The 23 Best films of 2023

For the first time in a while, keeping my list of favourite films of a given year at a reasonable number was tough. When I can't find room for bold, entertaining works like Poor Things, Godzilla Minus One, and The Killer, you know it's been a good year. And so it's the twenty-three best films of '23. 

23. They Cloned Tyrone

A canny melding of blaxploitation and sci-fi tropes, the wickedly fun They Cloned Tyrone goes down smooth thanks to a trio of terrific performances by John Boyega, Teyonah Parris, and Jamie Foxx. To reveal too much of what it's about would spoil the fun. 

22. The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

I thought I might finally be over Wes Anderson after the stultifying The French Dispatch, but thankfully he came back with a vengeance in 2023 with not one but two great efforts (plus sundry short-short films). The feature-length Asteroid City was damn fine, but I personally preferred his forty-minute adaptation of a classic Roald Dahl story. Almost an audiobook reading of the story with visual accompaniment, so faithful to the original short it is, The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is a synergistic meeting of two great talents (only one of whom is an anti-Semite, I think).

21. May December

A sensational Julianne Moore positively devours the screen in Todd Haynes' (mostly) fictional spin on the Mary Kay Letourneau/Vili Fualaau story. Natalie Portman portrays an actress doing research in order to play Moore's wife/mother/convicted sex offender in a movie based on her "affair" with a teen boy (now an adult played by an excellent Charles Melton). Often intentionally campy, May December walks a wobbly tightrope with remarkable success, though the real Fualaau's revealing that the filmmakers never reached out to him leaves a somewhat sour aftertaste. Nonetheless, an effective piece of candy laced with strychnine. HOT DOGS. 

20. M3GAN

The year's nicest surprise came early with 2023's first wide release, a goddamn delightful piece of knowing nonsense about a robot doll gone mad. A combination of genuine frights and abject silliness the likes of which we've seen rarely since Gremlins.

19. Air

"Product biopics" became an oddly hot subgenre in 2023, but none was better than Ben Affleck's rollicking tale of how Nike signed a young Michael Jordan and changed the game. Matt Damon is rock solid as Sonny Vaccaro, the marketing exec who believed in Jordan almost as much as his mother Deloris (a typically commanding Viola Davis), and is joined by a murderer's row of acting talent—none better than Affleck himself, a supremely underrated comic performer who makes nothing but perfect choices as Nike founder Phil Knight. Maybe one or two fewer on-the-nose "wow, the eighties, right?" needle drops whenever they do the story of how Puma signed Ralph Sampson or whatever, though. 

18. Albert Brooks: Defending My Life

It's been a long time since the once-great Rob Reiner made a film worth a damn, but it turns out that all he needed to do to regain form was get his best friend Albert Brooks to talk about his life and career a little bit. Defending My Life is a pretty straightforward retrospective documentary, but when said retrospective concerns one of the most remarkable comic minds of all time, that's more than enough, especially since the bulk of his classic material remains as hilarious as ever. 

17. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One

Do I even need to say anything about a new Mission: Impossible movie? One of the great action franchises rarely misses, especially in the capable hands of returning director Christopher McQuarrie. The plot is some nonsense about an evil artificial intelligence or something, but we're here to see Tom Cruise dramatically jump off things and land on other things, and jump off shit he does. Delightful newcomers Hayley Atwell and Pom Klementieff keep things humming despite the lengthy running time. 

16. The Zone of Interest

Certainly a movie to admire rather than actually enjoy, Jonathan Glazer's film—only his fourth in twenty-three years—is like staring the banality of evil dead in the eye for 105 minutes. A (very) loose adaptation of the late, great Martin Amis's novel, The Zone of Interest depicts the horrors of Auschwitz not via graphic recreation but by showing the bucolic existence of the family of real camp commandant Rudolf Höss just outside the gates of hell itself. As Höss's wife hosts tea parties and shows off her lush garden, the viewer is quietly assaulted by the background sounds of gunshots, arriving trains, and industrially assisted death. A deeply disquieting, necessary watch. But probably only once. 

15. Anatomy of a Fall

A forensic examination of a French murder trial, Palme d'Or winner Anatomy of a Fall is the kind of wide-ranging, impeccably crafted tale that John Grisham fucking WISHES his feeble mind could dream up. Sandra Hüller (also in The Zone of Interest) is a German expat accused of pushing her French husband out a window at their remote house. Seeing all sides of the Gallic judicial system puts one completely off ever committing a crime in France. Shame. 

14. Priscilla

A necessary corrective to the lumbering yet frenetic Elvis, Priscilla is a typically deliberate, lush Sofia Coppola Joint concentrating on the, uh, iffy relationship between the titular teen and the oft-childlike superstar. Cailee Spaeny remarkably and convincingly plays Priscilla from ages fourteen to twenty-eight, opposite a towering Jacob Elordi as Elvis (much taller than the real man, knowingly exacerbating the imbalanced power dynamic between predator and prey). Yes, it's another Coppola film about a pretty person locked in a gilded cage, but goddamn she's good at it. 

13. Eileen

Another literary adaptation, William Oldroyd's big-screen version of Ottessa Moshfegh's novel is a grimy grunge-noir about Thomasin McKenzie's lonely juvie staffer who becomes enamoured with the facility's new psychologist, an impossibly glamourous (for 1960s Massachusetts, anyway) Anne Hathaway, who effortlessly proves again to be one of our best actors. A discomfiting melodrama that makes you want to scrub yourself afterwards. I mean that as a compliment. 

12. Ferrari

Michael Mann is unquestionably my favourite director, and while I might've preferred his first film in nearly a decade to involve many more stoic cops or criminals in silvery suits staring manfully at a twinkling skyline or striding purposefully across a runway, I'll take what I can get, especially when the result is as compelling as this. While obviously a real figure, Adam Driver's Enzo Ferrari is almost an archetypal Mann protagonist—steely, cold, brilliant, indifferent to the emotional needs of others if it gets in the way of his getting what he wants. Shailene Woodley is wobbly as Ferrari's mistress (and father of his second child), but Penelope Cruz burns up the screen as Enzo's business partner and wife Laura. Technically impeccable, of course, and thankfully thrilling enough to overlook the fact that a character unironically says "Wrong son died!"

11. Past Lives

Able to sit proudly beside Richard Linklater's masterpiece Before Sunset as an exquisite portrait of opportunities lost and roads not travelled, Celine Song's stunning debut is a delicate semi-romance about childhood friends Nora and Hae Sung's reuniting in the present. The kind of touching, low-key indie film that inspires the cutting of trailers featuring quotes like "An exquisite portrait of opportunities lost and roads not travelled! - Variety" and "Able to sit proudly beside Richard Linklater's masterpiece Before Sunset! - The Tallahassee Democrat". 

10. The Holdovers

The knock that Alexander Payne "hates" his characters has always felt a bit off base anyway, but it's unlikely any critic lobbed that epithet at this warm, funny comedy of misfits in and around a Massachusetts boarding school in the seventies. Young Dominic Sessa is perfect as a sullen student, and the immortal Paul Giamatti absolutely Giamattis it the fuck up as his grumpy teacher, but it's the wonderful Da'Vine Joy Randolph (who's quietly been doing nothing but killing it the past few years) who provides The Holdovers with its beating heart. A big hug of a movie, with nary a hint of Payne's trademark acidity to be found. 

9. Barbie

When I first learned that Greta Gerwig was up next in a long line of attempts to bring a live-action Barbie to the screen, my first thought was that there must be SOMETHING that compelled such an extraordinary talent to bother with such a seemingly vacant property. Nonetheless, I became a bit cynical when all and sundry proclaimed it a masterpiece and said anyone who dislikes it hates joy, meaning I took way too long to see it. Well, whaddya know—everyone was right. Barbie IS something of a pop masterpiece, a pure delight from beginning to end that smuggles in all sorts of surprisingly complex thoughts on feminism and this perfect doll's place within it. Ryan Gosling almost runs away with the film as a staggeringly funny Ken, but Margot Robbie is the necessary glue to pull this off, and she's every bit as likeable, wide-eyed, and capable as the film requires. Yup, it really is that good. 

8. American Fiction

The premise outlined in the trailer is a killer—snooty professor/novelist Thelonious "Monk" Ellison gets so enraged by the mostly white public's embrace of "street" novels with titles like We's Lives in da Ghetto that he spitefully bangs out a vicious parody of the type that he calls My Pafology (later retitled Fuck), only to see it become immensely popular. But that's just one aspect of this complex, incredibly sharp satire by first-time director Cord Jefferson (based on the book Erasure by Percival Everett). Big laughs abound (especially courtesy of a scene-stealing Sterling K. Brown), but it's the quieter moments that cut like a knife. 

7. Oppenheimer

Yes, yes, Barbenheimer. I went with Oppenheimer first, and I don't regret it. This extraordinary biopic takes nothing less than arguably the most important invention of the twentieth century and makes it sing courtesy of whipcrack editing (it's one of the shortest three-hour movies you'll see) and Christopher Nolan's intense familiarity with obsession. Cillian Murphy is a dead cert for the Most Haunted Eyes Oscar I just made up (but he'll probably lose to the Flash entering the Speed Force anyway). 

6. John Wick 4

Earlier I did not refer to Mission: Impossible as THE greatest action franchise because, well, motherfucking John Wick exists. The glorious end of the Keanu Reeves-led corner of what will supposedly become a wider cinematic universe, the absolutely goddamn gorgeous John Wick 4 is the most ruthlessly stripped-down 170-minute film I've ever seen. Reeves glides gazelle-like through another round of increasingly inventive action set pieces, Donnie Yen lends credibility and his eternal coolness, and the climax is the best darn homage to Walter Hill's The Warriors ever. See you in the next life, or whenever they decide to resurrect the character, John. I love you. 

5. Origin

As flawed, emotional, and vast as life itself (but not Life Itself), the master Ava DuVernay's first feature in five years adapts Pulitzer winner Isabel Wilkerson's nonfiction bestseller Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents as both docudrama and a biography of the creative process, resulting in one of the most audacious, ambitious films of 2023. A luminous, powerful Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor (shoutouts to Sistah Girl from Undercover Brother) gives one of the year's best performances as Wilkerson, beset by a level of grief and tragedy that would seem over the top were it not true, but resolute in putting together her thesis viewing worldwide discrimination through the lens of caste, rather than purely through race. Sometimes stumbles in its disarming earnestness, resulting in parts that would provoke eye rolling had they come from any other filmmaker, but Origin positively bursts with feeling and ideas due to DuVernay's control over the complicated material and incredible work from Ellis-Taylor, Niecy Nash, and a never-better Jon Bernthal. 

4. Monica

Often when we get to the dreaded Awards Season, the narrative of whatever work the actor did becomes as important as the performance itself. Did you know Bradley Cooper spent literal YEARS practicing conducting that one Leonard Bernstein piece accurately for Maestro (by the way, ask me to do my "Bradley Cooper playing Leonard Bernstein" impression for you sometime)? Did you know Robert DeNiro PUT ON WEIGHT for Raging Bull? Did you know that Jared Leto spent decades playing at being a talentless asshole in preparation to play a talentless asshole in Talentless Asshole: The Jared Leto Story - Portrait of a Fucking Dickhead? Sadly, such nonsense, and the money required to mount a campaign, has meant that Trace Lysette's amazing work in Andrea Pallaoro's low-budget drama of a trans woman reuniting with her family, particularly her hate-filled mother (Patricia Clarkson, flawless as usual), has been almost entirely overlooked by awards bodies. Apparently someone waiting their entire goddamn life to play a role, bringing every moment of their very existence to bear, is an insufficiently compelling narrative. Well, fuck 'em all, because Lysette's deeply felt performance—my pick for best of the year—will live forever anyway. It is rare for me to observe a character that feels like they existed before the movie began and will continue to live after the credits, but Monica is such a creation—flawed, messy, sexy, smart, and human, and Lysette brings her to extraordinary, vivid life. 

3. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

While I was generally impressed by the earlier Into the Spider-Verse, I found the constant hum of "greatest comic book movie ever" a bit hyperbolic. Not so at all with the utterly spectacular Across the Spider-Verse, for my money a genuine contender for that title. Apart from an oddly timed cliffhanger ending, the continuing adventures of Miles Morales improve on Into in every conceivable way—more emotionally complex (gone are the simplistic, if effective, "be yourself" bromides of the first movie), more eye-popping, funnier, more thrilling. Every frame is packed with excitement and beauty. A feast for the senses. 

2. Bottoms

Quite simply the funniest fucking thing I've seen in a decade, Emma Seligman's gloriously queer, unhinged Bottoms is violent, absurd, and can sit alongside, or even above, acid-tinged teen classics like Heathers and Mean Girls (so look for Bottoms: The Musical to dominate the Tonys at some distant point). Rising star Ayo Edibiri and co-writer Rachel Sennott (who delightfully shares some "chain-smoking Jewish auntie" DNA with Natasha Lyonne) are a pair of self-described "ugly, untalented lesbians" who spin a tale of a murderous summer spent in juvie ("Once, a girl tried to kill me with rat poison so I took her outside and punched her till she died") and start a fight club at their high school for clout and possible virginity loss. Scene after scene takes bonkers comedic chances, and the hit rate nears a hundred percent. Even ex-football star Marshawn Lynch adds surprisingly honed comic chops as one of the few adults in the film. Yeah, Hazel, let's do some terrorism. 

1. Killers of the Flower Moon

It's a special time in every white film dork's life when he can proclaim that a film by the dean of American cinema, Martin Scorsese, is the best of the year. And the king's (yes, he is both dean and king) adaptation and reframing of David Grann's tome on the severely underreported murder/genocide plot against wealthy Osage people in 1920s Oklahoma is certainly that. Earning every second of its 206-minute length, Killers of the Flower Moon is a deeply American epic, a saga of the racism and greed that the very country was founded upon. Leonardo DiCaprio does perhaps career-best work as dopy WWI veteran Ernest Burkhart, dragooned by uncle William King Hale (a suitably smiling but malevolent Robert DeNiro) into a scheme to drain oil-rich Osage of their money—principally the stunning Lily Gladstone's too-trusting Mollie. Here is the US in all its glory—full of natural beauty and resources and wondrous culture, ready to be strip-mined and annihilated for the white man's profit. Was Scorsese the right person to drag this harrowing story of an oppressed people further into the light? He's not sure himself, but hopes he's done his best, as outlined in the movie's bold epilogue. The eighty-one-year-old legend somehow continues to learn and grow as a filmmaker and a person, and we are lucky enough to bear witness. 

The 22 best films of 2022

PICTURED: Me deciding which films to cut

2022 was a pretty stupid year, but aren’t they all these days? Well, it was slightly less garbage-fiery than the previous two. And there were a few good movies. So put on some…smooth jazz?…as I talk about twenty-two of my favourites, and let’s get on the Highway to the Danger Zone! 

 

(Spoiler: I didn’t like Top Gun: Maverick.)

 

22. Everything Everywhere All at Once

 

I put this on the list almost out of a weird sense of duty rather than pure enthusiasm. Yes, I did like the Daniels’ opus; no, I probably didn’t like it as much as you. What starts as joyful and inventive eventually becomes, for me, enervating and ultimately a little trite over a very long 140 minutes. Nonetheless! It’s entirely impossible to resist a film that tries so damn hard and throws so many weird things at the wall, and the performances by Stephanie Hsu, Michelle Yeoh, and especially Ke Huy Quan, in the comeback of the century, are truly wonderful. 

 

21. Good Luck to You, Leo Grande

Unceremoniously thrown on Hulu early in the year, Sophie Hyde’s two-hander about an aging widow who’s never had an orgasm and the good-natured sex worker she hires to finish the job is a gentle, funny, quietly insightful film about growing old and, duh, sex. Emma Thompson is typically award-worthy as the sullen Nancy, and is evenly matched by young Irish actor Daryl McCormack as the titular sex worker. 

 

20. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

It’s impossible to ignore the gaping, Chadwick Boseman-shaped gap in the middle of this film—not that director Ryan Coogler wants you to. And while landing far short of the damn near era-defining first Black Panther film, the slightly clunky Wakanda Forever nonetheless gets so much right over its unwieldy 160-minute running time that it’s hard to say too many bad things about it. The main flaw is putting Letitia Wright’s Shuri front and centre—even ignoring her offscreen anti-vaxx ranting, she’s simply too much of a lightweight to truly carry this enterprise. Luckily, the surrounding cast of ringers—especially a powerful Angela Bassett and exquisite Lupita Nyong’o—take this one home and help deliver both a solidly satisfying MCU blockbuster and a touching tribute to the sorely missed Boseman.

 

19. RRR

Watching S. S. Rajamouli’s gargantuan RRR is like bingeing on chocolate for three hours. Sure, it’s fucking delicious, but you’ll probably feel like you’ve had enough after a point. That said, what kind of asshole could resist this stupendously ridiculous extravaganza of singing, dancing, action, and CGI circus animals, with a triple shot of anti-colonialist sentiment thrown in? It’s exhausting, but goddammit, it’s worth it.

 

18. Prey

John McTiernan’s lean, mean Predator got it right the first time: take one super-strong invisible alien, match them against the One Person smart and tough enough to take them down, and let fucking rip—a simple, effective formula ignored by anyone who’s had a crack at making a Predator film since. Dan Trachtenberg finally does it properly by winding back the clock to the 1700s, pitting the big guy against a wily Comanche warrior played by the terrific Amber Midthunder, and not sparing the splatter. There isn’t much more to explain—Prey just fucking owns. The first major feature dubbed in the Comanche language, to boot.

 

17. Barbarian

“Lol, they should’ve called it ScareBnb,” I hilariously quipped after seeing the formulaic trailer for comedian Zach Cregg’s horror. Look, a great joke is a great joke, but boy was I wrong to laugh at Barbarian, a zippy, inventive ride. In Detroit for a job interview, Georgina Campbell is rather irritated to find that her long-booked Airbnb house is already occupied by a baffled Bill Skarsgård. And then…shit goes crazy. I won’t explain. Just watch it.

 

16. She Said

 

I’m a sucker for a “crusading journalist” movie, and Maria Schrader’s chronicling of New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s attempt to puncture the wall of secrecy surrounding Harvey Weinstein is a good one indeed. Straightforwardly told with a minimum of spin, She Said wisely concentrates on the trauma and emotional toll suffered by Weinstein’s numerous victims as well as the mystery slowly unravelling around them. Zoe Kazan and Carey Mulligan are strong, as usual, as the two reporters, and are surrounded by enough character-acting all-stars that even such a difficult, emotional story still somehow goes down smooth. 

 

15. The Batman

 

Did we need another fucking Batman film only a few years after Zack “Batman totally eats pussy, bro” Snyder did his best to screw things up? Did the result need to be three goddamn hours long, with two or three pretty unnecessary subplots? Was it a requirement that it be even Darker, Man than Christopher Nolan’s recent trilogy? The answer to all these questions is obviously “Jesus Christ, no, and stop annoying me at Starbucks, stranger,” yet somehow, miraculously, Matt Reeves’ The Batman kinda whips ass. An impressively un-buff Robert Pattinson makes an ideal Batman Who Feels, every other role is filled with ringers, and the thunderous action and rain-slicked cinematography is never less than impressive. Fuck it, make five more.

 

14. After Yang

Kogonada’s 2017 film Columbus was one of my favourites of the previous decade, and while his follow-up never quite hit me the same way, it’s still a marvellous, touching piece of sci-fi drama. The eponymous robot (Justin H. Min) is a lifelike android child serving as a de facto brother to Mika (Malea Emma Tjandrawidjaja), adopted child of Colin Farrell’s Jake and Jodie Turner-Smith’s Kyra—until he becomes unresponsive out of the blue. Farrell’s quest to repair his beloved pseudo-son is intercut with earlier memories, forming the spine of a slow, sweet saga that can break your heart purely via Kogonada’s exquisite mise-en-scène. (Yup, that film degree is finally paying off, baby.)

 

13. Kimi

It seems now that Steven Soderbergh can crank out a Hitchcockian thriller in his sleep. Thankfully, he was clearly awake for the tightly paced Kimi. Zoë Kravitz is an agoraphobic programmer working from home, monitoring queries to an Alexa-type device, when she hears Something She Shouldn’t Have. You’ve probably seen The Conversation or Blow Out (Enemy of the State, even?) so maybe have some idea what happens next, but Kravitz’s twitchy performance is so good and Soderbergh’s formal chops so honed that Kimi is still an extremely welcome addition to the Person Who Knows Too Much canon.

 

12. Hustle

The Adam Sandlernaissance continues apace with his extremely well-calibrated performance in this crowd-pleasing basketball drama by Jeremiah Zagar. Despite flagrantly ripping off the classic Kevin Bacon film The Air Up There (not really), the saga of a 76ers scout finding and training a raw prospect from Spain (real-life baller Juancho Hernangómez) hits all the right beats with heart, humour, and soul. A real slam dunk, hahahahaha *walks off pier*.

 

11. The Fabelmans

The trailer for Steven Spielberg’s semiautobiographical drama set off an alarm bell or two for some—too maudlin, too self-mythologising, too soft-focus? Hey, fuckers, relax, we’re talking Steven motherfucking Spielberg here. What we have here instead is a moving, sweet, but surprisingly dark story of family and how dedication to art can almost destroy you from the inside out. And MICHELLE WILLIAMS, capped, underlined, bolded, italicised, is in it giving one of the performances of the year as Babby Steven’s off-centre mother. The work of a master in full command of his craft, and with the best final scene of 2022.

 

10. The Banshees of Inisherin

It’s probable only an Irishman could’ve written and directed a film simultaneously so breezily funny and so full of weighty existential dread. Martin McDonagh gets possible career-best work from Colin Farrell (his third movie on this list, FarrellFans) and Brendan Gleeson in this tragicomedy about two friends who “break up” on the latter’s wishes (he feels he has little time left on the planet and doesn’t want to spend it with a “limited person”) and the ramifications of that act in their tiny island community. After the actually quite awful (to my eye) Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, it’s great to have McDonagh back on scintillating In Bruges form. 

 

9. Bros

It was probably ill-advised using so much of the advertising budget for Billy Eichner’s Bros on letting everyone know that it was the first gay romantic comedy financed by a major studio, thus piling on historical weight that this lovely, genuinely hilarious confection didn’t need. Eichner’s romance with hottie lawyer/baker Luke Macfarlane—and the former’s tribulations opening New York’s first LGBTQ+ museum—sits at the centre, but the genius move of the screenplay by Eichner and director Nicholas Stoller is how many other people it lets shine—from a delightful Guy Branum as Eichner’s bon vivant friend, to a luminous Eve Lindley as an Insta-obsessed museum board member, to a cameoing Harvey Fierstein, bringing queer history and impeccable comic timing to his small role. Also: It’s a Holly Poly Christmas.

 

8. Women Talking

Canadian genius Sarah Polley was one of my favourite actors for many years; she’s long since left acting behind (despite being not much older than me), but has proven just as good at directing. Her latest in quite some time (parenthood and an unfortunate head injury slowed her down juuuust a tad) is an adaptation of a Miriam Toewes novel inspired by a real-life case at a conservative Mennonite sect in Bolivia. Transferred to an undisclosed fictional location, the film really does what it says on the tin—most of its brisk running time is devoted to the community’s women discussing whether to leave after a flood of revelations that the sect’s men have been repeatedly drugging and assaulting them over years. Polley takes this potentially stagey, claustrophobic conceit and opens it up without resorting to flash or cheating; it’s a remarkably controlled work of directing aided by flawless performances from the likes of Claire Foy (as the angriest, most “I wish a motherfucker would” of the women), Jessie Buckley, and Ben Whishaw as the sole decent male of the community (hashtag NotAllMen), invited to the proceedings in order to take the minutes. Not one to chill with on Saturday night to be sure, but an impressive balancing act and compelling as hell.

 
7. Emily the Criminal

During the indie boom of the nineties, there was a flood of low-budget crime dramas, frequently inspired by Tarantino, or Scorsese-style seventies grit. John Patton Ford’s Emily the Criminal feels like a throwback of sorts to that era (yes, to the era of nineties films inspired by the seventies; we have reached the Singularity or Inception or something), except this one is not the hot garbage most of those were. An intense Aubrey Plaza is a thirty-ish college dropout just trying to get by, stymied at every turn by her minor felony conviction in an uncaring capitalist system. So when the chance to earn some extra by committing a little low-risk crime pops up, why the fuck not? It’s not like playing by the rules is working out. Inherently political without ever being hectoring, Emily the Criminal is a short, sharp shock to the system and a potential career-redefiner for the incredibly talented Plaza.

 
6. The Woman King

 

Gina Prince-Bythewood long ago proved herself a great American filmmaker with the exquisite Love & Basketball and emotional and complex Beyond the Lights, but has been given startlingly few opportunities on the big screen (gee, wonder why)—The Woman King is only her fifth feature film in twenty-three years. And it goes hard. Its absolute fucking genius is that, structurally, this could've been an eighties Stallone movie about a wily veteran and a brash young rookie on a mission. It has training montages, thunderous action, and at least one bona fide “you're a loose cannon, but goddammit do I respect you” moment. Viola Davis offers up two tickets to the motherfucking gun show in the lead, Lashana Lynch and Sheila Atim are startlingly good as her most trusted lieutenants, and The Underground Railroad's Thuso Mbedu is ideal as the young "rookie" with a chip on her shoulder. Oh, and there are a handful of men in it too, but who cares? They mostly exist to have their throats slit awesomely. The Woman King fucking rules.

 

5. Scream

I must declare a prejudice: I grew up on Scream movies and fucking love every one of them with my whole heart. Nonetheless, the first in over a decade was a dicey proposition in theory—the great Wes Craven has since departed our world, dopy slasher films as we understood them back in the day are barely a thing anymore, and hasn’t poor Neve Campbell been through enough already? But Scream (yes, using the original title again rather than Scream 5 is a joke about reboots), under the eye of directorial team Radio Silence (makers of the extraordinary Ready or Not), is damn near as close to perfection as they could’ve gotten. New jokes, fresh kills, a great new cast of youngsters alongside the old favourites—what’s not to love? Does it get so high on this list because I’m an absolute mark for this kind of thing? Yes, and I don’t care.

 

4. Glass Onion

Sometimes you see a movie that zaps the pleasure centres in your brain in such a specific way that you almost don't want it to end. Rian Johnson showed he was very good at doing that with Knives Out, and he’s done it again with this semi-sequel. Daniel Craig is back as Detective Benoit Blanc, gloopy Southern accent somehow getting thicker by the second, this time invited to a murder-mystery party on the private Greek island of tech billionaire Edward Norton—but that’s just the beginning of etc. etc. What an absolute treat to watch terrific actors having the time of their lives for two hours while working with a Swiss-clock-precise script, whip-smart direction, and faultless cinematography. And it's fucking funny. Please make one of these every year, Rian. I beg of you.

 
3. Nope

I do not say this lightly: Jordan Peele may be the next Spielberg. He’s become known for his brilliant, politically aware horror films, and Nope certainly has its share of “OH, FUCK THIS” moments, but it’s also a big, funny adventure in the vein of Jaws. There’s something in the sky over the Haywood family’s floundering Hollywood horse ranch, and siblings Keke Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya are sure as shit going to capture it on camera and get paid in an industry that takes what it wants from people of colour before discarding them on the cutting room floor of history. Thoughtful, exciting, stunningly shot by Hoyte van Hoytema, and just an absolute fuckload of fun. 

 

2. Tár

 

Shouldn’t it almost be boring at this point that Cate Blanchett rarely takes a wrong step and tends to outdo herself almost every fucking time? Todd Field’s unalloyed masterpiece about an acclaimed composer/conductor and how she completely torpedoes her own career is yet another career best for Blanchett, a piece of acting so stunning and convincing that you’ll leave the theatre wondering what Lydia Tár is doing right now, so alive and real does she seem. It’s also one of the few films to date to actually have something interesting to say about MeToo. A purely exhilarating film.

 

1. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

So why isn’t a film I just called an “unalloyed masterpiece” #1 on the list? Because while my head said Tár was the best of the year, my heart would not allow me to choose anything but Dean Fleischer Camp’s buoyant Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. An expansion of a series of shorts made by Camp and his artistic partner/ex-wife (amicably ex, I’m guessing) Jenny Slate, Marcel is possibly a perfect film. Little Marcel (he’s…a shell. That wears shoes) lives a peaceful life with his grandma, Nana Connie (an extremely game Isabella Rossellini), but sometimes acutely feels the loss of the greater community that he once had. Camp, playing a fictionalised version of himself, accidentally disrupts Marcel’s complacency by moving into his house, and thus begins a quest for family, pushed along by Marcel’s undying optimism and sweetness. But not a second of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On feels maudlin or saccharine or unearned. It does with a scant ninety minutes and a few million dollars what Pixar films used to do with one trillion times the resources (approx.), but even better, and I did not have a better time at the movies in 2022.

 

Suck it, Top Gun.