Our Drink in the Movies team have compiled a comprehensive year-end piece that provides a shared look at each of our top 10 films of 2023. You can see our selected titles below in the text list or by pressing the arrows on the Poster Carousel Images.
10.
Alexander Reams: ‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ (dir. Steven Soderbergh)
Anna Harrison: ‘The Creator’ (dir. Gareth Edwards)
I’ll probably get flamed on Twitter for listing “The Creator” in my top ten movies of 2023, and rightly so. It’s a mess of a film, with half-cooked ideas about AI, two attractive but charismaless actors at its center in Gemma Chan and John David Washington, has pacing issues, there are clunky lines all over the place… so why is it in my top ten? Well, perhaps it’s cheating, but “The Creator” earned its spot here for the vast potential it holds rather than the film it actually is. Directed by Gareth Edwards (who previously helmed “Rogue One” and 2014’s “Godzilla”), “The Creator,” which follows Joshua Taylor (John David Washington) and his attempts to smuggle a young robotic “stimulant” known as Alphie (Madeleine Yuna Voyles) to safety, is bursting to the seams with things to say about AI and the way people treat those who are different from them. Edwards even got something to say about geopolitics as Joshua travels from dystopian Los Angeles to the futuristic “New Asia.” The vistas are beautiful: on a mere $80 million budget, Edwards made a film that knocks Marvel’s far more expensive, far shoddier visual effects and cinematography out of the park. It’s too bad that all of Edwards’ ideas get bogged down in his own script, which needed several punch ups before it made it to the big screen; some lines were so obnoxiously bad that I laughed aloud in the theater. Still, “The Creator” represents the type of big, original sci-fi swing that Hollywood rarely takes these days, and its astounding VFX and visuals are bright spots amidst the increasing budgets and decreasing beauty of many modern films. If only Tony Gilroy had had a pass at “The Creator” as he did with “Rogue One,” but alas, I will settle for a well-shot, half-baked (quarter-baked, really) script with too many ideas over some of the other offerings Hollywood had to offer in 2023.
Jeff Sparks: ‘PJ Harvey Olympia, Paris’ (dir. Antoine Carlier)
Maria Athayde: ‘Joy Ride’ (dir. Adele Lim)
Michael Clawson: ‘Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros’ (dir. Frederick Wiseman)
Nick McCann: ‘The Creator’ (dir. Gareth Edwards)
Patrick Hao: ‘She Came to Me’ (dir. Rebecca Miller)
Raúl Mendoza: ‘Godzilla Minus One’ (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)
Taylor Baker: ‘ The Beasts’ (dir. Rodrigo Sorogoyen)
9.
Alexander Reams: ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ (dir. Martin Scorsese)
Anna Harrison: ‘Past Lives’ (dir. Celine Song)
Jeff Sparks: ‘Stonewalling’ (dir. Ryuji Otsuka & Huang Ji)
Maria Athayde: ‘Scrapper’ (dir. Charlotte Regan)
Michael Clawson: ‘Pacifiction’ (dir. Albert Serra)
Nick McCann: ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ (dir. Martin Scorsese)
Patrick Hao: ‘May December’ (dir. Todd Haynes)
The film that put Todd Haynes on the map in the underground film scenes was “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story,” a biopic of Karen Carpenter using Barbie dolls. This film operated on two modes through the aesthetics and the meta-textual, telling the tragedy of Karen Carpenter like a direct to tv, ripped-from-the-headlines exploitation piece using the pop culture iconography of Barbie creating unrealistic beauty standards on women, one in which Karen Carpenter, whose death was due to her struggles with bulimia, was a victim of.
It is heartening to see that thirty years later, Haynes is still just as transgressive. His latest film “May December,” one of the year’s best, once again operates on two modes. Using the framework of an actress (Natalie Portman) coming to observe a Mary Kay Laternou type woman (Julianne Moore) who had an affair with an underaged teen who she later marries now thirty-five (Charles Melton), Haynes is using the aesthetic of a melodrama to explore the exploitative nature of making movies. The actress is so interested in finding the “truth” that she does not see that there is no there there. That in and of itself would make for an interesting film that furthers Haynes’ oeuvre. But, beneath that, while the two women struggle with their Bergman “Persona” relationship, Haynes finds the emotional truth of a deeply broken person in Charles Melton’s character in a way that a direct adaptation of the Mary Kay Laternou story would have never been able to extract.
The duality enhances the richness of the text of “May December” that becomes somehow funnier and more tragic on rewatch. It is a sharp satire, using the aesthetic of trashy melodramas, on the way that Hollywood can trivialize tragedies with craven tabloid and true crime content.
Raúl Mendoza: ‘The Creator’ (dir. Gareth Edwards)
Taylor Baker: ‘Master Gardener’ (dir. Paul Schrader)
8.
Alexander Reams: ‘Saw X’ (dir. Kevin Greutert)
Anna Harrison: ‘Saltburn’ (dir. Emerald Fennell)
Jeff Sparks: ‘Amanda’ (dir. Carolina Cavalli)
Maria Athayde: ‘Past Lives’ (dir. Celine Song)
Michael Clawson: ‘Asteroid City’ (dir. Wes Anderson)
One thing that Wes Anderson understands just as well as screen geometry is star power. Where other filmmakers struggle to control the gravitational force exerted by famous faces, Anderson can arrange them like celestial constellations, managing the brightness of each actor to draw attention to a broader configuration of bodies in space. There are familiar faces in “Asteroid City,” like Jason Schwartzman, Tilda Swinton, and Edward Norton, along with new faces, including Steve Carrell, Tom Hanks, and Scarlett Johannsen, to name only a few. There are delightful individual performances by cast members from both camps: Anderson regular Schwartzman gives one of his more poignant performances, while newcomer Carrell capably fills in a very funny role that might otherwise have gone to Bill Murray. But to see the cast working together, mixed and combined in various patterns, is blissful cinematic stargazing.
Nick McCann: ‘The Killer’ (dir. David Fincher)
Patrick Hao: ‘The Holdovers’ (dir. Alexander Payne)
Raúl Mendoza: ‘Past Lives’ (dir. Celine Song)
Taylor Baker: ‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’ (dir. William Friedkin)
7.
Alexander Reams: ‘Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One’ (dir. Christopher McQuarrie)
It’s been mostly recognized that the “Mission Impossible” franchise hit an all-time high with 2018’s “Mission Impossible: Fallout,” the sixth entry in a nearly 20-year-old franchise somehow imbued an entirely new fire into the creatives behind and in front of the camera. Returning for his third film in the franchise, Co-Writer/Director Christopher McQuarrie proves that his genius didn’t tap out after “Fallout,” instead he goes in an entirely different direction. If “Fallout” was the ultimate action set piece film, then “Dead Reckoning” is the ultimate spy film. So much of the runtime is devoted to building and continuing the relationships that make this franchise great, from the brilliant mission-inducing conversation between Eugene Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) to the dialogue thrown around during the sequence in Vienna at the Entity’s party. While not the wall-to-wall action of “Fallout,” “Dead Reckoning” stands on its own as a film more focused on the characters’ motivations than the insane stunts that Tom Cruise continues to risk his life for.
Anna Harrison: ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ (dir. James Gunn)
Jeff Sparks: ‘Waiting for The Light to Change’ (dir. Linh Tran)
Maria Athayde: ‘Rye Lane’ (dir. Raine Allen-Miller)
Michael Clawson: ‘Retrograde’ (dir. Matthew Heineman)
Nick McCann: ‘No One Will Save You’ (dir. Brian Duffield)
Patrick Hao: ‘Showing Up’ (dir. Kelly Reichardt)
Raúl Mendoza: ‘Huesera: The Bone Woman’ (dir. Michelle Garza Cervera)
Taylor Baker: ‘Asteroid City’ (dir. Wes Anderson)
6.
Alexander Reams: ‘Asteroid City’ (dir. Wes Anderson)
Anna Harrison: ‘The Holdovers’ (dir. Alexander Payne)
“The Holdovers” is a Christmas miracle. Alexander Payne’s latest film feels like the type of movie that would have been a top-grosser in 1970, when the film is set (it even uses the old Warner Brothers logo); today, however, movies like “The Holdovers” are few and far between, and so what might have been a dime a dozen several decades ago now feels singular in 2023. It’s neither a very complicated nor erudite movie, but it never tries to be—it’s about a bunch of misfits at a fancy boarding school spending Christmas together, overcoming their animosity and accepting each others’ flaws in the spirit of the holiday season. What elevates “The Holdovers” above its predictable premise is David Hemingson’s charming script and the three performances that anchor the movie: Da’Vine Joy Randolph as cafeteria lady Mary Lamb, newcomer Dominic Sessa as lonely student Angus Tully, whose mother abandoned him for the holidays, and Paul Giamatti as irritable teacher Paul Hunham. Each of these performances are remarkable in their own way, but it’s Giamatti who steals the show as the irascible Hunham, whose empathy slowly comes out of hiding as he spends more time with Mary and Angus when all of them are forced to spend the holidays at the school as the titular holdovers. Payne balances the sweet and the sad deftly, never becoming too saccharine, though I was still in tears by the end, and he takes care to see that characters never veer into the one-dimensional; it’s not a groundbreaking movie by any means, but rather a warm blanket to wrap yourself in against the cold (and a reminder of just how damn good Giamatti can be).
Jeff Sparks: ‘Call me Chihiro’ (dir. Rikiya Imaizumi)
Maria Athayde: ‘Barbie’ (dir. Greta Gerwig)
Michael Clawson: ‘The Delinquents’ (dir. Rodrigo Moreno)
Nick McCann: ‘Talk to Me’ (dir. Michael and Danny Philippou)
Patrick Hao: ‘Queens of the Qing Dynasty’ (dir. Ashley McKenzie)
Raúl Mendoza: ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ (dir. Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson, and Kemp Powers)
Taylor Baker: ‘Magic Mike’s Last Dance’ (dir. Steven Soderbergh)
5.
Alexander Reams: ‘The Creator’ (dir. Gareth Edwards)
Anna Harrison: ‘Theater Camp’ (dir. Molly Gordon & Nick Lieberman)
Jeff Sparks: ‘The Zone of Interest’ (dir. Jonathan Glazer)
Maria Athayde: ‘BlackBerry’ (dir. Matt Johnson)
Michael Clawson: ‘Fallen Leaves’ (dir. Aki Kaurismäki)
Nick McCann: ‘Suzume’ (dir. Makoto Shinkai)
Anime can be truly beautiful. Not just in its animations and art styles, but in stories like this that channel such a palpable range of emotions. Growing up, grief, and unconventional unity, “Suzume” is a genuine rollercoaster in and out of its adventure spectacle. Crying over a toy chair is damn near peak cinema.
Patrick Hao: ‘Oppenheimer’ (dir. Christopher Nolan)
Raúl Mendoza: ‘Oppenheimer’ (dir. Christopher Nolan)
Taylor Baker: ‘R.M.N.’ (dir. Cristian Mungiu)
4.
Alexander Reams: ‘The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial’ (dir. William Friedkin)
Anna Harrison: ‘May December’ (dir. Todd Haynes)
Jeff Sparks: ‘Godland’ (dir. Hlynur Pálmason)
Maria Athayde: ‘Oppenheimer’ (dir. Christopher Nolan)
Michael Clawson: ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ (dir. Martin Scorsese)
Nick McCann: ‘How to Blow Up a Pipeline’ (dir. Daniel Goldhaber)
Straight-up tension, through and through. The name of the game is progression without compromise. Every element of “How to Blow up a Pipeline” fits perfectly where it is in the puzzle, be it character development or topical themes. Under a gritty layer of Kodak filmstock, the film demonstrates that a clear outcome is not without difficulty or justification in its backbone. Prepare for a white-knuckle edge of your seat story.
Patrick Hao: ‘A Thousand and One’ (dir. A.V. Rockwell)
Raúl Mendoza: ‘The Eternal Memory’ (dir. Maite Alberdi)
Taylor Baker: ‘Priscilla’ (dir. Sofia Copolla)
3.
Alexander Reams: ‘The Boy and the Heron’ (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
Anna Harrison: ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ (dir. Martin Scorsese)
Jeff Sparks: ‘Infinity Pool’ (dir. Brandon Cronenberg)
Maria Athayde: ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse’ (dir. Joaquim Dos Santos, Justin K. Thompson, and Kemp Powers)
In a year where the majority of the superhero genre movies tanked critically and commercially “Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse” was the only saving grace. As a viewer I am firmly in the I’m tired of superhero movies camp, but I was glad to catch this one in theaters. A well-told and balanced story proves that superhero and multiverse stories can work when they are helmed by a competent team that cares about the material. They infused the film with energy and enthusiasm. Telling the story through Gwen Stacey’s and Miles Morales’ eyes propels the film in multiple directions which are all reflected on screen with some of the most beautiful animation since the release of “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” in 2018. A testament to the beauty of this film is that any frame seen on screen is akin to an art installation. With incredible voice acting, countless moments of fan service (which worked), and a killer soundtrack.
Michael Clawson: ‘The Plains’ (dir. David Easteal)
Nick McCann: ‘Oppenheimer’ (dir. Christopher Nolan)
Patrick Hao: ‘Are you There God? It’s Me, Margaret.’ (dir. Kelly Fremon Craig)
Raúl Mendoza: ‘The Boy and the Heron’ (dir. Hayao Miyazaki)
Taylor Baker: ‘Oppenheimer’ (dir. Christopher Nolan)
2.
Alexander Reams: ‘The Killer’ (dir. David Fincher)
Anna Harrison: ‘Oppenheimer’ (dir. Christopher Nolan)
Jeff Sparks: ‘Poor Things’ (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)
Maria Athayde: ‘Theater Camp’ (dir. Molly Gordon & Nick Lieberman)
Michael Clawson: ‘Showing Up’ (dir. Kelly Reichardt)
Nick McCann: ‘Godzilla Minus One’ (dir. Takashi Yamazaki)
Patrick Hao: ‘Rotting in the Sun’ (dir. Sebastián Silva)
Raúl Mendoza: ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ (dir. Martin Scorsese)
“Killers of the Flower Moon” sees the return of the cinematic artist Martin Scorsese for his first narrative feature since his 2019 gangster epic, “The Irishman.” This film is based on the book of the same name by Eric Roth. In “Killers of the Flower Moon” we follow the story of Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone) as she falls in love with Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and sees her people and family murdered during the Osage Nation Murders during the 1920s in Oklahoma. Robert De Niro plays William King Hale the political and crime boss seemingly behind the murders of the Osage after oil was discovered on their land. I wholeheartedly believe Martin Scorsese is the greatest living director right now and his new directorial effort is just another example of the maestro’s cinematic transcendence.
The once New Hollywood director has moved into a different stage of his career, where his stories focus on aging, existence, and examining the world he lives in. Lily Gladstone is electric as she portrays Mollie with such merit. Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro shine just as bright inside this brutal tale of the United States’ past. It’s nowhere near being perfect but to still be able to get a movie like this out of Martin Scorsese is a cinematic blessing of its own. I hope that much like Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese continues to lead a career where he tries to understand the medium of cinema in these late stages of his illustrious career.
Taylor Baker: ‘Beau is Afraid’ (dir. Ari Aster)
1.
Alexander Reams: ‘Oppenheimer’ (dir. Christopher Nolan)
The scale that a film like “Oppenheimer” operates on allows for the diptych storyline of Lewis Strauss (Robert Downey Jr.) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) to play out like a war epic from old. Each scene feels crafted with the same meticulous blocking and thought that would go into recreating any historical battle, but the battle scenes are just men in rooms yelling, or looking at each other with a serious face. It’s a bold decision, but because of Nolan’s holistic understanding of the film medium, he can take these concepts that would put a class to sleep in high school and turn them into these epic scenes. From the literal gigantic IMAX film stock that he single-handedly popularized, to the score that simultaneously feels period-appropriate and imbued with modern styles, which shows how great of a combination Ludwig Görranson and Christopher Nolan are, each complements each other’s styles, while still creating something new each time.
Anna Harrison: ‘Anatomy of a Fall’ (dir. Justine Triet)
Jeff Sparks: ‘Beau is Afraid’ (dir. Ari Aster)
Maria Athayde: ‘Bottoms’ (dir. Emma Seligman)
Michael Clawson: ‘May December’ (dir. Todd Haynes)
Nick McCann: ‘The Holdovers’ (dir. Alexander Payne)
Patrick Hao: ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ (dir. Martin Scorsese)
Raúl Mendoza: ‘The Iron Claw’ (dir. Sean Durkin)
Taylor Baker: ‘Afire’ (dir. Christian Petzold)