I’ve been watching movies in theaters for as long as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is of watching The Return of the Jedi in my small-town cinema. Growing up my parents often took me to the movies, and I was always happy to go (even when I was completely embarrassed by being with them as I became a teenager). 

We were early adapters to VHS. I got a DVD player before nearly anyone I knew. I love streaming movies. I watch more movies now because of streaming than I ever have before.

But there was always something magical about going to the movies. The big screen, the big buckets of popcorn. Drinking so much soda you thought you were going to burst before the credits rolled. Sitting in a dark theater with some story shimmering in light in front of you was immersive and special.

In college, and for years after, I went to the movies every weekend. I saw every movie that looked even remotely interesting, and when I had seen those I watched movies that weren’t interesting to me. Even then I couldn’t see every movie. I’ve almost always lived in small towns or smallish cities. They don’t get all the arthouse and foreign language films that wind up on critics’ lists at the end of the year. 

But I always liked watching the Oscars. I always enjoyed the spectacle – all those rich famous people gathering to congratulate themselves. I always enjoyed hearing about great movies that I’d never heard of before, or that I hadn’t had the chance to see.

I don’t get to the movies nearly as often as I used to – almost never in fact. Over the last several years I’ve become a classic movie nerd. In my monthly movie-watching wrap-ups I always mention how many movies I watched that were made before I was born. Usually, it is the majority of them.

I still watch the Oscars, I still enjoy the spectacle, but rarely have I seen more than one of the nominees. I just don’t watch new movies when they come out.

Well, this year was different (sort of). I watched a couple of movies in the theater (Barbie, and Killers of the Flower Moon) and a few more when they came out on digital services, and then I intentionally set out to watch as many movies from 2023 as I could in December (to tell the truth I started out strongly and after a couple of weeks I returned to my classic movie schedule).

As such I’ve seen 31 movies from 2023. That’s not really a lot, and certainly not enough to create a definitive Best Of list, but darn if I’m not making one anyway. Or let’s just say this is a list of movies that came out this year that I thought were really good.

10. The Killer

Michael Fassbender stars in this David Fincher directed thriller as a hired assassin who isn’t quite as skilled as he thinks he is. When a job gets botched things spiral out of control. Fincher employs his usual meticulously detailed style to what is essentially a trashy genre picture and we’re all the better for it.

09. Anatomy of a Fall

A man falls from his second-story window and dies. Wounds indicate he may have hit on the head and pushed first. Suspicions fall on his wife, Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller). The only witness is their legally blind son (Milo Machado-Graner). Part mystery, part courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall doesn’t give us any definitive answers but lets the questions hang.

The cast is absolutely brilliant from top to bottom and Justine Triet’s direction while not flashy, is wonderful.

08. Asteroid City

Possibly the most Wes Anderson-y movie Wes Anderson has ever made. It is also, perhaps, his most difficult-to-understand film. It is actually a film within a film within a play. Or something like that. Honestly, it has been months since I’ve seen it and the details have all left my memory banks, but it does have a nesting doll structure with a lot of layers.

The production design is amazing, as per usual with Anderson, and it is crammed full of excellent actors doing excellent work (again as per usual). I really need to watch it again, but on first viewing I found it to be quite excellent.

07. You Hurt My Feelings

Julia Louise-Dreyfuss stars as a writer who accidentally overhears her husband (Tobias Menzies) discussing her latest book. He doesn’t like it and as the title indicates this hurts her feelings. Nicole Holofcener wrote and directed this lovely little dramedy that gets all the details of a relationship exactly perfect. The stakes are low but still meaningful. The comedy isn’t uproariously but it is clever and real.

06. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was such a breath of fresh superhero air when it came out in 2018. It was so original, so creative…so colorful. It felt like it was reinventing a genre that had grown stale.

Five years later that genre has started to grow moldy. Across the Spider-Verse doesn’t feel quite as new as Into the Spider-Verse, it is basically doing what it did, only more so. But it still feels so vibrant and refreshing as compared to all the other superhero movies and television shows that I hope they continue to make these for many more years.

05. Barbie

My wife has become a doll collector. She sews clothes for them and creates little stories. She’s quite good at it too. You can view them on her Instagram account. She buys all sorts of dolls, but Barbies are her favorite. She now has quite a collection of them.

We were destined to see the Barbie movie even if it wasn’t any good, but it turned out to be brilliant. It is very funny, there are lots of wonderful gags about how Barbie dolls would navigate the real world, but it is also quite clever and astute. It isn’t too deep, some folks have called it a Feminism 101 movie and that seems correct, and it sometimes got a bit too preachy for my tastes, but for a film based on a kid’s toy it’s pretty darn good.

04. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part I

Seven films in and this series hasn’t let up. The plot in this one is more spy-centric than the series has been in ages, but the plot isn’t the thing we watch these films for. That would be the stunts and while they aren’t quite as mind-blowing as they have been in previous installments, they are pretty spectacular. 

Special mention goes to Hayley Atwell who is marvelous.

03. Killers of the Flower Moon

I had been looking forward to this film from the moment Martin Scorsese was attached to it in 2017. I immediately read the book and was astonished this was a story I’d never heard of before, considering it happened not very far from where I lived.

It is the story of the Osage Indian Nation and how after being kicked around across the United States they were eventually forced onto a barren, desolate chunk of Oklahoma that was wanted by no one.

Then they discovered oil on the land. Amazingly, the Osage were able to keep the land and make huge amounts of money from the oil. For a time they were the richest people on Earth. Naturally, white people almost immediately began finding ways to cheat them out of it, even going so far as to murder a bunch of them.

Scorsese’s film is rich and long, beautiful and dark, and gives the audience a whole lot to think about. I very much want to watch it again, and again as I wasn’t able to take it all in the first time.

02. Past Lives

Past Lives is a film about choices and regret, about love and life and destiny. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo star as childhood sweethearts whose lives changed when her parents moved her from South Korea to Canada. Years later they reconnect via the Internet. But when things start to get serious she cuts the relationship short, wanting to forge her own life with her own career rather than running back to her homeland for him.

More years later she’s got her career, a husband, and a life. When he comes to the US to visit her all those questions of what might have been surface. Celine Yong, in her directorial debut, has created a film so filled with heart and beauty that I cannot wait to see what she does next. Both Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are magnificent.

01. Oppenheimer

Going to the movies was a magical experience for me growing up. For a very long time, I adored that experience. But if I’m behind honest I don’t really miss it. When I do go to the movies now I’m usually disappointed. It is so expensive I feel like I have to dig into my savings in order for me and my family to go. The screens seem smaller than they used to, and the projectionists are lousy at their jobs. (if that even is a vocation anymore instead of just some teenager who punches a button on a computer screen). Nearly every time I’ve seen a movie in the theater over the last ten years there has been some problem, either the image is poorly framed, or the sound is off.

People are constantly talking or looking at their phones. Most theaters now have reclining seats that are more comfortable than the old fold-out variety but as they age they get worse. The last theater seat I saw in learned to the left uncomfortably, and they all screech and squeal as if in agony when you try to recline them.

I’m perfectly happy these days watching movies at home. 

I really wish I’d seen Oppenheimer in the theaters. It is so big, so bold, so designed to be seen on the biggest screen possible I feel I missed something while watching it at home.

And still, it is my favorite movie of the year. Christoper Nolan’s biopic of the man who invented the atomic bomb is a stunning technical achievement, but it is also a fascinating dive into a complicated story. Nolan uses all his visual tricks to make the story huge, bombastic, and exciting. But it is the human story that is the most interesting.

Cillian Murphy is brilliant as Oppenheimer. I’m not sure that the film, or Nolan, or Murphy himself even like the guy. The film takes pains to show that he often isn’t the smartest guy in the room, but he was a very good organizer. He was able to get all the smartest guys and get them working toward the same goal.

There is a whole lot going on in the film, only a small part of which is whether or not they should have actually obtained that goal. That’s a bigger question than I have time for here, and the film deals with much more than I’m prepared to write about now. But I truly loved the movie and I’m happy to make it my number one film of the year.

And there you have it. My first foray into doing a Top 10 list of movies in a given year. Turns out it is rather difficult to write a couple of paragraphs on your favorite movies, but I hope I at least piqued your interest in a few films.

What were your favorite movies of 2023?