My Top 25 Films of 2023 (and the 5 worst)
An Oscars tradition unlike any other
The Academy Awards are tonight! I know, most of you could not care less, but I will be watching. Because I love movies, and I watch far too many movies, and I have far too many opinions about said movies. So, at this time every year, I rank my top movies of the previous year. It’s a tradition unlike any other.
As of this date, I have watched 68 films that were released in 2023. Some, I loved. A few, I hated. Most of them were, you know, pretty alright! Anyway, without further ado, here are my top 25 films of 2023, ranked:
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Holdovers
Oppenheimer
Asteroid City
Past Lives
Anatomy of a Fall
Perfect Days
The Killer
Saltburn
Poor Things
BlackBerry
Godzilla Minus One
American Fiction
Barbie
The Iron Claw
Four Daughters
Maestro
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
The Zone of Interest
20 Days in Mariupol
Air
Society of the Snow
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The Covenant
Creed III
One caveat: Wes Anderson’s short film, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, would have made my top five, but I limited this ranking to feature-length films only.
Just missing the list were a group of movies that I really liked! The Eternal Memory, Dumb Money, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and The Boy and the Heron.
And now, at the other end of the rankings, the five worst. The worst movie I saw in 2023 was Five Nights at Freddy’s; wow, was that a miserable couple of hours of my life that I will never get back. Rounding out the rest of the worst five are Shazam! Fury of the Gods, Theater Camp, 65, and Beau Is Afraid.
Okay, thanks for indulging me. Let me know how wrong I am! Now I can begin compiling my list for this year. In the meantime, I’m hanging out at Letterboxd, you know, if that’s your kind of thing.