The movies are back!
Or at least it feels good to say that they are. The data is encouraging, but since chasing data has been part of the problem with movies lately, let’s talk about the gut feeling. And the guts feel good when there are a bigger variety of choices in the theater – Christmas weekend had that old whiff of multiple choices for families and adults – and the runaway hits of the year felt generated by the general audience more than the fandoms. There was evidence that audiences are still shaped by the brands that seek to force feed the collective imagination, and just as much instances of audiences pushing back on the spoon.
So let’s celebrate the year’s most memorable moments without worrying about whether they belonged to the year’s “best movies” or crowning a champion (The Boy and the Heron). Please add your own memorable 2023 moments in the comments below to fill in my blind spots (apologies, Lanthimos and Kore-eda, there was a lot to see this year). Also make sure to check out John Bruni‘s great review of the year as a whole which covers worthy movies that didn’t find space here!
20) Bottoms – History’s most chaotic football game
One encouraging trend is the return of comedies to the list. While studios remained out of play for the most part (one exception below), indies like Theater Camp and Bottoms found traction at the mini- and multi-plexes. Bottoms in particular threatens to stay in the culture for a while with its absurd, queer quasi-parody of high school comedies that culminates in the kind of ridiculous violence that feels like a pie fight for an era on the edge.
19) Sanctuary – Solo dance
Margaret Qualley might be on the verge of her breakout, or she might always be on the verge of her breakout. Either way, witness her magnetic, seductive performance opposite Christopher Abbott if you have any question she’s a star.
18) How to Blow Up a Pipeline – Will they blow up a pipeline?
No capes in this team-up that imagines a grassroots eco-terrorism effort with a breathless moment when we wonder if it will go boom.
17) How to Have an American Baby – Difficult birth
This doc, now playing on PBS in the States, contains the only moment when an audience has celebrated the sound of a baby crying.
16) Divinity – Stop-motion battle
The annual reminder that even unworthy films can contain surprising and worthy moments. Like a cheap, pretentious sci-fi softcore that used Harryhausen-esque techniques for its hand-to-hand combat between a mutated Stephn Dorff and a musclebound dude who might also be a literal celestial star or something. The art of cinema contains multitudes.
15) Passages – Tomas’s shirt
Ira Sach’s latest relationship drama was memorable for its intense and raw sexuality. But its occasional, very dry humor shouldn’t be overlooked either. Like the choice of wardrobe for Tomas (Franz Rogowski) worn when patching things up. Revealing it from under a coat and below his earnest-though-dishonest expressions makes for a great moment in costuming.
14) No Hard Feelings – Beach fight
Anybody that thinks the most memorable beach battle of the year was in the doll movie hasn’t seen No Hard Feelings.
13) Napoleon – “You Think You’re So Great”
Ridley Scott is 86 and still has surprises for us. This year’s is how much humor he injects in a historical biopic that from the outside looked to be a sleepy exercise for battle-minded armchair historians, with Scott and star Juaquin Phoenix unafraid to make the military mastermind look a bit silly, giving him memorable lines vis-à-vis the naval might of his enemies and his opinions on the divine forces that deliver his dinner.
12) Beau is Afraid – Propped door
On the subject of Mr. Phoenix, he provided another amusing turn as a beleaguered case of arrested development who sees peril and disaster at every turn – and may not be wrong to do so. The consequences of his decision to break a clearly-marked rule in his apartment building provides one of the funniest sight gags of the year.
11) John Wick: Chapter 4 – The Rue Foyatier
The final(?) entry in a franchise that improved the more it let go of reality, the latest adventure for the titular dog-loving murderer finally stopped winking to Buster Keaton and for a scene made its hero a full-stop silent movie foil.
10) American Fiction – Book pitch
Jeffrey Wright has long held and deserved national treasure status as a character actor. His rare lead turn for Cord Jefferson’s debut feature displays his talent for creating a distinct soul around the character he plays. In this case it’s writer Monk Ellison who finds his career stalling when he gets pigeon-holed as a Black writer that isn’t Black enough. When a satirical submission gets taken seriously, we get the double treat of watching Wright’s character come up with a character of his own, the better to play into the stereotype the white publishers expect. Like when Monk adjusts his voice from a professorial tone to a Yo! MTV Raps patois. Wright presses the bit for maximum squirms and laughs.
9) Asteroid City – You Can’t Wake Up If You Don’t Fall Asleep
We got a lot of Wes Anderson this year. I very much wanted to include the final line of “The Swan,” the best entry of his anthology of Roald Dahl adaptations for Netflix. But Anderson pops on the big screen, and his melancholy comedy about a play-within-a-play-within-a-documentary-reenactment (note: this may not be right at all) has a generous helping of the surreal even before we get to its thesis that breaks the fourth (and maybe fifth and sixth) wall. Give yourself over, there are strange things in the sky.
8) Ramona – Baptism
A documentary that uses fiction to search for the bridge between worlds. Feeling unprepared to portray the role of a working class teen named Romona, actress Camila Santana and director Victoria Linares Villegas conduct a series of interviews with real-life pregnant teens about their experiences and how Santana might translate these onto screen. As the teens begin to take a more active role in the film’s development, the number of Ramonas multiply. Villegas steers this toward reconciliation rather than chaos, and the film’s cathartic climax comes as inviting as a warm bath.
7) Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour / Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé – Concert films
Concert films as a whole had a moment this year, with these two artists packing in the fans for 3-hour experiences of their shows. Based on the experience of the show, no behind-the-scenes peeks or 3D tricks, and audiences made the most of the opportunity, treating screenings like the real thing (with much cheaper ticket prices). Remains to be seen if this is the moment at the beginning of a trend but it’s at least a moment for the year.
6) May December – Makeup tutorial
Todd Haynes and Julie Ann Moore reteamed for another drama of a woman who wants for nothing, yet is trapped by her circumstances. Also containing a head-turning performance by Charles Melton as the much (much!) younger husband, the movie belongs to Moore and a never-better Natalie Portman. When the two share the screen, the overlap in their perceptions of each other and the involuntary ways they share and hold back, create a mesmerizing feedback loop within a simple shot of two faces.
5) The Boy and the Heron – Enter the tower
Hayao Miyazaki gifted the world one final(?) creation, a beautiful masterwork that’s unafraid to be messy. At turns reserved and melodramatic, the movie starts with a patience the animator rarely asks of his viewers, but once The Boy decides he must move forward into the unknown, it’s as grand and strange as any of the adventures he’s created over a monumental career. There will be delights to remember and revisit over the years – parakeets clutching their cooking utensils and the heron’s grotesque “suit” to name a couple – but there’s nothing quite like that feeling of stepping forward into the truly unknown.
4) Anatomy of a Fall – Audio playback in the courtroom
Did she kill him? The question lingers over the movie and beyond, with our sympathies and assumptions getting challenged and revised through the many twists and turns of Justine Triet’s mystery drama. The most visceral evidence is in its least visual scene, where a flashback cuts back to the courtroom but the audio recording of the encounter continues. It’s a literalization of the movie’s search for an absolute truth. The details of what’s happening are impossible to determine, only the anger and aftermath are certain.
3) Killers of the Flower Moon – Still dancing
This movie has a wealth of moments: an opening spray of oil answering prayers with a curse, the knowing delivery of Lily Gladstone’s first line, the shimmering heat of hellfire, all the way through a wallop of an ending. But we’ll spotlight a moment often overlooked after Marty’s final surprise (overlooked everywhere but The Solute, naturally): a community dance performance by present-day members of the Osage Nation. The movie digs up the dirt on the gangsters that strove to steal everything from a civilization, but the Osage people live on.
2) Oppenheimer – Victory speech
[Mortal Kombat voice] Barbenheimer! The portmanteau rang out all summer long like a starting pistol for theater-goers. The most pleasant surprise: both films ended up being worthy of the hype. The seemingly surer thing ahead of time was Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic. And while no amount of breathless crosscutting and dramatic scoring can make sense of why a grandstanding Robert Downey, Jr. got to drive the final act, the movie drove history like a wartime train, hitting its peak in the aftermath of the explosion the first two hours – a horrifying creep of sound and death images that haunt Oppy even as he stirs up a grateful crowd.1) Barbie – Final line
Given the pedigree of co-writer and director Greta Gerwig, one could maybe guess this would be a funny movie. One could hope it could include some personality within its unpromising origins. Doubtful anybody saw the degree to which the year’s biggest hit would balance duty to blockbuster spectacle with thoughts on mental health and feminism without sacrificing the space for jokes. But absolutely nobody would have predicted the movie to have a final line so perfect as to rival Some Like It Hot. It was funny, entertaining, and thoughtful and audiences responded. Maybe Hollywood will learn the wrong lesson again and make more toys – or maybe wins by striking writers and actors point to a reversal of the tide. The movies are back.