Jenna's Top Ten Movies of 2023
It’s that time of year again folks, and I shan't terry with pleasantries – especially since this was the year Cinema Came Back after years of pandemic delays and visionless corporate dreck. In 2023 I watched roughly 345 movies, with about 50 of those as new releases. Quite a bit considering I barely wrote anything for Back Row last year (mea culpa! It was a busy year).
So many anticipated films came out this year, and themes of dread, loneliness, anxiety, longing and empathy were the the forefront of most of them. While I absolutely enjoyed the dread crescendo that was Oppenheimer and the bubblegum classic cinema remixes within Barbie, neither movie particularly blew me away. I was actually a big fan of the latest Mission Impossible installation, but I decided not to rank it based solely on the fact that it was a ‘part one’ and I take umbrage with a three hour film not being able to even wrap up its own arc. That said, big fan of Ethan Hunt battling AI – part two is gonna rock.
I’ll also give a shout out to The Holdovers, which Dan aptly described as more 2010s drama than anything recognizably ‘70s, but it scratched an itch for a well-acted character drama about loneliness (aka my kinda jam). Speaking of loneliness, I also enjoyed Priscilla for its beautifully shot scenes and solid acting, but its fear to address anything too unpleasant – either in Priscilla or Elvis’ lives – stunted it too much for me. Moving right into dread, The Zone of Interest was smart and well executed but failed to wow me. That said, if you’ve never spent time meditating on the banality of evil concept I would push it as a much see. And speaking of Sandra Hüller, I enjoyed watching Anatomy of a Fall but was kind of bored by its procedural structure. Team Innocent, though.
As for the rest, I found Godzilla Minus One, Beau is Afraid, Evil Dead Rise, John Wick: Chapter 4, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny to all be enjoyable romps but not particularly memorable. As for this year’s disappointments, I couldn’t handle Maestro’s half-assed intimacy and scattered focus, nor could I stomach how much comedic potential was left on the floor for Cocaine Bear. Damn.
So let’s do it:
1) The Boy and the Heron (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
The triumphant and devastating return of Hayao Miyazaki! The Boy and the Heron is a meditation on the passage of time – learning to confront loss without backsliding into the poisonous trap of nostalgia and fantasy. The only way forward is to forgive and accept, embrace your worst fears and antagonists, use these experiences to propel you instead of hold you back. You can be as well read and experienced and still remain ignorant, like a man alone in a room desperately trying to keep a precarious stack of blocks from falling over; willing to ruin real lives in order to maintain the dream of the false ones indefinitely.
Miyazaki isn’t asking his audience to consider these lessons, he’s demanding it. Life is cruel, relentless and without reason — accept this now or suffer for your inability to change it. The choice seems obvious but you’d be surprised at our capacity for denial. Mahito would rather physically harm himself than accept a new reality he finds too painful to confront. He’d rather attempt to kill another living being rather than accept it for what it is, neither friend nor ally. So ruled by grief compounded by hatred and the terror of acceptance — and who can blame him? But Miyazaki firmly reminds us that disappearing only opens up more holes, it does not bind or mend.
2) Asteroid City (dir. Wes Anderson)
I’ve been trying to write up Asteroid City since I saw it twice in theaters in June but life unfortunately got in the way and my poor half-written article is languishing in the Back Row drafts. I’ll try to resurface it but all I’ll say for now is I’m really loving this new Wes Anderson who’s more interested in dissecting his own filmmaking style with his films than he is in telling a linear storyline.
There’s quite a few paradoxes within this movie that’s happening within a play, within a play, within a television show, within a movie. Its about grief as much as it’s about aliens; people left changed by an experience, forced to wrestle with a void they cannot comprehend and yet still feel overwhelmingly. But it’s also about the role of a director, and how somebody who makes a living creating such exacting, stylish and curated works of art, can even begin to capture, let alone simply portray, the pure chaos that makes up our world.
”You can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep” is a chant by Wes Anderson to Wes Anderson as much as it’s inspirational fodder for the characters, the actors and his audience members to learn how to let go.
3) Killers of the Flower Moon (dir. Martin Scorsese)
This long awaited Scorsese film did not disappoint, a slowburn that plays out in a straight forward but devastating fashion. Killers of the Flower Moon focuses on the insidious nature of evil and racism as told through lies, greed, misplaced loyalty, stupidity, and shrugs. The depths of grief and sorrow, the never ending pain of betrayal and wanton cruelty; how easy it is to stretch the threshold of tolerability when you justify your actions with the dehumanization of others. It’s the story of America, it’s the story of capitalism, it’s the story of now.
For a movie that actively keeps you at arms length from its characters just when you want it to lean harder into their emotions, I found myself actively pushing my emotions away whenever Lily Gladstone sobbed because it was too powerful to confront. Scorsese does his audience a favor in that way, an attempt to focus our attention on the lessons of this horror rather than the depths of the horror itself.
4) Poor Things (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
Poor Things is a deconstruction of life with a pessimistically optimistic bent. Emma Stone really goes bohemian with this performance in a way that is continually fascinating to watch even if her actions feel developmentally off. It’s not so much the jerky movements as it is the bursts of abstract expressions and the subtle changes that denote a sort of passive but passionate learning.
Lanthimos seems to have less to say about feminism than he thinks he does, and there’s more than a few moments where he goes overboard in order to pander to the audience’s own discomfort with sexual themes. But whenever he’s just allowing it to play out straight, no ham, it’s pretty vivacious. Really loved the dance scene for that — an almost cliche choice that Stone manages to elevate to surreally expressionistic highs. It gets across more directly most of what Lanthimos was trying to express with the numerous sex scenes, many of which felt more visually self conscious than liberating.
Shout out to Mark Ruffalo who manages to be both charmingly attractive (and funnier) as an aging cad than was necessary.
5) A Thousand and One (dir. A. V. Rockwell)
A really fantastic cinematic debut for A. V. Rockwell, A Thousand and One is an empathetic slice of life movie about a woman who kidnaps her son out of foster care in order to give him the life she feels he deserves. More than The Holdovers, this film is far more reminiscent of the sort of down-on-their-luck underdog movies of New Hollywood that I love so much. The direction is deft, the camerawork is beautiful and and the acting is strong — Teyana Taylor and William Catlett both walk the line between wounded anger and depressive empathy so well.
Most of all this movie seems to force the audience to consider what it means to be a mother. From what characteristics or biological prerequisites it takes, all the way to the therapeutic experience of giving to another what you always wished you could have experienced — and the sad realization that you might be able to fill one hole but you’ll never be able to stop others from opening up inside of them.
6) Kidnapped (dir. Marco Bellocchio)
History as horror — in Kidnapped, Marco Bellocchio resurrects a chilling true tale of insidious Catholic practices of forced conversion. What’s even more chilling is how this story, which caused international outrage in its time, has largely been forgotten to time.
It’s a fitting cap to 2023, akin to Killers of the Flower Moon or Oppenheimer in films that shine a light on dark moments in our past to better understand not only our present but the limits of our empathy. Nobody is killed in this movie and yet it is a story of mass murder — the slow chipping away at religion, culture, and the ability to see basic humanity in those you deem other. There’s several upsetting moments in this film where we follow the kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara from his loving family, including frustrating courtroom testimony and plenty of patronizing men who invoke God in order to avoid the truth of their actions, but the way the final scene manages to build so abhorrently is grimly fantastic. Bellocchio knows exactly how to just stab the audience right in the heart in a way that feels shocking and yet grimly logical.
A deft portrait of soulless cruelty masquerading as religious piety… or perhaps there is no mask and it’s just always been the one face.
7) May December (dir. Todd Haynes)
Complex, difficult and funny is a great mix. May December really made you think about how we all grow older but one has to make the decision to grow wiser. Which isn’t to say that’s an excuse of any kind; the world is full of adults who still see themselves as teens and most of them know better than to act so selfish they become predatory. But then again, some of them also can’t think critically enough about themselves to even begin to consider the feelings of others.
Morally and empathetically, these situations are black and white, but to pretend they arise simply because of some sort of comicbook level of good versus evil is to fundamentally misunderstand how many factors are in play. Layers upon layers of trauma, a complete lack of self awareness and a curdled sense of naïveté. All of which to say, May December is a pretty depressing watch. But excellent acting all around and the usage of The Go-Between (1971) score is next level.
8) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (dir. Jeff Rowe)
I was psyched to see Mutant Mayhem for the art direction and character designs alone, and thankfully the movie did not disappoint. Absolutely the best looking animated film we’ve had in a decade and yes I’m including Spiderverse in that. Granted I’m the target audience for this brand of nostalgia but it felt like a true a breath of fresh air — visually fresh, nicely updated and genuinely sweet instead of just merely action-action-action.
I love that they made the turtles actual teenagers in both voice actors and motivation. They felt like real kids. They didn’t even need all of those insecure of-the-minute pop references (which do get a bit grating), just the scenes of them poking fun at each other or being dopey rule so damn hard. Sure, there were missed opportunities to let their individual personalities shine through but I had too much fun to get hung up on it.
My biggest complaint is that the pizza did not look tasty, though.
9) Past Lives (dir. Celine Song)
One of the cruelest lies we tell ourselves is “meant to be.” A sentiment that wraps desire with the seductive concept of destiny and coats it all with the impenetrable armor of gut feeling. It allows us to rewrite the past, the present and the future to our comfort level while justifying our anger, sadness or deep flowing love for any given person, situation or time. It’s soothing and delusional — it gives us a false sense of purpose and meaning while simultaneously removing our ability to be content with what’s actually in front of us.
At its best it helps us strive for something better, at its worst it stops us from ever trying. In its own backwards way it can also make us feel content with nothing, settling instead for the potential — that feeling as if we’re always just about to arrive. The problem isn’t the feeling, it’s reality. It’s the idea that what we’ve accomplished and experienced isn’t as meaningful as what could or should have happened to us. Suddenly all of that optimism starts to curdle and harden into a prison while our emotions remain safely detached and hidden. You’re suffering daily, sure, but for a reason.
Some people thrive on ”meant to be,” build whole lives around it. Others are utterly devastated by it and their lives spin entirely out of control. In Past Lives it simply sneaks up on you when you least expect it, which is the film’s strongest point — an attempt to shine a light of clarity on an opaque murkiness. Discontentment as a natural part of the human condition right alongside love.
10) Napoleon (dir. Ridley Scott)
I was pleasantly surprised by Ridley Scott’s portrait of Napoleon’s glory as directly juxtaposed with his failures – both equally notable in the making of a legend.
Kept hearing about how tonally all over the place this was but I thought it was pretty consistent. The best way to learn history is through character study, not just the dates and the battles, but the flaws. To be fair, Ridley Scott isn’t worried about historical accuracy here, but he is interested in mining some sense of truth and humanity from a man thought of more as a symbol than a man. Inspecting a dysfunctional relationship with the same intensity as the battle of Waterloo.
The battles here are genuinely impressive looking and riveting. As was every scene with Vanessa Kirby — really liked her portrait of Josephine as complex, willful, and trapped in a system that both gives her life meaning and sucks away all of her power. Joaquin does a good job too but I couldn’t help but feel he was lacking in nuance.
Honorable mentions: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, The Zone of Interest, The Holdovers, Priscilla, Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret, Anatomy of a Fall, Oppenheimer, Barbie, Fair Play, They Cloned Tyrone.
