My Top 10 Movies of 2023

2023 has been a pretty great year for movies. I’ve managed to see so many and there’s still a few that I wanted to see that I haven’t managed to yet.

So, I wanted to end 2023 by talking about the movies I saw this year that left the biggest impact on me, and top 10 just felt right. It was impossible to put them in some kind of number order so I’ve just done them alphabetically. So here they are:

Anatomy of a fall

I love a strong female performance, and Sandra Hüller brings just that as the centerpiece of this courtroom drama from France. As a woman accused of killing her husband after he’s found dead at the bottom of their chalet home, the mystery hangs on whether she can convincingly keep you guessing as to whether she did it or not. She manages to balance that fine line between guilty and not guilty and never appear too obviously either way, leaving the audience to make up their own minds. I was gripped the whole time, as there are also so many nuances to the character and her relationship to the case, such as her language barrier, celebrity author status and visually impaired son, that pile onto the stakes of the possible outcome.

Barbie

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the big cinematic event this summer was Barbenheimer. Now I could have put both Barbie and Oppenheimer on here as a kind of double feature, but I have to be honest about the fact that Barbie left the bigger impact on me. The way Greta Gerwig and team created this whole world around Barbie, from the sets to the costumes to the music, we were fully immersed in Barbieland. And on top of that, it was incredibly well written and acted, it was funny, it was clever and it had something to say. After seeing this film, Barbie became my entire personality for about a month and I’ve still thought about it constantly since. This movie filled me with such joy, just thinking about it makes me smile.

The Boy and the Heron

So, in November I got to see My Neighbor Totoro on stage, and it was the most incredible thing I have ever seen. If you ever get a chance to see it you absolutely should. But the high from that show put me on a bit of a Studio Ghibli kick and I eagerly awaited the newest movie from the Studio and director Hiyao Miyazaki.

Did the movie get a leg up from its close proximity to the play? Maybe a little. But it still didn’t disappoint. It’s Ghibli and Miyazaki doing what they do best – high fantasy with deep meaning. What I love about Miyazaki’s fantasy worlds is that he never spends time trying to explain anything, you just have to kind of go with it and accept the world for what you see, and I find such freedom in that. The world created here was confusing yes, but at once also funny, scary and breathtaking. It very much feels at home with the likes of Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle and of course the greatest of all, Spirited Away!

Elemental

As I said in my review for this film earlier this year I was pleasantly surprised by this movie, as Pixar hasn’t been on their best form in recent years. This movie ended up being incredibly poignant, with a lot to say about immigration and the financial instability in immigrant communities, but in a way that’s easy for anyone to understand and digest. As well as the fun way the world was created, I also fell in love with the characters and especially the romance between the two leads Ember and Wade. It’s certainly one of, if not the most romantic Pixar movie, getting quite steamy at times, literally. It left me feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

Joy Ride

As happy as I am for Jamie Lee-Curtis, I still believe Stephanie Hsu deserved the Oscar for Supporting Actress, so I was keen to see what she would do next. I’m also a big fan of Adele Lim’s screenwriting for Crazy Rich Asians and Raya and the Last Dragon, so I was excited to see her directorial debut with the comedy Joy Ride, staring Hsu as well as Ashley Parkx Sherry Cola and Sabrina Wu. My god is this a funny film, I was in hysterics throughout. The film follows Audrey, who was adopted from China by a white American couple, as she travels to China with her best friend Lolo to close a business deal and try and find her birth mother. Obviously, things don’t go according to plan and it’s stupid, raunchy, irreverent but most importantly it has a heart, and I found myself crying at the big climax. We’re going through such a moment for Asian talent right now and it’s great to see a comedy with a predominantly Asian cast, written by Asians from an Asian perspective. There is space in every genre of movie for everyone and the more authentic stories we have across those genres, the better movies we’re gonna get!

Killers of the Flower Moon

So, what a lot of people had to say about this film was that it was too long. So going in I was expecting a slog of a 3 hours, stroking Martin Scorsese’s ego. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I didn’t feel the time at all, I was gripped for every minute of those three hours. Crime dramas are Scorsese’s bread and butter so he was really showing off what he does best, and it’s also a western, which I have a real soft spot for.

What really drew me into this movie was its story, the focus on the Osage community and and how they were targeted for their land’s wealth in the 20s was so tragic yet so fascinating. The way it was framed from both the perpetrator’s side, Robert De Niro’s William King Hale, and the victims, Lily Gladstone’s Molly Kyle, with Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart in the middle was a great way to get the fullest picture without compounding the story with too many characters to focus on.

My penchant for strong female characters strikes again as my favorite thing about this movie was Gladstone. The way she went on a journey of romance, grief, anger and strength through the film was so impressive. She did it all without getting too hysterical or dramatic, hers was a character that really spoke in the silence.

The Little Mermaid

It feels a little bit weird to put a Disney live-action movie on this list, as I generally hate the idea of them and think they’re wholly unnecessary. However, I can’t deny the impact this one had on me. I’m kind of obsessed with it, I’ve watched it twice since I saw it and I feel compelled to listen to the soundtrack whenever I’m by the sea. I think a big credit goes to the lead performance from Halle Bailey. As I said in my review of the film, she really is a star in the making, with the way she carried this movie with her acting and her amazing singing. I can’t wait to see her in more things. But I also loved the visuals of the film. Everything looks so lush and fantastical, both above and below the water, the Under the Sea sequence, in particular, filled me with joy with what they achieved with all the effects. I guess it just fills me with summery vibes and it makes me want to hang out in the sun.

Maestro

Every year it seems we get a big flashy biopic of a famous entertainer in the hopes it will win some Oscars. Bradley Cooper’s biography of Leonard Bernstein, which he’s written, directed and stars in is absolutely one of those projects, but the thing is it’s really good. I saw this movie as a brilliant in depth character study, focusing on Bernstein and his Wife played by Carey Mulligan. And those performances are what make this movie. We spend so long focusing in on those characters (often quite literally with the cinematography) throughout their long relationship, there’s really no room for either actor to falter, and of course they don’t. Cooper’s transformation into Bernstein is so studied and intricate, he’s in very strong running to win that overdue Oscar. Yes some people have taken issue with the use of prosthetics and I understand that, but to me it was not noticeable and didn’t detract at all from his performance. But Mulligan is who really stole the show for me as Felicia. She did such interesting work with her voice to emulate her while also doing all the other acting things she always does, and with many emotional scenes of anger, sadness and fear as well as romance, she’s really the emotional core of Bernsteins journey. If you wanna see two people act the hell out of a movie this really is one to see.

Past Lives

A lot of the films on this list are large flashy productions, but Past Lives is a very small quiet film which is what makes it so fascinating. It creates an intimate and close portrait of two childhood friends from Korea who reunite after years apart when one moved to America and the other stayed behind. What made this movie special to me was the way it explored human relationships. It unpacked how time changes things but also how we imprint and connect with people based on our cultural similarities. And I think it showed that we as humans often never really know who we are and what we want. The performances from Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are beautiful, as well as the way writer/director Celine Song uses the visuals and sound to evoke those feelings of memory and kinship. It’s one of those movies that makes you feel sad, but in a good way.

Wonka

When they first announced they were making a Willy Wonka prequel I thought it was a horrendous idea and it would be terrible. After I saw a trailer I felt a similar way, and even after I heard people saying it was good I wasn’t convinced. So I was very surprised when I absolutely loved it. I love a movie musical, and especially the golden age of the genre where everything was big and loud. This movie is a lavish, high-production blowout musical with great songs. It also just got that Roald Dahl brand of whimsical silliness down, which is hard to do. The centerpiece is of course Timothée Chalamet as Wonka himself, who just exudes this naive quirky positivity that never gets too much but rather pulls you in and makes you believe in him. And every other actor is just hamming it up in the best way too. I just had a really fun time and it made me really hungry for some chocolate.

There are a few movies that almost made it on here and some that if id seen them this year, I’m sure would have made it in. but what I know is that I’m already excited for what 2024 is going to bring.