This year's films were beautiful, heartfelt, daring. (Image via Searchlight)

This past year brought a slew of movies that, at least in some cases, were an unusual mixture of intensely popular and artistically provocative — the over-the-top statement that is Barbie (which missed my list, but which I liked) and Oppenheimer, what could have been an arthouse film, but which instead was an international smash, come to mind.

More so than in recent years, I think some of the biggest Oscar contenders are less generic than has been the case in recent years. I know that as I finished off the last few buzzworthy films I needed to see, I was continually pleasantly surprised.

Here are my Top 15 films of 2023:

(Image via Netflix)

(15) Rustin (directed by George C. Wolfe): A top-notch biopic about underappreciated civil rights activist Bayard Rustin, the film features a bravura, Oscar-worthy performance by Colman Domingo. Wolfe has created a lively and provocative document of Rustin's life as a gay Black man who changed the course of U.S. history.

(Image via Neon)

(14) Eileen (directed by William Oldroyd): This small movie starts out like Carol and then takes a startling turn that had me admiring its audacity. Stylish, hypnotic and as intimate as a whispered secret, the film's performances by Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway are to be treasured, as is a harrowing supporting performance by Marin Ireland.

(Image via Searchlight)

(13) Poor Things (directed by Yorgos Lanthimos): One of the most out-there films in a year dripping with them, this imaginative fairy tale is a rare combination of creative risk-taking and a compelling narrative that feels new. Emma Stone is majestic in a film that is more subversively feminist than the year's most unabashedly feminist film, the also enjoyable Barbie. Mark Ruffalo needs to do more nude scenes.

(Image via Orion)

(12) American Fiction (directed by Cord Jefferson): Jeffrey Wright finds the role he was born to play, that of a frustrated novelist who deliberately writes a stereotypically Black book as an experiment, only to see it become a runaway success. It's giddily cynical satire with juicy parts for Tracee Ellis Ross, Erika Alexander, Sterling K. Brown and Leslie Uggams.

(Image via Amazon)

(11) Saltburn (directed by Emerald Fennell): It ain't deep, but it's deeply satisfying, a Cruel Intentions meets The Talented Mr. Ripley for Gen Z that Gen X and Baby Boomers get to leer at, too. Barry Keoghan is phenomenal as a guy who covets his friend's (Jacob Elordi), well, everything, and whose appetite for cash is only surpassed by his appetite for the white stuff. Also, his nude scene turns out to be why Sophie Ellis Bextor's “Murder on the Dancefloor” was written decades ago.

(Image via Le Pacte)

(10) Anatomy of a Fall (directed by Justine Triet): An absorbing did-she-or-didn't-she? starring Sandra Hüller as an enigmatic woman who stands accused of murdering her melancholic husband by helping him out the window of their secluded home. The trial is gripping, and the film never hints at whether she's a cold-blooded killer, an innocent wife, or something in the middle. It's alarming not to be sure if we're rooting for a sociopath. Her son is played by Milo Machado Graner, and his gut-wrenching piecing together of how he plants to testify is perhaps the most affecting part of this astonishingly taut drama.

(Image via Netflix)

(9) May December (directed by Todd Haynes): The most perversely pitch-black comedy ever, May December gives Julianne Moore a role to devour as a woman based on the infamous Mary Kay Letourneau. If it was perhaps to be expected that she would turn it out, with lines like, “Boys are hard!” and, “I don't think we have enough hot dogs,” who could have predicted that Charles Melton, as a young man who marries his childhood abuser, would come up with such a sweet and vulnerable character? The film's mix of high camp and sincerity is unique.

(Image via A24)

(8) Dream Scenario (directed by Kristoffer Borgli): I was bowled over by this freaky high-concept comedy about a schlumpy professor (Nicolas Cage) who suddenly begins to appear in everybody's dreams. It's hysterically funny and a commentary on fame in the age of social media, and it turned me on to the director's other masterpiece that was released in the U.S. this year (see number 5).

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(7) The Holdovers (directed by Alexander Payne): A film that reminded me of Good Will Hunting, The Holdovers is a sentimental film cool enough to avoid being maudlin. It introduces Dominic Sessa as a bratty student whose attitude covers a world of hurt, a mirror image of his crotchety teacher, a splendid Paul Giamatti. These misfits — along with school cook, Da'Vine Joy Randolph — are exactly what each other needs to get through a rough patch in their lives. I found it satisfying at every turn.

(Image via A24)

(6) You Hurt My Feelings (directed by Nicole Holofcener): This is the kind of movie I live for, a quirky, cerebral, relationship-centered comedy not directed by Woody Allen. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies are the perfect imperfect duo, and what's not to love about people distracted by issues of aging and self-actualization?

(Image via Scandinavian Film Dist.)

(5) Sick of Myself (directed by Kristoffer Borgli): Just an insane and merciless look at narcissism and how social media aids and abets it, Sick of Myself is both far-fetched and documentarian, and Kristine Kujath Thorp is committed to the part of a woman so desperate for attention she will stop at nothing — and doesn't.

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(4) Killers of the Flower Moon (directed by Martin Scorsese): A rare historical drama that more than lives up to the hype, a tense exploration of the murders of Native Americans for their oil money that makes a great argument for three-plus-hour run times. It's Lily Gladstone's film — and she deserves an Oscar — but it's also delicious watching white devils Leonardo DiCaprio (who is suddenly Burton Gilliam) and Robert De Niro be as depraved as possible. Immediately one of my favorite Scorsese pictures.

(Image via A24)

(3) The Zone of Interest (directed by Jonathan Glazer): As uncomfortable a film as it is in concept — a dry depiction of the day-to-day lives of Germans living a stone's throw from Auschwitz, going about their hum-drum existences as scores are tortured and murdered nearby. I couldn't look away, and its style — I don't recall any close-ups — felt like newsreel footage at times. Hearing women express sadness at having been outbid on a murdered acquaintance's draperies, or excitement at discovering a diamond hidden in toothpaste, will stay with me forever, as will night-vision scenes that reminded me of the little girl in red from Schindler's List.

(Image via A24)

(2) Beau Is Afraid (directed by Ari Aster): I sometimes recoil from mad, fever-dream films, which can sometimes come off as self-indulgent, but fuck if I didn't love every second of this absolutely bonkers vision of paranoia starring Joaquin Phoenix as a man justifiably afraid of everything. Kafka wept! It also provides a juicy part for Patti LuPone, who plays it exactly right, very seriously, a cobra in the midst of lunacy. I can't recommend it highly enough.

(Image via Searchlight)

(1) All of Us Strangers (directed by Andrew Haigh): The fact that the film's central romance is gay might explain why All of Us Strangers isn't receiving as much Oscar buzz as it should. It's a flawlessly conceived and executed film that's unapologetically about love — sexual, romantic, familial. It's a ghost story, but one grounded in what makes us tick as human beings. Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal are on fire together, and in the same way Sophie Ellis-Bextor is rejuvenated by Saltburn, the music of Frankie Goes to Hollywood is here reimagined as anthemic and achingly timeless. It doesn't get better than this.

Some Others I Liked: Air, Barbie, Birth/Rebirth, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, Godzilla: Minus One, Leave the World Behind, M3gan, Monica, Society of the Snow, A Thousand and One

Didn't Understand the Fuss: The Color Purple, Dicks: The Musical, Freud's Last Session, Maestro, Oppenheimer, Past Lives 

Aside from Obvious Contenders, I Hope Award Shows Consider Performances by: Milo Machado Graner (Anatomy of a Fall), Paul Mescal & Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers), Trace Lysette (Monica), Dominic Sessa (The Holdovers), Teyana Taylor (A Thousand and One), Enzo Vogrincic (Society of the Snow)