Here are my top ten films of 2023. I’ve included my Letterboxd-sized reviews as well as the links to my jumbo-sized reviews and the relevant exit surveys. Honorable mention was The Iron Claw.
10. Talk to Me
Review: ari aster but make it Australian
9. Blackberry
Review: social network but make it Canadian
8. Poor Things
Review: this is the brand of contraption-core/petticoat-wave that I wanted from WONKA—dirigibles, foppish lawyers, ontological questions of personal continuity via swapping human brains and goat brains. excellent Fisher Price johnny greenwood score and the visuals sufficiently evoked Speed Racer. it sags like a doodie diaper at times but won me over in the end. one day Yorgos should adapt Pynchon’s “Against the Day.”
7. Barbie
Read: Our exit survey with Fatima, Darri, and William
6. Oppenheimer
Read: My full review of Oppenheimer for the Strawberry Criterion.
5. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Review: there’s a reason why they named a rest stop after Judy Blume on the Garden State Parkway
4. BEAU IS AFRAID
Review: this is how i have felt every day since i was born
3. The Zone of Interest
Review: the best score since Tenet, maybe There will be Blood. maliciously uncompromising, brimming with primeval haunted energy, should be required viewing for everyone whose tax dollars are bankrolling the bombs that Israel is dropping on Gaza. 100% a masterpiece in theory, 88% in practice. basically shows how the nazis didn’t lose WWII on the Defining Western Values Front. sledgehammer ending.
2. May December
Review: sooner than later I will present this film as part of a double feature with SOUND OF FREEDOM at a major film festival. directing was perfect/perfectly demented from the leads on down to the extras. the bro who plays the molested man-child husband turned butterfly breeder may give the performance of the year. i adored their disgusting under-furnished multi-jacuzzi 90s house. best line: “what if I had to x-ray myself?”
1. American Fiction
Review: the best Alexander Payne movie since Sideways. I am already SEETHING about them giving Jeffrey Wright’s Oscar to Leonardo DiCaprio. (Note from January ’24: NVM) director and score and screenplay should also be nominated. full disclosure: I am the bullseye of the target demo for a family drama slash literary satire set in a shore town. ending throws a real Hail Mary—and hauls in the catch!
baby pictures of famous dictators 