Best Films of 2023 (Jim Tudor’s List)

Ten Films From 2023 That I say are Quite Good, Plus Additional Films to Consider in Various Other Categories

2023 was a fine, fine movie year with lots and lots of quality offerings to choose from. Here are a bunch of titles that I think are really worth checking out, and a few to skip. Thanks for reading!

10. The Killer

Michael Fassbender, in a bucket hat and counting calories, steps, and his own heart rate, literally and figuratively kills as the nameless title assassin. Hyper-auteur David Fincher’s dark-like-night procedural of a perfectionist letting things turn personal doesn’t deserve to have been immediately released into the black hole of Netflix original movies. But, then again, what comes around sometimes, just sometimes, goes around…

9. All of Us Strangers

Never not hypnotic, British filmmaker Andrew Haigh quietly maximizes lead actors Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal as well as The Pet Shop Boys’ cover of Willie Nelson’s “Always on my Mind” to get at the sad heart of things left unsaid. A dark dream of cinematic precision.

8. Priscilla

The story of young Priscilla Presley (Cailee Spaeny, the second most overlooked lead performance of the year) finding herself trapped in Graceland as the wife of the King of Rock n’ roll is told with the kind of melancholic detail that only Sofia Coppola could muster. This necessary flip side to Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis also stands very much on its own, thankyouverymuch.

7. Barbie

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in BARBIE (2023)

This just goes to show that even something as plastic and mass produced as Barbie can break the mold. Make no mistake, this Barbie is fully alive from the start. And just like that, Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” will never be the same. (Good riddance). Greta Gerwig has gifted us with an instant classic.

6. Perfect Days

Don’t let the fact that Wim Wenders’ meditatively exceptional new narrative film spends a lot of time in toilets fool you, no one will want to wipe away anything about Perfect Days. Koji Yakusho’s finely nuanced turn as a quietly content sanitation worker who habitually loves his classic rock music and photography is the most overlooked lead performance of the year.

5. May December

Todd Haynes is back in his preferred territory of unabashed pitched-up melodrama and discomforting sexuality. With Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore heading up a fine cast, this matter-of-fact rejiggering of the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal both humanizes and horrifies-often at the same time.

4. Godzilla Minus One

Toho’s King of the Monsters emerges a decade early in Takashi Yamazaki’s surprisingly emotional reimagining of Japan’s first encounter with Godzilla. For the first time since Oshiro Honda’s original, the creature is truly frightening, and the commentary within seriously resonant. I’ve only seen this in its black and white re-release, an aesthetic variation that absolutely compliments the material. The best kaiju movie I’ve ever seen.

3. Beau is Afraid

Ari Astor bravely goes all out with his unwieldy epic of an insular agoraphobe (Joaquin Phoenix, amazing) who’s journey to his suddenly dead mother is never possibly what it seems. A three-hour anxiety attack of the highest cinematic order.

2. Past Lives

A completely compelling, beautifully realized film about the realities of relationship loss, what ifs, and what you have now. First-time filmmaker Celine Song has transitioned from creating live theatre to movies without a hint of “staginess”. Greta Lee in the lead role is a treasure.

1. Poor Things

Yorgos Lanthimos’ most accessible film may also be his most brazen. A deliriously warped fairy tale with a lot to say about female agency past and present, Lanthimos’ unapologetic propulsion of artifice evokes midcentury Czech animator Karel Zeman while Tony McNamara’s rightly unsettling screenplay makes with allusions to Frankenstein and Dr. Moreau. It’s Emma Stone, however, who truly owns this unlikeliest of fantastical movies. Not for everyone, but for those of us who’s spot it hits, the often-hilarious Poor Things leaves fans furiously jumping with the best kind of cinephilia.