If 2022 was the year we cautiously dipped our toes back into movie theaters after pandemic closures, 2023 was the year we cannonballed right back in. This was a standout 12 months for cinema that had something for everyone – whether your thing is sequels, superheroes, mind-bending sci-fi, or Coming-of-Age tales that take you back.
There were plenty of new directorial voices that caught our eye, bringing fresh perspectives to the screen. But we also saw some seasoned faves like Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan deliver instant classics that ranked among their best work. Novel adaptations proved you can successfully translate the spirit of a book to film. And the box office numbers showed that people aren’t done with the theater experience…not by a long shot.
Overall there was an electricity and sense of possibility in the 2023 movie lineup that felt downright triumphant. In a rocky couple of years, cinema still has the power to transport us. So grab your popcorn and read on as we break down the can’t-miss films that defined the last 365. The theater lights are dimming and the show is just about to start…
#10 The Holdovers
The holidays are prime time for feel-good flicks, but so many come off corny or treacly sweet. That’s why Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers is such a rare gem – it nails the cozy Christmas spirit without laying it on too thick. This bad boy takes place over winter break at a snooty New England boarding school, centering on cantankerous classics teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti). He’s less than thrilled to be stuck on campus overseeing the students who can’t go home. But as the holdovers’ numbers dwindle, Paul strikes up an unlikely friendship with sarcastic teen Angus Tully (newcomer Dominic Sessa) who touches his inner Scrooge.
As Angus opens up about his rocky home life, irascible Paul starts to thaw, becoming a father figure to the boy. Their Odd Couple dynamic delivers plenty of deadpan laughs. Yet The Holdovers also goes to emotional places as both guys confront grief and loneliness. Come for the killer 70s soundtrack, stay for the lump-in-your-throat ending. No wonder The Holdovers is on its way to being a perennial Christmas watch – it’s a total crowd-pleaser.
#9 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Four years after Into the Spider-Verse wowed audiences with its trippy visuals, 2023’s Across the Spider-Verse cranks everything up a notch. It picks back up with Brooklyn teen Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), still navigating his powers. This time, reality itself hangs in the balance as he meets Miguel O’Hara aka Spider-Man 2099 (Oscar Isaac). Their journey to save the multiverse treats us to spider-people aplenty, slam-bang action…and animation that pops off the screen.
The first Spider-Verse dazzled our eyeballs, but the sequel adds greater emotional heft as Miles questions whether he’s cut out for the hero gig. Even amid the dimension-hopping ruckus, Across the Spider-Verse keeps its heart firmly on what makes Spider-Man so relatable – those pangs of finding your place in the world. Plus it introduces fan fave Spider-Woman into the mix! With resonant themes packaged in bleeding-edge visual wizardry, this is easily one of 2023’s most complete cinematic experiences. Excelsior!
#8 John Wick Chapter 4
By Chapter 4, some action franchises start to run out of steam. Not so with every assassin’s favorite boogeyman, John Wick. Keanu Reeves slips back into the tailored suit like no time has passed, unleashing his brooding brand of vengeance. And the set pieces are bonkers as ever – director Chad Stahelski keeps finding new ways to choreograph the bone-crunching stunts.
This round, Wick heads to Paris and partners with an old friend-turned-foe, Caine (martial arts icon Donnie Yen). Their violent path of redemption offers emotional payoffs for Baba Yaga’s arc. And the Continental has never looked cooler as the backdrop for an extended gun fu ballet. But what makes Chapter 4 sing is its heart – beneath the expertly staged hyper violence beats a story about loss and consequences.
By the climax, Stahelski brings Wick’s quest full circle with a grace note about living (and dying) by the creed you set. In an era of weightless CGI spectacle, this franchise continues to show the visceral thrill of practical effects and commitment to character. Epic action cinema is alive and kicking.
#7 Poor Things
Director Yorgos Lanthimos loves the weird. So pairing him with Emma Stone – one of Hollywood’s most compelling leading ladies – in Poor Things made movie lovers perk up. And holy heck does this odd tale deliver. Stone has never been better as Bella Baxter, an eccentric woman brought back to life by mad science in Victorian Scotland. Is Bella an innocent reborn or something more sinister?
Stone navigates her sheltered character with such nimble humor and feeling as Bella evolves from guileless to hungry for life’s pleasures. Ye olde Scotland makes a visually sumptuous backdrop for Lanthimos’ arch wit. Poor Things marches to the morbid beat of its own drum, crammed with oddball detours like Willem Dafoe as Bella’s unhinged ‘father’.
But the film earns its place as a 2023 highlight by ultimately celebrating its heroine finding liberation through resilience and joy. Stone makes Bella’s journey to become the author of her own story weirdly life-affirming, moved by childhood fancifulness into adulthood resolve. A total original.
#6 Anatomy of a Fall
Nothing gets cinephiles buzzing like a juicy mystery, so ears perked up when Anatomy of a Fall landed stateside after winning top honors at Cannes. This icy French courtroom drama picks apart the violent death of Samuel, found dead outside his remote home. His wife Sandra (a shattering Sandra Hüller) soon goes from chief mourner to murder suspect.
Writer-director Justine Triet helms the story with an even hand, allowing secrets to steadily drip out via flashbacks and testimony. Sandra’s interviews force her to face wretched truths about the once romantic union corroded by resentment. Young actor Milo Machado-Graner also impressed as the couple’s partially blinded son whose own trauma echoes the tragedy.
Anatomy of a Fall may unfold slowly, but stick with its deliberate pace. Triet is a master at tightening the tension until we too feel the cold metal chair Sandra sits in. Rather than provide clear answers about Samuel’s fate, this autopsy of a marriage implicates everyone while letting no one off easy. The ending packs an emotional ice pick that will lodge in your thoughts for days.
#5 Past Lives
What if sliding doors moments scattered throughout your life kept leading you to the same person? That’s the idea fueling indie darling Celine Song’s Past Lives, focused on childhood friends Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) and Nora (Greta Lee) whose orbits keep almost overlapping from childhood playdates to adulthood in Seoul and NYC.
Bittersweet and smoldering as a cigarette burned down to the filter, Past Lives thrives on the lived-in rapport between Lee and Yoo. Their hangout vibe instantly sells a connection forged long ago. When they reunite for a day in New York years later, embers still glow between the pair as they wander the city peering into windows on alternate lives. Song handles the will they/won’t they tension with graceful restraint, letting charged glances and bilingual banter convey the probationary longing.
Past Lives marked an assured directorial debut for Song, who previously wrote on The Good Wife. This wistful what-if tale touched a chord about roads not taken and the tantalizing thought of what might have been. Credit two captivating lead turns that made us swoon for a romance lingering just out of reach.
#4 Killers of the Flower Moon
You know it’s gonna be a good year for cinema when Martin Scorsese drops a new flick. And his historical epic Killers of the Flower Moon did not disappoint, chronicling a chilling string of murders targeting Oklahoma’s wealthy Osage Nation in the 1920s. At the forefront are Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart who romances young Mollie Kyle (a fantastic Lily Gladstone), unaware she’s marked for death by Ernest’s uncle (Robert De Niro) seeking the family fortune.
Scorsese’s graceful direction exposes how white greed destroyed lives while empathizing with the Indigenous community targeted for their prosperity. Deftly paced across a sweeping timeline, Killers builds steadily like a twanging bowstring pulled taut. DiCaprio does some of his finest work opposite Gladstone’s revelatory turn. Their unlikely courtship offers respite from the gathering dread. Known for grim themes, this time Scorsese principled indictment of American exploitation packs an emotional wallop thanks to powerhouse acting.
Only a visionary like Marty could finesse such sprawling ambition into a cohesive indictment, by turns poetic and infuriating. At age 80, he proves that insight and innovation need no retirement date. Killers instantly takes its place in the Scorsese pantheon.
#3 May December
Prolific as she is, Natalie Portman still managed to surprise fans this year. She reunited with director Todd Haynes for May December, playing Hollywood actor Elizabeth opposite her younger husband Cam (Edward Norton). While prepping to portray notorious teacher Mary Kay Letourneau in a biopic, Elizabeth grows increasingly unsettled by her family dynamic. Haynes peels away the glossy facade to ask – how intimately should art try to understand life’s uncomfortable grey areas?
Portman dazzles in dual roles: first as confident Elizabeth, then as the convicted Mary Kay. She toggles between them fluidly, exposing the flaws and humanity in both. The actress has always gravitated toward thorny, subversive projects, and May December follows suit with an intentionally ambiguous study questioning biased perspectives. Depicting an illegal relationship without condoning it, Haynes trains a curious yet critical eye on societal blindspots.
It’s no wonder Portman was drawn to such an ethically slippery tale woven around a tour de force role(s). Not one to play things safe, she leads audiences through this prickly premise with integrity and nerve.
#2 Oppenheimer
Trust Christopher Nolan to tackle heady subject matter with swagger. With Oppenheimer, he translates the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer – misunderstood genius who unleashed nuclear power – into an electrifying spectacle. Jumping between timelines, we follow Robert (Cillian Murphy) from lanky student to the driven physicist hemmed in by his creation’s monstrous impact. Murphy has been one of cinema’s best kept secrets, but no more – his tightly wound portrayal holds Oppenheimer together through Nolan’s temporal shifts.
While examining moral quandaries in the atomic age, the film still delivers seat-rattling set pieces courtesy of DP Hoyte Van Hoytema. That Trinity explosion left audiences ducking for cover! And Nolan constructs a formidable framework from a topic many considered unfilmable, aided by a brainy ensemble including Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, and Emily Blunt. Yet he never loses sight of the man at the center whose Faustian vision revolutionized warfare. Love or loathe Nolan’s cerebral blockbusters, Oppenheimer makes a resonant statement about science grappling with conscience.
#1 Barbie
Forget everything you assumed about the plastic glamazon – 2023’s irrepressible Barbie shows she has more to offer than eye candy. Margot Robbie bounced into the role with gum-snapping sass, backed up by a creative team aiming to spin girlhood nostalgia into an empowering message. Director Greta Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach craft a Malaysia-to-Manhattan adventure that cuts Barbie down to size only to build her back up again.
When she’s exiled from Barbieland for not conforming, our sparkly heroine tackles real world problems without losing her empathy or signature joie de vivre. The script patience pays off Barbie’s endlessly upbeat attitude with resonant ideas about accepting who you are versus who society demands you should be. Ryan Gosling delights too as a himbo-fied Ken grappling with his own worth once separated from his Dream House.
Thanks to Gerwig and Robbie’s vision, Barbie became more than a symbol – she morphed into the year’s most instantly iconic underdog. With trippy visuals, on-point humor and surprising philosophical bite, Barbie didn’t just crack the box office – she left an optimistic imprint proving creativity and kindness still reign supreme.
