Ballot to Nowhere: The Best Movies of 2023
You can't wake up if you don't fall asleep.
A year and some weeks ago, I “published” my A.V. Club-style ballot of my best/etc. movies of 2022, and I’ve been meaning to do the same for 2023 since roughly January 1, 2024, a timeframe that has now slipped from “coolly unconcerned about best-of-list firsties” to “genuinely late.” I think what held me back from just zipping the damn thing out was my reluctance to try summing things up in some kind of intro graf, a task that I refuse to compare to the feelings of cosmic smallness explored by my favorite movie of the year, but believe me, it takes some effort. I’m not precisely sure what to say about the movies of 2023 as a whole. I’m not even precisely sure where to draw the line on “best” — I sure saw a lot of movies I liked, but is 20 too many? Is 10 too few? Am I being too precious about it by imagining anyone is paying attention? Sometimes I wonder if obsessive movie-watching is just long-form procrastination, or a more high-minded version of action-figure collecting. (I am deeply familiar with both of those particular hobbies.) Then I remind myself that I do this for a living, kind of, and what a miracle, even with the modifier! What an absurdly lucky life to be able to watch a movie and say it’s for work. I can’t really make the same claim about putting out an extremely occasional newsletter, but the fact that I could even assume that maybe 100 or so people might be interested in my favorites of the year and some related annotations is, again, a blessing. So thank you if you’re reading this.
The Best Movies of 2023, According to Jesse
Asteroid City: If we’re being honest, I was pretty sure this would be my #1 movie back in May, when I first saw it. I found it almost indescribably moving, and then tried to describe it after seeing it a second time. Most recently, I took another shot at it in the context of the very next movie on this list. Less recently, I worked on this list with a couple of my film-critic pals and loved every minute.
Killers of the Flower Moon: I wrote about this movie in the context of the DiCaprio/Scorsese working relationship, in the context of Scorsese’s amazing career, and with an eye on its breathtaking ending, as linked above. I think I said this on Letterboxd or something, but I feel such genuine gratitude and awe that I get to share some common time on Earth with this guy while he’s making movies. I hope every cash-rich streaming company on the planet takes turns giving him $200 million until they run out of money. It’s a happier thought than the idea of Scorsese running out of time.
The Killer: As far as seminal 1999 social satires and their auteurs go, I’d say that Election has aged better than Fight Club, but maybe, based on their 2023 releases, Fincher has aged better than Payne?! I discuss this further here. I also wrote a bit about the great time I had seeing The Killer in a theater. Also, I think enough time has passed since this movie’s release that I can say that when that dog smashed through the glass I absolutely guffawed.
Past Lives: Maybe this should have been a Substack post rather than a SportsAlcohol review, but I really wanted to get on Rotten Tomatoes for this one. A base instinct, but one I hope you understand. Later, I talked to Celine Song about the movie—another one that really sideswiped me hard towards the end.
May/December: I’m usually not a big Todd Haynes guy. Obviously a smart filmmaker, and I love I’m Not There, but some of his stuff feels a bit academic and even schematic to me. I was delighted not to feel this way about May/December, and not just because of its utility as a Natalie Portman text.
Barbie: This is the only movie I saw three times in a movie theater in 2023. This means I liked Margot Robbie’s Barbie at least as much as her Harley Quinn. High praise!
Oppenheimer: I’ll always probably like Nolan better in sci-fi mode than historian mode, but also, what a terrific film.
John Wick: Chapter 4: If I’m going to use a hacky construction, let’s go all in: The Keanu of it, the Donnie Yen of it, the Rina Sawayama of it… there are four or five characters/actors in this movie who would be the single coolest motherfucker in dozens of other movies, action or otherwise.
Showing Up: I cannot believe I never got a piece going about this one, especially with the crazy lead time of seeing it at NYFF in 2022. It felt half-forgotten by the time it hit commercial release in spring ’23, but that’s a shame because it’s note-perfect and also Kelly Reichardt’s funniest movie this side of Meek’s Cutoff (common comic ground: Michelle Williams absolutely seething at the people around her).
Priscilla: Fond memory: Banging out this review in the space of a couple hours at a Starbucks, just after passing Cailee Spaeny on the street and getting, I think (just let me have this), a miniature nod-and-smile over my Somewhere t-shirt.
Of an Age: This is why I persist in seeing movies I don’t know that much about at the AMC Empire a week or two into their barely-promoted releases; once in a while, something has the opportunity to really take my by surprise, as this Aussie coming-of-age-ish drama did.
Godzilla Minus One: I feel like when I was growing up I heard a lot about the U.S. losing some kind of nebulous tech/manufacturing/innovation war to Japan. Well, we’ve lost the blockbusters now.
Ferrari: The sad man make-a the racecars.
Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One: Probably doesn’t hold together as well as 4 or 5, but there’s something to be said for pure elation at the movies.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: Ditto.
Poor Things: Another one where I somehow never managed to write about it; maybe an essay about actresses made to perch on the precipice of adulthood for the better part of a decade can be a Coming Soon to This Substack thing for 2024, because lord knows it isn’t exclusive to Emma Stone—though Stone was savvy/lucky enough to star in a movie that’s more explicitly about that limbo and maybe it’s constant but maybe it’s also how we’re meant to live our lives, in a way.
The Iron Claw: Another from the end-of-year rush I never wrote about, but it sure made me cry a bunch!
Return to Seoul: I guess people are counting this as a 2022 movie but it came out commercially in the U.S. in 2023 and that’s when I saw it, so! If I went to the Angelika, it had to be real.
Suzume: hahahahaha that guy turns into a lil chair
Falcon Lake: It was between this and All of Us Strangers in terms of non-horror ghosty stories.
Outlier: Well, as mentioned last year, there’s no outlier when I’m not contributing to a group list, and although I know which movies I loved weren’t on a lot of other best-of lists, I’ll just use this space to say that I also very much enjoyed You Hurt My Feelings, The Royal Hotel, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, No Hard Feelings, and Dream Scenario, and also the first hour or so of Beau Is Afraid was the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.
Most Overrated: In the spirit of not picking something I think is bad at all, I’ll say that The Holdovers is a sweet and enjoyable movie that’s been inexplicably treated as a career pinnacle from the guy who made Election, About Schimdt, and Nebraska (all much better than this one). The screenplay is sometimes clunky, the “seventies” touches are far more precious than anything Wes Anderson comes up with, and the soundtrack cuts sound secondhand. None of this detracts from Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who would both make fine choices come Oscar time. Just don’t expect me to do flips when it wins Original Screenplay.
Most Underrated: Somewhere between Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre and Rebel Moon Part One: A Child of Fire, you have a couple of the most unwieldy subtitles of the year, and also, truly, some of the most pure enjoyment I had at the cinema. Whether it was the gift of middling expectations or simply the ease with which certain formulas (such as Statham + Aubrey Plaza or Sofia Boutella x cantina aliens) alight my lizard brain, I was absolutely dumbfounded by how little most critics/regular folks cared for either of these extremely entertaining genre plays.
Biggest Disappointment: Oh, boy, was I expecting something else from American Fiction. Something… funnier? Sharper? Meaner? Sadder? Smarter? Any of the above. Instead, this is a movie that starts out kinda clever, then weirdly conflates contemporary diversity-and-inclusion narratives with respectability-politics debates in literature circa the mid-2000s, then basically apologizes for ever implying anything satirical about any of that in the first place, then tries to double-back for a satirical ending that I found mostly incoherent (and not nearly as clever as I think I was supposed to). Jeffrey Wright innocent, but what a mess, which weirdly reminded me of Ruby Sparks, another quasi-literary quasi-indie comedy that thinks exposing its transparently “wrong” protagonist as blinkered and self-involved counts as some kind of revelation.
Most Welcome Surprise: Despite my Sandler fandom, I can sincerely say that I did not expect Leo to be one of the funniest movies of the year—and a provider of genuine catharsis, I think, for my eight-year-old daughter.
So that’s it for 2023, and thanks again to anyone reading me with any regularity.