Josh’s Favorite Movies of 2023 — Part Four!

I hope you’ve been enjoying reading my list of my favorite movies of 2023!  Click here to read part one, click here to read part two, and click here to read part three.

And now, here are my FIVE FAVORITE movies of 2023:

5. The Holdovers — Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers tells the story of the grumpy professor (Paul Giamatti), the troubled student (Dominic Sessa) and the head cook grieving the loss of her son (Da’Vine Joy Randolph), stuck together at a New England boarding school over the Christmas holiday in 1970.  It’s a beautiful film, one whose story and characters have stuck in my head ever since I saw it.  It’s sweet and sad, while also having plenty of moments of fun and good humor.  Those comedic beats are critical to keeping the film alive and engaging.  It’s a moving, nuanced story — what a pleasure it is to see a drama aimed at adults released in theaters!  All three leads are extraordinary, delivering incredible work.  It’s a delight to see Mr. Payne reuniting Paul Giamatti!  I appreciated the film’s leisurely pace and the way Mr. Payne allowed us to marinate along with these characters.  There’s a rumpled comfort to this film that I thoroughly enjoyed.  At the same time, I was surprised right up until the final beats by some of the specifics of how the story played out.  To put it mildly, that’s a pleasing combination.  (Click here for my full review.)

4. Oppenheimer — I loved Oppenheimer when I saw it on the big screen, and my appreciation and admiration for the film has only grown as it’s sat with me and I’ve had time to digest it.  What a magnificent achievement by the great Christopher Nolan!  Mr. Nolan uses his extraordinary filmmaking skills to create a film that is visceral and gripping, despite it being a story that mostly consists of people in rooms talking to one another.  Mr. Nolan’s mastery of cinematic imagery and his playful approach to chronology and editing creates a film that feels at times more like a stream-of-consciousness collection of memories than the usual type of biopic.  I love this.  Mr. Nolan has constructed his film to put the audience in Robert Oppenheimer’s shoes, so that we can attempt to experience what he experienced and therefore wrestle with the choices he made; choices that arguably reshaped the world in an unprecedented manner.  This is an effective approach.  The cast is incredible.  Cillian Murphy has never been better, and he’s surrounded by a tremendous ensemble, each of whom make the very best of their every moment of screen time: Robert Downey Jr., Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Benny Safdie, Rami Malek, Casey Affleck, Kenneth Branagh, David Krumholtz, Jason Clarke, Gary Oldman, James D’Arcy, Tom Conti, Dane DeHaan, Matthew Modine, Tony Goldwyn, Jack Quaid, Olivia Thirlby… and more… are all spectacular and so memorable!  This is a behemoth of a film, lengthy and ambitious.  (Click here for my full review.)

3. The Killer — I’m surprised this terrific new film from director David Fincher (Zodiac, The Social Network, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) didn’t get more attention this year!  Michael Fassbender is extraordinary in the title role as the unnamed killer, a patient and methodical hitman for hire.  He’s magnetic enough to hold our attention throughout the film, even though we’re often watching him do very little.  And yet, at the same time, he’s believable as someone who has cultivated the ability to blend in and be unnoticeable.  Mr. Fassbender is compelling and also very scary in his dead-eyed coldness.  It’s a terrific performance.  The film is exquisitely made, from top to bottom.  It’s gorgeous and gripping.  Mr. Fincher’s complete mastery of tone keeps this tense, taut thriller perfectly balanced.  It’s violent and upsetting at moments, and darkly funny at others; those tones don’t clash but rather fit together seamlessly.  Erik Messerschmidt’s cinematography is gorgeous, with sumptuous colors and a beautiful use of darkness and light.  The film has a relatively short run-time (under two hours) and a relatively simple story (hit goes wrong and hit-man faces the consequences).  But Mr. Fincher uses both to his advantage, crafting a lean and mean film, with a propulsive narrative that had me hooked from the first minute to the last.  (Click here for my full review.)

2. Killers of the Flower Moon — The latest masterpiece from director Martin Scorsese is a towering piece of work, rich and devastating.  Killers of the Flower Moon is epic in scale and scope, taking place over many years and featuring many characters.  And yet, Mr. Scorsese’s talented hands on the reins keep the storytelling clear and powerful.  I had no trouble following the various plots and characters as they dipped in and out of the narrative.  The film looks gorgeous; Mr. Scorsese and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto do an incredible job capturing the gorgeous Oklahoma landscapes (the film was apparently shot around many of the locations where these events actually took place) and recreating the look and feel of the film’s early 1900’s setting.  More importantly, Mr. Scorsese keeps his focus squarely rooted on the characters.  The cast is incredible — this film is packed with home-run performances.  Leonardo DiCaprio (who has become, over the years, Mr. Scorsese’s #2 actor collaborator) is endlessly compelling playing Ernest, a dumb lug who allows his greed to drive him to heinous acts.  Robert De Niro (who is, of course, Mr. Scorsese’s #1 actor collaborator) delivers his best performance in year as “King” Hale — a slick, smooth-talking oil salesman who hides a black, greedy heart underneath.  Lily Gladstone is an extraordinary revelation as Mollie, the Osage young woman who marries Ernest; I loved her depiction of this sharp, strong, quiet woman.  The true history of the murders of the Osage Native Americans in Osage County, Oklahoma (in which sixty or more Osage were killed between 1910 and 1930), as white men sought to control the fortune in oil to be found on their lands, is an awful true story.  It’s a dark chapter in the horrific novel of how the Native Americans have been mistreated over the decades and centuries.  This true story can be a bitter pill to swallow, but it’s an important story to be told.  I applaud Mr. Scorsese and his team of collaborators for so skillfully bringing this story to life.  (Click here for my full review.)

1. Asteroid City — There were a lot of great choices this year for what my #1 film would be, but in the end, it was an easy choice to select Asteroid City, the latest extraordinary concoction from director Wes Anderson.  The Royal Tenenbaums made me a fan of Wes Anderson’s for life, and I think his recent films have just been getting better and better and better.  (I’ll argue that Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and The French Dispatch are each masterpieces.)  I’m an enormous sci-fi fan, so I was so excited to see Mr. Anderson turn his attention to depicting a retro-futuristic 1950’s sci-fi movie setting — it’s as if this film was crafted specifically to appeal to all of my sensibilities!  The production design in Wes Anderson’s films is always exquisite, a beautifully detailed and heightened creation of a very specific time and place.  The look of the town of “Asteroid City” in this film hit all of my joy buttons.  I ate up every detail, repeatedly freeze-framing the film as I was watching it so I could soak up the look of the setting.  It’s like a beautiful painted pulp paperback cover brought to life.  It’s like Los Alamos from Oppenheimer crossed with a Loony Tunes cartoon.  Absolutely magnificent.  The cast, as is always the case in a Wes Anderson film, is incredible.  The film is jammed-full of tremendous performers, each of whom make the very most of their every second on-screen.  Just look at this ensemble: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Jeffrey Wright, Liev Schreiber, Hope Davis, Stephen Parks, Steve Carrell, Rupert Friend, Maya Hawke, Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Matt Dillon, Tony Revolori, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, Jeff Goldblum, Fisher Stevens, Bob Balaban, Rita Wilson, and Sophia Lillis (as well as several young actors I’d never seen before but was very impressed by: Jake Ryan, Grace Edwards, Ethan Josh Lee, and Aristou Meehan)… wow!!!  What a cast!!  Every single one of those performers makes a memorable impact in their particular role.  I loved the film’s nesting doll structure of stories within stories.  I suspect some audience-members might have been as confused as the characters in the film (or should I say, the actors in the play performance of the events at Asteroid City) were… yet I found that to be the key to the film’s whole point.  In real life, there are no easy answers, no moments of blinding revelation that provide exact explanations to all the mysteries of existence.  We have to find a way through regardless.  I adored this film, and it was easily my favorite film of 2023.  (Click here for my full review.)

Thanks for reading!!  I’ve got one more best-of list coming next week, and then I have a lot of reviews to post of some of the great TV shows and movies I caught up to at the end of 2023.  I hope you’ll come back and enjoy, and please help support my site by using some of the Amazon links below.  Thank you, it means a lot!

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