Film Essay: Top Ten 2023
The Best of 2023
In 2023, the film industry endured a series of blockbuster flops as well as weathering two strikes, and as a result, 2023 may ultimately be remembered as the year the Superhero bubble burst. Although Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was a pleasant if not fantastic traditional superhero romp, Marvel stumbled with a lackluster tentpole, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and DC’s film solo debut of The Flash was both a commercially and artistic disaster. But that wasn’t the only disappointing box office news. The seemingly unstable juggernaut that is Disney continued to mount losses with The Little Mermaid, which although earning a $298 million domestic gross, was a box office disappointment. That trend continued with Indiania Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Haunted Mansion, and Wish, among others, all suffered from low box office revenue. Given the cataclysmic decline in streaming revenue, 2023 may mark the end of an era. And yet, despite the box office malaise, 2023 is one of the best years for cinema in a decade.
To mark the occasion of a great year, 2023 will also be remembered as the year of “Barbenheimer”, a spontaneous and miraculous film event where the opening of two polar opposite films elevated each other to a record-breaking box-office success in an otherwise economically disappointing year. And while “Barbenheimer” was both historic and worth the accolades it received, this year saw great established masters producing some of their greatest work (Martin Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, Frederick Wiseman, Hayao Miyazaki, Todd Haynes, Paul Schraeder).
In the end, my choices for the best film of the year came down to three movies: Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer created by two of the great working directors and Past Lives an independent romance which marks the debut of new talent, writer/director Ceclia Song. I played with each film as my top choice before eventually landing on this arbitrary numbering. In reality, I would be happy with any of them as my choice for the best film of the year. Here are my selections for the ten best films of the year and the runners up:
10. Godland ****
Although some have said that Godland is another in the Western genre (and certainly it shares some connections to films such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller), the Western celebrates the power of man to bend nature to his will; transforming the wild west into civilization. In Godland, the main character, Lucas, an ambitious and driven priest, seeks to bring the word of God to the edge of civilization in Iceland. But, Godland has more in common with Herzog’s adventure into the Amazon, Aguire: The Wrath of God than it does with Westerns. Nature bends humanity to its cruel will, pitting survival above morality. Capturing this struggle between humanity and the seemingly hostile world is the best cinematography of the year. Beautifully and hauntingly rendered in the Academy ratio, Godland always reminds you of humanity’s feeble attempt to capture nature.
9. American Fiction ****
Continuing the string of recent great films about Black America (Moonlight, Nope, The Last Black Man in San Francisco, They Cloned Tyrone), American Fiction, by first time director Cord Jefferson, tackles the commercialization and stereotype of Black suffering. For generations, Hollywood, the publishing industry, and other cultural gatekeepers have ensured that the narrative about Black culture is one of suffering through constant depictions of gang culture, single parent households, poverty, an emphasis on slavery, and racism without demonstrating the vast positive cultural contributions and joy in Black America. Here, a scholar and author, Thelonious "Monk" Ellison, played by never better Jeffrey Wright, attempts to write sophisticated literary works only to be denied publication. When he invents a fake Black author who struggled with gang violence and now is publishing an autobiography, the publishing world leaps at the opportunity to make money, leaving Thelonious to play a stereotype of a “Black man”. The result is a powerful satire on America’s unwillingness to view Black culture as anything other than “Black trauma porn.”
8. Zone of Interest ****
Today, images of genocide and war stream to our social media as daily occurrences, and yet, it seems more of the population cares about Taylor Swift’s relationship with Travis Kelce than mass murder. Director Jonathan Glazer, who like Stanley Kubrick brings a cerebral, distancing approach to his films, often about very difficult subjects, takes on this willful blindness to atrocities by creating … dare I say… a unique film about the Holocaust. Generally, I would say that a film about the Holocaust from the German point of view would be a horrific idea, but Glazer finds the exact right subject. German Commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Hoss, and his wife Hedwig (Sandra Huller in one of two incredible performances this year) live in an idyllic family home just on the outskirts of Auschwitz. The cold and increasingly disgusting normalcy of their lives occurs within earshot and sight of the death camp. Jonathan, by focusing on this family, asks the difficult question about how willing are we to continue our lives, willfully shutting out the horrors of the world.
7. The Boy and the Heron ****
For the past five years, I’ve been grieving the loss of my sixteen-year-old brother to cancer. Although I have suffered numerous other losses, including friends my age, dealing with Dylan’s loss has proved more difficult to find peace. With The Boy and the Heron, animator Hayao Miyazaki has dug deep, giving us his most personal film that deals with grief and loss of his mother. This movie touched me in a way few films have, helping me to continue my own process of dealing with grief. The less known about The Boy and the Heron the better, as Miyazaki’s ability to draw us into a magical world entirely his own creates a sense of discovery and wonder that few films can capture. Miyazaki has retired numerous times before, but this film does feel like a proper coda for one of the great careers in cinema.
6. Menus-Plasirs les Troigros ****
Frederick Wiseman is a worldwide treasure. Perhaps the greatest documentarian, Wiseman’s signature style keeps his subjects at a distance, observes them with patience, and somehow captures their grandeur. He often sets up his cameras and records his subjects for months, really capturing their true essence. Whether it is a school or Boston’s City Hall, the access and depth of his films are rivaled by none. Yet, with Menus-Plasirs les Troigros, Wiseman creates his most intimate film. Rather than being expensive, Menus feels small, focusing on one restaurant and the one family that operates it. In doing so, Wiseman captures the manic and mania, the rivalry and brilliance that makes a three Michelin star restaurant. Being a gigantic foodie myself, Wiseman has done something special with this one, making me both appreciate and sit in new wonder at something so familiar.
5. May December ****
Last year, the Netflix show, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, was publicly derided by families of Dahmer’s real-life victims, saying that the TV show retraumatized them to the brutal murders and loss of their loved ones. This is the problem with the immensely popular True Crime genre which rips stories from the headlines often without concern for real-life consequences. With May December, director Todd Haynes, not only deals with an event inspired by the sexual abuse of a teacher to her preteen student and their marriage after her imprisonment, but also the media fixation on creating entertainment out of true crimes. Frequent Haynes collaborator Julianne Moore plays the former teacher / sex criminal who marries her former preteen student, played in a revelatory role by Charles Melton, and allows an actress, played by Natalie Portman, to visit them to prepare for playing a fictional version of the former teacher. The metanarrative allows Haynes to not only visit the true psychological trauma of the abuse, but also society’s problematic obsession with true crime narrative. Sometimes May December has been billed as a comedy, but for me, this is one of the most difficult and disturbing films of the year and also one of the best, led by stellar performances from all three leads.
4. Poor Things ****
Perhaps the most idiosyncratic director working, other than Wes Anderson, is the surrealist Yorgos Lanthimos. That Yorgos Lanthimos has garnered such success and thus financial backing is more than a little surprising. If you had told me that the director of the subtle, unsettling and confounding Dogtooth, would become the next “it” director and a darling for the Oscars, I would have called you full of it, and yet, here we are. While Poor Things is an ambitious and audacious steampunk take on a female Frankenstein film, I found Poor Things to be a frankly more modern and sexual version of Pygmalion or even My Fair Lady. A Dr. Frankenstein-esque mad scientist, Wilem Dafore, in a great performance, revives a dead corpse, Emma Stone, but resurrects her with the mind of a child. After which is where the Pygmalion similarities emerge. Several competing men enter her life, including a never better Mark Ruffalo, and try to form her to their imaginations of what a woman should be, but she rebels, and claims her own sexual liberation. In all of this madness, it is Emma Stone’s performance that grounds the movie in her character’s journey and gives the movie its emotional heft. A great film.
3. Past Lives ****
I long considered Past Lives as the best film of the year. In a way, it is similar to journey of grief and loss beautifully told in The Boy and the Heron but instead of a magical land, it is in the imagination of the main character, played magnificently by Greta Lee, who reunites with childhood love, only to realize what could have been. How do you mourn that which you never had? It is such an intimate part of loss. You mourn not only what you have lost, but those moments you know you will never have. As she struggles with remerging feelings for her childhood love, she is comforted by her husband, who in a brilliant stroke of writing, is not made into a jealous monster, but rather a concerned and worried partner. Past Lives is one of the best romances I’ve seen in years (deserves to be mentioned with Brokeback Mountain, 500 Days of Summer, and Call Me by Your Name) and complicates the traditional formula of two lovers who cannot be together, but this time, the culprit is time.
2. Oppenheimer ****
I am not sure Oppenheimer necessarily deserves to be this high on my top ten list given the problems I have with the last act of the film, but the movies’ strengths outweigh its’ issues, and I had one of the most intense and unique experiences of my life seeing this film. I wanted to see Oppenheimer in 70mm IMAX, but by the time I got around to buying the tickets, the only screening left was the 11pm screening. My friends who were going with me bailed, and so, I went to see the movie by myself. It had been a difficult and full day with nonstop work from 6am till 7pm before I headed up to San Francisco to see the movie. I am unsure whether it was my tiredness, Nolan’s decision to write the script in first person, his use of closeups which dominated the film, the nonlinear structure of the film, the use of visuals to represent the mindset of Oppenheimer, or Cillian Murphy’s performance, but for about two hours that night I ceased to be myself and became Oppenheimer. This is the closest I will ever come to understanding method acting. I could not think like myself and instead thought like Oppenheimer. I gripped my arm rest with nervousness and cold sweated through the film, at one point during the Los Almos speech, I was hyperventilating. Nolan has done something extraordinary with this film. Rather than dealing with the bomb itself, he has made a movie about the moral implications of discovery. By connecting Oppenheimer’s affairs with the atomic bomb, we witness Oppenheimer attempt to deal with is greatest moral faults and the implications not only for himself but for the world.
1. Killers of the Flower Moon ****
Here is one of those rare instances where an important film is also a great film. Killers of the Flower Moon tells the story of crimes against the Osage Native Americans that were committed and allowed to continue because of a racist system in plain sight. The film begins by visually explaining the concept of witnessing and seeing things that are hidden in plain view. In the first scene, we join the Osage as they are mourning a loss, sitting inside a traditional Osage structure. The reeds that form the walls can be seen through and we watch as children peer through them, trying to see clearly. This will be us as we watch the events that caused this mourning. At 80 years of age, Scorsese remains at the top of his game. I understand the criticism leveled against the film that this is an Osage story and should have been told by an Osage artist, or at the very least, had an Osage main character, but I think Scorsese also understands that criticism. In the last scene of The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort looks at the camera implicating the audience in his crimes and hero worship. In Killers of the Flower Moon, Scorsese’s surprise cameo implicates himself and the artistic world in the problematic approach of telling others’ stories for entertainment. He recognizes the problem and admits to the faults within his own film. However, the film ends on a note of hope. It began with the Osage mourning, and it ends with the Osage celebrating, as if crying out in a voice that despite all of this, “we are still here!”
Runners up (alphabetical order): Anatomy of a Fall ****, Beau is Afraid *** ½, Dream Scenario *** ½, Master Gardner ****, Monster ****, Perfect Days ****, The Pigeon Tunnel ****, Raging Grace ****, Return to Seoul ****, Sam Now ****.
Jury Award (alphabetical order):
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt *** ½, All of Us Strangers *** ½ , Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. *** ½, Asteroid City *** ½, Barbie *** ½, The Color Purple ***, Fallen Leaves *** ½, Ferrari ***, Godzilla Minus One *** ½, The Holdovers ***, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny *** ½, Infinity Pool *** ½, Maestro ***, Origin *** ½, Passages *** ½, Saltburn *** ½, Skinamarink *** ½, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ***; They Cloned Tyrone ***
Selections for the “Best of” 2020:
Best Actor: Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction
Runners-up: Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer; Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers; Barry Keoghan, Saltburn
Best Actress: Lily Gladstone, Killers of the Flower Moon
Runners-up: Emma Stone, Poor Things; Greta Lee, Past Lives; Sandra Huller, Anatomy of a Murder and Zone of Interest; Natalie Portman, May December
The strongest category this year
Best Supporting Actor: Charles Melton, May December
Runners-up: Mark Ruffalo and Willem Dafoe, Poor Things; Robert Downey Jr, Oppenheimer; Robert DeNiro, Killers of the Flower Moon; Ryan Gosling, Barbie
Best Supporting Actress: Scarlett Johanson, Asteroid City
Runners-up: Julianne Moore, May December; Da’Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers; Hailee Steinfeld (voice acting), Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse; Rosamund Pike, Saltburn
Best Cinematography: Maria von Hausswolff, Godland
Runner-up: Lukasz Zal, Zone of Interest
Best Production Design: Sarah Greenwood, Barbie
Runner-up: Shona Heath and James Price, Poor Things
Best Score: Ryuichi Sakamoto, Monster
Runner-up: Robbie Robertson, Killers of the Flower Moon
Best Editing: Laurent Senechal, Anatomy of a Fall
Runner-up: Yorgos Mavropsaridis, Poor Things
Best Screenplay: Celine Song, Past Lives
Runner-up: Samy Burch, Alex Mechanik, May December
Best Adapted Screenplay: Eric Roth, Martine Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Runner-up: Tony McNamara, Poor Things
Best Animated Film: The Boy and the Heron
Runner-up: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Best Documentary: Menus-Plasirs les Troigros
Runner-up: Sam Now
Best Direction: Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon
Runner-up: Christopher Nolan, Oppenheimer
Most Overrated Film: The Killer
For another opinion, please visit my colleague, dear friend, and one of the best critics I know, Peter Canavese at http://www.grouchoreviews.com/features/266
