When the history books of Hollywood are read back years from now and 2023 comes into the conversation, many might assume that it was a disastrous year at the movies. Amidst writers and actors strikes, gargantuan studio shifts and the opening weekend standoff for the ages, there was a lot that happened around the cinema sphere that could very easily distract from the genius that occurred within.
Yes, there were trials, but there were also triumphs. Whether it was beloved filmmakers reasserting their cultural dominance or new ones putting in their bids for the Hollywood Walk of Fame, there was still plenty of love to go around on the silver screen regardless of the story told by headlines and streaming service ratings.
In the end, filmmaking’s best in 2023 came from an eclectic bunch both in style and substance, yet maybe that’s just what the year needed.
Honorable Mention: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Fully in the swing of its fifth phase, James Gunn’s final entry for the franchise and studio serves as a spiritual finale for whatever signs of life still exist in the MCU’s orbit after “Avengers: Endgame.” Amidst plummeting box office numbers and scandals surrounding the next generation of actors on Kevin Feige’s payroll, the breath of fresh air that “Vol. 3” brings with it feels almost reviving.
Pivoting the narrative to everyone’s favorite furry hero in Bradley Cooper’s Rocket, the film plays — sometimes in excess — to the sympathies of its audience both in immediate and abstract senses. Alongside drawn-out scenes of animal cruelty and dismemberment that incite a baker’s dozen of negative emotions, there’s also picking up the pieces of lore the Guardians and Gunn could have left behind in this sequel that otherwise feels detached from our main canon.
Zoe Saldana’s Gamora ripped from an alternate timeline, gives Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill the runaround in the film’s secondary plot that goes to provide some comedic relief and a healthy amount of buoyancy to a script that would have otherwise drowned in its own tears.
The third outing for Marvel’s most dysfunctional family sports all the sci-fi tropes seeped in nuance and a tinge of irony to backdrop perhaps the most poignant entry to the franchise since the “Infinity Saga.”
As if they were fully aware that they’re captains of a sinking ship, Feige — alongside the other big-wigs at Disney — seem to have given Gunn and Co. unrestricted access to the toys in their sandbox before they too make their way overboard.
10: A Haunting in Venice
Actor and director Kenneth Branagh’s third stroll in the shoes in Hercule Poirot, “A Haunting in Venice” serves as the detective’s most indulgent outing in the recent film adaptations of Agitha Christie’s classic pulp novels.
It’s the feel of a golden-age Hollywood whodunit caught in the middle of the mystery these stories wear with pride, topped off by all the fears and anxieties that accommodate horror tropes both old and new.
Director of Photography Haris Zambarloukos illuminates these otherwise dimly lit corridors with a tint of classicism and panache in the product only achieved when crew and cast are in unison with their enjoyment of submitting to the process.
Our cast comes up to bat with that same tenacity, as Branagh’s ironically reluctant man with the mustache once again brings enough camp and old-school thespian flair to administer a healthy amount of curiosity in the audience just as he does in himself. A story of Halloween haunts that dances between the surreal and the supernatural, let’s hope that Branagh and Poirot have had their investigative juices reinvigorated for many more mysteries to come.
9: Napoleon
Like many of the recent retellings of history’s men of might, Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” looks at the Frenchman with a sneer rather than a smile of admiration. As critical as the film is of its namesake, it arguably provides a more entertaining and even insightful look into the man who seized his country by the throat, later including much of the world in that aggressive embrace.
It’s an aggression that personifies a lot of Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as he squares off against a variety of foes. There’s the Russian winter, shoes left to fill from emperor’s prior, and maybe most importantly his marriage and divorce with leading lady Josephine played by Vanessa Kirby.
The film’s two subplots, marriage and conquest, run parallel to one another while Phoenix tethers them both to the same thesis of toxicity being innate in ambition. Gargantuan battle scenes veer from the action to focus the microscope on our little emperor to watch as he seethes and curses his way to victory on more than one occasion, his relationships fairing no differently.
More impressive than Napoleon’s finesse on the battlefield is his persistence of a love that progressively reveals itself to be unrequited. Phoenix and Kirby both deliver wonderfully behind closed doors as their relationships begs questions of communication, intimacy and the issues that pride brings to matrimony.
While maybe not the historian’s favorite, Scott’s interpretation of France’s favorite dictator sparks as much contempt as it does conversation.
8: Priscilla
Yet another poignant case study of historical relationships, director Sofia Coppola takes a stab here at the uneven nature of intimacy versus infatuation in the context of a rockstar who knew both all too well.
The luxuriousness and emptiness of “Priscilla” is fascinating, with what’s left for rock and roll’s first lady when her king embarks on tours and film shoots being a space of immense vacuity despite its extravagance.
While the film carries her namesake, Priscilla as a protagonist seems to use the majority of the film’s runtime taking the reins on her own narrative as her beau does so easily, prancing around Hollywood and the hearts of many of its female residents. Aside from the unnerving age gap, there’s a lot of room for discomfort in the ways that Elvis treats his faithful and loving partner as a glorified pet throughout the majority of the film.
Jacob Elordi’s soft-spoken version of Elvis sinks its claws into the meat of a partnership whose manipulative nature and off-balanced social hierarchy make “Priscilla” both as a film and a woman a tragedy of control so easily given up in the face of white-hot stardom and impressionability.
“Priscilla” and Sofia Coppola speak on empty hearts and empty pairings seen when the spotlight isn’t shared equally.
7: The Killer
David Fincher’s latest in a filmography that seeps blood from every orifice, “The Killer” features Michael Fassbender’s nameless assassin, who is ripped from his own brain-splattering normalcy when he’s forced to clean up a mess he made after a botched job. The plot is simple enough, yet the real interest here comes in observing just how uninteresting Fassbender’s assassin is despite his incessant internal chatter.
When he’s not drowning out thoughts with The Smiths on his iPod, our anonymous killer spends the majority of the film walking and talking his way through his otherwise mundane day-to-day, one romanticized through a repeated series of mantras that deliver from Fassbender reads like a finance bro who just got ahold of his first and favorite self-help book.
It’s a delightfully violent and unforgiving look at hustle culture in the modern era through the lens of maybe its most radical participant, showing just how all-consuming and idolatrous philosophies of little to no merit can be. With all the bells and whistles of its murderous genre environment stripped away, “The Killer” takes a cruel observance to the incessant search for purpose that seems to plague the modern man.
6: Barbie
When screenwriting pair Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach were originally attached to Mattel’s “Barbie,” culture war crusaders and film fanatics alike were appalled at the corporate angle chiseling away maybe the most famous female toy in Western history.
Amidst dissent — maybe even in spite of it — the two encapsulated much more than gimmicks and novelty. There are a lot of ideas of who Barbie is, who she should be and even how she should be throughout the film.
Since her conception more than 60 years ago, Barbie’s taken on a number of personas, all of which Gerwig thinks deserve their day in the sun as a reflection of what a woman can be in the most basic of senses. Aside from a deep dive into Mattel lore, the cast of Barbies and Kens serves as a look at gender in history and how those perceptions not only vary but can serve as damaging when left unchecked as they are in Barbie Land.
What happens when a Barbie thinks about death? Or how about when Ryan Gosling’s Ken gets a glimpse of the chest-puffing and fist-bumping men in the real world have learned to weaponize?
It’s in our plastic protagonists and their realizations of humanity, with all its imperfections, that we see how juvenile our idealizations of one another have become. Backdropped by glamorous set designs and highlighted by Margot Robbie’s endearingly naive performance, “Barbie” acts a warm look at the parameters of gender in its most rigid of forms.
5: Beau Is Afraid
Joaquin Phoenix’s second, more anxiety-ridden performance of the year has him in the shoes of a man afraid of realization rather than one who would move mountains to find it. “Beau Is Afraid” is director Ari Aster’s third feature continues the trend of his weighty thematics overtaking the basic set and setting that his previous horror-leaning therapy sessions failed to prioritize as jarringly as is done here.
No, family and all its grievances aren’t disguised behind a Wiccan cult or sacrificial rituals for this go around. Here the white-knuckle intensity and stress of a bad acid trip are presented on a silver platter as the direct translation of Beau’s world when we’re exposed to it through murderers in the nude and tweakers crying for help as they brandish assault rifles.
The film’s basic themes of men and the mothers that make them is wonderfully executed as Beau embarks on a journey to visit his own mommy dearest, presented by Aster and production designer Fiona Crombie as a trek on par with Frodo’s journey to Mordor. A three hour road trip through a variety of tones and landscapes make Ari Aster’s least frightening feature his most pronounced statement to date.
4: Asteroid City
Set partially in a small town USA — which is actually a play being performed through a commentary on playwright Conrad Earp — “Asteroid City” doubles down on the wry and convoluted way director Wes Anderson approaches his stories.
A method which, in his eyes, may be how life presents itself to us. The main focus here really rests Jason Schwartzman’s Augie Steenbeck, a grieving husband and father trying his best despite a journey to the middle of the desert upending his and every other Asteroid City visitor’s worldview when a UFO lands smack dab in the middle of the Junior Stargazer convention.
However much recency and current events affected the film’s script, the ideas that Anderson and his all-star cast present here feel timeless in the setting of a 1950’s military town paranoia. Regardless of the varied occupations and demons that wait for the residents of Asteroid City once they depart, their lives will here forever be defined by the most random of instances.
There’s an instance toward the tail end of the film where Schwartzman’s Jones Hall/Steenbeck confronts director Schubert Green to admit that he’s still in confusion as to the meaning of the play. Green responds with the tact line, “Doesn’t matter. Just keep telling the story.”
This simple exchange boasts what Anderson has been revealing to us as well as himself for maybe his entire career: it’s still considered living even if “living” has no hard and fast definition.
3: Oppenheimer
There’s a certain irony in the notion that Christopher Nolan’s first biopic is perhaps his most autobiographical film to date. Centering around the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the three hours of intense dialogue and sweeping violin crescendos that occupy “Oppenheimer” deliver an admittance of flaws among the men that make history and the natural tragedy of collective trajectory resting on the shoulders of a singular soul.
Cillian Murphy and his piercing blue eyes burn holes through 70mm IMAX screens with a performance weighted in the guilt of succumbing to the forbidden fruits that harbor innovation. As the film veers away from the immediate calamities that followed innovation in this context, Nolan allows his viewer to infer their own opinions on history’s most polarizing brainiac.
Loose political allegiances and even looser morals ask questions about Oppenheimer normally pardoned in instances of genius, though here Nolan feels they’re equally as crucial as the legacy he leaves etched in court documents resembles far less than his greatest achievements.
Disastrously epic and gorgeous despite its namesake, “Oppenheimer” observes how well perception and alteration dance around each other, and if they ever truly cross paths at all.
2: The Iron Claw
The backdoor family film of the year boasts a trophy case filled with tragedy in Sean Durkin’s “The Iron Claw.” Loosely based on the real-life story of the Von Erich wrestling family, the film exists in the shadows of Shakespearian tragedy while harboring the edge and attitude found throughout Texas sports in films like “Friday Night Lights.”
Though takedowns and body slams are evident throughout, where the audience really feels its chest collapse is in the moments we get with the Von Erich is outside the ring. Zac Efron beefs up-literally-as eldest son Kevin, the glue of this group that dances around the boundaries of familial and fraternal conflict.
Pressure mounts and stakes rise as the film creeps along and continues to eliminate members of the Von Erich brotherhood right and left while Durkin’s biopic raises questions of exploitation, true potential and the boundaries of blood.
A tragic story of the push for prevalence under the guise of America’s most showy sport, “The Iron Claw” now resides amongst sports films that yearn for happier endings than the ones reality often lays before us.
1: Killers of the Flower Moon
At the ripe age of 80, director Martin Scorsese’s expansive career speaks for itself. “Killers of the Flower Moon,” however, focuses on those whose legacy hasn’t been granted the same luxuries.
Based on David Grann’s book of the same name, its film counterpart recounts the sprawling and violent mysteries that surrounded the uber-wealthy Osage tribe throughout the early 1900’s. A story unfamiliar to most American history courses, here the weight of Scorsese’s mounting guilt and anguish in his own circumstances are placed upon Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart, a man whose comfort in privilege ends up cannibalizing not only his community but his manhood.
Burkhart and his nefarious uncle — played by Robert De Niro — hatch plans to squeeze the life out of the Osage tribe, who are powerless to prevent their schemes. Ernest’s wife, Molly Burkhart, acts as our tether to this feeling of powerlessness as Lily Gladstone’s enormous performance highlights the importance of perspective when telling stories of this nature.
In what may be Scorsese’s most toiled-over effort, our filmmaker exhumes one of American history’s greatest blemishes, all while using it as an admittance of his own limitations as a storyteller
Powerful, vulnerable and a true display of how easily achievable evil really is, “Killers of the Flower Moon” being the year’s best is just the start regarding its high praise. Overflowing with conviction, it invites a new avenue of stories that hopefully prioritize those who didn’t have the pleasure of etching the history books with their own ink the first time.