Josh’s Favorite Movies of 2023 — Part One!

It’s always fun to put together my best of the year lists.  I hope you’re enjoying reading them!  Last week I went through my favorite TV shows of 2023!

And now, I’m excited to begin my list of my favorite movies of 2023!

As I usually do, let me mention that there were a ton of movies I wanted to see but didn’t get to yet.  These include, but are by no means limited to: The Boys in the Boat, Past Lives, Ferrari, Golda, American Fiction, Poor Things, May December, and What Happens Later.  (I hope to find time to see all those movies soon!!)

With that caveat, let’s dive into my list, shall we?

20. 1982: Greatest Geek Year Ever! and In Search of Tomorrow — We kick off my list with a tie!  These are two super-fun crowd-funded films (note: I backed both projects) looking back at the array of fantastic sci-fi films of the eighties.  In Search of Tomorrow is a four-hour extravaganza, taking a decade-by-decade survey through the eighties.  The doc digs into movies including The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Blade Runner, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Back to the Future, Dune, Aliens, Tron, The Terminator, Ghostbusters, Predator, The Road Warrior, The Abyss, Short Circuit, RoboCop, Akira, WarGames, and many more.  1982: Greatest Geek Year Ever! focuses, as is clear from the title, on the incredible (and incredibly varied) films released in 1982 (not-just sci-fi films but all manner of geeky films), including E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Blade Runner, John Carpenter’s The Thing, The Road Warrior, Poltergeist, Tron, Conan the Barbarian, The Dark Crystal, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Night Shift, First Blood, Rocky III… and so many more!  Both documentary films are a whole heaping help of fun for geeks like me who grew up in the eighties.  (Click here for my full review of In Search of Tomorrow, and click here for my full review of 1982: Greatest Geek Year Ever!)

19. Sly and Albert Brooks: Defending My Life — Another tie!  Ain’t I a stinker?  Both these films are fascinating looks back at the life and careers of two cinematic giants.  Sly focuses, of course, on Sylvester Stallone.  The film is structured around a series of interviews with Mr. Stallone, allowing him to tell his own story, looking back at his life and his body of work.  I was surprised by how vulnerable Mr. Stallone was during the conversation captured in the film, and how complex and interesting his life’s journey has been!  There’s a lot of spent digging into his film career (especially the Rocky movies), but more than that, I enjoyed getting a peek into who Mr. Stallone is as a person.  Albert Brooks: Defending My Life is a joyous salute to the life and work of Albert Brooks, directed by his friend Rob Reiner.  The film winds through Mr. Brooks’ incredible career: his movies, of course, but also his stand-up comedy, his many incredible talk-show appearances (that was my favorite part of the film), his comedy records, his dramatic performances in other people’s movies, and more.  Both documentary films are a lot of fun to watch, giving us a glimpse into these two incredible performers’ lives and careers, and their perspectives on it all.  (My full review of Sly will be coming soon.  Click here for my full review of Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.)

18. Babylon 5: The Road Home — While I have always been a Star Trek fan first and foremost, I love Babylon 5!  I have tremendous respect and affection for what J. Michael Straczynski accomplished with Babylon 5.  His serialized “novel for television” approach was incredibly influential on what all TV looks like these days.  And his achievement of writing almost every single episode of Babylon 5’s five seasons (of generally 24 episodes per season) will likely never be matched.  The cast was strong, the visuals and designs were memorable, the stories were epic.  Babylon 5 was a great show!  I’ve always felt the show should have continued, and yet the various attempts over the past two decades to spin-off or continue the show in some way have all sadly failed.  With a tragically large number of the show’s original cast having passed away, I assumed B5′s day was done.  And so it was a surprise and delight to see the series brought back to life via this wonderful animated movie!  This is not a reboot (although the film’s ending opens the door to that possibility), but rather (thankfully) a new story set in the pre-established B5 universe, featuring all of the surviving main cast-members!  The animation is strong, and it’s written by J. Michael Straczynski, of course, so it captures the classic B5 feel.  This is a satisfying stand-alone adventure, but I hope it’s the beginning of more B5 adventures to come.  (Click here for my full review.)

17. Luther: The Fallen Sun — This is an unusual start to my best movies of the year list, as I continue now with a second movie that is a continuation of a TV show.  This is, of course, a movie-length return to the world of Luther, the BBC series starring Idris Elba as the brilliant, but morally dubious, investigator.  Here in this film, Mr. Elba is paired with the incredible Andy Serkis as the horrible serial killer who Luther has to find a way to stop.  Several familiar faces from the Luther series return, and they’re joined by the terrific Cynthia Erivo as the new head of the SSCU (she’s Luther’s boss).  The story is a bit outlandish, but it absolutely succeeds in being a stomach-churning, edge-of-your-seat thriller, and the performances across the board are top notch.  I’d love for this to be the start of a series of Luther movies!  (Click here for my full review).

16. Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One — It was a pleasure to return to the world of Ethan Hunt in this latest action-packed spectacular.  Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie understand how to make a big-screen spectacle like no one else out there.  The film is jam-packed with incredible set pieces that are astonishing to see.  There’s a giddy thrill to knowing that Tom Cruise and his team achieved what we’re seeing on screen for real — not with CGI fakery — that’s key to my enjoyment of these recent Mission films.  I wish the story in this film was tighter.  It’s a lot of set-up that was interesting but that didn’t for me function as a satisfying story on its own.  (For example, it was a mistake, in my opinion, not to tell us the backstory between Ethan and the villainous Gabriel, and the mysterious death of a woman in Ethan’s past.  It was also a mistake to kill off Ilsa and try to just swap another woman — as wonderful as Hayley Atwell is!! — into the team five minutes later.)  Still, despite its flaws, Tom Cruise remains magnetic on screen and the whole ensemble is a hoot to follow along on this adventure.  And those stunts… wow.  The film’s promotion centered on the stunt of Tom Cruise riding a motorcycle off of a towering cliff, and that was incredible… but it was nothing compared to the escalating craziness in the runaway train sequence that ended the film.  Just amazing.  I really hope Part Two can stick the landing and pull together the story and character threads in a way that brings this epic (and Tom Cruise’s time in the role?) to a satisfying conclusion.  (Click here for my full review.)

C’mon back tomorrow for part two of my list!  (And hopefully a few more films the general audience has actually heard of!)  Thanks for reading!!

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