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Dec 31, 2023 Web Exclusive By Kaveh Jalinous

2023 has been an odd year for film. During the last 12 months, two industry-wide strikes took place as actors and writers fought for (and secured) better working conditions. Barbenheimer was one of the grandest cultural events of the year. Comic book movies saw a record decline in critical and financial backing, and Marvel released its first major flop. Part One movies flooded theaters, sometimes to audiences’ knowledge, sometimes not. Taylor Swift released a film version of her concert in theaters. So did Beyoncé.

Amidst all these events, one thing has remained consistent in 2023: an excellent slate of offerings. This year, we’ve received numerous highly-anticipated films from some of the most brilliant working auteurs—Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, and David Fincher, among others. Loads of new directors have entered the scene with electrifying debut features, such as Celine Song’s Past Lives or Raine Allen Miller’s Rye Lane. Sure, the year has had some low points—for example, a new Indiana Jones movie released this year, starring Harrison Ford, that nobody saw. But, even with these setbacks, it’s hard to deny that this year’s slate isn’t the best we’ve had in a long time.

Given the situation, narrowing the year’s offerings down to a list of 10 was extraordinarily difficult. As such, I’d first like to highlight some honorable mentions: The Iron Claw, Menus-Plaisirs: Les Troisgros, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Poor Things, Falcon Lake, The First Slam Dunk, and Other People’s Children.

10. The Beasts

Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s newest feature follows a French couple (played by the excellent Denis Ménochet and Marina Foïs) living as farmers in the Spanish countryside. When they refuse to join their townsfolk in allowing an energy company to plant windmills on their land, tensions quickly escalate as their neighbors begin menacing them, emotionally and physically. This 138-minute film is one of the tensest features of the year, brilliantly showcasing the horrifying lengths people will go to ensure they get what they want. There’s also an excellently explored underlay of nationalistic tensions, evident in how the language barrier between the central couple and the townsfolk further fuels their tensions.

9. All of Us Strangers

Throughout his career, British filmmaker Andrew Haigh has constantly used quiet characters, settings, and situations to reveal the pure emotions and heartbreaking revelations hidden beneath the surface. All of Us Strangers follows Adam (Andrew Haigh), a struggling writer who travels to his childhood home and discovers that it is the 1980s and that his parents (Jamie Bell and Claire Foy) are still alive. It’s one of the softest science-fiction movies of recent times, but how Haigh uses the film’s simple structure to explore the power of the past and the infallibility of memory is genius. The film’s complex screenplay, resonant themes and purposefully slow pacing make for a deeply emotional and truly unforgettable experience.

8. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

The second film in any action series–let alone a trilogy–is always a risky gamble. And watching Across the Spider-Verse, the second Spider-Verse feature following Miles Morales, it’s almost too easy to notice all the places where things could have gone wrong. But, the sequel manages to raise the narrative’s stakes with ease, effectiveness, and endless style. The film’s remarkable animation and visuals, its complex and emotional storytelling and Daniel Pemberton’s incredible score are just a few reasons why this superhero feature is one of the year’s and the genre’s most valuable offerings.

7. Oppenheimer

What more can be said about Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s sprawling, three-hour J. Robert Oppenheimer biopic? For starters, the film is one of the best biopics of recent times, using cinema’s visual and sonic language to adapt a historical figure’s story instead of cosplaying as a Wikipedia page. It also feels like the film Nolan has been waiting to direct all his life. Every stylistic and narrative decision is intensely calculated, surgically placed, and inherently pertinent to the story. That quality, along with the film’s incredible performances and excellent visuals, make it more than worth a recommendation.

6. Killers of the Flower Moon

For those who have read David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon, which uses the Osage murders to focus on the birth of the FBI, Martin Scorsese’s film may come off as a completely different project. That’s because it is. By centering the film around Ernest Burkhart’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mollie Burkhart’s (Lily Gladstone) relationship and Ernest’s role as the villain of the story, Scorsese reaches incredibly profound emotional depths and revelations, even questioning his role as the storyteller at hand and our role as consumers of that story. Don’t be daunted by the 206-minute runtime, either. The film’s quick pacing and Thelma Schoonmaker’s magnetic editing make it impossible to look away from start to finish.

5. Riceboy Sleeps

Anthony Shim’s sophomore feature, Riceboy Sleeps, flew under the radar when it was released on VOD with little marketing, no awareness, and, honestly, no confidence–an odd decision given the film’s success at 2022 film festivals. The film, divided into three parts, follows a Korean single mother (Choi Seung-yoon) raising her son, Dong-Hyun (Dohyun Noel Hwang, Ethan Hwang), in Canada. The first two parts are notable in their own right–following Dong-Hyun’s experiences in elementary school and high school. But, the film’s final act is what seals it as an unforgettable experience, using its quiet characters and their complex situations to explore what it means to belong–to your family, to your heritage, to your culture, and to the world itself.

4. The Taste of Things

Food has rarely ever looked as good on film as it does in The Taste of Things’ opening scene, which uses subtle camera movement and precise framing to capture the film’s two main characters (Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel) preparing an extravagant meal. The film’s opening scene echoes many of the ideas covered in the rest of Trần Anh Hùng’s film, which uses the power of food and cooking as a way to explore the relationship between two people who navigate what it means to love and be in love with someone, or something. The film’s simple, yet profound script, excellent cinematography, and powerful emotional revelations make this 135-minute film well worth watching. But, as I said in my review earlier this year, don’t approach it on an empty stomach.

3. May December

May December is a perfect example of what can happen when everyone’s completely in charge of their craft. The film’s premise has so much room for failure–an actress (Natalie Portman) visits a married couple (Julianne Moore, Charles Melton), previously tabloid-bait for their insane age gap (they started seeing one another when she was 36 and he was 13), to prepare for her role in an upcoming film adaptation of their relationship. But, from the moment the film begins, it is clear that both director Todd Haynes and screenwriter Samy Burch know what they’re doing. It’s hard to believe that this is Burch’s first screenplay, because every aspect of the film’s dialogue is exquisitely layered, highlighting the oddity and horror of the situation at hand with every chance. Haynes’ direction, and the performances from the film’s leads, are perfectly attuned to Burch’s writing, animating the story and characters with such grace and believability that the film’s revelations are all the more affecting.

2. Past Lives

In many ways, Celine Song’s Past Lives could be considered the film of the year. For starters, it was released long before most of the other films on this list—it premiered in January to ravenous acclaim at Sundance and was released in June of this year. Plus, it’s been impossible to forget about Song’s debut feature, which captures the relationship between Nora (Greta Lee) and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) over three periods of their life—as adolescents in South Korea at age 12 (right before Nora plans to emigrate), on Zoom at 24 and in-person in New York at 36, after Nora has married and settled down. Song possesses an inherent skill in aligning her directing style with her screenwriting tactics. The film is filled with static, long-lasting shots that amplify the film’s simple, complex dialogue, placing the character’s conversations at the front and center. This tactic is extremely beneficial, as it highlights the film’s astonishing performances and its ability to beckon the viewer to question their own lives—the opportunities lost, the ones gained and everything in between.

1. Monster

Monster, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first film made in his native Japan since the 2018 Palme d’Or winner Shoplifters, is an incredible return to form for a director who has consistently relied on smart screenwriting, intentional visual compositions and refined performances to capture real human emotions and thought processes, to great success. The film’s premise refracts the same scenario–a child accusing his teacher of abuse–through three lenses–once through the perspective of the child’s mother, once through the teacher’s perspective and once through the child’s point of view. When the film centers around the child’s perspective, Monster reaffirms itself as the film of the year, with a near-perfect second half that focuses on the stories we tell ourselves not only to survive, but to try and understand who we are. It’s an emotionally difficult film in the scale of its revelations. But, Kore-eda’s gentle camerawork and Yūji Sakamoto’s tender script never make the story feel exploitative or unwarranted, regardless of what’s happening on-screen.

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