2023 was a good year for watching movies and shows. I watched a total of 52 movies this year, and more than 40 of them were ones I enjoyed. There were also a dozen different shows that I watched this year, and for the first time I ranked the shows as well. On to the list!
50. I only have 49 new movies on the list this year, but the type of person that would rank every movie they watch is also the type of person that would much rather have their list start at 50 instead of 49, so I’m going to use this spot to mention the Best Picture nominees that I didn’t see this year. I watched 7 of the 10 nominees, but the ones I didn’t see were: 1) The Fablemans, which I’ve heard was decent, but really just did not look interesting at all to me. 2) Avatar, which I wanted to see in the theater, but never got around to it, and 3) Women Talking, which says right in the title, is about people sitting around talking, which does not seem like it could possibly be entertaining. I’ll probably watch all three of them this summer and realize that my impression was totally wrong.
49. The Banshees of Inisherin Banshees is probably the most polarizing movie of the year. I talked to several friends that thought it was one of the best movies of the year. I thought it was one of the worst. That’s not exactly right - it’s not necessarily a bad movie, I just hated it. There are some things to like about it: it’s well acted and it’s beautiful to look at, but those things alone don’t make up for a dreary story that ends up making you sick to your stomach. The only plot in the movie involves two friends (Collin Farrel and Brendan Gleeson) on the tiny Irish island of Inisherin. When Gleeson’s character decides that he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, things fall apart in both of their lives. The argument for why it was nominated for Best Picture probably would go something along the lines of “It’s a beautiful, tragic rumination on the end of a friendship”. The argument against would be “It’s a boring movie punctuated with confusing and unnecessary violence, and Academy voters apparently mistook being sad and serious for being meaningful.”
48. The Gray Man The worst kind of Netflix movie. Get some A list actors, in this case Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, and Chris Evans. Get an A list director, in this case the Russo brothers who have directed a bunch of Marvel movies. Steal some plot ideas from a well known franchise, in this case Jason Bourne. Throw together some action scenes in exotic locations that people will enjoy making movies in, in this case France and the Czech Republic. Hope that people will watch it even though they know it is totally formulaic because they are bored and can’t find anything else to watch. Well, I guess it worked because I watched the whole thing. You shouldn’t make the same mistake.
47. Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness This movie is the epitome of what is wrong with the Marvel movies right now. The whole multiverse thing was fun for a bit, but after about 10 movies where people travel to different universes and discover different timelines or different versions of themselves in order to save the world, it just feels completely played out. None of the characters here are particularly interesting, the fight scenes feel like things that have been seen a hundred times and there is nothing particularly interesting or even fun about this, or any of the recent Marvel movies.
46. The Black Phone The Black Phone is the kind of movie where studio executives got together and said “Let’s make a movie from a Stephen King book” only to find out that every single Stephen King book has already been made into a movie. “Well, what if we just made a movie that seems like a Stephen King movie?” Could we cast Ethan Hawke as a bad guy that kidnaps kids and call him The Grabber?” Done. When 13 year old Finney gets grabbed by The Grabber, he finds himself locked in a basement that conveniently has a black phone that doesn’t work. But when Finney is alone the phone mysteriously begins to ring, and on the other end are The Grabber’s previous victims, trying to help Finney find a way to escape. All the characters are so bland that they could’ve given them names like “teenage kid”, “disinterested parent”, and “The Grabber”. Oh wait, they did. The whole movie is minimally watchable, but it’s pretty hard to suspend disbelief if you’ve seen more than one horror movie in your life.
45. Thor Love and Thunder I am so tired of Marvel movies. Thor is a great character in the Avengers movies, but I’ve always thought that the Thor movies were some of the weaker entries in the Marvel universe. In this one Christian Bale plays a bad guy, some kids from Asgard get kidnapped, and it’s up to Thor to save them. I think it all works out in the end, but to be honest I’m not even sure that I finished this movie - all of the Marvel movies blend together at this point and I don’t care about the characters or the multiverse or any of it anymore.
44. Spirited Spirited looks like it should be really fun. Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell star in a musical adaptation of A Christmas Story, which is unfortunately only mildly entertaining. One of the things this movie reminded me is that if the music isn’t excellent, musicals are pretty hard for me to watch. Reynolds and Ferrell are fine - they’re always at least mildly entertaining - but there’s just nothing that makes the movie stand out in any way. Save yourself two hours and watch Elf or Scrooged instead.
43. Belfast The whole time I watched Belfast I kept hoping it would get more interesting. Belfast is Kenneth Brannagh’s mostly autobiographical tale of growing up in Ireland during The Troubles. The fighting mostly happens just outside our view, as the story focuses on 9 year old Buddy, his parents, and grandparents as they try to go about their lives as the conflict between Catholics and Protestants escalates in their neighborhood. The acting is good, and there are some nice moments between Buddy and each of the members of his family, and overall it is a very sincere movie. But the main narrative of the movie is whether or not Buddy’s family will move away from Belfast, and it just wasn’t enough to hold my interest, even for a relatively short 100 minutes.
42. Pig I put off watching Pig for a long time because, let’s face it, a movie starring Nicholas Cage as a guy whose truffle hunting pig gets kidnapped seems like it has the potential for being a total disaster. Cage’s movies for the last decade or so have mostly been of the phone-it-in or totally over-the-top variety, but this one is actually a serious movie that is pretty watchable. Cage’s character lives in the woods of the Oregon coast range, totally off the grid, with his truffle pig as his only real companion. When the pig gets kidnapped, it takes him on a quest back into Portland, where he was once the premiere chef in the city. It didn’t totally work for me, but it was at its best when Cage is ruminating about food and cooking and what makes a meal great.
41. Athena I watched this movie after it popped up on a couple of year end Best Of lists for 2022. It’s set in Paris after riots erupt when police kill a young Black man. One of the young man’s brothers is a decorated military veteran who urges calm, while another brother erupts in anger and leads a group of rioters protesting the police and the killing. It’s hard not to see some parallels to the protests in the US after George Floyd’s murder, and the movie embraces that intensity while telling the story from several different perspectives, including all three different brothers and a white police officer. While there was a lot to admire about the movie, it didn’t seem to come together that well, and the final act felt overly dramatic and for me didn’t resolve in a very satisfying or realistic way. Ultimately I thought it was an interesting but flawed movie.
40. Nightmare Alley is an enjoyably creepy movie from Guillermo Del Toro that stars Bradley Cooper as a con man who starts as a lowly carnival worker that becomes a successful psychic conning the rich and powerful. The best scenes in the movie are the ones set in the carnival, a grimy, morally bankrupt world, and even though Cooper’s character seems to rise to great success, he’s still the same grifter at heart, always trying to find another con.
39. Bullet Train In Bullet Train, five assassins board a train en route to Tokyo. None of them know each other, but it turns out they are all there for the same reason. The result is two hours of mayhem and Tarantino-style violence and clever dialogue. Brad Pitt leads a fun ensemble cast, and for the most part it is an entertaining movie with twists that keep you guessing along the way. The violence in these Tarantino copy-cat movies is a little too much for me, but overall I enjoyed it.
38. The Elephant Whisperers Nominated for Best Documentary Short, the Elephant Whisperers is the story of Bomman and Bellie, an older Indian couple that have devoted their lives to caring for orphaned baby elephants. It is a touching story of the love that the two of them have for the elephants, and eventually for each other as they spend each day together caring for an elephant under their watch. The elephants are remarkable creatures, intelligent, powerful animals that have a strong attachment to their caretakers. I watched several environment/animal related documentaries this year, and in all of them I was drawn to the stories of the people who care deeply and give of themselves to try to protect the natural world.
37. The Woman King The Woman King is a fairly standard historical war epic, following the warriors from the African kingdom of Dahomey as they fight to protect their land and their people from the Oyo, a neighboring Empire that wants to take their land and enslave their people. What makes the movie unique is that the warriors, led by Viola Davis, are all female. I wouldn’t say that the movie is a standout, but as these types of battle epics on Netflix go, it’s pretty solid.
36. Spiderhead Based on the novel Escape from Spiderhead by George Saunders, Spiderhead is the name of a prison colony island, where inmates are lightly supervised, in exchange for being guinea pigs for testing out new drugs from a pharmaceutical company led by Chris Hemsworth. The drugs, administered through a pack the prisoners wear at all times, purport to be able to control what the patient feels, from love to lust to fear. One of the prisoners, played by Miles Teller, grows suspicious of Hemsworth’s motives and tries to figure out what is really going on. The film is unremarkable, but I’m always glad for anything that’s an original story that I haven’t already seen several versions of.
35. Operation Mincemeat The good kind of Netflix movie. Not necessarily A list actors but a solid cast (the always solid Colin Firth is the lead), a story that is not flashy at first, but ends up being more interesting as the movie goes on, and an understated storytelling that works nicely. Mincemeat is the story of British Intelligence officers in World War II that come up with a scheme to plant false information on a dead soldier in hopes that the Germans will find the body and be tricked into making a false move. Not necessarily memorable but if you enjoy WWII movies or espionage movies (yes to both for me), then it is worth a watch.
34. Ghosted In Ghosted, Chris Evans plays Cole, a handsome organic farmer, who meets and falls for Sadie (Ana de Armas). After a great first day together, Cole decides that Sadie might be The One, only to have her never return his calls or messages. When he decides to travel overseas to find out what’s going on, it turns out Sadie is actually a spy, and they get caught up in an international caper. Is this a strong plot? No, it is not. Is Chris Evans believable as a farmer? No, he is not. Are Evans and de Armas attractive and charismatic enough that it’s worth watching them even in a movie that isn’t very good? Yes, they are.
33. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Like most of the other Marvel movies on this year’s list, I didn’t mind the movie, and probably would’ve enjoyed it more if I hadn’t reached the point of Marvel saturation in the last couple years. In this sequel to the original Black Panther, which I loved, King T’Challa has recently died, and his sister Shuri (Letitia Wright) and mother Ramonda (Angela Bassett) are grieving T’Challa’s death, while simultaneously dealing with a potential invasion from a rival nation from under the sea. The movie is watchable and interesting at points - it’s probably the best of the Marvel movies from the past year - but I just have a hard time getting excited about anything Marvel. At least there’s no mention of the multiverse.
32. Tar The movie Tar is all about Kate Blanchett. There are other characters in the movie, but Blanchett’s Lydia Tar is the sun around which everyone else orbits. Her character is the world’s most renowned composer, and the first female music director of the Berlin Philharmonic. Everything about her is captivating. She’s interviewed in front of an audience for the New Yorker. She teaches a class at Juilliard. She dines with other well known composers. She practices with the orchestra. She is captivating, but also narcissistic and manipulative, every relationship in her life transactional in some way. As the story moves along, the world she has worked so hard to control begins to collapse around her. It’s a movie I’m glad I watched, because Blanchett is a force of nature, but I can’t say I enjoyed watching it, mainly because her character is so unpleasant. Despite not necessarily being enjoyable to watch, it’s a movie I’d recommend simply to see Blanchett fully embody such a powerful, flawed character.
31. Traveling Band: Credence Clearwater Revival at the Royal Albert Hall In the 80’s, CCR was one of those bands like Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones, and The Steve Miller Band that made up the fabric of classic rock radio. You couldn’t go two hours without hearing Proud Mary, Run Through the Jungle, Born on the Bayou, or some other CCR hit. Their music always conjured up images of the South, and if you’d asked me where they were from, I probably would’ve guessed Louisiana. So you can imagine my surprise watching this documentary to realize that the Fogertys and the rest of the band were actually from El Cerito, California and had never even been to the South when they started making music. The documentary details the rise of the band, and follows them during the time period from 1968-1970 when they put out an incredible 6 studio albums. If you enjoy CCR’s music, it’s a great watch, made even better by narration of the Big Lebowski himself, Jeff Bridges.
30. Rise is a Disney+ movie that tells the story of Giannis Antetekoumpo’s incredible journey to the NBA. It’s a Disney movie, so as you might expect it is fairly predictable, but it’s still a fun watch. If you’ve never heard Giannis’ story (Born in Nigeria, moved with his family as undocumented immigrants to Greece, starts playing basketball as a teenager, and a decade later is MVP of the NBA), it would seem like something out of a Disney movie, so perhaps it is only fitting that it was made into one. As a side note for any NBA fans reading this, one of my favorite things about the NBA in the last two decades is how many international players like Giannis have changed the face of professional basketball. Many of the best players in today’s game didn’t grow up in the United States, and there is something refreshing about how they play and how they carry themselves, perhaps because they don’t grow up in a culture that tells them they are the greatest thing in the world from the time they are a teenager and good at playing basketball.
29. Thirteen Lives is the amazing true story of the Thai soccer team cave rescue. I thought this was a good telling of the story, and it really is a remarkable story of hundreds of people coming together and even risking their lives to save the thirteen boys trapped in the cave by floods. The only reason I’m a little hesitant to recommend it is that I thought the documentary The Rescue was even better because you get to see the real people and real footage of the event. I enjoyed this one, even having seen The Rescue before, but if I had to recommend one I’d probably say go with the documentary.
28. Troll I don’t know that much about Norway, but from watching movies, I do know that the Norwegians are fascinated by Trolls. Every decade or so there is a Norwegian troll movie, and they are usually pretty entertaining. In this one a paleontologist is summoned by the Norwegian government to investigate unusual activity, including giant footprints, in the mountains. Eventually everyone realizes that trolls are more than just mythological beasts, and the military and scientists have very different ideas about what to do about the troll. I found it more entertaining than the typical Hollywood monster movie, perhaps because the troll turns out to be more of a giant than a true monster, and with a smaller budget it’s much less reliant on special effects and spends more time on character development.
26. Causeway One of the things that a lot of people, myself included, forgot about during the rise of Jennifer Lawrence, A-list celebrity, is that Jennifer Lawrence is actually a really good actress. Before she was Best Actress, before she was Katniss Everdeen and before she played one of the X-Men, Lawrence first appeared in the movie Winter’s Bone, a dark, intense movie set in a drug-filled corner of the Ozarks. Back in 2010 I had Winter’s Bone ranked as my #3 movie of the year, and mentioned Lawrence as a standout, even though I had never heard of her before. My point in all this back story is that it was nice to see her in Causeway, a story where she plays a real human, and not a superhero or larger-than-life character of some sort. She plays Lynsey, a soldier who is back in the US after suffering a brain injury while on duty in Afghanistan. She is excellent as her character gradually re-learns how to walk and talk and deal with her injury, but I thought that her co-star, Brian Tyree Henry stole the show. Henry plays James, a car mechanic who is recovering from his own trauma, and when the two of them meet they form a friendship that helps both of them deal with their own brokenness. It’s a nice, small movie that doesn’t have any Silver Lining Playbook Hollywood moments, but does showcase the talents of two excellent actors.
25. Glass Onion Glass Onion is a fun, forgettable movie. It’s the sequel to Knives Out, which was a top 5 movie for me in 2019. Like the original, Glass Onion has a fun ensemble cast, but the only returner is Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc. Blanc is a great character - a cross between Agatha Christie and Colonel Sanders - and once again he’s tasked with trying to solve a murder mystery. In the sequel, Ed Norton has invited his closest friends to his private island for a weekend where they will play a murder mystery game. As always happens in these types of movies, one of the guests is actually murdered, and it’s up to Blanc to figure it out. The characters are fun,there are plenty of twists that keep you guessing, and even though the movie isn’t memorable, it’s a solid watch.
24. Don’t Worry Darling All the talk about the making of this movie, the press tour, and the bizarre behavior of some of the actors made it so that no one went into this movie with any kind of normal expectations. People expected the movie to be a train wreck, when in reality it was kind of an interesting, mysterious movie with a strong cast and a terrific retro look. Florence Pugh is great, as always, playing a 1950’s housewife living in a utopian community where the husbands work for something called the Victory Project while the wives take dance classes and make dinner during the day, then look good when their husbands get home. When Alice (Pugh) begins to realize something is off with this version of utopia, things begin to unravel. It’s a flawed film in some ways - the ending in particular was disappointing, but overall Don’t Worry is actually much better than you might have been led to believe by the press surrounding it.
23. Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu has been making interesting movies for more than 20 years. He became a legend when he won Best Picture and Best Director in back to back years for Birdman and The Revenant. Perhaps my favorite movie of his was 21 Grams, which was in 2003 before I started making my movie list, but if I had been, it probably would have been at the top. He was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director for the excellent Babel. He’s got an incredibly impressive catalog of diverse, unique movies. Bardo doesn’t rank among his best, but like everything else he’s made, it’s worth watching. Daniel Giminez Cacho plays Silverio, a journalist and documentary maker living in Los Angeles, who travels to his home in Mexico after winning a prestigious award. The movie, like Birdman, occasionally blends fantasy with reality, as Silverio wrestles with his identity and his legacy as a filmmaker, living in the US and making documentaries about Mexico. There’s a lot going on in the movie, and not all of it works, but I found the moments with Silverio’s family to be quite touching, and like everything Inarritu makes, it has a beautifully mesmerizing style that is easy to be swept up in.
22. A Hundred Invisible Threads A documentary for basketball die-hards, A Hundred Invisible Threads tells the story of Nikola Jokic and the history of Serbian basketball, as told by a group of friends that cover Jokic’s NBA team, the Denver Nuggets. The group from DNVR Sports set out to visit Serbia, see the places and people that shaped Jokic, learn about Serbian basketball and Serbian culture in general. The documentary is part travel journal and part history, as the group tells the story of a tiny Balkan country that can make a strong claim to being historically the second greatest basketball nation in the world, and home to the current best basketball player in the world, despite having a population of less than 7 million. What shines through in this documentary is what a special place Serbia is, the hospitality of its people, and a basketball history that is richer than even most basketball die-hards realize.
21. Decision to Leave Park Chan-wook is a Korean director known for making movies with striking visuals and violent brutality, including Thirst, Lady Vengeance, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and the legendary Oldboy. Decision to Leave is a departure from his films about revenge, but keeps his visual style. Park Hae-il plays the top detective in Busan, who investigates the case of a man that falls to his death while rock climbing. When he meets the man’s beautiful wife, he is intrigued and suspicious. The more he investigates, the more complicated the situation becomes. The movie has a bit of a film noir feel to it, and the acting and directing make it a captivating watch.
20. The Territory If you’ve ever read stories or worried about deforestation of the Amazon, this is a documentary you should watch. What does actual deforestation look like? Why is it happening? What are the politics behind it? Who are the actual people that are affected by the loss of the forest? The Territory tells the story of the Uru Eu Wau Wau, a small indigenous tribe living in a shrinking patch of untouched rainforest in Brazil. Documentaries are at their best when they tell us stories that give us windows into different worlds, and The Territory does a terrific job of taking us into the worlds of many different groups; the Uru Eu Wau Wau, but also the Brazilian ranchers trying to provide for their families and get land of their own, and the environmental activists working to preserve the forest and the native people. It’s an important and urgent story, a story that has already unfolded in the United States as settlers moved in, kicked out native people, and used the resources to build our country at a terrible cost to the people that were already there and the environment. Whether history repeats itself in the Brazilian Amazon remains to be seen, but this movie is important for understanding how and why it is happening right now.
19. Cha Cha Real Smooth is written, directed by, and stars Cooper Raiff as a somewhat aimless recent college graduate who moves back home while he tries to find himself and find a job. He ends up falling into a job as a Bar Mitzvah party host, and realizes he has a knack for helping people connect and have fun. At one of the parties he meets Domino (Dakota Johnson) and her autistic daughter Lola, and develops a unique friendship with both of them. It’s a charming, sincere movie with a ton of great characters that all feel like real people. This is Raiff’s second film, and he seems like someone to keep an eye on.
18. Air Air tells the story of Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon), Phil Knight (Ben Affleck), and Nike’s effort to sign Michael Jordan to a shoe deal coming out of college. Even as a huge basketball fan I wasn’t originally excited about Air, but I ended up really enjoying it. We all know that eventually Jordan signs with Nike and changes the company and shoe world forever, but there are a lot of fun details that I didn’t know about the story. Damon is terrific, as usual, but the whole cast is good (Jason Bateman, Chris Tucker, Affleck), and Viola Davis as Jordan’s mother steals every scene she’s in.
17. Licorice Pizza Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest movie is the coming-of-age story of Gary (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s son Cooper) and Alana (Alana Haim) in 1970’s California. Gary is a high school student and child actor with unlimited confidence, and Alana is an aimless 20-something woman who Gary falls in love with when she is working as an assistant photographer on school picture day. Despite the age difference and the fact that Hoffman seems like he’s actually 20, not 15, there’s a fun chemistry between the two of them. Their story is told in a series of individual scenes that are loosely tied together, from delivering a waterbed and flooding the house of Barbara Streisand’s boyfriend (played by a hilariously obnoxious Bradley Cooper) to riding along on a motorcycle as a restaurant full of onlookers watches a washed up actor (Sean Penn) try to recreate a famous scene from one of his movies. Each scene feels like an exaggerated version of a story that an older Gary might tell about his first love. It was a movie I expected to be boring and ended up really enjoying.
16. Hustle Another basketball junkie’s movie, starring Adam Sandler as professional scout Stanley Sugarman. When Sugarman is fired by his beloved Philadelphia 76ers he sets out on his own and discovers the raw but talented prospect Bo Cruz (NBA player Juancho Hernangomez) playing in a pickup game in Spain. Stanley convinces Bo to fly to the United States and train with him in preparation for the NBA draft. The movie is filled with all kinds of inside basketball moments and a ton of cameos from different NBA personnel, including most of the real 76ers team and staff. I especially enjoyed seeing Hernangomez in the starring role after watching him for many years at the start of his career with the Denver Nuggets. It’s a fairly predictable against-the-odds sports story, but one that any basketball fan will enjoy.
15. Cyrano A musical version of a love story does not sound like my kind of movie, but if the story is Cyrano and the music is made by Aaron Dessner and Matt Berringer of The National, then I guess it would be my kind of movie. The original Cyrano de Bergerac was a play written in the late 1800’s by Edmond Rostand, and it has been adapted many times, most notably in the 1987 Steve Martin/Darryl Hannah version, Roxanne. Even if you’ve never seen the play or one of the adaptations you surely recognize the plot device of a smart or charming character that is an outcast or “ugly” in some way, using a more handsome proxy to profess their love for someone beautiful. In this version Cyrano is played by the excellent Peter Dinklange, while Haley Bennett is Roxanne and Kelvin Harrison is Christian. The set pieces, the acting, and the music are all excellent, and the story is one that has been entertaining audiences for more than 100 years.
14. The Stranger With my Netflix feed, when a new movie pops up that their algorithm thinks I’ll like, they try to beat you over the head with it to get you to watch it. It’s at the top of the screen. It’ll be in the Daily Top 10. It’ll be under Trending Now. It will be under Popular on Netflix. They’ll even send you an email just in case you might’ve missed it. So it’s always a pleasant surprise when you find a new movie that arrives with little fanfare that turns out to be one of the best things they put out the whole year. In The Stranger, two men (played by Sean Harris and Joel Edgerton) meet on a bus ride in Australia and strike up a friendship, but it turns out both of them are hiding something. Both actors are excellent as they try not to crack under the weight of their secrets and the story slowly unfolds. To explain any more would take away part of what makes this true crime thriller a pleasure to watch. It’s an understated movie based on a true story, and the kind of movie I wish Netflix had more of.
13. Elvis Here are three good things about the movie Elvis: 1) Austin Butler is flat out phenomenal. I had heard of him before, but didn’t know much about him. He was soooo good as Elvis in all the different stages of his life. I didn’t see Brendan Frasier in The Whale, but I have a hard time imagining he deserved Best Actor more than Butler. 2) The music of Elvis. I like his music - I wouldn’t consider myself a huge fan, but he made so many good songs, and his music is a joy to hear throughout the film. 3) Baz Luhrman. The director of Moulin Rouge and The Great Gatsby has a very distinct style with a lot of flair, and it’s almost a guarantee that whatever he makes will be fun to watch and fun to listen to. Because of these three things, I really enjoyed the movie as a whole. What I didn’t like about it was Tom Hanks. It was an odd decision to tell the story of Elvis from the perspective of Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’ manager and the villain of the story. Even with the story being told from his perspective, it wouldn’t have been so bad if Hanks wasn’t just awful in the role. Hanks is one of our greatest actors, but at the same time, I feel like any role where he has to stretch himself and play anyone other than some version of Tom Hanks, especially if it involves an accent, there is a very real chance that it will go terribly off the rails. If you do not believe me, go watch the movie Cloud Atlas. Hanks aside, Elvis is a lot of fun and worth checking out.
12. White Noise What a strange, interesting movie. White Noise is based on the book of the same name by Don DeLillo. Adam Driver plays Jack Gladney, a professor in the field of Hitler studies at the College-on-the-Hill. His wife Babette is played by Greta Gerwig, and both of them are terrified of death. When a rail car carrying toxic chemicals collides with a truck, the resulting explosion causes an airborne toxic event, forcing the family and town to evacuate and confront their own mortality. If all of that sounds strange, it is, but that doesn’t really scratch the surface of what makes it entertaining. The movie is a contemplation of death, but somehow quite humorous. The dialogue is oddly formal and doesn’t really feel like how anyone talks, but it’s brilliant. All of it feels absurd and very post modern, filled with characters and themes and plot twists that don’t seem like they should work but they do. If you’re looking for an off-beat intellectual movie that is also fun, this would be a great pick.
11. Vengeance In the opening scene of Vengeance, Ben (BJ Novak) is talking at a party to John Mayer, and the two of them banter back and forth about relationships and women, agreeing “100%” with everything the other says. Our first impression of Ben isn’t very good - he comes off as shallow, selfish, seemingly content with his big city life of hook-ups and partying. In the next scene Ben has just hooked up with another woman, and gets a phone call from Texas that his girlfriend has been killed. Ben barely remembers the girl, but the next thing you know, her brother has convinced him to come down to Texas to help figure out who killed her. Because Ben works for a digital media company, he decides to go and make a podcast out of what happened, or more specifically, his version of what he thinks happened. It’s part fish-out-of-water tale and part mystery as Ben gets to know his girlfriend’s family and generally makes a fool out of himself in small-town Texas, but then his investigation/podcast ends up taking him to places he never anticipated. The movie, much like Ben’s character, ends up having much more depth than on first impression, and ends up having something worth saying.
10. Shadow Shadow is a Chinese movie, set 100’s of years ago as two kingdoms clash over their homeland. One kingdom is led by an unpredictable king that tries to manipulate everything around him to stay in power. But it is his army commander that is the central figure of the film - at conflict with both the enemy and perhaps with the king himself. What the king and the enemy don’t know is that the commander has a shadow - a man that looks just like him that he is training to take his place as he slowly weakens from an injury in battle. The plot has several twists, but what makes the movie so good is how it looks. Director Yimou Zhang (Hero, House of Flying Daggers) has a unique visual style that is unlike anyone else making movies. His fight scenes are not just battles, they are art - think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but better. His use of color is spectacular. House of Flying Daggers is an all-time visual movie for me, one that will blow your mind in an explosion of color. Shadow is the opposite - everything in the movie is black, white, or gray, except for the characters themselves. I’m not quite sure how they decolorized everything else in the movie, but it is remarkable.
9. All That Breathes Nominated for Best Documentary, All That Breathes is the story of three men in Delhi, India that run a makeshift hospital for a bird of prey called the black kite. It’s shot in a different style than many documentaries, more observational and artistic than most, following the men as they take in hundreds of the birds that are injured or become sick in Dehil’s polluted environment. It’s also an intimate portrait of India itself, as we see the men and their families go about their lives, eat meals together, and care for birds. In the not so distant background there is also worry over the persecution of their muslim families by nationalist leaders. The men are admirable in their work, but it is hard to not feel that they are faced with a sisyphean task: fixing and healing sick birds, only to release them back into the same environment that is making them literally drop from the sky. It is a portrait of resilience and beauty, but also sorrow at not knowing if any of the work will actually do any good.
8. Nope Jordan Peele is one of the few directors today making creative, original movies. Get Out and Us were two of the better movies of the past decade, and I’d go as far as to call Get Out a modern classic. Nope, while certainly interesting, didn’t quite live up to that standard for me. What I like about Peele’s movies is that they keep you thinking and talking about them for hours or even days afterwards. What was that movie about? What was that supposed to symbolize? What do you think he was saying there? Why did he choose that song in that scene? Everything in his movies means something, and things are rarely spelled out for you like they are in most Hollywood movies. The main characters in Nope are OJ (Daniel Kaluuya) and Emerald (Keke Palmer), siblings that are carrying on the legacy of their recently passed father, training and showing horses for commercials and movies. Things start to get strange as things start falling from the sky and eventually extraterrestrial objects start appearing. OJ and Emerald are determined to capture what’s happening on film. It didn’t always work for me - for some reason the story and the characters didn’t resonate nearly as much for me as they did in Peele’s other films, but I will always enjoy the fact that his stories are unique and packed with things to think about. For example, Nope opens with a chilling scene; a TV set with bodies laying on the floor, and an agitated chimpanzee with bloody hands walking around the set. We get no explanation until later in the film. When we see more of the chimp scene, it’s one of the most terrifying but also best done scenes of the year. At first the scene seems only loosely connected to the rest of the movie - one of the characters (played by Steven Yeun) was a child actor on the set when the rampage happened. But the scene is really tied to some of the main themes of the movie, including exploitation, and how what we see and record on screens is increasingly the way we process the world. When I left the movie theater, I originally was a little disappointed in the movie, but I ranked it this high because of the unique and thoughtful storytelling that you don’t see from many other directors.
7. Triangle of Sadness I watched Triangle of Sadness because it was nominated for Best Picture, and I’m really glad I did. It starts with a simple premise - Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charbi Dean) are shallow, vapid Instagram models that are dating each other because they like to have someone to look good with in photographs. They are invited to go on a cruise for the ultra-wealthy because the rich people like to have attractive models to look at too. As we meet the cast and crew, it is hard to find anyone to root for among the greedy, self-centered lot of them. Midway through the cruise, things start to go horribly wrong, and the final act of the movie finds the group trying to survive in a very different environment than most of them are used to. It’s at times hilarious, at times uncomfortable, but largely a delightful satire of what happens to the powerful when they lose power.
6. Top Gun Maverick In general a 36 year wait for a sequel usually doesn’t lead to a quality movie, but in this case, it worked out pretty well. It helps that Tom Cruise apparently ages in reverse dog years; 7 Cruise years = 1 normal human year. This also helps explain the Mission Impossible movies. Maverick is an enjoyable movie from start to finish, this time with Maverick (Cruise) in the role of instructor training elite Navy fighters in the Top Gun program. I haven’t talked to a single person that didn’t enjoy Maverick, and I’ve even heard a few people say they preferred this version to the original, but clearly those people weren’t alive during the 80’s.
5. Running with our Eyes Closed A truly excellent documentary about a truly excellent musician. I believe that Jason Isbell is our greatest living songwriter. From the moment he joined the Drive-By-Truckers and wrote Outfit and Decoration Day in early 20’s, to Cast Iron Skillet on his most recent album Weathervanes, no one can capture a story in a song quite like him. Running With Our Eyes Closed takes us inside the making of Isbell’s 2020 album Reunions. The movie is directed by Sam Jones, who also directed the legendary Wilco documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, and Running With Our Eyes Closed is on par with that film. Many great documentaries are great because they find an interesting subject and follow where they lead, and that’s exactly what happens here. From his early success with the Truckers, to his battle with alcohol and substance abuse, to his redemption as a solo artist and even struggles with his marriage as he works on the album with his wife and band member Amanda Shires, Isbell is a captivating figure, and this was my favorite music documentary since 2012’s Searching for Sugarman.
4. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent The premise of the movie is pretty fun: Nic Cage plays himself, but he’s fallen on hard times. A tough divorce and a string of disappointing movies leave him a little bit desperate, so when superfan Javi (Pedro Pascal) offers a lucrative sum for Cage to make an appearance at his birthday party in Mallorca, he reluctantly agrees. When he arrives, he’s intercepted by the CIA who try to convince him to help gather evidence on Javi, who they suspect is an international drug lord. The result is at once a Nicholas Cage movie spoof, a Nicholas Cage homage, and eventually, just a Nicholas Cage movie. And it works on every level. For anyone who likes Nic Cage, or really even anyone who has seen a Nic Cage movie, I can’t recommend this highly enough. I don’t think there’s ever been another actor that’s had a career quite like him; he’s been in over 100 movies (and counting!) more than half of which you’ve either never heard of or were really bad, he’s been in some trashy, fun action movies (Face Off, The Rock, Con Air, Gone in 60 Seconds), he’s had great roles in some really creative movies like Adaptation and Raising Arizona, and he even won Best Actor for leaving Las Vegas! The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent pays tribute to all of the greatness and weirdness that is Nicholas Cage in the most fun way possible.
Bonus: If you’ve never seen this supercut of Nic Cage freaking out, it is truly one of the best things on the internet Nicholas Cage Freak-Out Montage
3. Everything Everywhere all at Once I have to admit I was surprised when people started mentioning this movie as an Oscar favorite. Sure, I loved it, but isn’t it a little too weird and silly to be considered Best Picture material? Apparently not. It worked for me as an action movie. It worked for me as a comedy. It worked for me as an emotional drama. I loved Jamie Lee Curtis as a tax-auditor villain. I loved Michele Yeoh as the superhero mom. And I especially loved Ke Huy Kwan as Waymond Wang, even before I realized he was the same guy that played Short Round. But probably my favorite thing about the movie is all the silly, random things that pop up throughout the movie. I feel like I could do a whole post ranking the silliest things in the movie. If I did, the list would include:
Hot dog fingers
Fanny packs
Everything bagels
The names, (Jobu Tupacki and Waymond Wang, Deirdre Beaubeirdre)
People that turn into rocks with googly eyes
Raccacoonie
I was surprised that a movie with Raccacoonie won Best Picture, but in the end, a movie about the fate of the universe ended up being a movie about family, and a pretty great one.
2. All Quiet on the Western Front All Quiet affected me more than any other movie I watched this year. It was both the most beautiful and most brutal movie I have seen in a long time. I read the book when I was a teenager, and didn’t remember much about it other than thinking that it was an emotional gut punch to read. And that’s pretty much what it felt like as a movie. The cinematography in the movie is incredible - each scene is beautifully staged and shot. The images of war and destruction are stark and shocking at times. The beauty of the cinematography is frequently interrupted by absolutely brutal violence; tanks running people over, bodies being burned alive by flamethrowers, people getting shot or stabbed and dying slow, painful deaths. The movie follows Paul, a teenager, and his two friends who enlist in the German army in WWI. When we first meet the boys they are filled with excitement and nationalist pride as they get ready to join the war. Through Paul’s eyes we see the fervor change to horror as he witnesses the brutality of trench warfare. To emphasize this point, in some scenes his eyes are literally the only part of his face not covered in mud or ash from fighting in the trenches, staring wide eyed at the horror unfolding around him and in him. It was one of the hardest movies I watched, but also one of the absolute best. I would’ve voted it Best Picture of the year.
1. RRR Quite simply my favorite action movie of the last decade. RRR stands for Rise, Roar, Revolt, and tells the fictional story of two real-life Indian revolutionaries from the 1920’s: Komaram Bheem, who sets out to rescue a kidnapped girl from his village, and Rama Raju, an Indian police officer working for the British. Even though they are on opposite sides, Ram and Bheem meet during a spectacular rescue (highlights: an oil train crashing on a bridge, a child engulfed in flames, a motorcycle, a horse, and an Indian flag) and begin one of the great bromances in movie history. Everything about RRR is over the top, from the three hour run time to the music to the dance scenes to the most bonkers action I’ve seen since Mad Max Fury Road. All of the British characters in the movie are comically stereotypical villains, which is hilarious. The action scenes are so great that I’d say that probably my top 5 movie scenes of the year are all from this movie - several of them made me laugh out loud they were so wild. One of the greatest scenes of the movie actually isn’t an action scene, it’s the suspenders dance scene, which was so great I half-jokingly texted the friend that recommended the movie to me “That scene has to win an Oscar for something”, only to have the scene actually win the Oscar for Best Song. It’s a joyfully campy, spectacular movie and I wish I could convince everyone to watch it.
Older movies I watched this year:
Creed I had never seen Creed, but I can see why people liked it so much and why they’ve made a couple sequels. Michael B. Jordan is great, and it hits all the right notes for a sports movie.
Being John Malkovich Sill every bit as creative and weird as I remembered it.
The Hangover When this came out in 2019 I ranked it #1 on my movie list. It’s still funny, but there’s no way I would rank it that high if it came out now.
Bonus Section: A Brief Ranking and Commentary on the TV Shows I Watched This Year (because I can’t stop myself from ranking things)
Every single one of these is a show I’d recommend. I’m very quick to bail on a show after a couple episodes, so I have to really like something to watch the entire season. Every one of the shows below was one I really looked forward to each new episode.
12. Pepsi, Where’s My Jet Remember in the 90’s when there was that Pepsi commercial where it said if you collected enough Pepsi Points, you could win a harrier jet? This documentary series tells the amazing story of the young man who realized he could buy enough Pepsi Points to make it a reality, and what happened when he tried to cash in the points. It’s a fun trip down nostalgia lane where corporate power and lawyers ultimately take a backseat to a friendship that stands the test of time.
11. The Afterparty Entertaining Apple TV murder mystery series. When rich and famous pop star Xavier (Dave Franco) is killed at his high school reunion afterparty, Tiffany Hadisch puts her detective skills to use to find the culprit. Each episode is told from the perspective of a different character in a different style, based on the character (action movie, musical, cartoon, etc).
10. The Night Agent A super entertaining Netflix action thriller about a low level FBI agent who receives a call from a young woman in the middle of the night that changes both of their lives and uncovers a plot that leads to the White House.
9. Chimp Empire What if there were a show like Game of Thrones or Succession but it was a documentary about chimpanzees? That is actually a terrible pitch, but this is an amazing documentary series. Mahershala Ali narrates an incredible story of the relationships and territorial clashes between two neighboring chimpanzee communities.
8. I Think You Should Leave, Season 3 The funniest and weirdest sketch comedy show on Netflix. Not for people with good taste, but laugh out loud funny. i think you should leave season 3 zipline
7. The Mandalorian, Season 3 After a bit of a slow start, Season 3 finished with a couple excellent episodes. In many ways this is geared towards a younger audience, but I love all things Grogu and Mandalorian.
6. Slow Horses A great British spy series, with season 2 just as entertaining as the first.
5. Daisy Jones and the Six It’s a bit of a cheat to put this on my list because I’m only halfway through the series, but so far I love it and I’m pretty confident it will be in my top 5 shows for the year. It tells the story of the rise and fall of a band, and like any show or movie about music, the music is what makes or breaks it, and the original music for this series is terrific. There’s at least one moment in every episode that’ll give you chills.
4. Rings of Power This show has the potential to be great, even if it isn’t quite there yet. It looks amazing, it’s filled with interesting characters, and has a good story to tell. None of the characters connect quite the way a Frodo or Gandalf (or even Sam, Merri and Pippen) did in Lord of the Rings, but I think that over time these characters and their adventures will grow on us.
3. Freaks and Geeks An all time favorite, this was my third time watching Judd Apatow’s coming of age series that tragically lasted only 1 season.
2. Severance Mysterious, captivating, and brilliant. This was the best thing on TV last year. I grew to love the characters on this show so much I was genuinely disappointed when the season ended and I couldn’t spend any more time watching them. I watched each episode twice.
1. Andor Coming from someone who loves every Star Wars show, even the ones that other people think aren’t that great, this is the best Star Wars show. Instead of focusing on light sabers, Jedis, and the Force, Andor looks at the Star Wars universe from the perspective of the bureaucrats behind the Empire, and the spies in the Rebellion trying to fight back. The writing and character development is better than in any other show in the Star Wars universe - it’s a slow burn spy adventure that is highlighted by a couple of episodes (3, 6, and 10) that were better than any movie or show I watched all year. Even if you’ve never seen a single Star Wars movie or show, this would be worth watching.
Shows I started and why I didn’t finish them:
Peripheral Bad acting doomed a show that seemed promising. Any time someone uses bees to kill a character I feel like that’s a sign it’s probably not a good show.
Pachinko This actually was pretty good, I just got distracted by other stuff and decided I want to read the book first.
Squid Game Watched the first episode. It was fine, but too violent for me.
Beef Watched most of episode 1 and decided I couldn’t handle a whole series about road rage.
Abbott Elementary I want so much to like this show. Everyone tells me it’s good. I’ve tried a couple times and I just don’t think it’s that funny.
The Last of Us Watched the first couple episodes. Why did people think this was so great again? I liked it in the sense that it made it easier to talk about fungi in my Biology class, but how is this different from the Walking Dead and a dozen other post-apocalyptic zombie shows I’ve already seen?
The Bear Why would I want to watch a stressful show where people argue with each other the whole time while trying to run a restaurant? Watched a couple episodes and was bummed out after all of them.
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