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Like last year, I kept track of all the movies I watched, and this year I rated them as I went, so I could get a better sense of how to rank them all from top to bottom. I only rated them on an integer 1-to-10 scale, though, and I ended up with 29 movies rated a 7, so I still had to make a lot of relative ranking decisions well after the fact. But it's probably a reasonably accurate representation of what I thought at the time I saw them.
Unlike last year, this actually feels like a worse-than-average year for movies, at least according to my own tastes. Asteroid City was #3 on my list, but I think I liked The French Dispatch better, and maybe even The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (one of the four short films by Wes Anderson based on Roald Dahl stories that came out on Netflix this year). The Killer is a totally fine David Fincher movie but I don't think I'll have strong feelings about it in later years compared to others in his ouvre. And I was really disappointed by The Boy and the Heron, but it isn't further down my list because it still has enough of the essence of a Miyazaki film and I'm still a fan.
My #1 movie, though, Inside, will likely stick with me for a long time. Willem Dafoe plays an art thief who gets trapped inside a luxury penthouse, and that's basically all it is. It's mechanically very fun and compelling, but it's also metaphorically, emotionally, and existentially powerful. It's grueling and sometimes repugnant, which I often don't have any patience for (like last year's Triangle of Sadness, which made me put my hands in front of my eyes for long stretches), and the critics' reviews were mixed at best, but something about this film really connected with me. I should probably watch it again soon.
I'm posting this on the eve of the Oscar nominations being announced, and I think I've seen all but one or two of the likely Best Picture nominees. As you'll see, there are a few that I ranked quite low, so there's your teaser for the upcoming addition to my series of Best Picture posts. Also like last year, I plan to post an addendum with all the other 2023 releases I see before the unofficial end of the season when the Oscars ceremony airs in March. Last year's total was 102 movies seen; seems likely that I'll beat that number this year!
(Movies marked with * were ones I didn't see in a theater.)
I've been taking advantage of the AMC Stubs A-List deal: $25/month for free movies at AMC theaters (up to 3 a week). My current streak is 40 straight weeks of seeing at least one movie, and 30 straight weeks at the AMC Boston Common, which has plenty of screening rooms with plenty of empty seats for me to see weekday matinees nearly alone, like I prefer. Retirement has its perks!
Here's my current list of movies I'll try to see in theaters in the next couple months:
The Zone of Interest
The Teacher's Lounge
Origin
The Iron Claw
The Promised Land
The Taste of Things
Io Capitano
Evil Does Not Exist
Perfect Days
Totem
And here's a short excerpt of the long list of movies I missed that I'm hoping to track down at some point:
Memory
Showing Up
Even Hell Has Its Heroes
Pacifiction
The Five Devils
Rye Lane
Landscape with Invisible Hand
20 Days in Mariupol
The Eternal Memory
The Mission
Passages
Lynch/Oz
Afire
Plane
Dreamin' Wild
Golda
Outlaw Johnny Black
The Origin of Evil
The Retirement Plan
Bikeriders
War Pony
Suzume
What else did I miss? Let me know!
Unlike last year, this actually feels like a worse-than-average year for movies, at least according to my own tastes. Asteroid City was #3 on my list, but I think I liked The French Dispatch better, and maybe even The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (one of the four short films by Wes Anderson based on Roald Dahl stories that came out on Netflix this year). The Killer is a totally fine David Fincher movie but I don't think I'll have strong feelings about it in later years compared to others in his ouvre. And I was really disappointed by The Boy and the Heron, but it isn't further down my list because it still has enough of the essence of a Miyazaki film and I'm still a fan.
My #1 movie, though, Inside, will likely stick with me for a long time. Willem Dafoe plays an art thief who gets trapped inside a luxury penthouse, and that's basically all it is. It's mechanically very fun and compelling, but it's also metaphorically, emotionally, and existentially powerful. It's grueling and sometimes repugnant, which I often don't have any patience for (like last year's Triangle of Sadness, which made me put my hands in front of my eyes for long stretches), and the critics' reviews were mixed at best, but something about this film really connected with me. I should probably watch it again soon.
I'm posting this on the eve of the Oscar nominations being announced, and I think I've seen all but one or two of the likely Best Picture nominees. As you'll see, there are a few that I ranked quite low, so there's your teaser for the upcoming addition to my series of Best Picture posts. Also like last year, I plan to post an addendum with all the other 2023 releases I see before the unofficial end of the season when the Oscars ceremony airs in March. Last year's total was 102 movies seen; seems likely that I'll beat that number this year!
(Movies marked with * were ones I didn't see in a theater.)
- Inside
- Dream Scenario
- Asteroid City
- Leave the World Behind
- Anatomy of a Fall
- Return to Seoul
- Blue Beetle
- Monster
- The Killer
- Past Lives
- Knock at the Cabin
- Squaring the Circle (The Story of Hipgnosis)
- Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd
- Magic Mike's Last Dance
- Emily
- Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
- M3GAN
- A Haunting in Venice
- The Marvels
- Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
- The Eight Mountains
- Theater Camp
- Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
- The Holdovers
- Killers of the Flower Moon
- The Royal Hotel
- 65
- Foe
- BlackBerry
- The Boy and the Heron
- Murder Mystery 2*
- Jules
- The Blackening
- Being Mary Tyler Moore*
- The Flash
- Joy Ride
- They Cloned Tyrone*
- Gran Turismo
- Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
- Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One
- Creed III
- All of Us Strangers
- May December
- Freud's Last Session
- American Fiction
- Eileen
- Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre
- The Pigeon Tunnel*
- Stan Lee*
- Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
- Barbie
- Society of the Snow
- Napoleon
- John Wick: Chapter 4
- The Creator
- Anselm
- Fallen Leaves
- Alice, Darling
- Beau Is Afraid
- Somebody I Used to Know
- Love at First Sight
- Fair Play
- Silent Night
- Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3
- Shazam! Fury of the Gods
- You Hurt My Feelings
- Full River Red
- Paint*
- Saltburn
- How to Blow Up a Pipeline
- Bottoms
- Sanctuary
- Maestro
- Guy Ritchie's The Covenant
- Priscilla
- Master Gardener
- Dumb Money
- What Happens Later
- Godzilla Minus One
- Ferrari
- Anyone But You
- Air
- Poor Things
- Hidden Blade
- No Hard Feelings
- Wonka
- Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
- Tetris*
- Oppenheimer
- The Shift
I've been taking advantage of the AMC Stubs A-List deal: $25/month for free movies at AMC theaters (up to 3 a week). My current streak is 40 straight weeks of seeing at least one movie, and 30 straight weeks at the AMC Boston Common, which has plenty of screening rooms with plenty of empty seats for me to see weekday matinees nearly alone, like I prefer. Retirement has its perks!
Here's my current list of movies I'll try to see in theaters in the next couple months:
The Zone of Interest
The Teacher's Lounge
Origin
The Iron Claw
The Promised Land
The Taste of Things
Io Capitano
Evil Does Not Exist
Perfect Days
Totem
And here's a short excerpt of the long list of movies I missed that I'm hoping to track down at some point:
Memory
Showing Up
Even Hell Has Its Heroes
Pacifiction
The Five Devils
Rye Lane
Landscape with Invisible Hand
20 Days in Mariupol
The Eternal Memory
The Mission
Passages
Lynch/Oz
Afire
Plane
Dreamin' Wild
Golda
Outlaw Johnny Black
The Origin of Evil
The Retirement Plan
Bikeriders
War Pony
Suzume
What else did I miss? Let me know!