Chris Feil's Top Films of 2023

What to say about 2023? The kindest thing I could say was that the movies were good, but there were other nice things in a year I’m happy to leave behind. 

The greatest cultural document I experienced was Barbra Streisand’s memoir, My Name is Barbra, in audiobook form–Barbra can’t help but expound extemporaneously from beyond the confines of her own (already exhaustingly thorough) written word. The best meal I had was at Bar Cecil in Palm Springs, not exactly a destination town for great food. I embraced change for once in my life (switching from Spotify to Apple Music). I found something to replace swear words when things go wrong (“I lost half a day of skiing”). But all told, it was a great year for movies, more than could possibly fit on a list etc.–the best since 2019, I wonder if there is a reason for that. 

Anyway, onto the list…

1. MAY DECEMBER

A trademark of Todd Haynes’ best work is an ability to be multiple things at once–[safe] knots AIDS panic, climate change, and self-help bullshit into a contemporary dystopian pitch black comedy or horror, depending on your vantage; Far From Heaven, I’m Not There, and Dark Waters are genre films that also comment on their genre; I’m already going too long to even dip a toe into Poison and Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, but you get it. (Carol and Mildred Pierce are the outliers, I guess, semi-straightforward masterpieces made powerful through Haynes’ density of detail and ideas. Sorry, I’ll get on with it.)

His latest, May December follows Elizabeth (Natalie Portman, again gloriously thrusting herself out on a limb), an actress who descends upon the life of the tabloid staple Gracie (Julianne Moore) that she is about to play. Gracie was jailed for sleeping with Joe (Charles Melton) when he was 12, and now they are married with three young adult children. Elizabeth ingratiates herself, adopting Gracie’s mannerisms piecemeal and dancing around the uncomfortable questions, sometimes manipulatively. Being under her microscope causes Joe to finally question the nature of their relationship and Gracie to cling to her manufactured image of everyday housewife, the one that has allowed her to be accepted by her community.

Gracie is playing a role as much as Elizabeth is, and the layers get more twisted and funny with every crack Elizabeth strikes to Gracie’s veneer. But maybe Gracie is so convicted of this lie that she is uncrackable–what’s particularly terrifying about Gracie is how hard it is to tell whether she is truly that self-assured or can just convincingly pretend to be. If nothing else, May December is about the roles we construct for ourselves, but it is of course about many other things too–both embodiment and critique of the type of cheap film Elizabeth will be making, a lurid satire of tabloid culture, and the most damning critique of the American psyche Haynes has made since Poison.

All that and its greatest shocks–lines, gestures, revelations alike–are the ones dispensed most casually. It is in some ways the quintessential Haynes movie not only because it’s impossible to pin down as one thing, but because it returns Haynes to many past themes across his unique, dissimilar films. Performance, submission, the social order of straight society, women who lie to themselves, and the power of what’s unspoken. (Now in theatres and on Netflix)

2. ASTEROID CITY

Plenty of smart writers have heralded this as Anderson’s response to critics who have called his work cold and impersonal artifice, and that may well be Anderson’s motivation here. I’d argue the film itself is substantive rebuttal to that lingering critique, regardless of Anderson’s actual narrative intent; it’s enough that he made what might be his most emotionally affecting, funniest, and simply best movie. Asteroid City’s refrain of “you can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep” is a potent one, the idea of necessary pause reflected in the film’s notions of grief, scientific exploration, and artistic transformation. Who are we now that this thing has happened to us, what does it mean, and where do we go from here? Anderson made the one good movie about COVID lockdown times and he put a real estate vending machine in it. (Now on Peacock)

3. KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

It has felt morbid to reflect on Martin Scorsese’s mortality as he’s continued to deliver immense, exhaustive masterpieces such as this year’s Killers of the Flower Moon, his latest about the systematic violence and annihilation perpetrated against the Osage in the early 20th century. But that mortality is impossible to avoid discussing alongside his work, particularly for the epilogues of his sprawling late stage films–The Irishman, Silence, and most resoundingly Flower Moon all close with a note of “and one more thing before I go” that powerfully recontextualizes the narrative we have just watched. In this film, Scorsese is interested in condemnation, but unlike the final shot of The Wolf of Wall Street, that condemnation is inward as well as out towards the audience. Killers of the Flower Moon is in dialogue with a history of American cinema that set a certain false narrative and Scorsese, before he goes, wants us all to participate in setting the record straight. (Now in theatres)

4. LA CHIMERA

The world of Alice Rohrwacher’s films always feels two inches off the ground, floating between our real world (and all its troubles) and caught in an ascent towards somewhere otherworldly. Here Josh O’Connor joins a gang of Etruscan grave marauders (tomboroli!) who sell ancient, sacred artifacts for money, sending him on an odyssey through shady artifact collectors and a gang of brash daughters of Isabella Rossellini. It was simply the most transported I felt by any film of this year, both in the unexpected thread of its ideas (morality and economics, the living and the dead, and community) and its tangible, tactile beauty (drywall mold, marble, and the wondrous and mysterious topography of Josh O’Connor’s face). (Begins its theatrical expansion… soon? Neon has not stated…)

5. SHOWING UP

Kelly Reichardt’s Portrait of an Artist Without Hot Water Who is Inconvenienced by All–simply cannot relate to this film at all, no certainly not one bit. In it, Michelle Williams’ Lizzy is an artist at the mercy of other artists–her successful potter father, the art students and faculty she processes paperwork for, and her landlord quasi-friend played by the miraculous Hong Chau. To everyone else, it all comes so easy, there are seemingly no obstacles to their creation. Even her disturbed brother’s creative expression feels like a type of freedom. No one is explicitly trying to be an asshole, but for Lizzy, their general indifference to her priorities can only be received as such. She ultimately produces her meticulously positioned female sculptures into a menagerie of emotions and movement, with every creative setback like a gutpunching compromise, and when people see them, all they have to say is that they like the colors. Lizzy is, of course, also part of the problem–determining the appropriate amount of cheese for her show is just one of her many frustrations of her own making. But the gentle catharsis that comes once Lizzy’s work is released to the world is seismic enough to sustain her. (Now on Paramount+/Showtime)

6. PASSAGES

After a run of bittersweet films from Love is Strange to the underrated Frankie, Ira Sachs swandives into the acerbic with Passages. The film follows a gay film director who begins a sexual relationship with a woman for the first time while in post-production on his latest film, with both his long-beleaguered partner (Ben Whishaw) and new lover (Adele Exarchopoulos) as collateral damage in the aftermath of his self-absorbed creative exorcism. Sachs’ narrative control yields something elegant and often bracingly funny as its protagonist litters dysfunction at every turn, with Rogowski giving a terrifying performance that entwines the character’s delusions with his emotional terrorism. (Now on MUBI)

7. AFIRE

Like Sachs and Reichardt, Christian Petzold finds brutal humor through character study, in this fleet and flinty seaside cottage-set Rohmer homage. Thomas Schubert’s performance as Afire’s narcissist writer Felix is perhaps my favorite of 2023 that exactly nobody is talking about, so subtle and exacting in expressing the character’s passive aggressive woundedness and latent sexual attraction to every other character. The film’s tragedies come in its final stretch, persuading the audience to think he learns the folly in his self-absorption–until the film’s final whisper suggests he hasn’t changed a bit. Club Sandwich! (Now on Criterion Channel)

8. THE DELINQUENTS

Bank teller Morán confesses to his coworker Román that he’s stolen enough money for them both to never have to work again, so long as Román protects Morán’s half while Morán waits out his prison sentence. From there, Rodrigo Moreno's The Delinquents unfurls a three-hour existential fable about the confines we choose for ourselves and the fallacy of total personal freedom. It delivers a dreamy deadpan and it’s exquisite. (Now on MUBI)

9. KOKOMO CITY

One of the most thrilling debuts of 2023 came in the form of this documentary about Black trans sex workers. Director D. Smith coaxes out candid, sometimes funny, sometimes sobering, interviews out of each of her subjects and does so with more audacious, unfettered style than any number of recent talking head documentaries combined. Instead of the dull hallmarks of that genre, Kokomo City is something more alive and texturally akin to 1990s MTV or HBO After Dark and without falling into pastiche or pretension. (Now on VOD)

10. TÓTEM

Lila Avilés’ sophomore feature follows 7-year-old Sol on the precipice of great loss, following her family members as they prepare for her father’s going away party. Taking on the vantage of various family members, the film is shaggy, dropped in, and mystifying enough to keep it from being too saccharine. I’ve been comparing it to Rachel Getting Married, which probably explains what I love so much about it and what some won’t. (Begins its theatrical expansion 1/26)

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Honorable Mentions (11-20):

11. MAGIC MIKE’S LAST DANCE – Soderbergh simply loves the art of dance and communal, collaborative effort. This unfairly maligned-to-dismissed third entry to our finest franchise is half meant as advertisement for the live show (no complaints!! See also: previous Excursion episode). The other half is a romantic comedy between two artist opposites played by two great stars, Salma Hayek Pinault and Channing Tatum: an anxiety-ridden producer with a vision and the reluctant but effortlessly talented creator she hires after he gives her a life-altering lapdance.

12. THE KILLER – A hilarious existential crisis thriller with every detail shrouded in consumerist ennui. What do we think Fincher’s McDonalds order is?

13. A THOUSAND AND ONE – Unfolds like a great American novel with an incredible Teyana Taylor performance as its epicenter. Already in line for whatever debut director A.V. Rockwell does next.

14. THE ZONE OF INTEREST – Disquieting but still doesn’t incite much discussion beyond its monolithic craft (which is why I don’t rank it higher), though everyone is being too “banality of evil” reductive than this deserves. It pointedly references The Act of Killing, we’re meant to think of atrocity beyond the Holocaust–while watching, I repeatedly thought of the ongoing civil war in Sudan, met with complete indifference by the western world.

15. BARBIE – There’s only one Allan.

16. EILEEN – There’s only one Eileen.

17. THE MOTHER OF ALL LIES – Hybrid nonfiction, animation, and recreation used to audacious effect.

18. ARE YOU THERE GOD? IT’S ME, MARGARET. – Achieves the impossible (makes me enjoy a Benny Safdie performance).

19. DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD – Unencumbered by the rules of how movies are supposed to work and not all of it entirely works, but Rade Jude made a furious, freakshow funny banger.

20. YOU HURT MY FEELINGS – The bit where Jeannie Berlin refuses to admit she went to the Beetlejuice musical is why everyone should be in the Nicole Holofcener business.