Top 20 Films Of 2023

 

My Favourite
Films Of 2023

Okay then... the usual caveats apply to this pretty subjective list. Firstly, some of the films I’ve included, which I saw in cinemas as parts of festivals, probably won’t go on general release until next year, if ever. But I saw them this year so, that more than qualifies them for me. Similarly, films I saw at the cinema in 2022 but didn’t get released widely until 2023 are not on the list if I already included them in 2022. So, stuff like Mad Heidi and Argento’s Dark Glasses were already included by me in last year’s list (which you can look at here if you so desire).

There are a couple of mainstream superhero movies on here, surprisingly. They are fairly low down on the list but I wouldn’t have included them if I thought they weren’t worth it. At least one of them was universally panned but, I have no idea why and I have come to suspect that, the worse a superhero movie does at the box office, the better it actually is as a piece of art. I’ll be testing that theory some more over the coming year, I think... although I believe superhero movies are going to be slim pickings in 2024, with most of the franchises taking a kind of ‘year out’ break, if my information is correct and mostly just the pseudo-Marvel movies getting some air. Looking forward to seeing what they do with Deadpool 3 though.

Lastly, you won’t find Barbie or Oppenheimer on this list. Purely because neither of them appealed to me and so I just haven’t bothered with them. I usually like Greta Gerwig but I get bad vibes off this one... and I rarely like Christopher Nolan’s films so, why subject myself (he made two decent Batman movies, after a terrible first film in that trilogy, as far as I’m concerned... and that’s it). And there are a fair few other movies that I really wanted to see but never got the time to, so my apologies for any obvious absentees from the list. I’m sure half the reviews of 2023 movies I’ll post next year will have the old “I wish I saw this last year so I could have included it in my end of year list” comments in them.

So, yeah, this list in ascending order from least to best and won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, for sure. If you want to read my reviews of the titles in question, just click on the title and it should take you to the review... and as always, thanks for reading.

20. Cocaine Bear
USA
A film which does exactly what it says on the tin so, really, if you are expecting anything other than a cocaine fuelled bear on the rampage comedy, then you came to the wrong party.

19. Blue Beetle
USA/Mexico
This film had one of the worst trailers I’ve ever seen and the only reason I managed to drag myself to the cinema to see this was because it was part of an all encompassing franchise (which has just been foolishly jettisoned by the studio, by the way... the new Aquaman movie being the last part of this DC experiment which had finally been gaining some traction in recent years). Fear not, the trailer was nothing like the movie, which was way better than anyone had the right to expect. Really pleased I caught this one at the cinema, to be honest.

18. The Nun II
UK/USA
The latest installment in The Conjuring franchise was a blast... again, it was much better than I’d been told and I’m looking forward to seeing where they go from here with it.

17. Shazam - Fury Of The Gods
USA
Again, another superhero movie which positively shines. The first movie was absolutely brilliant and this one is an absolute corker too. Bonus points for bringing back Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in a very meaningful and life affirming way... not to mention a really great and comical way of putting in product placement (which I usually hate in any movie but those bloodthirsty unicorns were something else).

16. The Creator
USA
A nicely made piece of sci-fi world building, I’ve forgotten almost everything about it other than I loved it... so I guess I’ll be picking up the Blu Ray at some point then.

15. Monolith
Australia
This character study of a formerly disgraced journalist working from the home of her parents to make a podcast about strange, black bricks which are turning up in people’s lives is hands down the best thing I saw at Fright Fest this year. The ending is a bit obvious but getting there is fun.

14. Enter The Clones Of Bruce
USA
This great documentary piece about the various actors who were asked to fill the void in the market left after the death of Bruce Lee is, in equal parts, informative and hilariously entertaining. It’s directed by one of the heads of Severin Films so I’m expecting it to be a key disc in an up and coming Brucesploitation boxed set in 2024.

13. Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny
USA
While it’s true this latest Indiana Jones adventure is the ‘least’ of the movies, it’s still nice to watch in a nostalgic way. It’s kinda long and the second half maybe drags a little but it ticks all the boxes and it has a really nice ending.

12. Meg 2 - The Trench
USA
So this is what happens when you let great British modern folk horror auteur Ben Wheatley direct a schlocky B movie with a big budget... someone who, against all odds and negative vibes (not least from the majority of critics) manages to understand just what people wanted from the first movie and deliver a completely ridiculous product that is far superior in every way. Fun with a bite.

11. The Marvels
USA
I have no idea why this movie was received so negatively by pretty much everyone else on the planet. It’s easily the best Marvel movie in a fair few years and it has a planet where the inhabitants have to communicate through song. And it even has a montage scene needle dropped with Barbra Streisand’s cover version of Memory from Cats. What’s not to like? Plus, Iman Vellani needs to be in everything now, please.

10. Dream Scenario
USA
Nice, low key fantasy drama about a man who inadvertently finds himself turning up in people’s dreams. A quirky movie with Nicolas Cage which isn’t over the top in its outrageousness... in terms of the way the characters are portrayed, at least.

9. Pearl
USA/Canada/New Zealand
Nice looking prequel to X from the year before, showcasing Mia Goth’s brilliant acting in a much more interesting way than the somewhat drab Infinity Pool (which didn’t even make this list).

8. Reality
USA
This docudrama starring Sydney Sweeney as real life person Reality Winner is scripted verbatim... including redactions, which are handled in a very interesting manner... from an FBI recording of those events, in real time. A very interesting watch, for sure.

7. Scala!!! Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise And Fall Of The World's Wildest Cinema And How It Influenced A Mixed-Up Generation Of Weirdos And Misfits 
UK
Beautiful documentary about the rise and fall of the Scala cinema in London. Even if you’ve never been there, if you are of a certain age and lived in London in the 1980s, this one will probably pique your interest. I believe this is getting a limited cinema run here in the UK a few days after this Top Twenty is published on the blog.

6. The Three Musketeers - D’artagnan
France/Germany/Spain/Belgium  
As unlike the original Dumas novels as the majority (if not all) film adaptations are, this one manages to look both gritty and beautiful at the same time and has Eva Green playing Milady. Plus it has a nice ‘one take’ style of capturing the fights in complicated sets of camera movements which must have taken a lot of rehearsals, I would guess.

5. The Three Musketeers - Milady
France/Germany/Spain/Belgium
Mor of the above but, perhaps even a little better.

4. Godzilla Minus One
Japan
Wow... this unbelievably heartfelt period drama with added Godzilla goodness is easily as good as, if not better than, the 1954 original. This is how you do a Godzilla movie and it stomps all over the recent American attempts to do something with the character.

3. Daaaaaali!
France
This wonderfully comical movie which is inspired by Salvador Dali and which has a few actors playing Dali over the course of the film, in and out of the role, comes from the wonderful French surrealist Quentin Dupieux, who gave the world Rubber, among other things. This one is yet to open in the UK but I hope it gets a general release soon... the audience I saw it with absolutely loved it too.

2. Asteroid City
USA
This is Wes Anderson doing what he does best... being Wes Anderson. It’s another nice slice of off kilter, quirky and statistically saturated comedy... giving you exactly what you’d expect from this director... and there’s nothing wrong with that.

1. Lola
Ireland/UK
Wonderful looking sci-fi-on-a-budget British movie which deals with two ladies who change the course of the Second World War when one of them invents a time machine which picks up transmitted broadcasts from the future... and how they then try to change things back. Not for everyone but I really liked this one a lot.

Godzilla Minus One

Gojira Warfare

Godzilla Minus One
Directed by Takashi Yamazaki
Japan 2023
Toho
UK Cinema Print

You know, I’m at that age where I don’t go out to the cinema on week nights anymore. I get up at 5am for work the next day so I tend to restrict my cinema time to the weekends if possible. But then Cineworld had an Unlimited cardholders preview of the new Japanese Godzilla film, just in time for next year’s 70th Anniversary of the character and, well, regular readers will know this would not be something I could resist. So I braved it out last night to the preview and... wow.

I’m not a fan of the usual hyperbole that enthusiastic audience members use to describe new films in a franchise just because it’s new and shiny. So please don’t take it lightly when I say that Godzilla Minus One is, probably the greatest Godzilla movie ever made (to date). Taking its cues from the original 1954 Ishiro Honda classic movie, this one... in my humble estimation... actually manages to pay homage to that version while somehow surpassing it.

Now, it is a reboot, so to speak and in some ways I’m sure some people will see this as just a remake from the original material but, no, it’s not. It shares some similar traits (quite deliberately and rightly so) but it is its own beast of a movie and it’s actually set just after the Second World War, as seen from the Japanese perspective. Starting towards the end of the war, the main protagonist Koichi (played by Ryunosuke Kamiki) is a kamikazi pilot who can’t see the sense in carrying out his mission now the outcome of the war is obvious. So he lands it on the fictional Odo Island (which is an island featured in the original Godzilla movie) and the mechanic team there try to figure out what’s wrong with his plane when, actually in many ways, it’s the pilot who needs fixing.

Then the creature talked about by the locals, Godzilla, shows up and leaves all but Koichi and one mechanic dead, in a truly frightening sequence. The remaining mechanic blames Koichi for not using his aircraft guns against the beast in the hopes of saving the lives of those colleagues who were either stomped, thrown or eaten and this continues the strand of emotion running through the whole film... guilt. Especially survivor’s guilt... of the chaos of war and the new terror of Godzilla. 

When Koichi returns to a war flattened Tokyo, finding both his parents dead, he befriends a woman (played by Minami Hamabe) who has ‘stolen’ a baby and is being pursued as a thief when she tries to steal it food to keep it alive. The baby is not stolen... it’s left in her care by a dying parent and Koichi’s life becomes inextricably entwined with her and the child... not to mention the presence of Godzilla who, after the Bikini Atoll test bombs, is irradiated and changed, growing larger and gaining the ability to emit a nuclear death ray from it’s mouth. And that’s mostly what I’ll say about the plot but it’s a film which is all about personal redemption and ultimately doing the right thing in the face of lethal and overwhelming odds.

Like the original film, so many decades ago, the director wisely sticks to keeping Godzilla’s screen presence to a minimum. The creature only gets about 11 minutes of screen time in a 125 minute film. Instead, the focus is on the human drama at the heart of the story and also creating many characters that the audience can really get close to. So we have a director who understands that by keeping The Big G’s appearances to a minimum, the scenes of spectacular devastation when he does put in an appearance every so often, become intensely magnified in contrast to the heartwarming, grittiness of the drama of an American occupied, post-war Japan.

And there are some wonderful nods to the franchise too, especially the original film. For instance, there’s a device which appears to me to be a version of the famous Oxygen Destroyer from the first movie and in one sequence of gripping rampage, the iconic shot where Godzilla starts chewing on the train carriages is replicated but given a new spin too, as one of the main protagonists is aboard the train and finds a way to narrowly survive that experience.

And it’s just brilliant. The film has a lot of heart and the human drama and the story of the various characters is, as I said, the main focus here, punctuated with appearances of the title monster when appropriate. Godzilla is not a character you’ll be rooting for here either. Like in the very first couple of movies, he’s very much the villain of the piece and you will want to see him stopped by whatever means possible.

And the musical score by Naoli Satô is brilliant too. I am hoping this gets a CD release because it’s phenomenal, not just in the nods back to the original franchise... although speaking of that...

By about three quarters of an hour into the movie, I was assuming we wouldn’t be hearing any of original Godzilla composer Akira Ifukube’s music interwoven into the film which, I was almost disappointed by but, honestly, the film was working so well without it, I really didn’t mind. Except, no it’s here, they just make you wait for it with some cunningly spotted sequences, bringing in the first of Ifukube’s themes for a big Godzilla moment and then, later, bringing in the full Godzilla march during a climactic action sequence. Talking of which... the leitmotif for the march seems almost twisted around this time. It’s not so much scoring the majesty of the creature... more it’s scoring the rag tag band of humans who have come out to fight Godzilla and it becomes their heroic fanfare, of a sorts. But it works very well in this capacity, I must say.

One last thing... given the trials and struggles of the lead characters leading up to the end of the film, I was surprised that the finish of the story was quite so optimistic. Two things happened which, well I won’t say I didn’t see them coming, they were always a possibility and certainly didn’t surprise me... but they did almost disappoint me in their fall back on Hollywood style optimism and hope for the future. That being said, I don’t begrudge the audience the almost impossibly happy ending the film has and, yeah, it’s not really a complaint either.

Bottom line is, I absolutely loved Godzilla Minus One and, as I said, I think it’s the best one yet. I hope this gets a sequel set in the same period following some of the same characters, for sure. Go and see this one at a cinema, is my advice. Kaiju Eiga fans will not want to miss this one on a big screen.