Here are my 10 favorite movies I saw for the first time in 2023. This is in no way a 10-best list, particularly since half of them came out before, sometimes long before, this year. They are just the 10 movies I enjoyed the most that I hadn’t seen before. They date from the 1920s up until December of this year.
What movies would you put on your list of favorites?
Torchy Blane series (1937 – 1939), starting with Smart Blonde, Fly Away Baby, Torchy Blane The Adventurous Blonde, Blondes At Work. A series of second features from the late 1930s staring Glenda Farrell as the brassy fictional newspaper reporter Torchy Blane, who would go on the be the inspiration for Lois Lane in the Superman comics. To be fair, Torchy was also played by Lola Lane and Jane Wyman in two films, but we don’t talk about those, and they don’t count.
Till (2022) – Was fortunate enough to see this devastating historical civil rights drama at our wonderful community-run World Theatre. It seems inexcusable to me that Danielle Deadwyler did not get an Oscar nomination for playing Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of the murdered teen Emmett Till.- The Fabelmans (2022) – Steven Spielberg’s semi-autobiographical film about growing up and making movies. It’s a great story of about the love of family and love of the movies.
- Buster Keaton Shorts with live piano (1920s) – The World Theatre here in Kearney showed three Buster Keaton short films with live piano accompaniment by Rodney Sauer. Keaton was a writer/director/actor who established what you could do with visual comedy in the movies. If you have watched and loved the work of the Looney Tunes, Pee Wee Herman, or Mel Brooks, you have seen the brilliant comic influence of Buster Keaton.
- Nimona (2023) – Probably my favorite animated film of the year when there were a lot of other great ones released (Across the SpiderVerse, Suzume, TMNT: Mutant Mayhem). It has a futuristic feudal society with knights and shapeshifters. It also tells a fundamentally queer story that includes an LGBTQ+ romance and a shapeshifting character who does not really have a pre-defined gender. Nimona survived cancellation by Disney after it acquired 20th Century Fox’s Blue Sky Studio. Fortunately, it got picked up by Annapurna Pictures, which released it on Netflix. It is visually stunning, and I really wish I could see it on the big screen.
- Oppenheimer (2023) – Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer reminded us all of why we go to the biggest, best theater to see bigger-than-life movies. Oppenheimer was shot on IMAX-format film and used all practical/non-digital effects. I went with a friend to see it at an UltraScreen DLX premium theater that is the next best thing to IMAX.
Barbie (2023) – Greta Gerwig’s Barbie famously was released the same weekend as the summer’s other massively anticipated film, Oppenheimer, something that studios have typically avoided. But the two films, dubbed Barbenheimer, showed that audiences were desperate for well-made, interesting, original films and wanted to see them in theaters. Superhero/franchise fatigue be damned, people wanted to get to movies and escape for an evening of magic. Gerwig keeps proving that she can take anything from indie fare like Ladybird to classics like Little Women to gonzo-crazy pop culture feminism and turn them into fascinating, entertaining and popular movies.- Asteroid City (2023) – Wes Anderson being maximum Wes Anderson. I can’t explain this film. Just see it if you haven’t. (Currently streaming on Amazon Prime)
- Pride & Prejudice (1940) – The last of the old films on my 2023 list. This 1940 version of Jane Austen’s classic novel stars Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. Dear Wife and I are used to thinking of Sir Laurence as the grand old man of British theater and cinema, not this vital, dare I say sexy, young actor. And Greer Garson is always wonderful.
Godzilla Minus One (2023) – This Japanese-language film (one of three I saw this year) was a surprise for me. I had barely known it existed before going to see it at a local commercial theater. As I wrote in an earlier blog post, Godzilla Minus One is an excellent look at the price we pay for war, for fighting, for fear… and what we must do to redeem ourselves. The movie tells the story of a Japanese pilot and the men, women and children who surround him in the waning days of World War II and the years following. Yes, it is a good monster movie, but it is also a touching story of our humanity. It also shows that brave filmmakers with good stories to tell can still make great movies out of franchises that have been around for decades.
I presented my ten favorite movies in the order I watched them without any attempt to rank them. The following are the remaining 11 films that didn’t make my 10 favorites but were in contention.
- Triangle of Sadness (2022) – Oscar nominated very-dark comedy about class conflict.
- Avatar – The Way of Water: 3D (2022) – Return to the world of James Cameron’s hubris, but in an entertaining way.
- Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023) – Surprisingly fun movie based on the role-playing game.
- Suzume (2022) – A Japanese-language anime fantasy film I was lucky enough to see at my community non-profit theater.
- Navalny (2022) – Disturbing documentary about the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.
- Spider Man – Across the SpiderVerse (2023) – Second of the ground-breaking animated SpiderVerse movies.
- The Hustler (1961) – In which Paul Newman shows why he was one of the greatest actors of his generation. Martin Scorsese made the sequel The Color of Money in 1986.
- Theater Camp (2023) – A low budget film made by a group of friends who just wanted to have fun together.
- Teen-Aged Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023) – The fourth animated film I’ve mentioned here. Not at all like the first SpiderVerse or Mitchells vs. the Machines, but clearly influenced by the them in breaking into new ways of telling stories with animation.
- Cold Mountain (2003) – Our campus film club showed this at our community theater, and I am so grateful to have seen this Civil War-based retelling of The Odyssey on the big screen.
- King Coal (2023) – An thoughtful documentary/meditation on how the coal industry has changed Appalachia, including my former home of West Virginia. Directed by a grad of West Virginia University’s journalism program.
So – What were your favorite movies you saw in 2023?