We are already more than halfway through January, and all of us are looking to the future to make 2024 the best year yet. Before I move on from what might be one of the most significant years of pop culture across TV, film, and video games in my lifetime, I want to give you my selections for the Top 10 Movies of 2023. I’ve kept up the tradition of ranking my favorite films of the year every year since 2009. I saw over 90 new releases in 2023, and blindspots aside, picking the best was an immense challenge. Naming my top 5 movies of 2023 on The Cinematropolis podcast, The Cinematic Schematic, earlier this month was one of the more stringent exercises in criticism I’ve done recently.
Picking the top 10 movies of 2023 often felt like an impossible choice because there were so many ambitious films across genres and budget tiers, several of which come from the most tenured living filmmakers like Hayao Miyazaki, Martin Scorsese, Greta Gerwig, Michael Mann, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Yorgos Lanthimos, and Christopher Nolan among others. I’d also be remiss if I didn’t mention how many top-notch directorial debuts I watched last year.
With the formidable task being clear, I defaulted to the criteria I developed in my college blogging days:
Choosing the Top 10 Movies of 2023
When picking my top ten films, I abide loosely by the following categories:
- Vision and Direction – How strong, unique, and well-executed was the direction by the director?
- Performances – How well did the cast interpret and perform the material they were given?
- Effectiveness – How well did the film accomplish what it set out to achieve?
- Impact – What is the film’s impact on the audience, both in the theater and long term?
- Rewatchability – How likely am I to revisit the film for pleasure or a specific use case?
I used to put a much larger emphasis on “what is objectively the best film,” but I have come around to the idea that criticism is more compelling when we bring our preferences to our ratings, reviews, and rankings. At the end of the day, I made these selections based on how well it achieved these categories for me.
With that in mind, here are my top 10 films of 2023.
10. John Wick: Chapter 4
John Wick: Chapter 4 is cinematic ecstasy. It begins with the momentum of being fired out of a canon and doesn’t let up for the entire two-hour and forty-nine-minute runtime. And no, I never felt that length once.
With the continuously outrageous stunts, impressively refined production design, maniacally inventive set pieces, and more “how the hell did they do that?!” moments than I can count, director Chad Stahelski has cemented his reputation as one of the great action directors of the last decade. When paired with Keanu Reeves’s commitment to stuntwork, it’s a masterpiece.
I know this reads like hyperbole, but believe the hype!
I hope Keanu takes a long break.
Listen to our John Wick: Chapter 4 review discussion on The Cinematic Schematic podcast.
9. BlackBerry
BlackBerry is low-key one of the funniest movies I saw in 2023. Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton’s deadpan Silicon Valley meets Glengarry Glen Ross on-screen chemistry is comedic magic.
When it’s not putting these larger-than-life versions of the RIM(Research in Motion) crew into increasingly impossible situations, it achieves a similar focus on the connection between tech, business, and people that made Halt and Catch Fire such a critical hit on TV.
Don’t sleep on BlackBerry. It’s the closest we’ve seen to a true spiritual successor to director David Fincher’s 2010 masterpiece, The Social Network.
8. Godzilla Minus One
Undoubtedly, one of the year’s biggest surprises for me was Godzilla Minus One, a prequel to the original Godzilla (1954) from Toho Studios in Japan. Coming seemingly out of nowhere, the first Japanese entry into the series since the exceptional Shin Godzilla (2016) took a radically different direction. Set during the restructuring of Japan following World War II, the film follows a kamikaze pilot, Kōichi Shikishima, who copes with survivor guilt after he decides not to go through with his mission and discovers his parents had been killed during the bombing of Tokyo.
What’s most compelling about this blockbuster-sized period piece is its emphasis on human drama and putting emotionality in the forefront. The big guy is threatening, sure, but I was just as invested in whether or not these people will find redemption or problem-solve their way to safety with science and teamwork. When paired with the slow-burn reveal of Godzilla’s awesome power followed by spectacular destruction, you have an instant monster classic in the vein of Speilberg’s Jaws.
7. Barbie
The chances are high that you have already seen last year’s unexpected smash hit…at least twice. What’s left to be said about Greta Gerwig’s Barbie that has yet to be said by the rest of the internet? It’s bold, imaginative, and subversive. It’s got musical numbers so big and catchy I’ll be singing them to myself until I’m on my deathbed. Most importantly, it treated the story of Mattel’s treasured toyline womanhood in the twenty-first century with more respect and credibility than any of us expected a toy company and major studio would. To echo the sentiment of Martin Scorsese, it’s pure cinema.
The movie is more than Kenough to sit among the greats of 2023. While the interest in superhero movies dwindled and the conversation regarding women’s rights in America took dire turns, Barbie arrived just in time to provide a bold, fresh, and life-affirming take on the future of IP-based movies. It has big ideas, and it has humility for all of its characters. Sure, it’s not a perfect movie. Still, it is undeniably a film that will impact younger audiences and how Hollywood approaches big-budget blockbusters in at least the next decade of Hollywood.
Listen to our Barbie review on The Cinematic Schematic podcast.
6. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
When Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse isn’t blowing your mind with the seemingly infinite animation styles flashing across the big screen, it’s tugging at the heartstrings through inventive takes on familiar Spider-man tropes and dilemmas. It’s the darker Empire Strikes Back of the Spider-verse trilogy in its tone and structure, giving a weighted edge heavier than its predecessor.
Since Avengers: Endgame closed the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first saga, my superhero fatigue has increased tenfold with every subpar comic book adaptation from Marvel or DC. The remedy is bold, ambitious, and original storytelling. Imagine every superhero movie was as fresh and original as Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. In that case, I’d have fewer complaints and more enthusiasm for a genre I’ve fallen out of love with over the last decade.
And depending on what they do with Beyond the Spider-Verse (part 2), this could be a 5-star movie. As it stands, this sequel remains half an indescribable movie-going experience.
Listen to our Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse review on The Cinematic Schematic podcast.
5. Anatomy of a Fall
You know the popular sentiment, “Sometimes life just isn’t that complicated”? Anatomy of a Fall disavows the arrogance of that notion in a harrowing courtroom drama interrogating the ideas of truth, murder, and responsibility in a deteriorating marriage.
What is true? Sometimes, being in a relationship is chaos. The conclusion of a case isn’t clear. The truth presented in the courtroom is squishier than one can immediately intuit. Sometimes, both arguments can be true, and other times, neither accusation is accurate. Anatomy of a Fall is dedicated to exploring the problems that arise in the ambiguous and moral grey areas of an individual caught in a tragic situation followed by even more dreadful accusations.
Did Sandra Voyter, played by the exquisite Sandra Hüller, kill her husband? By exploring the mystery at the heart of the drama, Anatomy of a Fall proposes we are the problem. Let’s focus on a different question–why is it human instinct to boil the lives and situations of others down to pass judgment on their character?
4. Past Lives
Director Celine Song’s debut film, Past Lives, is a triumphant and quietly emotional exploration of the roads not taken in life, the warm comforts of midlife romantic partnerships, and the Korean-American immigrant story told in the vein of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight Trilogy.
What are the lives you didn’t live, either by choice or by fate? Yes, there is something beautiful about the joy in the life you have made for yourself. A bittersweet feeling occurs when you encounter an old friend, flame, or acquaintance reminding you of what could have been. Past Lives ties the ideas to the American immigrant experience, an essential and powerful story in its own right.
Not unlike one of my very favorite films of 2016, Moonlight, Celine Song’s partially autobiographical story demonstrates Roger Ebert’s quote from his 2005 Brokeback Mountain review, “Strange but true: The more specific a film is, the more universal because the more it understands individual characters, the more it applies to everyone.” If movies are machines that generate empathy, as Ebert described in his memoir Life Itself, Past Lives is the most impactful movie I watched in 2023.
3. Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is an adult drama with a capital A. Its slow-burn story is filled scene to scene with people talking in rooms about theories, ideas, and philosophies so much bigger than the moments depicted on the screen presented in the most epic fashion imaginable.
Does Nolan’s treatment of women remain shallow? Yes. Did it need to be 3 hours long? Probably not. Is the beginning of Act 3 messy in terms of pacing? Yep. Does the lack of a Japanese perspective feel questionable in 2023? Absolutely.
But when the final moments of the film land, none of those shortcomings seemed to matter in the face of a haunting ending that will go down as one of the most chilling cinematic moments in recent history.
With the “invent first, consider the repercussions later” mindset being so prevalent in Silicon Valley’s approach to AI, Oppenheimer has more to say about the state of the world today than perhaps any of Nolan’s previous outings. It’s both his least crowd-pleasing and most crucial movie yet.
Listen to our Oppenheimer review on The Cinematic Schematic podcast.
2. The Boy and the Heron
For two hours, Hayao Miyazaki swept me away into another whimsical hand-drawn fantasy playing familiar beats full of splendor, but this time with a more contemplative and bittersweet perspective.
The Boy and the Heron (originally titled “How Do You Live?” in Japan)is Miyazaki’s reflection on his life and creations, not as a swan song, but as a passing of the torch to the generation who has lived a life surrounded by his work. The film oscillates between reflections on familiar themes he’s worked through previously and moments that play as intimately personal and specific as if he were speaking directly to the audience, his family, and his team at Ghibli.
The filmmaker’s imagination has rarely felt as grandiose and vibrant as it does here through the awe-inspiring animation and moving score from Joe Hisaishi.
After his previous film, The Wind Rises, put such a definitive period at the end of his prolific career, it was hard to imagine what the director had left to say. In The Boy and the Heron, he has quite a lot left on his mind.
Listen to our The Boy and the Heron review on The Cinematic Schematic podcast.
1. Killers of the Flower Moon
Killers of the Flower Moon is an instant American classic and my top film of 2023. The film reveals the especially American flavor of greed, deception, envy, and betrayals enacted on the Osage Tribe by their most trusted neighbors. It’s less a “who done it” and more a “who didn’t do it,” with everyone, including the audience, being complicit in Scorsese’s latest crime epic.
Every talent operates at the very top of their game, from the cinematography to the script and art department. The most compelling element carrying the emotional core of the film is Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone’s incredible chemistry as Ernest and Mollie Burkhart in a love story wrapped in passion and tragedy. While Scorsese’s reflection on the sins of institutional racism against Indigenous Americans may be remembered as one of his best films to date, Gladstone will go down as the MVP and one of the great cinematic discoveries of 2023.
Listen to our review of Killers of the Flower Moon on The Cinematic Schematic podcast.
Runner-Ups to Caleb’s Top 10 Movies of 2023
As already noted, picking just 10 films felt impossible. Frankly, my numbers six to twenty-five could all change order depending on how I wake up feeling that day. With that said, here is the remainder of my top twenty-five. All of these movies from 2023 have something transcendent to offer viewers.
Check out my top 10 films from previous years:
