Looking back on the year in movies, hardly a week went by without at least one good-to-great film, with a partial list including “Poor Things,” “The Iron Claw,” “The Boy and the Heron,” “Eileen,” “Leave the World Behind,” “Saltburn,” “Napoleon,” “Rustin,” “American Fiction,” “The Holdovers,” “The Royal Hotel,” “Fair Play,” “Dreamin’ Wild,” “The Blackening,” “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” “BlackBerry,” “Knock at the Cabin,” “Infinity Pool” and “Are You There, God? It’s Me. Margaret.”
That’s a terrific list, covering just about every genre in the Extended Genre Universe — but each of the aforementioned films is in the Honorable Mention category. Here are my picks for the very best films of 2023.
1. ‘Oppenheimer’
Christopher Nolan is the master of detail, a skill set perfectly tailored to tell the awe-inspiring, controversial and complex story of the Father of the Atomic Bomb, and how’d you like to have that label forever attached to your legacy? Led by nomination-likely performances from Cillian Murphy in the title role and Robert Downey Jr. doing some of the finest acting of his career, “Oppenheimer” features stellar work from the star-studded ensemble cast, stunning visuals, astonishingly effective use of sound and VFX, exquisite production design, costumes and hair, a deeply effective score — you name the category, you won’t find better work in any movie this year. This is a film that should garner about 10 Oscar nominations and win in a half-dozen categories.
2. ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
I was tempted to break protocol and list “Oppenheimer” and “Killers of the Flower Moon” as co-winners of best film of the year, but if we’re going to do a list we’re going to do a list, so here we are. Pick any decade from the 1970s through the 2020s, and the 80-year-old Martin Scorsese will have at least one film near the very top of the list, and he proves to be as masterful as ever with this true-crime American period piece about a shocking series of murders of Native Americans in 1920s Oklahoma. Scorsese regulars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro turn in typically outstanding work, but the most indelible performance comes from Lily Gladstone as the Native American Mollie Kyle, who marries DiCaprio’s handsome but rock-headed and ultimately corrupt Ernest and sees the world around her crumbling in horrific and bloody fashion. Few directors in the history of the medium can match Scorsese for creating scenes that are destined to live forever. “Killers of the Flower Moon” contains a myriad of such sequences, from gangland-style murders to one of the most haunting fires ever depicted onscreen.
3. ‘Air’
From “BlackBerry” to “Tetris” to “Flamin’ Hot” to “The Beanie Bubble,” this was the year of the Product Development Movie. By far the best of the bunch was Ben Affleck’s “Air,” which was about the courting of incoming NBA rookie Michael Jordan to sign with Nike but is about so much more than that, perfectly capturing the zeitgeist of the sports world of the 1980s and the dawn of a new era of athletes as global pop-culture icons. Comparisons to “The Social Network” were legitimate, with Affleck creating a vibrant and fast-paced time capsule. Matt Damon has been so consistently good for so long that we sometimes take his versatility for granted. He’s at the top of his game here playing the doggedly determined gym-rat visionary Sonny Vaccaro, who convinced the company to put all its chips on the 21-year-old Jordan — and convinced Michael’s mom, Deloris (Viola Davis, great as ever) this was the right move for her son, who was on the brink of doing things no one imagined. Well, no one except maybe Michael and his mother.
4. ‘The Killer’
David Fincher and Michael Fassbender team up for this minimalist masterpiece about a robotically efficient hired assassin who never misses — until he does miss, and his perfectly orchestrated, meticulously designed and ritualistic way of doing things is turned upside down in chaotic fashion. This is a violent, unforgiving, brutal film, but also darkly funny, including a running joke in which the Killer (we never learn his real name) employs a number of aliases, all named after sitcom characters from the 1970s such as Sam Malone, Archibald Bunker, Howard Cunningham and Lou Grant. Listening to the Smiths on his headphones and making wry observations about the bland commercialization of today’s world (hello, McDonald’s, Amazon and Wordless), the Killer is soulless and ruthless, but also … dare we say it, kind of hilarious.
5. ‘Maestro’
Bradley Cooper the director and co-writer has fashioned a marvelously entertaining biopic of the great Leonard Bernstein, while Bradley Cooper the actor captures the essence of Bernstein in a performance that goes much deeper than just an impression. Filled with changing aspect ratios and palettes, “Maestro” is a highly stylized film, but never at the expense of the core story about the longtime partnership of Bernstein and his wife, the actress Felicia Montealegre (Carey Mulligan), who knew Lenny was gay and made her peace with that, for the most part. This is maybe the best-looking film of the year and, given the incredible body of work Bernstein the composer gave us, the music is pretty great too.
6. ‘May December’
Academy Award winners Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman absolutely sizzle in Todd Haynes’ twisted and darkly funny social satire, which puts a fictional spin on an infamous scandal from the 1990s. Moore’s Gracie is married to the man she was convicted of sexually assaulting when he was an underage teenager, and Portman’s Elizabeth is a TV-famous actress who has been cast to play Gracie in an independent film. As the story grows ever more twisted and salacious, we’re reminded that beneath her cheery, perfect mom-and-wife façade, Gracie remains as manipulative and corrupt as ever — and let’s just say Elizabeth is particularly well-suited to portray Gracie.
7. ‘Dream Scenario’
The Nicolas Cage Renaissance continues with Cage giving a heartbreakingly strong performance in writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s magnificently weird tale of a perfectly ordinary, rather forgettable and utterly uninteresting man who suddenly starts showing up in the dreams of thousands of people the world over. You know how it’s almost impossible to convey your dreams to people in the bright of day — how they look at you and go, “That’s CRAZY” when you know they’re just hoping you’ll stop talking about it? In that same vein, it’s always been a challenge for filmmakers to depict the dream experience, but this film does it as well as any I’ve ever seen.
8. ‘The Color Purple’
With “Cats” and “Dear Evan Hansen,” we’ve recently seen some spectacular misfires of musicals on film, but Blitz Bazawule’s “The Color Purple” is a show-stopping adaptation of the Broadway version and the revival of Alice Walker’s iconic novel, with gorgeously staged musical numbers, impactful drama and powerful performances from Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks, Colman Domingo and Taraji P. Henson.
9. ‘Joy Ride’
I fully expected Adele Lim’s raunchy, edgy, bold and flat-out hilarious female-fronted comedy to join the ranks of “The Hangover” and “Bridesmaids” in popularity and acclaim. That didn’t quite happen, but that’s no fault of Liam, screenwriters Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao and the cast led by Ashley Park, Sherry Cola, Stephanie Hsu and Sabrina Wu, who teamed up to deliver clever and timely social commentary while also giving us the funniest movie of the year. “Joy Ride” pulls off the tricky feat of embracing stereotypes and turning them this way and that for effective comedy.
10. ‘Barbie’
The funniest thing about Greta Gerwig’s gloriously pink and enormously popular “Barbie” might have been the reactions from certain self-appointed Manly Men who were driven to fits of hysteria because … I don’t know, they thought Ken wasn’t given his due? He’s KEN, man; he’s always been Barbie’s handsome but dopey and uninteresting counterpart. Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling sparkled as Barbie and Ken, with sparkling supporting Barbies Issa Rae, Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Rita Arya, Nicola Coughlan and Kate McKinnon. Barbieland forever!
