Your movie year was very different from mine. Even if we saw all the same movies released in 2023, it only takes one film, or sometimes even just one performance, to have shifted the standard for which ones were most impactful to you. 

It was clear, for me, after two viewings this summer of Ira Sachs’ well-observed Passages, a gay-bi-straight love-triangle drama as sharp and arresting as a slap in the face, that I probably would not see ten more sublimely realized films the entire rest of the year, and I didn’t.

Several features measured up, offering objectively excellent combinations of script, design, direction, and performances, that re-set again and again what the best film of the year might look like. For a night this fall, it looked a lot like Yorgos Lanthimos’ bizarre fantasy Poor Things, until a night later, when I was entranced by Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers.

The question for this Top Ten then became, which other films — among the more than 130 I saw this year, from M3GAN to Ferrari — also conjured that alchemy of vision, emotion, and cinematic satisfaction. More than can be listed here, in fact — though not necessarily the same films that were the ten best for you.

10. EL CONDE

The premise powering Pablo Larraín’s dryly sardonic historical horror-comedy El Conde likely strikes some viewers as obvious, but, obvious or not, it takes a lot of nerve to portray former fascist dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet, as a literal vampire who feasts on the hearts of his people. Larraín and co-writer Guillermo Calderón weave more daring twists into the film, shot in lustrous black-and-white, depicting the dictator (amusingly embodied by Jaime Vadell) facing the end of his undead existence surrounded by greedy family members, the witless enablers of his monstrous reign.  

9. KOKOMO CITY

Many documentaries can only approximate the gift that D. Smith’s captivatingly candid Kokomo City bestows, of granting viewers what feels like a face-to-face introduction to the fascinating strangers presented onscreen. The women who star in Smith’s vivid, upbeat portrait of Black trans sex workers — Daniella, Liyah, Dominique, and Koko da Doll — share raw, sometimes anguished insights and experiences, and, just as valuably, share their strength, humor, and self-assurance. The film also captures the love they and some of their peers have found in community, or in a romantic partner, while merely trying to exist in defiance of violence and hate.

8. ROTTING IN THE SUN 

Sexy, funny, cool, and chock full of jolly, swinging dicks in its first half, Sebastián Silva’s uber-gay, meta social-media satire flips in an instant to become a darker, true-crime comedy of errors and never looks back. Starring filmmaker Silva and online influencer Jordan Firstman as broad caricatures of themselves (or dead-on self-portraits, who knows?), the movie starts as a fabulous trip to a nudist beach town before returning to the cold, hard city, where Silva’s not-so-secret weapon, The Maid star Catalina Saavedra, takes over, generating nail-biting suspense as a housekeeper who is definitely hiding something, or some body.

7. THE BOY AND THE HERON

Animation master Hayao Miyazaki drew from his own WWII-era childhood for this hand-drawn Studio Ghibli masterpiece about a willful young boy forced to confront sudden loss when his mother is killed during an air raid on Tokyo. After the boy’s factory owner father remarries and relocates their family to a rural estate, the boy is led — or lured — by the titular talking gray heron into a fantastical and frightening fairy-tale domain where every season of life, death, and afterlife coexists, and accepting loss and change is the only true key to escape. Coincidentally, similar themes abound in this year’s other Japan-set, WWII-era action fantasy, Godzilla Minus One, which makes for a perfect double feature, viewed in either order.

6. KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

The America on display in Martin Scorsese’s brutal but beautiful Osage Nation epic, adapted by Scorsese and Eric Roth from the book by David Gann, is so recognizably the America we live in today. Manifest destiny, E pluribus unum, Get rich or die trying — all the American way, if not the only way, that our nation could produce another “little known” true story of deceit, corruption, betrayal, and murder, this one at the expense of Indigenous people. Lily Gladstone’s nuanced performance as Mollie Burkhart, the most betrayed, provides the movie’s courageous heart, while Robert De Niro delivers his richest work in years as William “King” Hale, the ultimate politician, an expert at faking friendship.

5. AMERICAN FICTION

Layered within Cord Jefferson’s adventurous adaptation of Percival Everett’s novel Erasure are stories within the story of novelist Thelonius “Monk” Ellison, frustrated by the plight of Black authors (perhaps even Jefferson), to be “Black” enough for their community, intellectual enough for the intelligentsia, and commercial enough for the market. Jeffrey Wright leads one of the season’s tightest dramedy ensembles — featuring Erika Alexander, Tracee Ellis Ross, John Ortiz, Leslie Uggams, Myra Lucretia Taylor, and Sterling K. Brown, nailing the late-bloomer, coming-out energy of Monk’s self-involved younger brother — and the jokes on pretentious publishers and oblivious Hollywood execs all but write themselves.

4. PASSAGES

In one brief, pivotal scene of Ira Sachs’ bittersweet, sex-filled exploration of a gay marriage that’s blown up by one husband starting an affair with a woman, said husband, Tomas (Franz Rogowski, the charismatic embodiment of bisexual chaos), drops a new, unhappy truth bomb on beleaguered partner Martin (Ben Whishaw, in a top-tier supporting turn). At first, we see Tomas only from behind, and Martin in a corner of the frame, just a bent elbow and pissed-off stance that alone garners a chuckle before the mood shifts to something sadder. Because Tomas wants what he wants, three complicated adults, including his lover Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos, also great), are tossed onto an emotional rollercoaster that Sachs and crew cleverly capture from every angle.

3. PAST LIVES

Speaking of complicated adults, Celine Song’s aching romantic drama looks deep into the hearts and minds of its lead pair, Hae Sung and Nora, the latter of whom, as it happens, is married to someone else and contentedly living in Brooklyn when Hae Sung pops up in her life many years since their paths diverged as children in Korea. As Hae Sung, Teo Yoo gives a masterclass in subtle passion, opposite Greta Lee’s tender Nora, a pitch-perfect mix of longing and conflicted loyalty, torn between supportive husband Arthur (John Magaro, holding down hubby’s sliver of territory), and a love that’s lived for her for as long as she can remember.

 2. POOR THINGS

One could wager that sexual repression was a potent side effect of the pandemic, and produced its own side effects, like, for one, the current renaissance of sex in movies — all kinds and genres of movies, including, if it weren’t already clear, most of the films on this list. But none so pointedly and exuberantly reflects all the pent-up sexual energy that came gushing out onscreen this year as Yorgos Lanthimos’ delectable, hilarious, eye-catching odyssey towards female power, agency, and sexual liberation, starring Willem Dafoe as the mad scientist he was born to play, Mark Ruffalo at his most appealing playing the least appealing lothario, and Emma Stone giving simply the best performance of the year.

1. ALL OF US STRANGERS

A wistful fantasy of reunion and renewal, Andrew Haigh’s delicate romance sustains a beautiful connection between lonely London writer Adam (a superb Andrew Scott) and his loving Mum (Claire Foy) and Dad (Jamie Bell), who welcome him home for visits despite the fact that they perished when he was nearly 12. Their revived presence in Adam’s life coincides with his hot dalliance with Harry (Paul Mescal), a handsome stranger in his apartment building, also lonely and desperate to connect in this mesmerizing story of desire and utter heartbreak.

And 10 more that added to this year of terrific movies:

Anatomy of a Fall

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

Fallen Leaves

Godzilla Minus One 

Love to Love You, Donna Summer

Oppenheimer

Origin

Skinamarink

The Holdovers

The Taste of Things