Best Movies of 2023!
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s almost the end of 2023 — good riddance! — so it’s time for my annual best movies of the year. Since I see so many movies every year, in order to keep my “best of” list to a manageable size, I don’t include animated films — such as the amazing The Boy and His Heron, and the very good Spiderman Across the Spiderverse. Nor do I include short films, or documentaries or TV movies, many of which are great. And I’m only including films that played either theatrically or as part of a film festival, and, of course, only films I’ve actually seen.
I am trying to include both indie and big-budget films, as well as genre films — comedy, romance, sci-fi, horror and fantasy — which are often given short shrift in lists like these.
The films I choose have to have be a good movie, but also have something special about them — shock value, surprise, novelty, great acting, important stories, or beautiful production values. Also keep in mind I always forget to include some films I love, and only remember after I record this — so my apologies in advance for leaving out some great movies. (I realized, immediately after taping, that I accidentally left out Monster from the first list, and Rotting in the Sun and May December from the second list; see below).
Some of these are already available on streaming sites, others are still playing in theatres, and a few have not yet opened.
Ok, with no further ado, here is my list of the best movies of 2023, in no particular order:
1 Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret,
Dir: Kelly Fremon Craig
is a nostalgic, coming-of- age story about a pre-teen girl who moves from New York to a small town in New Jersey. Based on the YA novel by Judy Blume.
2 Beau is Afraid
Dir Ari Aster
…is a complex, psychological fantasy about a man named Beau (Joaquin Phoenix) trying to leave the hell-hole he lives in to attend his rich but controlling mother’s funeral (Patti Lupone). Some people find this movie overwhelming, but that’s part of its attraction.
Talk to Me
Dir: Danny and Michael Philippou
Is a Australian horror movie about a teenager party game involving a mummified hand that takes users into a world between the living and the dead. This is one of the scariest movies I’ve seen in years.
4 The Holdovers
Dir: Alexander Payne
is a drama set in a New England prep school in 1969, where some students, a teacher and the cook are staying there over the Christmas holidays.It’s a compelling story with superb acting by Paul Giamatti, Da’Vine Joy Randolph — primarily a stage actress — and Dominic Sessa in his first role.
5 The Movie Teller (La Contadora de Películas)
Dir: Lone Scherfig
…is a wonderful romantic melodrama set in a company town in a Chilean desert in the 1960s. It’s about a family who need to find a new source of income when their father is injured in a mining accident.
6 The Promised Land
Dir: Nikolaj Arcel
…is an epic, historical drama about a former soldier (Mads Mikkeksen) who is trying to tame the soil of unsettled Jutland, Denmark, but has to deal with a cruel aristocrat who wants total control.
7 Poor Things
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
… is a brilliant picaresque fable about an adult woman (Emma Stone) with an infant’s brain transplanted in her head, as she discovers sex, morality and economics in Victorian Europe.
8 The Anatomy of a Fall
Dir: Justine Triet
…is a gripping courtroom drama set in the French Alps about a middle aged writer (Sandra Hüller) who is accused of killing her husband who fell out of a window. It’s also an intensely moving story about a mother and her young, blind son.
9 The Nature of Love (Simple comme Sylvain)
Dir: Monia Chokri
…is a delightful comedy/drama about a married, bourgeois intellectual from Montreal who falls in love with a redneck building contractor who is renovating her cottage.
10 Green Border
Dir: Agnieszka Holland
… is a harrowing drama about a group of asylum seekers caught in a hellish cycle of deportation and abuse in the area between Poland and Belarus. A moving and intricate story told through the eyes of very different characters.
11 Showing Up
Dir Kelly Reichardt
…is a deceptively simple comedy about an irritable sculptor at an art college in Portland Oregon (Michelle Williams) who is trying to put on a one-woman show at a local gallery.
12 Killers of the Flower Moon
Dir: Martin Scorsese
…is an historical drama set in Oklahoma in the 1920s where the Osage nation discovers oil, but have to fight off the swindlers, criminals and murderers looking for their piece of the pie. This one stars Robert De Niro, Leonardo Dicaprio, and Lily Gladstone.
13 Fallen Leaves
Dir: Aki Kaurismaki
…is a dark romantic comedy about a working class man and woman in Helsinki whose paths keep crossing but — because a series of accidents — can’t seem to realize their destiny as lovers and soulmates.
14 Monster
Dir: Kore-eda Hirokazu
And here are the runners-up, which are more or less as good as the list I just finished:
1 Godland — a moving historical drama about Danish settlers in a remote part of Iceland
2 Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
A fantasy action/adventure based on the game
3 The Eight Mountains
A story of friendship in Piedmont Italy
4 Blackberry
The rise and fall of the Canadian cel phone company
5 Afire
A tragicomedy about a struggling writer in a summer home in Germany
6 Oppenheimer
Historical drama about the Manhattan Project and its aftermath
7 After the Fire
A Parisian-Arab family reacting to the police after the death of their brother.
8 Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World
A biting social satire about workplace injuries in Bucharest
9 Kidnapped
A melodramatic retelling of Pope Pius IX’s kidnapping of a 5-year-old boy in 19th century Bologna
10 Perfect Days
A simple story about a kind and loving man who works as a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo
11 Evil Does Not Exist
A remote town fighting back against a developer who wants to build a glamping spa — by the director of Drive my Car.
12 The Iron Claw
A biopic about the Von Erichs —a family of pro-wrestling brothers — plagued with misfortune.
13. May December
14 Rotting in the Sun
Once again, my top movies off the year:
Monster
Fallen Leaves
Killers of the Flower Moon
Showing Up
Green Border
The Nature of Love
The Anatomy of a Fall
Poor Things
The Promised Land
The Movie Teller
The Holdovers
Talk to Me
Beau is Afraid
Are you there, God? It’s Me, Margaret
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.
#TIFF23! Capsule reviews: The Nature of Love, Anatomy of a Fall, Dumb Money PLUS Aggro Dr1ft, Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World, The New Boy, A Boy and the Heron
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Have you been down to King st between Spadina and University lately? If not, get down there now, because, for the weekend it’s been transformed into Festival Street. The festival, of course, is TIFF, showing world premieres of some of the best movies out there. But there are also free screens, showing classics like Farewell My Concubine by Chen Kaige (who I interviewed on this show a while back), free outdoor concerts — including Nickelback, the band everyone loves to hate — and loads of celebrities and their fans, scrambling to see them up close. There’s also yummy food and drink samples for free, various red carpets, lots of booths and games and places to pose, with sponsors including the countries of Spain and Korea, promoting their burgeoning film industries. Everything is taking place around King St W, and in the nearby David Pecaut square.
So this week I’m going to talk about movies at TIFF: movies that I haven’t seen yet, but really want to see; and some movies I know more about, but promised to keep my capsule reviews short and sweet.
TIFF Movies I’m looking forward to
Here are a few movies which I haven’t seen yet but am very much looking forward to seeing.
Aggro Dr1ft is a movie I know very little about, except that it was entirely filmed using infrared light. Harmony Korine is one of the most brilliant experimental filmmakers out there, and I’ll watch anything he does. I’m especially pleased to hear of massive walkouts at the Venice Festival screening — all the more reason to watch it in Toronto.
Another one I can’t wait to see — and which probably won’t make it to commercial theatres anytime soon — is Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World, by Romanian director Radu Jude. If it’s as absurd and outrageous as his last one — Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn — I’m hopping to be as confused, shocked and surprised by this one.
I’m also looking forward to The New Boy about an indigenous kid
in Australia who walks into a remote monastery to perform miracles. The director, Warwick Thornton, brought us the great Sweet Country in 2017, so eager to see what he’s up to next.
There are other categories too. Don’t miss out on some of the excellent documentaries at TIFF. There’s Silver Dollar Road about a black family in North Carolina fighting a land developer, from French director Raoul Peck; The Pigeon Tunnel by Errol Morris looks really good: it’s about the spy and
spy novelist John Le Carre; and on the lighter side, a doc about a camp for trans and non-binary kids in Alberta! It’s called Summer Qamp and it’s directed by Jen Markowitz.
Finally, although I never review short films — never enough space — there are some fantastic programs 
set up for the festival. I’ve only seen one so far, Casey Lum’s Bloom (about one woman’s strange relationship with a potted plant) but I’m sure there are lots more fascinating films where that one came from.
And, finally, can’t wait to see A Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki’s latest — and possibly last — animated film. He did Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and so many others, and I’m sure this one will live up to Ghibli Studios very high standards.
Now, here are some capsule reviews of movies opening at TIFF:
The Nature of Love aka Simple Comme Sylvain, is Montreal’s Monia Chokri latest, about Sophia, a happily-married university prof (Magalie Lépine Blondeau) whose life changes when she meets Sylvain (Pierre-Yves Cardinal) a small-town contractor they hired to repair their cottage. She falls for him, hook, line and sinker… and he seems to feel it, too. Can this be love? Or is the life of a sophisticated Montrealer just too different from a skidoo-riding handyman? The Nature of Love is a wonderfully campy and touching sex comedy from Chokri.
Anatomy of a Fall
Dir: Justine Triet
Sandra (Sandra Hüller) is a renowned German novelist who lives with her husband in the French Alps. But when their blind son finds his Dad lying dead in the snow just outside of their chalet, no one knows whether he fell, jumped out a window, or was pushed. The Anatomy of a Fall, is a gripping courtroom drama about Sandra’s trial for a murder that might not have actually happened. This won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and I can see why.
Dumb Money
Dir: Craig Gillespie
Keith Gill aka Roaring Bunny (Paul Dano) is a small town dad who talks about and posts his stock market each night online, to an ever increasing audience. But things really take off when he tries to stop short-sellers on Wall Street from driving a shopping mall chain Game Stop out of business. And when tens of thousands of regular people join him to drive up its undervalued stock, Wall Street fights back… but can ordinary folk ever beat the bigwigs? Dumb Money is a very enjoyable comedy based on events that happened just a couple years ago.
The Nature of Love, Anatomy of a Fall, and Dumb Money — and many more — are playing at TIFF this week, and opening theatrically later this year.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
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