In Reel Deep is pretty much an annual thing at this point, so here we are again with our Best of the Year list for 2023. We’re in to our second decade of doing this. And eclectic as we remain, we’re in an almost unprecedented amount of agreement about what we loved this year, sharing four in our respective top 10s.
So, here we go. We’ve got 16 of the year’s best for you, waiting just below.
The Top Four
Anatomy of a Fall
Andrew Johnson: You’ll never hear the song “P.I.M.P.” the same way again, for starters. Pay a little bit closer attention, though, and Justine Trier’s film will have you thinking of how it fits in with the rich cinematic tradition of courtroom-style dramas that prompt deep thought on the nature of truth and what we can ever really know. Yes, Anatomy of a Fall merits mention in the same breath as Rashomon and Anatomy of a Murder among others.
Steve Cimino: The French courts look wild, man. And I no longer have to wonder what a certain hit 50 Cent song sounds like on a steel drum. But beyond that, this is a remarkable drama about the tangled messiness of truth, death, perception, and memory, and a reminder of how well movies can depict all of the above. It’s a whodunit but also a whydunit, with wonderful performances from Sandra Hüller, Milo Machado-Graner, and a dog named Snoop. It’s trite to say, but at a time when what’s real and factual is up for debate, Trier has produced a neatly layered look at how muddy objective reality can be.
The Holdovers
AJ: There you are Alexander Payne. You too, Paul Giamatti. There have been countless movies in the same vein as this one - coming-of-age stories where a ragtag group of misfits find connection and purpose in each other - but few made this well. That’s down to Payne and, especially, Giamatti and the far less known Dominic Sessa and Da’vine Joy Randolph. The Holdovers is the kind of movie that leaves you wondering what the characters in it are up to - how their lives turned out - long, long after it is over.
SC: Just an absolute delight. By far the 2023 movie I’d most recommend to someone’s parents, no matter who they are, but also a super-fun romp for all ages. In case you’ve forgotten about Giamatti, he’s as back as can be and he’s also got a weird eye. Randolph deserves every award she’s racking up, and Sessa deserves a few too. Payne’s return to form is a little pretentious but always pauses at the right moment to let the air out of Giamatti’s Paul Hunham, an overbearing windbag academic with a heart of gold. And again, there’s the eye; seeing it bulging on the big screen was one of the thrills of my cinematic year.
Oppenheimer
AJ: Perhaps the finest tribute to this film I can offer is that I am as haunted by the exploits and subsequent downfall of J. Robert Oppenheimer as the title character is. Christopher Nolan delivered an indictment of the Nuclear Age and a workplace drama all in one. Beware your own idealistic ambitions when they are joined up with those of cynical political climbers.
SC: Finally, the unmistakable Christopher Nolan masterwork. Interstellar is more of an acquired taste; The Dark Knight is fun until you realize it's a pretty-looking but dumb Batman movie where Batman is the worst character. But Oppy has it all, including every white character actor on the planet, especially Josh Hartnett, Benny Safdie, and (swoon) David Krumholtz. It's the Robert Downey Jr "bounceback" we never really needed. It has maybe the most emotional and captivating scene I've seen in years, when the remarkable Cillian Murphy is faux-celebrating the bomb's detonation in front of screaming 'fans' and slowly losing his mind. It's a propulsive masterpiece in which Albert Einstein is a literal character and leaps out from behind a cab at a pivotal moment. It's a wild, 180-minute, pulse-pounding epic about a scientist who makes a bomb in which nearly every second is gripping. It's high-brow blockbuster filmmaking at its best.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
AJ: This will live longest in my memory because it introduced my 8-year-old daughter to the concept of a cliffhanger. What happens next to Miles Morales might be my least favorite part of the film, to be honest, but there’s a metric ton to love here, from the romance between Miles and Gwen Stacey, to the unbearable burden of secrets between parents and children to the distinct animation style and ambitious cinematography. Yet again, the Verse version of Spidey is more daring and inspiring than pretty much anything the Marvel Cinematic Universe has ever conjured. What a treat.
SC: Gwen Stacey in Across the Spider-Verse—her arc, her dialogue, and the performance by Hailee Steinfeld—is the greatest female character in comic book movie history and it’s not even close. It’s lovely to see Miles Morales again, of course, and I’ll never begrudge Jake Johnson for taking a nice paycheck for a few hours of “remember me, I’m back” work, but pivoting to revolve this sequel around Gwen is a brilliant touch. It’s touching, it’s heartfelt, and it adds depth to an already-thoughtful series of children’s animated films. Shameik Moore’s Miles still drives the story, and he’ll probably wrap it up nicely in the third entry, but my lasting memories of Spider-Verse are gonna be Gwen-y in the best way.
The Best of the Rest
Asteroid City
AJ: Wes Anderson has spent much of his career pondering how people adapt to the gaping void of grief, and Asteroid City is yet another extension of that theme. It’s not an easily answerable question, but what I appreciated about this entry in his filmography, relative to the others, was that he hazarded an answer. Put one foot in front of the other. Carry on. The holes can’t be filled, and if you seek to fill them, you’ll miss out on possibilities. This one is as dry as the desert setting, but it packs a remarkable wallop at the end.
Beau Is Afraid
SC: One of the few 2023 releases that I saw twice in theaters, I spent almost the entire year thinking about Beau. Ironically, I didn’t love Hereditary or Midsommar; I could tell Ari Aster was a genius, but his first two releases felt more impressive than enjoyable to watch. Yet as I watched Joaquin Phoenix wander around as the titular Beau, terrified of his surroundings, seeing everything as a series of death traps that may or may not be real, I was either laughing hysterically or overwhelmed by the complexity of it all. Beau is weird as hell and understandably polarizing, and I actually started to like it a little less once I saw some “fan theories” on Reddit that tried too hard to dissect its plot. It’s best to sit back, relax, and let Aster’s suffocating pool of anxiety wash over you.
BlackBerry
AJ: Yes, Dennis the CEO is worth the price of admission alone, but Glenn Howerton isn’t the only one driving the fun here. BlackBerry had plenty of company last year - AIR and Tetris also gave us crash-course business histories of beloved consumer products. Part of the reason this was the class of the bunch was because failure after unbridled and unrivaled success is vastly more interesting than the more familiar pattern of struggles on the brink followed by triumph. It’s the performances from Howerton and Jay Baruchel that make this such fun. Hubris: it works where product-market fit is concerned, too.
El Conde
AJ: How many directors were filled with envy after taking in the latest from Pablo Larrain? It’s a brilliant, obvious stroke of genius to turn a bloodthirsty dictator like Augusto Pinochet in to a real, actual vampire, but it takes a good dose of craft to take that conceit and make it a visual delight that also plays well as an extended riff on Succession.
Fallen Leaves
SC: Sad to say that Fallen Leaves was my first Aki Kaurismäki film, but it won’t be my last. Along with the overwhelmingly dry dialogue and the sparse-but-deliberate set design that made me think of Wes Anderson with notably more restraint, I was immediately in love with the romance between Alma Pöysti’s Ansa and Jussi Vatanen’s Holappa, to the point that I was yelping in anger when circumstances intervened to keep them apart. Also, Janne Hyytiäinen deserved an Oscar nomination for his work as Holappa’s even-dryer pal Huotari; never have lines been delivered so monotone yet popped so hard.
Killers of the Flower Moon
AJ: Martin Scorsese’s latest remains surprisingly divisive, and I suspect that’s because of how grueling and punishing an experience it is. Given the runtime and the subject matter it chronicles, you might expect that punishment to come in the form of brutal, stylized violence. Instead, it comes from Leonardo DiCaprio’s character, Ernest Burkhardt, and the slow-motion, tragic contradictions he embodies. I’m not sure this is a great film - it’s certainly not up with Marty’s best - but it is a visceral and important one.
Maestro
SC: Everyone taking potshots at Maestro seems to have fully missed the point. “But I didn’t learn anything about Leonard Bernstein and his music!” I didn’t realize that a movie about a person needs to explain all the nuts and bolts of their being in order to be successful. In a manner similar to Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, Bradley Cooper has no interest in going paint-by-numbers with his Bernstein ‘biopic.’ He’s trying to capture the essence of the man, what made him tremendously complex and hurtful to those he loved, and how his gifts won over people who otherwise might’ve kicked him to the curb long ago. And if you really need some music in your movie, the Ely Cathedral performance is maybe the best scene of the year.
Napoleon
AJ: You’re forgiven if you were expecting a straightforward, sweeping historical epic and instead got a comedy with a side dish of big-guns-go-boom-boom. But you’re not forgiven if that subversion of expectations leads you to misunderstand this film. Napoleon the Toddler was one of the boldest cinematic choices of the year, and it worked to great effect, showing off and deriding the staggering damage that can be wrought by the wrong infantile man operating at the wrong moment, when he possesses a non-insignificant amount of street smarts.
Past Lives
SC: The most rise-and-fall movie of 2023; every year, there’s a picture that captivates audiences—usually a sweet drama—but then a few weeks go by and “but was it really that good” starts up. And then there’s pushback, and pushback to the pushback, and we go on like this forever. Past Lives really is that good; for starters, Celine Song finds a way to shoot New York that somehow looks new and exciting. And the brilliant performances of Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and John Magaro all emphasize the distinctness of this trio brought together by love and circumstance. The three-way dinner scene will make you cringe and cry at nearly the same time; you’ve never seen hearts alternatingly swell and break quite like this.
Perfect Days
SC: Another admission: I’ve never seen a Wim Wenders movie until now. But I’ll have to go back and revisit his work as well, because Perfect Days couldn’t be more up my alley. I could watch Kōji Yakusho’s Hirayama live his quaint Tokyo life for another 2 hours. Your initial read might be that this is a laid-back, chill story about a guy who finds joy in cleaning public toilets for a living. And while that is some of the appeal and a chunk of the run-time, it’s also about what he left behind, and the value (and sometimes detriment) of routine. We should all find happiness in the little things, otherwise what’s the point of being alive, but it’s also foolish to think you can wall yourself off from the rest of humanity. I think that’s what Wim’s getting at here, and I’m all for it.
Poor Things
AJ: I don’t know what I was expecting going in to this film. Truth be told, given Yorgos Lanthimos’ esoteric filmography, I’m not sure you should ever go in expecting anything from the man. What surprised me wasn’t so much the sheer oddity of this Frankenstein’s monster tale as it was the sweetness at its center. This is, yes, a coming-of-age tale, and it’s one with an immense amount of soul to go along with its wit. Bella Baxter’s sense of her own agency, something partially instilled in her by God (aka Willem Dafoe), is as empowering as it is raunchy and ridiculous.
The Taste of Things
SC: Knowing very little going in, I started to suspect that this was a “woman behind the scenes” story: a famous chef can’t function without his female partner, the unseen heart and soul of the operation, and falls apart without her. But nope; this is about a partnership, albeit an uneven one given its 1885 setting, and how food binds them together professionally and romantically. Scene after scene ends up being nothing but Juliette Binoche or Benoît Magimel cooking, and I loved every minute of it, especially when they cook for each other. Trần Anh Hùng imbues his film with a deep, unspoken sense of longing, one that lingers—like the smell of a meal—long after you leave the theater.
Honorable Mention
AJ: Knock at the Cabin continued M. Night Shyamalan’s sorta-resurgence. John Wick 4 further cemented that franchise’s place among the best in action movie history, and certainly the best going right now. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was a lot of fun. Meanwhile, No Hard Feelings and Bottoms reminded me that it is still possible to make a great comedy, and I’d happily go to the theater to see this kind of film in the future.
SC: The Boy and the Heron is, much like The Wind Rises, a beautiful potential coda for the great Hayao Miyazaki. BlackBerry does the device-o-pic (is that a new word) right by reinforcing how the world of tech is just another cravenly greedy and ultimately doomed dump birthed by modern capitalism. And The Iron Claw is a flawed but emotional retelling of pro wrestling’s infamously ‘cursed’ Von Erich family. I talked all about it on my other podcast, Awesome Truth; give it a listen!