The 30 best films of 2023

There’s no one who captures “nu-royalty” better than filmmaker Sofia Coppola. With her quietly insightful biopic , she’s fashioned a Marie Antoinette-esque fable from Priscilla Presley’s real-life love affair with the King of Rock N’ Roll, Elvis Presley. Graceland becomes a castle in which this titular lonely princess is isolated in her wall-to-wall carpeted prison. Cailee Spaeny and Jacob Elordi give the picture an evocative emotional texture that matches the sumptuous craftsmanship in period-era costume and production design. And there’s no more empowering scene this year than the final one scored by Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You.” [Courtney Howard]

After Disney’s acquisition and subsequent closure of 20th Century Fox-based Blue Sky Studios, where had been in development for years, it’s a small miracle the animated feature came out at all this year. Unlike so many other abandoned projects, though, this one has a happy ending. It was revived by Annapurna Pictures, completed by DNEG Animation, and released on Netflix to critical acclaim this past June. Based on the graphic novel series by ND Stevenson, it stars Chloë Grace Moretz as the voice of the irreverent, fun-loving title character, a shapeshifter who teams up with a disgraced former knight (voiced by Riz Ahmed) to help him clear his name. With edgy, stylized 2D animation that combines fantasy and sci-fi elements and a story that leans heavily into queer themes, it’s the antithesis of a modern Disney film. Compared to backward-looking projects like the recently released Wish, Nimona feels more in step with the future of animation, or at least where it should be headed. [Cindy White]

gave Keanu Reeves’ assassin a proper sendoff which, in John Wick’s world, means there were a whole lot of guns, blood, and High Table shenanigans. Chapter 4 sees the franchise at its most gloriously over-the-top: bigger set pieces, longer fights, more villains, that runtime. But for as long as the film was (170 minutes), it never dragged, instead stuffing every minute with more of what makes the series so special. The fights this time around were especially captivating, thanks in part to the addition of Donnie Yen as one of the only other assassins who can give John a run for his money. And even though Lionsgate clearly hedged their bets with the film’s ending, can you really blame them? It’s not like anyone would object to more John Wick movies. [Jen Lennon]

In a performance of both sexy swagger and wounded pathos, Franz Rogowski plays a filmmaker who embarks on an affair with a teacher (Adèle Exarchopoulos), sending his husband (Ben Whishaw) into an existential crisis. Ira Sachs’ assured writing and command of the mise en scene turns expectations for this film upside down. is a passionate menage a trois with European sensibilities, but also a scathing deconstruction of the narcissism and ego of artists everywhere. To make great art sometimes one has to mess their life up and become a complete jerk to those they love. [Murtada Elfadl]

One of the most romantic and visually beautiful films of the year, looks at food and cooking not just as an art, but as a method of expressing care for one another. Juliette Binoche’s Eugénie and Benoît Magimel’s Dodin have created together for so long they move through their 19th-century kitchen almost wordlessly, their rhythms synced to a science. The Taste Of Things follows a familiar romantic recipe, but Trần Anh Hùng is a skilled chef. This meal is best experienced on the biggest screen you can find; the food and the idyllic French landscape are pure relief. [Drew Gillis]

We’ve been so inundated over the last few years with shows and docs and films about tech that changed our lives that when I heard about , I honestly shrugged. But the IFC feature is fantastic, a comedy that, if you’re trying to sell it to a friend, you wouldn’t be wrong in dubbing a very funny, very Canadian The Social Network. But I’d more accurately label it a hilarious movie that just so happens to be about a cell phone. (That’s not a great elevator pitch—I get it.) Directed confidently by Nirvanna The Band The Show’s Matt Johnson, who co-wrote the project with Matthew Miller, the film boasts a powerhouse performance by It’s Always Sunny’s Glenn Howerton as a suit-wearing prick, some great banter, a fun, era-appropriate soundtrack—the Strokes! the White Stripes!—and more than a thing or two to say about friendship and ambition. [Tim Lowery]

With , David Fincher reunites with Se7en screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker for another stylish thriller. Michael Fassbender stars as the unnamed killer, an assassin on the run after he screws up a job. Fassbender and Fincher make for a striking pair; Fassbender answers Fincher’s daunting filmmaking precision with a performance that’s equal parts tense and absurd. This is peak Fincher with a surprising side of self-awareness, brought together by an incredible soundtrack from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. [Jen Lennon]

Filmmaker Jonathan Glazer took his adaptation of Martin Amis’ novel to the next level, incorporating Johnnie Burn’s precisely calibrated sound design into its impactful narrative and thematic function. As the daily mundane lives of the family of a Nazi commandant (Christian Friedel) at Auschwitz play out in the foreground, it’s impossible to ignore the horrific holocaust heard in the background, augmented by Mica Levi’s soul-piercing score. Sandra Hüller turns in captivating, chilling work as the household’s matriarch. Human complacency captured in this masterful picture is unshakably visceral, sickening, and destabilizing. [Courtney Howard]

No one knows relationships and the joy and sorrow they can bring quite like Andrew Haigh. New lovers falling in love (Weekend), lifetime marriages falling apart (45 Years), Haigh can dissect it all. In , Haigh makes his best film yet. A superb quartet of actors—Andrew Scott, Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, and Jamie Bell—tell the story of a screenwriter falling in love while trying to reconcile unresolved feelings towards his long-dead parents. This is the emotional wallop movie of the year, by the end the audience is as healed as the characters. [Murtada Elfadl]

After crushing it with , sharpens her comedic voice as a co-writer and director with the satirical, self-aware Bottoms. No movie made me laugh harder in a theater this year more than this one, in which two high school students create a fight club to woo their crushes. It’s all thanks to the genius lead pair of and co-writer , who are aided by a brilliant supporting cast in bringing the wonderful, bizarro script to life. The onslaught of jokes, one-liners, twists, and yes, the violence in a surreal climax, makes a delightful adventure. It’s got everything that matters: Lesbians, queer love stories, an ode to female friendships, mastering how to play a grade-A manchild, a Marshawn Lynch monologue that will leave you in splits, a stadium fight scene, YA shenanigans, and did I mention lesbians? Bottoms immediately beckons to coming-of-age movies of the past while carving its own weird path by subverting the traditions of it. Thus, an instant classic is born. [Saloni Gajjar]

is peak Wes Anderson. From the story—which follows the participants of a Junior Stargazer convention in the 1950s—to the mega-star-studded cast, this is pure Andersonian indulgence. But if ever there was a setting that seemed to be begging for the director’s signature aesthetic, it’s the desert of the American West. Plus, the story-within-a-story device and the characters’ own confusion about their roles and the purpose of what they’re doing give some distance from the whimsical story, giving the film a hazy, dream-like quality that’s not easy to shake. [Jen Lennon]

Alexander Payne’s concept for wasn’t just to pay homage to the late 1960s and early ’70s films of directors like Hal Ashby and Mike Nichols, he wanted it to feel like a contemporary film made during that era. He succeeded, but that’s only part of its appeal. The Holdovers also gave us Paul Giamatti in his best role in years as a cranky, wall-eyed academic stuck with the job of sole caretaker at a prestigious boys’ boarding school during the winter break of 1970. Not to be outdone, Da’Vine Joy Randolph delivers a devastating performance as the school’s head cook, who’s barely holding it together after losing her son in the Vietnam War. Newcomer Dominic Sessa completes the central trio, and impressively holds his own as a difficult student who helps unlock something in both of them. The pacing is calibrated just right, so the emotional epiphanies feel earned by the time we get around to them. If the term “bittersweet” didn’t already exist you’d have to invent it in order to accurately describe this film. [Cindy White]

The filmmakers behind the Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse were smart enough to know not to mess with success. For the sequel, they took everything that worked about the original and made it bigger, weirder, and more beautiful. In a year with more than its share of terrific animated movies, stood out for its imaginative designs and dynamic characters. From Gwen Stacy’s moody watercolor vibe to Spider-Punk’s paper collage aesthetic to Pavitr Prabhakar’s vibrant Mumbattan it’s a kaleidoscope of constantly shifting images that never let you forget that you’re watching a work of art in motion. [Cindy White]

Accidents happen when blasting a steel drum cover of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” from the attic window of a Swiss chalet. In the Palme d’Or-winning , filmmaker Justine Triet delivers a riveting thriller that not only examines the suspicious death of a man (Samuel Theis), but also the death of a marriage. Sandra Hüller gives an exceptional performance as a woman on trial, forced to defend her entire identity as a wife, mother, and author against a cutthroat, detestable prosecutor (Antoine Reinartz). Plus, Milo Machado Graner, Swann Arlaud, and the Palm Dog-winning Messi are revelations. [Courtney Howard]

It’s become trendy in the past decade to take a tabloid story from the ’90s—Tonya Harding, Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee, Monica Lewinsky—and give it a faithful, prestige adaptation. takes that trend and expands on it. Loosely based on the story of Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Faulaau, Todd Haynes’ film bypasses the event itself and instead checks in with the couple 26 years after the noise has subsided, examining the consequences a disturbing crime had on its victim, its perpetrator, and those who are obsessed with it. Both Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore kill their roles, but it’s Riverdale alum Charles Melton who breaks out as a child who became groomed into national attention and fatherhood. May December suggests that moving on is a completely different thing than closure. [Drew Gillis]

When you think of all the ways a movie based on Mattel’s Barbie toy line could have gone wrong, it makes you appreciate director Greta Gerwig and her partner Noah Baumbach that much more for creating something truly profound. To say it’s a feminist treatise on the injustice of the patriarchy would be the simplest of surface reads. That’s not completely wrong, but is so much more than that. It examines what it means to be human, to find the space to be yourself, and to appreciate others for who they truly are. And if you don’t want to take any of it too seriously, you can just sit back and enjoy all the visual and audible delights it has to offer, including magnetic performances by Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling, and the rest of the cast. [Cindy White]

has many of the hallmarks of the most famous Martin Scorsese films: a troubled marriage, crime that pays but only for a while, Robert De Niro. But Scorsese’s 26th film takes pains to remind the audience that this is a story of pain, not a glamorization of destructive male power as previous films have occasionally been accused of in the past. To drive the point home, the filmmaker implicates himself at the end, facing the camera to explain that the story of Mollie Burkhart is one that demands the exploration of her people’s suffering at the hands of the white men who were closest to her. With standout performances from Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers Of The Flower Moon dispels any cowboys-versus-Indians narrative; there is undeniably a bad guy here. [Drew Gillis]

Arguably Christopher Nolan’s greatest achievement, is a fascinating portrait of a man who seems to be slowly unraveling over the course of his entire life, right up until the moment he finds the horrible, planet-killing thing that he was born for, and then must spend the rest of his life reeling from the aftermath of every decision he has ever made. It’s not the story of the creation of the atomic bomb, which you could get from a documentary, but it is the story of the man behind the bomb—with the focus locked solely on him, even when he’s not onscreen for long portions of time as Robert Downey Jr.’s Lewis Strauss tries (and fails) to take control of the narrative. But the movie still manages to avoid letting Oppenheimer off the hook, creating empathy for his misery without forgiving him for what he did to cause it, all in a talking-heavy biopic (about physicists) that plays like an action-packed blockbuster. [Sam Barsanti]

There’s no one making films today quite like Yorgos Lanthimos. His bold and unique vision brought us the likes of The Lobster, Killing Of A Sacred Deer, and The Favourite—all very different films but still recognizably the work of a singular auteur. It was while making the latter that he found his latest muse, Emma Stone, and turned her onto a novel he was planning to adapt as his next project. That novel was , and the culmination of their partnership finally arrived this year in all its absurdist, cinematic glory. Poor Things is set in a lush, vaguely Victorian artificial universe begging to be explored, and that’s exactly what Stone’s reborn Bella Baxter sets out to do. Rather than being defined by the male characters around her, it’s Bella who defines them, including her creator Dr. Godwin (Willem Dafoe), his earnest research assistant (Ramy Youssef), and a foppish would-be suitor (Mark Ruffalo). It’s bizarre, salacious, unapologetically feminist, and often hilarious, but most notably it feels wholly original, a quality that’s become increasingly rare in Hollywood these days. [Cindy White]

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve landed on an extremely lazy formula for picking my favorite film, , , , , or what-have-you of the year: Whichever thing I talked about the most (positively) wins. (It’s a fascinating equation, I know. How did I come up with it?) Which is all to say that I was delighted to see fellow A.V. Club staffers agree that this remarkable, moving film deserves the top spot for 2023. And has, yes, so much to talk about: There’s Celine Song, who directs so maturely and builds narrative tension so naturally in her script that you would never guess this was her first feature. There’s the story—childhood kinda sweethearts keep in touch, years later, when they’re split between Seoul and New York City, then don’t, then reconnect in the flesh—that’s so specific but carefully rendered that it feels emotionally universal. There’s that cast— and Teo Yoo as those friends, and John Magaro as Lee’s character’s husband, all fantastic and in very different modes. There’s cinematographer Shabier Kirchner, who, as a friend put it, makes the case that “there’s nothing quite like 35-millimeter film.” There’s the perfect, unshowy uses of songs like Them’s “Don’t Look Back” and John Cale’s “You Know More Than I Know.” And there’s that inevitable goodbye, shot in the East Village on a weekend night, with two people not saying what any other script would have them say, which somehow managed to pack the biggest emotional wallop of the year. [Tim Lowery]