It happened again. A year passed and I watched some films. This publication has been sleeping for a while, but it is time to wake it up. For now I am become Dave, the reviver of blogs.
These are my favorite films of 2023.
1 — ANATOMY OF A FALL
★★★★★
Anatomie d’une chute
Justine Triet
France
There are many things being dissected here. A man’s fall to his death is the introductory investigation, but as the story unfolds more entities are put under the magnifying glass, as a family in grief is flung into an unforgiving courtroom drama. Through a tightly focused script that never once during its 152-minute runtime loses its urgency, Justine Triet cross-examines the anatomy of a marriage, the anatomy of storytelling, the anatomy of ambiguity, the anatomy of memories and opinions, of subjectivity and truth. Sandra Hüller is outstanding in her career-defining performance as the writer/wife suspected of murder, Swann Arlaud is the lawyer we all want to hire (or be, or be with), and 13-year-old Milo Machado Graner delivers one of the most impressive child-actor performances I have ever seen. Not to mention Messi (the dog) — how do you even train a dog to do all of that? Anatomy of a Fall is the perfect example of how one single event can be used to expand a film’s universe, because in order for us to understand that event we must understand its context. To be able to know the nature of and the reason for one specific moment of a life or a relationship, we must seek to know this life or relationship in its entirety. (Try telling that to the judge.) I have seen this film twice now, and thanks to its multilayered fabrics and meticulously precise tailoring, it just continues to grow on me. This is top-tier filmmaking, cold and clinical on the surface but deeply human at its core, expertly crafted in all divisions. It leaves you with an almost Zodiac-like sense of not knowing what really happened here — it does not really make any sense, from whichever angle you’re approaching it, and while we desperately try to figure it out, we slowly realize we can’t. A stone-cold masterpiece and the film of the decade so far — all to the sweet tunes of 50 Cent.
2 — PAST LIVES
★★★★★
Celine Song
South Korea, USA
Seoul, some twenty years ago. Two kids, a boy and a girl, twelve years old. Girl moves to America, boy stays. Their friendship lost somewhere over the Pacific. Years pass and lives diverge. // New York, present day. Two adults meet again. Strangers, old friends. A couple that never was. Who were they to each other? Who are they now? // This is writer-director Celine Song’s debut feature, and I cannot understate what a remarkable achievement that is. This feels like a story told by an old person, wise from years of living through joys and sorrows, and not a first-time filmmaker. Our protagonists Nora and Hae-sung, captivatingly portrayed by Greta Lee and Teo Yoo, are riddled with doubts and existential questions, hopes and dreams that are lost and found and lost again, and while it is all channeled through the theme of diasporic ties and liberations very specific to the Korean people, there is a transcending universality that allows for us to imagine or relive our own stories that never was. And what does it bring? Closure? Or impossible beginnings? Going into Past Lives is like entering a bittersweet dimension of alternate storylines, where something won in one storyline inevitably means something lost in another. It is touching on many levels, overwhelmingly melancholic and warm. Like being comfortably tucked in under a duvet of sadness.
3 — OPPENHEIMER
★★★★★
Christopher Nolan
UK, USA
When he dropped his Inception B-side also known as Tenet, a Christopher Nolan parody made by Christopher Nolan himself, I was worried that we had lost Christopher Nolan altogether. But it is a good feeling when worries prove wrong, and for the first time in almost twenty years the Briton has once again reached heights comparable to those of Memento and The Prestige. It is my assured opinion that Nolan is at his best not when he’s going into space, dreams or time travel, but instead when he has a concentrated idea that he obsessively saturates into something larger. Perhaps this is what he should do going forward — biographical closeups? In Oppenheimer, the marriage of a more straight-forward core plot and Nolan’s constant search for ways of distorting it provides for a far more appealing and rewarding end product than most other biopics, and I hold this film as one of the best in its category. It is a jaw-dropping audiovisual experience, and the shortest three hours I have ever lived through — there are no breaks, no moments of rest — the stress is as intrusive and feverish on the audience as it seems to have been on J. Robert Oppenheimer himself. It all evokes a strange mixture of admiration for the human progress in the art of engineering, and disgust, or plain fear, for how we have come to utilize it. And while the whole thing revolves around the most explosive invention known to man, there is nothing more frightening than the silence anticipating it. There are images from this film that I will never forget, of Cillian Murphy’s hollow eyes staring into skinless faces destroyed by his own creation.
4 — 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL
★★★★★
20 dniv u Mariupoli
Mstyslav Chernov
Ukraine
Speaking of images that I will never forget, this is 94 minutes of them. This documentary is compiled by original footage from a team of Ukrainian journalists documenting the first twenty days of the Russian invasion of Mariupol in early 2022. The images mostly speak for themselves, but are accompanied by a voice-over explaining the journalists’ rationale for where to go, what to film, and why. For all of us who paralyzedly followed the news in real time during this period in time, much of the footage has already been broadcast and seen, but it is the extension and contextualization of it that renews and heightens the sense of shock and devastation. A mother holding her dead infant, a father rushing to his son’s deathbed, an orphaned boy crying because he does not understand, a doctor trying to keep it together while losing his powers minute by minute, while another hauntingly expressionless tank turns its warhead towards another residential building. I still cannot fully grasp the evil and the tragedy of it all, and it is hard trying to write something about it that would add any value to anything. The banality of ranking this historical account in a list like this seems rather absurd, as the values of this film arguably far exceeds those of pure works of fiction. All I can do is urge everyone to see it, for this is the darkest parts of human history unfolding right before our eyes. And we must not close them.
5 — PASSAGES
★★★★★
Ira Sachs
France, Germany
German filmmaker Tomas (Franz Rogowski) is rumbling through Paris on a lustful crusade filled with bad decisions and damaged relationships, one of the victims being his husband Martin (Ben Whishaw) and another being his dance-floor fling turned girlfriend (?) Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos). Tomas does not seem capable of ever making up his mind of what he wants, and neither does he seem to understand the effects of his behavior towards the people he loves (or does not know he loves). The dynamics of this drama are passionate and messy in a very French way, and director Ira Sachs does not shy away from pushing his characters towards each other with full force just before separating them in an equally brutal way, over and over again as if he is trying to light a match. These people are trapped in an exhausting and seemingly unsolvable equation, and we get to spy on them while they desperately try to make sense of it. Tomas acts with an almost childlike naïvety, which seems fun and charming at times but mostly drainingly tiresome, and in the end this is just the real Triangle of Sadness. I was onboard from beginning to end and enjoyed the highs before suffering from the inevitable lows, much thanks to a superb trio of actors.
6 — BOTTOMS
★★★★★
Emma Seligman
USA
It’s been a long time since I had this much fun in a theatre. The best comedies are those that are both smart and stupid at the same time, and the Seligman-Sennott project of 2023 is perhaps less intellectual or grown up than Shiva Baby, but impressively secure and steadfast in what it is trying to achieve in its fresh queer take on the high-school comedy. The film follows two uncool girls (Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri — yeah, these two are uncool, right) who starts an after-school fight club (kind of), officially in the name of self defence but really just to get laid with their cheerleader crushes. They quite surprisingly find support for organizing this controversial initiative by their teacher Mr. G (Marshawn Lynch — the funniest man in film this year), who becomes inspired and starts his own little investigation into who started feminism and whatnot. The fight club gains traction and becomes a distraction for the school’s football team who are preparing for some important game. It all leads up to a complete clash, violent and stupid and wonderful. Bottoms arrived at exactly my wavelength and has stayed and continued to grow on me, having me laughing out randomly whenever I’m reminded of some stupid line or goofy detail from it, like the one with the boys all wearing full match gear at all times. It is just so dumb. Bottoms has a lot of things to say about stereotypes and high-school politics, but it also does not give a shit, in a cool and refreshing combination. And the end-credits bloopers are back, baby!
7 — FALLEN LEAVES
★★★★★
Kuolleet lehdet
Aki Kaurismäki
Finland, Germany
A different kind of comedy altogether (if it even is to be seen as a comedy, in all its deadpan anti-glory) can be found in Helsinki, where two people’s bleak everyday lives get a rare little low-key spark when they run into each other and falteringly develop some kind of tie. Ansa (Alma Pöysti) works in a supermarket, Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) works as a sandblaster. They are both lonely and uninspired (and he’s an alcoholic too), and nothing much happens. We follow them through uneventful days at work and half-empty cafés, and nights at rock bars and karaoke clubs. These places all seem stuck in a time long gone, and there is a distinct timelessness to the settings and the props, allowing for some confusion as to where in time this all takes place, before a laptop and a radio broadcast about the Ukraine war help us identify the present and we realize haven’t gone back in time at all — we’ve only gone to Finland. Everyone’s a little depressed, everyone’s drinking and smoking, and no-one is really saying much. Aki Kaurismäki, one of the true auteurs of colorful minimalism, caringly frames this all with his trademark combination of kitchen-sink realism and black comedy, and throws in a few easter eggs for the observant cinephile.
8 — TIME STILL TURNS THE PAGES
★★★★★
Ninsiu Yatgei
Nick Cheuk
Hong Kong
I love walking into a movie theatre completely blank, not knowing anything about what I’m about to see, and just allow myself to be swept away. This is one of those experiences, and it brought me to a school in Hong Kong, where our protagonist teacher Mr. Cheng is left dealing with a whole lot of stress and concern when pieces of a suicide note is found at the school, seemingly written by one of his pupils. He does not know who wrote it or why, but becomes deeply involved in trying to find out, while simultaneously reliving traumas from his own childhood, which are revealed piece by piece alongside his ongoing present-day investigation. The film deals with heavy subject matters such as suicide (especially among children), parenthood and the pressures of a demanding upbringing where high family standards separate the successful from the failures, and how this affects a child. It is a heartbreakingly sad story, effectively packaged into a piano-and-strings-soaked ambience on the verge but just short of the overly sentimental, from which crying becomes the only available resort. Debutant writer-director Nick Cheuk also makes certain very interesting dramaturgical choices that allow for unexpected turns to the story — a very powerful additional tool that I, for self-explanatory reasons, cannot discuss in detail without spoiling too much. I will conclude by acknowledging that there were many empty seats for my Wednesday night screening on a grey day in December — but I cried for all of them.
9 — DREAM SCENARIO
★★★★★
Kristoffer Borgli
USA
A simple but smart concept is the perfect start to the process of writing a film, and Dream Scenario has a brilliant one. Academy Award winner Nicolas Cage plays a very ordinary biology professor and family father who becomes the subject of a bizarre development when he suddenly starts appearing in other people’s dreams, many of whom do not even know him. At first this is just a curious and amusing topic of conversation, but when the dreams warp into nightmares and become darker and more violent, things get ugly and problematic. Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli really tries this concept out and drives it to its limits, in the form of a both hilarious and slightly frightening combination of fantasy, dark humor and horror-esque sequences, fronted by a Cage in top form. The film provides some timely commentary on fame, cancel culture, capitalism and the cynicism of the media (represented by Michael Cera), and rounds it off with a great Talking Heads reference. But most of all it’s just a fun film, and a priceless joy to see Nic Cage excel yet again.
10 — BEAU IS AFRAID
★★★★★
Ari Aster
USA
The whackiest film on this list by far is Ari Aster’s (producer of Dream Scenario, by the way) completely unhinged three-hour nightmare centering on poor Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) and his never-ending misfortunes. I deeply admire the scale and the ambition of this film, and while not a complete homerun, it covers many bases throughout its timeline of surreal and almost impossible-to-summarize-level series of events. The universe of Beau Is Afraid is quickly established as distorted and fantastical and not to be trusted at any point, and we experience it through the channel of a deeply troubled individual named Beau. We really feel for Beau. He is having a rough time, and everything seems to be working against him. He goes through verbal and physical abuse, his apartment is plundered, he lives in fear, experiences death in the family, a road accident, the complete breakdown of vital infrastructure and endless trauma, and by this point we are barely an hour into the film, which proceeds to continue hammering poor Beau down for another couple of them. Phoenix cements his status as one of the greatest of his generation, masterfully mediating the experience of complete and constant anxiety, and not a single scene passes by without me rooting for this poor guy. For me, this is Aster’s best and richest film so far, much more substantial, personal and affecting than both Hereditary and Midsommar. I wonder what he will be cooking up next, and I hope he continues in this direction (and I certainly hope that he is allowed to, considering the box-office fiasco of Beau). Beau Is Afraid is not for everyone, but everyone should at least be able to acknowledge its originality, and regardless of opinion that is something worth appreciating.
11 — KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
★★★★★
Martin Scorsese
USA
One of the things I find myself thinking about these days is what we, as a society, shall do when the inevitable happens and we no longer enjoy the presence of Martin Scorsese in this world, let alone new films by him. This is not the time or place for delving deeper into such a scenario, but I do think about it. Anyway, the year is still 2023 and we have once again enjoyed the privilege of celebrating the arrival of another Marty epic, this time telling the story of the Osage Indian murders in Oklahoma in the 1920s. It is a disturbing and unsettling part of American history, showcasing the evil and brutality of white Americans towards Native Americans, who were murdered and conspired against for oil and power. In Killers of the Flower Moon, this story is unfolded by focusing on the relationship and marriage between Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a war veteran driven by greed and an imprecise moral compass, and Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), member of a wealthy Osage family with valuable rights to oil resources. Burkhart enters the relationship with seemingly good intentions, guided by his friendly and good-hearted uncle William King Hale (Robert De Niro), but soon becomes part of a cynical plan orchestrated by the same uncle to practically wipe out the whole Kyle family. It is a long and quite demanding film to watch, and the 206-minute runtime is not completely without challenge, but at the same time it is hard to argue that anything should be cut, for it is a very well-edited and powerful film with a story of great importance, well worth sitting through. DiCaprio is believably stupid, Gladstone forcefully compelling and De Niro chillingly sinister. I think I need to see this film again to be able to fully process it, but it definitely has a place on this list, and it certainly is one of those stories that must be told. And truthfully so, clearly demonstrated by the comparison of how the film tells it and how its concluding radio broadcast (barely) tells it.
12 — MONSTER
★★★★★
Kaibutsu
Hirokazu Kore-eda
Japan
From the handful of his films I have seen, Hirokazu Kore-eda has been a bit of a hit-or-miss director for me (I loved After the Storm, did not care for Shoplifters), so I went in with wary expectations for Monster. I was happy to find it to be one of his hits, and one that keeps growing stronger after seeing it. Monster is a story told from several perspectives, one from each of the main characters’ point of view, one at a time. In short, the film is about a boy who is starting to act strange, leading his mother to contact his school where she uncovers a situation with a potentially abusive teacher and suspicions of bullying. The situation is complicated and sensitive, and very difficult to straighten out since the people involved (the kid, the teacher, the mother, the headmaster and the kid’s friend) all have their own versions of what has happened. When we have seen the plot play out once and think we know it, we are led to reassess it, as more details are added by the other persons’ perspectives, and while some things get clearer, others get more complex. I will admit there were moments when the inherent repetitiveness of the Rashomon storytelling technique put my emotional investment at risk, but the risk stayed unrealized and in the end this story really resonated with me and moved me deeply. It hits the sweet spot of sadness and hope, and much like a Ken Loach film, it ends on a very human note, bittersweet and beautiful. This note is metaphorical of course, but it is also literal: Aqua by Ryuichi Sakamoto. Go listen to this piece and tell me you’re not crying — I won’t believe you. And if you insist you’re telling me the truth, I advise you to seek therapy.
13 — THE BOY AND THE HERON
★★★★★
Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka
Hayao Miyazaki
Japan
First of all, let us all just be happy that Mr. Hayao Miyazaki is once again making films, so that we can collectively procrastinate his retirement together with the people at Studio Ghibli. The world of film just won’t be the same without him.
“Just when I thought I was out, [I] pull [myself] back in!”
Now, I am not a Miyazaki connoisseur by any means, and I have a lot of catching up to do within his filmography. I do love My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away, but that’s pretty much what I have seen so far, so I cannot completely contextualize or compare The Boy and the Heron with his other films. What I can say is that I enjoyed the trip into yet another strange land of imagination, and I fully surrender to the skill and beauty of the craft — it is simply astonishing how rich and detailed and gorgeous these vivacious paintings are. Trying to explain the plot is not very meaningful, since it follows its very own illogical logic, but at its core it’s about a boy who has recently lost his mother during World War II and is relocated to his new stepmother’s big house in the countryside, where he meets a weird heron and follows it into another dimension full of mystery and symbols. My favorite weird little guys are the warawara (some kind of white blobs representing unborn human souls, of course), and there’s a whole little world of creatures in this film alone. It’s a beautiful film, unique in a lot of ways, and apparently one of Miyazaki’s most personal. A thing I have come to appreciate more and more through the years is pacing that allows for the viewer to rest within a film (contradictory to my own Oppenheimer comment I realize), and this is a representative example of such a film. There is no need to cut, cut, cut to keep things moving all the time, we can allow ourselves a few breaks here and there. Look, I’m old and tired now, and sometimes you just want to be able to stop for a moment and appreciate the surroundings, breathe in the air and listen to the birds sing.
14 — 12.12: THE DAY
★★★★★
Seoul-ui bom
Kim Sung-su
South Korea
In October 1979, the president of South Korea was assassinated, an event that sparked major instability in the country’s political world. In December the same year, a coup d’état was carried out by certain members of the army after arresting (without order from the president) a military general suspected of involvement in the former president’s assassination. As you can see, this is getting complicated already on a basic synopsis stage, and it surely is important to keep your attention on high alert during the almost two-and-a-half hours that this film is given to depict the events that unfolded during the 12th of December, putting South Korea in a complex and urgent situation that nearly sent it into full-blown civil war. For those of us who enjoy being flies on the wall in smoke-filled (from cigarettes, just to clarify) meeting rooms populated by serious-looking suits and uniforms calling from shining phones to military bases and government buildings and other smoke-filled meeting rooms with strict orders or voice-trembling ultimatums or potentially game-changing information, this is a very pleasant cup of tea. It is a very talky film, not very unlike Oppenheimer in that sense (without further comparison), with an ever-present nerve keeping things tense and urgent. How historically accurate it is, I really cannot say (and people’s names have been altered for this fictionalization), but I was fully invested in this intense, powerful and seemingly tragically unnecessary drama — people died, buildings were targeted, branches of the army were fighting each other, chaos ruled and nobody knew for sure who was in charge — just because a few stubborn men couldn’t come to an agreement. That’s how it goes, I guess.
15 — THE HOLDOVERS
★★★★★
Alexander Payne
USA
I always seem to appreciate the films of Alexander Payne, but I am still to be greatly affected by any of them. He has a very solid three-star track record in my book. The Holdovers, however, became the first Payne film to cross the line and earn itself a fourth star, and is evidently my favorite film of his so far. It has a great premise, set in the year of 1970 and following a handful of prep-school students with nowhere to go for Christmas, and their unpopular history teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) who gets the responsibility to watch over and keep them in order during the holidays. It is a very funny movie, that time and time again makes jokes at its characters expense, and by hammering down the loser stamp on them (especially Mr. Hunham), they inevitably become more likable and sympathetic the more we get to know them. Giamatti’s teacher character is a deeply tragic yet relatable figure that you, after a while, cannot dislike or not feel sorry for. He is just misunderstood and unlucky. The acting is brilliant throughout the cast, with extra strong praise given to Da’Vine Joy Randolph and most of all debutant (!) Dominic Sessa — that boy will become a superstar, no doubt. I don’t care much about the Oscars these days, but I do hope that Giamatti stands a chance this year, because he is just great. I mean really, really great. One of those performances that oozes of suppressed feelings and broken spirits in a pure and human way. There is so much warmth in this movie, so much love and humanity — after a while at least, when the guard has been lowered and all is allowed to come forward. And in the muted O Captain! My Captain! moment towards the end, I could not help but feel a tear running down my cheek. Damn, they got to me too.
Honorable Mentions
Eileen (William Oldroyd), Femme (Sam H. Freeman & Ng Choon Ping), Godzilla Minus One (Gojira -1.0, Takashi Yamazaki), How to Have Sex (Molly Manning Walker), Last Summer (L’été dernier, Catherine Breillat), May December (Todd Haynes), Priscilla (Sofia Coppola)
Not Even Close
Animal (Sandeep Reddy Vanga), Asteroid City (Wes Anderson), Napoleon (Ridley Scott), Saltburn (Emerald Fennell), Wonka (Paul King)
RESERVATIONS
As usual at the end of the year, there are films that I have not yet been able to see, and I want to acknowledge this to explain why they are missing from the list. You never know if they would have made the list, of course, but a few films that I am very much looking forward to seeing are All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh), The Bikeriders (Jeff Nichols), The Iron Claw (Sean Durkin), Perfect Days (Wim Wenders), Poor Things (Yorgos Lanthimos) and The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer).
Last Year’s Stragglers
A constant headache when writing these lists are releases that are sliding around between years (2022 films mainly released in 2023, and so on). I have chosen to keep this year’s list clean in terms of year of release, and not included any 2022 films — not even those that have not been made available to see in my region(s) until 2023. Correct? I don’t know. It just felt a bit outdated to write about how much I loved Aftersun in the 2023 list. Thus, the titles in the list above are strictly 2023 films by all accounts.
Not mentioning the unfortunate 2022 latecomers at all, however, would be unfair and sad. Therefore, please find a few extra honorable mentions in the little additional paragraph below, for films that retroactively would be contenders for last year’s list.
AFTERSUN ★★★★★
Charlotte Wells | UK, USA
This heartfelt, personal and quite minimalist father-daughter relationship drama really knocked me over, and I’m still processing it. Need to see it again soon, and possibly add another star. An extraordinary directorial debut and perhaps the best film of 2022 altogether.
THE NIGHT OF THE 12TH ★★★★★
La nuit du 12
Dominik Moll | France, Belgium
A brutal murder of a teenage girl, a case turned cold and a detective gone obsessed from his need for solving it. A dark, haunting mystery with great acting and a page-turner plot dealing with sexism, violence and a French Laura Palmer.
PARIS MEMORIES ★★★★★
Revoir Paris
Alice Winocour | France
Two great performances from Virginie Efira and Benoît Magimel (big favorite of mine) bring depth and emotion to this story about the processing of memories and the recovering from trauma, as two people try to move on from surviving a terror attack in a Paris bistro.
An additional handful of late 2022 arrivals that I took interest in and consider potentially listworthy were The Five Devils (Le cinq diables, Léa Mysius), Pacifiction (Pacifiction — Tourment sur les îles, Albert Serra), Return to Seoul (Retour à Séoul, Davy Chou) and The Whale (Darren Aronofsky).
Concluding Notes
Are we back? Is this blog a thing again? Yes. Maybe. I don’t know. We promise nothing and take no responsibility. We’re just happy to be here.
“And like that… He’s gone.”