Another year and another nearly 200 movies watched. And, as is usually the case, our esteemed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has mostly failed to recognize the finest films this past year had to offer, leaving it up to me to dutifully inform you of what was actually good in the year that was 2023.
Below is the short list of what I loved in the last twelve months or so. There are, of course, more films you should see, such as The Holdovers, Society of the Snow, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, but these eight should get you started. Now, 2024 awaits.
8. The Iron Claw
The real Kevin Von Erich has told his family’s story a number of times in articles and documentaries, but, despite The Iron Claw being a dramatization of his life’s major events, it still feels like the most real version we fans have been given to date. READ THE FULL REVIEW
7. Sisu
In all my years, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a film with such satisfying displays of brutality and gore as Helander gives us with his fantastically intense and surprisingly comic film. READ THE FULL REVIEW
6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
I rarely leave a theater with a big, dumb grin on my face, and it’s even rarer for the rest of the family to have the same grin on theirs, but Mutant Mayhem sparked a generational joy that doesn’t happen very often. READ THE FULL REVIEW
5. Perfect Days
What’s amazing, though, is that where we’ve been trained to expect emotional outbursts or heartfelt reconciliations by our years of watching predictable movies, Perfect Days gives us only as much as we need to better understand its characters, and does so completely free of anything even approaching Oscar-bait grandstanding. READ THE FULL REVIEW
4. Godzilla Minus One
In an awards season that’s sure to see mass murderer J. Robert Oppenheimer honored over and over again, I urge you to balance any Nolan-styled hero worship you may be feeling with not just Godzilla Minus One or Honda’s original, but with as many post-war Japanese movies you can get your hands on. READ THE FULL REVIEW
3. Beau is Afraid
You could compare it to Alice in Wonderland, I suppose, but I don’t think Lewis Carroll could have dreamed this up no matter what kind of hallucinogens he had access to. READ THE FULL REVIEW
2. Past Lives
While it’s true that it gets to the heart of what love is, what it means, and the many forms it comes in with more honesty and self-awareness than decades of predecessors, it doesn’t operate by any known formulas and frequently takes fascinating swerves that force personal and emotional exploration. It works on principles of sincerity rather than manipulation, and pragmatism rather than excess. READ THE FULL REVIEW
1. Monster
The results are a staggering display of cinematic delicacy that approaches difficult subject matter with the utmost respect while never exploiting our natural emotional responses to what we’re being presented. READ THE FULL REVIEW
James is a writer, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.