The Top 10 Films of 2023

This was a terrific movie year for sticking it to the patriarchy. A majority of the films here are about young women forging their own paths in a world trying to keep them down. In that vein, I’d like to award an honorable mention to M3gan, which put an android spin on female empowerment. It wasn’t exactly a masterpiece, but it delivered a lot of campy horror delights, and in a less bountiful year probably would have landed on my list.

Also, cheers to a handful of recent-release titles I didn’t get to. American Fiction, The Iron Claw, All of Us Strangers, and Maestro, you might well have been contenders! Alas for the Hollywood tradition of cramming anything it deems awards-worthy into a few short weeks at the end of the year.

Without further caveating, my top 10:

Barbie 

From its Helen Mirren-narrated, 2001-parody opener, I knew Greta Gerwig’s homage to the absurdly-proportioned blonde was going to execute a neat trick, namely taking Mattel’s money to make a cheerfully subversive feminist film. I loved every hot-pink minute of it, from its sincere love of Barbie world-building to Ryan Gosling’s patriarchy-drunk Ken. Musical numbers, America Ferrera’s womanhood monologue, Rhea Perlman as Barbie inventor Ruth Handler, Michael Cera as beta-male doll Allan – there simply isn’t a dull moment. I’ve seen it thrice and I’ll go back for more. Sublime!

Taylor Swift: Eras

Hands down, my most memorable cinematic experience of the year was being surrounded by tween girls who knew every single word to Swift’s many earworm hits. Eras is a remarkably immersive recreation of the experience of seeing Time’s Person of the Year perform live this summer on the tour off-limits to most of us mortals for both financial and logistical reasons.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

The righteous fury of young eco-activists fuels this tiny thriller, which revolves around a group planning to carry out a bombing of a Texas oil pipeline. It took a Soderberghian approach to weaving together the various backstories, with a presumably microscopic version of that guy’s budget, and pulled it off with panache.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

Adaptations of beloved young-adult classics often turn out less than great (Nancy Drew, Harriet the Spy, Ramona and Beezus), but Kelly Fremon Craig’s take on Judy Blume’s most famous work got all the notes right, particularly in its supporting cast of Rachel McAdams as Margaret’s frazzled mother and Kathy Bates as her doting Manhattanite grandmother.

You Hurt My Feelings

Nicole Holofcener continues to be the preeminent, non-pervy successor to Woody Allen as our best chronicler of urban neuroses, and this comedy about a writer named Beth (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) whose husband (Tobias Menzies) secretly doesn’t love her work is maybe Holofcener’s best yet. Michaela Watkins goes toe to toe with Louis-Dreyfus for subtle comic genius, and Arian Moayed (Succession’s Stewie) perfectly rounds out the foursome as Watkins’ insecure actor husband.

Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse

Nearly every frame of this sequel is daring and dazzling in its animation innovation, and even if it concludes overly abruptly with a cliffhanger teasing the final chapter, I was rapt for all of its 140 kinetic minutes. There’s even a perfect hat-tip to the pointing Spider-Men meme, one I should have seen coming and definitely didn’t. Yes, Hollywood is way oversaturated with multiverse stories, but this franchise brings more than enough fresh ideas to justify its own.

Bottoms

A black comedy about two social-reject lesbians (Rachel Sennott and Ayo Edebiri) starting a fight club at their high school? Yes, please. It didn’t have the stylistic innovation of Heathers, the teen comedy to which it was compared, but Bottoms did bring a similar irreverent energy to its treatment of high school movie tropes, culminating in an unapologetically hilarious bloodbath and featuring a very game Marshawn Lynch as a skeptical teacher.

Still

The best documentary of the year sees Michael J. Fox looking back on his career as it intertwined with his developing Parkinson’s disease symptoms, in an enormously moving, often very amusing interview with director Davis Guggenheim. It’s fascinating to regard Fox’s meteoric rise in Hollywood and his many indelible film roles in the context of his quest to make being in constant motion look effortless.

The Holdovers

Having grown up at a New England boarding school, I was admittedly in the tank for Alexander Payne’s 1970s-set latest, about a grouch of a prep school history teacher (Paul Giamatti, never better) spending the December holidays stuck supervising a marooned kid (newcomer Dominic Sessa, a former prep-schooler himself), alongside a grieving cafeteria worker (Da’Vine Joy Randolph) who sticks around as well. Caustic, witty, melancholy and heartwrenching, it’s the best kind of new holiday classic.

Poor Things

It feels right to bookend this list with Barbie and Poor Things, which as has been pointed out are two riffs on the theme of female self-discovery. But boy, does Poor Things do it to the extreme. I could easily have watched three-plus hours of Emma Stone clomping and boning her way through the role of a Victorian woman reanimated without the burden of societal mores. Adding to the spicy delights here are surrounding performances by Willem Dafoe as Bella’s Frankenstein-esque creator and Mark Ruffalo as her idiotic, Peter Sellers-inspired dandy of a paramour. Sadly, it clocks in at a mere two hours and twenty minutes. There’s always hope for a director’s cut, though.