshest of elements. The attention to detail is unmatched, even going as far to shooting in the actual crash location. The ensemble cast lost weight, grew their hair, and all get equal importance in the story and you better believe this is gonna make you feel things.
So maybe that’s J.A. Bayona’s gift to the world? His ability to depict survival on camera and reflect on death, but also hope… And sometimes dinosaurs.
I’m worried that a second viewing of good ‘ol Oppie won’t hit as hard at home, but I can certainly say it hit in IMAX. The scope and feel of this critical/commercial juggernaut captivates its audience in a way only Christopher Nolan could. Will this win every Oscar? Maybe. Does it deserve it? Maybe. Is it on this list? Ab-so-lutely.
Easily my best high watch of 2023. Another mindbender from Brandon Cronenberg, who is truly living up to the name of his pervert auteur father, David Cronenberg.
Set at a resort in a fictional Eastern European country, Infinity Pool is about a struggling author (Alexander Skarsgård), who after a drunk hit-and-run discovers that he can pay the local government to have a clone of himself made and killed in his place.
Mia Goth co-stars as another insane resort guest who along with our lead start a gang of rich people who go on a crime spree and then get off watching their clones be executed. It’s fucked, but the kind of fucked that makes you think.
Sublime!
It’s so rare we get good comedies anymore. It’s even rarer that we get good Christmas movies anymore. So the fact that we got two in the same year AND THEY’RE THE SAME MOVIE is a Christmas miracle.
I just love the feel of Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers. I love the snowy Massachusetts setting, the grainy 70s look accompanied by an era appropriate soundtrack (all bangers). Newcomer Dominic Sessa shines, Da’Vine Joy Randolph glows, Paul Giamatti burns as bright as the sun–if the sun loved Jim Beam.
Not only was The Holdovers a great movie to watch in 2023, it’ll be a great movie to watch every Christmas for the rest of my life until the sun (Paul Giamatti) burns out. But don’t take my word, go watch it! NOW! And God bless us everyone.