favorite films of 2023
a little late but hey
Hello! Here I am with a lil’ post about my favorite movies of 2023. Two months into 2024. Not for any real reason other than to blurt out some words about things I watched and liked because once upon a time I did that for a living. I will say flat out that there are some big ones I haven’t seen yet (Zone of Interest, which I am waiting to experience at home; American Fiction and Ferrari for the same reason; most big blockbusters because I was moving this summer when they came out and I struggle catching up on those at home; Beau is Afraid because I need to time my anxiety attacks to the perfect day; etc!). I also did not do a great job of seeking out international or independent features and I’m not sure I watched a single documentary this year.
Basically, this is the list of a hobbyist, not critic, and someone who moved cross-country this year, no longer gets screeners, and just kinda watches movies when I can as I find my way back into a proper rhythm. When you leave film journalism/criticism as a full-time endeavor, finding a way back to loving them as a medium and not a job is a little… complicated. So please keep that in mind.
Also keep in mind that I thought 2023 was a pretty ok year for movies! Or at least, now that I’m not watching things with as sharp of a critical lens, I think I’ve just been able to relax into and enjoy the experience a little more. I’m in my late-stage Ebert era, what can I say.
Passages (dir. Ira Sachs)
Passages was by far my favorite thing I saw in 2023. Not a day has gone by where it doesn’t cross my mind in some way. Franz Rogowski’s haunting performance as a narcissistic film director who instigates an ill-fated love triangle between himself, his husband (Ben Whishaw), and a hot French girl (Adèle Exarchopoulos), is so beguilingly specific—playful, poisonous, sexy as hell. We all know someone like Rogowski’s Tomas, with a giant and seductive aura that attracts and then annihilates. Passages is everything I want in a movie: rich interpersonal drama, revelatory sex scenes, conflict so layered you can slice it with a knife. It also reminds me why the Oscars are so bunk—it’s ridiculous that this film isn’t in contention while Oppenheimer is gonna win acting awards. No one in that film is doing anything a quarter as interesting as the lead trio here. (Josh Hartnett innocent.) If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s currently streaming on MUBI—go watch and luxuriate in the sort of adult storytelling that’s sadly become a rarity.
The Killer (dir. David Fincher)
Fincher is my lord so it comes as no surprise that I adored this slick, cutting little thriller. It’s a master whittled to his essence and firing off banger scene after banger scene. It works as something of an allegory for the bloody-handed grunt work done for corporate goons, with pitch-perfect jabs at the gig economy. And if it is indeed some sort of self-commentary from Fincher, then it’s fascinatingly revealing. Michael Fassbender’s eponymous assassin has the aesthetic of a methodical, sociopathic mastermind, but actually kind of sucks at his job. There’s nothing I love more than a white guy at the top holding his own feet over the fire. When Fincher cooks, we all feast.
May December (dir. Todd Haynes)
I try to filter out the noise of discourse when I reflect on movies these days, but it’s hard to in the case of May December—so mind-numbing was the chatter. Can a movie about child abuse be funny? Do other people have the right to fictionalize a survivor’s story without their permission? Is it appropriate to sensationalize real-life events even when critiquing our tendency to sensationalize? My answer to all of those questions is a resounding “yes, of course”. To semi-quote Natalie Portman’s character in the film, “that’s what artists do”—pluck facts from reality, stir in genre ingredients, and extrapolate purpose in the resulting concoction. I’d argue that the melodrama of May December is in fact more honoring of its serious subject matter than a straight biopic would be, because projecting a Mary Kay Letourneau-esque story through the lens of dark comedy demands a different kind of attention. It doesn’t let you, the viewer, off the hook—it necessitates accountability. It’s no wonder the movie made so many Twitter and Reddit gossipers squirm (and the Academy too, apparently). Looking in the mirror and addressing your tendency to dehumanize for entertainment hurts, huh? I think this is a borderline masterpiece. Todd Hanyes 4ever.
Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (dir. Kelly Fremon Craig)
I declared this my favorite movie of the year on Letterboxd (follow me!), and though I’ve softened quite a bit on it since, I still adored this lovely coming-of-age story. I was never really a Judy Blume girl, so the original text is not nostalgic for me. But I don’t think it matters here because the movie is so immediately its own thing. I love when art takes adolescence as seriously as adulthood, because in many ways being 12 years old is the most alive we’ll ever be. You’re never so in love with and intrigued by the world as you are at that age and I think everything that comes after is an attempt to re-bottle those feelings. Abby Ryder Fortson’s Margaret captures the emotion pitch-perfectly, but it’s Rachel McAdams as her mom that steals the movie for me. The parallel mother-daughter stories inspired me in some intangible way—made me realize that even ordinariness is extraordinary if we love each other enough.
Priscilla (dir. Sofia Coppola)
Priscilla mesmerized and angered me in all the ways it intended and therefore I consider it very special. Sofia Coppola has long shown us how seductively masculinity can ensnare and damage young women. Look at the prowlers in The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, The Beguiled. Men who pluck girls from assembly lines, assign them an importance they never asked for, then abandon them when they finally reciprocate. I think often of Priscilla Presley, locked in a Memphis music box, spun around for an Elvis who exists to disappear and how ardently Coppola captures and presents that kind of life from a place of great knowing. I loved everything about this, and it felt so clearly a return to form for one of our greats. (Not that she ever strayed too far.)
The Iron Claw (dir. Sean Durkin)
I’m fascinated by Sean Durkin (The Nest—underrated, go watch it) and his serene and melancholic style. How even his straightforward dramas feel borderline horror. So I wasn’t sure what to expect with The Iron Claw, being a biopic and all, nor did I have much prior knowledge of the Von Erich family. Turns out this was extremely my shit! Not quite horror-tinged, but not not either, with all those beautiful male bodies piled into something Bosch-like and brutalized, Zac Efron’s chest pummeling against boxing ring rope like a loose spring. I’m not 100% on the casting of Jeremy Allen White but everyone else was note-perfect. Efron especially wowed me—the way he used his body like the musical-trained instrument it is, shifting gears to athleticism. The story is sad, but never treacly. But most of all, the grief is intentionally esoteric. It exists in that fabric of spirit where those who relate are immediately, intimately familiar. “I used to be a brother”—like a knife to the heart.
All of Us Strangers (dir. Andrew Haigh)
Speaking of well-rendered grief, it feels right to group these films together because both utterly destroyed me. I can’t be objective about All of Us Strangers—it’s too personal. When I realized the film was about a lonely, city-dwelling adult who lost his parents at age 11 and struggles with intimacy and commitment as a result… well, fuck. This ghostly film, about a man (Andrew Scott) who connects with the spirits of his deceased parents (Claire Foy and Jamie Bell) while simultaneously falling in love with his neighbor (Paul Mescal), got right up in my bones and shook them dry. I think fondly of a scene near the end, when Andrew Scott and Claire Foy lay in bed together, a dead mother asking her son about the life he lived without her: where he went, who watched after him, how he feels now. And how much I both crave and fear a moment like that with my own dead mom. Crave, because of how desperately I’d love to see her face, feel her presence, bathe in the cadence of her voice. Fear, because of what I’d have to relay to her: the enormous void her absence created in me that I can never quite fill. I’ve never seen a film that so tenderly translates the condition of lifelong grievers and shows us how alike we are. Floating along, trying to be adults… when we were never taught how to be. I’m not sure every element of Haigh’s movie gels together by the end (the Mescal part remains a little mystifying to me), but I don’t really care. When a movie sees you this way, it’s a part of you forever.
Anatomy of a Fall (dir. Justine Triet)
I put off watching this one for a while and I’m kind of glad I did. It’s a perfect living room watch in that I think a theatrical viewing might have pissed me off too much. Not because the film is frustratingly made—au contraire. Because it is so impressively made that I could sense in real time how idiotic the reactions must be and felt myself getting tense. And boy was I right. The first articles I read post-watch argued the guilt of Sandra Hüller’s character with as much misogynistic venom as the French courts, reducing the plot to a whodunnit and not interrogating its more interesting limbs. To me, this is a film about cultural divides—how the tenor of someone German might read cold to someone French, and how language shapes our perception of the world. Not just of people but of order, routine, love. I never once questioned Sandra’s innocence. I saw this instead as a horror fable about women who dare revolt from social order. Who see themselves as artists first, mothers and wives second. Who are comfortably bisexual. Who are not always nurturers or serviceable partners—but who fuck when they’re sad, argue with the detachment of a man, wear noise-cancelling headphones and take midday naps without guilt. And how simply existing this way makes you suspect of murder. Great movie and also I’d like to be Justine Triet, she’s so fucking cool.
Barbie (dir. Greta Gerwig)
I really don’t give a fuck about Barbie hot takes. I really liked Barbie! I don’t much feel like interrogating all of the associated bullshit, especially after the mind-numbing Oscars discourse these last few weeks. If women don’t like it, they’re not gender traitors. If women do like it, they’re not trite baby feminists. If Gloria’s speech spoke to you, you’re not less intersectional or unserious, and if it didn’t, you’re not banal for wanting more. I really don’t wanna hear any of that bullshit ever again. I liked Barbie because it reminds me both of MGM musicals and late 90s/early 2000s pop comedies like The Brady Bunch Movie, Josie and the Pussycats, and Zoolander. I love that Greta Gerwig’s eyes are always brimming with tears, that she loves terrible 90s dad-band needle drops, that the movie doesn’t bog itself down with over-explanation of lore or logic. It’s just a nice movie with a great big heart doused in unapologetic pink femininity and emotion. There are of course arguments to be made about corporate commodification and its role in IP, and that’s all good and fine. I’ll read the think pieces! But I also just kinda like fun, well-made blockbuster movies, you know? And I know it’s corny, but seeing this opening weekend with a lot of folks dressed up, playing along, having fun—sometimes unbridled joy is enough!
Knock at the Cabin (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)
My favorite thing about Shyamalan—and what separates him from your run-of-the-mill horror auteur—is how absolutely dead seriously he takes matters of faith. Not religious faith, per se—although there’s some of that too—but faith in whatever’s unseen and unknown. His characters speak earnestly about what sounds ridiculous but is almost always completely real. Slight spoiler alert, but think of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs, and now this—films with preposterous setups that are all unflinchingly true. No smoke and mirror diversions, no gotchas. Aliens are here? Yes, they actually are! The world is ending? Yes, it actually is! Shyamalan’s not changing the world, but he’s churning out campy Hitchcockian chamber pieces with aplomb these days, and peppering them with actual good actors so that the result is deeply felt, pulpy, emotive, and sincere. I had so much fun with Knock at the Cabin. I don’t care if it’s kind of dumb! Bautista, Aldridge, Groff, and Grint are having a fucking ball in this thing and it rules. More please.
Asteroid City (dir. Wes Anderson)
I really fucking despise when people reduce Wes Anderson to an aestheticist and refuse to acknowledge the deliberateness of his edifice. How pink hotels and ornate wallpaper and clean fine lines are smokescreens for his internal self reckoning—a great inability to emote his grief, paranoia, and pain with the more straightforward articulation like some of his cinematic peers. That Asteroid City attempts to unpack and investigate its author’s tendencies is remarkable—that this attempt flew over the heads of his worst detractors is I suppose expected. But for those of us who see through the tulle and into the gut, this is one of Anderson’s most mature, poignant, and lasting movies—a nesting doll story about the layers we wear to avoid the simplest confrontations. I’ll be thinking of the Margot Robbie scene—such a perfect distillation of all the film’s themes, in an elegant and stripped-down parcel—for the rest of time.
Killers of the Flower Moon (dir. Martin Scorsese)
I don’t know that I have anything more to say about this than what I already wrote on Letterboxd, so I’ll repost that here:
Moves like liquid, never boring or slight. And is far more muscly than it shows. There’s something very nasty simmering beneath the surface that I wish it had leaned into more. Felt like Scorsese holding back a bit to play nice, to remain impenetrable. I wanted the fangs. But maybe that’s the point too. History isn’t acquiescent or heedful. It is often brunt fact, poeticized later for where it fits into time. I’m fascinated to see how this will age. What it will reveal with distance, context, memory.
I will also say this: There were moments where I was so overwhelmed by the filmmaking that I felt like I saw right through time. Was suddenly blisteringly aware we have so little of it left with our great storytellers. Scorsese will be gone soon. His panache—the way he combs through story and knows just where to punctuate it with gore or humor or sonic eclogue—will be of history, not of now. We’ll remember how lucky we were to be here.
Eileen (dir. William Oldroyd)
I know this wasn’t a particularly beloved film from this year and I can see why. It isn’t exactly elegant and I don’t know that it’s even memorable. I have a mostly hate relationship with the works of Ottessa Moshfegh in that I find it all painfully dishonest but for some reason this film—based on her novel, adapted by her and her husband—hit all the right chords for me. Maybe it’s the grimy perversions of the female lead, delicate and disgusting. Maybe it’s the way she reviles her alcoholic father, resents but is also fascinated by him and the parts of him that live in her. Maybe it’s how easily she gets swept up in the presence of the beautiful new woman at work and how it complicates her personality, morality, sexuality. I’m not sure what it is, but I responded to this more than anticipated—despite the kind of incongruous ending and bad accents. Anne Hathaway, the woman that you are.
Fair Play (dir. Chloe Domont)
I feel like Fair Play fell off everyone’s radar kind of quickly and in some ways I guess that’s fine. It’s a three-ish star movie for the most part—but honestly, I miss solid three-star movies! Sometimes it’s nice to just sit on your couch, gulp down a silly little thriller, and then pop a Lean Cuisine in the microwave, ya know? But that’s kind of a disservice to Fair Play, which is slicker than that, even if some of the character etchings go a little zaggy. Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich (two names that are really fucking hard to type out, geesh) play hedge fund analysts who hide their engagement to maintain the veneer of office rivalry—a rivalry that quickly turns cutthroat when she’s promoted over him. The result is some nasty gender politicizing, with him going feral and jealous and her going girlboss. Yes, it’s all a little reductive, but the best erotic thrillers are. (Not that this is really an erotic thriller—I know that’s been debated half to death. I don’t care to re-litigate, but it’s erotic, it’s a thriller, so whatever!) I think Dynevor was an epic miscast—she lacks the nasty flavor of someone like a Mädchen Amick or Linda Fiorentino, who made similar movies extra salty in the 90s. But overall I had a memorably good time with this. More erotic (or erotic-adjacent) thrillers, I say! *bangs gavel*