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Best Movies of 2023

It was a terrific year for film, whether art house or mainstream, even if the main subject the movies wrestled with was deeply pessimistic.

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By Manohla Dargis and Alissa Wilkinson

Manohla Dargis | Alissa Wilkinson

Manohla Dargis

A Thrilling Bounty

I had a terrific movie year — you? I saw hundreds of new films with a variety of plots and styles made on every imaginable scale and budget. Some were from newcomers like A.V. Rockwell and others from the ever-new Martin Scorsese. Some you’ve heard of or will, while others scarcely made a ripple. Some were released by independents like A24 and the tiny KimStim; others came from tech companies and still others from what are now often called legacy studios, a vaguely eulogistic term that suggests influence but also obsolescence.

The movies have ostensibly been at death’s door at least since the shift to sync sound, which isn’t to undersell the industry’s business woes. When the year began, it was still recovering from pandemic-forced shutdowns and slowdowns. “As 2023 Begins, Worry and Fear Linger After a Topsy-Turvy Year,” The Hollywood Reporter fretted , calling the ups and downs of the 2022 box office “dramatic.” Yet some Wall Street analysts were bullish on moviegoing. “We’re seeing a resurgence of interest back in the theaters,” one analyst told Yahoo in late January. I had just returned from the bounty at the Sundance Film Festival and was feeling bullish, too.

As winter gave way to spring and summer, several of my favorite movies had been released in theaters and I had previewed several others at Cannes, where I had again been buoyed by what I had seen. At the same time, the drumbeat of worrying industry news continued when the Writers Guild went on strike on May 2 and several sure-bet blockbusters failed to charm audiences into theaters. “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was “ cursed ,” read one headline; “‘Mission: Impossible 7’ falls short of expectations ,” ran another. The moaning in the trades gave way to klaxon horns when much of SAG-AFTRA went on strike on July 14. Two days later Barry Diller, who once ran Paramount, warned that the strikes could lead to the industry’s “absolute collapse.” Five days later, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” opened.

That phenom dubbed Barbenheimer buoyed the box office, the strikes ended, and here we are. It’s tempting to repeat William Goldman’s axiom that “nobody knows anything” and leave it at that. Except that this year also reminded us of some things that we have known for a while, including that women directors can make any kind of movie, from the intimately scaled to larger-than-life productions that become monster hits. This year also reminded us that a mass audience will happily get out of the house for movies without superheroes. And, on occasion, it won’t show up for movies with them, which was evident after disappointments from both the DC and Marvel studios as “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” “Shazam: Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash,” “Blue Beetle” and “ The Marvels ” sputtered in theaters.

Two other words that popped up regularly in the news this year were “superhero fatigue,” which should have surprised absolutely no one. Old Hollywood embraced genre films but it also banked on variety, churning out musicals, westerns, dramas, comedies, historical epics, detective and gangster tales and genre hybrids. Some were interchangeable; others had fresh stories, distinctive visual styles and authorial flourishes. Now, though, the big studios are largely in the business of action-adventure franchises and serials; they bank on similarity, not variety. As of Nov. 30, half of this year’s top 20 grossing domestic releases fall in the action-adventure category, including a clutch of superhero flicks.

The mass turnout for both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” has been credited to everything from timing to originality, their meme-ability and people’s fear of missing out. Whatever the reasons for their success — and talent played a part, too — they proved that those Wall Street analysts bullish on moviegoing were onto something. That’s what else this year reminded us, and what I’m reminded of each week: Films can be great! They can embrace genre, play with it, transcend it. Their stories and their telling can be diverse, their quality thrilling, their art transporting. There’s more to movies than the industry, its crises and convulsions. In 1951, David O. Selznick, the producer of “Gone With the Wind,” rued that “there might have been good movies if there had been no movie industry.” The thing is, there have always been good movies despite the industry but, then, I’m a shameless optimist — I’m a film critic.

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The Best Films of 2023 … So Far

For too much of film history, the first half of the year has often been forgotten as people make their top ten lists when the calendar actually turns over. It’s a product of studios scheduling high-profile projects in a season that’s often kinder regarding awards, along with that little thing called recency bias. But this might be changing. The last Best Picture winner was a March 2022 premiere, and 2023 has been rich with artistic quality over its first six months. This list was once going to be around 15 titles but easily expanded to 20 and then 25. Honestly, we had to cut some excellent films from it. So consider this just a sample of what the writers of RogerEbert.com have loved so far this year, with new capsule reviews, links to the originals, and information on where to watch them. Catch up with these 25 movies. And don’t forget them in six months. 

We all know how this story of rich people getting richer ends: Michael Jordan ’s deal with Nike is almost as legendary as his career with the Bulls. Somehow, director and uncredited co-screenwriter Ben Affleck keeps it surprising with superb structure, impeccable casting, and performances. (Though Jordan does get some credit as his one request was that Viola Davis play his mother, Deloris, and of course, Davis is dazzling as always.) It’s also important to point out that 2023 is the year of movies about the art of the deal, with consumer product origin stories featuring Blackberry smartphones, Beanie Babies, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Tetris, and more. On the surface, “Air” is about sneakers named for a basketball player. But it has a subtle, deeper origin story, especially meaningful during a writer’s strike with the possibility of an actors’ strike. “Air” is the first film from a new company formed by Affleck and Matt Damon that promises to give a percentage to the people who work on films as Nike did for Jordan, giving cinematographers, designers, and sound technicians a share in the profits of the work they help to create. The medium is the message. ( Nell Minow )

Now streaming on:

“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.”

Not only is Kelly Fremon Craig’s marvelous screen adaptation of iconic author Judy Blume ’s 1970 masterpiece my favorite film of the year thus far, but it’s also the first movie I’ve seen five times during its initial theatrical run. This resulted in me wanting to share the picture with as many friends and family members as possible, including my grandma—a lifelong movie buff—who told me as tears streamed down her face that this is the sort of film that can make the world a better place. For over half a century, Blume has busted stigmas regarding the female experience that the current governor of her home state appears hell-bent on reinforcing, and writer/director Craig has masterfully captured the timeless humanity of her work in every frame. The ensemble contains brilliant turns from Rachel McAdams , Kathy Bates , and a revelatory Elle Graham , though it is Abby Ryder Fortson ’s extraordinary portrayal of the titular heroine’s adolescent bewilderment and spiritual yearning that makes this film a cinematic gift for the ages. Indeed, Abby told me during our interview that the conversations sparked by this movie are ones “we need to have in order to let people know, if nothing else, that they’re not alone.” (Matt Fagerholm )

“ Asteroid City ”

In a time when people think they know Wes Anderson enough to develop AI systems that try to replicate his work, his “Asteroid City” proves not only that his voice and style can’t be duplicated or recycled but that it keeps evolving. In this multilayered ensemble piece about an in-universe televised production of a play about an alien sighting at an astronomy convention in a deserted town during the ‘50s, Anderson reflects on life as an artist. “Asteroid City” is as inviting and quirky as most of Anderson’s films, but the humor is consistently hilarious, swaying between upbeat and dark. The ensemble cast all pour incredible soulfulness into their immersive performances; Jason Schwartzman , Tom Hanks , Jefferey Wright, Scarlett Johansson , and Jake Ryan (who I can only imagine Anderson went giddy over that he found a miniature Schwartzman) are standouts. But the film’s boldest quality lies in Anderson’s existential exploration of life, asking how artists can continue to make art with purpose when processing a significant tragedy. It’s as if the pandemic had Anderson wrestling with an existential crisis, and writing this script was his only outlet. “Asteroid City” is as humanely complex and sincere as his best work. ( Rendy Jones )

“ The Eight Mountains ”

The other day, while filling my car with gas, I was enjoying standing there in the cool misty morning, enjoying the quiet and peace. Suddenly the screen on the gas pump blazed into life with jingles and manic voices, all commercials. I was a captive audience. You can’t “opt-out” of these. I resented this. I can’t even have a minute alone to myself without being advertised to! This is all part of a larger cultural refusal to allow space for contemplation and stillness. Sometimes quiet and even emptiness leave room for depth of feeling and thought. Current movies sometimes act like that gas pump, afraid to allow the audience a moment to think. 

What does this have to do with “The Eight Mountains”? The film’s slow rhythm, its quietness, and gentleness, and its resistance to high-pitch emotions or even conflict took an attitude adjustment at first, even for me, who watches all kinds of movies of every pace imaginable. The film forces you to slow down. I was captured by the visuals, the cinematography, the music, and the way it told the story of a 40-year friendship between two very different men ( Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi ). Co-directed by Charlotte Vandermeersch and Felix van Groeningen, based on a best-selling novel, “The Eight Mountains” has the patience to allow for things in the audience, giving us space and time to be with our own thoughts. This “allowing” space is all too rare. I see a lot of films, and some are forgettable, others are terrible. Some are flawed but likable, and some are very good. It’s rare that a film expands in your consciousness after you’ve seen it, sticking with you, images floating by, a part of you already. “The Eight Mountains” is one of those films. ( Sheila O’Malley )

“ Full Time ”

Laure Calamy delivers a powerhouse performance in “Full Time,” a sharp observational drama set in and around Paris. Her force of presence in the role of Julie Roy, a stressed single mother of two who travels each day from the city to the suburbs, is essential to writer/director Éric Gravel’s breathless, furiously focused strain of social realism; both actor and filmmaker achieve an astonishing intimacy and credibility in their depiction of not only the quotidian rhythms of Julie’s domestic and working-class life but the social, psychological, and moral tensions that its economics impose. Entirely reliant upon public transportation to get to the five-star hotel where she works as the head chambermaid, and also to an interview for a job at a marketing firm that would better suit her skill set, Julie faces a hectic week even before a transit strike shuts down the city’s trains and buses, making her day-to-day existence even more fraught with obstacles. The film’s supply-chain drama informs Julie’s increasingly frantic movements—her all-consuming initiative and inner life governed by a sense of pressurized individualism—while remaining at its periphery; in Gravel’s cutting social analysis, her political and personal considerations of labor are suppressed by its constancy.

( Isaac Feldberg )

“ Godland ”

In “Godland,” writer/director Hlynur Pálmason uses the history of Iceland’s colonial past to craft a transfixing meditation on life’s many oppositions. At its center is the relationship between Danish priest Lucas, on a mission to build a Lutheran church in a rural southeast settlement, and his soulful Icelandic guide Ragnar ( Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson ), who the colonizers continually belittle. As they make their journey together, cinematographer Maria von Hausswolff captures the beauty–and the harshness–of this unspoiled land, capturing its raging ocean waves, peaceful waterfalls, and glowing lava in richly textured 35mm shot in Academy ratio. This framing choice adds both intimacy and distance to the film as if it were composed of thousands of vacation slides. This same sensation is echoed in the way Pálmason films his actors, often centering their bodies, positioning their faces to look squarely at the camera, as if they too were about to be photographed by Lucas. Through these two characters, Pálmason contemplates the complex tension between Denmark and Iceland, the Church and the natural world, life and death. The title, “Godland,” is presented at the beginning and end of the film in Danish and Icelandic, probing the audience to contemplate these ever-present dualities of life in a colonized state. ( Marya E. Gates )

“ How to Blow Up a Pipeline ”

Daniel Goldhaber ’s thriller is relentless because it has to be. It conveys the urgency of its creator that he felt on reading the non-fiction book of the same name by Andreas Malm . Working with writers Ariela Barer and Jordan Sjol , Goldhaber took the study of extreme action to stem environmental trauma and fictionalized it into a riveting story of eight people drawn together by their extreme desire for change. Working back and forth to unpack a complex story of young people with different motives but similar goals, Goldhaber has made a film that simultaneously works as a character study, cultural commentary, and intense thriller. It’s not a movie that preaches; it pulses and hums with the understanding that we are long past the time when talking will save the future. It’s reductive to label this film as a call to violent action. Goldhaber isn’t interested in that kind of exact moral supposition. He merely understands that people need to do something more than talk about change that never comes. We don’t need to literally blow up anything to understand that lack of some kind of action will doom us. And we need to start asking ourselves what this kind of dread is doing to young people in this country, who are so increasingly frustrated by the world around them that something feels like it might explode inside them. ( Brian Tallerico )

“ Infinity Pool ”

“Infinity Pool” wouldn’t really work as a black comedy or a horror movie if its creators weren’t so committed to their depraved vision of bougie privilege run amok. This sort of eat-the-rich satire requires a full head of teeth and an appetite to match, and writer/director Brandon Cronenberg thankfully brought both. Set at a tacky vacation resort in the imaginary third-world country of Li Tolqa, “Infinity Pool” seems more like a natural extension of the to-the-molars style that Cronenberg previously established in both the hypno-hypochondriac psychodrama “Antiviral” and then the body-mod bloodbath “Possessor.” In “Infinity Pool,” “ The Northman ” star Alexander Skarsgard delivers another all-in turn as James Foster , a violently hungover and creatively blocked writer who stumbles into the wrong crowd, led by Mia Goth’s femme fatale out-of-towner Gabi Bauer, and then gets stuck with them after he commits manslaughter, and then pays top dollar to clone himself to avoid the death penalty. The numbing bender that ensues wouldn’t be as compelling if Cronenberg—and cinematographer Karim Hussain , and production designer Zosia Mackenzie , and special makeup artist Dan Martin —weren’t so maniacally focused on representing James’s physical and spiritual bottoming out. Many try, but few succeed at being this fanatically vicious. ( Simon Abrams )

“ John Wick: Chapter 4 ”

In almost any other circumstance, beginning a film with a direct visual homage to one of the most famous moments of “ Lawrence of Arabia ” might come across as wildly cheeky at best or an act of insane hubris at worst. “John Wick: Chapter 4,” however, proves itself more than capable of covering that particular check. In this continuation of this saga about the enormously resourceful hitman on the run ( Keanu Reeves , whose laid-back soulfulness continues to mesh beautifully with the insane violence he deals out), director Chad Stahelski takes us around the world, brings in an impressive supporting cast of series regulars (including Laurence Fishburne , Ian McShane , and the late Lance Reddick ) and newcomers (such as the legendary Donnie Yen in a scene-stealing turn) and offers one knockout set piece after another over two solid hours. That is all prelude for its extended Paris-set finale, the most astonishing burst of sustained action to hit the screen since “ Mad Max: Fury Road ”—an orgy of pure cinema that pays homage to the likes of De Palma and Keaton and manages to continually top itself. And it does so in such a seemingly effortless manner that when it’s all over, you may resent most other new action films—even the good ones—for a long time to come for their comparative lack of ambition and execution. ( Peter Sobczynski )

“ Judy Blume Forever ”

At first glance, “Judy Blume Forever” is your typical bio-doc about the life of a person whose name you might recognize from your old summer reading list. But this documentary blossoms into something poignant for today as well as a celebration of its subject, beloved author Judy Blume. The film is a nostalgic trip back to those awkward tween years normalizing the questions kids may have about God and periods, it’s a time capsule of when women had to struggle to pursue their own careers separate from their husbands, and it’s a call to fight book censorship, which Blume has done so for decades. With the recent release of the movie adaptation of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret , Davina Pardo & Leah Wolchok ’s colorfully-illustrated documentary is an ideal companion piece, rich in heart, a revealing story time with the author on her sources of inspiration. Readers and fans of all ages will be delighted to learn Blume is a kid-at-heart, now eager to share personal memories and rally against the increased calls to prohibit kids from reading what they want. ( Monica Castillo )

“ Knock at the Cabin ”

Lots of people understandably take issue with M. Night Shyamalan’s latest, a moody, claustrophobic apocalypse thriller liberally adapted, let’s say, from Paul G. Tremblay’s novel. After all, it’s a film that posits, at least on its surface, that our salvation from a very Christian-looking apocalypse comes from the ritual killing of a queer person. But contrary to that (quite surface, in my estimation) reading, “Knock at the Cabin” feels like a thought experiment testing the purity and strength of queer love and resilience—fighting to stay ourselves in a world that hates us and what we’ll do to save the little corners of happiness we find. If that read doesn’t move you, consider it one of Shyamalan’s leanest and most stylish genre exercises to date. Jarin Blaschke ’s cinematography turns a humble woodland cabin into a tesseract of skewed perspectives, and Dave Bautista and Ben Aldridge give impressive performances that constantly teeter between sensitivity and savagery. ( Clint Worthington )

“ Master Gardener ”

With his motif of men journaling, journaling, journaling, Paul Schrader has long chased a movie adapted from a book that didn’t exist, a book whose careworn spine they could feel in their hands, annotated, pages bent to make communing with its best passages all the easier. I would argue he’s succeeded twice; once in his script for “ Taxi Driver ,” his perverse revision of Catcher in the Rye , and now with “Master Gardener,” his tale of a white supremacist whose external humanity and fascist tattoos have to vie for conclusive proof of his soul’s true direction. Joel Edgerton plays Narvel Roth, a perfect literary name and fittingly a construct, a man that a neo-Nazi invented to escape his past. He has shaved himself to a fine point, a man who exists to say “yes” when people ask him for anything and ensure that acres of flowers don’t die on his watch. Schrader has found a vessel for his lifelong spiritual agony that’s genuinely on the precipice of something risky and dangerous. ( Scout Tafoya )

“ Past Lives ”

Woven from delicate whispers of truth, Celine Song ’s debut feature summons an incandescent yearning for the paths untraveled, for the versions of ourselves lost to the passage of time in order to give birth to who we were meant to become. Nora ( Greta Lee ) and Hae Sung ( Teo Yoo ), the central childhood sweethearts turned strangers over many decades and across thousands of miles, are not involved in a love triangle of dueling suitors. Instead, they reunite to mourn a precious shared past that didn’t bloom into a future together. But whether the hand of destiny or the randomness of circumstance is to blame for their multiple separations, the distant memory of who they once were to each other remains alive within them. For Nora, however, this bond exists not as romantic interest but as an anchor that holds together all the moving parts of her identity. The miracle of Song’s debut and the swoon-worthy performances within it is that they give a cinematic body to sentiments so layered and ambivalent they could seem nearly impossible to articulate on screen with such emotional precision. Thankfully for our hearts, the film’s tear-inducing conclusion brims with empathy for every character’s resolution. ( Carlos Aguilar )

“ Polite Society ”

“Polite Society” begins and ends with a spin kick. The feature debut from “We Are Lady Parts” creator Nida Manzoor explodes with energy, color, and movement, telling the story of a martial arts-obsessed British-Pakistani teenager named Ria Khan ( Priya Kansara ) who shifts into action-hero mode after her older sister Lena ( Ritu Arya ) gets engaged to a wealthy doctor who’s too perfect to be real. The obvious touchstone here is Edgar Wright and “Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World,” with whom Manzoor shares a knack for heightening familiar situations with bold, stylized filmmaking. But Manzoor’s sensibility leans more feminist and punk—dig that X-Ray Spex song over the end credits—giving her take on the coming-of-age action comedy an infectious sense of rebellion and fun. ( Katie Rife )

“ Rye Lane ”

Raine Allen-Miller’s incredibly enjoyable feature debut proves the power of likable leads. It’s such a simple formula, and Hollywood keeps failing to get it right. Two people that viewers not only want to spend time with but want to see end the film happy. It’s that simple. And from nearly the first frames of this film, we find ourselves rooting for the happiness of Dom ( David Jonsson ) and Yas ( Vivian Oparah ). As they walk through the vibrant neighborhood around Rye Lane Market, their backstories become clear, mostly how they still suffer from broken hearts. They make each other stronger. Yas helps Dom confront his toxic ex-girlfriend; Dom helps Yas do the same. It’s an incredibly lean film in terms of plot, but we feel the growth in these characters that needed someone to help them get over the latest speedbump in their young lives. Jonsson and Oparah are charming, funny, and clever in ways that people only really are in movies like this, but it doesn’t matter. We take the journey with them. Because we want to see where they’re going next. ( Brian Tallerico )

“ Sam Now ”

Built from home movies and family interviews spanning 24 years, director Reed Harkness’ documentary tells the engrossing true story of how he and his younger stepbrother Sam, a frequent subject of his backyard filmmaking experiments, set out to find Sam’s mother Jois, who had disappeared without explanation. The movie’s opening section makes viewers squirm in anticipation of a tragic murder story. But “Sam Now” deftly moves on to a more mundane but still wrenching question: What happens when a parent decides they no longer wish to be a parent and would prefer to become a pariah by pursuing their own happiness? Steven Spielberg told a version of this tale in his semi-autobiographical family story “ The Fabelmans ,” but Harkness achieves comparable complexity and power on a much smaller scale, using a mix of consumer-grade and semi-professional equipment to record sensitive questions and honest answers, and set competing narratives against each other without telling that any of them are morally correct. The most remarkable thing about this film isn’t the filmmaking itself, which is extraordinary, but the tough yet empathetic way it presents the feelings of everyone involved as being equally valid, though impossible to reconcile to everyone’s satisfaction. ( Matt Zoller Seitz )

“ Sanctuary ”

Playful in its beginning and sobering in its final moments, Zachary Wigon ’s feature film debut is one for the ages. It couldn’t come at a better time, since Hollywood appears to be deterred by sex, kink, and anything in between. “Sanctuary” oozes with tension, with Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott lighting up the screen with a chemistry lost on most modern on-screen couples. “Sanctuary” is a tightrope walk of a battle of the sexes, with Qualley playing a dominatrix and Abbott playing an heir to a hotel conglomerate who desperately seeks to break off their relationship. The two play off each other marvelously, dodging earnest admissions of what could be called love for quick jabs meant to hurt the other player in the sick game they’ve cultivated for themselves. In the wrong hands, the film’s one-location setting could quickly become a gimmick, but here it allows Qualley and Abbott to fully delve into their characters, leaving them bare upon the screen. They’re pressed so tightly against mirroring hotel walls that it feels like they may crawl through the screen to get away from each other, but by the end of the ordeal, they fall back into each other’s embrace. What begins as an erotic thriller slowly unravels into a fine romantic comedy and shapes into one of the best films of 2023. ( Kaiya Shunyata )

“ Showing Up ”

From the housewife trapped in a malaise in “ River of Grass ” to two strivers in the American West in “ First Cow ,” the people who live on the margins of the margins have long fascinated Kelly Reichardt . It would therefore seem odd that her newest film, “Showing Up,” set in the cozy confines of a Seattle art school, would take notice of a part-time sculptor and arts administrator. What makes the distant Lizzy ( Michelle Williams ) so interesting? Through Reichardt and Jon Raymond’s taut script, buoyed by one of Williams’ most idiosyncratic performances, “Showing Up” reveals how this woman subsists on a kind of margin: Her pleasant artist parents are ignorant of the pains felt by their children; her brother ( John Magaro ) is battling mental health issues. But it’s the economy that diminishes creatives to the point of turning them into landlords, and which demonstrates how the interpersonally rigid Lizzy deserves our time and empathy. As does Reichardt’s quiet, observational eye. She courses through this world—the grounds of the art school, the meditative community that populates it—with the nimbleness of Lizzy’s fingers. The wonderful calibration by Williams and Reichardt in “Showing Up” makes it their most intense, richest, and thematically modern collaboration. ( Robert Daniels )

“ Sick of Myself ”

The big laughs from Kristoffer Borgli ’s “Sick of Myself” are select, knowing, and usually followed up with a sinking gut feeling. They’re all from the fantasy of Signe ( Kristine Kujath Thorp ), who wears our need for spectators in the facial skin disease she has knowingly given herself. When not bandaged up, her mug is colonized with freakish red veins and bulbous sores; Signe hopes these side effects from an illegal Russian drug will get her pity, attention, and real estate in people’s minds. Writer/director Borgli (whose next project is an A24, Ari Aster-produced film starring Nicolas Cage ) doesn’t follow up these acts with scenes of her posting updates on Twitter—that would be too on-the-nose for this tactful movie that’s kind of horrific, kind of funny, and mighty Scandinavian about a cultural hunger within us all like Alex’s psychopathy in “ A Clockwork Orange .” Borgli’s plotting is too high-minded to simply punch down, and Thorp creates an essential compassion, making us feel every little victory that comes in Signe’s body-destroying, wish-fulfilling journey. To match its shock and awe, cinematographer Benjamin Loeb often embraces slow zooms, as with one of its biggest gag-inducers: Signe, surrounded by art in a museum, is finally the subject of a photo shoot that could make her an iconoclast. The camera gets closer and closer. And then she starts bleeding from the head. ( Nick Allen )

“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-verse”

The Oscar-winning “ Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ” was a blast of pop-art cleverness, rattling the prematurely ossified bones of big-budget Hollywood animation, which seems increasingly stuck in a Pixar-DreamWorks witty-bobbleheads rut. The bigger, wilder, more propulsive sequel builds on the original’s innovations, sending teenage hero Miles Morales on an interdimensional adventure that doubles as a tour of Marvel comics art styles (and textures; some of the characters even seem to have been cut from paper) and offers a clever series of thought prompts for young viewers who may not have considered how comics art relates to painting, drawing, sculpture, and architecture from earlier times (the Guggenheim sequence, complete with Banksy joke, should be shown in museums). Along the way, the movie embroiders its genuinely moving story with subtle affirmations that we all have the same basic needs and desires underneath it all, despite superficial differences of race, culture, and gender identity that bad guys twist to pit us against each other. This is a classic second installment in a grand fantasy trilogy, right up there with “The Two Towers” and “ The Empire Strikes Back .” ( Matt Zoller Seitz )

“ STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie ”

It could have been an eat-your-vegetables movie: a mawkish documentary about an inspirational figure overcoming adversity. Instead, “STILL: A Michael J. Fox Movie” feels more like a celebration: of this actor’s talent, drive, and powerful ability to connect with the audience despite the ravages of Parkinson’s disease. Fox’s candor about his condition only makes him more compelling. At 62, he maintains the boyish charm and infectious energy that made him a superstar in the 1980s. And the impeccable comic timing remains intact, even if it takes him a beat or two longer sometimes to deliver that perfect zinger. The jokes are often at his own expense as he looks directly into director Davis Guggenheim ’s camera and discusses his life and career, from his early struggles to the heights of fame and acclaim he achieved between TV’s “Family Ties” and the “ Back to the Future ” movies and beyond. Working with the brilliant editor Michael Harte , Guggenheim cleverly uses clips from Fox’s substantial filmography to illustrate the tales the actor tells. And Fox’s narration from his memoirs helps create the intimate sensation that he’s speaking exclusively to us. “Still” is thrilling. ( Christy Lemire )

“ A Thousand and One ”

A.V. Rockwell’s “A Thousand and One” (winner of this year’s Sundance Grand Jury Prize) is an atomic bomb of a feature debut. Inez ( Teyana Taylor ) is fresh out of Rikers Island, and in order to reunite with the son she left behind, she kidnaps him from the foster care system to raise him herself. Houseless, jobless, and uncertain, Inez and young Terry are carried forth only by their unconditional love and tenacity against the odds. Taking place over the 1990s and 2000s, the film examines the development of an unbreakable bond that is constantly tested by a changing New York City. “A Thousand and One” pulses with poignancy in every second of its runtime. Taylor is soul-stirring as Inez, hitting every beat of tender care and tough love. There isn’t a question that this film is birthed out of adoration for Black families, and for Taylor and Rockwell’s native NYC itself, which functions as a character in its own right. With phenomenal photography, first-class performances, and the love and light and Blackness itself, “A Thousand and One” boasts an unforgettably emotional coming-of-age between a mother and son. ( Peyton Robinson )

“ Tori and Lokita ”

The movies made by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne may be quiet, but that doesn’t mean they’re not angry. The Belgian filmmaking team is composed and canny enough to understand that their statements against a grotesquely cruel and hateful world don’t need to be shouted. This story of two children, African migrants trapped in a web of exploitation as they seek to find a place in today’s Europe, is, like all their movies, plain in its artfulness and implacable as a mathematical proof. The opening scene, in which the older Lokita wilts as she negotiates a Q&A about her background, struggling to give the answers that will get her what she needs, is a remarkable microcosmic view of the banality of man’s inhumanity to man. If this remarkable movie is more heartbreaking than most Dardenne pictures, that’s due to the gut-wrenching performances by Pablo Schils and Joely Mbundu in the title roles. ( Glenn Kenny )

“ The Year Between ”

Alex Heller gives her all to “The Year Between,” a writer/director/actor debut that takes some of the wildest chances of any noteworthy comedy so far this year. That’s all extra impressive given the true inspiration: Heller was diagnosed with bipolar disorder while in college and moved back in with her Illinois suburb family. With Heller’s hilariously indignant lead performance at the center, putting her less brash parents and young siblings on further edge as she balances her emotions and brain chemicals, it’s a bold crowd-pleaser that leads with unsentimental empathy and hard-earned levity. Boasting one emotionally fine-tuned scene after another, “The Year Between” displays a fresh storytelling talent, with the on-screen endorsement of J. Smith Cameron and Steve Buscemi (who play her parents, adding to the film’s uniquely warming family dynamic) and the behind-the-scenes advocacy of Kenneth Lonergan . Heller is one of the most promising Chicagoland filmmakers in some time, and considering how many leaps she lands with this acrobatic debut, it’s an exciting wonder what she’ll pull off in her second movie, or tenth. ( Nick Allen )

“ You Hurt My Feelings ”

For any cinephile, one of the sweetest treats is getting the privilege to see one of your favorite filmmakers enter their Late Period. This is not strictly a function of age or the size of one’s filmography. It has more to do with a filmmaker zeroing in on exactly what it is they do better than anyone and discarding everything else. With her seventh feature film, “You Hurt My Feelings,” filmmaker Nicole Holofcener feels like she’s reached her Late Period. Guided by her muse Julia Louis-Dreyfus , Holofcener’s dark comedy manages to plumb the unspoken fears of a seemingly successful Manhattan couple in a fashion typically reserved for horror. As usual, Holofcener has a musician’s ear for dialogue and a knack for plotting that puts her relatably human characters in increasingly painful situations. And yet this is a departure for her. Anger, specifically women’s anger, has always been the secret fuel of Holofcener films. But it doesn’t drive “You Hurt My Feelings.” She’s instead tapped into a broader range of feelings without sacrificing humor, landing on the divine abilities to forgive and reconcile. This may be her best work, but for what comes next. ( Brandon David Wilson )

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The 10 Best Movies of 2023

N o year-end best-movie list is definitive, because no year of moviegoing experience can be reduced to bullet points—nor should it be. Particularly now, when we can watch so many new movies without leaving our homes , the experience of watching has changed drastically, and in ways we may never be able to fully reckon with. When you finish watching a movie at home, you may still be thinking about it as you tee another one up, or head off to bed, or patter into the kitchen to make a sandwich. But a movie watched in a theater, in the company of other human beings, takes up space in a different way. As you drive away, or head to the bus or subway, a great movie—or even a terrible one—follows you. It expands to fill the air, rather than shrinking back into a little box. This is the space in which its greatness, or the overwhelming force of its mediocrity, is fully revealed to you.

You can watch a great movie at home and fully acknowledge its greatness: after all, streaming older movies, or watching them on physical media, is how most of us learn about movie history . But a year of new movies, whether you watch them at home or not, should be much more expansive than your living room. Following are 10 movies—plus a large handful of honorable mentions—that kept me thinking in the hours, days, and months after I watched them. These are the movies that followed me home.

More: Read TIME's lists of the best TV shows , podcasts and video games of 2023.

10. Passages

It’s impossible to get through life without messing a few things up. But how much messing up is too much? At the center of Ira Sachs’ sometimes funny but also piercing Passages is a self-centered filmmaker, played in a dazzling performance by Franz Rogowski, who windmills through life with reckless disregard for the feelings of those around him, including his husband (Ben Whishaw) and the young woman who has temporarily entranced him (Adèle Exarchopoulos). At best, he’s exasperating; at worst, he inflicts deep and lasting pain. And still, you feel something for him. His electricity is also his curse, and as this love triangle unfolds, it may leave you feeling the charge and the anguish all at once.

Read TIME's review

Stream on Amazon Prime .

9. Dreamin' Wild

There are two types of people in the world: those who view rock’n’roll dreams as small things you eventually grow out of and those who never stop living them, even if they confine their dream time to the spiral grooves of sides A and B. Bill Pohlad’s Dreamin’ Wild —based on real-life events, and starring Casey Affleck and Walton Goggins—is for the second group, a story about what happens when two people who sought pop stardom as teenagers get a second chance in middle age. Music can mean a lot in one lifetime: it can break dreams, but it can also mend them.

Stream on Hulu .

8. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

Movies dealing with the specifics of women’s experience are still a relative rarity on the movie landscape. How many studio execs are going to leap at the chance to finance a film about the onset of menses and—by suggestion—its lunar twin, menopause? Featuring a superb cast (including Rachel McAdams, Benny Safdie , and Abby Ryder Fortson), Kelly Fremon Craig’s adaptation of Judy Blume’s 1970 coming-of-age classic is largely about the confusion of adolescence—but also, more subtly, it addresses what it means for women to say goodbye to all that as they hit middle age. This is a great movie for young people, but maybe even a better one for those who find themselves look-ing through the far end of the telescope.

7. Killers of the Flower Moon

To watch Lily Gladstone (above) in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon is to recapture a thread of history that has, until recently, eluded most of us. Scorsese has made a somber, poetic adaptation of David Grann’s account of how a group of greedy white men systematically murdered members of the Osage Nation in early 1920s Oklahoma. As Mollie Burkhart, a rich Osage woman whose family was gradually killed off around her, Gladstone gives face to a million stories that have been conveniently forgotten in modern America. Scorsese’s mournful epic also features bigger movie stars, like Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. But Gladstone’s Mollie is the soul of his film, and he knows it.

Read more: Martin Scorsese Still Has Stories Left to Tell

Stream on Apple TV .

6. Past Lives

In writer-director Celine Song’s stirring debut film, a Korean immigrant who has built a life for herself in Toronto and New York ( Greta Lee ) reconnects with the childhood friend she left behind years ago (Teo Yoo); her husband (John Magaro) stands by, a witness to the subterranean crackle of their connection. In any life, there are an infinite number of roads not taken—we can be on only one road at a time. Song’s movie is all about the mournful beauty of missed opportunities, a recognition of the truth that yearning is part of life. Without it, all we’re left with is false certainty, perhaps the greatest dishonesty of all.

Stream on Amazon .

5. Revoir Paris

The brother of French writer-director Alice Winocour survived the 2015 terrorist attack at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris; unable to communicate with him as he hid, she had to wait to hear if he'd made it out alive. In Revoir Paris , Virginie Efira gives a shattering performance as a woman who survives a similar, but fictional, attack—though the meaning of survival here is complex. Efira’s Mia can’t recall much of the horrific event; the experience was too traumatic. But over time, she finds her way back to life, and to feeling, by connecting with others whose lives were also broken by the tragedy. Without preciousness or platitudes, Winocour and Efira plumb the stark and sometimes painful truth of what it means to commit to the world of the living.

Read more: The 100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades

4. Priscilla

Elvis is everywhere, even 46 years after his death. But what about Priscilla Beaulieu Presley, the woman he met when he was a 24-year-old soldier stationed in Germany and she was just a girl of 14? Sofia Coppola’s film , adapted from Priscilla Presley’s 1985 memoir , brings this story to the screen with infinite tenderness. Jacob Elordi plays Elvis, a great artist and a messed-up man who mistreated the woman he loved most. But the movie belongs to Cailee Spaeny as Priscilla, preternaturally self-possessed as a young teenager but both wiser and more resilient by age 27, when her marriage to royalty ended. Spaeny walks us through this extraordinary but also painful span of time in one woman’s life, one satin-slipper step after another.

Stream on Max .

3. The Zone of Interest

The everyday things many of us want and need—plenty of food, marital companionship, a safe and comfortable home —are the same things German SS officer Rudolf Höss, the longtime commandant of Auschwitz , and his wife Hedwig wanted for themselves and their family. In Jonathan Glazer’s ghostly, ice-cold film—adapted from Martin Amis’ 2014 novel—Sandra Hüller plays Hedwig, who runs her household with starched-linen efficiency, vaguely cognizant of the horrors being perpetrated beyond her garden walls but viewing them as an annoyance rather than an atrocity. Christian Friedel’s Höss is highly inventive when it comes to pleasing the higher-ups; his ideas are a fuel for evil. The Zone of Interest isn’t just a semi-fictionalized view of history. It’s also a story for the here and now—a reminder that happiness built on the suffering of others is no kind of happiness at all.

Pledging your life to another person is not for the faint of heart. Bradley Cooper’s Maestro , less a biopic than a window into a complex, passionate marriage , is a modern rarity: an example of a starry, big-ticket production put to use in telling a truly grownup story. Cooper stars as conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein , complicated and charismatic as both an artist and a man. Carey Mulligan gives one of the finest performances of the year, a portrait of both steeliness and human fragility, as the Costa Rican–Chilean actor Felicia Montealegre, who became Bernstein’s wife and the mother of his three children. This is grand-scale filmmaking that’s also bracingly intimate.

1. Fallen Leaves

A tentative romance between a woman who’s making the best of dreary workaday life (Alma Pöysti) and a metalworker whose perpetual drunkenness keeps him underemployed (Jussi Vatanen), plus a dog who helps his human bridge the expanse between loneliness and the contentment of solitude: those are the main ingredients of Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki’s Fallen Leaves, and he works magic with them. Kaurismäki is the master of the deadpan humanist comedy, the type of picture that people may think of as merely odd or charming. Yet so much of life is made up of little revelations that form the core of who we are. This is Kaurismäki’s gift: to catch those moments, seemingly snatching them from the wind, and put them onscreen so that we, too, will know them when we see them.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer , Paul Schrader’s Master Gardener , Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things , Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant , Lisa Cortes’ Little Richard: I Am Everything, Frances O’Connor’s Emily , Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morning , Anh Hung Tran's The Taste of Things, Ava DuVernay’s Origin , Andrew Haigh's All of Us Strangers, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days

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The 50 Best Movies of 2023, According to 158 Critics from Around the World

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2023 was a tumultuous year for the film industry, with lengthy writers and actors strikes bringing Hollywood productions to a grinding halt and forcing fall festivals to proceed without their typical red carpet star power. But amid all the chaos, it slowly emerged as one of the best years for cinema in recent memory. Just take a look at the 50 best movies of 2023, as determined by IndieWire’s annual critics survey .

158 critics voted in our end-of-year poll, and the resulting top 50 films of the year are the closest you’ll find to a truly global critical consensus about the year’s best films.  

The concept of Barbenheimer — that “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” would release on the same day, July 21 — grew in the minds of cinephiles in the months leading up to both films actually unspooling on screens. How extraordinary is it that these films actually lived up to the hype? They are well represented on our Top 50 list below, with “Oppenheimer” at number two and “Barbie” at number eight respectively.  

Christopher Nolan’s film went on to receive 13 Academy Awards nominations , while “Barbie” scored eight. For those upset at Greta Gerwig not receiving a Best Director nomination, our 2023 Critics Survey may not offer much consolation: Yes, Gerwig appears at number six on our Best Directors list there … but that is outside the Top 5 cutoff for the Academy Awards (where Justine Triet appeared at the Oscars, instead of Todd Haynes as on IndieWire’s list).  

It’s also extraordinary that, for so many, “Killers of the Flower Moon” met expectations as well, after years of anticipation that included a wholesale rethinking of the script and story focus. It topped our Top 50 list as the best film of 2023, as well as the Best Director list for Martin Scorsese. It notched entries on the Best Cinematography and Best Screenplay lists, too, but of particular note is Lily Gladstone, who came in at number two on the Best Performance list, just behind Emma Stone for “Poor Things.” It’s been a race between the two of them for the Best Actress Oscar , with both winning Best Actress in a Drama and Best Actress in a Comedy, respectively, at the Golden Globes, and Stone winning the Critics Choice Award and the BAFTA for Best Actress (where Gladstone wasn’t nominated). Gladstone has picked up momentum near the end of the season with her Best Actress win at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, however.  

So, in many ways, IndieWire’s 2023 Critics Survey set the stage for much of the Oscar race to come. Where it’s most exciting, especially in this Top 50 list below, is how it goes beyond Oscar contenders to suggest films that aren’t a part of that race, but are every bit as fulfilling to cinephiles and maybe more so. Take “Pacifiction,” which appeared as the best film of the year on the ballots of five of the critics who voted, as well as in lower positions on many other ballots, and notched a spot at number 18 accordingly. Or “The Settlers,” which was Chile’s submission for Best International Feature, yes, but failed to get a nomination — yet is as engaging and eye-popping as any action film made in Hollywood last year, and with deeper ideas. Or “Eileen,” a particular IndieWire fave that was also overlooked by the Oscars, but gave us the year of Anne Hathaway’s primal scream.  

Keep reading for the 50 films that critics selected as the best of 2023, ranked in ascending order. Each voter had to fill out a ranked top 10 list, where 10 points were assigned for a first-place choice, nine points for a second-place choice, and so on to generate a numeric score for each film that determined the order of the Top 50. Use the resulting list below to catch up on the best in cinema from 2023, and read more about what placed in other categories such as Best Director, Pest Performance, and Best Cinematography here .

This list features editorial contributions from Wilson Chapman, Alison Foreman, and Samantha Bergeson.  

50. “Eileen”

Director: William Oldroyd

Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, Shea Whigham

Read IndieWire’s Review : Director Oldroyd has toned down the deliberate repulsiveness of “My Year of Rest and Relaxation” author Otessa Moshfegh’s second novel, but you still get the sense here of a young woman fascinated by the disgustingness of life and as a means of expiation for underachieving — and for staving off boredom. But she also gets off on degrading herself, which is part of the film’s sick pleasure. Enter Rebecca Saint John (Hathaway), the new psychologist at the prison, who has an almost Jackie Kennedy-esque aura about her, a platinum-blonde flipped bob, and cigarette-wielding charisma that just oozes out of her. Eileen (McKenzie) is almost immediately intoxicated, and the feeling is mutual, because Rebecca, unlike her father, doesn’t flinch at Eileen’s depraved underside. When she catches Eileen poring over bloody crime scene photos in the prison’s archives, Rebecca entreats Eileen for an invitation to drinks. Eileen and Rebecca have a heady, woozy chemistry reminiscent of Todd Haynes’ lesbian romance “Carol,” and yes, those comparisons are going to stick because, like Rooney Mara’s Therese Belivet, Eileen is a young woman pulled out of her self-made shell by an older, more confident one. It’s impossible to talk about the gasp-eliciting twist “Eileen” takes — when Rebecca invites Eileen over to her house for Christmas — without spoiling the whole thing. But let’s just say that a criminal subplot is introduced, and it brings Eileen and Rebecca more intimately together, turning “Eileen” into a kind of cracked queer Christmas noir. 

49. “Close Your Eyes”

Director: Victor Erice

Cast: José Coronado, Manolo Solo

Read IndieWire’s Review: “Close Your Eyes” is neither an autobiographical cine-memoir à la “The Fabelmans” nor a teary-eyed tribute to the magic of the movies in the vein of “Cinema Paradiso.” Yet, as if by accident and divine purpose all at once, it also becomes both of those things by the end. Set at the dawn of the streaming age and shot with the funereal sterility that came with it, “Close Your Eyes” openly laments the loss of a more tactile film experience (the kind that included actual film), but only so that it can honor the way certain images take root inside us when seen under the right circumstances, as inextricable from our being as a soul from its body.

48. “The Settlers”

Director: Felipe Galvez

Cast: Mark Stanley, Alfredo Castro, Camilo Arancibia, Benjamin Westfall

Read IndieWire’s Review : Felipe Galvez’s Chilean Western “The Settlers” may remind some viewers of a Boetticher film when they’re watching it: following three men on horseback on a cross-country journey, it dramatizes questions of identity and belonging, and how these things can be written in violence. Most Boetticher-like, in a tight 98 minutes “The Settlers” says more than a lot of films double its length. It’s one of the most chilling art-Westerns to come along in some time, as provocative for its ideas, dialogue, and characterizations, as for the beauty of its empty landscapes. “The Settlers,” for all its artistry, is also a deeply felt work of activism with a message that needs to be heard in Chile. – Christian Blauvelt

47. “La Chimera”

Director: Alice Rohrwacher

Cast: Josh O’Connor

Read IndieWire’s Review : It begins with a man played by Josh O’Connor — famously not Italian — dreaming of the woman he loved and lost. His name is Arthur, her name was Beniamina, and this idyllic vision of their reunion is rudely interrupted by a ticket-taker aboard a gorgeous country train as it rumbles across the Florentine countryside during the mid 1980s. Legend tells of a buried door that connects this world to the next, and this surly archaeologist is so hellbent on finding it that he’s become the leader of a ragtag gang of tombarolis — lovable grave-robbers, essentially — in the small village where his Beniamina once lived. He offers the group his sorcerer-like ability to dowse the location of ancient treasures, and in return they do the digging for him. Stealing 2,000-year-old pots and statues out of the earth isn’t exactly legal work (Arthur is returning from the latest of his many stints in jail when the film begins), but the group makes a decent profit by selling whatever they find to a mysterious local fence named Spartaco, who operates like a Bond villain from their secret lair atop the local animal hospital. 

46. “The Eternal Memory”

Director: Maite Alberdi 

Cast: Paulina Urrutia, Augusto Góngora

<a href=”https://www.indiewire.com/video/the-eternal-memory-paulina-urrutia-forgot-filming-doc-1234927706/” target=”_blank”>Watch IndieWire Art of the Doc&rsquo;s Interview with Subject Paulina Urrutia</a>: The film centers on a Chilean couple, Augusto G&oacute;ngora and Urrutia, who grapple with G&oacute;ngora&rsquo;s Alzheimer&rsquo;s diagnosis. The duo have been together for 25 years, but Urrutia, an actress-turned-Minister of Culture and the Arts in Chile, is awaiting the day her love does not recognize her anymore.

45. “Saltburn”

Director: Emerald Fennell

Cast: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Richard E. Grant, Carey Mulligan, Alison Oliver

Read IndieWire’s Review : Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” is a movie sustained by the friction between identity and reinvention, and therefore a fitting second feature by a filmmaker whose Oscar-winning debut made it hard to tell if she was an underachieving dramatist or an overachieving provocateur. Emerald Fennell’s “Saltburn” is a movie sustained by the friction between identity and reinvention, and therefore a fitting second feature by a filmmaker whose Oscar-winning debut made it hard to tell if she was an underachieving dramatist or an overachieving provocateur.

44. “The Eight Mountains”

Director: Felix Van Groeningen

Cast: Luca Marinelli, Alessandro Borghi

Read IndieWire’s Review : “The Eight Mountains” lovingly adapts Paolo Cognetti’s novel of the same name, a valentine to brotherhood and a shape-shifting tale of self-discovery, resilience, nature and love — platonic but more steely than any rock you could climb – that somehow rarely feels like it treads a single step of the endless stream of movies and literature capturing the ever-evolving yet enduring nature of all of those just mentioned things since time immemorial.

43. “Beau Is Afraid”

Director: Ari Aster

Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Nathan Lane, Parker Posey, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan

Read IndieWire’s Review : “Beau Is Afraid” is quick to reveal itself as a fundamentally different beast than “Hereditary” and/or “Midsommar” (and not just because the movie is so unrepentantly Jewish that every one of its cuts feels like it was performed by a mohel). That change of pace starts with Aster’s decision to forego a straightforward genre narrative in favor of an unclassifiable Odyssean mindfuck. While the film’s plot couldn’t be simpler — a 49-year-old virgin named Beau Wassermann (Phoenix) journeys to his mother’s house across a country gone mad — its frazzled and strictly episodic telling owes more to Charlie Kaufman and Albert Brooks than it does to any of the ancient Greeks. 

42. “Four Daughters”

Director: Kaouther Ben Hania

Read IndieWire’s Review : “Four Daughters” orbits the trauma of a Tunisian woman named Olfa and her youngest daughters, Tayssir and Eya. Some years ago Olfa’s two eldest daughters, Rahma and Ghofrane, left to join ISIS — or, as this documentary posits, were “devoured by the wolf.” Filmmaker Kaouther Ben Hania, never seen but often heard from her safe space behind the camera, decides to re-tell the story of how this came to be.

41. “A Still Small Voice”

Director: Luke Lorentzen

Cast: Margaret “Mati” Engel

Read IndieWire’s Review : “A Still Small Voice” is ultimately such a life-affirming film can only be explained by the climactic scene in which it finds its title. It’s a moment of profound acceptance that follows what might seem to be a moment of unsalvageable rejection; a moment delivered in a trembling whisper, meek in its way but still loud enough for us to hear its message that failures aren’t necessarily endings, and endings aren’t necessarily failures. 

40. “Ferrari”

Director: Michael Mann

Cast: Adam Driver, Penelope Cruz, Shailene Woodley, Patrick Dempsey

Read IndieWire’s Review : Ultimately, while “Ferrari” indeed centers on the man of its title, that title also extends to the same-named dynasty that made Enzo’s empire possible, the people he touched, the women left strewn by his death drive. Driver’s performance is a fine one, flanked ever by emotional guardrails even in stressed-out moments like when Enzo eyes his stopwatch for his racing Ferraris’ latest speed times. But Cruz hijacks the wheel from her co-star in a grief-dazed but always alert and forceful turn, her face a stony wall that tells of great pain. (A wonderful closeup of her staring at Dino’s mausoleum brings on a wave of conflicting emotions that tell her whole story.) The cast benefits greatly from Mann’s bottlenecking approach to one slice of Enzo’s life, as domestic and professional stresses merge in what was eventually a triumph for his company, putting Ferrari back at the front of the auto arms race against the likes of Maserati, but a tragedy for his restless, never-satisfied being. 

39. “Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros”

Director: Frederick Wiseman

Read IndieWire’s Review : Billed as a “farm-to-table” documentary on account of its loose, semi-linear trajectory from the markets and vineyards of Roanne to the restaurant dining room in which they’re ultimately transformed into something much greater than the sum of their parts, Wiseman’s slow-cooked but satisfying “Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgros” occupies a generous space between his sober portraits of American institutions (e.g. “At Berkeley,” “Ex Libris: The New York Public Library”) and his more epicurean films about the French arts (e.g. “Crazy Horse,” “Ballet,” “La Comédie-Française ou l’Amour joué”). Its characteristic focus on the tension between tactile labor and abstract crises — between day-to-day upkeep and spiritual survival — is present from the opening moments, but so is its characteristic refusal to artificially define the contours of that tension. 

38. “20 Days in Mariupol”

Director: Mystylav Chernov

Cast: Mystyav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, and Vasilisa Stepaneko

Read IndieWire’s Review : Chernov frequently blurs the most severe injuries, but it’s the puddles of blood, dead animals and lifeless limbs half-buried by rubble that indicate the sheer scale of suffering in Mariupol. His jarringly stoic narration and haunting original music by Jordan Dykstra add to the sense that, in Mariupol, nothing is left. This is not a film about President Zelensky’s Churchillian leadership or the heroism of first responders (though if you look, there is some of that).

37. “About Dry Grasses”

Director: Nuri Bilge Ceylan

Cast: Deniz Celiloğlu, Merve Dizdar, Musab Ekici, and Ece Bağcı

Read IndieWire’s Review:  At nearly 200 minutes in length, “About Dry Grasses” (or “Kuru Otlar Üstüne”) is par for the course for Turkish virtuoso Nuri Bilge Ceylan. He returns, once again, to the icy frost of his Anatolia-set Palme d’Or winner “Winter Sleep,” for a story that beats with similar frustrations towards power in the grand social scheme. However, he weaves this theme into his background tapestry, favoring instead a talkative and often discomforting tale of a small-town art teacher, his 12-year-old female student, and an accusation of impropriety that might be false on its surface, but is rooted in truths the camera sees. 

36. “Bottoms”

Director: Emma Seligman

Cast: Rachel Sennott, Ayo Edebiri, Nicholas Galitzine, Ruby Cruz, Havana Rose Liu, Kaia Jordan Gerber, and more

Read IndieWire’s Review: At the bottom of the film’s knotted plot and raunchy jokes, however, lies a rather poignant story about female friendship and empowerment. Though it starts as a genuine desire to protect themselves from a rival school that is literally kidnapping and beating up students (free of consequence, one might add), the girls get more out of the club than just good fighting skills.

Though the focus is always on PJ and Josie — Sennott and Edebiri are phenomenal, with the film serving as an “Ayo and Rachel Are Single” reunion — the supporting cast really makes the movie shine. From the rest of the fight club members, each one with their own unique personality that manages to become more than archetypes even when they don’t have that much screentime, to the football players baffled and enraged by the girl’s fight club taking attention away from their games, “Bottoms” has a terrific ensemble.

35. “A Thousand and One”

Director: A. V. Rockwell 

Cast: Teyana Taylor, Will Catlett, Josiah Cross, Aven Courtney, and Aaron Kingsley Adetola

Read IndieWire’s Review: Terry and Inez’s story is only one of many, but it serves as a microcosm for the specific economic struggles of any Black lower-middle-class Americans trying to keep up with gentrification’s engine and NYPD indifference to Black people. “A Thousand and One” culminates in a gutting conclusion that turns the entire movie on its head — it’s one best left entirely unspoiled — and serves as a sobering reminder of how fucked-up beginnings can hopefully bring about better endings. Cross is effective in a key scene surrounding this revelation, but it’s Taylor who anchors Rockwell’s direction and screenplay with her powerhouse performance. Taylor has worked with the likes of Tyler Perry in comedies, but it’s her seeming kinship with Rockwell (and Taylor’s own story as a New Yorker) and a performance as fiercely committed to the project as Inez is to Terry that signal a major acting talent.

34. “Trenque Lauquen”

Director: Laura Citarella

Cast: Laura Paredes 

Read Cahiers du Cinema’s Best Films of 2023: “Trenque Lauquen,” Citarella’s four-hour mystery about the search for a missing botanist in Argentina, landed in the top spot after premiering at the 2022 Venice International Film Festival. 

33. “De Humani Corporis Fabrica”

Director: Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor

Read IndieWire’s Review: Perhaps the most striking footage of all parallels one of the most famous moments in art cinema — in Salvador Dali’s 1929 “Un Chien Andalou,” where a woman’s eye is sliced open in a dreamlike sequence. But in “De Humani Corporis Fabrica,” the moment isn’t fleeting or simulated. The eye is taped wide open with wide dilated pupils, the lens slowly cut open and painstakingly repaired. Where Dali’s slice was a momentary flinch, Paravel and Castaing-Taylor’s scene is a hypnotic experience, and watching the images is more intense than grotesque. But even with the technological marvels and precise surgical skill, there is still a sense of meat being butchered. The camera doesn’t flinch at gelatinous substances tethered to flesh, which slowly decays around it, all tentatively kept alive by little vessels pumped by a muscular mass that could stop at any moment. The film’s existential fascination with anatomy has classic roots. Leonardo Da Vinci to Michaelangelo employed grave robbers so they could similarly cut open the human body and discover its secrets.

32. “Priscilla”

Director: Sofia Coppola

Cast: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, and Dagmara Domińczyk

Read IndieWire’s Review: Comparisons to the more opulent and electrifying “Marie Antoinette” are inevitable, as both movies are about teenage girls who are trying to appease their kings, and both movies look at their hermetically sealed historical figures through a (somewhat) modern lens that sees through decades or centuries of mythmaking in order to render the emotional reality of their respective situations. But from a certain perspective, “Priscilla” is also the polar opposite of Coppola’s 2006 masterpiece. While Marie Antoinette was forced to Versailles against her will, Priscilla Presley’s ultimate dream was — like many girls her age in 1963 — to live in Graceland as Elvis’ wife. And while Marie Antoinette spent the brunt of her short life struggling to reconcile a sense of personal identity with the one conferred upon her by the royal palace, Priscilla Presley, who’s still alive today (and an executive producer on this film), spent the brunt of her short marriage realizing that she didn’t have to. 

“Priscilla” may not be one of the better movies that Coppola has ever made — it’s vague where her previous coming-of-age stories have been knowingly precise, scattered where its predecessors revealed new insight with each scene, and gloomy where those other films were galvanized with pockets of light — but it stands apart from the rest of her work as the uniquely sensitive and self-honest portrait of a girl who starts to realize that she may have outgrown her greatest fantasy. 

31. “Kokomo City”

Director: D. Smith 

Read IndieWire’s Review: D. Smith knows how to make a person stand up and pay attention. From the rollicking opening scene of “Kokomo City” — her luminous documentary portrait of four Black trans sex workers which she shot, edited, and directed — it’s clear the terms are being set by a visionary artist who just happened to funnel her interdisciplinary talents into filmmaking for this particular project. How lucky we are that she found this medium.

“Kokomo City” may be her filmmaking debut, but this songwriter innately understands the rhythms and beats that make compelling cinematic storytelling. You can see it in the staccato contrast of light and dark in her elegant black-and-white photography. You can hear it in the unexpected needle drops and deep-cut tracks, and you can feel it in her lyrical cuts that find small moments of beauty in everyday compositions. Make no mistake, Smith announces wordlessly from behind the camera: I have arrived to change the game.

30. “Godzilla Minus One”

Director: Takashi Yamazaki

Cast: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki, and more

Read IndieWire’s Review: Every entry in the sprawling, oft-rebooted franchise has wrestled with the question of scale as it finds its place on a spectrum between “human story plagued by giant lizard” or “giant lizard story nagged by humans,” a balance easily miscalculated. The twenty-story-tall poster boy’s recent exploits in Hollywood have managed to have it neither way instead of both, overdosing on lore while dawdling with characters who cannot hope to be as interesting as their reptilian upstager… 

Of course the big guy’s home studio of Toho understands this better than anybody, as evident in 2016’s reinvigorating “Shin Godzilla,” in which bureaucratic red tape held up the defensive countermeasures as a comment on the mismanaged Fukushima meltdown of 2011. With estimable brawn and brain, its follow-up “Godzilla Minus One” returns to the primal scene of nuclear devastation to ponder the value of an individual life in the face of mass death, and finds a handful worth fighting for. 

In judging the nobility of self-sacrifice against the ambiguous morality of kamikaze warfare — posed as an injustice not to its targets, but rather to the Japanese soldiers spent like bullet casings by an indifferent state — writer/director Takashi Yamazaki does more than find a renewed purpose for an IP asset impervious to irrelevance. He’s reconciled the series’ pop thrills with the heaviness of its political subtext more skillfully than anyone since the rubber-suit days by melding the two into an ideological spectacle to rival Sergei Eisenstein’s, both in its foregrounded populist leanings as well its rousing, cathartic montage in action.

29. “Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World”

Director: Radu Jude

Cast: Ilinca Manolache, Nina Hoss, and Uwe Boll

Read IndieWire’s Review: It takes flair to concoct visual-gag-after-visual-gag within episodic riffs on the raw deals suffered by the gig-economy-classes in modern day Bucharest. Radu Jude blends absurdist humor with keen social integrity, like a sharper Romanian riposte to Ruben Östlund, as the trials of a dangerously overworked production assistant named Ange (Ilinca Manolache, sensational) builds to a 40-minute final shot in which tragicomedy is heaped upon tragicomedy to unbearably brilliant effect.

Observing a nation’s shortcomings is not typically this fun. Yet — unlike latter-day miserabilist works by the likes of Ken Loach — Jude’s “Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World” and its barbs stick entirely because Jude trusts his audience to appreciate tonal scope.

28. “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt”

Director: Raven Jackson)

Cast: Charleen McClure, Moses Ingram, Reginald Helms Jr., Zainab Jah, Sheila Atim, and Chris Chalk

Read IndieWire’s Review: A whispered symphony of sense memories that cycles through the decades like rain water — heavy with images and ambient sounds that trickle down from the generations above before they’re absorbed into the earth and suffused back into the air — the vague but vividly rendered “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt” runs a little drier every time writer-director Raven Jackson loops back to squeeze another drop of meaning from the textures and traditions that connect a Black Mississippi woman to the place where she was born (and vice-versa).

Her name is Mackenzie, she’s played by a small troupe of different actresses over the course of Jackson’s freeform debut, and the body they share between them serves as a kind of living conduit between then, now, and whatever comes next. Her story is filtered through a too-studied slipstream of a movie that makes its vignettes feel as neatly arranged as the verses of a poem, its scenes spanning from the ’60s to the ’80s but all located in an eternal now that quickly does away with the linearity of flashbacks or forwards.

27. “You Hurt My Feelings”

Director: Nicole Holofcener

Cast: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Tobias Menzies, Michaela Watkins, Arian Moayed, Owen Teague, and Jeannie Berlin

Read IndieWire’s Review: Filmmaker Nicole Holofcener has long been one of our foremost chroniclers of the minutiae of everyday life, someone uniquely equipped to marry the very funny with the very honest, the sort of creator who makes things that hurt, in both good and bad ways. For her first original feature in a decade — she’s been making plenty of TV in recent years, and in 2018, directed and scripted the Ted Thompson adaptation “The Land of Steady Habits” — Holofcener returns to classic territory: a New York City story about neuroses and good intentions and the slights that keep us at night. It’s, of course, about love.

And while “You Hurt My Feelings” is not without all the things Holofencer does so very well — all that honesty, all that understanding of the texture of everyday life, plus Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the spotlight, where she belongs — it also feels decidedly low-key for such a insightful filmmaker. The shagginess of it, the missteps, the rambling bits are pleasurable enough, and there are plenty of laughs and insights here, but there’s also nothing new. If you like Nicole Holofcener films, you will like this one, and there’s comfort in that, if not an edge of disappointment, too.

26. “John Wick: Chapter 4”

Director: Chad Stahelski

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård, Laurence Fishburne, and more

Read IndieWire’s Review: The “John Wick” franchise has evolved from a small-scale tale of revenge for the death of a wife and the killing of a do  to a globe-trotting epic that spans continents, dozens of characters, and an intricate mythology. In its fourth chapter, director Chad Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves bring this franchise back to its roots while expanding the world and the story to bigger and bolder places. The result is not only the best movie in the franchise, but the best American action blockbuster since George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

After going to war with essentially the entire world, and causing the deaths of hundreds of people, “Chapter 4” finally starts pondering the question of just how far John Wick is willing to go for revenge, how many people close to him he’s willing to endanger, and whether it was all worth it. At this point, this is no longer about the killing of his wife and dog, it’s about burning down a system that always resented Wick for abandoning it.

25. “Godland”

Director: Hlynur Pálmason

Cast: Elliott Crosset Hove, Ingvar Sigurdsson, Vic Carmen Sonne

Read IndieWire’s Review : The life and work of writer-director Hlynur Pálmason seems suspended in a liminal space between his homeland of Iceland and the neighboring Scandinavian nation of Denmark, where he studied filmmaking and has now raised a family. And nowhere is that interstitial status more evidently reflected than in his third and finest feature yet, “Godland,” an arrestingly beautiful and philosophically imposing bilingual historical drama about the arrogance of mankind in the face of nature’s unforgiving prowess, the inherent failures of colonial enterprises, and how these factors configure the cultural identities of individuals.

24. “The Taste of Things”

Director: Tran Anh Hung

Cast: Juliette Binoche, Benoît Magimel

Read IndieWire’s Review : There is something to be said for a simple dish made with the best ingredients by a trusted hand. Just as a perfect omelet made by a lover is more satisfying than an eight-hour feast laid on by a Prince, so it follows that a film like “The Pot-au-Feu” works, not in spite of, but because it focuses on executing its basic premise with enrapturing attention to detail. This is a story about love and food, which it presents as the same thing.

23. “Maestro”

Director: Bradley Cooper

Cast: Carey Mulligan, Matt Bomer, Vincenzo Amato

Read IndieWire’s Review : Bradley Cooper exerts and exhausts his soul to not only direct and co-write “Maestro,” about the great composer and New York Philharmonic conductor Leonard Bernstein, but also to star as the complicated musical legend widely known for writing the score for “West Side Story.” Much ado has already been made about the prosthetic nose the gentile second-time feature filmmaker dons to inhabit the specific skin of the Jewish maestro, who died of a heart attack in 1990 at 72. This feat of sculptural makeup effects by artist Kazu Hiro is an unnecessary distraction that never stops reminding you that the person underneath is actually Bradley Cooper, not Bernstein.

Nose aside, “Maestro” is a technical triumph in terms of checking all the boxes of multihyphenate-ism — Cooper funnels himself into the project at every creative level — but this handsomely made Oscar-tailored package actually belongs to another person entirely, and that would be Carey Mulligan, playing Bernstein’s wife of nearly four decades, Felicia Montealegre.

22. “Perfect Days” (Wim Wenders)

Director: Wim Wenders

Cast: Koji Yakusho, Tokio Emoto, Arisa Nakano

Read IndieWire’s Review : Wim Wenders‘ latest, “Perfect Days” plays like the culmination of filmmaker’s long tryst with Japanese virtuoso Ozu Yasujirō, which includes Wenders’ 1985 Ozu documentary “Tokyo-Ga,” and manifests here as a distinctly Ozu-esque observance of life and rhythm. First commissioned as a short film project celebrating Tokyo’s state-of-the-art public toilets — the great social equalizer — Wenders snatches the concept and doesn’t so much run with it as much as he strolls with it in the park while contemplating dreams, the dignity of labor, and the fleeting joys of waking moments.

21. “The Killer”

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Charles Parnell, Arliss Howard

Read IndieWire’s Review : Like the “Jeanne Dielman” of assassin movies, “The Killer” centers on how the self-started glitches in one character’s routine cause their carefully ordered world to fall slowly off its axis. David Fincher’s sleek if small genre exercise plants us into the orbital sockets of an unnamed killer-for-hire, played by Michael Fassbender, whose self-deceptions catch up to him amid a contract job gone just about an inch wrong in Paris.

There are few surprises in this straight-line thriller, well-executed within a millimeter of its life as ever by the “Gone Girl” and “Social Network” director. Here, the perfectionist, you-might-say-control-freak director punches up a nimbly sketched screenplay by “Seven” scribe Andrew Kevin Walker that evokes no sympathy for its protagonist, played with Zen-cool by a no-pulse Fassbender.

20. “Afire”

Director: Christian Petzold

Cast: Thomas Schubert, Paula Beer, Langston Uibel

Read IndieWire’s Review : Gently dunking on a writer of near-apocalyptic pomposity over the course of a languid seaside vacation, Petzold’s latest film plays a bit like “Barton Fink” by way of Eric Rohmer, though the slight dramedy never quite equals either of those highs. Still, this smoldering tour through the life of the mind marks an endearing change of pace for the talented filmmaker, who trades the capital-H history of “Phoenix” and romantic fantasy of “Undine” for a more subdued — and sometimes surprisingly funny — character study.

19. “Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret”

Director: Kelly Fremon Craig

Cast: Rachel McAdams, Abby Ryder Fortson, Kathy Bates, Benny Safdie

Read IndieWire’s Review : Judy Blume never talked down to kids or adults, and such is the spirit that drives Kelly Fremon Craig‘s film adaptation of “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” It’s an adaptation that Blume long resisted, at least before “The Edge of Seventeen” filmmaker and her mentor and producer James L. Brooks pitched their idea to her, but Blume’s book translates beautifully to the big screen with same zip, pep, and good humor of Blume’s books.

18. “Pacifiction”

Director: Albert Serra

Cast: Benoît Magimel, Pahoa Mahagafanau, Marc Susini

Read IndieWire’s Review : What do you want when you already have paradise? That question looms over Albert Serra’s singularly mysterious cinematic immersion into Tahiti, “Pacifiction.” The indigenous Polynesians living there would likely argue that this paradise hasn’t been theirs in a long time. Serra, the Catalan filmmaker behind such boundary-pushing works of experiential filmmaking as “Honor of the Knights” and “Story of My Death,” is yet another outsider coming to their shores, but he avoids the touristic travel-porn clichés of most movies set in some tropical locale. “Pacifiction” is not a vicarious experience of luxury; it is an experience of life. Set to its own tidal rhythm, it is one of the most beautiful and rigorously introspective movies of this or any year, a film that makes you deeply ponder the fate of humanity itself.

17. “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”

Directors: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson

Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Brian Tyree Henry, Oscar Isaac, Issa Rae

Read IndieWire’s Review: “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” is awash in stories — its first five or so minutes, an ostensible prologue, is a dynamic tragedy in miniature, and that’s just the first five minutes — all built around an idea one of its characters tosses out during a similarly information-packed voiceover: They’re going to “do things differently.” It’s precisely what the film‘s predecessor, the rightly Oscar-winning “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” did four years ago, taking a well-worn concept (a Spider-Man origin story? again?) and turning it into an actual masterpiece built on a wealth of stories, new and old, told with legitimate energy and innovation. And it’s what Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson attempt to replicate in their sequel, an aim that pays off mightily.

16. “American Fiction”

Director: Cord Jefferson

Cast: Jeffrey Wright, Tracee Ellis Ross, 

Read IndieWire’s Review : In “American Fiction,” the comic and tragic go hand in hand. Each moment is layered with meaning, socially, politically, and emotionally. The film, based on the novel “Erasure” by writer and professor Percival Everett, is part satire, part romantic comedy, all combined with thoughtful family drama. With an all-star cast and talented writer at the helm, “American Fiction” is poised to become an audience favorite.

15. “Passages”

Director: Ira Sachs

Cast: Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, Adèle Exarchopoulos

Read IndieWire’s Review : A signature new drama from a director whose best work (“Keep the Lights On,” “Love Is Strange”) is at once both generously tender in its brutality and unsparingly brutal in its tenderness, the raw and resonant “Passages” is the kind of fuck around and find out love triangle that rings true because we aspire to its sexier moments but see ourselves in its most selfish ones.

14. “The Boy and the Heron”

Director: Hayao Miyazaki

Cast: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Ko Shibasaki 

Read IndieWire’s Review : It’s true that “How Do You Live?” — which tells an original story that borrows its title from Genzaburo Yoshino’s 1937 novel of the same name, and has been inexplicably rechristened “The Boy and the Heron” for its international release at Studio Ghibli’s behest… despite the fact that Yoshino’s book acts as a crucial plot point in a film whose climax hinges upon an obvious stand-in for its writer-director literally asking the audience “How do you live?” — isn’t Miyazaki’s best film. It lacks the full kineticism of “The Castle of Cagliostro,” the fury of “Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind,” the adventure of “Castle in the Sky,” the Totoro of “My Neighbor Totoro,” the effervescence of “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” the romance of “Porco Rosso,” the grandeur of “Princess Mononoke,” the beguilement of “Spirited Away,” the floridness of “Howl’s Moving Castle,” the hamminess of “Ponyo,” or the emotional mega-wattage of “The Wind Rises.” 

Crucially, however, “The Boy and the Heron” contains aspects of all of those things (in addition to more overt references to the anime godhead’s previous work). And while this dream-like warble of a swan song may be too pitchy and scattered to hit with the gale-force power that made “The Wind Rises” feel like such a definitive farewell, “The Boy and the Heron” finds Miyazaki so nakedly bidding adieu — to us, and to the crumbling kingdom of dreams and madness that he’ll soon leave behind — that it somehow resolves into an even more fitting goodbye, one graced with the divine awe and heart-stopping wistfulness of watching a true immortal make peace with their own death. 

13. “All of Us Strangers”

Director: Andrew Haigh

Cast: Paul Mescal, Andrew Scott, Carter John Grout

Read IndieWire’s Review: God bless British Andrew Haigh, whose best films — “Weekend,” “45 Years,” and now the quietly shattering “All of Us Strangers” — are the rare work of a modern director who knows how to get out of their own way. Haigh’s simple but penetrating dramas couldn’t be more specific in how they depict the strangeness of intimacy and the intimacy of strangeness, and yet they’re also palpably unfilled in a way, like a half-empty room that someone you were looking for just left. In that light, it should come as little surprise that Haigh is so well-suited to an ineffably personal ghost story about the absences that can shape our entire lives if we let them.

12. “Showing Up”

Director: Kelly Reichardt

Cast: Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, Andre 3000

Read IndieWire’s Review : “First Cow” may not have been anywhere near as soul-devouringly sad as “Wendy and Lucy,” but that bittersweet frontier comedy about two friends who get milked to death while trying to make an honest buck was still bleak enough to leave me very scared for the heroine of Kelly Reichardt’s latest film about desperate people and the animals with which they run afoul. Or, a fowl, as the case may be in the director’s feathery “Showing Up,” a slight knowing smile of a movie starring Michelle Williams as a stressed-out Portland ceramist with a pageboy haircut who reluctantly finds herself nursing an injured pigeon during the most important week of her not-quite career.

11. “Fallen Leaves”

Director: Aki Kaurismäki

Cast: Alma Pöysti, Martti Suosalo, Jussi Vatanen

Read IndieWire’s Review : Indeed, she gets fired from the supermarket for stealing expired food, and he struggles to stay sober long enough to get through an entire shift at the construction site where he works with his friend, Houtari (Kaurismäki veteran Janne Hyytiäinen, wonderful here as a wannabe lothario who possesses a divine confidence in his karaoke skills). But hope, much like “Fallen Leaves” itself, is only ever believed to be lost, and happiness is never far at hand. 

10. “Asteroid City”

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Brian Cranston, Steve Carrell, Margot Robbie

Read IndieWire’s Review: Like any movie by Wes Anderson, “Asteroid City” is the epitome of a Wes Anderson movie. A film about a television program about a play within a play “about infinity and I don’t know what else” (as one character describes it), this delightfully profound desert charmer — by far the director’s best effort since “The Grand Budapest Hotel,” and in some respects the most poignant thing he’s ever made — boasts all of his usual hallmarks and then some.

9. “The Holdovers”

Director: Alexander Payne

Cast: Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa

Read IndieWire’s Review : Set in the winter of 1970 and shot to look as if it had actually been made back then, Alexander Payne’s nuanced and hyper-literate “The Holdovers” takes great pleasure in defying every impulse of modern cinema from even before the moment it starts (the studio fanfare includes a “throwback” Focus Features logo, which is a cute little in-joke about a company that wasn’t founded until 2002). And yet, it might take even greater pleasure in embracing some of the movies’ most time-honored tropes and traditions. 

Chief among them: The inviolable rule that anything a school teacher “casually” tells their students in the first act of a film must speak to a core idea of the film itself. In that light, be sure to take notes during the opening scene in which Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) quotes Cicero to the “vulgar philistines” in his Ancient Civilization class. “Non nobis solum nati sumus.” “Not for ourselves alone are we born.” No spoilers, but that’s definitely going to be on the final exam of “The Holdovers,” which gradually thaws into a slight but sensitive tale about a trio of lonely souls who teach each other to push through their lives’ most isolating disappointments.

8. “Barbie”

Director: Greta Gerwig 

Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Will Ferrell, Kate McKinnon, America Ferrera

Read IndieWire’s Review : Gerwig, as ever, has assembled a stellar supporting cast. All Barbies delight, but the Kens, appropriately enough, launch a real sneak attack, especially Simu Liu and Kingsley Ben-Adir, and Michael Cera nearly makes off with the whole thing as the singular sidekick Allan. There’s also a murderer’s row of below-the-line talent: Opuses can and will be written about Sarah Greenwood’s production design and Jacqueline Durran’s costumes. “Barbie” is a lovingly crafted blockbuster with a lot on its mind, the kind of feature that will surely benefit from repeat viewings (there is so much to see, so many jokes to catch) and is still purely entertaining even in a single watch.

It’s Barbie’s world, and we’re all just living in it. How fantastic.

7. “Anatomy of a Fall”

Director: Justine Triet 

Cast: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado Graner, Antoine Reinartz

Read IndieWire’s Review : Rounding out her own impressive hat trick, “Toni Erdmann” and “The Zone of Interest” star Sandra Hüller dazzles in a role clearly written with the performer in mind. She plays Sandra, a German-born, France-based bisexual novelist accused of killing her male partner in a way eerily foretold by one of her novels. And if that description calls to mind another icy-blond (in a performance, incidentally, that also shook the Cannes Film Festival, back in 1992), the echo is both wholly intentional and entirely irrelevant. Indeed, “Anatomy of a Fall” is filled with such anti-portents — coincidences or clues, depending who you ask, echoes or empty noise, depending on who’s listening.

6. “The Zone of Interest”

Director: Jonathan Glazer

Cast: Sandra Hüller, Christian Friedel, Freya Kreutzkam

Read IndieWire’s Review : A narrative Holocaust drama that’s defined by its rigorous compartmentalization and steadfast refusal to show any hint of explicit violence, Jonathan Glazer’s profoundly chilling “The Zone of Interest”stands out for how formally the film splits the difference between the two opposite modes of its solemn genre — a genre that may now be impossible to consider without it. No Holocaust movie has ever been more committed to illustrating the banality of evil, and that’s because no Holocaust movie has ever been more hell-bent upon ignoring evil altogether. There is a literal concrete wall that separates Glazer’s characters from the horrors next door, and not once does his camera dare to peek over it for a better look. It doesn’t even express the faintest hint of that desire.

5. “May December”

Director: Todd Haynes

Cast: Julianne Moore, Natalie Portman, Charles Melton

Read IndieWire’s Review: A heartbreakingly sincere piece of high camp that teases real human drama from the stuff of tabloid sensationalism, Todd Haynes’ delicious “May December” continues the director’s tradition of making films that rely upon the self-awareness that seems to elude their characters — especially the ones played by Julianne Moore. 

4. “Past Lives”

Director: Celine Song

Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magro, Moon Seung-ah

Read IndieWire’s Review : Of all the writers retreats in all the summer towns in all of New York, he had to walk into hers. As the sun fades on a perfect Montauk night — setting the stage for a first kiss that, like so many of the most resonant moments in Celine Song’s transcendent “Past Lives,” will ultimately be left to the imagination — Nora (Greta Lee) tells Arthur (John Magaro) about the Korean concept of In-Yun, which suggests that people are destined to meet one another if their souls have overlapped a certain number of times before

3. “Poor Things”

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley

Read IndieWire’s Review : “Poor Things” is the best film of Lanthimos’ career and already feels like an instant classic, mordantly funny, whimsical and wacky, unprecious and unpretentious, filled with so much to adore that to try and parse it all here feels like a pitiful response to the film’s ambitions.

2. “Oppenheimer”

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Matt Damon

Read IndieWire’s Review : At first, I thought that if J. Robert Oppenheimer didn’t exist, Christopher Nolan would probably have been compelled to invent him. The exalted British filmmaker has long been fixated upon stories of haunted and potentially self-destructive men who sift through the source code of space-time in a desperate bid to understand the meaning of their own actions, and so the “father of the atomic bomb” — a theoretical physicist whose obsession with a twilight world hidden inside our own led to the birth of the modern age’s most biblical horrors — would seem to represent an uncannily perfect subject for the “Tenet” director’s next epic. And he is. In fact, Oppenheimer is so perversely well-suited to the Nolan treatment that I soon began to realize I had things backwards: Christopher Nolan only exists because men like J. Robert Oppenheimer invented him first. 

1. “Killers of the Flower Moon”

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons

Read IndieWire’s Review : It’s a difficult balancing act for a filmmaker as gifted and operatic as Scorsese, whose ability to tell any story rubs up against his ultimate admission that this might not be his story to tell. And so, for better or worse, Scorsese turns “Killers of the Flower Moon” into the kind of story that he can still tell better than anyone else: A story about greed, corruption, and the mottled soul of a country that was born from the belief that it belonged to anyone callous enough to take it. 

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Hollywood reporter critics pick the 10 best films of 2023 so far.

THR’s reviewers choose faves from the first half of the year, including a Michelle Williams-Kelly Reichardt collab, Miles Morales’ latest adventure and an aching love-triangle drama.

By David Rooney , Sheri Linden , Lovia Gyarkye , Jon Frosch , Leslie Felperin , Jordan Mintzer June 26, 2023 6:45am

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A transcendent chamber piece, Aleem Khan’s feature-length directorial debut is graced with an exceptional lead performance from Joanna Scanlan as an English woman who converted to Islam for marriage years ago — only to discover, when her husband dies, that he was living a shocking double life. It’s a miraculous study of grief, jealousy and ultimately compassion, all executed with very little dialogue.­­ — LESLIE FELPERIN

ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET

Related stories, sienna miller talks nurturing new talent alongside cate blanchett with bull-jumping short 'marion', from 'traitors' to theater: alan cumming sets new gig as artistic director of pitlochry festival theatre, de humani corporis fabrica.

Véréna Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor take us not only deep inside the world of invasive medical procedures in several Parisian hospitals, but as far inside the human body as a feature-length documentary has ever gone. For those who can stomach it, this fascinating look at modern surgery is a memorable experience, making us ponder our own humanity as we watch people reduced to pure flesh and blood. — JORDAN MINTZER

In the late 19th century, a young priest travels from Denmark to Iceland, where his mission is mocked by nature and the corruptibility of his faith in Hlynur Pálmason’s mesmerizing elemental epic. That description suggests brooding portentousness, but there’s a marvelously odd vein of sneaky humor running through the film, along with an unpredictability that keeps you glued. It’s a work of grim majesty that exerts a powerful hold. — DAVID ROONEY

OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN

Anchored by a superb Virginie Efira as a 40-ish teacher whose bond with her boyfriend’s young daughter awakens unexpected maternal yearnings, Rebecca Zlotowski’s latest film confirms her gift for injecting formulas with freshness and charm, smarts and sexiness. It has all the contours of conventional Parisian dramedy, but gradually deepens into something much tougher and wiser. — JON FROSCH

PALM TREES AND POWER LINES

It’s difficult to convey the multilayered beauty of playwright Celine Song’s exquisite debut feature, beyond urging people to see it for themselves and experience its transfixing spell. The melancholy romantic drama features Greta Lee as a woman observed at three points in time, with Teo Yoo and John Magaro as the men whose fates are tethered to hers across two continents. It’s a film that prompts you to reach back into your own life, to ponder forks in the road and consider how a different course might have altered your identity. — D.R.

Leading a cast of mostly nonprofessionals with take-no-prisoners intensity, Julie Ledru plays a motorbike rider who claims her place in the brotherhood of outlawed dirt bike “rodeos.” The strife and hustle of Paris’ suburbs have been portrayed before, but never through the eyes of such an uncategorizable protagonist. Lola Quivoron’s exhilarating genre mashup is a crime story, a character study and an existential mystery, a celebration and a lament both gritty and transcendent.­­ — SHERI LINDEN

SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

Even when it feels leaden with backstory, this thrilling second chapter of the Spider-Verse series, in which Miles faces challenges across the multiverse, vibrates with the same freewheeling energy as its predecessor. The result is a visual feast, with an impressive layering of styles and a hero at its center who remains very much worth rooting for. — L.G.

This story first appeared in the June 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe .

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• What Is Cinema?

The Best Movies of 2023

The best movies of 2023 run the gamut from intense dramas to should-have-been studio blockbusters to quietly perfect slice-of-life studies. Some are splashy prestige productions with the backing of a major awards campaign; some are quirky passion projects, as idiosyncratic as the filmmakers who created them. (In a few thrilling cases, they’re both things at the same time.) Existential unease, literate thrills, devastation and the sublime: they’re all here in this year’s best of 2023 list, ranked from wonderful to even better. Happy watching.

21. Reality

A bold conceit is carried out with precise technical direction in Tina Satter ’s adaptation of the play Is This a Room, a harrowing chamber thriller that stages the transcript of NSA whistleblower Reality Winner ’s initial interrogation and arrest. Sydney Sweeney leaves Euphoria histrionics behind to give a measured, tightly controlled performance, deftly mapping a young woman’s dawning realization that her life is about to change, terribly and forever. Satter adds a few cinematic flourishes, but otherwise keeps the film stern and focused, solemnly observing the consequences of speaking truth to power. Starkly presented and small in scale, Reality nonetheless feels huge and vivid, a light breaking through a dark and tangled web of lies and misinformation.

20. Blue Beetle

If we simply must have superhero movies, may they all be as lively and appealing as Ángel Manuel Soto ’s rollicking adventure. Blue Beetle is sharp in its political argument—framing gentrification as a continuation of colonialism’s long and insidious project—but also abundant with silly humor and genuine sentiment. Xolo Maridueña is a bright and engaging lead, while Adriana Barraza steals scenes as a kindly grandmother possessed of hidden mettle. A rare superhero movie that successfully blends action and message, Blue Beetle was of course a poorly marketed box office dud. Clearly, some studios don’t recognize a good thing when they have it.

19. Pretty Red Dress

We have seen aspects of Dionne Edwards ’s film before: a marriage straining under the weight of unspoken desire, impossible dreams reached for and unrealized. But Pretty Red Dress synthesizes what might be called cliché into something wholly original. Natey Jones and former X Factor star Alexandra Burke richly render a married couple—one just out of prison, the other pursuing her West End acting ambitions—as they navigate a pivotal moment in their relationship. A thoughtful study of masculinity and sexuality, Pretty Red Dress is above all else a deeply humane film, letting its characters yearn and wish with all the contradiction and nuance of real people in the real world. Edward’s film, her debut feature, is one of the year’s hidden gems, waiting to be discovered in all its intricate facets.

18. Sharper

A movie of the sort they don’t make often enough these days, Benjamin Caron ’s twisty con game is a literate pleasure . The cast— Justice Smith,Briana Middleton,Sebastian Stan, and a fabulously shifty Julianne Moore —perfectly balance the sexy and the sinister, tearing into a clever script with panache. Caron, mostly known as a TV director in the UK, has a keen sense of rhythm and an eye for composition. Sharper is polished and sophisticated but never forgets that it is, at root, a seamy little B-movie. Which is great! May there be more compact, nifty films like this, ones that tell a good story and don’t skimp on aesthetics ( Sharper was shot on film) like so many streamer-original movies do. Hopefully we’ll someday reach a time when films like Sharper are given proper theatrical releases again.

A film about both sexual abuse and early onset dementia, Memory has all the trappings of overegged melodrama. But writer-director Michel Franco chooses subtlety over excess, pulling in close on two characters, played with understated grace by Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, as they contend with the limits and regrets of their lives. Set in wintry little corners of Brooklyn, Memory has a keen sense of place—and a sense of true purpose, examining the wear and tear of adulthood with sober compassion.

16. Monster

The great Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda offers up another poignant assessment of life’s bumpier dimensions . This time, there is an air of mystery to the story, a secret uncovered through intriguing shifts in narrative perspective. What is eventually revealed is a close friendship, and maybe something more, between two tweenage boys both coping with loss. At once delicate and brimming with feeling, Monster has a deep affection for all of its characters, even the ones who behave rashly or carelessly. Which is to say, all of them—and all of us.

15. Perfect Days

Decades into a storied career, director Wim Wenders finds new vim on the streets of Tokyo, traversed by a solitary (but not exactly lonely) toilet cleaner (played by Koji Yakusho ) as he goes about his work. Told as a series of linked short stories, Perfect Days finds poetry in the banal, though not in the condescending fashion of so many other so-called tributes to the everyday working man. An existential murmur courses under the modest action of Wenders’s film, prodding the audience toward a sincere appreciation of the small moments that comprise any life in the world. The closing minutes of Perfect Days are among the most moving of the year, as a man wordlessly takes stock of all he’s experienced and putters along toward more.

14. Four Daughters

Kaouther Ben Hania ’s film is a beguiling blend of documentary and deliberate artifice. To tell the harrowing story of a Tunisian woman, Olfa Hamrouni, who lost two daughters when they joined the Islamic State, Ben Hania has enlisted actors to reenact some of the events leading up to Hamrouni’s estrangement from her children. We also see the hired actors interacting with the real family, all engaged in a lively and at times uncomfortable discourse about parenting and politics. A fascinating survey of post-Arab Spring Tunisia and a probing commentary on memory and storytelling, Four Daughters makes grand use of its meta premise.

13. Poor Things

Emma Stone totters and lurches toward greatness in Yorgos Lanthimos ’s strange and strangely moving bildungsroman. Stone plays a Frankensteinian creation (a baby’s brain placed inside the skull of an adult body) who, as she grows, becomes a literate and libidinous woman of the world. Lanthimos takes inspiration from the lookbooks of Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton to create a dark fantasy version of continental Europe, through which Stone merrily makes her way, delivering a perhaps career-best performance as she goes. Grim but never bleak, clever but not smug, Poor Things is a nervy experiment that yields oddly beautiful results.

12. Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World

Romanian provocateur Radu Jude takes us on a rambling, funny, creepingly depressing tour of Bucharest in the passenger seat of a well-used car driven by the arresting actor Ilinca Manolache. She plays a production assistant interviewing potential subjects for a workplace-safety-training video—everyone she speaks to has been somehow injured on the job, and is now mired in a hell of legal bureaucracy. Jude takes aim at his country’s frayed social infrastructure, the plundering greed of foreign companies benefiting from cheap labor, and at a media-sick public who have become calloused to the terrible things that flash across our screens every day. Mordant and trenchant, Do Not Expect Too Much From the End of the World does not offer much comfort beyond the grim catharsis of gallows humor.

A family gathers for a birthday party that may actually be a final goodbye to a beloved son, brother, and father in Lila Avilés ’s astonishing second feature. Avilés sets her camera darting and wandering around a middle-class Mexico City home as various relatives go about their day, busying themselves with anything other than worrying about the man slowly dying in the next room. Tótem is a riot of noise and motion, but none of it drowns out the sadness at the film’s center. Avilés builds toward a climax that is as dazzling as it is devastating, a moment of familial connection both profound and terribly fleeting.

10. Asteroid City

Wes Anderson ’s latest is both a return to form and a thoughtful expansion of the director’s humanist impulses . The story of disparate people (played by a starry array of actors) trapped in a tiny desert town at the height of the Atomic Age, Asteroid City considers matters of grief and loneliness, romance and existential wonder. Contained in its lovely diorama box is a winsome picture of life in almost its entirety, all the strangeness and sweetness and arrhythmia of being. What’s more, Anderson’s structural flourishes— Asteroid City is a play within a television broadcast within a film—do not alienate as they have in recent past efforts. Instead, Asteroid City finds true meaning in its layers, offering something like a consoling pat on the shoulder—or a willowy embrace—in difficult, confusing times.

9. Showing Up

Kelly Reichardt offers up perhaps her liveliest, warmest film yet with this wistful, softly comedic look at the making of things. The director’s frequent collaborator Michelle Williams is all watery sighs and huffs as a sculptor who lives in Portland, Oregon, earning a living at a local arts college and spending her spare time tending to her creative output. Reichardt lovingly teases the pretensions and neuroses of a milieu she knows well, while also saying something rather grand (in a quiet way) about what ends art is supposed to meet. Lilting yet sharp, Showing Up is a must-watch for anyone tinkering away at their own passions.

8. You Hurt My Feelings

At first glance, writer-director Nicole Holofcener ’s witty, beautifully acted comedy seems like a mere light romp through monied Manhattan. But as she always does, Holofcener has deeper things on her mind . You Hurt My Feelings is a sharp and often poignant study of the mechanics of love, how its eagerness to support and encourage can sometimes have the exact opposite effect. It’s a clever and thoughtful movie about white lies and well-meaning indulgence, wise in its detailed observation of human behavior. And what a human Holofcener has cast in the lead: Julia Louis-Dreyfus (who is also excellent in Holofcener’s Enough Said ) gives a radiant star turn, as naturally dexterous with the film’s peppery comedy and she is with its bleary drama. It’s an immensely charismatic performance, one that would, in a just world, be recognized by awards-giving bodies at year’s end.

7. Anatomy of a Fall

While there is certainly some suspense in Justine Triet ’s riveting film , it’s more drama than thriller, an inquest into the unknowable. How well do we really know those closest to us? How well do we really know our own hearts, our own capacities for love and anger? Sandra Hüller anchors Triet’s film with a fierce intelligence, never betraying moral judgment of her character—a woman accused of murdering her husband in what may actually have been a terrible accident. Hüller’s is one of the great performances of the year, as shifty and multifaceted as Triet’s ever-morphing film. Anatomy of a Fall is either a murder mystery or the sad story of a mishap, a look at a marriage brought to the worst breaking point or at one cruelly interrupted mid-sentence. Either way, Anatomy of a Fall is dazzling, provocative entertainment, a worthy winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or and whatever other awards it picks up in the coming months. 

6. Earth Mama

An auspicious feature debut from filmmaker Savanah Leaf, Earth Mama is a grounded look at motherhood, poverty, and adoption. Tia Nomore, also making her film debut, sensitively plays Gia, a woman at a major crossroads. She’s in recovery and is working to clean up her life in order to get her children out of foster care and make way for a new baby she’s due to deliver any day. As she struggles to find work and hold onto her housing, Gia must confront the possibility that perhaps her baby would be better off with another family. Leaf has not made some gritty, exploitative movie that makes a novelty of Gia’s circumstances; Earth Mama is instead carefully observed and pitched in a credible timbre. Leaf has made an empathetic film about choice, which Gia still possesses despite being denied so much else.

5. Passages

A romantic drama without much romance, Ira Sachs ’s beguiling character study examines the heedless man at the center of an interpersonal storm. The great Franz Rogowski —preening, pitiable, vibrating with restless energy—plays a film director, Tomas, who disrupts the relative contentedness of his marriage (to Martin, played by Ben Whishaw ) by embarking on an affair with a Parisian school teacher, Agathe ( Adèle Exarchopoulos ). Relationships crack and heal and crack again in this intelligent, funny, evocative film . Full of sex and talk (the foundation of so many couplings), Passages rambles, in its high-minded way, toward a mysteriously poignant conclusion: an image of a man somehow stuck in ceaseless motion.

4. The Zone of Interest

A dreadful film in the most literal sense, British artiste Jonathan Glazer ’s fourth feature concerns itself with the man who runs Auschwitz and his family, a happy clan of Germans who enjoy lush grounds, a well-appointed home, even a swimming pool. The boggling horror happening just over the garden walls is never seen—but is palpably felt, mostly through horrifically effective sound design. Glazer’s film is a period piece, but it is also keen with awful relevance to today; the director is ringing something like an alarm bell, hoping to shake people out of complacency, out of the assumption that evil will flamboyantly announce itself rather than insidiously seep in, corrupting every seemingly normal thing it touches. The Zone of Interest is a marvel of form, but Glazer does not prize style over substance. His film is clear and urgent in its themes, its insistence that the noise we hear in the distance isn’t as far off as we’d like to believe.

3. The Holdovers

It’s been a long while since director Alexander Payne last served up a prickly little slice of life. The Holdovers is a welcome return to the forms of Nebraska and Sideways, tart and bleary at once. Paul Giamatti , doing his most appealing work since Private Life, plays a sorry, drunken boarding school teacher tasked with watching one left-behind student over winter break in the early 1970s. Newcomer Dominic Sessa is a gangly, endearing revelation as that problem student, while Da’Vine Joy Randolph provides invaluable support as a cafeteria worker tasked with feeding these messy men while tending to her own profound sorrow. Payne’s worldview has been softened by age; where he might have gone mean 20 or so years ago, he instead turns to ragged empathy. He finds the grace in the shambolic, depicting a tired, downtrodden older man as he allows the springy obnoxiousness of youth to coax him out of stasis. The Holdovers is a very good Christmas movie and a great New Year’s one: a look at resolutions that may really stick this time.

2. Past Lives

One of t he most striking debut features in years , Celine Song ’s decades- and continents-spanning romantic drama took Sundance by storm in January. Although “storm” implies something aggressive, which Past Lives , in all its delicate emotional insight, certainly is not. Instead it’s a sad, swooning, graceful look at the journeys of immigration and aging, telling a story about two old friends and maybe lovers. The film follows Nora (played as an adult by Greta Lee ) and Hae Sung (played as an adult by Teo Yoo ), early adolescent pals in Seoul who are separated, seemingly forever, when Nora’s family moves to Canada. Past Lives traces their initially tentative and then wholehearted reunion years later, as they reconcile the realities of their adult selves with their dreamily remembered youth. Song swathes her film’s metaphysical questions in gorgeous, summery light, crafting a lilting portrait of life in its infinite dimensions and sliding-doors possibilities. Past Lives is a must-see gem of a film, one that augurs many good things for its fledgling creator. 

1. May December

From one angle, May December is a dark comedy about sexual mores and tabloid nosiness about the business of others. From another, Todd Haynes ’s film is a bitterly sad portrait of a life brutally compromised by childhood abuse. And another: The film is about the lie of moviemaking, its necessary bending of the truth and its tendency to pretend it’s doing otherwise. There are many more ways to approach May December (shrewdly written by Samy Burch ), a transfixing and shape-shifting film, sly and sophisticated. Natalie Portman, playing an actor researching a role she hopes will launch her into the prestige echelon, works wonders, making manifest all of our predatory hunger for sordid detail, our eagerness to assign a moral framework that defines our decency against others’ lack of it. Julianne Moore ferociously plays a woman who once did something monstrous but may or may not still be a monster, while Charles Melton gives the film its beating, broken heart. Coy and vaguely sinister—while still also kind, still attuned to the multitude of ambivalences contained within each character— May December could probably be endlessly unpacked, so varied are its tones and textures and piercing insights. What could have been a nasty little bit of camp is instead something wise and heady, a complex film whose mind whirs at breakneck speed.

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The best movies of 2023

From ‘Tár’ to ‘Barbie’, this is our ranking of the essential films of the year.

Oh, we are so back. It took a few years, but 2023 felt like the year that Hollywood finally found its footing post-pandemic – which is ironic, considering Hollywood also shut down for large parts of the year. Before all the strikes hit, though, there were indications that the movie industry was coming back to life. There was the #Barbenheimer phenomenon, of course, which helped power the domestic box office to its strongest overall numbers since 2019. But in terms of pure moviemaking, the year was particularly strong. Martin Scorsese dropped another masterpiece , while Across the Spider-Verse made comic-book movies fresh again (at least until Madam Web , anyway). Past Lives made audiences swoon, while small-time charmers like Theater Camp , Scrapper and Rye Lane reasserted the vitality of indie filmmaking. And don’t forget the one about the dancing killer doll !

Overall, it was a great year for movies – even the Oscars were enjoyable. But what movies were the greatest? Here are our picks.

RECOMMENDED:

🫶 The best movies of 2024 (so far) 📺 The best TV and streaming shows of 2023 🎥  The  100 greatest movies ever made

Been there, done that? Think again, my friend.

Best films of 2023

1.  tár.

Call it 'A Portrait of the Artist In the Midst of Being Canceled’. In Todd Field's psychological character study, Cate Blanchett is Lydia Tár, a genius-level composer, EGOT winner and insufferable narcissist whose icy demeanor hardly fractures as accusations of sexual impropriety threaten to shatter her career. Blanchett's Oscar-nominated performance has rightly earned the lion's share of plaudits, but the superb acting is buoyed by Field's subtly off-kilter visual style, lending the ‘ripped from the headlines’ narrative a hint of Kubrickian uncanniness.

2.  Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Building on the mash-up of animation styles that made Into the Spider-Verse so ridiculously vibrant and throwing in a multitude of new ones – stop-motion LEGO-mation, anyone? – this dizzying, dazzling sequel is the persuasive case for superhero movies than the played-out genre desperately needed. The Miles Morales version of Spidey, voiced again with a sense of wonderment and real soul by Shameik Moore, zooms across multiverses and meets several hundred parallel Spider-people in a personal quest with universal stakes. The gags and pop-culture references – delivered with trademark Lord and Miller irreverence – come so thick and fast, you’ll need several viewings to unpack them all. Which will not be a major burden with a movie this entertaining.

3.  Oppenheimer

Any year in which both the box office and the Academy Awards are dominated by a three-hour doomscroll through the life of the inventor of the atomic bomb should be considered a very good year for movies. It’s not just the tough subject matter that makes Christopher Nolan’s all-time-great biopic such a surprising blockbuster but the enormity of the themes contained within it: war, genocide, guilt, nuclear fission, the Red Scare, the Spanish Civil War, the apocalypse, love, marriage et al . Cillian Murphy, brilliant as J Robert Oppenheimer, wears it all in every line on his face, especially the ‘guilt’ part – he’s the walking embodiment of the phrase ‘your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should’.

4.  EO

Thanks to Banshees of Inisherin , Triangle of Sadness   and this disarmingly powerful four-legged odyssey from veteran Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski, the humble donkey has become a cinematic colossus of late – a kind of doleful-eyed, carrot-chewing Brando. The genius of EO , which follows one little donkey across Europe, is in using its furry hero as a mirror to reflect back at us the state of the world in all its beauty, pain and ineffable sadness. It shouldn’t be half as bewitching and emotional, but honestly, it ruined us. 

5.  Killers of the Flower Moon

Are we starting to take Martin Scorsese for granted? Shut out at the Oscars, and made the butt of more hacky ‘movies are too darn long now’ jokes, his account of the murders that plagued the oil-rich Osage Indian Reservation in Oklahoma in the 1920s is nevertheless ‘just’ another late-period masterpiece from cinema’s greatest living director, a darkly atmospheric true-crime epic informed by one of America’s original sins. Scorsese’s usual gang of A-listers, including Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons, are all typically excellent, but the soul of the film is the previously unheralded Lily Gladstone as Mollie Kyle, an Osage woman quietly haunted by the suspicion that she’s allowed the devil into her heart, home and community. 

6.  Return to Seoul

A diaspora tale of real psychological acuity and emotional eloquence, this captivating drama perfectly articulates the hurt of a young adopted Frenchwoman as she returns to the country of her birth and struggles to reconcile with the past. French-Cambodian filmmaker Davy Chou follows his brilliantly-drawn protagonist, the spiky, chaotic Freddie (Park Ji-Min), as she shrugs off Korean customs, her drunk-texting birth father and a continued sense of rejection from the mum who won’t acknowledge her in the hope of wrestling back control of her inner life. Like Freddie, it’s a film that will only grow in stature with the passing of time. 

7.  Anatomy of a Fall

Finding flaw in Justine Triet’s ( In Bed with Victoria ) brainy, provocative and elusive Palme d’Or winner is no easy task. It’s hard even to define it. Murder-mystery? Courtroom drama about an innocent woman ( Toni Erdmann ’s Sandra Hüller) suffering from institutionalised sexism? That question sits at its murky heart. A man falls from the balcony of his Alpine chalet and suspicion falls on his writer wife. Cue a forensic examination of a rocky marriage, as well as a knotty character study of a refreshingly complicated woman. Triet teases us with morsels of information that may (or may not) be important, like an arthouse version of Cluedo. Keep your wits about you and it’s one of the most satisfying cinema outings of the year.   

8.  Past Lives

Getting compared with Wong Kar-wai’s classic romance In the Mood for Love loads seriously unreasonable expectations on a first-time filmmaker. But Korean-Canadian filmmaker Celine Song’s tender-hearted romance holds up to them purely for its emotional intelligence and wisdom and its sheer empathy for its characters. The central relationship plays out over several decades between Korean New Yorker (Greta Lee) and the childhood sweetheart (Teo Yoo) who never left Seoul, and the husband who struggles to give her space to explore her feelings. A love letter to two people and two cities – Seoul and New York – in all their messy glory, it’s one we’ll be revisiting in years to come.

9.  May December

• 4 out of 5 stars
• Recommended

Todd Haynes’ latest melodrama – the ripped-from-the-headlines story of a suburban woman, Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), living in the shadow of an underage sex scandal – sounds maudlin. But Haynes, working off a brilliant screenplay from Samy Burch, injects the film with enough self-conscious camp to qualify as a comedy (at the Golden Globes, anyway), even as it explores heavy themes involving sexual power dynamics and self-delusion. It’s a complex, richly character-driven story, with Charles Melton quietly stealing scenes as Gracie’s now-adult partner and Natalie Portman as an oily TV actress preparing to play Gracie in an indie drama. But it’s hardly snooty – and the hilariously sensationalistic score is one of the year’s best running gags.

10.  The Boy and the Heron

The un-retirement of Hayao Miyazaki has been one of 2023's bonuses, but the great anime auteur wasn't here for a victory lap. His latest is as vital and vibrant as any of Studio Ghibli's best movies, a trippy adventure with shades of Lewis Carroll and 'Beauty and the Beast' that sends a grieving boy down a fantastical rabbit hole in wartime Japan to find healing and peace of mind. In the process,   The Boy and the Heron   manages to speak with typical empathy to our own troubled times. It's the best kind of weird and wonderful escapism – you will never look at parakeets the same way again – and the purest kind of big-screen balm.

11.  Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

• Action and adventure

Tom Cruise’s willingness to do literally any bastard-mad thing to entertain us finds its purest expression in the seventh instalment of the consistently excellent Mission: Impossible movies. He sprints, freefalls, races and horse-rides through a series of gawp-worthy action set pieces, occasionally while handcuffed to Hayley Atwell’s terrified franchise newbie, all expertly executed by writer-director Christopher McQuarrie. And the plot? Hard to say, this being the first part of a Dead Reckoning twofer and with multiple strands yet to be tied together, but it’s smart-baffling in the best M:I tradition. Kudos, too, to charisma machine Esai Morales, who somehow makes dialogue about A.I. sexy as the superbad, Gabriel. Roll on Part Two .

12.  How to Have Sex

A sunkissed hangout movie that sours and spins out of control like the worst kind of night out, Molly Manning Walker’s debut is where bubblegum fun strays into a minefield of sexual assault, trauma and heartbreak. Terrific newcomer Mia McKenna-Bruce is Tara, a high-schooler celebrating finishing her exams with a mates’ holiday to Crete. On the menu? Booze, partying and saying farewell to her virginity. Enter the seemingly charming Paddy (Samuel Bottomley) and exit all the good vibes. A coming-of-age drama they should teach in schools, How to Have Sex is not a bit less cinematic for its educational message.

13.  All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

• Documentaries

There’s so much going on in Laura Poitras’s doc, it speaks volumes for the quality of the filmmaking that it all hangs together so dexterously . Iconic photographer Nan Goldin is its subject, protagonist and guide, as the film takes in a tour of New York’s ’70s counterculture, ex-addict Goldin’s quest for justice against the odious Sacklers, the family behind America’s OxyContin epidemic, and the nuts and bolts of social activism. It’s moving, enthralling and artful – in every sense of the word.

14.  Rye Lane

Who said the romcom was dead? Putting an authentically South London spin to the Before Sunset formula of two strangers meeting, chatting and slowly falling for each other – ie with loads more chicken shops and Supermalts – Rye Lane is sparky, romantic and pisstakey in all the ways that London is. David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah provide charm, jokes and very relatable insecurities as two young Black Londoners, Dom and Yas – who slowly size each other up and – eventually – like what they see. Their Salt-N-Pepa karaoke scene is a mic drop moment in every sense. 

15.  Godzilla Minus One

Possibly the  angriest  Godzilla we’ve seen, this Toho reboot of the Japanese icon represents a triumphant homecoming for the kaiju after a series of murky and mediocre Hollywood blockbusters. Under the skilful oversight of VFX wizard Takashi Yamazaki, who writes and directs, the action beats are thunderous and the effects look great – and are always in the service of a surprisingly touching human story nestled amid the colossal destruction. One seaborne chase borrows from Jaws and isn’t embarrassed by the comparison. 

16.  Fremont

Played by real-life Afghan refugee Anaita Wali Zada, Donya is an interpreter forced to flee the Taliban and start afresh in America in this soulful, black-and-white study of loneliness and connection. With British-Iranian director Babak Jalali’s meticulous compositions and a faint, slackerish energy best embodied by Gregg Turkington’s drowsy, Jack London-loving psychologist who helps Donya tackle her undiagnosed PTSD, Fremont is not flattered by the Jim Jarmusch comparisons. It’s the kind of lo-fi gem that would have built a steady rep in the old days of video stores. It deserves to be discovered on streaming.

17.  They Cloned Tyrone

It got lost amid July’s Barbenheimer noise but this raucously entertaining, needle-sharp Blaxsploitation riff is ripe for discovery on Netflix. An almost uncategorisable mix of crime thriller, satirical comedy and near-future sci-fi, it’s the handiwork of a first-time filmmaker of real promise in Juel Taylor. He rescues the term ‘woke’ from the right-wing commentariat with a They Live -adjacent storyline in which John Boyega, Teyonah Parris and Jamie Foxx team up to uncover a conspiracy to control Black consciousness via… well, that would be spoiling one of the year’s best in-jokes. 

18.  The Fabelmans

It’s been an era of filmmakers recreating their childhoods on screen (and let’s face it, it’s mostly boyhoods we’re talking about), with Alfonso Cuarón, Paolo Sorrentino and Lee Isaac Chung all parlaying their own younger lives into Oscar-worthy dramas in recent years. But of all of these cine-reminiscences, Steven Spielberg’s feels the most alive to the possibility that it might even be misremembering or misinterpreting events – and thus it feels like the most guileless and honest of the lot. With Spielberg’s on-screen surrogate, Gabriel LaBelle’s Sammy Fabelman, to the fore, its many moments of hurt and wonderment are dazzlingly realised.

19.  Reality

Euphoria ’s Sydney Sweeney is electrifying as 25-year-old NSA translator Reality Winner, who was questioned by the FBI in 2017 over leaked documents relating to Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 election. Tina Satter’s anxiety-inducing thriller expertly transfers her ‘verbatim theatre’ stage production ‘Is This a Room?’ into a kind of verbatim cinema, drip-feeding dread in a real-time recreation of Winner’s first interrogation. It’s signals the arrival of a singular talent in Satter, and offers further evidence of Sweeney’s brilliance. Oh, and that double meaning title? Chef’s kiss.

20.  Theater Camp

Borrowing equally from the mockumentaries of Christopher Guest and modern single-camera sitcoms like Parks and Recreation , this spirited little comedy is pretty far from being something you’ve never seen before. But writer-directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman have clearly studied those influences closely, and they obviously know the small-stakes art world they spend the movie affectionately mocking on an intimate level. Following the attendees of a theater-focused summer camp in the Adirondacks as they plot a last-minute tribute to their ailing founder (Amy Sedaris, who’s sadly not around much), it mines the inherent humour of passionate people whose ambition far outstrips their resources. Needling drama kids (and drama adults) is like shooting fish that have been shoved into a high school locker, and the movie does indulge in some fairly broad cliches, but it never feels cruel, and the biggest laughs often come from just how big-hearted it is. In this vicious age, niceness can go a long way – and Theater Camp is some very nice stuff.

21.  The Old Oak

British cinema’s own old oak, Ken Loach delivers a (possibly final) film as inflamed and vital as ever. Some would argue to its detriment, with the line crossed from social realism and into straight polemic in its depiction of a struggling northeast English community reacting to the arrival of a group of Syrian refugees. But Loach and his long-time screenwriter Paul Laverty aren’t here to spin subtle, elliptical yarns. The Old Oak is another clarion call inspired by real-life crises that are impacting working class people and that directness is its greatest strength. And throughout, the cast of first-time actors bring unvarnished warmth to its moving moments of human connection. Who else is making films like this – and who will make them when Loach finally hangs up his clapperboard?

22.  Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

What unexpected joy and wisdom this stop-motion animation delivers. Expanding a 2010 short and perhaps taking a cue from Aardman’s classic Creature Comforts , it introduces us to a sparkly little mollusc called Marcel (voiced by co-creator Jenny Slate) and her gentle Nanna Connie (Isabella Rossellini), left behind when their community of shells disappears overnight. Enter documentary maker Dean (Slate’s co-creator Dean Fleischer Camp) to join the quest for this missing shell utopia. Cute by never cutesy, and with a surprisingly sharp wit, it’s cinematic soul food that’ll have you going back for a second helping.

23.  Saint Omer

The directness of French filmmaker Alice Diop‘s courtroom drama – a film of long, unblinking takes and zero showy camerawork – shouldn’t be confused with simplicity. Knotty and morally challenging, Saint Omer traverses some of the biggest cultural fault lines of modern Europe – race, migration, religion – in its story of a young woman (Guslagie Malanda) accused of leaving her child to drown on a Normandy beach. It’s based on a real-life court case that Diop herself attended and her recreation engages both the brain and the heart. Just try shaking it. 

24.  Barbie

It was the biggest movie of 2023, and one of the year’s major pop culture events in general, but for all its world domination, Barbie ended up being one heck of a strange movie. Maybe we should have expected it – after all, with Greta Gerwig writing and directing, along with her husband, Noah Baumbach, serving as co-writer, you knew it wasn’t just going to be a film about, like, an inspirational fashion model. But who could have predicted the feminist fantasia we actually got? Set in a matriarchal land of living dolls, where everything is blissful and neon and perfect until the fears, insecurities and toxic masculinity of the real world encroach, it’s a wickedly smart, unabashedly silly satire smuggled to the masses inside a fuschia-coloured disco ball. Margot Robbie is pitch-perfect as ‘Stereotypical Barbie’, practically sparkling with cheery glamour even while suddenly plagued by thoughts of death and the reality of existing as a woman. And Ryan Gosling is possibly even better as the Kenniest Ken to Ever Ken, just radiating vacant himbo energy in every scene. It’s maybe not the best movie of 2023, but it’s the movie you’ll most associate with the year – and we don’t mind it one bit.         

25.  Women Talking

While not exactly an escapist night at the pictures, Sarah Polley’s tough, talky, ‘The Crucible’-esque feminist allegory all but dares you to reach for your popcorn. Sit up and pay attention, it demands – and anyone prepared to lean into its dialectics is rewarded with an elite group of actors (Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, Frances McDormand and Ben Whishaw) debate a still-scarily-resonant case of sexual abuse in a religious commune. Faith, female rage and the meaning of forgiveness have been rarely chewed over with quite this simmering power.

26.  Passages

Characters don’t have to be likeable or good to be great.  Love is Strange  director Ira Sachs gets it, delivering a so bad he’s grand antagonist for the ages in self-centred Tomas. Portrayed by mercurially intriguing German actor Franz Rogow ​sk i ( Great Freedom ), he’s a Paris-based filmmaker and hot mess who’ll crack it at an actor for not walking down the stairs artfully enough. Thinking nothing of taking a lover –  Blue is the Warmest Colour  star Adèle Exarchopoulos – while leaving hubby at home (Ben W h ishaw), he ping-pongs between them, causing maximum damage to all three. But you can still see why they would. Beautifully written, framed and performed, it’s a thoroughly French, knotty affair.   

27.  Saltburn

Promising Young Woman director Emerald Fennell drips arsenic into the champers of the English upper classes in a seductive, subversive and playful thriller set in the aughties of iPod Nanos, Livestrong wristbands and Abercrombie jeans. Fennell’s witty screenplay infiltrates Barry Keoghan’s Liverpudlian undergraduate Oliver Quick into the lives of the privileged Catton family – and their outlandishly vast country pile – and awards no prizes for guessing that this class-bridging summer fling is going to end badly for all concerned. Don’t expect a tightly-plotted procedural, but as a black comedy in the great tradition of Ealing with plenty of gasp-out-loud moments, it’s quite the big-screen experience. 

28.  The Royal Hotel

‘It’s a mining area so you’ll have to be okay with a little male attention.’ As understatements go, the parting words of the recruiter who sets up American backpackers Hanna ( Ozark ’s Julia Garner) and Liv ( Glass Onion’ s Jessica Henwick) with a job pulling pints in a remote Aussie pub is a doozy. Director Kitty Green made the excellent post-Weinstein thriller The Assistant , also with Garner facing down some despicable bastards, and here she puts a feminist lens on a beery, blue-collar kind of male toxicity. Like the Outback tinnie-sploitation classic Wake in Fright , The Royal Hotel is a brilliantly nightmarish night at the boozer.

29.  Enys Men

There’s something haunting and ancient in the soil of Britain and it’s captured mesmerically in a trippy tale of isolation and disturbing plant life that plays like a druid’s cheese dream. It could only be the work of Cornish auteur Mark Jenkin, whose debut drama, Bait , was a handmade treasure back in 2019. Here, he uses the same vintage aesthetic and 16mm cameras to craft a worthy companion piece to any of the great ’70s folk horrors, as Mary Woodvine’s botanist goes full The Lighthouse on a remote island. 

30.  Subject

This gripping, intelligent doc interviews the subjects of some of the most famous docs of recent years about their lives through a lens. The stars of The Staircase , Hoop Dreams and Capturing the Friedmans reveal what it’s like to be at the eye of a non-fiction narrative story, testimonies that are delivered with compassion and insight. Equally interesting on the issues of telling someone else’s story (duty of care, whether participants should be paid),  Subject captures the documentary form at a crossroads, hopefully finding its way to a more caring, culturally sensitive future. Filmmakers could do a lot worse than watch Camilla Hall and Jennifer Tiexiera’s engrossing film as a cautionary tale.

31.  War Pony

This social drama set on the Native American reservations of South Dakota reflects the outside status of America’s indigenous people in stark, emotionally searing terms. It follows two mostly-unconnected Lakota boys – 12-year-old Matho (LaDainian Crazy Thunder) and 23-year-old Bill (Jojo Bapteise Whiting) – as they eek out a life for themselves, living hand-to-mouth in grinding poverty but boyishly hustling like the heroes of an old Italian neorealist masterpiece. Co-directors Riley Keough and Gina Gammell, and their Native American screenwriters Bill Reddy and Franklin Sioux Bob, sweeten the tough stuff with hope and cautious optimism. Blunt yet lyrical, it’s a deeply rewarding watch.

32.  Alcarràs

A juicy organic tomato of a movie that deservedly won Berlin’s Golden Bear, Carla Simón’s channels the Spanish filmmaker’s own experiences growing up on a Catalan farm to give life to one hard-working farming family. A new landowner's attempt to install solar panels threatens the farmers' livelihood in a movie that succeeds as a family drama and a deconstruction of capitalism. With incredible performances from the non-professional actors playing stressed-out peach farmers, Simon crafts a worthy follow-up to her sparkling childhood memoir Summer 1993 . 

33.  Queendom

Agniia Galdanova’s gorgeously shot documentary captures both the desolation of Russia’s tundras and the bravery of Gena Marvin, a drag artist who’s as colourful as her hometown is grey. As Putin stirs up anti-LGBTQ+ hatred, she turns up to a paratroopers rally dressed only in duct tape the colours of the Russian flag. But behind her swagger there’s a softness, and Queendom captures so many quiet moments of faltering connection with her bewildered, smalltown family too. It’s painful and beautiful all at once.

34.  Joyland

It’s complicated enough when stay-at-home dad Haider (Ali Junejo) finds fulfilment as a backing dancer to trans performer Bibi (trans actress Alina Khan) in Lahore. When he also finds love with her, the fabric of his life – and his family’s – begins to unravel. Faced with Pakistan’s draconian censorship laws, Joyland had to struggle to the screen, but you’d never know it from its effortless humour, compassion and craft. A bold snapshot of Pakistani society, masculinity and gender in flux, it would feel progressive if it’d been set in Paris or Palm Springs. 

35.  The Eight Mountains

Pietro and Bruno, two boyhood friends, reconnect as adults in a soulful Italian language film that sweeps you up in its glorious Alpine vistas, themes of hard-earned brotherhood and sense of rough-hewn spirituality. Like the hand-constructed mountain cabin at its heart, friendship is something that must be built brick-by-brick in Belgian co-directors Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch's idyllic but unsentimental story. The upshot is an emotionally eloquent film about two buttoned-up men.

36.  Air

Does it sound like an unquestioning hymn to capitalism? Yep. Does it get close to deifying Michael Jordan? That too. But there’s something in Ben Affleck’s pacy, loose-limbed retelling of Nike’s efforts to sign a young Jordan from under the noses of more powerful rivals Adidas and Converse that blasts past any reservations. That secret sauce is a simple but infectious joy in sharp dialogue and characterisation that feels like a throwback to Hollywood’s ’70s golden age. It doesn’t hurt to have Matt Damon schlebbing-up winningly as Sonny Vaccaro, the Nike NBA savant willing to risk everything for Jordan’s signature, and Affleck himself in as a wonderfully droopy version of Nike founder Phil Knight. Championship rings for all involved.

37.  Scrapper

Not so much ‘magical realism’ as magical and realistic, Charlotte Regan’s debut paints in much brightest colours than you’d perhaps expect from a film about a young girl swerving social services in an east London estate. Full of big laughs, it’s a loose-limbed depiction of that girl, 12-year-old Georgie (the brilliant Lola Campbell), as she reluctantly reconnects with the dad she’s never met ( Triangle of Sadness ’s Harris Dickinson). The offbeat bond that develops between them is a reminder of Taika Waititi’s Boy , with Regan’s affection for her characters making for a movie with a generous heart and an irrepressible spirit.

38.  The Three Musketeers: D’Artagnan

The best Alexandre Dumas adaptations in decades – sorry, Dogtanian and Paul WS Anderson fans – this swaggering French adventure flick has everything you could want from a swashbuckling caper. The improbably sexy cast has Eva Green as the pipe-puffing Milady, executing Cardinal Richelieu’s devilish scheme against a gauche monarch, the English, the Protestants and our heroes themselves, the Musketeers – here featuring a moody Vincent Cassel and a flamboyant Romain Duris. We came for the all-star line-up and stayed for the blur of sword fights, horse chases and smart storytelling choices. Roll on part deux later this year.

39.  The Beasts

A nerve-shredding modern Spanish parable that offers a gradually suffocating fog of xenophobia, resentment and envy, this year’s Goya Award winner is set among scrubby, hardscrabble farmsteads of Galicia. Inglourious Basterds ’ Denis Ménochet essays a brooding kind of restraint as teacher-turned-farmer Antoine in the face of increasing intimidation. Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s carefully constructed slowburn thriller is full of great performances, too, especially from Marina Foïs as Antoine’s dogged wife and Luis Zahera as the sinewy, menacing neighbour who hates everything the couple stand for. 

40.  Evil Dead Rise

The bar was set low for Irish filmmaker Lee Cronin to re-raise this beloved but faded horror series from the dead. The return of the demonic possession Deadites was originally intended to go straight to VHS (okay, streaming), and franchise OGs Bruce Campbell and Sam Raimi were only distantly involved as exec-producers. But by hellfire’s light, Cronin and co cleared that bar by miles with a ferociously funny gore splatterer tailor made for baying Friday night crowds. Australian stars Lily Sullivan and Alyssa Sutherland excel as estranged sisters holding back the dark in a condemned LA apartment tower, rather than a cabin in the woods. We never thought we’d say this, but bring on the sequel.

41.  Revoir Paris

Fresh from Paul Verhoeven’s sexy nun psychodrama Benedetta , Virginie Efira takes things down a notch or two as the survivor of a Bataclan-style massacre at a Parisian bistro. Full of sensitivity in its depiction of the lonely path walked by a PTSD sufferer, French director Alice Winocour’s enthralling drama is alive with empathy. And it’s the Caesar-winning Efira who centres it all as a woman emotionally imprisoned by her trauma, with Benoît Magimel providing soulful support as a fellow survivor who helps her through. 

42.  How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Inspired by Swedish author Andreas Malm’s eco-manifesto, which suggested that non-violent protest was doomed to fall short in the face of the climate change catastrophe, co-writer/director Daniel Goldhaber and his diverse young cast ( American Honey star Sasha Lane is a standout) craft an urgent thriller exploring the personal toll of committing to an existential cause. The source text was dynamite, while this is more of a slow burn. But when it catches fire, it’s both a compelling thriller and a clarion call to action. 

43.  The Mission

‘There’s a fine line between faith and madness.’ That line in this enthralling doc is physical as well as metaphorical, and it’s crossed by zealous 26-year-old American missionary John Chau when he set foot on the Indian Ocean’s remote North Sentinel Island clutching a Bible in 2018. As Amanda McBaine and Jesse Moss, the co-directors of 2020’s equally thoughtful doc Boys State , chart, the evangelical urge to spread the Christian gospel resulted in Chau’s death at the hands of indigenous islanders who saw his very presence as an existential threat. And, as The Mission suggests, wasn’t it? As an elegy for a young man full of promise and a critique of the religious groups that sent him into danger, it’s powerful stuff.

44.  The Creator

• Science fiction

One of the low-key delights of the year has Gareth Edwards rediscovering his early promise after the bruising experience of Rogue One and the murky misfire that was 2014’s ​​ Godzilla . Sure, it adds a few noughts to the budget, but The Creator is more of a part with his excellent guerilla-style debut Monsters , combining clever visual effects with glorious real-world locations to build a believably dystopian futurescape and then embroider it with an intimate story of grief, surrogate parenthood and timely questions of identity. The plot, in which John David Washington’s broken-down ex-soldier bonds with an all-too-human superpowered A.I. (Madeleine Yuna Voyles), is Philip K Dick-meets-Apocalypse Now, with eye-popping Asian locations that make it a killer travelogue as well as a satisfying cerebral action-sci-fi.

45.  The Whale

It would have been so easy for Darren Aronofsky’s adapted-from-the-stage chamber piece to get swamped by its prosthetic, fat-suited artifice and one-location staginess. That it doesn’t is down to a career-best performance from international treasure Brendan Fraser. He makes you take grieving, apartment-bound college tutor Charlie, a man facing up to his own mortality, to your heart in just a few scenes, supercharging this fable of human frailty and reconciliation with endless empathy and emotion. We’re not crying, you’re crying. 

46.  M3GAN

A toy inventor ( Get Out’ s Allison Williams) creates a sentient A.I. doll with creepy eyes and the grip of an industrial vice as a companion for her bereaved niece. What could go wrong? J ust about everything, as this giddily mean-spirited Blumhouse horror charts. Despite having Saw ’s James Wan’s boody fingerprints all over it as co-creator, it reins in the nastiness in favour of big laughs, including some instantly meme-worthy doll dances. Roll on M4GAN. 

47.  Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

Cinematically, the fantasy genre has tended take itself very seriously, but   Dungeons & Dragons   comes at its swords and sorcery with a refreshing and exuberant irreverence. Writer-directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein respect their role-playing tabletop game source material, but also mirror the sense of levity and improvised invention you get while playing it. With the help of an amiable ensemble, the jokes come as thick and fast as the FX-driven action. Game for a laugh, indeed.

48.  Broker

Hirokazu Kore-eda has a knack for taking gritty slices of social realism and sprinkling them with a kind of escapist stardust. Who else could turn the story of actual baby traffickers into a bubbly feel-nice yarn in much the same way Shoplifters parlayed hard-scrabble lives into a quiet heartwarmer full of wit and heart? Here he heads to Busan, South Korea, and borrows Bong Joon-ho’s old mucker Song Kang-ho to headline another touching, wryly funny tale of surrogate families. Charles Dickens would be proud to have written a character like Song’s larger-than-life adoption broker Sang-hyun.

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The 10 best movies of 2023 (and 4 worst)

EW critics rank the films that stood out for both good and bad reasons this year.

Maureen Lee Lenker is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly with over seven years of experience in the entertainment industry. An award-winning journalist, she's written for Turner Classic Movies, Ms. Magazine , The Hollywood Reporter , and more. She's worked at EW for six years covering film, TV, theater, music, and books. The author of EW's quarterly romance review column, "Hot Stuff," Maureen holds Master's degrees from both the University of Southern California and the University of Oxford. Her debut novel, It Happened One Fight , is now available. Follow her for all things related to classic Hollywood, musicals, the romance genre, and Bruce Springsteen.

Christian Holub is a writer covering comics and other geeky pop culture. He's still mad about 'Firefly' getting canceled.

Devan Coggan (rhymes with seven slogan) is a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly. Most of her personality is just John Mulaney quotes and Lord of the Rings references.

The movie theater became a party again, and not just because the patron saint of cinemas Nicole Kidman declared it so. Barbenheimer , Tom Cruise , the Eras and Renaissance concert film extravaganzas, and the TikTok trend-spawning onscreen antics of Barry Keoghan put people in seats in a big way, even as the Hollywood industry at large had been dealing with months-long writer and actor strikes. Of the titles that stood out for the right reasons, here are the best movies of 2023, as selected by EW's critics — plus a few that stood out for the wrong reasons.

The 10 Best Movies of 2023

10. 'barbie'.

Barbie breezed into the summer to paint the world pink. The movie takes what could have been an extended Mattel commercial and channels the complicated legacy of the beloved doll into a story about the toxic impact of the patriarchy and the pressures of performative femininity. With a touch of studio system whimsy, director Greta Gerwig trusses up her feminist fantasia in a Technicolor musical package replete with some of the best jokes of the year. Margot Robbie perfectly treads the line between blissful ignorance and tongue-in-cheek awakening as Barbie, while Ryan Gosling is divinely goofy (and surprisingly vulnerable) as "just Ken." But perhaps the movie’s greatest sleight of hand is its ability to puncture the fantasy of Barbie’s Dream House and pack an emotional wallop while never losing its sense of humor. Life in plastic is decidedly not fantastic, but Barbie is SUBLIME! — Maureen Lenker

9. 'The Boy and the Heron'

Legendary director Hayao Miyazaki has been threatening to retire for more than 20 years now, vowing with each new film that this one really will be his last. Thank goodness, then, that he reneged on that oath and returned for his first film in a decade, the moving and magical adventure The Boy and the Heron . Inspired by the 1937 Japanese novel How Do You Live? , Miyazaki’s latest is a lavish and heartrending saga, following 12-year-old Mahito (voiced in Japanese by Soma Santok and in English by Luca Padovan) as he grapples with the death of his mother and finds himself sucked into a mystic world of talking birds and twisty dream logic. In many ways, The Boy and the Heron feels like a culmination of Miyazaki’s many interests: the destruction of war, the magic and mystery of flight, the inherent unknowability of death. The original Japanese voice cast is extraordinary, but the English dub also deserves praise, with a stacked cast that includes Dave Bautista , Florence Pugh , Mark Hamill , Christian Bale (who returns to Studio Ghibli to voice Mahito’s father, almost 20 years after starring in Howl’s Moving Castle ), and Robert Pattinson (who is delightfully unrecognizable as the heron, shapeshifting between graceful bird and crotchety old man). Mahito’s dream world swings between inviting and horrifying, populated by adorable, blobby creatures and cannibalistic parakeets. But how lucky are we that it’s a world we get to visit? — Devan Coggan

8. 'The Holdovers'

Seacia Pavao/FOCUS FEATURES

Of all the presents the year in cinema brought us, the fact that oft-cynical director Alexander Payne delivers the most earnest, feel-good movie of the year is the most surprising. The Holdovers , shot with the grit and lived-in warmth of a 1970s picture, follows a group of misfits thrown together over the 1970 holiday break. There’s curmudgeonly history professor Paul Hunham ( Paul Giamatti at his most humane), grieving school cook Mary Lamb (Da’Vine Joy Randolph defining the power of smiling through tears), and troubled student Angus Tully (revelatory discovery Dominic Sessa), left behind by his own family. The film embodies the Christmas carol lyrics of “muddling through somehow,” blending the inherent melancholy of the season with timeless themes of generosity of spirit and goodwill. The Holdovers is a new holiday classic in its blissfully unsentimental tale of found family, a bittersweet reminder that sometimes the greatest gift of all is connection. — M.L.

7. 'Poor Things'

Yorgos Lanthimos/Searchlight Pictures

Poor Things offers up a female Frankenstein mixed with 19th-century bildungsroman as it follows Bella Baxter (a piquant Emma Stone ), a reanimated corpse who embarks on a journey of self-discovery under the lascivious guidance of Duncan Wedderburn (a deliciously unhinged Mark Ruffalo ). Bursting with visual exuberance, Yorgos Lanthimos ’ film is a feminist parable of desire and a life lived unapologetically. Through the unique eyes of Bella, Lanthimos crafts a tale that is both a feast for the eyes and the soul in its reminder that the mere act of being alive is fascinating. That’s certainly true when a film this provocative, romantic, poignant, and daringly funny is there for our viewing pleasure. — M.L.

6. 'May December'

Francois Duhamel/courtesy of Netflix

Like the petals of a flower or the wings of a butterfly, there are many rich layers of meaning to Todd Haynes ’ latest masterpiece. On the surface, the story of Gracie Atherton-Yoo ( Julianne Moore ) and her much younger husband Joe (Charles Melton, in a heartbreaking performance) bears a strong resemblance to the real-life tabloid story of Mary Kay Letourneau and her student-turned-lover Vili Fualaau. But May December smartly sidesteps the lurid details of true-crime stories in favor of even more unsettling ideas. Instead of seeing how Gracie took advantage of Joe back then, we get contradictory memories explained to Elizabeth Berry ( Natalie Portman ), an actress seeking to play Gracie in a movie. As the lines blur between fact and fiction, reality and entertainment, May December raises big questions (What is the difference between love and seduction? Is adaptation inherently exploitative?) and teaches us not to expect easy answers. — Christian Holub

5. 'Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret'

Since its publication in 1970, Judy Blume ’s novel has been an enduring favorite with young readers, a heartfelt ode to growing up (and all its accompanying horrors). It’s also a book that Blume herself has fiercely protected, and the author refused to sell the film rights for more than 50 years, until she met with writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig ( The Edge of Seventeen ). The resulting film adaptation was well worth the wait, as Craig delivers a sharp, funny, and devastatingly relatable tale, following preteen Margaret (Abby Ryder Fortson) as she navigates a move from New York City to the Jersey suburbs. The film retains the book’s 1970s setting, but Margaret’s struggles feel enduringly timeless, as she grapples with religion, awkward first kisses, and the general gruesomeness of puberty, guided by geeky dad Herb (Benny Safdie) and frazzled mother Barb ( Rachel McAdams , in a warm performance that deserves awards attention). Like the book, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret is an instant coming-of-age classic, the kind that will remain relatable for years to come. — D.C.

4. 'Saltburn'

Perhaps no film is more polarizing this year than Saltburn , a perversely Gothic take on obsession, wealth, and desire that pulls precisely zero punches. Barry Keoghan leads a stellar ensemble as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Oliver Quick. It’s a magic trick of a performance, riveting in the sheer audacity and abandon with which he attacks his most outrageous scenes. When rich, pretty boy Felix ( Jacob Elordi ) invites Oliver home to the titular manse for the summer, it sets in motion a tragic spiral that draws Oliver into the orbit of the Catton family (brought to life by one of the year's best acting ensembles). With Promising Young Woman , Emerald Fennell established her wholly unique voice, but Saltburn refines it, soaking her provocateur's lens in the excesses of old money and the mesmerizing power of want. There’s no wilder ride at the movies this year, nor one more visually arresting. Saltburn made us lose our minds — in the best possible way. — M.L.

3. 'Killers of the Flower Moon'

It’s easy to imagine what Killers of the Flower Moon might have looked like in a lesser filmmaker’s hands. David Grann’s 2017 book centers on the Osage Reign of Terror, when white settlers in 1920s Oklahoma systematically targeted and murdered wealthy Osage people. Another director might have tackled the topic as a dusty period piece, one that keeps its victims (and murderers) at arm’s length. Instead, Martin Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth literally climb into bed with their subjects, zeroing in on the marriage between Osage woman Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone) and her white husband Ernest ( Leonardo DiCaprio ). The result is a film that’s part crime epic, part gut-wrenching marital drama. Over the course of its three-and-a-half-hour runtime, Killers of the Flower Moon spotlights the inherent sickness of the American Dream, revealing an unflinching look at greed, murder, race, and power. Scorsese recruits several of his frequent collaborators for the effort, including DiCaprio and Robert De Niro as Ernest’s powerful uncle. But it’s Gladstone who serves as the film’s beating heart, elevating every frame with a silent glance or a carefully chosen line. More than anything, she makes Mollie feel alive, a reminder that this hundred-year-old story is closer in time than you might think. — D.C.

2. 'Past Lives'

Much has been made in recent years over the disappearance of heartwarming Hollywood romantic comedies, as superheroes and other blockbuster franchises sucked up all the big-screen oxygen. Maybe that’s why Past Lives , whose writer protagonist Nora Moon (Greta Lee) wonders if she truly belongs with her husband Arthur (John Magaro) or her long-lost childhood sweetheart (Teo Yoo), made such an impact this year. But though there are laughs to be had in Past Lives (Arthur’s novel, which we see him signing in bookshops, is literally called Boner ), Celine Song’s directorial debut is definitely more of a romantic tragedy, thanks to the most emotionally devastating gut punch of the year. Still, it feels like a necessary corrective to Hollywood’s recent obsession with the multiverse (represented by some of the worst movies of 2023, as you can see below). Outlandish villains from beyond time and space are tired at this point, but anyone can relate to wondering what other directions your life might have taken. — C.H.

1. 'Oppenheimer'

Theory and practice. Those are the two poles that define atomic physics, international communism, and Christopher Nolan ’s magnum opus. When viewers first meet Cillian Murphy ’s incarnation of J. Robert Oppenheimer, he is a theoretical physicist so in tune with new scientific ideas that he can literally see the beauty of the quantum world all around him. He is also a young idealist who can’t help but be sympathetic to the socialist movements that sprouted up across the world between the two great wars. Over the course of the movie, Oppenheimer works hard to bring his ideas into practical reality, only to realize afterward that he may have destroyed the very things he loved so much. Full of big ideas, breathtaking spectacle, and incredible performances, Oppenheimer (along with its eternally entwined opposite, Barbie ) points the way to a bright new future for Hollywood movies, while also reminding us not to take the stability of our own world for granted. — C.H.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: All of Us Strangers , Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One , Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse , Asteroid City , M3GAN , Priscilla , Anatomy of a Fall , The Zone of Interest , Suzume , John Wick: Chapter 4 .

The Worst Movies of 2023

'ant-man and the wasp: quantumania'.

The herald of superhero fatigue, the harbinger of CGI overload, Quantumania is superhero movies at their worst. And considering how much was riding on the film setting up Jonathan Majors as the new Thanos for the next "phases" of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it's shocking how complacent this movie feels as just a thoughtless product of the MCU algorithm. Who knew Marvel's smallest hero could make such a big mess? — Nick Romano

'Ghosted'

This dreckish action rom-com made Chris Evans “America’s Ass” in a new sense, with its flaccid pairing of his fish-out-of-water farmer and Ana de Armas ’ CIA agent, who has more chemistry with her gun than her costar. Swipe left, trust us. — M.L.

'The Flash'

This bloated DC dud is utterly devoid of charm or wonder, trading actual storytelling for an endless parade of fan-servicey callbacks and desperate cameos. Also, between this, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness , Loki , and Everything Every All at Once , we’re officially calling for a moratorium on multiverse stories. The upcoming Spider-Verse sequel gets a pass, but everyone else? You’re on thin ice. — D.C.

'Expend4bles'

More energy went into where to place the "4" than this franchise that should've retired long ago. — N.R.

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The 50 best movies of 2023

Celebrating a terrific year at the movies

If you buy something from a Polygon link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement.

by Tasha Robinson , Pete Volk , and Polygon Staff

Making a collaborative list of the year’s best movies usually feels like trying to form a committee to definitively rank apples and oranges. How do you account for personal tastes? For access, when a given movie — er, fruit variety — is only available in certain markets at certain times? For the fact that apples and oranges are just so qualitatively different that they don’t have a lot in common except juiciness and vitamin C content?

Fortunately, 2023 has its own peculiar answer, in the form of the Barbenheimer phenomenon . Beleaguered movie theaters got a boost this year from film fans who made an event out of seeing two radically different movies back-to-back: a slyly satirical movie about a living fashion toy , and a heavy, grim historical drama about the father of the atomic bomb. While Barbie and Oppenheimer do have a clear theme in common , they’re still radically different movies. But the way they collectively dominated the 2023 box office and the cultural discussion is a strong reminder that regardless of tone or topic, a great story, told passionately, stands out. Cinephiles can be drawn to just about any movie in any genre, if it’s well crafted and engaging, no matter what kind of fruit it is.

Here at Polygon, we have pretty eclectic collective tastes: Some of us are hungriest for action, horror, epic fantasy, or challenging science fiction, while some of us prefer complicated drama or dark neo-noir, and others are drawn to musicals, comedy, animated adventures, and other lighter fare.

Our best-of-the-year list reflects that range.

How the Polygon top 50 list works

Every year, the staff’s film fans create individual ballots to reflect their top movies, with an option to rank them numerically or just weight them. We use these ballots to generate a collective list, weighted by strength of opinion to make sure a much-seen mainstream movie doesn’t have too much advantage over a terrific but underseen indie. And then we put it all out there for your enjoyment. The top 10 picks on each our staff’s lists will be listed in the comments.

Any movie released in the US this calendar year is eligible, but since we are publishing this in early December, some December releases are underrepresented. We hope you’ll find a new favorite here on our list of the best movies of 2023.

Honorable mentions

Movies that received votes but did not crack our top 50: The Pope’s Exorcist , Bottoms , Rye Lane , No Hard Feelings , Hundreds of Beavers , Evil Dead Rise , Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 , Nimona , The Starling Girl , Thanksgiving , Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant , The Eight Mountains , The Roundup: No Way Out , The Royal Hotel , Red, White & Royal Blue , Blue Jean , The Venture Bros.: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart , Quiz Lady , Air , Elemental , Extraction 2 , Fair Play , Metalocalypse: Army of the Doomstar , A Haunting in Venice , Fast X , You Hurt My Feelings , The Super Mario Bros. Movie , No One Will Save You , Monster , The Pigeon Tunnel , The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial , Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania , American Fiction , Maestro , Saw X , Maaveeran , The Creator , The Blackening , The Marvels , Afire , Kandahar , Crater , Dark Harvest , Ernest & Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia , Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

50. Shin Kamen Rider

Director: Hideaki Anno Cast: Sosuke Ikematsu, Minami Hamabe, Tasuku Emoto Where to watch: Prime Video, under the title Shin Masked Rider

The best superhero movie of 2023 didn’t come from Marvel or DC. Instead, it came from Hideaki Anno. Shin Kamen Rider might not reach the soaring heights of Shin Godzilla , but it’s an incredibly fun time bolstered by terrific costume designs, inventive action sequences, and a delightfully bizarre tone, all while looking gorgeous throughout. — Pete Volk

49. Missing

Directors: Nicholas D. Johnson, Will Merrick Cast: Storm Reid, Nia Long, Ken Leung Where to watch: Netflix, or for digital rental/purchase

If Knives Out has proven anything, it’s that people are hungry for mysteries on the big screen. Missing — the twisty and fun spiritual sequel to 2018’s Searching — is what people don’t know they’ve been looking for. It’s a web of clues, a mess of mystery, all played within the computer screen of June (Storm Reid), who’s left to figure out what happened when her mom (Nia Long) doesn’t return from a vacation with her boyfriend.

The mystery genre deserves more movies that feel big and meaty. And whether it’s splashed across the big screen or just a computer one, Missing manages to bring its A-game. — Zosha Millman

48. Passages

Director: Ira Sachs Cast: Franz Rogowski, Ben Whishaw, Adèle Exarchopoulos Where to watch: Mubi, or for digital rental/purchase

Perhaps the platonic ideal of an arthouse film: a messy love triangle, set in Paris, shot through with explicit sex and arresting fashion choices. Sometimes you just want to watch complicated hot people (Adèle Exarchopoulos, Ben Whishaw, and Franz Rogowski in this case) messing with each other’s heads in tops their characters couldn’t possibly afford. There’s nothing wrong with that. — Oli Welsh

47. Fist of the Condor

Director: Ernesto Díaz Espinoza Cast: Marko Zaror, Eyal Meyer, Gina Aguad Where to watch: Hi-Yah!, free with a library card on Hoopla, free on Tubi and Plex

Fist of the Condor is a martial arts throwback where Marko Zaror ( John Wick: Chapter Four ) plays twin brothers at odds with each other over an ancient text. Zaror, who also choreographed the movie’s fight scenes, excels. There are high-flying kicks, rapid displays of martial arts forms, and the drama inherent to great cinematic fights.

The movie is at its best when leaning into the action, but that’s not all it has to offer. Director Ernesto Díaz Espinoza shoots the landscape of Chile in a way that builds the drama of the fights and adds an element of tranquility to the chaos. For fans of martial arts cinema, Fist of the Condor is a must-watch. — PV

46. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

Director: Francis Lawrence Cast: Rachel Zegler, Tom Blyth, Peter Dinklage Where to watch: Theaters

The Hunger Games series is one of the few where the movies are often just as good as the books. The new prequel movie, which focuses on a young President Snow (played excellently by Tom Blyth ), is no exception. With a particular attention to detail and some masterful songs to really color the world, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes is a rare meaningful prequel that bolsters the existing narrative. — Petrana Radulovic

45. The Origin of Evil

Director: Sébastien Marnier Cast: Laure Calamy, Suzanne Clément, Dominique Blanc Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase

This French thriller is the kind of twisty story that’s hard to sum up in any way without giving something away, but that’s part of the appeal. Sébastien Marnier, director of the shocking 2018 prep school thriller School’s Out , steers The Origin of Evil away from a neo-noir tone, even though the plot is pure noir, right down to the character types. When a woman (Laure Calamy) insinuates herself into a rich family, claiming she’s a lost daughter to the patriarch, Serge (Jacques Weber), viewers will suspect she has more of an agenda than she’s letting on. But Serge and the rest of his caustic family members have agendas too. Unpacking every lie and scheme in this movie takes every minute of its run time, and it’s guaranteed that audience sympathies will shift half a dozen times in the process. As a crime story, it’s a gem; as a character story, it’s even better. — Tasha Robinson

44. They Cloned Tyrone

Director: Juel Taylor Cast: John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, Jamie Foxx Where to watch: Netflix

Juel Taylor ’s Blaxploitation-inspired romp follows a drug dealer, a pimp, and a prostitute who inadvertently stumble upon a clandestine government facility that has been secretly experimenting on their neighborhood from the shadows. Faced with the horrifying reality of their situation, the trio band together to do the only thing they can — find a way to spread the truth and fight back against their oppressors. They Cloned Tyrone is a wild, weird, and genuinely funny comedy anchored by strong leading performances (especially in the case of Foxx’s charismatic and foul-mouthed turn as Slick Charles). —Toussaint Egan

Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda Cast: Song Kang-ho, Gang Dong-won, Bae Doona, Lee Ji-eun Where to watch: Hulu, or for digital rental/purchase

Hirokazu Kore-eda ( Shoplifters ) returns with another story about people committing crimes just to survive. This time, it’s two men who sell abandoned babies on the adoption black market.

Song Kang-ho and Bae Doona deliver electrifying performances — Song as another shifty, funny schemer who is in way over his head, and Bae as a hard-headed cop pursuing them. But it’s Lee Ji-eun, as a young mother who becomes entangled in the scheme, who steals the show, with a fierce intelligence and hardened worldview concealed by a veneer of youthful innocence. Plus one very adorable baby. That never hurts. — PV

42. Creed III

Director: Michael B. Jordan Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Jonathan Majors Where to watch: Prime Video, MGM Plus, or for digital rental/purchase

In 2015’s Creed , Michael B. Jordan established his bona fides as a true movie star when he assumed the role of Adonis Creed, the lost son of Apollo Creed and heir apparent to his father’s title as the heavyweight boxing champion of the world. In this year’s Creed III , Jordan has taken on the mantle of the Rocky franchise and made it his own as both the film’s star and director, enriching Adonis’ story with a perspective and style that feels at once fresh and familiar.

With electrifying fight sequences and powerful lead performances, Creed III is a knockout sports drama that combines anime-inspired choreography with a powerful narrative about strained relationships and redemption. —TE

41. Infinity Pool

Director: Brandon Cronenberg Cast: Alexander Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Cleopatra Coleman Where to watch: Hulu, or for digital rental/purchase

Death doesn’t have to be real in the world of Infinity Pool — at least, not if you’re rich enough to turn it into a fun night out. Director Brandon Cronenberg’s (2020’s stellar Possessor ) third film gazes into the bizarre void of identity and wonders what happens when it gazes back. Infinity Pool is queasy and fascinating, and perhaps 2023’s most nihilistic view of wealth. But the real selling point are the go-for-broke central performances by Mia Goth and Alexander Skarsgård. — Austen Goslin

40. Master Gardener

Director: Paul Schrader Cast: Joel Edgerton, Quintessa Swindell, Sigourney Weaver Where to watch: Hulu, or for digital rental/purchase

The third in Paul Schrader’s thematic “Man in a Room” trilogy, Master Gardener follows a reformed former white supremacist (Joel Edgerton) who works as a horticulturist on a grand Southern estate. When the young Black relative (Quintessa Swindell) of the estate’s owner (Sigourney Weaver) arrives, the two form an unlikely bond.

Master Gardener is a gorgeous movie, filled with fields of flowers and excellent performances from Edgerton and Swindell. The movie distinguishes itself from many other “reformed racist” movies by having Edgerton’s character already distanced from his past self, rather than relying on his relationship with a Black person to spur that change. He’s a new person, but that doesn’t erase his history. It’s a wonderful coda to a superb trilogy. — PV

39. Theater Camp

Directors: Molly Gordon, Nick Lieberman Cast: Jimmy Tatro, Ben Platt, Molly Gordon, Noah Galvin Where to watch: Hulu, or for digital rental/purchase

All great camp movies are about found family, and there are few subcultures that theme fits better than theater kids. Theater Camp , from Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman, is well aware of this and plays its excellent (and specific) jokes to the cheap seats for an audience it knows has felt its characters’ pains and joys themselves.

What Theater Camp understands best about its subjects is that being a theater kid means never really leaving a stage. It’s all performance, whether it’s for an audience, your best friend, your campmates, or alone to yourself. And it doesn’t really matter if you’re laughing or crying, as long as you enjoyed the show. — AG

38. BlackBerry

Director: Matt Johnson Cast: Jay Baruchel, Glenn Howerton, Matt Johnson Where to watch: AMC Plus, or for digital rental/purchase

More Social Network than the recent streak of corporation-flavored inventopics (see: Air , Tetris , The Beanie Bubble ), genre-bending filmmaker Matt Johnson’s indie take on tech breakthroughs and backstabbing finds darkly comedic laughs in capitalist meltdowns. At the center of the movie: two great performances destined to fly under the radar.

Wannabe businessman Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) initially brushes off lowly inventor Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel), until he sees a gold mine: a reimagined mobile prototype that doesn’t actually work, but could definitely sell. Johnson’s screenplay, co-written with his Dirties and Operative Avalanch e cohort Matthew Miller, delivers all the bravado one expects from this type of rise-and-fall saga. Howerton rewires his Always Sunny Dennis persona into a true warhead, barking at Doom -playing brainiacs until they get results. Baruchel’s arc as a tech genius sinking in corporate quicksand is almost a mini Breaking Bad . Johnson’s touch is delivering a searing indictment of Canada’s own Silicon Valley behavior with puncturing goofs and plenty of chewed-up scenery — it’s a fun movie, too. The keyboard clacks and the cast absolutely roars. — Matt Patches

Director: William Oldroyd Cast: Thomasin McKenzie, Anne Hathaway, Shea Whigham Where to watch: Theaters

Sleek and understated, Eileen takes a compact and uncomfortably close eye to a psychological thriller about ladies making bad decisions. Based on the novel by Ottessa Moshfegh — who co-wrote the script with Luke Goebel — Eileen follows its eponymous protagonist (a magnetic and fidgety Thomasin McKenzie) and her obsession with Rebecca (Anne Hathaway), a worldly and glamorous psychiatrist who begins working at the prison Eileen works at as a clerk. As the women get closer, they feed into each other’s darker impulses, and upend their lives, violently. With pulpy thrills and assured direction from William Oldroyd, Eileen is a perfect anti-holiday film in the vein of David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo , a smart, edgy feel-bad good time. — Joshua Rivera

36. Earth Mama

Director: Savanah Leaf Cast: Tia Nomore, Erika Alexander, Doechii Where to watch: Paramount Plus, Showtime, or for digital rental/purchase

Gia, a pregnant single mother in the Bay Area, seeks to recover her two children from foster care. The close-up is director Savanah Leaf’s flex. She uses the shot with a confident abundance that few contemporaries dare. On each character, she moves in close, like a friend at a party with a secret to tell under the loud music. When that intimacy is shared with Gia herself, what differentiates Earth Mama comes into focus. We are not observing this woman from a distance; we are sitting beside her, listening closely and hoping for the best. — Chris Plante

35. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Director: Wes Anderson Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley Where to watch: Netflix

Benedict Cumberbatch is a rapscallion who seeks to learn how to see without his eyes (in order to cheat at gambling). The premise is mostly immaterial. Henry Sugar, and the three other Roald Dahl stories Wes Anderson adapted for Netflix, are opportunities for the director to continue to push his aesthetic forward.

In his recent work, Anderson has made bare the artifice essential to filmmaking. These shorts take that even further. Actors recite Dahl’s words verbatim, often speaking directly to the camera. The sets are treated like those on a theater stage, collapsing or building in real time to aid scene transitions. Even in short form, Anderson never ceases to amaze. — PV

Director: Gerard Johnstone Cast: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Amie Donald Where to watch: Prime Video, or for digital rental/purchase

2023 was such a big year for big conversations about AI (including AI art , AI writing , and AI style theft ) that it’s no surprise we’re already getting a fresh wave of “ AI is going to murder us all ” horror movies. But M3GAN is a refreshingly goofy spin on that old trope — and a fairly creepy one, too. When a tech whiz (Allison Williams) has to take responsibility for her dead sister’s kid, she distances herself by building a robot to handle parenting for her. It goes badly. Scripted by Akela Cooper with the same shamelessly messy, giddy verve she brought to Malignant , M3GAN is a good time for knowledgable horror fans, packed with referential humor, but still channeling some real anxiety about the place computers have in our lives and how far that’ll eventually go. — TR

33. When Evil Lurks

Director: Demián Rugna Cast: Ezequiel Rodríguez, Demián Salomón, Luis Ziembrowski Where to watch: Shudder, AMC Plus, or for digital rental/purchase

Demián Rugna’s gory possession movie isn’t just the usual barrage of religious imagery and religious anxiety: It’s much more concerned with bigger, sadder thoughts on the ways our institutions keep failing us , and the ways we fail each other and ourselves. Ezequiel Rodríguez gives a mesmerizing performance as Argentinian farmer Pablo, a man estranged from his wife and in denial about his own responsibilities. When a demonic presence starts stalking his rural county, he runs to his ex-wife and the city, and brings the curse along with him. It’s a shocking film that crosses lines in unusual ways for a horror film (particularly around horrors visited on children and animals), but what really makes it land is how well realized all the human drama is, more so than the demon drama. — TR

32. Polite Society

Director: Nida Manzoor Cast: Priya Kansara, Ritu Arya, Nimra Bucha Where to watch: Prime Video, or for digital rental/purchase

Ria (Priya Kansara) dreams of being a stuntwoman and loves her sister deeply. So when her sis drops out of art school and gets engaged to some jabroni she’s known for a month, Ria does what any of us would: Plan a wedding heist to rescue her sister from what’s surely a fate worse than death.

With that, Polite Society vaults between genres and tones and makes it all look easy, melding the wedding-prep comedy with Ria’s action thrill ride. Ria’s story may be singular, but all of us can relate to the enthusiasm and care she brings to her life. (Even if the rest of us are still trying to nail our flying reverse spinning kick.) — ZM

31. Talk to Me

Directors: Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou Cast: Sophie Wilde, Joe Bird, Miranda Otto, Alexandra Jensen Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase

Talk to Me is like the horror movie version of a perfect comedy sketch. It’s got a perfect premise (possession as a party drug), a brilliant turn you saw coming from the start but that hits even better than you expected, and it ends before it wears out its welcome. It helps that it’s also one of the most stylish and shocking horror movies of the year.

Between its abrupt bursts of violence, possession-party montages, and creeping family tension, by the time Talk to Me ’s brisk (just under 90 minutes before the credits roll) run time is up, it feels like you were one of the lucky kids who let go of the demon hand at exactly the right moment for the maximum high. — AG

30. Skinamarink

Director: Kyle Edward Ball Cast: Lucas Paul, Ross Paul, Dali Rose Tetreault Where to watch: Hulu, AMC Plus, Shudder, or for digital rental/purchase

Skinamarink is hands down the most peculiar and divisive horror film to come out in 2023. It is also one of the best. A pair of siblings awake in the middle of the night to find their home transformed into an inescapable nightmare of yawning hallways, dimly lit corridors, and looming walls devoid of any windows or doors. As they search aimlessly for safety and familiarity in this otherworldly situation, the children find that they are not alone in the house, haunted by an unknowable entity that seems to feed on their fear, as it twists their lives into ever more frightening shapes. Or maybe not! The film’s narrative is notoriously sparse and open to interpretation, but the effect is nonetheless one of the most unsettling scenarios seen this year. —TE

29. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Director: Kelly Fremon Craig Cast: Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams, Benny Safdie Where to watch: Starz, or for digital rental/purchase

Judy Blume’s coming-of-age novel is one of the most challenged in the country, because of its direct discussion of puberty. But it’s a staple of children’s literature, and director Kelly Fremon Craig’s movie is a gem. She previously wrote and directed The Edge of Seventeen , so she knows her way around crafting a relatable coming-of-age movie. As Margaret’s parents, Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie steal scenes, but Abby Ryder Fortson’s earnest and endearing performance as Margaret anchors the whole film. — PR

28. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

Director: Jeff Rowe Cast: Micah Abbey, Shamon Brown Jr., Nicolas Cantu, Brady Noon Where to watch: Paramount Plus, or for digital rental/purchase

Director Jeff Rowe and executive producer Seth Rogen’s spin on the turtles asserts itself as one of the most visually impressive animated films of the post- Into the Spider-Verse era . A modern reboot of the classic TMNT origin story, Mutant Mayhem emphasizes the fact that everyone’s favorite anthropomorphic reptilian warriors are, well, teenagers, with all the stupid, fun-loving shenanigans that come with being an adolescent. From the character designs and lighting to the action sequences and soundtrack, everything in the film pops with its own unique oddball charm that breathes new life into a beloved franchise. Whether you’re new to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or a longtime fan, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem is a certified banger. —TE

27. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Directors: Jonathan Goldstein, John Francis Daley Cast: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Justice Smith Where to watch: Prime Video, Paramount Plus, MGM Plus, or for digital rental/purchase

Far from the definition of great, ambitious filmmaking, Honor Among Thieves is nevertheless a pretty perfect romp for fantasy fans, whether or not they know the RPG or care about its rules . It’s funny, fast-paced, and freewheeling, full of visual gags for the in-the-know crowd , but broad and action-driven enough to be comprehensible to people who’ve never picked up a d20. Chris Pine and Michelle Rodriguez’s companionable bard-and-barbarian relationship is a lovely model for how to include a romance-free mixed-gender friendship in a story — still a frustratingly rare thing for mainstream movies. — TR

26. Napoleon

Director: Ridley Scott Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim Where to watch: Theaters

Rather than trying to encompass the entire life of one of modern history’s most important and captivating figures, Ridley Scott’s biopic seeks to establish three things about Napoleon Bonaparte. First, that he was one of the greatest battle commanders, tacticians, and military men to ever live. Second, that he was a petty and weird little pervert. Third, that those first two things are deeply and irrevocably intertwined.

To that end, Napoleon is undeniably hilarious . Sure, it has gigantic battles, with beautiful photography and framing, and a more jaw-dropping sense of scale than almost any movie made in the last decade. But between its massive and awe-inspiring battles, Napoleon finds time to gawk at France’s first emperor parading around his palace, screaming at the English about boats, and pouting about being cucked. It’s the story of Bonaparte by way of Barry Lyndon , and we’re all luckier for it. — AG

Director: Atlee Cast: Shah Rukh Khan, Nayanthara, Vijay Sethupathi Where to watch: Netflix

The biggest Indian movie of the year is a genre-bending, crowd-pleasing spectacle that rests on the reliably charismatic talents of star Shah Rukh Khan.

Jawan is many things, but the cleanest description of the premise is “ Charlie’s Angels meets Robin Hood.” Another clean description would be “everything you want in a blockbuster movie,” combining some of the year’s best action, romance, and dance numbers within a compelling revenge story with a strong “power to the people” message.

The key to Jawan ’s joyful success, though, is Shah Rukh Khan. One of the biggest movie stars in the world, he has returned to blockbuster cinema after a brief hiatus with Pathaan and this movie. Both are very fun and make good use of his irrepressible charisma, but Jawan shines to a different degree. It’s a reminder of what blockbuster movies can be — fun and exciting, but with plenty on its mind. It’s the highest-grossing Indian release of the year and the second-highest-grossing Hindi film ever. As you catch up on the year’s biggest releases, don’t miss this one. — PV

24. Saltburn

Director: Emerald Fennell Cast: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike Where to watch: Theaters, coming to Prime Video Dec. 22

Emerald Fennell’s startling, gleefully dark follow-up to Promising Young Woman is another story about toxic obsession. This time, the central figure is a social climber (Barry Keoghan, mesmerizing as ever) trying to weasel his way in among a rich family in 2000s England. It’s one of the year’s most polarizing films: Critics either applauded its daring or dismissed it as empty provocation, due to its graphic use of nudity, sexual imagery, and extreme behavior. But “empty provocation” is such an odd insult to levy at a movie from someone who so thoroughly thinks her movies through . Saltburn is visually luscious and emotionally gripping, a real feast for the senses. It’s grimly funny and full of shocks. And it’s a smarter, more insinuating take on the growing eat-the-rich subgenre. — TR

23. Dream Scenario

Director: Kristoffer Borgli Cast: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, Michael Cera Where to watch: Theaters

There is nothing special about Paul Matthews (Nicolas Cage). He’s a frumpy college professor in a small, cold town. He has a wife and daughter and students that take his biology class because it’s required. And he has started to appear in the dreams of everyone in the world. Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s black comedy about viral fame gives audiences plenty to ponder, with sudden turns both hilarious and deeply uncomfortable. All of it is held together thanks to a tremendous performance from Cage, in his best role since 2021’s stunner Pig . In Cage’s hands, Paul Matthews’ plight, while farcical, stays grounded in humanity, and all the petty, cringeworthy foibles that come with it. — JR

22. The Zone of Interest

Director: Jonathan Glazer Cast: Christian Friedel, Sandra Hüller, Ralph Herforth Where to watch: Theaters

The Zone of Interest is set mere feet from the walls of Auschwitz, at the home of commandant Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel) and his family. The Höss family builds their life in this small estate, with a fancy house, and Mrs. Höss’ (Sandra Hüller) carefully curated garden, while the horrible sounds and black smoke of the concentration camp constantly seep over their protective walls.

Director Jonathan Glazer’s camera never really goes inside the camp, or shows the prisoners huddled there or their actual fates. Rudolf is careful to never speak about his job while at home.

This may sound like it sidelines the tragedy and horror of the Holocaust, centering the story on the culprits rather than the victims, but Glazer’s carefully measured detachment lets the situation speak for itself, as the quiet part gets louder and more horrific throughout the film. This creates a completely different kind of Holocaust film from almost any we’ve ever seen, and one that is essential in understanding the scale and depth of its evils. — AG

21. Priscilla

Director: Sofia Coppola Cast: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi, Dagmara Domińczyk Where to watch: Theaters

I won’t spoil it, but perhaps the best needle drop of the year arrives at the end of this Priscilla Presley biopic: a stone-cold tear-jerker so apt it takes your breath away, and a song with a complex history that adds multiple layers of delicious dramatic irony to the scene. Nobody ever accused Sofia Coppola of lacking taste. Adapted from Priscilla’s memoir about life with Elvis — who groomed her to be his companion from the age of 14 — Priscilla is a dreamy, uneasy, claustrophobic study of life in a gilded cage (a Coppola specialty). Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi are stunning in the lead roles, and Coppola, empathetic as ever, is careful neither to let Elvis off the hook nor damn this damaged man completely. It’s a fascinating companion piece for Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis , a brassier study of the man as performer that only skirts his domestic life, but shows he had a cage of his own to contend with. — OW

20. Anatomy of a Fall

Director: Justine Triet Cast: Sandra Hüller, Swann Arlaud, Milo Machado-Graner Where to watch: Theaters

The premise could set up a tacky 1990s courtroom drama or erotic thriller: A woman’s husband falls from a balcony and dies while she was in the house. Did she do it? Anatomy of a Fall is not one of those movies, but it’s not not one of those movies either. Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or-winning procedural is not a thriller, but it is thrilling; and even though Triet stubbornly refuses to pick any of the obvious ways her film could resolve itself, it achieves a deep and lingering payoff anyway. Anatomy of a Fall is a hypnotic well of a movie in which the truth of what happened only seems to recede the deeper you dive into it. That’s a bold, almost sadistic choice, but the sleek presentation, sharp script, and riveting performance by Sandra Hüller — perhaps the year’s best by any actor — keep you on the hook. — OW

19. Knock at the Cabin

Director: M. Night Shyamalan Cast: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Rupert Grint Where to watch: Prime Video, or for digital rental/purchase

This recent stretch of M. Night Shyamalan films has marked a fascinating chapter in the career of one of the most idiosyncratic directors working today. Coming off of the success of 2021’s Old , Knock at the Cabin marks Shyamalan’s return to one of the most understated yet prevailing themes of his work: religious terror and despair in the face of the unexplainable.

The film follows a family (Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, and Kristen Cui) who, after traveling to a secluded cabin in rural Pennsylvania for a vacation trip, find themselves menaced by a group of four heavily armed intruders who refuse to let them leave. The family is presented with a warning and an ultimatum: Every single person on the planet is about to die, and the only way to prevent this catastrophe is for one of them to choose to sacrifice themselves for the sake of humanity. As the family struggles to escape from their captors, the undeniable weight of their situation begins to set in. Could their kidnappers be telling the truth? And if so, would any of them be willing to submit to the unthinkable cruelty of their fate?

Knock at the Cabin is a film that challenges its audience to look inward for the answer to these questions, all the while witnessing its story unfold. This is not a horror movie whose horrors rely on brutality and gore — though there is certainly that and then some — but one whose apocalyptic premise provokes both outright terror and disquieting introspective dread. —TE

18. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One

Director: Christopher McQuarrie Cast: Tom Cruise, Rebecca Ferguson, Hayley Atwell Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase

Tom Cruise loves popcorn and movies , and nobody made a better popcorn movie in 2023 than Dead Reckoning Part One . While it fell some way short of the series’ critical and commercial peak, Fallout — mistakes were made, chiefly putting “Part One” in the title — the seventh (seventh!) Mission: Impossible film is another shockingly confident and artful action movie that delivers set-piece after astounding set-piece over a breathless two and a half hours.

At its center, controversially edging Cruise’s slinky pas-de-deux with Rebecca Ferguson out of the frame, is a new, more kinetic and balletic partnership between the star and Hayley Atwell. In the movie’s best sequences (the Rome car chase, the train carriage climax), the pair somehow blend jaw-dropping practical stunt work with ballroom dancing, silent slapstick, and rom-com meet-cute — a perfect, fizzing cocktail of a century of cinematic sugar highs. — OW

17. The Killer

Director: David Fincher Cast: Michael Fassbender, Tilda Swinton, Sophie Charlotte Where to watch: Netflix

The Killer , like the assassin at its center, is difficult to pin down. It’s astonishingly gorgeous and well made, but at the same time stubbornly unflashy. It’s bleak and violent, but at the same time hilarious and irreverent. It’s fascinated with exploring the ideas of how media shapes identity, but completely resistant to assigning any actual meaning. The Killer is the kind of movie that can throw in a fight scene for five minutes that’s better than almost any fight in a mainstream movie this year, then never go back to hand-to-hand combat again. In other words, it’s a David Fincher movie through and through.

Fincher is famous for his precision on set and his dedication for finely honing every aspect of his films until they’re exactly what he needs. And yet, his movies never feel stodgy, tight, or lifeless; he makes it look easy. And that’s where The Killer truly excels. It breezes by every assassin movie and thriller trope, executing each one flawlessly, all while making a snide comment about it. It’s the kind of movie that feels so effortless and smooth that it makes you wonder why all movies can’t be this good. But that’s Fincher’s gift; his films have the kind of quality and handmade perfection so precise it can be mistaken for the work of factory machines… until you look a little closer. — AG

16. Ferrari

Director: Michael Mann Cast: Adam Driver, Penélope Cruz, Shailene Woodley Where to watch: In theaters Dec. 25

Between Ferrari and Oppenheimer , it’s been a fabulous year for biopics about bastards doing tremendously dangerous things.

The Enzo Ferrari biopic’s standout sequences are unquestionably its races, which director Michael Mann infuses with tension, speed, and horror. The movie goes to great lengths to show us how dangerous auto racing is, and every time someone gets into a car, Mann translates that danger into a palpable tension. But what’s most surprising about Ferrari is that its most thrilling sequences are those that clear the way for Adam Driver’s performance as Enzo.

The movie is an incredible portrait of a man who was a perfect concoction of some of Mann’s favorite things: obsessive, brilliant, awful, detached, and a winner through and through. The film, and Driver’s exceptional performance, make Ferrari’s ambition and passion deeply clear. The painful determination driving him is absolutely electric to watch — even more exciting than the races, which is saying something. — AG

15. Poor Things

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos Cast: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe Where to watch: Theaters

If there were an award for unlikeliest but most effective Oscar bait, it would go to this reunion of The Favourite star Emma Stone; its Greek surrealist director, Yorgos Lanthimos; and its screenwriter, Tony McNamara. Poor Things is tipped to win a few real Oscars, despite making The Favourite look like a normal movie. It’s a deeply weird, neo-Frankenstinian fable about a reanimated woman’s quest for independence, identity, and the meaning of life. Yep — along with everything else, Poor Things is also goth Barbie .

Adapted from a cult novel by the eccentric Scottish writer, illustrator, and typesetter Alasdair Gray, Poor Things reworks Frankenstein to explore themes of feminism, sex, and social rot. Lanthimos doubles down on the baroque stylings of The Favourite to create an astonishingly visually dense film composed of outlandish costumes, lavish sets, and fantastical painted backgrounds, often shot through woozy fish-eye lenses. It’s also, surprisingly, one of the year’s most hilarious movies, in no small part thanks to Mark Ruffalo’s game campery and McNamara’s cleverly twisted syntax. But the movie is Stone’s. Her performance is fearless, frank, funny, and intensely physical. Bella is no less than a deconstructed human being, and to watch her slowly reassemble herself is to fall in love with the character: an insatiable, ferocious force of nature, whose appetite for life and love for humanity never dim, despite their many disappointments. — OW

Director: Makoto Shinkai Cast: Nanoka Hara, Hokuto Matsumura Where to watch: Crunchyroll

Makoto Shinkai’s career seems to have been building up to Suzume . It has all the hallmarks of Shinkai’s recent, most popular works: a young couple brought together by strange fantastical elements, a looming disaster threatening to upend the world, and clear blue skies. But everything that didn’t quite work in Your Name and Weathering with You manages to coalesce together in Suzume .

While Suzume is about two young people banding together to save the world from disaster, it is equally about Suzume, the protagonist, overcoming her own trauma. As she travels cross-country with an animated chair (who is actually a handsome and mysterious young man), she starts to connect with other people, instead of closing herself off. Her quest to stop a giant earthquake-creating worm comes from the fact that she lost her mother in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Slowly but surely, throughout her journey, she rediscovers her will to live and realizes that her life is not disposable. Unlike Shinkai’s other works, the romance is subtle, the barest hint of it actually, and that just makes it resonate even more.

It’s a beautifully haunting story, rooted in a real-world tragedy that makes it resonate even more. — PR

13. Godzilla Minus One

Director: Takashi Yamazaki Cast: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada Where to watch: Theaters

Godzilla fans aren’t wanting for new media, including the recent Apple TV series Monarch . These recent releases, while enjoyable, have taken a distinctly Hollywood approach, building out a mythology in the style of the MCU. Godzilla Minus One is the first Japanese live-action Godzilla film from Toho since the brilliant, post-Fukushima Shin Godzilla . And it returns to the original recipe.

Minus One is a throwback: to the post-WWII Tokyo setting, to 1950s human melodrama, and to a kaiju singularly focused on the obliteration of large, human-made structures. Its hero, Koichi Shikishima, is a kamikaze pilot who, in the final days of the war, fakes a technical issue with his plane, taking shelter in a repair facility on a small island that just so happens to be in the path of a certain teenage lizard monster.

How Shikishima builds relationships with a wide cast of lovable surrounding characters elevates Minus One above other giants. Where Shin Godzilla chronicled a government response to disaster, Minus One pins its hopes on civilians who — failed by their leaders and the world — must rely on each other. — CP

12. John Wick: Chapter 4

Director: Chad Stahelski Cast: Keanu Reeves, Donnie Yen, Ian McShane Where to watch: Starz, or for digital rental/purchase

John Wick has only ever wanted to fuck off and retire, and no one seems to get the message. Chad Stahelski’s saga about the boogeyman of assassins in a world full of them reaches a staggering crescendo in Chapter 4 , a film that somehow manages to run faster and hit harder than three previous movies dedicated to constant escalation. Facing off against action legends Donnie Yen and Scott Adkins, Keanu Reeves pushes John Wick harder and farther than before in a film that rages against the untouchably wealthy , and their expectation that the world be in their service. — JR

11. May December

Director: Todd Haynes Cast: Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, Charles Melton Where to watch: Netflix

Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) arrives in Savannah to prepare for a new role based on Gracie (Julianne Moore), a grown woman who slept with 13-year-old Joe (Charles Melton) and subsequently married him. Elizabeth comes with an open mind, ready to inhabit Gracie and fully understand her. And yet, across Todd Haynes’ May December , we see how nothing is as simple as Elizabeth — or the audience — thinks. Gracie is always more than meets the eye: more emotional, more aware, more monstrous. And throughout the movie, Haynes expertly teases out the two women’s mysteries as they each try to craft an identity around the other.

Haynes’ film certainly has callbacks to other, classic movies about selfhood. But in a way, May December feels most in line with something like The Rehearsal , which also has a lot on its mind about how blurry the line between real life and performance can be, and particularly how traumatic it is to ask kids to behave like adults. It’s something Melton’s Joe is tragically caught in the middle of, and something May December always has on its mind, even when it feels like it’s about other things. As Gracie and Elizabeth obsess over little details, May December lets Melton make the case for the quiet, seething corruption at the heart of the film. — ZM

10. Showing Up

Director: Kelly Reichardt Cast: Michelle Williams, Hong Chau, John Magaro Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase

Lizzy (Michelle Williams) is a 30-something artist living on campus at her hometown art school. She wants two things in life: time to prepare for her exhibition, and her landlord, Jo (Hong Chau), to fix her hot water heater. Superficially, there’s little more to Lizzy’s plight, for the better. Director and co-writer Kelly Reichardt never permits the stakes to rise too high or the plot to get too complicated. Because this film, at its core, is about working artists working in less financially stable mediums, like ceramic figurines and trippy visual projections. Without plot filling the film, we have time to just be present in this beautiful Pacific Northwest scene.

Reichardt’s genius is getting the audience giggling at the artists but never the art. For example, it’s funny to think that an artist dedicated a year of her life to crocheting a jumpsuit. Except then, in Showing Up , you see the outfit and it’s beautiful — an intentional undermining of the punchline. A teacher smugly opines on ceramics, but each piece he holds up is so lovingly crafted that they confidently speak for themselves.

This decision (rib artists, celebrate art) sets the tone. We humans are artifice, a bunch of contradictory masks that we put on to match the situation and the crowd. But our creations — when we commit to a craft, whatever medium it may be — are an expression of our most vulnerable selves.

I suppose I knew this on some subconscious level, but Reichardt, as with so many of her films, helped me mine the epiphany from my brain or heart or wherever I was keeping it. She knows that art, when created from that place of sincere intent, deserves compassion and respect — even if its creator is still a desperate, self-conscious ball of anxiety. And now I know it too. — CP

Director: Greta Gerwig Cast: Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, Will Ferrell Where to watch: Digital rental/purchase before streaming on Max

Any description of Barbie ’s big themes (toxic masculinity, how Barbie branding affects young girls, women as playthings, the commodification of girl power) makes it sound preachy and stilted. But writer-director Greta Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach never hold still for long enough that viewers will feel like they’re sitting through a Gender Studies 101 class. They package these ideas into a giddy satire full of bright and winning performances, pointed jokes aimed at Mattel and the corporate world, terrific casting (Issa Rae as President Barbie, Simu Liu as one of many Kens, and Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie are standouts), and endless cultural gags. And then there are the bright, poppy meta-humor musical numbers, including Ryan Gosling turning “ I’m Just Ken ” into 2023’s top movie anthem.

Perky, playful, and deceptively caustic, Barbie is one of just a few films (like 1995’s The Brady Bunch Movie and 2007’s Enchanted ) that gleefully satirize a cultural staple while also treating it with real affection. Margot Robbie makes a perfect Barbie, whether she’s in perky-and-plastic mode or slowly revealing her underlying humanity, as fears of death and dying leak into the endless party of Barbieland. There’s so much going on in this patter-filled, joke-a-second comedy that it feels like 2023’s Everything Everywhere All at Once , right down to the big life messages smuggled into all the goofery. It’s a high-speed joke-fest that doesn’t take Barbie any more seriously than she deserves — but does pay solemn homage to all the ways, positive and negative, that Barbie fandom makes people feel. — TR

8. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Directors: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson Cast: Shameik Moore, Hailee Steinfeld, Daniel Kaluuya Where to watch: Netflix, or for digital rental/purchase

2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse changed the game for superhero movies and animated movies. It raised the bar for what a Spider-Man story could be, and inspired animators to push the boundaries of what their movies could look like. Maybe Hollywood as a whole took away the wrong lesson (we’ve seen so many multiverse movies), but Into the Spider-Verse redefined genre staples.

The sequel continues to raise the bar. It’s a little busier than the first, pulling in more characters , more frantic visuals, more emotional throughlines, but it’s still bold, daring, and unlike anything else in the superhero movie sphere.

As the characters bounce across the multiverse, the animation style shifts, with each character rooted in a different style. Spider-Gwen’s world is rendered with watercolors, which shift according to the tone of her story. She gets a step up in this movie — a second chance for Gwen Stacy, whose previous iterations across media have not ended well. Meanwhile, Spider-Punk , the brash counterculture rebel, is made up of collaged bits, and animated against the norm so he stands out even more. Every frame of the movie is a visual feast, just bursting with lovingly rendered details.

With a bigger cast and higher stakes, Across the Spider-Verse wasn’t going to finish its story in just one movie . It ends on a huge cliffhanger, but all the pieces are in place for one hell of a trilogy finale. — PR

7. The Boy and the Heron

Director: Hayao Miyazaki Cast: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Ko Shibasaki Where to watch: Theaters

Texture is essential to Hayao Miyazaki’s work. Sometimes the most visceral memories of his movies are the ways liquids glob or glide, while wood flecks flint and flake in tiny explosions. Famously, even his still shots contain some motion, often featuring the slightest of movements that make the world feel more full — more real.

The Boy and the Heron , for all its fantastical realms and magical happenings, follows the same ethos, constantly grounding itself in the feel of Miyazaki’s style and knack for characters drawn into strange worlds. This time it’s 11-year-old Mahito, who’s bored and miserable after moving to the country following his mother’s death in a World War II bombing. His grief has a touch familiar to those who have lived with it: bland and isolating. But the touch of Miyazaki’s work is always deeper, and it’s not too long before an errant heron proves the veil between Mahito and his more vivid dream world is much thinner than he knew.

But no matter which side of the fantastic we’re on, The Boy and the Heron makes the texture of the world feel enthralling. Little details — a bandage loosening in water or a granny’s gait — weave together, building a world that feels at once like anything Studio Ghibli has made and wholly its own. It manages to meditate on its themes without lingering, never letting its story falter (even as our hero languishes in his country tedium). No one is going to be on the other side of an argument calling Hayao Miyazaki the GOAT (at least, nobody I care to talk to). But The Boy and the Heron shows that he is always game to top himself, finding new ways to add layers to every part of his work. — ZM

6. Asteroid City

Director: Wes Anderson Cast: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, and many more Where to watch: Peacock, or for digital rental/purchase

To people who don’t know Wes Anderson’s work well, he’s a known quantity that’s easily replicated and parodied : If you’re watching one of his films, you’re going to see a lot of fast-talking people responding with unemotive calm to extraordinary events, against a backdrop of meticulously designed pastel sets. But fans see a lot of nuance within that formula, as Anderson’s voice (especially his sense of humor) develops from film to film.

In Asteroid City , his ridiculously meta story-within-a-story sci-fi film about an alien encounter, that voice hones in on the question of art and creativity — who it’s for, what it brings the artist and the audience, why any form of recognition or acclaim is good enough for one creator while another strains to find connection and resonance in their work. It’s the kind of film that moves so quickly, and with so little attempt to hold the audience’s hands and tell them what to feel, that it takes some work to scratch the surface.

But it’s worth diving into the movie’s connections and themes, as a who’s who of actors — many from Anderson’s usual stable, and some debuting here — bounce off each other, looking for meaning in an isolated desert setting. The cast (including Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Jeffrey Wright, Sophia Lillis, Edward Norton, and many, many more) navigate familial death, meaningless plaudits, and that alien visitor with the same straight-faced aplomb. This may not be a movie designed for passionate emotional response, but as usual for Anderson, it’s remarkably specific, idiosyncratic, beautifully assembled, and absolutely intentional. — TR

5. How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Director: Daniel Goldhaber Cast: Ariela Barer, Lukas Gage, Forrest Goodluck Where to watch: Hulu, or for digital rental/purchase

An unconventional adaptation of the controversial 2021 nonfiction novel, How to Blow Up a Pipeline applies the ethos of the book (which argued sabotage is a necessary part of environmental activism) to a fictional scenario. In the movie, a group of people from different walks of life — students, disillusioned activists, service workers, punks — gather in Texas with a plan: Blow up an oil pipeline and finally enact some real change. And the movie absolutely rules.

The movie takes the best parts of the heist thriller genre (a likable crew who each brings their own specialized skills, a worthy cause, a focus on the process, a tense finale) and discards the rest (notably, there is no major police/investigator B-plot). It’s a perfect marriage of the genre and the movie’s radical politics, without sacrificing either. Pipeline is also just an impeccably crafted movie, with strong location work that makes the most of America’s vast landscapes, hinting at past beauty ruined by industrialization. And it’s all supported by great performances from emerging stars, especially Forrest Goodluck ( The Revenant ), who excels as a quiet, awkward, self-taught explosives expert.

One of the buzziest and most controversial movies of the year, don’t mistake it for an empty vehicle for controversy; How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a thoughtful, masterful work that weaves in the principles of what makes heist thrillers fun to great effect. 2023 has had many great movies, but none feel as urgent and timely as this one. — PV

4. Killers of the Flower Moon

Director: Martin Scorsese Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro Where to watch: Theaters, or for digital rental/purchase

Ernest Burkhart loves money. It’s one of the first things he says when he arrives in Oklahoma, fresh off the Great War’s killing fields and into the arms of his manipulative uncle, William Hale. Together, they will help turn this land, home of the Osage Nation, into another killing field. For 206 minutes, we will watch them.

Killers of the Flower Moon is an act of lamentation. A cinematic wail against one of the many foundational horrors of these United States, a crime that is still in living memory, its ill-gotten gains still propping up any claim to prosperity the nation has today.

With tremendous conviction, director Martin Scorsese’s reverent, methodical film adapts David Grann’s 2017 account of the reign of terror that plagued the Osage in the 1920s, paring back the sprawling story to focus on Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), Hale (Robert De Niro) and Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), the Osage woman who would marry Burkhart and pay for it with the lives of her entire family.

Through the Burkhart marriage, Scorsese renders the crimes committed against the Osage in miniature, three and a half hours of rumination on the theft and bloodshed that watered the prosperity of white America, endured in stifled silence for a century. Monumental and sobering, Killers of the Flower Moon trembles at the evil that has been grafted onto our collective story, and mourns the voices that will never get to be a part of it. — JR

3. The Holdovers

Director: Alexander Payne Cast: Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Dominic Sessa Where to watch: Theaters, or digital rental/purchase

If you hate sentimental, cliched “abandoned kid and aging curmudgeon create found family” movies like I hate them, The Holdovers is a guaranteed surprise. The latest from Alexander Payne ( Election , Nebraska ), scripted by Kitchen Confidential creator and writer David Hemingson, reunites Payne with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti, playing a buoyantly stuffy professor at a ’70s private boys’ prep school, where he’s tasked with overseeing “the holdovers” — the kids who are staying at the school for Christmas while all their more fortunate classmates head home or out on adventurous holidays.

The Holdovers is full of sudden twists, mostly backstory reveals suitable for a particularly startling stage play. But the real surprise is how personal and specific it becomes, and excellent writing and acting help it dodge the expected parameters for this kind of story. Eventually, it settles into a three-hander between Professor Hunham (Giamatti), his troubled adolescent student Angus (Dominic Sessa, in an intense star-making performance), and Mary (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), the school’s head cook, an older Black woman mourning her son’s recent death in the military.

All three of these characters get room to develop and reveal themselves, and they’re all handled with sensitivity and real warmth that goes far beyond the usual sentimental holiday feel-good fare. (If anything, this is a pretty dark story, and not in a laughable Bad Santa kind of way.) It’s a beautifully calibrated, touching drama about starting over when there’s no other choice available. — TR

2. Past Lives

Director: Celine Song Cast: Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, John Magaro Where to watch: Available for digital rental/purchase

A radiant romantic drama with a shiver of tension running through it, Past Lives is about a love that might have been. But it’s also about a person who might have been (or two people, or three). As well as romantic relationships, it’s a movie about the complicated relationships people have with themselves: especially the various versions of themselves who exist in the past, the present, the future, and on the paths not taken.

It unfolds in three time frames. In Seoul, around the turn of the millennium, Na Young and Hae Sung are 12-year-old classmates and best friends who might be starting to develop deeper feelings for each other, but Na Young’s family is planning to emigrate to Canada. 12 years later, Na Young has changed her name to Nora Moon (Greta Lee) and is a young writer living in New York; she falls into an intense Skype affair with Hae Sung (Teo Yoo), but plans to visit each other never come together. In another 12 years, Nora is still in New York with her husband, Arthur (John Magaro), and Hae Sung comes to visit, threatening to destabilize all their lives.

It’s a film of almost impossible delicacy. Writer-director Celine Song and her brilliant trio of actors hold so much within Past Lives ’ patient frame — unspoken feelings, unrealized possibilities, layers of cultural subtext — that you find yourself holding your breath while watching it, even before it gets to its heart-stopping final scene. The 35mm film cinematography by director of photography Shabier Kirchner ( Small Axe ) absolutely glows, too. Past Lives has a lot to say about the immigrant experience and about the uncertain spaces between childhood and adulthood. It has a philosophical, maybe even spiritual dimension, too. But this all emerges quite naturally from a simple, beautifully observed, and achingly romantic story that anyone can relate to about the sweet pain of the one that got away. — OW

1. Oppenheimer

Director: Christopher Nolan Cast: Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh Where to watch: Theaters and for digital rental/purchase before streaming on Peacock

Is there much left to say about the United States’ criminal, moral compromise in dropping the atomic bomb or the obviously tortured psychology of the bomb’s creator, J. Robert Oppenheimer? Maybe not, but as Christopher Nolan proves in his biopic on the life of the theoretical physicist, there’s plenty left to feel. Cross-cutting through time at lighting speed, and smashing together facts in ways its source material, the exhaustive biography American Prometheus , can’t in bound form, Nolan’s action-movie sensibilities split the very atoms of his subject to understand not the what, but the how and why.

Bouncing from the early days of a daydreaming scientist to the congressional hearings of his eventual political confidant to Oppy’s eventual time at Los Alamos, his $2 billion built-from-the-ground-up research base, Nolan litters the drama with factual detail ripped straight from the book. Yet at every turn, he ditches the Bohemian Rhapsody school of explanation to handwave away complicated mathematical explanation and legalese that might tie a complicated situation up in knots. Like in everything from The Dark Knight to Dunkirk , stakes do the talking — Oppenheimer must end the war. Throughout time he wrestles with turbulent family life, the burial scrutiny of a blacklist-giddy government that wants names of his Communist pals, and the heartbreaking fact that the Jewish people, his people, are under attack… but it all comes back to the bomb. There’s a ticking clock, and yet again, Nolan takes full advantage.

Part heist movie, part courtroom drama, part dreamscape, the swirl of Oppenheimer is at constant crescendo thanks to a kinetic camera, Ludwig Göransson’s humming score, and what might be the most stacked cast in movie history. Every IMAX-sized close-up of Cillian Murphy reveals layers to Oppenheimer that are easily assumed. Robert Downey Jr. takes the right lessons from Tony Stark to imbue Oppenheimer’s political adversary, Lewis Strauss, with swagger. Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, and so many more all show up to deliver — and yet there’s still room for The Santa Clause ’s David Krumholtz to be the MVP. They all fire off life-or-death lines, sweat under the pressure of the job, stagger backward when they realize what they’ve done, and under the eye of Nolan, reach the quantum realm of impossible choices. Oppenheimer has a magnitude worthy of the Trinity tests, but most admirable is that it never fetishizes the accomplishment of the bomb. The end will leave a person absolutely furious, as it must. — MP

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The 10 best movies of 2023

Peter Travers shares his take on the best 10 films of 2023.

It was a phenomenal year for movies.

With the long shadow of the pandemic in retreat, cinema came back in all its infinite variety, filling theaters to such an extent that the term "Barbenheimer" was coined to describe two summer movies that opened on the same day and shattered box-office records.

Few had much hope for "Barbie," a film about a doll, or "Oppenheimer," an epic about nuclear doomsday. But look at them now, heading into the Oscar race with dollar signs attached to their rave reviews.

Both rank high among the year's best, joining another classic about America's violent past from beloved master Martin Scorsese and an achingly tender romance from South Korean newcomer Celine Song, whose young talent is just beginning to blossom.

MORE: Golden Globes nominations 2024: Snubs and surprises

So here, starting with No. 10 and working our way up to the top spot, are my picks for the 10 best movies of 2023.

10. "Barbie"

A Hollywood hack could have turned the backstory of a Mattel doll into a quick-buck opportunity. Instead, trailblazing director Greta Gerwig gifts us with a hot-pink fantasia of feminist art that refuses to play it safe as Margot Robbie's doubt-plagued Barbie teams up with Ryan Gosling's clueless Ken to keep you thinking long after the laughs die down.

And the dudes who think Gerwig's takedown of the patriarchy means she's a hater of men aren't paying attention. Gerwig is a woman of heart and mind. Listen up and you might just learn something.

9. "May December"

Todd Haynes' slippery tease of a movie has been classified as a comedy. So how does that explain the tears falling from your eyes? Focus on the heart-crushing performance from Charles Melton as a stunted manchild still reeling from his marriage to a woman (a thorny, complex Julianne Moore) jailed for seducing him when he was just a seventh grader.

With Natalie Portman hitting a new career peak as the manipulative actress prepping to bring that skewed love story to the screen, you'll be thrown thrillingly off balance.

Editor’s Picks

Review: 'May December' is spellbinder that tears at your emotions

'Napoleon' review: Time capsule-worthy battle visuals, hypnotic performances

Review: Oscar attention must be paid to Rosamund Pike in 'Saltburn'

8. "The Holdovers"

Already hailed as a new holiday classic, this fresh triumph from "Sideways" director Alexander Payne delivers warmth that shouldn't be mistaken for weakness. Paul Giamatti shines as a Grinchy teacher who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit Dominic Sessa's Angus, a student with nowhere to go. And Oscar frontrunner Da'Vine Joy Randolph is the school cook who can't laugh off her pain as the film turns cliches into hard truths.

MORE: Review: 'The Holdovers' has the makings of a new holiday classic

7. "The Zone of Interest"

Jonathan Glazer is the kind of risk-taker who creates a film about the Holocaust and then makes his point by not showing us anything about the horrors taking place as Nazis exterminate Jews at Auschwitz. Instead Glazer focuses on commandant Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedel) as he and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) and their children go about the mundane business of living as if they couldn't see the smoke and hear the screams coming from just next door. Echoing the scary rise of antisemitism today, this urgent warning is hard to watch and impossible to forget.

MORE: Review: 'The Zone of Interest' is hard to watch, but impossible to forget

6. "Maestro"

As star, director and co-writer, Bradley Cooper tops his career in this raw and romantic crescendo of a movie about conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein. The Oscar belongs to Cooper for his heart-full-to-bursting tour de force as the maestro whose passions can't be confined to one kind of music or one sex.

Carey Mulligan is his emotional equal as the wife who lives with Bernstein's angels and demons. Alive with glorious music, Cooper's labor of love catches us up in the experience of watching a genius in the exhilarating act of inventing himself.

MORE: Review: 'Maestro' is Bradley Cooper's heart-full-to-bursting tour de force as Leonard Bernstein

5. "American Fiction"

There's a rush of fresh comic thinking in writer-director Cord Jefferson's dazzling debut feature. In his best and most bracing film role to date, Jeffrey Wright stars as Monk, a Black novelist who feels angry and frustrated that his well-reviewed books never sell. It seems the public only ponies up for stories that juggle tropes about Black poverty and violence. So Monk joins the enemy club under a pseudonym and hits paydirt with hilarious and pointedly satiric results. This tale of an artist selling out his principles will make you laugh till it hurts.

MORE: Review 'American Fiction': Jeffrey Wright should be on his way to an Oscar nomination

4. "Anatomy of a Fall"

No list of the greatest film actors of 2023 would be complete without Hüller (also starring in the aforementioned "Zone of Interest"), who burns up the screen in Justine Triet's forensic anatomy of a marriage. Told through the compulsively watchable tale of a wife on trial for killing her husband by pushing him out a window, the film pins you to your seat. As a successful author forced to deal with the failure of her far-from-better half (Samuel Theis), Hüller gives a performance you can't shake. The same goes for the devilishly clever script by Triet and her husband Arthur Harari, who merge a brilliant battle of the sexes with a courtroom thriller for the ages.

3. "Poor Things"

Prepare to be wowed by Emma Stone's nakedly unafraid performance in this rowdy and rapturously beautiful blast of feminist whup-ass from director Yorgos Lanthimos. Stone plays a pregnant and suicidally unhappy wife who plunges to her watery death only to be reanimated by a nutjob scientist (Willem Dafoe) who swaps her dead brain for that of her unborn child and waits until she can take baby steps into a sexual and psychological awakening.

Lanthimos is a master provocateur who doesn't make movies like anyone else. You won't know what hit you.

MORE: Review: Emma Stone delivers a performance you'll never forget in 'Poor Things'

2. "Past Lives"

Writer-director Celine Song gets it gloriously right her first time out, crafting a lyrical work of art out of her own life as a 12-year-old girl who leaves her family home and her boy crush Hae Sung in South Korea to grow up in Canada. The luminous Greta Lee stars as the adult Nora, who's now a playwright in New York City and married to Arthur (John Magaro), an American, when Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) decides to visit Nora in Manhattan.

The movie spins on that pivotal reunion, uniting Nora and Hae Sung through bonds of language and culture that basically cut Arthur out of the equation. Delicate business is being transacted in this transfixing beauty of a film.

MORE: Review: 'Past Lives' is one of the best movies of the year

1. A tie between "Killers of the Flower Moon" and "Oppenheimer"

They are the twin peaks of this banner film year. I couldn't rate one over the other. Greatness is written all over "Killers of the Flower of the Moon," Martin Scorsese's sorrowful epic about the long history of U.S. mistreatment of Native Americans. Underlined by stupendous acting from Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Oscar favorite Lily Gladstone as an Osage oil heiress caught in a murderous trap by greedy white men, "Killers" is classic Scorsese.

"Oppenheimer" is classic Christopher Nolan, a generation younger than Scorsese but also possessed of the mind of a visionary and the soul of a poet. You can see it in Nolan's brilliant, bruising take on J. Robert Oppenheimer (a flawless Cillian Murphy), the conflicted architect of the atomic age.

Just as Scorsese unearths the tangled roots of American racism, Nolan triggers the nightmare of nuclear annihilation that we still can't wake up from.

Through the past, these all-time, filmmaking giants speak profoundly to right this very minute.

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The 15 Best Movies of 2023—and Where to Watch Them

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Put bluntly, picking the best movies of 2023 was tough. The double-whammy of Barbie and Oppenheimer gave the box office a long-overdue, post-Covid-19 jolt, only to be followed by a pair of months-long strikes in Hollywood that shut down production on nearly all the films in the works for 2024 and beyond. Even now, with the strikes over, the industry is scratching its head at what happened and what’s to come.

Still, amidst all the noise, 2023 provided a wealth of quietly beautiful films. Even as Hollywood fretted over the possibility of artificial intelligence upending filmmaking and giving writing and acting gigs to bots, it’s impossible to watch the movies on this list and not feel such a possibility is faintly ridiculous. This year’s best releases were full of so much ambition and emotional intelligence it’s hard to argue that the value of human input in filmmaking is heading toward obsolescence. Packed with highly accomplished debuts from younger directors, and full of brilliant ideas, the best movies of 2023 were compelled by art’s old chestnut: humans struggling to understand their place in the world.

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In 2017, David Grann published Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI , a true-crime yarn set in 1920s Oklahoma, a period when members of the Osage Nation were being killed for their oil money. Grann’s central character, Mollie Burkhart, was an Osage woman desperate to understand the deaths in her family; a twist reveals that her beloved husband, Ernest, is complicit. Martin Scorsese made a bold decision while adapting Grann’s work: He removed the whodunit aspect, instead letting the audience see exactly how Ernest came to menace his wife, anchoring the movie in the dim-witted villain’s perspective. It shouldn’t work, but in zeroing in on Ernest (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), Scorsese creates an almost unbearably harrowing portrait of all-American evil. A feel-bad masterpiece.

Sandra (Sandra Hüller) is a successful writer married to Samuel (Samuel Theis), a failed writer. When Samuel is found dead outside their home one snowy day, Sandra quickly goes from grieving widow to prime suspect and is forced to reveal the most intimate details of her complicated marriage, including the resentment she had toward her husband for an incident that left their son Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) partially blind. Ultimately, it’s Daniel who serves as the final word in what happened on that tragic day—and what will happen to his mother. This twisty, impeccably acted courtroom drama won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and was a hit when it was released in its native France in August, but it made just a modest art-house splash in the US. But its success in the earliest days of the awards season—including accolades from the European Film Awards, National Board of Review, New York Film Critics Circle, and the Gotham Awards, as well as four Golden Globe nominations—indicates that splash will have a ripple effect.

It would be remiss not to include Oppenheimer , which divided the WIRED office and the internet. Some saw it as misogynist and shallow; some saw it as a blockbuster auteur’s return to form. Whatever your opinion, director Christopher Nolan took an esoteric biography about a scientist trying to get security clearance and turned it into more than $950 million at the box office .

Kelly Reichhardt and Michelle Williams—the indie world’s Scorsese and DiCaprio—collaborate here for the fourth time, and the result is a deeply layered and subtly poignant gem. We follow Lizzy (Williams), a doggedly persistent artist, as she preps for an upcoming show. Her artistic endeavor, small clay women molded into evocative poses, is obstructed by family, work, and life in general. Showing Up captures the universally recognizable seesaw between the anxiety that life is slipping through your fingers, happening to you, and the joy—evidenced in moments of Lizzy’s contented sculpting—that things are going just as they should.

Perhaps no one expected a film based on Mattel’s iconic doll to become a feminist lightning rod, but here we are. What made director Greta Gerwig’s Barbie , which she wrote with her partner Noah Baumbach, such a cultural flashpoint is that it walks such a fine line. It is both so progressive it had conservatives lighting dolls on fire and also not feminist enough . For those in the middle, though, it was a washed-in-pink sendup of patriarchy full of Indigo Girls sing-alongs and Zack Snyder jabs that really took hold. It also took home nearly $1.5 billion at the box office and started talk of a Mattel Cinematic Universe. Welcome to the Mojo Dojo Casa House, I guess.

Raven Jackson’s directorial debut is a feast for the senses. Over the span of 92 minutes, the award-winning poet and photographer channels her artistic talents to create this breathtakingly shot recounting of one Mississippi woman’s life, from the seemingly mundane (adolescent adventures) to the moments you never forget (the death of a loved one). Though Jackson is spare with her dialog, the result is a lyrical movie that is reminiscent of Terrence Malick’s earliest work. The film—which was produced by Moonlight ’s Barry Jenkins—was a hit at Sundance earlier this year and was named one of 2023’s best indie films by the National Board of Review, but it managed to stay firmly under the radar during its brief theatrical run in November.

Filmmaker Tomas (Franz Rogowski) and his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), are living a comfortable life in Paris, though possibly too comfortable. At the wrap party for his latest film, Tomas meets a young woman named Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), and the two begin an intense affair, creating a complex love triangle. Though Tomas and Martin split, they continually find themselves coming back together. The film is a painfully human exploration of the complexities of love, with impeccable performances all around—most notably from Rogowski, who has landed on some critics’ lists as a possible Oscar contender.

In 2018, when Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse hit theaters, it changed perception about what Spider-Man movies, and animated films, could be. No longer led by Peter Parker, a kid from Queens who gets bit by a radioactive spider, it was led by Miles Morales, a kid from Brooklyn who met a similar fate in another part of the multiverse. Across the Spider-Verse continues Miles’ story and his quest to be his own kind of hero and save the multiverse, and his timeline, from a terrible fate. Fun, heartbreaking, and a thrill to watch, it’s one of the best Spider-Man movies ever and is so beautifully animated it’s breathtaking.

Never before in the history of cinema has the phrase “I don’t think we have enough hot dogs” felt so ominous or so perfect. The latest from director Todd Haynes ( Carol ) centers on Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), an actress who travels to Savannah, Georgia, to shadow Gracie, the woman she’s about to play in an upcoming film. Loosely based on Mary Kay Letourneau , Gracie is a middle-aged woman married to a younger man whom she first met when he was 13 and she was in her thirties. Their twins are about to graduate high school, and during the week before the ceremony that Elizabeth spends with the family all sorts of complex and unsettling details emerge—some of the most unnerving about Elizabeth herself. Wicked and chilling, right down to its score, May December is full of surprises and two impeccable performances from Portman and Moore.

With its pastel hues, A-list ensemble cast, and a plot that’s like going for a meandering stroll with someone who tells long, pointless stories, Asteroid City is—depending on your viewpoint—either quintessentially Wes Anderson or unbearably Wes Anderson. On the surface, it’s about an alien spaceship landing in a retro-futurist version of small-town America. But it’s layered and intricate: a movie about a documentary about a play, with Jason Schwartzman as war photographer Augie Steenbeck (and the actor playing him), and Scarlett Johansson as Hollywood star Midge Campbell (and the actor playing her). The overall effect is like some fine work of French patisserie—a macaron, maybe: sweet, pretty, gone.

Director Savanah Leaf’s latest centers on Gia, a 24-year-old mother and recovering addict caught up in San Francisco’s foster care system. Gia has two kids she can see only sporadically; she is pregnant with a third. She must decide whether agreeing to adoption will help her case of increasing contact with her other two. Leaf’s achievement is to capture the inhumane pressure that leads people to act self-destructively. The viewer feels that pressure throughout and faces no choice but to understand what Gia must do.

Horny teen-sex comedies have been around for at least a half-century—which makes director Emma Seligman’s reinvention of the genre all the more impressive. In Bottoms , queer pals PJ (Rachel Sennott, who cowrote the script with Seligman) and Josie ( The Bear ’s Ayo Edebiri) decide to start a fight club at their high school as part of an elaborate scheme to hook up with hot cheerleaders. What the teens don’t count on is the plan actually working and that the best course of action is to try to undo the revolution they ignite. Real-life friends Sennott and Edebiri are an onscreen duo to be reckoned with and get a huge assist from retired running back Marshawn Lynch, who gets to spread his wings as a comedic actor (after his hilarious performance in an episode of Netflix’s Murderville ).

This is Jonathan Glazer’s long-awaited return to film following 2013’s critically-beloved Under the Skin . Here he takes on an Everest: the Holocaust. This story is based on the novel by Martin Amis, who passed away this year, and follows Rudolf Höss and his family as they live an idyllic life on the edge of Auschwitz. In the tradition of films like Shoah , Glazer never quite looks the horror in the eye. There are merely visions of smoke and barbed wire, and a deeply unsettling chorus of muffled screaming. Much of the most starkly vicious moments come from the script: At one point, Höss cannot concentrate at a party; he is too busy sizing up how the high ceilings would make it challenging to gas the guests.

The first feature of Australian YouTubers Danny and Michael Philippou is an intelligent, brilliantly realized, nasty little shock of a horror film . The central threat is an embalmed severed hand, which, when you hold it and say the film’s title, lets you converse with the dead. The kids treat it like a designer drug, filming their hallucinatory freak-outs on their phones. If that makes it sound like there’s a lot that could go wrong, be sure—it all does.

After years of brilliant films, Japanese animation house Studio Ghibli landed at the top of the North American box office with The Boy and the Heron . Reportedly the final film from studio cofunder Hayao Miyazaki, it brought in $12.8 million in its opening weekend, a first for an original anime film. It’s deserved. Telling the story of a boy, struggling to cope with his mother’s death, who meets a heron who shows him a magical world, it’s everything fans have come to expect from Ghibli. Lush, gut-wrenching, and full of just the right balance of fantasy and reality, it’s classic Miyazaki.

Kate Knibbs, Amit Katwala, and Angela Watercutter contributed to this guide.

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2023 was a great year for moviegoing — here are 10 of Justin Chang's favorites

Justin Chang

Film critics like to argue as a rule, but every colleague I've talked to in recent weeks agrees that 2023 was a pretty great year for moviegoing. The big, box office success story, of course, was the blockbuster mash-up of Barbie and Oppenheimer , but there were so many other titles — from the gripping murder mystery Anatomy of a Fall to the Icelandic wilderness epic Godland — that were no less worth seeking out, even if they didn't generate the same memes and headlines.

These are the 10 that I liked best, arranged as a series of pairings. My favorite movies are often carrying on a conversation with each other, and this year was no exception.

All of Us Strangers and The Boy and the Heron

Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal in All of Us Strangers, left, and 12-year-old Mahito in an otherworldly realm in The Boy and the Heron. Searchlight Pictures; Studio Ghibli hide caption

An unusual pairing, to be sure, but together these two quasi-supernatural meditations on grief restore some meaning to the term "movie magic." In All of Us Strangers , a metaphysical heartbreaker from the English writer-director Andrew Haigh ( Weekend , 45 Years ), Andrew Scott plays a lonely gay screenwriter discovering new love even as he deals with old loss; he and Paul Mescal, Claire Foy and Jamie Bell constitute the acting ensemble of the year. And in The Boy and the Heron , the Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki looks back on his own life with an elegiac but thrillingly unruly fantasy, centered on a 12-year-old boy who could be a stand-in for the young Miyazaki himself. Here's my The Boy and the Heron review.

The Zone of Interest and Oppenheimer

The Zone of Interest portrays life next-door to Auschwitz, left, and Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer. A24; Universal hide caption

These two dramas approach the subject of World War II from formally radical, ethically rigorous angles. The Zone of Interest is Jonathan Glazer's eerily restrained and mesmerizing portrait of a Nazi commandant and his family living next door to Auschwitz; Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan 's thrillingly intricate drama about the theoretical physicist who devised the atomic bomb. Both films deliberately keep their wartime horrors off-screen, but leave us in no doubt about the magnitude of what's going on. Here's my Oppenheimer review .

Showing Up and Afire

Michelle Williams in Showing Up , left, and Thomas Schubert in Afire. A24; Janus hide caption

Two sharply nuanced portraits of grumpy artists at work. In Kelly Reichardt 's wincingly funny Showing Up , Michelle Williams plays a Portland sculptor trying to meet a looming art-show deadline. In Afire , the latest from the great German director Christian Petzold , a misanthropic writer (Thomas Schubert) struggles to finish his second novel at a remote house in the woods. Both protagonists are so memorably ornery, you almost want to see them in a crossover romantic-comedy sequel. Here's my Showing Up review .

Past Lives and The Eight Mountains

Teo Yoo and Greta Lee in Past Lives , left, and Alessandro Borghi and Luca Marinelli The Eight Mountains. A24; Sideshow/Janus Films hide caption

Two movies about long-overdue reunions between childhood pals. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are terrifically paired in Past Lives , Celine Song 's wondrously intimate and philosophical story about fate and happenstance. And in The Eight Mountains , Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch's gorgeously photographed drama set in the Italian Alps, the performances of Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi are as breathtaking as the scenery. Here are my reviews for Past Lives and The Eight Mountains .

De Humani Corporis Fabrica and Poor Things

A surgeon in De Humani Corporis Fabrica , left, and Emma Stone in Poor Things. Grasshopper Film & Gratitude Films; Atsushi Nishijima/Searchlight Pictures hide caption

Surgery, two ways: The best and most startling documentary I saw this year is Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel's De Humani Corporis Fabrica, which features both hard-to-watch and mesmerizing close-up footage of surgeons going about their everyday work. The medical procedures prove far more experimental in Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos ' hilarious Frankenstein-inspired dark comedy starring a marvelous Emma Stone as a woman implanted with a child's brain. Here is my Poor Things review .

More movie pairings from past years

Justin Chang pairs the best movies of 2022, and picks 'No Bears' as his favorite

Justin Chang pairs the 10 best movies of 2021 — plus 1 film that stands alone

A Terrific Year For Smaller Films: Critic Justin Chang Pairs 10 Favorites From 2020

Double Feature: Critic Justin Chang Pairs His Favorite Films Of 2019

20 Best Movies of 2023

By David Fear

Had you told us at the beginning of 2023 that an internet joke about summer-movie counterprogramming would give birth to a major pop-cultural phenomenon ; that both a lo-fi Canadian horror flick and a $200 million epic from the greatest living American filmmaker would provide twin poles of cinematic ingenuity; that Marvel Studios would run into what’s possibly its own endgame in terms of keeping its successful cinematic universe afloat; that dual strikes from both the WGA and the Screen Actors Guild would nearly crater Hollywood entertainment as we know it; and that Taylor Swift would be the one to save the motion picture industry (not to mention the music industry, the NFL, and Western civilization as a whole), we might have questioned whether your crystal ball was on the fritz.

At the end of a long, unpredictable and thoroughly upended year at the movies, however, we know now that the double mantras for 2023 were: anything goes; and there is no such thing as a sure thing. This was a year in which disruption seemed to be the only constant, streamers continued to terraform the landscape of theatrical distribution (though they aren’t so stable either), and salvation seemed to come from some unlikely places. To go from “ Barbenheimer ? Seriously?” to “ Barbenheimer ! Seriously!!!” was a journey and then some. The hope is that even though the industry was reluctantly forced to recognize that, I dunno, people should be properly paid for their work and having software programs substituting for real people would be problematic (understatement alert!), the long, stalled summer of ’23 and the slightly delayed awards season will lead to genuine progress. Business as usual is no longer an option.

Not that all this sturm und drang and the feeling that things are very much still in a transactional phase stopped great movies from coming out. Both big studios and hipper, scrappier distributors hit the equivalent of home runs, critically and commercially. Festivals like Sundance, Cannes, and Venice delivered more than their share of spirit-raising, faith-restoring highlights. There were movies that harkened back to that ol’ time religion feel of Hollywood in its heyday, and those that reminded you that sometimes all you need is a phone, some actors, and a vision to make it work. Our top 20 movies for 2023 run the gamut in terms of genre, scope, running time, and subject matter. The only thing all of these have in common is that they reminded us of how thrilling it is to feel a sense of communion between the artists who make films and those of us who watch them. The circle remains unbroken in that respect. (A quick note: We’re going by official theatrical release dates and not qualifying runs, which is why you will see titles like The Quiet Girl and Return to Seoul here, and will not see, say, Perfect Days and The Taste of Things — two great movies that officially bow in the first half of 2024 and will likely be on next year’s best-of list. Also, some additional 2023 shout-outs go out to: American Symphony, Earth Mama, Infinity Pool, May December, Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgos, Reality, R.M.N., Smoking Causes Coughing, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, A Thousand and One. )

‘Oppenheimer’

Christopher Nolan’s sprawling biopic on the Man Who Would Be Destroyer of Worlds benefits from a depth-charge of a performance by Cillian Murphy, a meticulous sound design that prizes both dead silence and deafening booms , and a cast featuring every third actor with a SAG card. (The fact that it was also one half of the most unlikely cinematic coupling in the history of the movies didn’t hurt, either.) Yet so much of it works because of the characteristic rigor that Nolan, one of the last name-above-the-title auteurs standing, brings to the filmmaking; even when the competing timelines and set pieces start to mash up against each other, there’s a genuine thrill to watching the Inception director try to get inside the mind of this towering, often inscrutable 20th-century figurehead. It’s a movie that brings to mind the difficult era-spanning epics of yesteryear, from Reds to The Right Stuff, as well as a movie made by adults for adults, yet done with the sweep and majesty we now associate with movies made for kids and teens. Read the full review here.

‘The Boy and the Heron’

Hayao Miyazaki’s latest — and possibly last — gives us surreal imagery, cuddly-to-creepy creatures, excitement, sorrow, space, silence, and emotional currents that run leagues deep. It’s a Miyazaki film, in other words, but one particularly suffused with wisdom, boundless empathy and grief. A tween named Mahito (voiced by Soma Santoki) moves to the countryside with his widower father, right after his mother has perished in a hospital fire in Tokyo. While he’s getting accustomed to his new surroundings, the boy meets a mysterious and somewhat aggressive heron, who seems to be harboring a secret. Or maybe it’s simply the key to a secret world, where Mahito can start to process his trauma. “Create a world without malice, and full of beauty,” one character tells our hero — a profound statement that sums up not just this potential swan song but Miyazaki’s entire career. If this is indeed it, the animation godhead is going out on a high note. Read the full review here.

‘Bottoms’

P.J. (Rachel Sennott) and Josie ( The Bear ’s Ayo Edebiri ) are at the bottom of the high-school social-order food chain. Then these best friends accidentally start an afterschool fight club, partially to get out of a jam and partially to pick up hot cherleaders who wouldn’t otherwise give them the time of day. Guess who’s suddenly the most popular seniors on campus? Filmmaker Emma Seligman follows up her nerve-shredding character study Shiva Baby with a a wild, anarchic raunchcom fueled by overworked libidos, bloody knuckles and pure chaos energy. It’s both a perfect showcase for a next-gen comic duo and the Heathers that Gen Z deserves. Read full review here.

‘You Hurt My Feelings’

The cringe-comedy equivalent of Scorsese and De Niro — albeit with a slightly lower body count — director Nicole Holofcener and Julia Louis-Dreyfus reunite for this Upper West Side farce about an author who overhears her husband ( Tobias Menzies ) saying he doesn’t care for her new in-progress book. He’s been white-lying to her in order to be supportive; she feels she can no longer trust him. It’s the perfect setup for JLD to flex her chops , and for the O.G. Sundance filmmaker to turn good people behaving badly into painful, witty, and painfully-witty bullseyes. May these two make a million more movies together. Read the full review here.

‘Passages’

All hail Franz Rogowski, the man behind the all-consuming black hole at the center of director Ira Sachs’ gloriously messy love-triangle romance . The German actor plays Tomas Freiburg, a filmmaker who’s a charismatic box of bon-bons with biohazard stickers plastered with biohazard stickers. He’s just struck up an impromptu relationship with Agathe ( Blue Is the Warmest Color ‘s Adèle Exarchopoulos), a young woman he meets at a nightclub during his latest project’s wrap party. Soon, he’s moving in with her… much to the consternation of his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw). Sachs is an indie-film veteran who’s no stranger to turning the spotlight on dysfunctional relationships and/or showcasing raw, explicit sex scenes, and this drama has plenty of the latter. But it’s ultimately about being an artist, and the way that gives someone license to assume, rightly or wrongly, that the world revolves around them. Read the full review here.

‘Skinamarink’

The oddest and most welcome up-from-the-underground success story of 2023, Kyle Edward Ball’s ghost story adapts the grainy, lo-fi look of found-footage horror and the cut-and-paste vocabulary of experimental movies to stunning effect — it’s the rare genre flick that fans of both Paranormal Activity and Maya Deren can love. A four-year-old boy (Lucas Paul) finds himself alone in his house late at night, seemingly by himself; his mother, father, and older sister (Dali Rose Tetreault) disappear one by one, as do many of the doors and windows leading to the outside world. Odd images of dolls and chairs affixed to the ceiling suggest something wicked this way comes, and that’s before an unknown voice whispers for the boy to pick up a knife. Anyone with longstanding abandonment issues may want to have their therapist on speed-dial before they dip into this waking nightmare. But you don’t need a firsthand knowledge of trauma to appreciate the way the Canadian filmmaker so deftly channels the free-form fear and anxieties of childhood. Appreciate, and feel extremely unnerved by.

‘Beau Is Afraid’

Meet Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), your typical 21st-century schizoid man. He’s just found out his mother has died, which means he has to travel from his Bosch painting of a downtown neighborhood to the family mansion by the sea. Such Freudian journeys are easier said than done. Ari Aster ( Hereditary, Midsommar ) returns with a long, dark comedy of the soul, following his Oedipal wreck of an everyman into a fairy-tale world of grieving suburbanites, PTSD-suffering soldiers, traveling theater troupes, and a truly monstrous maternal figure. There are so many baroque touches and visionary flourishes on display that it’s tempting to dub Aster’s self-incriminating masterwork the Citizen Kane of mommy-issues movies. It’s truly a sui generis nightmare all its own. Read the full review here.

‘Return to Seoul’

The idea that Park Ji-min, a visual artist who works with plastics, had never acted before filmmaker Davy Chou cast her in his identity-crisis drama is, frankly, almost as astonishing as what she’s doing onscreen. There’s a lot going on in his tale of a young woman sifting through her past in search of answers, and this newbie actor is responsible for 99 percent of it. Playing a Korean-born, French-bred millennial who’s come back to her native country in search of her birth parents, Park lets you ride shotgun as her character Frédérique spends her days trying to connect with her biological mom and dad, and nights indulging in the sort of free-for-all hedonism that characterizes the interzone between teendom and responsible adulthood. It’s a perfect complement to Chou’s stylish storytelling, which leaves you woozy and punch-drunk by proxy. Such a gem, this one. Read the full review here.

‘All of Us Strangers’

A writer (Andrew Scott) meets a handsome, young man (handsome, young Paul Mescal) who lives in his apartment building. Sparks immediately fly, but the emotionally closed-off scribe is reluctant to see where a potential hook-up might lead. Several days later, he ventures from London back to the house he grew up in, where he finds his Mum (Claire Foy) and Dad (Jamie Bell) welcoming him with open arms. The fact that his parents appear to be the same age as he is, however, suggests something else is going on here. Writer-director Andrew Haigh’s extraordinary ode to memory, family, and the rocky terrain of unfinished business in regards to both turns a what-if scenario into a quietly shattering look at one man’s reluctance to love. You can never truly go home again, they say. And yet, as this delicate, devastating tearjerker reminds you, the good, the bad, and the ugly of home never truly leaves you, either.

‘American Fiction’

Frustrated by the lack of interest in his “important” novels, author Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) decides to write the most cliché-filled book about Black life imaginable under a pseudonym. Cue: the literary event of the season. If Emmy-winning writer Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut was simply a satire in the tradition of, say, Bamboozled or Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, it would still be scathing, sharp, and funny as hell. But he’s also threaded a character study and a tender family drama within the broad comic strokes and cutting barbs about the publishing world, and captured the push-pull dynamics of siblings in a way that feels beautifully, painfully spot-on. Plus, he’s handed Jeffrey Wright a gift of a role, which the actor responds to by doing some of the best work of his career.

‘Barbie’

It’s tough to sell a decades-old doll and actively make you question why you’d still buy a toy that comes with so much baggage. (Metaphorically speaking, of course — literal baggage sold separately.) Filmmaker Greta Gerwig knew this going in to this big-screen take on the pinkest of I.P.s. So did her cowriter Noah Baumbach, producer and star Margot Robbie , the Ken-for-all-seasons Ryan Gosling, and everyone else involved with what, you’d assumed, would have been a feature-length commercial. Such tongue-in-cheek self-awareness still does not prepare you for what turns out to be a saga of self-realization, filtered through both the spirit of free play and the sense that it’s not all fun and games in the real world — a doll’s story that continually drifts into the territory of A Doll’s House. Rather than turn away from the baggage, Gerwig & co. unpack it, while still delivering a deliriously big, broad, mega-box office bonanza. Our minds are still reeling. Behold, the most subversive blockbuster of the 21st century. Read the full review here.

‘All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt’

You more or less pray that a directorial debut like the one from poet-turned-filmmaker Raven Jackson comes along every so often — the sort of out-of-the-gate announcement of a new talent that makes you feel like you’ve just been hit and hugged at the exact same time. Both a free-form look at a young Black woman (played by Kaylee Nicole Johnson as a child and Charleen McClure as a twentysomething) growing up in a Mississippi town circa the early 1970s and a tribute to the strong female figures that helped shape Jackson’s perspective, this coming-of-age story announces right from the start that you are not just watching a movie. You’re experiencing an immersive portrait of a life and a landscape intertwined, and one in which its creator’s voice retains its power as its translates from words on a page to sound and vision on a screen. Read the full review here.

‘The Delinquents’

It’s the “perfect” crime: A bank employee (Daniel Elías) steals a duffel bag’s worth of money from his job. He then asks a co-worker (Esteban Bigliardi) to hold on to it. His plan is to turn himself in, do a brief prison sentence, retrieve the cash, and then happily retire. After all, isn’t that better than working a soul-crushing gig for the next 25 years for the exact same payoff ? His friend reluctantly agrees. Eventually, he stashes the loot deep in the countryside. And what happens after that turns Argentine writer-director Rodrigo Moreno’s debut feature into something way more thought-provoking, playful, and philosophical than your average heist movie. Does one live to work or work to live? What is your freedom worth to you? And where can I find a vinyl copy of the soundtrack, featuring the kick-ass Seventies South American rock band Pappo’s Blues? Read the full review here.

‘Anatomy of a Fall’

Filmmaker Justine Triet drops us into a mystery involving a German writer (Sandra Hüller, having a very good year — see also The Zone of Interest ), a remote house in the French Alps, and a corpse. The dead man is her husband (Samuel Theis). The main suspect is the author herself. Whether her spouse fell or was pushed from the top floor of their dwelling becomes a matter for the courts to decide, at which point we begin to find out more and more about the couple’s highly mercurial history. A colleague described this as “ Marriage Story but as a thriller,” which tracks — especially once an audio recording of an argument turns into a scathing, screaming, take-no-prisoners set piece. Bonus points for the most passive-aggressive use of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P” ever. Read the full review here.

‘The Quiet Girl’

A shy, withdrawn 12-year-old girl (Catherine Clinch) is sent to live with an older couple (Carrie Crawley and Andrew Bennett) on a farm for the summer. Her parents are neglectful at best and borderline abusive at worst; it takes a while for this lass to open up to these new guardians. Her caretakers have a tragedy in their past as well, and there’s a sense that the three of them need each other more than words can communicate. Director Colm Bairéad’s beautiful yet devastating story of the need for nurturing swept Ireland’s version of the Oscars last year, and it’s a great reminder that when you have a performer as emotionally open and expressive as Clinch, silence can indeed speak volumes. Rarely has a movie been this graceful in breaking your heart in two. Read the full review here.

‘Showing Up’

In which Kelly Reichardt shows you why word work is a key part of “artwork.” Longtime collaborator/muse Michelle Williams is a Portland-based sculptor desperately trying to finish some final pieces for an upcoming gallery exhibit; everything from a wounded bird to her flighty landlord (Hong Chau, killing it as usual) seems to be conspiring against her, however. It’s a character study that, like so many of Reichardt’s best films ( Old Joy, Wendy & Lucy, First Cow ), makes you revise your opinion of the people at the center of these funky, oft-kilter portraits of off-balance lives. And it’s also a bone-dry comedy about the ways that the constant piling up of quotidian bullshit can send someone into a slow-burn meltdown. But it’s first and foremost a testimony not only to the labor involved in being creative but to those genuine artists — like Reichardt and Williams — who can make something this deep and complicated seem like the most naturally, casually brilliant masterwork around. Read the full review here.

‘Poor Things’

Or: Frankenstein, but make it funnier, racier, and more feminist. Yorgos Lanthimos’ take on the Prometheus myth imagines a young woman named Bella Baxter — take a bow, Emma Stone — who’s resurrected from the dead by Willem Dafoe’s scarred scientist. Given the brain of a baby, Bella is forced to relearn everything from speaking to social graces. Then she discovers the joys of sex, and what follows is both a harsh education and well-earned empowerment. Reteaming with The Favourite screenwriter Tony McNamara, Lanthimos and his star gin up a throwback comedy of manners that revolves around a particularly repressive era’s attitudes toward women. The fairer sex may be married, imprisoned, fetishized, objectified, forced into motherhood, and treated like property. But they mustn’t feel physical pleasure. That way lies madness… for men. And thanks to Stone, we watch as the fallen angel stands up, dusts herself off and spreads her wings wide on her own sexed-up, pro-science terms. We’re all the richer for it. Read the full review here.

‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

Yes, the word “masterpiece” is overused a lot. But what else can you call a work that finds our greatest living American filmmaker Martin Scorsese turning a sprawling, three-and-a-half-hour drama involving power, corruption and our nation’s toxic past into an intimate story, without sacrificing its depth or scope? Less a straight adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller than a complement to it, this throwback drama about a murder epidemic in the oil-rich Osage Nation circa the early 1920s narrows its focus on the love story between Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his wife Mollie (the extraordinary Lily Gladstone). She’s watched her mother and sisters perish via both a mysterious “wasting illness” and outright murder; the fear is that her husband and his big-shot uncle (Robert De Niro) are after her family’s wealth and land rights, and she’s next. It’s the closest thing Scorsese has made to a Western, and the extra emphasis on the clash between Jazz Age modernity and traditional Osage culture — as well as the threat of 20th century white supremacy — makes this a partial corrective to decades of movie mythology. Stunning, on every level. Read our full review here .

‘The Zone of Interest’

Jonathan Glazer ‘s take on Martin Amis’s 2014 novel is a portrait of hell from the periphery. An S.S. officer (Christian Friedel) and his family live in the housing area surrounding Auschwitz; they throw pool parties and take afternoon tea with friends while chimneys belch black smoke in the distance. Glazer strips away the imagery we now associate with Holocaust dramas and puts his high-formalism style to perfect use, presenting an absolutely chilling look at how normalization works — at some point, you simply stop hearing the barking dogs, gunshots, and human suffering happening right outside your own backyard. This is what the banality around the banality of evil looks like. And Sandra Hüller, playing the officer’s raging wife, once again convinces you that she’s one of the most fearless international actors working today.

‘Past Lives’

Once upon a time in Seoul, two kids — Na Young and Hae Sung — were the best of friends. Then her family immigrated to Canada, so whatever mutual childhood crush they harbored for each other is cut short. Years later, the now-grown Na Young ( Greta Lee ), who goes by Nora, reconnects with Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) over social media. She lives in New York. He’s still in South Korea. Eventually, communication stops. Life goes on. Nora gets married to a fellow writer (John Magaro). And then Hae finally makes good on his promise to come visit America. She offers to play tour guide. Every sightseeing excursion and catch-up exchange feels loaded. The feelings haven’t gone away. Neither of them know what’s going to happen next.

A playwright with a genuine feel for nuance and crafting characters so achingly real and recognizable that you feel like you’ve known them forever, writer-director Celine Song has a talent for letting things be left unsaid, and letting this central trio express themselves through unfinished sentences, casual asides, and glances; every hesitation and pause suggest short stories unto themselves. And with her first movie (drawn from her own autobiographical experiences), she already proves she can make the sort of intimate, character-driven romantic drama that never overplays its hand yet will gladly lubricate your tear ducts. It also makes you realize that Lee has been chronically underused as an actor — she’s never been given a chance like this to display her chops before, and takes full advantage of exploring this very complicated woman’s conflicted feelings. Most importantly, Past Lives takes what appears to be a simple story of unrequited love and gives it the depth, the feeling, and the emotional scope of something that feels so much larger than just a film. When we first saw this minor-key masterpiece back in January , we felt like we’d already seen the best movie of the year. All these months later, that feeling still remains. Read our full review here .

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Best 20 Movies of 2023

1. Oppenheimer

2. Past Lives

3. Poor Things

4. The Holdovers

5. Killers of the Flower Moon

6. About Dry Grasses

7. Anatomy of a Fall

8. The Promised Land

9. Fallen Leaves

10. Perfect Days

11. The Taste of Things

12. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

13. The Zone of Interest

14. American Fiction

15. The Boy and the Heron

16. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

17. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

18. John Wick: Chapter 4

19. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

20. Godzilla Minus One

More to explore, recently viewed.

What was the best movie of 2023? From 'Barbie' to 'Poor Things,' these are our top 10

Y'all, this was a great year in film.

There have been pretty stellar ones in the past (1984 boasted "Ghostbusters," "Beverly Hills Cop," "Amadeus," "The Terminator" and "Footloose") but 2023's film fare brought welcome nuance to theaters and blockbusters that mattered. " Barbenheimer ," anyone?

So what are the greatest hits, the works that have been artistically excellent and emotionally resonant? It was a hard job winnowing it down to the highlights but they're there. The refreshing origin tale of, yes, a sneaker. A feminist take on a "Frankenstein" fable. Sure, a Martin Scorsese crime saga always has a good chance to make a best-of list – his newest definitely earns a fire emoji. Yet you'll also find here a joyous period musical, a bit of 1970s holiday nostalgia and a ghost story.

Here are 2023’s best movies, definitively ranked:

10. 'Cassandro'

Wrestling fans sadly don’t have a large canon of great films (“No Holds Barred,” anyone?). But we're in a mini-golden age between "The Iron Claw" and this underdog biopic that passionately puts a headlock on viewers’ hearts and minds. Gael García Bernal's Saúl hangs up his mask – a signature aspect of the Mexican luchador set – and embraces his queer identity inside and outside the ring by being a flamboyant “exótico,” making a character type historically jeered and mocked into a runaway success .

Where to watch: Prime Video

9. 'The Holdovers'

Alexander Payne's latest will have you revisiting your list of all-time Christmas movies because this throwback is a heartfelt and humorous instant holiday classic . Dripping in a 1970s aesthetic and boasting a crackling script, the film stars Paul Giamatti as an uptight teacher who befriends a rebellious student (newcomer Dominic Sessa) and a grieving cook (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) while stuck at a boarding school over winter break.

Where to watch: Apple TV , Vudu , Amazon

'The Holdovers' movie review: Paul Giamatti stars in an instant holiday classic

8. 'American Fiction'

It's past time for Jeffrey Wright to get his flowers. In Cord Jefferson's sharp satire, the Golden Globe nominee is a curmudgeonly academic tired of getting his books rejected while books with stereotypically Black tropes get all the love. He writes a "bad" novel as a joke and, much to his chagrin, becomes a runaway hit in a thoughtful film that has something to say about race and culture but also family and aging.

Where to watch: In select theaters now (nationwide Jan. 12)

While it’s hard to imagine anything as cool as a pair of original Air Jordans, director Ben Affleck’s retro basketball business drama comes pretty close. Matt Damon plays the embattled but optimistic talent scout obsessed with signing NBA rookie Michael Jordan to a Nike shoe deal in 1984 – the only problem is he has to get His Airness’ protective mother (Viola Davis) totally on board too.

6. 'The Color Purple'

Blitz Bazawule's vibrant and joyous adaptation of the Broadway musical (based on Alice Walker's seminal book) is a different experience than Steven Spielberg's 1985 best picture nominee but no less effective. "American Idol" favorite Fantasia Barrino is terrific as a Southern woman shackled to a no-good man (Colman Domingo) who fosters a strong sisterhood with a loyal friend (Danielle Brooks) and a blues singer (Taraji P. Henson).

Where to watch: In theaters now

5. 'Barbie'

Only in director Greta Gerwig's hands could the famous doll become the feminist meta pop-culture moment that everyone can get behind . When things go awry in Barbie Land, Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) head to the Real World and deal with existential crises in enjoyably madcap fashion in a goofy and heartfelt comedy that explores humanity, patriarchy and the meaning of life. May we all be a little less Ken and a lot more Weird Barbie.

Where to watch: Apple TV ,  Vudu ,  Amazon , Google Play

4. 'Rye Lane'

An awkward, tearful meeting in a unisex bathroom brings together recently dumped Dom (David Jonsson) and carefree Yas (Vivian Oparah) and kickstarts Raine Allen-Miller's wonderfully endearing, must-see reimagining of the rom-com. The adorably quirky twosome bond during a revelatory stroll through London that involves a cathartic run-in with an ex, spicy vittles, revealing chats and some light breaking-and-entering.

Where to watch: Hulu

3. 'Poor Things'

Is it too early to give Emma Stone 's best actress Oscar for "La La Land" a new golden friend? She's never been better as the reanimated Bella Baxter in Yorgos Lanthimos' fantastical dark comedy. Bella matures from infantile woman-child to liberated Victorian-era prostitute with a heart of gold in a sex-filled, eccentric narrative that co-stars Mark Ruffalo as a punchable toxic love interest and Willem Dafoe as Bella's mad-scientist "dad."

'Poor Things': How sex (and sweets) helped bring Emma Stone's curious character to life

2. 'Killers of the Flower Moon'

That this true-life Western epic is one of the best in Martin Scorsese's iconic career is saying something. The Oscar-winning director's newest is a love story between a World War I veteran (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a young woman (a fantastic Lily Gladstone) from Oklahoma's wealthy Osage Nation. At the same time, it's also a murder mystery about the deaths that plagued the Native American tribe in the 1920s, and a well-acted, thought-provoking look at white greed, corruptive power and America's complicated history with its indigenous people.

1. 'All of Us Strangers'

In director Andrew Haigh's moving fantasy, Andrew Scott delivers an astounding performance as a lonely London screenwriter who fosters a relationship with a flirty neighbor ( Paul Mescal ) while at the same time regularly visiting his childhood home to talk with the parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) he lost 30 years prior. For those looking for a metaphysical masterpiece, it's a brilliant and haunting narrative about grief, love and letting go of the past to find one's self in the present.

Where to watch: In select theaters now, expanding through Jan. 19

Films of the year 2023

Releases that won the critics' approval this year

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Foreign language, period drama, documentary, action / thriller, children's films.

2023 was the year that was dominated by the twin releases of "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer". Here we look at some of the other films that impressed the critics this year. 

In Todd Field's psychological drama "Tár", Cate Blanchett plays a world-renowned conductor who becomes embroiled in a #MeToo-type scandal. The film runs to 158 minutes, yet it "doesn't drag for a single minute", said Deborah Ross in The Spectator – and Blanchett is sensational as the narcissistic maestro brought low. 

"The Fabelmans" is Steven Spielberg's love letter to his parents and to the movie-making craft. It is "suffused with warmth", and has a "great deal of gentle humour", said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail .

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"Scrapper" explores the relationship between an isolated 12-yearold (Lola Campbell) and her father (Harris Dickinson). Without ever teetering into twee, this "spunky British indie" shows that "a grief story set on an east London council estate" needn't be "grey and miserabilist", said Larushka Ivan-Zadeh in the Daily Mail . 

Molly Manning Walker's "How to Have Sex" follows a group of girls on a wild, post-GCSE holiday in Crete, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent . A "gut punch" of a film, it's about how "what isn't openly felt" is often "the stuff that really hurts".

In "You Hurt My Feelings", Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays a writer who hears her husband (Tobias Menzies) confessing that he doesn't like her new novel. "The film is super-spare in execution, yet everything is meticulously tuned," said Jonathan Romney in the FT .

"The Great Escaper" tells the true story of war veteran Bernard Jordan (Michael Caine), who left his care home, aided by his wife (Glenda Jackson), to attend a D-Day commemoration. Jackson and Caine are a sheer "joy", said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail .

The Peckham-set romcom "Rye Lane" – about an accountant and an aspiring costume designer – is a delight. It is full of "laugh-out-loud" lines, said Claire Shaffer in The New York Times , and comes together at the end "as only the best romcoms can".

The Belgian drama "Close" – a prizewinner at Cannes – follows two 13-yearold boys whose friendship comes under strain when they start secondary school. A "miraculously subtle" film, it packs "a formidable emotional wallop", said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph . "Every beat rings utterly true."

"The Three Musketeers: D'Artagnan" is the first French adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel in 60 years – and it's a "swashbuckling" delight, said Lillian Crawford in Empire . The first of two parts, this film depicts D'Artagnan's attempts to become a musketeer. The cast is "dangerously sexy"; and you'll finish it with your appetite "whetted" for part two (in cinemas now).

In "One Fine Morning", Léa Seydoux plays a widowed translator from Paris who is trying to raise her unbiddable eight-year-old while caring for her sick father. When she bumps into an old friend, they begin a complicated affair. So French "you can almost taste the croissants", this is a "thought-provoking film about love, the sheer messiness of grown-up life" and the indignities of old age, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday .

Directed by Celine Song, a Korean-born, New York-based playwright, "Past Lives" is about a Korean-born, New York-based playwright (Greta Lee) whose life is disrupted when she reconnects with her childhood friend (Teo Yoo). "More attuned to the ache between souls than the combat between bodies", it is a "wonderfully assured" film that keeps you "guessing to the end", said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times .

In the courtroom drama "Anatomy of a Fall", Sandra Hüller plays a celebrated author who stands accused of murdering her husband in the French Alps, said Wendy Ide in The Observer . A "solid, unshowy film", it's "compulsively watchable" and hardly ever loosens its "throttling" grip.

"Theater Camp" is a mockumentary that depicts life in a kids' theatre camp in upstate New York, where the children are quick to jazz-hand and the teachers bubble over with enthusiasm. It's the kind of film "we haven't seen much of recently", said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph : "a very, very funny one"; in fact, it made me laugh so much "I slid out of my seat". 

"Dream Scenario" stars Nicolas Cage as an ageing professor whose humdrum life is turned on its head when he starts appearing in people's dreams. "Silly, strange" and hilarious, the film is powered by a "peak Cage Renaissance performance", said John Nugent in Empire .

In the live-action comedy "Strays", featuring real but CGI-enhanced dogs, Will Ferrell voices a terrier called Reggie who falls in with a bunch of strays when he is rejected by his owner. The film "demands a high tolerance for swearing, knob gags and bodily fluids", said Ed Potton in The Times ; but it's often funny.

Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" examines the murders of members of the Native American Osage tribe, who, by the 1920s, had become the richest people in the world, owing to the discovery of oil beneath their reservation. "A movie of guilt and conscience", it shows that "for now, upper-case Cinema lives", said Danny Leigh in the FT .

"Till" retells the shocking, real-life story of Emmett Till, the boy from Chicago who allegedly wolf-whistled at a white woman in Mississippi in 1955, an infraction for which he was tortured and killed. The film follows his mother Mamie Till's search for justice. It's a "tough watch", but a powerful one, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday. 

Set in northeast England in the late 1980s, Georgia Oakley's debut feature "Blue Jean" revolves around a partially closeted PE teacher (Rosy McEwen) who spots one of her pupils at their local gay bar. McEwen is "a revelation", said Leslie Felperin in the FT : "vulnerable and moon-child pale", she projects the "wariness of a skittish cat"; and she is amply supported by a cast who imbue the story with "spontaneity and warmth".

"The Deepest Breath" explores the lethal world of freediving, through the prism of Italian world champion Alessia Zecchini and her safety instructor. The story is "the stuff of epic melodrama", said Kevin Maher in The Times , and it is "beautifully filmed". Director Laura McGann uses competition footage to reveal a ravishing subaquatic world "where sun-kissed athletes, in their prime of youth, go to die".

John le Carré  gives his final interview in Errol Morris's documentary "The Pigeon Tunnel". An "absorbing, colourful" portrait, it is particularly illuminating on the author's relationship with his conman father, said Richard Brody in The New Yorker .

"Nothing Lasts Forever" takes a hard look at the diamond industry, the way the gems have been marketed to the world, and the seismic impact of lab-grown stones on the market. Now and again, there comes a documentary that turns your view on a subject upside down, said Wendy Ide in The Observer ; this "witty, highly entertaining" film is one of them.

The seventh instalment in the "Mission: Impossible" series was one of the biggest casualties when Covid struck, and film units were forced to close down. When it finally arrived in cinemas, it fell short of box-office expectations. Yet it provides a proper dose of "adrenaline-rush entertainment", and builds to a "frankly jaw-dropping finale", said Mark Kermode in The Observer .

Adapted from a graphic novel, David Fincher's "The Killer" is a hitman revenge thriller starring Michael Fassbender. It's a "bullet-fast piece of filmmaking" that "hijacks your nervous system for two hours before releasing you, pleasantly exhausted, into the cool night air", said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times .

An adaptation of Rumaan Alam's hit apocalyptic novel, "Leave the World Behind" stars Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke as an affluent couple from Brooklyn who are grappling with what seems to be the end of the world. It's a film that "knows how to make you care", said Peter Travers on ABC News – even as it fries your nerves "to a frazzle".

Judy Blume's 1970 coming-of-age novel, "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret", has been beloved by generations of young readers, who have empathised with its 11-year-old heroine's worries about friends, boys and puberty. This adaptation is "Classic Coke ad meets 'The Wonder Years'", said Ed Power in The Daily Telegraph – "a sugary concoction that goes down perfectly". 

Part live action, part stop-motion animation, "Marcel the Shell with Shoes On" is the story of a friendship between a heartbroken man and a one-inch talking shell (voiced by Jenny Slate). "Profound and poetic", the film is also very witty, said Phil de Semlyen in Time Out ; 90 minutes in Marcel's company will leave you "little short of transformed".

In "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", four turtles battle to rid New York of an evil mutant housefly, said Charlotte O'Sullivan in the Evening Standard . "Peppy" and "anarchic", this animation "looks scrumdiddlyumptious" and "doesn't talk down to teens".

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'Saturday Night' Review: Live From New York, It’s Jason Reitman’s Best Film in Years! | TIFF 2024

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Saturday Night , the latest film from director Jason Reitman , begins with quite possibly the most famous quote ever made by Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels : “The show doesn’t go on because it’s ready; it goes on because it’s 11:30.” It’s this mantra that has led SNL through fifty years of episodes, and considering an entire show is put together in less than a week, it’s remarkable any episode ever made it to air. Sometimes, the show is a showcase for some of the best and brightest in the comedy world, filled with jokes and political commentary that become iconic and influential; other times, it’s just what could be scrambled together in a week (to those “ Saturday Night Live isn’t relevant/funny anymore” commenters, sorry, the show has always been this level of a mixed bag. Yes, even when you grew up with it).

In Saturday Night , Reitman, who also co-wrote with his Ghostbusters collaborator, Gil Kenan , does his best to not make this an ensemble of young actors doing impressions of comedy greats, nor is he trying to create an entirely historically accurate recreation of what actually happened in the 90 minutes leading up to the first SNL episode. Instead, Reitman is more interested in capturing the spirit of getting ready for a show as frantic as SNL , a ticking time bomb that will go off at 11:30 P.M., which can seem more like herding cats than putting on a comedy show, and how it's a minor miracle that this show has been able to do this for nearly half a century.

What Is 'Saturday Night' About?

Gabriel LaBelle ( The Fabelmans ) stars as the young Lorne Michaels, who is trying to prove himself to NBC that his idea of a live comedy show with musical guests, movies, Muppets, and everything but the kitchen sink is a good idea. His producer, Dick Ebersol ( Cooper Hoffman ), is trying to make things as smooth as possible, while also trying to do what’s best for the studio. But with 90 minutes to air, it seems as though there’s no chance that Saturday Night will hit the air to prove itself. Network executives are breathing down Michaels’ throat, John Belushi ( Matt Wood ) still hasn’t signed his contract, there’s no one to do the lighting, bricks are still being laid, and Michaels hasn’t even decided how to pare down the show to an hour-and-a-half. With so much still up in the air and nothing seemingly going right, it looks as though Michaels’ brainchild might not manage to make it to air, regardless of whether it’s 11:30 or not.

'Saturday Night' Is More Than Just a String of Impressions

Right out the gate, as the opening credits roll, Saturday Night introduces the audience to who is playing who in this recreation. Instead of stopping the film dead in its tracks whenever we need to be introduced to an actor playing a comedian we know, this intro handles that simply and effectively. The casting of the show’s original crew is impeccable, but is also never attempting to be a direct take of the show’s first cast. For example, Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd seems like such an odd choice, but O’Brien matches the mannerisms as much as he needs to, without going into an impression. Wood, Lamorne Morris ( Garrett Morris ), and Cory Michael Smith ( Chevy Chase ) are all matching the spirit of these actors, but never diving too deep into trying to recreate them directly. Saturday Night also makes the show’s three female cast members, Gilda Radner ( Ella Hunt ), Jane Curtin ( Kim Matula ), and Laraine Newman ( Emily Fairn ) feel like a unified trio, trying to make their name in a show that’s very clearly a boy’s club. Balancing out Michaels’ manic energy is Rosie Shuster ( Rachel Sennott ), Michaels’ wife from whom he’s separated, which shows that despite Michaels getting the credit, Shuster was an important yin to his yang, without which the show probably would’ve never made it to air.

Saturday Night is crammed with an absurd ensemble, from Tommy Dewey ’s Michael O’Donogue , whose dark, brash sense of humor is both a gift and a curse, Matthew Rhys as the show’s first host, George Carlin , Nicholas Braun pulling double duty as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman , J.K. Simmons as friggin’ Milton Berle , and No Hard Feelings ’ Andrew Barth Feldman as the only person who might be in over their head more than Michaels. Each character here only gets a few minutes of screen time, but each is following their own specific storyline along the fringes of Michaels’ story. While it would be great to potentially spend more time with each of these great characters, Saturday Night , much like SNL , is about the ensemble rather than the individual , and Reitman plays to that, making the amount of characters who Michaels’ needs to deal with feel overwhelming and impossible to manage.

'Saturday Night' Is More a Celebration Than a Factual Recreation - And That's a Good Thing

Even though Reitman and Kenan attempt to base each of these character’s stories in fact and what they were doing on the night of this first episode, it also, rightfully, never feels like it’s attempting to be a direct recreation of everything that happened leading up to this premiere. This is a clear exaggeration of what was likely one of the most intense shows of Michaels’ career, and it’s easy to see how all of these events probably happened in the build-up to this show, just probably not in the 90 minutes beforehand. There are moments that are clearly added to make more of a strong narrative structure, like Michaels having to explain what the hell is show is to network executive David Tebet ( Willem Dafoe ) right before air, or having Michaels undergo an epiphany as he watches Belushi ice skate in a bee costume outside Rockefeller Center. These moments don’t quite work because they do feel false in the larger scheme of this bonkers production, a necessary evil in order to give this story a tighter structure than it would have without.

Saturday Night is also the best film from Reitman since his work with Diablo Cody in 2018’s Tully and 2011’s Young Adult . Reitman knows how to build the tension of this situation, a never-ending string of problems that need to be solved and quickly. Also perfectly adding to this sense is Jon Batiste ’s score, which is centered around a steady drum beat that builds and smashes to pull at your nerves in effective ways, à la Birdman . Reitman has spoken at length about his love of Saturday Night Live , and even working as a writer on the show for a week, and you can feel that love emanating from his camera, as he maneuvers around this recreation of Studio 8H, almost as though he’s a documentarian there to capture this groundbreaking episode of television. He’s swinging the camera around, making long takes, rapidly cutting between moments, and generally having a blast behind the camera in a way that we haven’t seen from him since probably Juno .

However, Reitman and Kenan’s script mostly asks its audience to have as much awareness about Saturday Night Live and its cast as they do , and that could likely be a bit overwhelming for the uninitiated. Saturday Night asks its audience to know details like how the cast used to advertise Polaroid camera during the show, Belushi’s history with dressing up as a bee on the show, and the appearance of Alan Zweibel ( Josh Brener ) will feel like an “oh shit!” moment to fans, and mean absolutely nothing to others. Reitman and Kenan are clearly super fans of SNL, and its history, and because of that, the script often doesn’t take into account that its audience probably won’t know as much about this show as they do.

But beyond that, Saturday Night is an exciting, enthralling, and often hilarious celebration of Saturday Night Live with a tremendous cast that shows the unbelievable amount of work that goes into putting this show on. There is a clear love for the legacy and history of SNL and its importance in comedy and television, and Reitman captures that wonderfully here. By looking back at this iconic episode, Reitman has made one of his best films in years.

Saturday Night (2024)

Saturday Night is a loving celebration of SNL that captures the spirit of trying to put on a live comedy show every week.

• Jason Reitman presents the frenetic energy and stressful build-up to this groundbreaking live comedy show.
• This ensemble is one of the year's best, yet never falls into cheap impersonations.
• Reitman and Gil Kenan's script expects the audience to have some awareness of SNL and its history beforehand.

Saturday Night screened at the Toronto International Film Festival. It comes to select theaters in the U.S. on September 27 before expanding. Click below for showtimes near you.

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The killer's game.

• Common Sense Says
• Parents Say 1 Review
• Kids Say 0 Reviews

Common Sense Media Review

Over-the-top killing, blood, gore in romantic action comedy.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Killer's Game is an action-comedy-romance about an assassin (Dave Bautista) who learns that he's dying and takes out a contract on himself, then discovers he's going to live but is unable to stop the onslaught of killers coming for him. Extremely over-the-top violence includes…

Why Age 16+?

Lots of over-the-top, comic-book-style action/killing. Guns and shooting. Grenad

Two scantily clad women sleep in a man's apartment; the implication is that he's

Language includes "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "a--hole," "c--t," "t-ts," "as

Character drinks whiskey from the bottle and gets drunk before sending a difficu

Any Positive Content?

In the main cast, Dave Bautista is half Filipino, Sofia Boutella is from Algeria

There's a message about telling the truth in order to establish trust; if a lie

Characters are likable, and they're definitely brave, but their behavior is extr

Violence & Scariness

Lots of over-the-top, comic-book-style action/killing. Guns and shooting. Grenades and explosions. Knives and stabbing/slicing. A blade is impaled in a character's face, and characters are slashed with a katana sword. Fighting with swords and blunt objects. Many blood spurts and spatters, plus oozing blood and other gore. Severed limbs, exploding heads, and dead bodies. Martial arts-style fighting. Punching, kicking. Head-bashing. Characters are slammed against hard surfaces and through walls, impaled, slashed with shoe/boot blades/spurs, crushed by fallen scaffolding, hit by a car, and lit on fire. Person's throat is sliced by dragging it along edge of broken window. A character lights a cigar with a severed hand that's on fire. A person's limbs are ripped off with motorcycles and chains. Men's private parts are sliced and crushed. Person clobbered with motorcycles. Character's head crushed with foot. Handful of teeth goes flying after a hard punch. Lead pipe to chest. A woman is punched in the face and knocked out cold. A woman is knocked over in a rushing mob and stepped on. Broken limbs. Character uses glue to close an open wound. Character is told he has a debilitating disease that will kill him. Reference to "trafficking women." Other violent incidents described in dialogue.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Two scantily clad women sleep in a man's apartment; the implication is that he's had sex with both of them. One woman is topless, but she's mostly covered or out of focus. Characters kiss and are playful in bed together; a woman straddles a man, snuggling. Graphic, sex-related dialogue ("blow job," "swallow," "take it in the ass," "it gets me wet," etc.). A woman grabs a man's private parts and suggests that she's ready for sex.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Language includes "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "a--hole," "c--t," "t-ts," "ass," "bitch," "son of a bitch," "bastard," "prick," "d--k," "twat," "dumbass," "piss," "hell," "bollocks," "stupid," "oh my God," "shut up."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Character drinks whiskey from the bottle and gets drunk before sending a difficult text, which begins "I'm drunk…" Character takes a prescription and washes it down with a swig of whiskey from the bottle. Brief cocaine-snorting. Secondary characters regularly smoke cigarettes or cigars. Characters drink beers and smoke in a bar. Empty beer cans fall out of a car. Characters celebrate with champagne. A priest is introduced with the sound of a clattering bottle; he weaves back and forth while speaking.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Diverse Representations

In the main cast, Dave Bautista is half Filipino, Sofia Boutella is from Algeria, Terry Crews is African American, and Pom Klementieff is mixed race (Korean and White). They all have at least a little agency, although the movie's world allows for very little wiggle room. Various contract killers and groups of killers represent different countries or cultures, including Korean, Latin, Scottish, African American, and more. Overall, the cast seems to come from all over the world.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update.

Positive Messages

There's a message about telling the truth in order to establish trust; if a lie or a hidden truth is ignored for too long, it can undo trust that has been built. But mostly the movie is about fighting until the last person is standing.

Positive Role Models

Characters are likable, and they're definitely brave, but their behavior is extremely violent, and there are no consequences.

Parents need to know that The Killer's Game is an action-comedy-romance about an assassin ( Dave Bautista ) who learns that he's dying and takes out a contract on himself, then discovers he's going to live but is unable to stop the onslaught of killers coming for him. Extremely over-the-top violence includes shooting, stabbing, slicing, blood spurts/spatters, gore, severed limbs, fighting, punching, and kicking, with characters killed in a jaw-dropping array of creative ways. Sexual situations include two scantily clad women in a man's bedroom (one is topless, but not much is visible), characters kissing and being playful in bed, and graphic sex-related dialogue. Other strong language includes "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "a--hole," "c--t," "t-ts," "ass," "bitch," "bastard," "prick," "twat," and more. Characters drink and get drunk, briefly snort cocaine, and frequently smoke cigars and cigarettes. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Parent and Kid Reviews

• Parents say (1)

Based on 1 parent review

What's the Story?

In THE KILLER'S GAME, Joe Flood ( Dave Bautista ) is the best assassin in the game, but lately he's started experiencing headaches and double vision. On his latest job, he rescues a beautiful ballet dancer, Maize ( Sofia Boutella ), and she invites him to dinner. They hit it off and quickly fall in love, but then Joe visits a doctor and learns that he has a degenerative illness and only three months to live. Rather than confess what he does for a living to Maize and put her through the agony of his death, Joe contacts his loyal handler, Zvi ( Ben Kingsley ), and asks him to put out a hit on himself. Zvi refuses, so Joe goes to an old archenemy, Marianna ( Pom Klementieff ), who's only too happy to comply. But just before the contract is set to begin, Joe gets a call from his doctor: There was a mistake, and he's going to live! Alas, it's too late to call off the contract, and now Joe must face an entire army of professional killers who are gunning for him.

Is It Any Good?

It's not exactly the most original idea for a movie, but this action/comedy runs with it, keeping things light and speedy, with Bautista holding up his end as a tough, funny, romantic lead. Directed by former stuntman JJ Perry ( Day Shift ), The Killer's Game gets things going right away with Joe pulling off a hit during a ballet. The murders are, of course, intercut with the dancing, but it works. The dancing is exciting, and the cutting is crisp. Another clever sequence intercuts Joe and Maize's budding romance with more of Joe's killings; he adorns her with a necklace and strangles a victim in the same beat.

As the movie goes on, Perry finds ways to keep the killings surprising and not repetitive, but it's Bautista who sells most of this. He has a fun, low-key delivery that makes most of his one-liners work, and Joe's impromptu confession to a Catholic priest is flat-out hilarious. But what's really notable about the movie is that fully embraces its unabashed romance. Joe and Maize are truly in love, and viewers are likely to really root for them. Movies about unending violence can be numbing, and certainly The Killer's Game doesn't break any new ground, but, in treating this whole business as a "game," it winds up being a decent measure of fun.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about The Killer's Game 's violence . How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

How are drinking , smoking , and drug use depicted? Are they glamorized? Are there consequences? Why does that matter?

What's interesting about stories in which criminals are the main characters? Can they be considered antiheroes?

Movie Details

• In theaters : September 13, 2024
• Cast : Dave Bautista , Sofia Boutella , Terry Crews
• Director : JJ Perry
• Inclusion Information : Asian actors, Female actors, Middle Eastern/North African actors, Black actors
• Studio : Lionsgate
• Genre : Action/Adventure
• Run time : 104 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : strong bloody violence throughout, language, some sexual material, brief drug use and nudity
• Last updated : September 13, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

What to watch next.

John Wick: Chapter 4

Kingsman: The Secret Service

The Hitman's Bodyguard

Bullet Train

Grosse Pointe Blank

You Kill Me

Best action movies for kids, romance movies.

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

The best popcorn makers to buy for movie night in 2024, according to reviews

• Updated: Sep. 13, 2024, 5:05 p.m.
• | Published: Sep. 13, 2024, 5:05 p.m.

Here are some of the top-rated popcorn makers you can buy for your Saturday night movie nights, including this Presto Poplite model. Amazon

• Dawn Magyar | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

If you’re a movie fan, chances are you’re also a popcorn aficionado who likes to serve up a buttery bowl as you settle in to watch your nightly Netflix.

Because popcorn is the classic movie snack, it’s perfect for those heart-pulsing dramas as well as those laugh-until-your-belly-hurts rom-coms. Not only will a popcorn maker serve up never-ending bowls of fluffy popcorn to satisfy any movie watcher or salty snacker until the credits roll, but you can perfect your preferred taste in just a few simple steps.

But with so many different popcorn makers on the market today, it can be overwhelming to choose which one to buy.

The best popcorn makers to buy in 2024

To help, here are some of the most recommended popcorn makers available, including models from Presto and Wabash Valley Farms .

• Presto Poplite Hot Air Popper: “It heats quickly and effectively, while it also circulates humid air out of the popping chamber to keep the kernels from getting soft or soggy, with no oil needed. The Presto Poplite is our favorite hot-air model; it was consistently able to pop a full half-cup of corn (that’s 15 to 18 cups popped) in well under three minutes, with light, fluffy, and crisp results across the board,” The Spruce Eats says.
• Wabash Valley Farms Whirley Pop Popcorn Maker: “During testing, we found that the Whirley Pop makes a big batch of consistently tasty, crunchy, and chewy popcorn with very few, if any, kernels left over. We noticed some scorching on the bottom of the pan after one batch, but none on the popcorn itself. It’s easy to clean, too: If used often, you can simply wipe it out after it cools down, or rinse with a little bit of soapy water if you plan to store it away for a while,” Food & Wine says.
• Dash Hot Air Popcorn Maker: “The narrower spout helped guide the popcorn kernels directly into the bowl beneath, and the butter tray on top actually got hot enough to give us a decent amount of topping. Once we got to the bottom of the bowl, we were shocked to find just two lone kernels left, which was drastically fewer than most machines we tested. The size also stood out, being just slightly smaller and more compact than other countertop models,” Food Network says.
• Cuisinart EasyPop Hot Air Popcorn Maker: Our favorite popcorn maker, the Cuisinart Easypop, is the best air popper that makes up to 10 cups of the fluffiest and largest popcorn in under three minutes. No need to add any oil, just add up to half a cup of popcorn kernels into the fun and bright red base (use the handy measuring cup that also triples as the lid and butter melting cup) where very hot air heats them up,” Good Housekeeping says.
• Chef’n Pop Top Microwave Popcorn Maker: The Chef’n PopTop’s unique design made it one of the most fun poppers to use, and the resulting popcorn was impressive—especially for a microwave model. Unlike most microwave popcorn makers, the PopTop is a single silicone piece with folding tabs that collapse in to form the lid. We loved that the lid was built in, making it impossible to misplace. Furthermore, the tabs of the lid expand as the kernels pop, which helps to indicate doneness. (Plus, it’s just plain fun to watch),” EatingWell says.

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‘KishKindha Kaandam’ movie review: A flawless screenplay drives this intriguing mystery drama

The true sign of any timeless work of art is that hard-to-achieve space of uncertainty, which the film masterfully occupies and easily finds a place among one of the best mystery-dramas malayalam cinema has ever produced.

Updated - September 13, 2024 05:57 pm IST

A still from ‘KishKindha Kaandam’ | Photo Credit: Special Arrangement

‘Layered’ is a term we throw around lazily to describe any screenplay that has just a little more depth than meets the eye. But where does one start, when describing a screenplay which gives of the impression of peeling an onion, layer by layer, only for us to end up with an orange? Do we start off with the sheer joy of marvelling at the ingenuity of the writing or about the pains of its three principal characters that slowly seep into us, and stay with us long after?

KishKindha Kaandam , directed by Dinjith Ayyathan, is marked by a steady flow of events, almost none of which take the familiar route. It all begins from a routine government order ahead of elections for firearms licence holders to deposit their weapons at the nearest police station. From a missing gun to a missing person to changing hues of relationships and intriguing revelations about its characters, the film slips seamlessly between genre boundaries, escaping any easy classification.

KishKindha Kaandam (Malayalam)

A quiet serenity marks the happenings when Ajayan (Asif Ali) begins life with his newly wed wife Aparna (Aparna Balamurali) at an old mansion bordering a forest, serenaded constantly by a gentle breeze and inhabited by monkeys. Ajayan’s father Appu Pillai (Vijayaraghavan), a retired army man, is the other occupant of the house, where every activity seems to be adjusted to the rhythms of the grumpy old man. Aparna gels into this situation unobtrusively, almost like a fly on the wall, but equally curious like us viewers about that which lies beneath the calm and the peculiar habits of the old man.

In contemporary Malayalam cinema, we have had fascinating set ups, only for the screenplay to squander all efforts in the third act (like Asif’s Kooman ). Here, screenwriter Bahul Ramesh achieves a near flawless pay off, worthy of the painfully created set up. Hardly any red herrings are thrown at us to mislead, but every other sequence is meant to add to our understanding of the characters or to give us something more to dwell upon. He also doubles up as the cinematographer, thus having the luxury of visually translating all that he imagined on the page, while editor Sooraj E.S. masters the smooth transitions. Mujeeb Majeed’s background score hits all the right moods.

Elevating the hard work in almost all the other departments are the heartfelt performances from the three central characters and some of the side characters, like those played by Jagadish and Ashokan. Vijayaraghavan internalises a character who is caught between the false pride of his heydays and the frailties of old age, while also burdened by secrets that are too much for any one person to carry. Asif Ali has got an interesting character arc that requires him to draw deep from his reserve of emotions, and he manages it exceedingly well. Aparna Balamurali pulls off a convincing act as a woman slowly blending into a situation which many might consider running away from.

In the end one is left wondering whether what we were witnessing was a struggle of memory against forgetting or that of forgetting against memory. The true sign of any timeless work of art is that hard-to-achieve space of uncertainty, which KishKindha Kaandam masterfully occupies. It would easily find a place among one of the best mystery-dramas Malayalam cinema has ever produced.

KishKindha Kaandam is currently running in theatres

Published - September 13, 2024 05:29 pm IST

Related Topics

Malayalam cinema / Indian cinema / reviews

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Movie Review: In 'The Critic,' Ian McKellen's theater critic takes his job very seriously

This image released by Greenwich Entertainment shows Ian McKellen in a scene from "The Critic." Credit: AP/Sean Gleason

The arts rarely have anything good to say about critics. That they’re not generally the hero of many stories is, at the very least, understandable. More often they’re portrayed as joyless, cruel and a little pathetic; themselves failed artists who live to take down others, or, worse, sycophants in search of a famous friend.

Without getting into any sort of philosophical, or even factual debate about the nature of the kind of person drawn to criticism (besides perhaps a staunch antipathy to either job security or amassing wealth), it is safe to say that the drama critic of “ The Critic ” takes all the worst stereotypes to hysterical heights.

Set in the 1930s in London, Ian McKellen is Jimmy Erskine, a veteran theater critic whose reviews can make or break a play or a performer. He has a monastic devotion to telling the truth, as entertainingly as he can, and knows what he must sacrifice to do so.

“The drama critic is feared and reviled for the judgement he must bring,” McKellen says in an ominous voiceover. “(He) must be cold and perfectly alone.”

When one woman dares to chat him up after a play, offering her take on the material and performances, he swiftly tries to have her removed from the restaurant claiming he must be protected from the general public. When an actress, Nina Land (Gemma Arterton), confronts him about his wildly inconsistent criticisms of her (how can she be both plump and emaciated, she wonders), he refuses to apologize. And he scoffs when the new boss at the newspaper, David Brooke (Mark Strong), implores him to tone it down: “Be kinder,” he says. “More beauty, less beast.”

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But what starts as satire spirals into a wildly messy tragedy with contrivance upon contrivance. This is a film that could have listened to its anti-hero’s advice to the flailing actress: Do less. That someone as great as Lesley Manville, as Nina’s mother, gets a mere handful of scenes and is only minimally consequential to it all is telling. It strives to be an intricate spider-web of compelling, intersecting stories, but few characters are fleshed out enough for us to care.

“ The Critic,” handsomely directed by Anand Tucker (“Hilary and Jackie,” “Leap Year”) and written by Patrick Marber (“Closer,” “Notes on a Scandal”), is very loosely based on Anthony Quinn’s novel “Curtain Call,” itself more a murder mystery than this ever allows itself to be. Instead, the film is about the desperate lengths a man will go to when his job and freedom are threatened. Erskine is the kind of gentleman critic whose power and authority have gone unchallenged for so long, he’s become delusional beyond recognition. His words don’t just destroy, though. They’ve also inspired. Even the actress he obliterates time and time again admits as much: She tells him it was his writing that made her fall in love with the theater.

There are some fun ideas here, and good performances. McKellen is having a wonderful time living inside this charismatic monster who you are with until you’re really not. Erskine is also gay; an open secret that becomes a liability with his new boss and the rise of fascist thought around him. But none of it really adds up to anything poignant or enormously entertaining; its darkness is both lopsided and superficial, as most become casualties of Erskine’s aims. Theater critic as tyrant is a juicy premise; “The Critic” just can’t live up to the promise.

“The Critic,” a Greenwich Entertainment release in select theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “some language and sexual content.” Running time: 100 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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