20 Best Movies of 2023

It’s tough to sell a decades-old doll and actively make you question why you’d still buy a toy that comes with so much baggage. (Metaphorically speaking, of course — literal baggage sold separately.) Filmmaker Greta Gerwig knew this going in to this big-screen take on the pinkest of I.P.s. So did her cowriter Noah Baumbach, producer and star Margot Robbie, the Ken-for-all-seasons Ryan Gosling, and everyone else involved with what, you’d assumed, would have been a feature-length commercial. Such tongue-in-cheek self-awareness still does not prepare you for what turns out to be a saga of self-realization, filtered through both the spirit of free play and the sense that it’s not all fun and games in the real world — a doll’s story that continually drifts into the territory of A Doll’s House. Rather than turn away from the baggage, Gerwig & co. unpack it, while still delivering a deliriously big, broad, mega-box office bonanza. Our minds are still reeling. Behold, the most subversive blockbuster of the 21st century. Read the full review here.

You more or less pray that a directorial debut like the one from poet-turned-filmmaker Raven Jackson comes along every so often — the sort of out-of-the-gate announcement of a new talent that makes you feel like you’ve just been hit and hugged at the exact same time. Both a free-form look at a young Black woman (played by Kaylee Nicole Johnson as a child and Charleen McClure as a twentysomething) growing up in a Mississippi town circa the early 1970s and a tribute to the strong female figures that helped shape Jackson’s perspective, this coming-of-age story announces right from the start that you are not just watching a movie. You’re experiencing an immersive portrait of a life and a landscape intertwined, and one in which its creator’s voice retains its power as its translates from words on a page to sound and vision on a screen. Read the full review here.

It’s the “perfect” crime: A bank employee (Daniel Elías) steals a duffel bag’s worth of money from his job. He then asks a co-worker (Esteban Bigliardi) to hold on to it. His plan is to turn himself in, do a brief prison sentence, retrieve the cash, and then happily retire. After all, isn’t that better than working a soul-crushing gig for the next 25 years for the exact same payoff? His friend reluctantly agrees. Eventually, he stashes the loot deep in the countryside. And what happens after that turns Argentine writer-director Rodrigo Moreno’s debut feature into something way more thought-provoking, playful, and philosophical than your average heist movie. Does one live to work or work to live? What is your freedom worth to you? And where can I find a vinyl copy of the soundtrack, featuring the kick-ass Seventies South American rock band Pappo’s Blues? Read the full review here.

Filmmaker Justine Triet drops us into a mystery involving a German writer (Sandra Hüller, having a very good year — see also The Zone of Interest), a remote house in the French Alps, and a corpse. The dead man is her husband (Samuel Theis). The main suspect is the author herself. Whether her spouse fell or was pushed from the top floor of their dwelling becomes a matter for the courts to decide, at which point we begin to find out more and more about the couple’s highly mercurial history. A colleague described this as “Marriage Story but as a thriller,” which tracks — especially once an audio recording of an argument turns into a scathing, screaming, take-no-prisoners set piece. Bonus points for the most passive-aggressive use of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P” ever. Read the full review here.

A shy, withdrawn 12-year-old girl (Catherine Clinch) is sent to live with an older couple (Carrie Crawley and Andrew Bennett) on a farm for the summer. Her parents are neglectful at best and borderline abusive at worst; it takes a while for this lass to open up to these new guardians. Her caretakers have a tragedy in their past as well, and there’s a sense that the three of them need each other more than words can communicate. Director Colm Bairéad’s beautiful yet devastating story of the need for nurturing swept Ireland’s version of the Oscars last year, and it’s a great reminder that when you have a performer as emotionally open and expressive as Clinch, silence can indeed speak volumes. Rarely has a movie been this graceful in breaking your heart in two. Read the full review here.

In which Kelly Reichardt shows you why word work is a key part of “artwork.” Longtime collaborator/muse Michelle Williams is a Portland-based sculptor desperately trying to finish some final pieces for an upcoming gallery exhibit; everything from a wounded bird to her flighty landlord (Hong Chau, killing it as usual) seems to be conspiring against her, however. It’s a character study that, like so many of Reichardt’s best films (Old Joy, Wendy & Lucy, First Cow), makes you revise your opinion of the people at the center of these funky, oft-kilter portraits of off-balance lives. And it’s also a bone-dry comedy about the ways that the constant piling up of quotidian bullshit can send someone into a slow-burn meltdown. But it’s first and foremost a testimony not only to the labor involved in being creative but to those genuine artists — like Reichardt and Williams — who can make something this deep and complicated seem like the most naturally, casually brilliant masterwork around. Read the full review here.

Or: Frankenstein, but make it funnier, racier, and more feminist. Yorgos Lanthimos’ take on the Prometheus myth imagines a young woman named Bella Baxter — take a bow, Emma Stone — who’s resurrected from the dead by Willem Dafoe’s scarred scientist. Given the brain of a baby, Bella is forced to relearn everything from speaking to social graces. Then she discovers the joys of sex, and what follows is both a harsh education and well-earned empowerment. Reteaming with The Favourite screenwriter Tony McNamara, Lanthimos and his star gin up a throwback comedy of manners that revolves around a particularly repressive era’s attitudes toward women. The fairer sex may be married, imprisoned, fetishized, objectified, forced into motherhood, and treated like property. But they mustn’t feel physical pleasure. That way lies madness… for men. And thanks to Stone, we watch as the fallen angel stands up, dusts herself off and spreads her wings wide on her own sexed-up, pro-science terms. We’re all the richer for it.

Yes, the word “masterpiece” is overused a lot. But what else can you call a work that finds our greatest living American filmmaker Martin Scorsese turning a sprawling, three-and-a-half-hour drama involving power, corruption and our nation’s toxic past into an intimate story, without sacrificing its depth or scope? Less a straight adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller than a complement to it, this throwback drama about a murder epidemic in the oil-rich Osage Nation circa the early 1920s narrows its focus on the love story between Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his wife Mollie (the extraordinary Lily Gladstone). She’s watched her mother and sisters perish via both a mysterious “wasting illness” and outright murder; the fear is that her husband and his big-shot uncle (Robert De Niro) are after her family’s wealth and land rights, and she’s next. It’s the closest thing Scorsese has made to a Western, and the extra emphasis on the clash between Jazz Age modernity and traditional Osage culture — as well as the threat of 20th century white supremacy — makes this a partial corrective to decades of movie mythology. Stunning, on every level. Read our full review here.

Jonathan Glazer‘s take on Martin Amis’s 2014 novel is a portrait of hell from the periphery. An S.S. officer (Christian Friedel) and his family live in the housing area surrounding Auschwitz; they throw pool parties and take afternoon tea with friends while chimneys belch black smoke in the distance. Glazer strips away the imagery we now associate with Holocaust dramas and puts his high-formalism style to perfect use, presenting an absolutely chilling look at how normalization works — at some point, you simply stop hearing the barking dogs, gunshots, and human suffering happening right outside your own backyard. This is what the banality around the banality of evil looks like. And Sandra Hüller, playing the officer’s raging wife, once again convinces you that she’s one of the most fearless international actors working today.

Once upon a time in Seoul, two kids — Na Young and Hae Sung — were the best of friends. Then her family immigrated to Canada, so whatever mutual childhood crush they harbored for each other is cut short. Years later, the now-grown Na Young (Greta Lee), who goes by Nora, reconnects with Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) over social media. She lives in New York. He’s still in South Korea. Eventually, communication stops. Life goes on. Nora gets married to a fellow writer (John Magaro). And then Hae finally makes good on his promise to come visit America. She offers to play tour guide. Every sightseeing excursion and catch-up exchange feels loaded. The feelings haven’t gone away. Neither of them know what’s going to happen next.A playwright with a genuine feel for nuance and crafting characters so achingly real and recognizable that you feel like you’ve known them forever, writer-director Celine Song has a talent for letting things be left unsaid, and letting this central trio express themselves through unfinished sentences, casual asides, and glances; every hesitation and pause suggest short stories unto themselves. And with her first movie (drawn from her own autobiographical experiences), she already proves she can make the sort of intimate, character-driven romantic drama that never overplays its hand yet will gladly lubricate your tear ducts. It also makes you realize that Lee has been chronically underused as an actor — she’s never been given a chance like this to display her chops before, and takes full advantage of exploring this very complicated woman’s conflicted feelings. Most importantly, Past Lives takes what appears to be a simple story of unrequited love and gives it the depth, the feeling, and the emotional scope of something that feels so much larger than just a film. When we first saw this minor-key masterpiece back in January, we felt like we’d already seen the best movie of the year. All these months later, that feeling still remains. Read our full review here.