Jason’s Top 10 Films of 2023

10 May December

In order to describe just how well May December works as a film, I’d like to discuss a few of the final scenes in the movie. Spoilers. There is a scene near the end of the picture, in which Natalie Portman’s Elizabeth has sex with Charles Melton’s Joe. She lures him into the situation,  and the scene itself is reflective of how earlier in the film she describes the mechanics of filming sex scenes. To her, intercourse with Joe is just a means to understanding Julianne Moore’s Gracie better.  

Following this scene, before going to bed Joe takes a long shameful shower. Unlike a scene much earlier in the film where Gracie complains of him bringing the smells of their cookout to bed with them, this time Joe is much more self-aware about not bringing the day’s smells to bed. These two scenes… that’s good writing! 

Immediately following the shower scene, we get a scene between Gracie and Joe where they finally unpack their problematic relationship. For the first time, Joe is beginning to understand that he was too young to make the decisions he was making. Gracie immediately places the burden on him, claiming he was the one to initiate their relationship, not vice versa. Moore is masterful here as to be expected, as she manipulates the situation, and Charles Melton is a revelation, capturing the naivety that Joe never got to grow out of. 

The next scene sees Natalie Portman delivering an incredible monologue to the camera, playing  Elizabeth playing Gracie, reading a personal letter that finally gives her the confidence and insight to capture Gracie’s essence for a part in a movie. Portman is performing on so many levels, and nailing it on all of them. These two scenes… that’s good acting! 

9 Oppenheimer

When I sat down to watch Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer for the first time… I hated it. I got through the first half of the movie, and couldn’t stand it at all. It moves at a breakneck speed,  hopping in and out of order, while drowning out any nuance in the acting and dialogue with Ludwig Goransson’s admittedly wonderful score. The first forty minutes of the film lack any thesis on the project as a whole, and by the time Oppenheimer’s mistress is killed offscreen at the halfway point I was out.  

After a lively discussion with my brother who loved the film, and a few days break from it, when I sat back down for the second half of the feature… I loved it. The scene just beyond the halfway point acted as the needed thesis for the project when Oppenheimer and other officials discussed the cities that would be the targets for the atomic bomb. The actors are given some uninterrupted time to finally bring these performances to life and to bring the message of the film to the forefront. That of the moral qualms of the scientists who worked on this project coming into opposition with the United States’ military policies. In short, can you be loyal to your country while disagreeing with some of the heinous acts it’s committed?  

Christopher Nolan’s direction in the film is at its finest when showing the internal struggle of Oppenheimer, and Cillian Murphy does some of the best acting of his career when the camera frames the emotion in his eyes. Just chop off that first forty minutes and you got a pretty fantastic film. 

8 The Boy and the Heron

Studio Ghibli’s film, How Do You Live? was released in Japan with a very mysterious marketing strategy. The only bits of information revealed to the public were a poster, a release date, and the name of its director. Renowned filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki. When I heard about the way it was released in Japan, I decided I would stay away from learning as much about this film as possible. Released in the West as The Boy and the Heron, the picture is undoubtedly one of the year’s best. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to go in as blindly as I did.  If you have seen it, or you’re just not as nuts as I am, well… 

The Boy and the Heron is Miyazaki’s coming out of retirement project. At 82 years of age, Miyazaki continues to have a voice in animation that has been unable to be replicated. Even by his own son. It is a wonder getting to step back into this visionary’s imagination one more time. Much more fantastical than the biographical The Wind Rises, this is perhaps the first time since 2004’s Howl’s Moving Castle that we’ve had a story like this from him. Our main character is 12-year-old Mahito, who is coping with the loss of his mother. Via an invitation from a grey heron, Mahito enters an alternate world hoping to find her and bring her home. The film struck a particular cord with me, as Mahito comes to accept that his new stepmother is the mother he needs now.  

The film explores many themes and is perhaps much more ambiguous in its storytelling than you’d expect. And despite some logical inconsistencies that occur, I think this approach largely works in this film’s favor. The project also takes its time getting to its more otherworldly aspects, but the animation is flawlessly gorgeous even in its slower-paced moments. The scene of Mahito’s mother’s death in particular is devastatingly spectacular. The film even balances its use of 3D work surprisingly well. I don’t know how many more coming out of retirements Hayao Miyazaki has left but for as long as we still have him, I am going to savor each one of these magical films.

7 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

In my opinion, the MCU has always been at its best when Kevin Feige has allowed a director to execute his vision within the reality of this greater universe. Iron Man 3 is distinctly a Shane Black film. Thor: Ragnarok has the same unique sense of humor as any of Taika Waititi’s movies. And Guardians of the Galaxy is uniquely James Gunn through and through.  

At a time when the MCU seems to be drowning under its own weight, Guardians Vol. 3 is one last gasp of fresh air. Gunn wraps up his trilogy by giving each of his characters the closing arcs that they deserve. He even expertly weaves in this new version of Gamora which clashed with his original vision for the franchise. But you would never guess as much, as her inclusion contextualizes the series’ greater message of found family in new ways. That said this is ultimately Rocket’s story, and it appropriately makes the viewer empathize with who has been the most closed book of the team up until this point. 

At a time when superhero fatigue has been a real thing, Vol. 3 is one of the most imaginative studio vehicles of the year. The art design in this corner of the galaxy is unrivaled and I think it’s that aspect that I will miss most about this series. James Gunn was never afraid to do things you’ve never seen before in a Hollywood blockbuster. And Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is a fitting goodbye to his unmatched vision.

6 Killers of the Flower Moon

If I had to come up with one word to describe Martin Scorcese’s Killers of the Flower Moon,  that word would be unabashed. The runtime is nearly three and a half hours, and while I  certainly felt that you could trim this down into a much tighter package, Scorcese seems unconcerned with length. He and editor Thelma Schoonmaker let shots and scenes play out for as long as they need.  

Scorcese also seems uninterested in tension or thrills. There is no sense that Robert DeNiro’s William King Hale and his co-conspirators might not succeed in their task. There is no sense of that they may be found out, up until they are. Instead, you just get the growing sense that the Osage are a doomed people, as these heinous acts play themselves out. The film is very clinical in portraying the very real tragedy of this tribe. 

At the center of the tragedy are Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone’s Ernest and Molly Burkhart. These two are the heart of the film, and both actors are captivating in each scene they’re in. I appreciated how the deception didn’t run to the core of their marriage, Ernest truly loves his wife despite inflicting so much misery onto her. That misery is palpable, as Gladstone steals each scene she’s in. 

At this point in his career, Martin Scorcese can really do whatever he wants. In Killers of the  Flower Moon, he’s not out to thrill and entertain like he did with Wolf of Wall Street, even if his direction is still a total delight in Killers. No, I get the sense that he really just wanted to tell this story, to give it the time and tone it needed despite what you the viewer may have preferred.  And if you give up control and get on board with that, you’ll find Killers of the Flower Moon unabashedly great.

5 The Killer

I’ve come away with two different reads on David Fincher’s new film, The Killer. The first is that Michael Fassbender’s meticulous hitman protagonist makes his first real mistake, and that begats a series of misfortunate events in which he loses more and more control of the situation. The second reading, which is much more bizarre, is that he was never any good at his job, despite his inane rambling inner monologue insisting otherwise.  

I have come to prefer the second reading. 

This makes the film a delightfully dark comedy, as under this impression you realize that this guy is basically stumbling from situation to situation somehow coming through by the skin of his teeth. The climax of this concept is when he is jumped from behind while telling himself to anticipate the unexpected, and he gets the absolute crap kicked out of him. The Killer is not an action movie by any stretch, but this scene is so unexpectedly violent and visceral, and the fact that it’s played straight somehow makes it funnier. 

But as funny as the film is, it’s not a parody, it’s not satire, it’s still played just as straight as any David Fincher thriller. Which means it’s gorgeously framed, lit, and shot. And the few performances in the film that get a chance to shine, do. There is one scene in which our protagonist sits down across from Tilda Swinton’s character. This scene is electric, and it’s one of the best singly performed exchanges I’ve witnessed all year. Swinton is not much more than a cameo here, but she makes a meal of the role… I’m realizing now after writing that sentence that I’ve made a pun… because her scene is set in a restaurant…

I find The Killer to be a fascinating new step in David Fincher’s filmography. He is self-aware enough to know that the viewer has an idea of what a David Fincher movie is. And because of that, The Killer has the opportunity to play with your expectations and do something so bizarrely different as to make a fool out of its protagonist. Personally, it makes me excited to see what David Fincher at this stage of his career does next. 

4 Suzume

Suzume is the first Makoto Shinkai film that I have had the opportunity to see in theaters and I’m so thankful I did. The animation work of the director of Your Name and Weathering with You has been unrivaled in the anime industry. He doesn’t have the best-looking characters or the most fluid movement. But his backgrounds and world design feel fleshed out in a way that few others have come close to replicating. Getting to see those worlds blown up on the big screen was half the experience of Suzume. 

The other half was a bit trite in terms of Shinkai-isms. Yes, there is a young romance, yes there is a fantasy component, and yes there is a natural disaster threatening Japan. However, while the film reuses some of these same elements from Shinkai’s other works, it executes them so well that I was caught up in the magic of it all. The story this time sees young heroine Suzume on a quest across the country to seal magical doors that threaten to unleash an earthquake-causing monstrosity, all the while accompanied by a talking cat and a boy who has been transformed into a chair. 

The allusions in the plot to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami are hard to miss if you are at all familiar with the real-world tragedy. While the film avoids being outright explicit in its references to the disaster, it treats the sensitive topic with utmost respect. Shinkai and the movie itself seem to grieve for the 20,000 lives lost while trying to remind those affected to remember the ones they loved. It is a heartbreaking and triumphant tale that reminds those left behind that there is still a tomorrow.  

Also once again, Radwimps returns to pump out another glorious score. The title track made its way onto my Spotify wrapped, it’s just transfixing. On the surface, this seems like just another Shinkai project, exploring the same themes and ideas. But no other film this year has burrowed its way into my mind and heart like Suzume.

3 The Iron Claw

The Iron Claw is not a wrestling movie. I would consider Darren Aronosky’s The Wrestler a wrestling movie. Fighting with My Family is certainly a wrestling movie. The Iron Claw is a tragedy about a family, whose business just so happens to be that of wrestling. And what a tragedy it is, the film adapting the real-life story of the Von Erichs.  

Each member of the family is grounded by a stellar performance. Character actor Holt  McCallany plays the patriarch of the family Fritz, who is less the abusive father often characterized in movies of this ilk and more Captain Ahab, obsessed with his life’s one driving goal, even at the cost of everything else. Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, and Stanley Simons each do an admirable job as siblings Kerry, David, and Mike respectively. But ultimately this is Zac Efron’s movie, and he accomplishes the incredible feat of carrying this film. It is a career-defining and transformative performance that will change the way you look at him as an actor.  

As the weight of tragedy escalates throughout the film, director Sean Durkin places you in the shoes (or rather boots) of Efron’s Kevin Von Erich, until like him you finally break under the weight of all the suffering. This is Durkin’s main achievement as a director, but he also does a good job of capturing the feeling of being in this time in this place during this family’s successes and failures. The Iron Claw makes you feel every bump.

2 Past Lives

Past Lives is an anti-romance movie. It is the story of a love that never was between two people a world apart. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo play Nora and Hae Sung, two childhood friends who are separated when Nora’s family immigrates to North America. The two reconnect once briefly as young adults, and then again years later when Hae Sung comes to New York to visit after breaking up with his longtime girlfriend. Nora is married to John Magaro’s Arthur, and these three actors bring to life this heartbreaking tale of awkward longing.

Past Lives comes from first-time director Celine Song, a playwright whose experiences are the basis for the story of the film. It is an inspired directorial debut and Song utilizes the work of award-winning cinematographer Shabier Kirchner. Kirchner frames the worlds of Past Lives from a very human perspective, giving the locations a sense of unique place and scale as Hae Sung has come to New York under the guise of tourism. 

The two relationships in the picture are portrayed with ample amounts of chemistry. Even when Nora and Hae Sung largely communicate through Skype in the earlier scenes of the movie,  their chemistry is palpable through the screen thanks to the performances of these leads. And the intimate moments that Nora and her husband share in the latter half of the film feel wholly believable. Even the interactions between Arthur and Hae Sung are handled brilliantly, as the few times they communicate come across as rightfully awkward, and yet they seem to come to understand each other. 

I typically hate stories like this, and the melodrama that accompanies the trope of a married woman reconnecting with an old flame. But writer/director Song avoids taking the easy out of vilifying any of these characters. Past Lives is a heartbreaking story and one that will stick with you well after Nora’s long walk back to the front door of her apartment.

1 Godzilla Minus One

This was the biggest surprise of the year, hands down. Where did this come from?? Minus One works magnificently as a character study on the horrors of war, the trauma of survivor’s guilt, and the importance of found family. It immediately dealt with the moral dilemmas of WWII in all the ways I wanted from the first half of Oppenheimer. And it’s all grounded in heart-wrenching performances and dazzling cinematography. The scenes of suffering that the picture portrays are often bone-chilling. It is a perfect war film…  

-also, did you know Godzilla’s in this?!?!  

You’ve probably heard everyone praise the film’s pragmatic budget of $15 million, but don’t let that undercut how well the effects were pulled off here. The King of Monsters has never felt so real, nor so terrifying. When he wanders into Tokyo for the first time, the filmmakers do an incredible job of presenting the usual franchise tropes in spellbinding new ways. The soundtrack as he wreaks havoc invokes pure dread. The first time he uses the atomic breath is pardon the pun, breathtaking. This isn’t a fun kaiju movie. It’s a movie on the horrors of war told via a Lovecraftian nightmare from beneath our ocean. 

I am not a Godzilla fan, so if you told me this would have made my list I wouldn’t have believed you. So you can take me at my word… it’s the best thing on my list.