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.

Reality

Bites

Reality
USA 2023
Directed by Tina Sutter
Vertigo Films

Warning: I guess if you don’t know the real life events behind this one, as I certainly didn’t, then technically this review does have spoilers.

“The FBI documented the following events with an audio recorder.
The dialogue in this movie is taken entirely from the transcript of that recording.”
From Reality

It’s been said that drama is no better manifested than in real life. I’m not 100% sure about that myself. I think drama is very much a fashioned/crafted art form trying to capture the compelling tension of everyday life, even if the events being written and performed are not based on a true incident. Reality, is based on a true incident... and it’s also based on a play ‘written’ by this film’s director (who also co-wrote the script). I put written in inverted commas because, the way a play or a film is staged, performed and, in the case of a movie, shot and edited (amongst other things) is the art which informs the drama, so to speak.

So the original play was called Is This A Room? And it’s based on an FBI audio transcript, lasting just under an hour and a half, on the real life events of the questioning in her home and, subsequent arrest, of ex-military translator and former intelligence specialist Reality Winner in 2017. And when I say based on, I mean the dialogue script and running time of the film is verbatim from those recordings. Although they are not the actual recordings heard themselves... the actors in this one just speak the lines and, in the case of actress Sydney Sweeney who plays Reality, taking the performance to the nth degree in that she would talk with the real Ms. Winner on zoom calls and study her mannerisms and so on as she was talking to her. She looks a little bit like her too... something which becomes apparent when real life artefacts are used on some of the images thrown up on the screen for illustrative purposes or to push a point.

Okay, so we have Sweeney as Winner, Josh Hamilton as Agent Garrick, Marchánt Davis as Agent Taylor and Benny Elledge as Unknown Male. Plus a dog and a cat, representing Reality’s pets, who hold things up slightly when they need to be tied up and put into controlled situations before a room in the house is used for Reality’s initial interrogation, which is what this film is all about. And all of the actors in this movie are absolutely great. And, let’s face it, if drama does stem from reality then the drama inherent in the dialogue provided by the FBI recording in Reality, is certainly one step closer to drama than, well, normal reality... you know, with a lower case r.

But, of course, it’s drama as opposed to ‘just reality’ so, there are all manner of visual and audio contrivances (such as a musical underscore) to enhance that drama. Just as there are also elements to constantly remind the audience that they are watching a true series of events unfold in real time, more or less as they happened.

Of that latter technique we have the time settings given precisely. For example, after an opening bit of footage showing Reality working at her desk in an office which constantly has Fox News on the TV screens, something used by her later to try and explain her motivations, we jump into the main meat of the film which takes place, as the screen tells us... 25 days later. June 3, 2017 - Augusta, Georgia. Then, throughout the movie, at random moments, we jump cut to an on screen graphic depicting the sound waves of the recording as the conversation (or not) is being spoken. In addition to reminding the audience that they are essentially listening to a version of a direct transcript, these are accompanied by a time stamp somewhere on the screen. Although, since it’s such a useful device, the time stamp is not solely used in the scenes depicting the graphics. So we can see, for instance, that it’s not until 4.07pm, 37 minutes into the recording, until she is accompanied from the front yard area into her home to begin the actual interrogation.

And, though the film is relatively impartial to the rights and wrongs of the situation... we know it’s almost an hour into the film before she admits to her crime. I’ll come back to that in a minute.

Another, truly wonderful moment of artistry in the mechanics of how the script of the transcript is presented lies in the parts of the recording which the general public are not allowed to know about. At one point, we are shown a text of the conversation we are listening to and part of the recording has been redacted... there’s then a weird, scribbly high pitched computer gibberish sound made when the cursor travels over that part. And then, once the director has put that audio signifier into the audience’s mind that anything featuring that sound effect is a redacted part of the audio as it stands, she then pushes that angle visually. So as we are watching the conversation unfold between the actors, whenever somebody says something which has a redacted portion in it, the sound cue returns and they are deleted visually from the screen for the few seconds that part of the dialogue is being said. There’s a fantastic moment where the sound effect is going off and Sydney Sweeney walks towards the camera, left of screen and, as the redaction ends, we find she is face to face with another character in the room. So, yeah, for a directorial debut in the motion picture industry, I have to hand it to Tina Sutter for fully grasping how to play around with the boundaries of the cinematic language. This hopefully won’t be her last movie.

The only other thing I will say about the content of the film/play... which has Reality Winner’s full endorsement (although, I believe she feels to actually watch it herself and relive the encounter may be too traumatic), is that I think it’s somewhat open to interpretation as to whether you come out on her side or not. Yes, she was definitely found guilty of passing on a printout of a classified document to a newspaper which proved the election results were hacked and rigged... and got a ‘five years and change’ prison sentence for it. At least that’s my understanding of it... as regular readers may remember, politics just isn’t my thing. The flip side as hinted at in the movie’s final moments seems to be in defence of the subject of the film, perhaps asking the question... was that not doing more of a public service to the American people by letting that truth out there than if it hadn’t got out?

I don’t have an answer to that, at least not an official one but, yeah, it’s a hard call. I kinda wish there were no secrets held by any government agency anywhere (I want to know more about the space aliens) but there’s also probably a very compelling case to be made that many things classified at this level of secrecy is a necessity, I would imagine.

At the end of the day, all I know for sure is two things. One is that I really love that a movie has to have a credit in the final roll that holds the title ‘video glitches’. Secondly, that Reality is an absolutely riveting piece of drama and I would recommend it to most people. Whether justice is served in terms of being a drama closer to reality and whether justice was served to Reality, is something you’ll have to decide for yourself, I think.