Top 20 Films Of 2023 (Part 2: 10-1)
Part 2 and the Top 10 start now
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10: Talk To Me
Ever since The Babadook in 2014, my pretentious ass has come to love allegorical horror. Incidentally, I’ve also come to love Australis horror and Talk To Me delivered on both counts. The allegory this time is drug abuse and it plays into that brilliant, in both the rush of adrenaline that keeps you coming for me and the self-destruction that comes from doing too much. It’s honestly chilling, already a solid ghost story but the addition of addiction, Sophie Wilde’s manic, twitchy lead performance and an ending that hits you wrong in the best way all come together to create something amazing. Knowing there’s already more to come has made this franchise one I’m going to keep a close eye on.
9: Nimona
I saw Nimona quite late in the year, and before I did, I was worried that my usual space for an animated film in the top 10 wouldn’t get filled this year. Thankfully I did decide to check it out and I’m so glad I did, this is something truly special. On the surface it’s an utterly chaotic romp through medieval futurism with a pace so quick that the main plot and characters have been set up perfectly within the first 20 minutes. But then you see beyond that, you see the trans allegory, the story about having to hide your true self for fear of what ‘Normal’ people will think of you, and the emotional toil it takes on you. Christ there’s themes of suicide that are some of the most heartbreaking you’ll seen in an animated film. It’s about the importance of acceptance and the dangers of puritan beliefs, designed to hurt one but caring not if they hurt 100, the whole thing is one of the most enjoyable and beautifully crafted films I’ve ever seen and absolutely deserves to be 2023’s best animated feature.
8: Guardian Of The Galaxy Vol. 3
The film we almost never got turned out to be the film Marvel desperately needed. As an MCU apologist, even I have to admit their outings lately have been more quantity than quality but the Guardians always had the air of hope that with Gunn back in the driver’s seat, the trilogy would end strong. But it didn’t just end strong, it ended even stronger than anyone could’ve imagined, The Guardians have never been afraid to get super serious amongst the mad-cap fun, but Vol 3 is absolutely traumatising in the best way. Tying in Rocket’s backstory and his time with The High Evolutionary – a villain so sadistically evil he’s actually worse than the genocidal Thanos – with the Guardian’s struggle to find their place in a world that moved on without them for 5 years is utterly genius and proof that nobody can twist genres together like James Gunn. One moment I’m cackling at a goat child being smacked in the face with a ball, the next I’m horrified by the sickening body horror displayed on screen. If Vol. 3 is to be the Guardian’s final flight, then they flew higher than they ever had before with what might be the best trilogy the MCU has to offer, certainly the best one to include a fucking phenomenal fight scene set to The Beastie Boys, that scene alone is worth the price of admission.
7: The Iron Claw
Fucking Zac Efron made me cry. On my bingo list of things to happen in 2023 that was not on there but goddamn this film got to me, and I’m not a crier so you know that shit is emotionally fucking devastating. The crying does give this a few bonus points in the ranking just for giving me an emotional response but the rest of the film is fantastic, this is a harsh gut-punch of a film, slowly building up the toxic influences of a father who never got his shot and living vicariously through his sons, forcing them to be the best then forcing them some more until they finally break and the results are devastating. Even still, director Sean Durkin never makes it feel exploitative, this is an examination of one family and how things turned out so badly for them – apparently the true story is even sadder – but it’s also a celebration of brotherhood and the strength of loved ones, as cathartic as it is heartbreaking and one of the best challenges to masculinity we’ve had in years. Just make sure you’re emotionally prepared for what’s to come.
6: Past Lives
If The Iron Claw goes heavy on the emotions then Past Lives plays them softly and subtly, because let’s be honest, emotions are complicated things and people are complicated being and for as simple as Past Lives might sound, it captures the complexities of humans better than anything I’ve seen in ages. At it’s core this is a love triangle where one side of the triangle doesn’t exists except in hypotheticals, we all know that nothing’s going to happen, the characters know nothing’s going to happen, the fact that there is a connection doesn’t diminish what main character Nora has with her husband Arthur but it also doesn’t negate what she has with former best friend Hae. Nora is allowed to wonder what might have been, Arthur is allowed to feel jealous that his wife is close both emotionally and culturally with another man and Hae is allowed to feel sad that he missed his chance with Nora. No-one in this film is the villain, the tension comes from a soft-hearted ‘What ifs’ and that is the most human thing of them all.
5: Oppenheimer
Say what you want about Nolan, the man knows how to entertain, who else could make a 3 hour talky biopic fly by? But he does and Oppenheimer is incredible as a result, from it’s examination of the Father Of The Atomic Bomb and how he and his team worked tirelessly to create something they didn’t even know they could, to the smear campaign fuelled by McCarthyism and The Red Scare to take any tiny piece of evidence they had and shit all over the man who won America The War. It’s an immense film, covering several decades, timelines, plot threads and more A-List actors in bit parts than a fucking Wes Anderson film, but Nolan somehow keeps it all coherent, all entertaining and all brilliant to witness, hell the sound design alone is among the best of Nolan’s career with my IMAX viewing literally shaking the chair. And of course, the dual leads of Murphy and Downey Jr are front-runners for the Oscars for good reason, both serve similar purposes to see these men fall in tragically spectacular fashions and both portray their roles with anxiety, dread, spit and vindictiveness, to see one man would’ve been enough but both of them together – RDJ especially for his role in the third act – makes an already great film even better.
4: Evil Dead Rise
Evil Dead Rise is fucking gnarly. That’s it. That’s the post. Alright I’ll discuss it a little more, for a 40 year old franchise to never have a bad entry is an impressive feat, even more so when you realise that Rise is the first to go Ash-less and Cabin-less and still makes a play for one of the series best. Its setting inside an apartment building brings in a new element of claustrophobia, it’s gore work is outstanding and befitting of both the chilling tone of the 2013 reboot and the manic energy of the original trilogy, striking a perfect blend of the two, and it’s twin lead sisters Beth and Ellie both take to the insanity with gusto and badassey. It’s also fucking mean in how easily it picks off its main cast, they did not hold back for this one and I loved every blood drenched moment of it, sometimes I don’t to choose between scary horror and fun horror, sometimes I want both and Evil Dead has never failed me on that part.
3: Killers Of The Flower Moon
Once you see past the 3 and a half hour runtime, Killers of The Flower Moon is an exceptional piece of cinema, proving that Scorsese still has the power to pull a masterpiece out of his hat whenever he likes. This is an ugly tale of greed and bigotry, made even uglier with the knowledge that it really happened, that rich men tried to get richer by systematically murdering Osage tribe members and telling the survivors how sorry they were for the loss. It’s evil so blasé, so banal that it’s actually made worse but how little guilt anyone involved shows for what crimes they have committed, because for some victims, there’s no such thing as justice. Scorsese masterfully takes on a story that even he admits should’ve been told by someone else, through the relationship between DiCaprio’s thickheaded thug Ernest, Gladstone’s strong but suffering heart Moillie and De Niro’s Machiavellian William Hale we see another awful story of American history be brushed aside and finally brought into the light. We can argue if it was right for a white man to tell an Osage story forever, but Scorsese shone a light onto this forgotten tale of weaponised evil and it’s a light bright enough for all to see.
2: John Wick Chapter 4
You guys have no idea how close this came to being Number 1. I saw this film is March and it wasn’t until December until I found something that beat it. But it makes the number two spot and for good reason, it’s fucking awesome, probably the best in the series and one of the best action films since The Raid 2. There is a feeling of finality with Chapter 4, even from the start you feel Reeves showing fatigue and exhaustion as Wick faces yet another Sisyphean task and from the word Go it is relentless, a small war in a Japanese hotel, an all out brawl in a Berlin nightclub, a goddamn Horde Mode in the third act which build and build and builds and builds, never letting you or John take a breath for close to an hour. That in itself is a goddamn masterclass of action and tension but add in The Greatest Goddamn Action One-Take since Oldboy’s hallway scene, a scene lifted straight out of Hotline Miami with some many technical parts and choreography and it’s a wonder how it’s pulled off so well. But why Chapter 4 is so high on the list is for how good it is, outside of the action, Bill Skarsgard is a colossal prick as the main villain, Shamier Anderson brings a lot of moral greyness into how he interacts with John, and Donnie Yates’ blind badass Caine comes into his first film of this franchise and absolutely nails his history with John, making their scenes together suitably tragic as both of them unwilling march to an inevitability that neither of them wants. John Wick was always a great action series, but Chapter 4 delivered in ways I wasn’t even expecting it to.
1: Godzilla: Minus 1
I cannot stress enough how caught off-guard I was by Godzilla: Minus 1. I went in expecting monster smashing action, but I came out with a powerful story of trauma, guilt and the power of hope. As much as I’ve enjoyed the Legendary Monsterverse films as popcorn blockbusters, seeing Godzilla back on home turf as not only a villain again, but a near deity to nuclear devastation was almost frightening at times. Even when he’s not on screen, you can feel his presence while you watch protagonist Kochi fight survivor’s guilt and his own fear that he doesn’t deserve a happy ending with his makeshift family unit. Nowhere else have I seen a Godzilla film tackle the human story this well, Kochi’s struggle to accept his redemption makes your heart warm to Noriko and Akiko and makes Godzilla’s destructive return all the more harrowing for what it means for Kochi and for Japan as a whole. While at the same time, the sheer atomic power of Godzilla’s wanton chaos makes the fight against him, the comradery and bravery shown by the few who had just survived nuclear Armageddon and were now aiming to face it again in the form of an indestructible monster all the more heroic and heart soaring to witness. From it’s jaw-dropping SFX work – just watch Godzilla’s atomic breath scene, it is breathtaking – to it’s hyped as fuck soundtrack, to it’s wonderfully realised characters and their different traumas to W.W.2 and the rise of Monsters to it’s perfectly balances story of guilt, redemption, hope and kaiju terror, everything about Godzilla: Minus 1 works and all of it comes together to create The Best Film of 2023.