The 10 Best Movies Of 2023
It has been a bad year for cinema.
After the long shadow of the pandemic passed, movie theaters returned with endless variety, filling them to such an extent that the term “Barbenheimer” was coined to describe two summer movies that opened on the same day and broke box office records. . .
Few people had high hopes for “Barbie,” a movie about dolls, or “Oppenheimer,” an epic movie about the apocalypse. But look at them now, entering the Oscar race with dollar signs and getting rave reviews.
Both are among the year's best, another classic about America's violent past from beloved maestro Martin Scorsese and a painful love story from South Korean newcomer Celine Song, whose young talent is just beginning to blossom.
Here are our picks for the top 10 movies of 2023, starting at number 10.
10. "Barbie"
Hollywood heels can quickly turn a Mattel doll's butt into an option. Instead, groundbreaking director Greta Gerwig gives us a rosy feminist art fantasy that's anything but safe, as Margot Robbie's hesitant Barbie teams up with Ryan Gosling's desperate Ken to make you think long after the laughs stop.
And the people who want to call Gerwig's overthrow of the patriarchy misanthropy don't care. Gerwig is a woman with heart and soul. Listen and maybe you'll learn something.
9. "May December"
An indirect reference to a Todd Haynes film classified as a comedy. So how does that explain the tears welling up in your eyes? It centers on the deeply felt performance of Charles Melton, still recovering from his marriage to a woman (a feisty and complex Julianne Moore) who seduced him when he was in seventh grade.
As Natalie Portman reaches new heights in her career, she will find herself in an intriguing balance as the manipulative actress prepares to bring this love story gone wrong to the screen.
8. "Destroyer"
Already hailed as a new Christmas classic, this new triumph from Sideways director Alexander Payne exudes a warmth that cannot be confused with boredom. Paul Giamatti plays Professor Grinchy, who is forced to stay on campus over Christmas break to take care of Angus (Dominic Sessa), a student who has nowhere else to go. And Da'Vine Oscar nominee Joy Randolph plays a school cook who laughs at her pain as the film turns cliché into harsh reality.
7. “Areas of interest”
Jonathan Glazer, who took the risk of making a film about the Holocaust and then giving us his opinion, tells us nothing about the horrors that occurred when the Nazis exterminated the Jews at Auschwitz. Glazer focuses instead on Commander Rudolf Hoss (Christian Friedel), who goes about making a daily living with his wife Hedwig (Sandra Hülser) and their children as if they didn't see the smoke and screams near the house. Given the alarming rise in anti-Semitism, this urgent warning is difficult to recognize and impossible to forget.
6. "Master"
As star, director and co-writer, Bradley Cooper rounds out his career in this raw, romantic crescendo of film about director and composer Leonard Bernstein. The Oscar belongs to Cooper, who is full of passion for touring and has proven to be a master whose passion cannot be limited to one musical genre or one genre.
Carey Mulligan is Bernstein's own wife who lives with angels and demons. Cooper's labor of love, brought to life by beautiful music, brings us to the experience of witnessing genius in an exciting act of self-discovery.
5. "American Fiction"
Writer-director Cord Jefferson's charming feature debut has a new comedic twist. In his best and strongest film to date, Jeffrey Wright plays Monk, a black novelist angry and frustrated because the good reviews of his books never sell. The public seemed to hear only stories that combined black poverty and violence. Then Monk joins a rival club under a false name and begins to achieve hilarious and satirical results. This story of an artist who sells his principles will make you laugh until it hurts.
4. "Anatomy of a fallen man"
No list of the best film actors of 2023 would be complete without the groundbreaking Forensic Anatomy of Hülser's Marriage by Justine Triet (who also stars in the aforementioned "The Field of Interest"). This movie will keep you glued to your seat as you watch this compulsive story about a woman tried for killing her husband by pushing him out of a window. As a successful writer who struggles with failure for half his life (Samuel Theis), Hülser gives an unforgettable performance. The same goes for the wicked script by Triet and her husband Arthur Harari, which combines a brilliant battle of the sexes with a courtroom thriller.
3. “Bad things”
Prepare to be blown away by Emma Stone's fearless performance in Yorgos Lanthimos' stunning and beautiful feminist showdown. Stone plays a hapless, suicidal pregnant woman who sinks to death, only to be brought back to life by a mad scientist (Willem Dafoe). get up
Lanthimos is a master provocateur and makes films like no other. You won't know what hit you.
2. "Past life"
Writer-director Celine Song makes her debut creating a lyrical work of art from her own life as a 12-year-old girl who left home and her crush Hae Sung in South Korea to grow up. In Canada, the brilliant Greta Lee is an adult Nora, now a playwright in New York and married to the American Arthur (John Magaro), when Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) decides to visit Nora in Manhattan.
The film examines this fateful encounter, which unites Nora and Hae Sung through linguistic and cultural ties that Arthur essentially abandoned. He faces a difficult issue in this beautiful film.
1. A mix of "Killers of the Flower Moon" and "Oppenheimer."
These are two of the highlights of this extraordinary year of cinema. I can't value one over the other. “The Moonflower Killers,” Martin Scorsese's sad epic about the long history of mistreatment of Native Americans in the United States, is an extraordinary work. Oscar favorites Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone play Osage heirs caught in a murderous trap by greedy white men. “Killers” is a Scorsese classic.
Oppenheimer is the quintessential Christopher Nolan, a generation younger than Scorsese, but also with the mind of a visionary and the soul of a poet. You can see this in Nolan's brilliant portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer (a perfect Cillian Murphy), the controversial architect of the atomic age.
Just as Scorsese exposed the dark roots of American racism, Nolan evokes the nightmare of nuclear annihilation of which we are not yet aware.
Over the centuries, these all-time film giants have spoken at length about this moment.
