The 30 best films of 2023

So that’s a wrap for 2023… And it has been a banger. The 30 motion pic­tures you see in the list below are the result of intense inter­nal delib­er­a­tions deep in the LWLies secret lair in Shored­itch, and there was some democ­ra­cy involved, but also a fair bit of com­mon sense and per­son­al lob­by­ing. The list runs from 1 Feb­ru­ary 2023 to 31 Jan­u­ary 2024 (to account a lit­tle bit for some ear­ly US releas­es, such as Poor Things and All of Us Strangers), but we were fair­ly strin­gent on the cut-off. For our num­ber one film, there’s some­thing unas­sum­ing about it on first watch but, like all great art, it doesn’t just lodge itself in the mind, but demands repeat­ed reap­praisal and discussion.

For bet­ter and for worse, we say to Car­ol Mor­ley: nev­er change. She is some­one who, through­out her career, has ploughed her idio­syn­crat­ic fur­row with pas­sion and inten­si­ty. Some­times, the final prod­ucts don’t land, but with her new one, a com­ic dis­sec­tion of Eng­lish man­ners as told through the life of artist Audrey Amiss, she has pro­duced one of her best and most heart­felt movies, lift­ed no end by a won­der­ful cen­tral per­for­mance from the great Mon­i­ca Dolan.

Jus­tine Triet’s 2023 Palme d’Or win­ner is pow­ered by a stratos­pher­ic per­for­mance by the Ger­man actor San­dra Huller, who plays a nov­el­ist who is accused of killing her hus­band by push­ing him out of the win­dow of their pine chalet. The film takes us through the legal minu­ti­ae of the ensu­ing inves­ti­ga­tion, but is more inter­est­ed in hav­ing us con­sid­er the slip­pery and abstract nature of truth.

One of 2023’s finest debuts, How to Have Sex is a film that fil­ters vital ques­tions regard­ing sex­u­al con­sent through the chron­i­cle of a clas­sic rite-of-pas­sage sun hol­i­day. Three young female friends see this moment as a chance for some gloves-off thrill seek­ing, but the lads they hook up with have oth­er ideas. Man­ning Walk­er picks apart a dif­fi­cult moment in the path to matu­ri­ty, and does so against the neon-lit land­scape of Malia.

Ya got­ta laugh though, haven’t you? No real­ly, you do… Rid­ley Scott rolls out a grandiose his­tor­i­cal biog­ra­phy of the 18^th cen­tu­ry French mil­i­tary tac­ti­cian, and has Joaquin Phoenix play him like an up-tight incel whose omnipresent tri­corne hat cov­ers up a head full of deep Freudi­an neu­roses. It’s a film that split view­ers over its fideli­ty to the record­ed real­i­ty and the extreme focus on Napoleon’s obses­sive love for his wife Josephine (Vanes­sa Kir­by), but the bat­tle scenes are some of Scott’s finest, and the whole thing, how­ev­er you take it, is an unabashed hoot.

Any­one who thinks the rom-com is dead should have a word with debu­tant direc­tor Raine Allen Miller, whose Rye Lane is a film which fond­ly bor­rows from the genre’s hal­lowed past while offer­ing some­thing com­plete­ly fresh and invig­o­rat­ing. Blessed with the chem­istry-heavy par­ing of David Jon­s­son and Vivian Oparah, this one was a big, charm­ing win and hope­ful­ly the start of some­thing big for its maker.

This was a good year for malev­o­lent cheese graters (see also David Fincher’s The Killer), and the one that crops up in Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise makes for one of the year’s most inge­nious­ly nau­se­at­ing scenes. This clever reshap­ing of the 1981 Sam Rai­mi orig­i­nal sees the action trans­plant­ed to a moul­der­ing apart­ment block, and the film is all the bet­ter for its mix­ture of earnest­ness and humour, and of course the tor­rents of red stuff that fill the hallways.

As finan­cial­ly suc­cess­ful as they’ve always been, movies about the Teenage Mutant Nin­ja Tur­tles have always been awk­ward brand cash-ins aimed at an indis­crim­i­nate demo­graph­ic of Prime-guz­zling teens. Jeff Rowe, with the help of his pal Seth Rogen, takes a leaf out of the Spi­der-Verse play­book and deliv­ers some­thing new, gen­uine, heart­felt and very fun­ny with this prop­er­ty. The ani­ma­tion is inno­v­a­tive, the script is very fun­ny, and the voice­work – espe­cial­ly from the four young new­com­ers play­ing the epony­mous heroes in a half-shell – is absolute­ly top-notch.

Park Ji-min deliv­ered one of the break­through per­for­mances of 2023 in Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul, in which she plays a tena­cious Kore­an orphan who was fos­tered by par­ents in France, and who decides to return to the home she feels resent­ful towards to find the par­ents who aban­doned her. It sounds like a trau­ma­tis­ing weepie, but it’s very much not, as the protagonist’s prac­ti­cal, emo­tion­al­ly detached meth­ods help to present this intrigu­ing sit­u­a­tion with humour and pathos in rich abundance.

One of the mea­sures by which we select the films that even­tu­al­ly make it on this list is to ask whether they’re show­ing us some­thing we have nev­er seen before. Sam­sara, from Span­ish exper­i­men­tal film­mak­er Lois Patiño, ticks that box and then some with this hush, ambi­ent tale of tran­scen­dence and trans­port to a high­er plane of being. At the 2023 BFI Lon­don Film Fes­ti­val, this one played at the BFI IMAX, and we hope that it gets a few more show­ings there when it’s released in the new year.

Span­ish film­mak­er Albert Ser­ra rocked the 2022 Cannes com­pe­ti­tion with this insid­i­ous and sub­tle explo­ration of French colo­nial influ­ence in the South Seas. Benoît Mag­imel, who’s fast mak­ing a name for him­self as one of the world’s great actors, stars as a diplo­mat­ic emis­sary who wants to have his fin­ger in every pie going, but whose atten­tion is divert­ed when a pos­si­ble end to his all-encom­pass­ing reign rolls into town in the form of a nuclear sub. Con­tains one of the year’s great shots of boats being tossed around by giant waves.

A big dis­cov­ery was made in Chris­t­ian Petzold’s lat­est film, Afire. And that dis­cov­ery is that the words ​“Club Sand­wich” as enun­ci­at­ed with a Ger­man lilt are in fact the fun­ni­est spo­ken words in all lan­guages. For a direc­tor whose films tend to be on the more seri­ous, melo­dra­mat­ic end of the spec­trum, this was some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent for him: a decep­tive­ly light com­e­dy about a young nov­el­ist unable to over­come his pre­ten­sions and pre­con­cep­tions of the world.

The tight­est film of 2023 was Daniel Goldhaber’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline, a thought­ful dra­mat­ic adap­ta­tion of Andreas Malm’s 2020 non-fic­tion book which explores the moral­i­ty of direct-action activism. Cal­i­brat­ed as a clas­sic-era heist movie, in which a dis­parate crew comes togeth­er to – you guessed it! – blow up a pipeline, the film also to make sure that their mes­sage rings out across the land­scape and leaves a chill­ing­ly ambigu­ous mark on the audi­ence as well.

The return of the king. Finnish mae­stro Aki Kau­ris­mä­ki returns to the scene in 2023 doing what he does best: pro­duc­ing immac­u­late hang­dog romances in which the poor, des­o­late and down­trod­den find love on the chilly streets of Helsin­ki. There’s also sur­re­al karaōke, trag­ic missed con­nec­tions, evil cap­i­tal­ists, and one of the great­est cin­e­ma date scenes ever com­mit­ted to film.

A small but remark­able debut fea­ture from Savanah Leaf which offers a visu­al­ly and atmos­pher­i­cal­ly unique take on Black par­ent­hood in the mod­ern age. Leaf is gift­ed with a tac­i­turn but open-heart­ed lead per­for­mance from Tia Nomore as Gia, an expec­tant moth­er who has already had two of her kids tak­en from her cus­tody by author­i­ties and must now nav­i­gate a malev­o­lent bureau­cra­cy. It’s social real­ism with an ambi­ent, more lushy visu­al twist.

One of the year’s finest British offer­ings came from the mak­er of one of the millennium’s best TV sit­coms: We Are Lady Parts. Nida Man­zoor ris­es to the chal­lenge of the fea­ture film debut by whisk­ing togeth­er a tra­di­tion­al tale of gen­er­a­tional malaise among the bick­er­ing mem­bers of a Pak­istani fam­i­ly in Lon­don, and a high-kick­ing action spec­tac­u­lar in which one teenag­er must save her sis­ter from a con­spir­a­cy that could unrav­el the very fab­ric of the com­mu­ni­ty. Very fun­ny, com­plete­ly charm­ing – we can’t wait to see what Man­zoor and star Priya Kansara do next.

The title of this inti­mate opus refers to a province in the west of Argenti­na, and it’s being used in the same way as David Lynch used the name Twin Peaks – to denote a locus for mys­tery and intrigue. Lau­ra Citarel­la spins a tale of one woman’s jour­ney through the rab­bit hole of his­to­ry and her obses­sion to uncov­er the details of a romance lit­er­al­ly found between pages of books at the local library. But then it jack­knifes sud­den­ly into more sur­re­al and pro­found ter­ri­to­ry, cel­e­brat­ing female auton­o­my and the allure of small, inde­pen­dent collectives.

The time-hon­oured court­room dra­ma took on a new form in 2023, and at the van­guard of this change was Alice Diop’s extra­or­di­nary and har­row­ing Saint Omer. Its sto­ry, which is based on the writer-director’s own research, tells of a woman who’s in the dock on charges of mur­der­ing her young child, and her tes­ti­mo­ny takes us to some dark, moral­ly and philo­soph­i­cal­ly ambigu­ous places. We love Diop’s short films and doc­u­men­taries, but this fic­tion fea­ture debut is arguably her first masterpiece.

That rare bird: a film that debuted at the Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val that real­ly deliv­ers the goods. Play­wright Celine Song tran­si­tions seam­less­ly to film with the lilt­ing, long-dis­tance romance of Past Lives, in which tele­coms tech­nol­o­gy and social media help a Kore­an cou­ple rekin­dle a for­ma­tive romance with her hav­ing emi­grat­ed before things could real­ly blos­som. Ten­der, wist­ful and nev­er judg­men­tal, we’re just hop­ing and pray­ing that Song isn’t chewed up and spat out by the Stu­dio machine.

We’re not entire­ly sure who deserves top billing here. Could it be the three extra­or­di­nary leads in Ira Sachs’ Parisian part­ner-swap­ping ménage à trois? Or could it be Sachs him­self, who culled the sto­ry from his own for­ma­tive expe­ri­ences of Cupid’s poor­ly-aimed arrow? But maybe we’ll just give it to the cos­tume depart­ment, espe­cial­ly the per­son who found the three-quar­ter length top that Franz Rogows­ki wears to a ​“meet-the-par­ents” luncheon.

2023’s mod­el block­buster, in more ways than one. More than just a movie, Gre­ta Gerwig’s Bar­bie is a form of cin­e­mat­ic alche­my that achieves what so many aspire towards and so often fail spec­tac­u­lar­ly: pleas­ing every­one all the time. Meet­ing in the mid­dle between cor­po­rate-man­dat­ed fran­chise exten­sion and weirdo art movie, Bar­bie deserves every pen­ny of its extra­or­di­nary suc­cess, not least for gift­ing Mar­got Rob­bie and Ryan Gosling with two of their most per­fect roles to date.

The film about a bomb that did the exact oppo­site at the box office. Christo­pher Nolan cements his movie-Midas sta­tus by giv­ing us a glitchy, three-hour biopic of moral­ly-scarred atom­ic bomb inven­tor Robert Oppen­heimer, and mak­ing the sort of mon­ey usu­al­ly reserved for films with span­dex-clad movie stars and lots of awful CGI. Next to becom­ing Offi­cial God of Movies Through­out the Galaxy and Beyond, the sky’s the lim­it for what Nolan does next. And, of course, this could be his gold­en tick­et come Oscar time…

In 2020, David Finch­er made the film Mank, which served as an ode to his depart­ed father in that it was based on a film script he wrote. With The Killer, the famous­ly-fas­tid­i­ous film­mak­er has come up with a film which may serve as auto­bi­og­ra­phy, the com­ic chron­i­cle of a zen per­fec­tion­ist assas­sin (played by Michael Fass­ben­der) whose attempts to pre­ci­sion-cal­cu­late the require­ments of his job always seem to come up short. Dis­miss as slight at your peril.

This state-of-the-nation epic based on a rip­ping page-turned by New York­er scribe David Gran saw its mak­er, Mar­tin Scors­ese, in a reflec­tive mood. Killers of the Flower Moon is a film about the mechan­ics of geno­cide, car­ried out by wealthy white set­tlers against unknow­ing natives, but also one which pon­ders the trag­i­cal­ly ephemer­al nature of sto­ry­telling and, by exten­sion, his­to­ry itself. Leo’s great. Bobby’s bril­liant. Gar­lands go to Lily Gladstone.

There’s been a mur­der, and the vic­tim is the UK the­atri­cal prospects of Kel­ly Reichardt’s scin­til­lat­ing new film, Show­ing Up. It pre­miered at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val in 2022 and there hasn’t been a whiff of it on these shores… until a Blu-ray release cropped up in online list­ings for the end of Jan­u­ary 2024 (right before our cut-off for this poll). Michelle Williams stars as a can­tan­ker­ous sculp­tor who has to deal with all man­ner of tri­fling non­sense to enable her to get the hard work of cre­ativ­i­ty done. It’s a beau­ti­ful film, and we hope that some peo­ple over here get to see it big.

While Baz Lurhman gave us a pre­dictably OTT hot-foot through the life of Elvis Pres­ley in 2022, Sofia Cop­po­la deliv­ers a bet­ter film is just about every respect with her supreme­ly thought­ful, ele­gant and unshowy take on the ear­ly life of the King’s first wife, Priscil­la Pres­ley. It stars new­com­er Cailee Spae­ny who deliv­ers a career-mak­ing turn as the porce­lain doll who even­tu­al­ly cracks, with man-of-the-moment Jacob Elor­di as her mam­ma-lov­ing weirdo spouse. It’s biog­ra­phy with the Wiki bull­shit pulled out and deep psy­cho­log­i­cal analy­sis placed in its stead.

Fol­low­ing a brief sojourn into the world of tele­vi­sion, Andrew Haigh knocks it out of the stratos­phere with his return to the big screen with this emo­tion­al­ly over­whelm­ing adap­ta­tion of Taichi Yamada’s 1987 nov­el, ​‘Strangers’. Andrew Scott has sel­dom been bet­ter as a lone­ly writer whose mem­o­ries of past loves (Paul Mescal) and fam­i­ly dra­mas (Jamie Bell, Claire Foy) coa­lesce into a time-switch­ing tale of romance and regret. Plus, lots of eight­ies elec­tro pop bangers on the soundtrack.

So is this Hayao Miyazaki’s third or fourth retire­ment movie? He def­i­nite­ly men­tioned he was pack­ing things in after Spir­it­ed Away, and that was five films ago now… Any­way, let’s not both­er pick­ing over all that, and be thank­ful for the fact that the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li grand fro­mage has deliv­ered one of the Japan­ese ani­ma­tion house’s finest works, a melan­choly com­pendi­um of pet themes and far-reach­ing philo­soph­i­cal inquiry. It’s ambi­tious and occa­sion­al­ly obscure, yet the seri­ous­ness of intent is always enveloped with­in the filmmaker’s patent­ed brand of eccen­tric creativity.

It’s the film Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos was born to make! Okay, hyper­bole aside, Poor Things feels like the sweet, sweet prod­uct of film­mak­er who’s set out his intel­lec­tu­al stall (Dog­tooth), done his indus­try dues (The Favourite), and has now been hand­ed a carte blanche by the head of accounts to make what­ev­er he god-damn wants. And this free adap­ta­tion of the 1992 nov­el by Alas­dair Gray casts Emma Stone in the role of glo­be­trot­ting nymph Bel­la Bax­ter – a young woman with the brain of a child who’s learn­ing human behav­iour from scratch. It’s a stel­lar piece of cin­e­mat­ic craft, which acts as a gild­ed pedestal for a one-for-the-ages per­for­mance from Stone.

The jury is still delib­er­at­ing, but we can’t help but won­der if Wes Anderson’s lat­est mad mis­sive is also his great­est to date. His inter­est in the telling of the tale as much as the tale itself man­i­fests in the nest­ing sto­ries of a the­atre troupe putting on a play about an extrater­res­tri­al sight­ing in the desert-town of the title. There’s more stars than Heav­en in the movie, but spe­cial men­tion should go to long-time Ander­son totem, Jason Schwartz­man, who is gift­ed his first lead role in an Ander­son film since Rush­more. In short, twisty, immac­u­late­ly-direct­ed main­stream metafic­tion has sel­dom been so fun. And so moving!

If you take a peek in Todd Haynes’s tro­phy cab­i­net, you’ll notice he already has some LWLies sil­ver­ware from when he secured the num­ber one spot in with Car­ol for our 2015 films of the year. So con­sid­er this one the dou­ble. When we caught his scin­til­lat­ing, dis­ori­ent­ing new one, May Decem­ber, at the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val, we walked from the screen­ing unsure of what we’d just seen. Per­haps it was an acer­bic com­e­dy which han­dled the dark­est of sub­ject mat­ters with dain­ty aban­don? Or a big, brassy actor stand-off, with Natal­ie Port­man and Julianne Moore both on superla­tive form? Per­haps it was a stealthy cri­tique of bio­graph­i­cal cin­e­ma, screen act­ing and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of emu­lat­ing anoth­er per­son on film? Maybe it was all of those things? Or none of them? To be frank, we still haven’t quite decid­ed. But what we do know was that this was the film that still has us chortling, gasp­ing and winc­ing just think­ing about it, a dis­cus­sion-point movie par excel­lence and anoth­er crown­ing achieve­ment in the career of its direc­tor. Our only prayer now is that the award sea­son set take notice. And if you wan­na hear from the man him­self, take a lis­ten to this episode of Truth & Movies in which the august Han­nah Strong inter­viewed him about the mak­ing of this bril­liant film.