10 best films of 2023

There are decent movie years, and then there are those like 2023: wonderful. Perhaps that’s because we’re only now seeing the fruits of that post-pandemic labor, as filmmakers have finally been able to bring their bolder visions to life. Over the past twelve months there has been a Barbenheimer cultural phenomenon (Barbie AND Oppenheimer Double bills for those of you living under a rock) and two long, unique and historically rich epics from writers and directors – Ridley Scott. Napoleon and Martin Scorsese Flower Moon Killer – whose box office success is a good sign for cinema.

Meanwhile, the MCU’s poor performance – a rather optimistic sign of “superhero fatigue” – may create more opportunities for weird, personal and artistic ideas to return to the screen. And it was a successful year for films that got weirder and weirder: indie films like Ira Sachs’s “The Tale of a Sexy Parisian Love Triangle.” TransitionsFinnish director Aki Kaurismäki returns with a beautiful and funny love story. fallen leaves, and Amanda Kramer, art-cinema provocateur, and her two brilliant performance films. Brilliant films always hit the mark too, with Todd Haynes continuing his great run of films. May-December a story about the sexual exploitation and manipulation of women, wrapped in a kind of trashy comedy with the darkest black humor.

Coming in at number one this year is a film that I initially only gave four stars, a mistake that has become more apparent with each iteration. I’m so sorry, Scorsese.

Here are the 10 best movies of 2023.

10. Passages

A bitter bisexual love triangle and an intelligent exploration of human nature. Transitions It could have been your average European-influenced arthouse film from an American director in Paris: sexy, dark, fearless, whatever. But Transitions has a design intelligence that takes it to the next level: it stars Franz Rogowsky as a wolfish director who touches the hearts of both his regular partner (Ben Whishaw) and his newbie (Adele Exarchopolous), both of whom are chaotically intimate in their sex scenes and furious intrapersonal dynamics that will keep you guessing long after the sizzle has died down.

9. Infinity pool

Brandon Cronenberg – David’s son, who is not at all bothered by his same love of body horror and technology – makes a tense thriller in the form Infinity pool. The film stars Alexander Skarsgård as a writer from the past and Mia Goth as a frighteningly energetic but sexy traveling companion at a luxury resort in an imaginary and vaguely dictatorial European country. When a privileged group comes across a government program to create doubles/clones in case of wrongdoing, they realize there is a way to take advantage of the situation. A gritty dystopian science fiction story with far-reaching implications regarding wealth and greed. This strange entertainment pushes the boundaries of conventional cinema.

8. Please, baby, please

Okay, it’s not for everyone. Kramer’s theatrically staged feature film about sex, power and gender identity rolled into one West Side Story-meets-warriors The setting is unlike anything else you’ll see this year, and the attempt to cinematically provoke audiences is done thoughtfully and carefully. The film centers on a married couple (Andrea Riseborough and Harry Melling) in mid-century New York who become increasingly fascinated, worried and terrified by a local gang of leather-jacketed outlaws. Please baby please it’s part musical, part runaway show, part sexual odyssey with beehives attached. Raise your eyebrows if you will, but this is powerful stuff.

7. Anatomy of a fall

This is French-speaking Cannes Palm d’Or At first glance, Winner appears to be a simple courtroom drama. To some extent, it follows all the conventions, albeit with incredibly specific detail: a woman (Sandra Haller, a vibrant personality of micro-expressions and wry detachment) finds her husband dead after he seemingly fell out of a window onto the ice; she becomes the main suspect; Even her teenage son is unsure of her innocence as evidence piles up against her. But Justine Triet’s film is an elegant, thoughtful allegory: it’s not just a murder case, but a metaphorical journey through marriage, gender roles, and perhaps even the entire circus of guilt and remorse that haunts our wider culture today. Follow the intrigue; Return once more to the delicious ambiguity.

May 6-December

Todd Haynes has long been a master of exploring women’s interiority against a historical, often domestic backdrop, and he wears his inspiration from old Hollywood melodramas on his sleeve. In his latest film, he flips the switch and looks at the sexual exploitation of men by women without losing sight of how these women work. The wry psychological drama stars Julianne Moore as Gracie, a middle-aged wife and mother who was abused and became pregnant with a 15-year-old boy, wonderfully played by Charles Melton (now an adult and married to Gracie). When actress Elizabeth (Natalie Portman) comes to interview them, the toxic dynamic becomes painfully—and often hilariously—clear. This movie is intense enough to singe your eyebrows, but you’ll have so much fun you won’t even notice.

5. Killer

If David Fincher has long been revered as a seasoned commercial director and a renowned perfectionist director of American cinema, he must have a joke somewhere: his homage to the minimalist crime films of the past also satirizes a man who believes. that he can do it. Check everything. Starring Michael Fassbender as a hitman whose smug voiceover conveys an arrogant emptiness and slight incompetence. Murderer Beautifully constructed and razor-sharp, it uses the mechanics of late capitalism as Fassbender inventively tries to kill a group of people. What more would you like?

4. Oppenheimer

Christopher Nolan’s stunningly ambitious tale of curious character J. Robert Oppenheimer (star Cillian Murphy) is undoubtedly one of the best films of the year, even if it has its flaws at times. Nolan doesn’t write particularly well about the women in the film, but it’s hard not to appreciate his overall look at Oppenheimer’s complicated political life before, during and after his appointment as director of the Los Alamos facility to develop the first atomic bomb. Shot in stunning 70mm black and white, it features one of the most gripping and harrowing sequences in film this year – the build-up to the successful Trinity test. Oppenheimer an organization at once bombastic and thoughtful, saved from some pitfalls by brilliant leadership and a willingness to ask subtle questions about ethics, politics and American history.

3.Napoleon

Sir Ridley Scott (director) gladiator) knows how to create a historical epic on a grand scale, but its wry humor and satirical look at the life and times of the great world conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte (played by the always great Joaquin Phoenix) are what really make it shine. Combining elegantly staged violence on snowy battlefields with his toxic, sensual and tumultuous marriage to wife Josephine (a brilliantly sly and compositional Vanessa Kirby), the film is less a history lesson than a showcase for the combination of greatness and disgusting selfishness. it demands that this role be fulfilled. It often contains the hilarious lines: “You think you’re so great because you have boats!” At one point, Napoleon shouts at a British diplomat. The film’s undermining of the biography of the “great man” – the film ends not with a list of Napoleon’s achievements, but with a list of the dead left after building his empire – shows that the film is much better than the usual historical one. Epic.

2. Barbie

A cultural phenomenon, a reason for girls to dress up, an excuse for the color pink, a rare cinematic event that grossed a billion, and a surprisingly entertaining, tongue-in-cheek exploration of femininity? Indeed, hello Barbie! Margot Robbie, a woman I’ve long recognized as a bona fide movie star, couldn’t be more captivating as the world’s most popular doll, heading into the real world when things get a little weird in Barbieland. But Greta Gerwig’s smart direction, Ryan Gosling’s terrific fun as Ken, and the production of a cute, plastic, pastel world make this film a true serotonin machine. Each time I liked him even more.

1. Flower Moon Killer

So I have to admit something openly: I made a mistake when I first reviewed this movie. Something prevented me from giving this sweeping, heartbreaking epic—about the discovery of oil beneath Indian lands in 1920s Oklahoma and the subsequent murder of the Osage at the hands of those who sought access to it—a full five-star rating. On first viewing, I was intimidated by the sheer size of the tapestry Scorsese was weaving and confused by how he changed the structure of the story from the source material, David Grann’s book. But I found his thesis about the evils white Americans inflict on indigenous people and the toxic carelessness that racism infects society to be brilliant, not to mention the stunning performances from Lily Gladstone, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. I’ve seen the film twice more since then, and my opinion has only grown: it’s a masterpiece.