​Greetings all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! In our last Oscars piece, we went over all this season’s major Oscar contenders, but they are not the only films vying for gold this season. There are still plenty of films outside of the major contenders that have a solid chance at sneaking into some nomination fields, whether below-the-line or above, the only differences being they’re unlikely to be competitive across a wide spectrum of Oscar categories, or they’re simply not as big of releases as those discussed in the other piece. As with last time, this is not a fully comprehensive list of everything competing for Oscar glory, but more of a guide as to where things could be heading. There’s still plenty of time for momentums to rise and drop, category shifts to take place, and things to change dramatically throughout the awards season regarding what constitutes a major or minor contender. With all that said, let’s dive right in. Here are this season’s minor Oscar contenders!

The Apprentice
​
Despite having released nationwide over the October 11 weekend, it’s still unclear just how strong this Donald Trump/Roy Cohn biopic really is in terms of awards contention. For my own part, I found it to be tremendously entertaining, buoyed by two fantastic central performances from Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong. Stan is the most obvious contender here, having played the former President immaculately (and as unfortunate as it is, it’s more likely that the Academy nominates him for this than for his career-best turn in A Different Man), but with such an uncertain race ahead in the Supporting Actor category, don’t be surprised if Strong slips in as well. After all, the film hinges on the idea that Roy Cohn was at least partially – if not entirely – responsible for creating Donald Trump as we know him today, so if voters feel that nominating the lead actor also means connecting that nomination to the supporting part the performance bounces off of, it would be entirely likely that Strong lands that coveted 5th spot. The Academy also loves subtle makeup effects, particularly in biopics, so an Apprentice appearance in that category shouldn’t shock anyone, were it to happen.
 
Best Chances: Best Actor (Sebastian Stan), Best Supporting Actor (Jeremy Strong), Best Makeup & Hairstyling

​Civil War
 
Alex Garland’s Civil War – divisive as it was upon release – was a barn-burner for A24, becoming their second-highest-grossing film to date (only behind Everything Everywhere All at Once), and stayed in theaters for a good while. The studio’s gambit to open themselves up to more I.P. and spectacle-driven storytelling only has this one success story thus far, but it’s an undeniable success. To that end, while the film is unlikely to compete above-the-line, there are at least two tech categories in which it stands a fighting chance. Chief among these categories is Best Sound, which – regardless of how one feels about the narrative or pacing thereof – remains the film’s standout element by a wide margin. The whiz of sniper bullets, the sharpness of the gunfire, the ferocity of every explosion follows the viewer everywhere, especially during the film’s masterfully-crafted third act raid on Washington D.C. One other category, however, that awards enthusiasts may not be considering hard enough is Best Visual Effects. As 2019 showed us with 1917’s win in the category, war films can contain a great deal more visual effects than one might expect, and it’s the seamless blending of these effects that the Academy pays attention to. That said, Civil War would still face a tough uphill battle in that department, so if you’re set on just giving it one shot, Sound should be it. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Visual Effects, Best Sound

​Didi
 
It’s a real shame this Sundance darling about a young Vietnamese boy named Wang-Wang growing up through the dawn of the digital age doesn’t have as large of an awards reputation as some of its contemporaries in the genre, but then again, Bo Burnham’s near-perfect Eighth Grade may be its closest contemporary, and that didn’t get any awards love either. Didi’s one and only hope – apart from a miracle break into the original Screenplay category – is in Joan Chen’s endearing turn as the lead character’s mother. Chen is genuinely fantastic in the film, anchoring all of Wang-Wang’s anxiety with a steely vulnerability, and a well-deserved nomination in Best Supporting Actress is not out of the question as a surprise spoiler in the category. Unfortunately, with all of Focus Features’ awards attention fixed on Conclave, it’s highly unlikely for that spoiler to gain enough momentum by the time nominations are announced.
 
Best Chances: Best Supporting Actress (Joan Chen)

​A Different Man
 
As mentioned above, most of Sebastian Stan’s award attention is likely to be focused on The Apprentice for obvious reasons, but in my not-so-humble opinion, if he is to land a Best Actor nomination, it should be for this performance instead. A Different Man is an incredible look at the idea of self-hatred, internal insecurities, and identity that rests almost entirely on the shoulders of Stan’s towering turn, but also happens to feature Adam Pearson as one of the film’s funniest characters. While the script may be darkly comic and unendingly clever though, the limited amount of collective watch time amongst audiences and Academy voters (plus the crowded fields in both Screenplay categories and most other above-the-line slots for which it would have competed) likely means that beyond the Makeup & Hairstyling category, it basically only has one other shot, if A24 and Stan want to campaign for his performance.
 
Best Chances: Best Makeup & Hairstyling

​Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
 
In case any of you were wondering, no, I will not be forgiving everyone who let this movie go DOA and flop so hard at the box office that director George Miller had to pull back on his certainty that he would be doing another Mad Max movie at all. There simply is no one better at making this kind of movie than him, and it will be a black mark on all movie-goers if he dies being taken for granted as a director. Furiosa is no Fury Road, to be sure, but to even make a post-apocalyptic revenge epic this well more than deserves all the praise anyone could throw at it. Fury Road took home 6 Oscars (all in tech categories) the year that it competed, so it’s not out of the question that some of those techs could repeat nominations as long as the movie is shown to Academy members in time for voting. Here’s hoping. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Sound

​Joker: Folie À Deux
 
My oh my, how the mighty have fallen. Joker: Folie À Deux certainly has its defenders – even I admired Todd Phillips’ “screw your fantasy sequel” approach to putting it out there – but there’s no denying the film just doesn’t work, buried underneath layers of poorly-staged musical covers and lacking the conviction that comes with being allowed to rip off two of Scorsese’s best works. This was meant to be Warner Bros’ big fall season awards push; now, the studio could consider themselves lucky to land a few tech nominations. What happened?! Well, apart from the film’s myriad of issues like a repetitive narrative, lack of development for most non-Joker characters, and twist ending that essentially means the film before it meant nothing, it also didn’t make any money. Box office isn’t necessarily an indicator of awards consideration, but having a sequel to one of your most successful movies of all time flop, and having your star drop out of an upcoming Todd Haynes film just days before shooting, thus ruining his nomination chances for the same part he won Best Actor for last time, burns a lot of good will the movie may otherwise have kept even with the drop in quality. As it stands, Folie À Deux still has the slimmest of chances to repeat some of its old techs, but don’t expect it to go any further than that. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling

The Substance
 
Something is happening with The Substance amongst awards pundits, who seem to consider the film stronger than ever as awards season is in full swing and Oscar voting approaches. Many have still kept it out of the above-the-categories (save for one), but even with the Academy’s understood bias against the horror genre, the momentum for it seems to only be building, especially where it concerns the towering Demi Moore performance at its center. Personally, I doubt that it competes in many categories apart from the obvious due to that Academy bias, but if this thing somehow lands a Best Picture nomination, I will be shocked and delighted. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Actress (Demi Moore), Best Makeup & Hairstyling

​Hard Truths
 
Each year in one of the acting categories and in the screenplay category, there’s always one wildcard selection that has the potential to throw every would-be 5-for-5 predictions list out the window. This year, that’s Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, a film containing a Marianne Jean-Baptiste performance every critic who’s seen the film raves about. It’s not hard to imagine Jean-Baptiste as an included fifth contestant, especially if the Academy refuses to nominate Demi Moore, and Mike Leigh is beloved enough by movie enthusiasts that there’s some good will towards his landing a nomination for an original script, regardless of how far the film could go after those considerations. This early in the race, it’s too difficult to tell how certain these nominations would be, but if the potential for dark horse candidates is in play, so is the dark horse movie of this season.
 
Best Chances: Best Actress (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), Best Original Screenplay

​Nightbitch
 
Following a disastrously bad first trailer, Marielle Heller’s adaptation of Nightbitch received mixed-positive reviews, with many pundits singling out Amy Adams starring turn as mother who thinks she’s turning into a dog as proof that she’s still got it. Coming off a historically bad run following her Best Actress snub in 2016 for Arrival, this movie could be seen as a comeback vehicle for Adams, even if it’s unlikely to appear anywhere else that matters. We’ll find out when the film hits theaters on December 6 just how competitive Adams is likely to be, if at all.
 
Best Chances: Best Actress (Amy Adams)

​The Piano Lesson
 
August Wilson adaptations have done well at the Oscars in the past, with both Fences and Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom racking up nominations above-the-line left and right, although the latter did miss out on Picture and Director. Both received Adapted Screenplay nominations, and both had their lead and supporting performances recognized by the Academy, so it stands to reason that The Piano Lesson won’t be much different except with respect to the fact that John David Washington, who leads this movie, may not be able to crack this crowded of a Best Actor field, and Samuel L. Jackson – whom many pundits originally predicted to win the Best Supporting Actor category – apparently isn’t in the movie very much. That said, everyone who’s seen the movie thus far has raved about Ray Fisher’s performance, so Best Supporting Actor could still happen, and almost all of them also have Danielle Deadwyler’s supporting turn – as well as the screenplay – still locked into a nomination position, with the latter looking the most wobbly if something else were to take its place. The film is being put out by Netflix, which is also platforming Emilia Pérez and Maria this season, so it’s entirely likely that some of the larger categories don’t feature it as heavily.
 
Best Chances: Best Supporting Actress (Danielle Deadwyler), Best Supporting Actor (Ray Fisher), Best Adapted Screenplay

The Room Next Door
 
Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language film has received a bit of a mixed reception from those who have seen it, with many citing the magic he’s able to conjure in the Spanish language not translating correctly to English, leaving the script feeling clunkier than it’s likely meant to. That said, it does still have many defenders, including people who still believe it has a chance to make its mark in Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Actress with Tilda Swinton, even if a Supporting bid for her would have worked out better for a competitive win. Stars Julianne Moore and Swinton are both campaigning in Lead Actress, but given Swinton is the one everyone talks about regarding this film, it’s most likely the nod goes to her or neither, leaving a more dark horse candidate to fill up that fifth spot. Both Pain and Glory and Parallel Mothers, Almodóvar’s last two films, managed to score some surprise nominations along the way, so we’ll see if that streak of surprises continues here.
 
Best Chances: Best Actress (Tilda Swinton), Best Adapted Screenplay

​The Seed of the Sacred Fig
 
A thriller apparently made in secret in Iran, Mohammed Rasoulof’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig has been burning up the minds of those who’ve seen it ever since it debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May of this year. The film is Germany’s official selection for the International Feature Oscar race, but also seems to be nomination-competitive in at least one other category (Original Screenplay), and some are predicting it to break into Picture and Director as well. I’ll have to see the movie myself before I consider adding it to my predictions in those latter two categories, but International Feature is all but a certainty, and Original Screenplay is very much in play, so don’t count it out of your predictions just yet.  
 
Best Chances: Best International Feature, Best Original Screenplay

​September 5
 
A film about the Israeli hostage crisis at the 1972 Munich Olympics, September 5 is told entirely from the perspective of the ABC newsroom who covered the story at the time. Bottle movies about journalism tend to fare well with the Academy, in at least the Editing category, and the studio is campaigning its cast for Supporting considerations given the ensemble nature of the piece, Peter Sarsgaard being the most obvious contender amongst the group. The predictions betting site GoldDerby has listed September 5 amongst its ten predicted nominations for Best Picture, but without having seen the film, and with much of the awards release slate still to come, the lack of certainty surrounding such a prediction is why I’m hesitant to throw it that bone just yet. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it sneak into the #10 spot, especially with such a wide-open Best Picture race only seeming to be getting wider.
 
Best Chances: Best Supporting Actor (Peter Sarsgaard), Best Film Editing 

And with that, we’ve covered most (if not all) of the major and minor Oscar contenders this awards season! Which of these films are you looking forward to the most? Do you foresee any of these minor contenders making the switch to major? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for reading!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​Hello all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! Awards season has arrived as both major and minor studios vie for distribution rights from festival premieres and focuses shift toward a fairly unpredictable Oscar race. With the current awards field becoming simultaneously overcrowded and difficult to nail down in terms of finding front-runners for most major categories, sifting through what to watch out for and what not to worry about can be a daunting task to say the least, especially if (like me) you feel that there’s never enough time in the day to figure those things out organically by seeing everything you want to see. That’s where I come in.
 
Over the next three to four months, a whole slew of new works – some from respected masters, some from audacious new talents – will be released to cap off the movie year as we prepare for one of the most unpredictable Oscar seasons in recent memory. This piece serves as both a directory of titles for those who may be interested in knowing more about the films most likely to be competing, as well as a guide to determine which categories these films best stand a chance of entering. This will be a two-part piece covering both the major and the minor contenders in the race, with the first publishing of our Early Oscar Nomination Predictions soon to follow. There’s still plenty of time for things to change (I’m not sure if anyone saw The Brutalist coming when this awards season was first being discussed), but for now, let’s survey the cinematic landscape ahead and explore what exactly the major contenders are.

Dune: Part Two
​
If there were one film above all others that has never wavered on its way to the finish line, it’s Denis Villeneuve’s second-half adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi novel, Dune. Dune: Part Two was a powerhouse when it released to rapturous acclaim, and has showed no signs of slowing down at all as this year’s grand-scale blockbuster achievement. When one considers the immaculate craft, committed performances, brilliant storytelling, and the failures both critically and commercially of WB’s other major player this season (Joker: Folie À Deux), it’s no wonder the cultural foothold of Dune: Part Two has continued to stay so strong, making it by far the most obvious major contender across eleven different categories, even if some wins outside of the tech categories are unlikely to occur. One thing’s for sure though: with the brutal snub of Denis Villeneuve for Best Director in 2022 in favor of Kennth Branagh’s so-so work on Belfast, Oscar enthusiasts are waiting with their metaphorical pitchforks to make sure the Academy doesn’t make the same mistake twice, so it seems all but a certainty that a snub there will not occur. (Then again, this is the Academy we’re talking about.)

Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Denis Villeneuve), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound

​​Saturday Night
 
Jason Reitman’s Saturday Night, which has now been released following its world premiere at Telluride (man, they had a good lineup this year), chronicles the opening night of NBC’s very first Saturday Night Live show. The trailer demonstrates just how chaotic and unpredictable the mounting of such an audacious production ended up being, though according to some pundits, those more familiar with the history of SNL may find the film lacking a bit. As an ensemble piece full of young stars about the history of a visual medium, however, the film has a strong chance to land some SAG attention, which could push it over the hill and into Best Picture territory, a sandbox with which Reitman is not unfamiliar. It’s doubtful that any acting nods will come out of it, but to put a movie like this together, Editing and Screenplay are far from out of the question, apart from the question of which Screenplay category the Academy decides the film belongs to. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score

​Sing Sing
 
The unfortunate reality of the race’s current state is that as soon as A24 picked up The Brutalist, its other fall and winter releases (sans the horror films) seemed to fall almost entirely by the wayside in terms of marketing. Sure, Queer and Babygirl are still coming out, and are well-positioned to get some awards love of their own outside of most major categories, but the bulk of the campaigning from A24 seems to have fallen in line behind Brady Corbet’s great American epic. Despite this, however, and despite one of the more confusing release strategies for an A24 summer movie in recent memory, Sing Sing is still positioned by most pundits to take up a decent amount of space come Oscar nomination time, and in my opinion, it would fully deserve everything it’s given. It’s not only the year’s best movie so far, but one of the only real challengers to Dune: Part Two in terms of relative certainty in competition. You can read my full review here.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Actor (Colman Domingo), Best Supporting Actor (Clarence Maclin), Best Film Editing, Best Adapted Screenplay

​Anora
 
Winner of the Palme d’Or at perhaps the most prestigious film festival on the main circuit (it competes with Venice on that), Anora comes to us from director Sean Baker, and stars Mikey Madison as the titular character, a sex worker who gets married to the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch. NEON picked up U.S. distribution for the film, and considering the immensely positive word of mouth surrounding the project, as well as the fact that NEON has won the coveted Palme d’Or five years in a row now, with three of those wins translating to Best Picture nominations at the Oscars, this seems like one of the more “no-brainer” type of contenders, even with its limited and worldwide public release dates still weeks away.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Sean Baker), Best Actress (Mikey Madison), Best Film Editing, Best Original Screenplay

​Blitz
 
This is where things start to get a little more complicated. Steve McQueen’s Blitz, which will be released in limited theaters on November 1 leading up to its nationwide debut on AppleTV+ three weeks later, has been the big question of awards season ever since news of its production broke. For a long while, it was unclear whether it would ever make a fall/winter release date, or have to be pushed into 2025 due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. It was also unclear just which categories its starts would compete for, as Saoirse Ronan prepares to mount a comeback to the awards field with this film and The Outrun. Would she be lead or supporting? How prevalent is Harris Dickinson in the movie? Does it look like a strong contender in the tech categories? These were all questions that, until the trailer released, had inconclusive answers. Few people have seen the film as yet, but with the film’s London Film Festival premiere having now occurred, things do appear to be looking favorable, though not everyone's praises appear to be as gargantuan as the film might need to be win-competitive. Of course, there is also the looming shadow of the Academy’s complete shut-out of McQueen’s previous theatrical feature, Widows. McQueen’s Small Axe limited series, which was essentially five short films that debuted on Prime Video, was warmly received by critics, but due to the confusing categorization of the project relegated it to Emmy contention instead of Oscar glory. Widows, on the other hand, was a straightforward crime thriller, and received no acclaim at all, apart from positive reviews. When taking all of this under advisement, it seems that the Academy’s love for WWII-set films, as well as the talent involved, is what’s most likely to give Blitz the boost it needs to become more than just a craft category staple.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Steve McQueen), Best Supporting Actress (Saoirse Ronan), Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design

​The Brutalist
 
If you’ve stepped onto film twitter over the last several weeks even once, you’ve likely heard raves from every direction about Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist, which is being dubbed a new American epic by pretty much everyone who’s seen it, in part due to its lengthy runtime which features an intermission, and in part due to its apparent high qualities of craft and storytelling. Every reaction and review to come out of a screening of the film regards Adrian Brody’s work as some of the best – if not the best – of his career, while pundits also single out Guy Pearce for shining in a supporting part, as well as Felicity Jones, who plays Brody’s wife as – according to IMDB – the two “flee post-war Europe in 1947 to rebuild their legacy and witness the birth of modern America.” Many thought NEON would jump at the chance to have another major contender in the mix, and I’m sure they put up a pretty penny, but A24 holds distribution rights and has set the film for a limited December 20 release, with an expansion coming in 2025, likely in January. There’s something to be said for the studio spreading their awards campaigns too thin, but if any of A24’s acquisitions appear to be the most muscular in terms of awards competition, it's this one, especially since comparisons have already been made to Once Upon a Time in America and There Will Be Blood, two of the great American epics of all time. Could The Brutalist join those ranks? We’ll have to wait and find out.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Brady Corbet), Best Actor (Adrian Brody), Best Supporting Actor (Guy Pearce), Best Supporting Actress (Felicity Jones), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Original Score, Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound

​A Complete Unknown
 
Regardless of how one feels about James Mangold’s unusual miss in helming Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, there’s no denying the director’s immense talents, which has seen him put out more hits than misses in the course of his overall directing career. Now, he’s set his sights on Bob Dylan, a subject who’s no stranger to the cinematic landscape. What remains to be seen is whether or not Mangold’s take on the famed musician can stand out enough to rise above other fare covering the same subject, including Todd Haynes’ I’m Not There, which saw Cate Blanchett play Dylan, and no less than two separate Martin Scorsese documentaries, one of which can be found in the prestigious Criterion Collection. Mangold has a good team with him on this – largely the same that made Ford v Ferrari back in 2019 – and with a Christmas Day release date, it seems likely that this is the big play for Searchlight Pictures this season.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Actor (Timothee Chalamet), Best Supporting Actor (Edward Norton), Best Cinematography, Best Makeup & Hairstyling, Best Sound

​Conclave
 
Though it’s unlikely to achieve front-runner status in the Best Picture category, Conclave – which comes to us from All Quiet on the Western Front helmer Edward Berger adapting the Robert Harris novel of the same name – has been one of the race’s most certain contenders since it premiered at Telluride in August. Many pundits have tapped both Ralph Fiennes and Stanley Tucci for Oscar contention in the Lead and Supporting Actor categories, and some have even gone so far as to include Isabelle Rossellini among the mix for Supporting Actress despite her apparently not being in very much of the film (one might call this “the Judi Dench effect”). Whether Berger himself holds enough capital with the Academy in such a competitive director year is anyone’s guess, but it would hardly be a surprise to see him slide into that fourth or fifth spot next to the year’s three most obvious candidates (Sean Baker, Brady Corbet, Denis Villeneuve). Focus Features, who is distributing the project, has already moved up the film’s release from November 1 to October 25, likely to give it some distance from the upcoming U.S. Presidential election given the film’s subject matter, so we’ll see soon just how strong a candidate it’s likely to be. According to book readers, the politics of the story’s finale may sour some voters on its winning more major categories (I’ll find out myself when I finish the book, hopefully before the film’s release).

Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Edward Berger), Best Actor (Ralph Fiennes), Best Supporting Actor (Stanley Tucci), Best Supporting Actress (Isabella Rossellini), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Adapted Screenplay

Emilia Pérez
 
Without a major domestic awards player this season, Netflix has gone international (as it has in years past, the most famous of which being Roma), opting to become the home of Jacques Audiard’s audacious trans Mexican drug lord musical, Emilia Pérez, which won both the Cannes Jury Prize for its director as well as a four-way split for Best Actress between Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz. The former two actresses are widely expected to be competitive in both the Lead and Supporting Actress category (Gascón in Lead, Saldaña in Supporting), with the latter of those two widely speculated to be win-competitive. The trailers have not given much to viewers in the way of plot, so its chances of winning Picture seem slim at best, but a nomination is likely, and many pundits have the film tapped to compete in a few below-the-line categories as well, especially since France wisely selected it as their submission for International Feature, a mistake they made last season by opting out of selecting eventual six-time nominee Anatomy of a Fall. The film opens in select theaters on November 1 before dropped on Netflix November 13, so it won’t be long to wait now before viewers are able to decipher for themselves just how competitive it really is, and given the musical genre’s recent struggles at the box office, a streaming home might be just what it needs to entice reluctant would-be patrons.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (Jacques Audiard), Best Actress (Karla Sofía Gascón), Best Supporting Actress (Zoe Saldaña), Best International Feature, Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Sound

​Gladiator II
 
For my money, one of the biggest questions this Oscar season is whether or not multiple sequels will make it into the Best Picture field. It’s not an unheard of prospect – only two years ago both Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick competed for the top prize (which would eventually go to Everything Everywhere All at Once) – but that was also the first time in Oscars history that such a thing has ever occurred. When it comes to this year, the big question mark hovers over Ridley Scott’s hotly anticipated Gladiator II, which sees former Oscar nominee Paul Mescal (Aftersun) in the lead part after Russell Crowe’s Maximus tragically perished at the end of the original film, which won Best Picture in 2001 (2000 being the competition year). First reactions to the film, which dropped following its first screening on October 18, praise it as perhaps Scott’s best since Black Hawk Down, with nearly everyone singling out both its audacious production values and Denzel Washington’s performance, an apparent front-line contender in the Supporting Actor race (some have even pegged it as win-competitive). That sounds like a recipe for enormous awards success, provided it hits with the right audiences, and if its projected box office opening – which it’s set to pull off against Universal Studios’ Wicked – is anything to go by, there will be a lot of audiences for it to hit.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Actor (Paul Mescal), Best Supporting Actor (Denzel Washington), Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Visual Effects, Best Sound

Maria
 
Pablo Larraín’s recent output of biopics about complicated famous women and the public’s relationship to their personas has been a consistent staple in the Oscars race for each year in which they’ve been released. Both Jackie and Spencer managed to score Lead Actress nominations for Natalie Portman and Kristen Stewart respectively, with the former also scoring nods for Original Score and Costume Design. This season looks to be another repeat success for the Chilean filmmaker, as Larraín is poised to go three for three in the Lead Actress category, this year’s nominee being Angelina Jolie, who plays renowned American-Greek soprano Maria Callas. Those who have seen the film rave about Jolie’s performance, with many citing this as the best of Larraín’s leading lady performances to date. The film is also expected to contend in other below-the-line categories, though its critical appraisal – as of this writing – may keep it from reaching the necessary heights required to attain other above-the-line category nods.
 
Best Chances: Best Actress (Angelina Jolie), Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design

​Nickel Boys
 
Another Telluride premiere turned Oscar hopeful, Nickel Boys is based on the Pulitzer Prize-Winning novel of the same name by Colson Whitehead. Early reactions to the film have raved about its bravery, daring cinematography, and devastating emotional core. Having not yet read the book (and, of course, not having not seen the film), I can’t speak to just how emotional the story gets, nor its production qualities, but it is expected to be a strong Oscar contender nonetheless. In fact, director RaMell Ross currently sits in my number 5 spot in Best Director predictions, given how the Academy does like to surprise with an unexpected name (or lack thereof) in that category. The film is set for mid-December release in New York and Los Angeles prior to a likely outward expansion over the winter months.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Director (RaMell Ross), Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay 

​Nosferatu
 
Until the most recent trailer was released for Robert Eggers’ upcoming take on the titular vampire horror story, many Oscar pundits (including me) may have assumed that the furthest it could reach would be a Best Cinematography nomination. After all, The Lighthouse is Eggers’ only film to not be completely shut out by the Academy come nomination time, and it was in the Cinematography category that it found its singular point of praise. In fact, this film was not originally included on this list. However, once viewing the trailer, Cinematography became all but a certainty; the question now becomes not “can Nosferatu score any nominations,” but “how many more nominations can it score?” As a remake of one of the most iconic silent era classics, it’s sure to enthuse many a cinephile from within the Academy’s ranks, and with Robert Eggers’ star only rising every time he puts out a movie, this could be their chance to reward him for nearly a decade of visionary filmmaking.
 
Best Chances: Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling 

​Queer
 
With Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers remaining conversationally relevant in terms of the best movies of 2024 to date, it’s tough to tell whether the director’s upcoming Queer, starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey, will hold enough sway with the Academy to ultimately make a stronger dent, or if the former is the stronger bid for Picture contention. Early reactions from the film out of Venice suggested that it may be too unwieldy for some fans, whereas others praised just how strange it was. In any case, not one of those reactions suggested that Daniel Craig would be dropping out of the Best Actor race, and the film – which is adapted from the William S. Boroughs’ novel of the same name – still holds strong odds in Adapted Screenplay. Personally, I’m always interested to see what Luca Guadagnino is up to, so I’ll be seeing it either way. Whether the Academy will like what they see enough for a real push is anyone’s guess.
 
Best Chances: Best Actor (Daniel Craig), Best Supporting Actor (Drew Starkey), Best Adapted Screenplay

​A Real Pain
 
Searchlight Pictures’ other contender this awards season is Jesse Eisenberg’s writer/director project, A Real Pain, in which the actor plays David Kaplan, who embarks on a guided tour through Poland with his cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) following the death of Benji’s grandmother. While critical reception of the film itself has been on the mixed-positive side, Culkin’s performance is one of the two strongest contenders right now for a Supporting Actor win, and that tenth spot in Best Picture could mean the film has an opening to fight for amongst the pack, depending on whether or not it hits properly with audiences when it releases on November 1. It certainly is likely to land (and perhaps be win-competitive) in Original Screenplay as well, especially with a slightly less crowded field than Adapted, and I’ve got a personal sneaking suspicion that if it does well, Culkin and the script won’t be the only nominations it can muster.
 
Best Chances: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Kieran Culkin), Best Original Screenplay

Wicked
​
While nomination counts may ultimately appear lower in the major categories, there’s no denying the box office juggernaut Universal Studios has on their hands with Wicked, which adapts the first half of the Broadway musical phenomenon by the same name. Pre-sales for the film are already sky high, and many pundits believe there are a few of the larger tech categories in which it could be win-competitive. Such a large production – with a Thanksgiving release no less, opening against Gladiator II – requires some impressive production quality to pull off, and although the color grading in the trailers has left some cinephiles wanting, the design work itself appears to have leaned into the audacious nature of such a production. The reveal of the soundtrack’s song list indicated that there would be no original music included in this half of the Wicked story, so Best Original Song is definitively not happening, but a surprise Sound nomination could be in the cards if it truly blows viewers away. We’ll be able to sniff out whether Universal’s bid to campaign its two stars, Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, for Lead and Supporting Actress bears any weight with the Academy once people have had a chance to see the film, but for the time being, expect it to at least show up in all major design categories.
 
Best Chances: Best Production Design, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup & Hairstyling

And that’s it for the major contenders for this year’s Oscars season. Have you seen any of these films? Was I right on the money or way off on some? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for reading! Stay tuned for the minor contenders, coming soon!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​One of cinema’s most long-standing and storied series, the Planet of the Apes films have one of the most consistent hit records in the history of franchise filmmaking, especially wherein the sci-fi genre is concerned; only once has the series ever put out a generally agreed-upon bad film, and even those entrants that are less beloved than others all have something valuable to offer, whether that be an ambitious swing that doesn’t always pan out or a further exploration of philosophical concepts. Having been around since 1968, when the original Charlton Heston film wowed audiences with its twist ending, the themes and ideas examined by this world and explored by the characters within it continue to resonate with audiences to this very day. Those same audiences now have the opportunity to experience the series’ latest release, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, in all its visual glory on the silver screen, and re-immerse themselves in the world of their favorite intelligent simians, courtesy of director Wes Ball (you can find my full review for the film here). In light of this new Apes film finally hitting screens after a seven year hiatus for the series, I binge-watched all nine previous entries in the franchise over the course of three days. Now having seen Kingdom twice, I have ranked all ten Planet of the Apes films below, beginning with the worst, and of course, ending with the best. Apes Together Strong! Let’s get started.

​10. Planet of the Apes (2001)
 
The only outright bad entry on this list, Tim Burton’s perhaps always doomed remake of Planet of the Apes features none of the things that made the original great or any of its follow-ups even passible at their worst. Most notably lacking in the series’ core tenets of philosophical science and exploration of humanity’s nature, the film substitutes these ideas with a generic sci-fi action story which – to be fair – features terrific makeup effects but essentially nothing else worthwhile. The iconic lines are irreparably altered, clunkily-scripted, and none of the performances really land (Tim Roth is particularly bad here). Still, this Planet of the Apes is only a generically-bad sci-fi movie…until the ending happens and throws the entire thing off-balance. In trying to replicate the “it was Earth all along” twist, the story sees Mark Wahlberg’s character (whose name I have yet to recall without having to look it up) actually leave the planet he has been on the entire time in order to re-enter the time-warp storm that sent him there, eventually ending up on what’s implied to be Earth at the end. There’s just one (or several) major problem with this; in the original film, Charlton Heston’s character Taylor never leaves the planet of the apes, which is then revealed to have been Earth all along; how are we supposed to infer that the planet Mark Wahlberg leaves was even Earth in the first place? Did he just go forward in time? Why would the apes just make the same society humans did; isn’t the whole point of their being intelligent apes that they make a different society for themselves? If he went backwards in time as intended, how does General Thade even factor into the Lincoln Memorial in terms of the timeline implied by the film? WHY DO THE APES HAVE A LINCOLN MEMORIAL? Every answer to each question only introduces three new questions, the answers to which all contradict the previous question’s entire premise, fundamentally breaking the film – and my brain – in the process. I long for who I was before the ending of this movie.

​9. Beneath the Planet of the Apes
 
On the whole, Beneath the Planet of the Apes isn’t the outright disaster that the 2001 remake of the previous film eventually becomes, but it lacks the vision of its immediate predecessor, failing to make good on that film’s ending or explore further elements of the planet of the apes itself which were previously unseen, at least for most of its runtime. It certainly tries some interesting ideas with having an entirely new protagonist suffer the same introduction to this world that Taylor did and have to navigate it himself (albeit with a lot more help from Nova), but the film fails to explore anything else that Charlton Heston’s Taylor hadn’t already experienced; Nova simply finding John Brent and taking him back to the same ape colony with the same characters we’re familiar with is an understandable choice, but too safe for what this sequel could offer. Most of the film’s runtime after Taylor disappears in the first five minutes is spent above ground as Brent hides out with Zira and Cornelius, re-treading what happened with Taylor during the third act of the previous film in a less interesting way. It’s not until we get to the third act of this film that anything new happens at all, when – in a thoroughly ambitious and bizarre swing – we’re introduced to an underground mutant human society that worships an atomic bomb. (They have magical powers which they say are only illusions, but the mechanics of these illusions are never demonstrated, so it’s still more or less magic.) This part of the movie is definitely the most interesting, but doesn’t feel as though it matches at all with what we’ve experience to that point in terms of any sort of natural progression, and by then, the film has burned up most of its good will by wasting too much time getting there and making Nova an essentially useless character. The tail end of it, with Taylor’s poetically-tragic killing setting off the ultimate doomsday weapon after he’d been so distraught about the results of nuclear warfare in the last film does offer a slight good note for the movie to end on, but it feels like part of a better third act the film doesn’t have. I’ve certainly seen worse sci-fi sequels, but for a franchise this storied, with such an iconic opening film, it’s hard to recommend this follow-up to anyone who asks.

​8. Escape from the Planet of the Apes
 
For many, this is considered the best of the original sequels, but for my part, it is without doubt my least favorite. The only reason I’ve listed it above Beneath despite how it frustrates me more is due to my admiration for the hugely ambitious swing it takes with the premise: having Cornelius and Zira go back in time to 1973, before the John Taylor mission ever launched. Reversing the formula to place the intelligent apes into regular human society is an inspired decision, even if the spoof comedy style it introduces at first it has no actual intentions of committing to. The tone switch, once our main characters are on the run in the latter portion of the film, becomes far less interesting after the story has spent the past hour of zaniness rendering Zira less intelligent than any of the humans around her, and the addition of yet another “twist” ending – which by this point one could see coming a mile away – made this one a little more annoying to sit through than its immediate predecessor, even if it does have a little more to offer on the whole.

​7. Battle for the Planet of the Apes
 
Many may call this the least successful of the original Apes sequels, due to its looking extremely low-budget and not having a ton going on apart from its battlefield skirmish, but overall, it’s the most well-balanced of any of the sequels offered by the original set of films, even if it’s not the most exciting overall. The story is well-told across the runtime, without ever feeling too long or as though the structure of the film leans too heavily in one direction or the other. The ape/human society discussions are further rooted in the more philosophical musings the series began with, and even though Aldo’s whole plan for the humans makes no sense once you think about it too long, all the Caesar stuff is generally pretty solid. Plus, there’s a certain charm to the human army rolling up to the battle with a school bus as one of their transport vehicles, all Mad Max-style. This one has a lot more in common with the future Dawn of the Planet of the Apes than any other film in the franchise, and while we’ll get to that film later on down the list, this one is not a half-bad prototype on which to base that kind of story.

​6. Conquest of the Planet of the Apes
 
While Battle may be overall more well-balanced and a generally better movie than this one, Conquest’s second half goes so hard that I can’t deny its innate power, which elevates it slightly over its sequel. The first half is a bit wonky though, especially in the editing. That’s not to say that nothing about that first half works; the Orwellian ape slavery society we see is interestingly set up, especially since we’re only privy to what we can see in the Century City portion of the world, but what doesn’t work kind of overwhelms whatever is working. At two points, by my count, it seemed as if there were entire transitional scenes missing from the film; a character would say something and the movie would immediately cut to the result of what was said, but without any indication that a cut was even coming. The film also starts rather slow, with Caesar (renamed from “Milo,” thank god) simply biding his time in learning about the ape society itself, meaning he has to spend a lot of time with the human characters that aren’t especially interesting. All that said, once the second half of this one gets going and the revolution begins, the film doesn’t stop until the credits roll. The prison break sequence is one of the great set pieces across the Apes franchise, and while the plaza showdown is overlong, it remains surprisingly tense and thrilling to watch play out, all culminating in Roddy McDowall actually getting to show off some acting chops under the mask and deliver a killer monologue which sets up the next film beautifully. Of all the original sequels, this one is my personal favorite.

​5. Planet of the Apes (1968)
 
Though a few of its sequels have terrific individual elements or thrilling sequences in a vacuum, the best of the original Apes films remains the 1968 classic starring Charlton Heston. It’s not exactly as flawless as one might hope on a rewatch – the interior sets seem a little too closed off even for this world, and the pacing isn’t exactly smooth sailing the whole way through (plus Heston’s performance is a tad wooden, even for him) – but it holds up rather well when compared to its immediate counterparts, and is still one of the best sci-fi films of its era full-stop. It really mostly feels more like a series of interesting scenes set in different rooms than one fully fleshed-out story from beginning to end, but that could also be due to what we know is coming later on down the line, and the film’s notorious twist ending buys the movie a lot of good will – it’s all too rare to see a twist like that executed as well as this one was. If you haven’t revisited this one since seeing it the first time, I don’t think a rewatch would be too disappointing.

​​4. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
 
As alluded to in the intro for this piece, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the most recent addition to the Apes canon, and falls for me about where the next entry on this list does, though the pacing isn’t quite as strong and some of the character work seems too broadly-painted by the film’s end. Still, these are largely minor complaints in a film which is clearly the first entrant in a series of new Apes stories set many generations after Caesar’s trilogy, and which still features some terrific cinematography, excellent visual effects, and expert-level compositing, as well as really solid performances from the entire cast (especially Owen Teague and Kevin Durand). I don’t want to spoil too much of what goes on in this one, given how new it is, but the journey it takes the viewer on is much more of an adventure film than anything that came before it, and the confidence Wes Ball clearly has in his ability to not lose the audience despite the long runtime is something that can’t be taught to many directors. This is the largest scale at which these films have ever been made and you can see the money spent very wisely up on screen. The official word is that the producers of this new set of Apes films want this to be a nine-film saga, the beginning of which would have been Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and if the storytelling for this second trilogy in that saga can improve enough from here to whatever comes next, in the same fashion the previous trilogy improved, we’re in for something really, truly special.

​3. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
 
The first chapter in the Planet of the Apes franchise’s first prequel trilogy, Rise of the Planet of the Apes has us bear witness to the origins of Caesar, the original intelligent ape, as he’s brought up by Will Rodman (James Franco) following an ill-begotten test of a brain repair drug which is implied to have the ability to cure Alzheimer’s. The subsequent rise of Caesar from intelligent ape to leader is one of the great protagonist formations in one of the great starts in movie trilogy history, a start which would only be surpassed by the film’s immediate sequels. Above all else, this movie is exceptionally well-paced, clocking in at just over one hour and forty-five minutes, the efficiency in storytelling never waning for a second. To be fair, this can cause one or two edits to feel a little off, and the speed at which the film moves does cost somewhat in terms of the quality of CG compositing and some backgrounds still looking digitally-rendered, but even the early visual effects on the apes look remarkable for where they began. Hearing Caesar say “no” for the first time still takes my breath away, and the Golden Gate bridge finale is a fantastic action set-piece. The film’s other flaws are a little more noticeable, like the fact that Frieda Pinto’s character feels fairly inconsequential to the story beyond just being James Franco’s girlfriend and isn’t present at all for the Redwoods finish despite having been with Will and Caesar for five years to that point, and the fact that David Oyelowo’s fun scenery-chewing character eventually just morphs into straight-up cartoon capitalism villainy (then again, art imitates life, so what are you gonna do), but they’re not heavy enough to detract from what the film has going for it positively. This is still a terrific first film for this trilogy to open with, and an incredibly fun watch for first-time viewers just now getting interested in this franchise.

​2. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
 
For a long time, this was my favorite of the most recent Apes trilogy, and on some days, it still is, with good reason. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes is the first of the two Matt Reeves films in this franchise, and it’s under his astute vision for this world and the characters within it that everything is elevated to another level, from the visual effects to the characters themselves, to the conflicts they have with each other, to the tension from scene to scene, to the performances from both ape and human actors to some of the franchise’s greatest action set-pieces and image-making. At no point during my first ever watch of this movie in theaters did I know exactly where it was going, and on no viewing since have I wanted it to go anywhere else. There are two or three shots in this film that are absolutely goosebump-inducing: the 360 one-shot on the tank, the crane shot above the tower as Caesar and Koba are about to face off, and of course, Toby Kebbell’s Koba – the greatest antagonist in Planet of the Apes franchise history – on horseback, bursting through a wall of flames with a machine gun like a demon spawned straight from hell. Kebbell’s performance matches Andy Serkis’ evolved character of Caesar with a tragic rage no villain in this franchise, or most sci-fi series, has ever had in such nuanced terms, and it can be so easy to get lost in just how good a character Koba is before remembering that it’s all being done by an actor in a mo-cap suit. He still never outperforms Andy Serkis as the mo-cap king, a more insurmountable task with each passing film in this trilogy, but he more than holds his own, as does Gary Oldman despite rather limited screen-time. Jason Clarke, Keri Russell, Kodi Smit-McPhee, and all the other human actors also turn in good work, but it’s the previous three mentioned that steal the show. And even with all of that, no one steals the show here from Matt Reeves’ directing. From the first moment after the film’s brief virus recap to the last frame, Reeves has total control over this narrative, and knows exactly how to evolve this story organically without playing a single false note, and I have no doubt that it’s this movie that got him the job for The Batman in 2022 (it certainly was the reason I wanted him for it, anyway). If this one is still your favorite, you will not hear an argument from me.

​1. War for the Planet of the Apes  
​
Having gained some distance from initial pre-release expectations and marketing which didn’t really sell the right movie, War for the Planet of the Apes is my new #1 film in this franchise, and in bingeing them all concurrently, it was an amazing thing to see the final film in the series to this point be the franchise’s strongest. Everything in this film is operating at the top of its game. Somewhat victim to the same misnaming issue that Battle for the Planet of the Apes suffered, the film opens explosively before reminding us that the war we’re witnessing affects characters we care about in deeply personal ways, and it only gets more personally affecting from there. The choice to journey inward, to reckon with the darker parts of Caesar after all this time, instead of forcing a grand-scale spectacle purely off of audience expectation rather than organic storytelling, is a bold choice that reminds the viewer why Matt Reeves was chosen to conclude this story, Caesar’s story. Between Reeves’ direction and Serkis’ understanding of these characters, the filmmaking and narrative storytelling has never been better for this franchise. This is Andy Serkis’ best performance as Caesar bar none (maybe Serkis’ best performance ever), especially in how it’s juxtaposed against Woody Harrelson’s menacing Colonel character, and every expression on his face, be it the best visual effects the franchise has ever had or the performance in itself, is full of unprecedented depth. In fact, so powerful is the sheer level of detail in this film’s visual effects, it’s still a bit baffling that this franchise has never won an Oscar for them (which this one lost to Blade Runner 2049 in an entirely understandable but unfortunate blow for this movie). Steve Zahn’s “Bad Ape” provides some really great comic relief while also still being somewhat of a tragic character himself, and of course, I have to shout out the underrated MVP of this trilogy in Karin Konoval as Maurice. The cinematography and compositing in this one is note-perfect, the pacing moves exactly as fast as it needs to and slows down when appropriate, the film contains some of the trilogy’s most quietly sweet and tragic moments, and this is easily Michael Giacchino’s best score in a live-action film prior to The Batman. Without a doubt in my mind, this is the best film in the Planet of the Apes prequel trilogy and the best Planet of the Apes movie ever made. What a conclusion.

And that’s my ranking of the entire Planet of the Apes franchise! How would you rank these films? Any you think are more underrated than others? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

by Jacob Thomas Jones​

​Greeting, all, and welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan! 2023 sure was a great year for movies, and 2024 looks to be another banger of a cinematic calendar. One of the lead stories of 2023 was the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, which led studios to push certain films into 2024 in order for actors and writers to continue and begin promotional work on both small and larger-profile projects. These projects ranged from the highly-anticipated Dune: Part Two to Luca Guadagnino’s tennis film Challengers, the latter of which was one of the first major moves off of the 2023 slate. However, as a result of those moves, we may be getting more quality cinema in 2024 than even we’re expecting.

​A few notes on the list order before we begin: given some of those films’ larger prominence and imminent release dates, they may appear lower on this list than you might expect. The fact is, there are others with more mystery surrounding them that adds a layer of excitement some of the lower-numbered entrants don’t necessarily lack, but no longer possess in quite the same way. As well, while some of the films higher on the list have less information available or a lack of current footage, the information that is available is elevates them above other, more obvious candidates. There are also any number of films due to release this year that simply don’t have enough information available yet to be included on this list, and some that may be expected to release this year could get pushed into 2025, so while it’s possible some of these end up on the Top 10 Best Movies of 2024 list, one can’t bank on that. 

​As with the Top 10 Best Movies of 2023 list, there are a few films in the Honorable Mentions section that are listed in numerical order of anticipation due to how much we’re looking forward to them over the other, non-numbered alphabetical entries, but all the films on this list carry some level of excitement for us, so let’s get started. Here are our picks for the Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2024!

​10. Horizon: An American Saga 
 
Kevin Costner is back in the director’s chair with an epic western event that not only has a theatrical release but already has an announcement trailer from Warner Bros. Given that its multi-part stories have not yet separated themselves in either footage or plot details, I’m just including them both as just one big entry here. With Chapter 1 dropping in June and Chapter 2 finishing the job in August, there’s a lot to look forward to, especially as Costner has invested a lot of his own money into developing the project after having left the series Yellowstone in order to make it happen. We haven’t gotten a proper Western genre epic in a long time, and to see Costner back in the director’s chair on a Western project so long after Dances with Wolves is cause for excitement. Hopefully this will be one of the moviegoing events of the summer (provided its quality is as high as it can go).

​9. The Bikeriders
 
The first film on this list to fall victim to the SAG-AFTRA strike of 2023, Jeff Nichols’ The Bikeriders will be the first feature film the director has released in 8 years, following the severely underrated Loving in 2016. The film – which debuted at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2023 and was slated to release that December – was dropped by Disney following the strikes in what seemed like a revenge move against SAG-AFTRA, later being picked up by Focus Features for a June 2024 release. Inspired by the 1967 photo-book of the same name, the fictional story tracks a biker gang from the streets of Chicago all across America’s Midwest, and stars the likes of Jodie Comer, Austin Butler, Tom Hardy, and Mike Faist. Nichols is one of our greatest yet most under-sung filmmakers and this looks to be yet another film of his that utilizes a brilliant ensemble cast and likely excellent script to their fullest effect.

​8. Dune: Part Two
 
It may seem odd for Denis Villeneuve’s long-awaited follow-up to Dune to be this low on the list, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not still hotly anticipating its arrival. The first film in this two-part adaptation of Frank Herbert’s iconic novel was a remarkably well-crafted production of sci-fi glory that wasn’t afraid to take its time establishing everything we would need to know in order to understand this world, and every element from the cinematography to the score to the sound design heralded the arrival of a new genre classic. Part Two promises to add everything the first film missed – or at least, sort of missed – with a greater emphasis on action, a more thorough understanding of Zendaya’s character Chani and the Fremen people with which she is embedded, and the added cast powers of Florence Pugh, Austin Butler, and Christopher Walken. If these trailers have shown us anything, it’s that Villeneuve was exactly the right person to helm these adaptations, and if he’s snubbed for Best Director a second time, the Academy and I will have words.

​7. Mufasa: The Lion King
 
If you weren’t aware, director Barry Jenkins – the man behind Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk, and the Prime Video limited series The Underground Railroad – was tapped some time ago by Disney to direct a live-action Lion King prequel film centered around the character of Mufasa. The latter part of that description leaves a lot to be desired in terms of voter confidence, no doubt about it. However, while live-action Disney projects as of late have ranged from poor to not-as-poor in quality, Barry Jenkins is one of the highest-quality filmmakers we have, and unless a Dial of Destiny-level misfire occurs, this is likely to be yet another incredibly poetic, beautiful, and miraculous notch in the Barry Jenkins quality belt. If anything, it will be something to remember.

​6. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
 
It’s been nine years since we last had a Mad Max adventure on the silver screen, and if its first trailer is any indication, the theatrical space has sorely missed George Miller’s fast and furious apocalypse franchise. As a prequel to one of the most badass Best Picture nominees ever in Mad Max: Fury Road, Furiosa tracks the titular Imperator’s journey from her beginnings to her eventual rise within the ranks of Immortan Joe’s inner circle. Sure, some of the CGI in the trailer looks a bit wonky, but this thing comes out in May, so there’s plenty of time for improvements, and with superstar Anya Taylor-Joy stepping into Furiosa’s desert boots – tagging in Chris Hemsworth as the new Max – I have very little doubt that this Mad Max Saga won’t at least mostly satisfy.

​5. Blitz
 
You’d be forgiven for not even knowing what this was, since there’s very little publicly available information and absolutely zero footage yet, but what ultimately matters is that Steve McQueen, the man behind 12 Years a Slave, Widows, and the Prime Video short film series Small Axe, is directing a movie about the blitz of London during WWII, and has tagged in Saoirse Ronan and Harris Dickinson to play his two leads. McQueen is one of the most singularly talented and visionary filmmakers working today, and with leads like that – plus a likely Christmastime release date – this thing seems like a major awards player already. We’ll just have to wait and see how much of a player it is.

​4. Civil War
 
While Alex Garland’s Men was an unusual but nonetheless interesting miss for the director compared to his previous two works, his remains one of the most consistently quality careers in entertainment, both as a writer and in the head chair. And with A24 expanding their typically indie portfolio to larger-budget projects such as action films and IP-based adaptations, they couldn’t have chosen a better or more innovative filmmaker to launch with. Civil War looks intense, terrifying, and insanely well-put together, its first trailer jolting one into fight or flight almost as easily as its characters (Jesse Plemons might be too good at this job), and with secret weapon Stephen McKinley Henderson on the call sheet, there’s little doubt that this will be one of the most talked-about and impressive movies of the year.

​3. Mickey 17
 
Recently delayed “indefinitely” by Warner Bros. Discovery in order to move up Godzilla x Kong’s nationwide release, Mickey 17 is all but certain to debut in late 2024 as a major awards season player, thanks to the likes of Academy Award Winner Bong Joon Ho – who made a little movie called Parasite (the first non-English language movie to ever win Best Picture) – and superstar Robert Pattinson teaming up for a sci-fi movie that already has an announcement trailer available to watch. Plot details have been kept pretty close to the chest, but I’m hoping more is revealed soon, and I hope what is revealed is as weird and eclectic as the rest of Bong Joon Ho’s filmography. This will be the director’s first fully English-language film, and simply based on him and Pattinson alone, I’m more than confident in its overall quality being high, hence its placement this far up the list.

​2. Nosferatu
 
Nosferatu is one of the most iconic films ever made, the first to popularize the titular vampire as a horror icon, and still one of the best vampire films available even though it came out in 1922. There have been other film adaptations of the character before – most notably Werner Herzog’s 1979 film Nosferatu the Vampyre – but nothing quite like what visionary director Robert Eggers is sure to be cooking up. Bill Skarsgård stars as the character, with the additional cast of Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, and Willem Dafoe. Dafoe in particular has had some extremely praiseworthy words for Eggers’ directing, and with a Christmas Day release date, Focus Features seems extremely confident in their product. Robert Eggers films are some of the best around, always extremely well-crafted and brimming with commitment to whatever story is being told; this is a perfect fit for him, and I cannot wait to see how he envisions this world and this iconic character.

1. Megalopolis 
​
For the better part of two decades, Francis Ford Coppola has been building up his revenues with his and his daughter’s other companies – including a quite popular winery – to self-finance this passion project about an architect who wants to rebuild New York City as a utopia following an unprecedented disaster. There simply is no other spot on this list more befitting for the man behind The Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now, especially not when he’s working with Adam Driver – whose words of praise for his director should not go unnoted – as his leading man. With all of that information, plus the title itself being a play on Metropolis (another iconic film ripe for re-interpretation), my confidence is quite high. Any movie can suck, including those by some of the greatest filmmakers to ever be in the business; in fact, a few of Francis Ford Coppola’s more recent films have been rather poor. But my instincts on this one, and the knowledge that Coppola’s less quality films were made largely after he ran out of money to make movies on his own, tell me that we’re about to receive a film from Coppola the likes of which we haven’t seen before in the best possible way.

And those are our picks for the Top 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2024! What movies are you looking forward to this year? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​Honorable Mentions:
11. Challengers
12. Hit Man
13. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
14. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim
15. Deadpool 3
16. Twisters
17. The Wolf Man
18. Joker: Folie à Deux
19. Wicked: Part One
20. Gladiator II
 

• Alien: Romulus
• Apartment 7A
• Apex
• Back to Black
• Ballerina
• Borderlands
• Burn
• Drive-Away Dolls
• Havoc
• Inside Out 2
• Janet Planet
• Maria
• MaXxXine
• A Quiet Place: Day One
• Sing Sing
• Weapons
• Wolfs

​Well, here we are. We’ve finally made it to the end. It’s been a long journey getting to this point, across oceans of quality film and vast fields of work that almost landed the plane, but as is the case every year, some truly excellent material had to get cut for this list to happen as it’s meant to. In fact, this year was such an excellent year for film and filmmaking – despite the lead film industry stories from this year being WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes that caused more than a few of this list’s potential candidates to get pushed into the 2024 calendar – that in order to whittle the list down to 10, I had to start with a shortlist of 15 and put that list in numerical order first just to find out what went in the #11 spot (#15-#11 are listed below in the Honorable Mentions section along with unranked, alphabetically-ordered selections). This is my favorite list to write every year, and I can’t wait to gush about some of these films for the first time ever alongside the ones I’ll be gushing about even more than I already have. So, without further ado, here are my picks for the Top 10 Best Movies of 2023!

​10. May December
 
Is this movie camp? I don’t think so, but it does run pretty close to a brilliant satire. While I don’t know that I’d consider it a masterpiece like the rest of my colleagues seem to, May December puts Todd Haynes in easily his best mode since Carol, and maybe even a better one than that. A film about how exploitation often drives the film industry to do what it does even when it’s damaging to those whose lives are being put up on screen for our entertainment is a risky move from such an established filmmaker, and if you saw the SAG award nominations, actors in particular were none too happy about it. Easily one of the year’s best scripts (and from a first-timer no less!) shines by way of being combined with three of the absolute best performances in any piece of 2023 media, especially Julianne Moore and Charles Melton. Yes, Natalie Portman is excellent as well, but it’s Melton in particular that really shines here, breaking free of his Riverdale stigma to deliver maybe the year’s best supporting performance. There are line readings and moments in this film so devastating they hit you right in the jugular, and the editing is some of the best I’ve seen in any Netflix film.

​9. Barbie
 
I flipped between this and Poor Things so many times when it came to what films would be included on this list, it almost gave me whiplash, but while Poor Things is a film I do love and respect a lot, this spot ultimately came down to “favorite” vs. “best,” and favorite won out; I’ve returned to Barbie far more times since my first viewing, and I’ll likely return many more times since the film is just so fun. Yes, one could argue that the film is Feminism 101, but for a commercial Barbie movie to have even this much nuance is something only director Greta Gerwig could have pulled off in exactly this way. This is, without doubt, the best version of this movie we possibly could have gotten with this wide of an appeal. The production and costume designs are immaculate, most of the jokes land like gangbusters, Ryan Gosling’s supporting performance is an all-timer for the man’s career, Margot Robbie is a superstar both in her lead performance and in the film’s production, and Greta Gerwig’s filmography – while I do think this might be the weakest film in it – is already one of the most iconic in movie history. She’s one of the great singular artists of this century, and her achievement of getting her first 3 films all nominated for Best Picture cannot be more worthy of praise.

​8. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
 
For a long time, I struggled with whether or not this movie belonged on this list above other excellent work like Poor Things or even May December, but at the end of the day, this is my list, and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. was, to me, the culmination of all coming-of-age stories from the mid-2010s to now, the most befitting of the genre and the most appropriately adapted work in that space to come along in years. I know it’s cliché, but we just don’t get movies like this anymore. Stories that feel like they would have come out in the 90s and made classics by way of repeat viewings all the way up to now. The soft, unobtrusive direction of Kelly Fremon Craig, the unfairly under-awarded supporting performance of Rachel McAdams, the excellent star-making turn of Abby Ryder Forston in the title part, and the warm fallbacks of Kathy Bates and Benny Safdie batting cleanup make this one not only well worth your time, but an excellent one for kids and young adults to grow up on.

​7. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
 
I loved Into the Spider-Verse when it came out; it changed the medium of animation as a whole and set a new bar for what these things could look like, and while I don’t know if Across the Spider-Verse is narratively as tight and well-structured as its immediate predecessor, I never expected in a million years that this team would be able to pull off the same magic trick twice with even larger leaps. This is one of the most stunningly-crafted movies of the year; the sound design is excellent, the animation yet again reshapes and redefines what can be done in this medium, the narrative – one that directly confronts the idea that canon is more important than innovation, that Miles is supposedly “not the real Spider-Man” – is even more mature and brilliant than the last one, the sheer use of color and that magnificent score elevate this one in craft so far above where any animated movie has ever gone, it’s even more ground-shaking that the last one was. It is an absolute crime that this – the second-best score of the year – was snubbed by the Oscars in favor of Indiana Jones, and if they stick the landing on the third film, a film on which I hope they take all the time they need, we’ll be looking at a new contender for the best animated trilogy of all time, and a new entrant in the “Best Trilogies of All Time” canon (not that canons matter), full stop.

​6. Anatomy of a Fall
 
I’m not sure what France is doing with their International Feature submissions, but swapping out this magnificently-crafted mystery for the more formalistic The Taste of Things (which I have heard is excellent nonetheless) may go down as one of the all-time bad moves in Oscar submission history. It’s difficult to describe just what makes Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall so damn good without simply fawning over things the film has in it – hot lawyer, all-timer movie dog, show-stealing supporting child performance from Milo Machado Graner, Sandra Hüller showing up to dominate the best performances of the year conversation – but what sets it apart is how it uses both the mystery of the fall itself and the French court system to dissect a relationship and put the very idea of marriage on trial for its life. The script is bound to win the Best Original Screenplay Oscar, and when that happens, you’ll hear no protest from me.

​5. Maestro
 
I don’t care that this has become film twitter’s villain of the year; I loved this movie, and I shall continue to love it because Maestro blew me away in both its artistry and its ambition. Exquisitely crafted from top to bottom, with some of Matthew Libatique’s most stunning cinematography to date, Maestro is Bradley Cooper not so much dissecting Leonard Bernstein as he is the artist’s struggle, choosing to channel the legendary composer rather than embody him. In his thorough examination of Bernstein’s marriage to Felicia Montealegre – along with all its complications, its tragedies, its highs and lows – Cooper never disappears or transforms, but one can feel the same energy that Bernstein likely experienced flowing through Cooper’s performance at every turn, and Cooper’s direction also supports this notion. Carey Mulligan is as excellent here as she’s ever been, and the Ely Cathedral sequence remains to this day my favorite singular movie scene of 2023.

​4. Past Lives
 
For a very long time, Past Lives was my favorite movie of the year, a soulful examination of the choices we make and how those choices shape the people we become. Greta Lee turns in an Oscar-worthy performance as Nora, a young Korean woman whose departure from Korea means having to ultimately part ways with her childhood sweetheart, only for them to reconnect years later when Nora herself has an entire life of her own with a husband she met after breaking things off. The always undervalued John Magaro shines as Lee’s shockingly understanding husband in the face of some incredibly discomforting circumstances, and Teo Yoo gives my favorite singular performance of the year as Hae Sung, the resurfaced childhood sweetheart in question. It will be a long time before I see another film with this delicate of a script that reaches into the depths of my soul as deeply as Past Lives did (at least, in the positive sense), delivering not just one but two of the all-time heartbreaker sequences in the bar scene and the film’s magnificently emotional ending moments. I can’t believe this is Celine Song’s debut feature.

​3. Oppenheimer
 
It shouldn’t be possible for a director as revered, respected, and as much a titan of industry as Christopher Nolan is to make their best film 11 movies deep into their career…and yes, I said best film. While I still hold space at the top for the way The Dark Knight shook the ground and changed superhero films forever, Oppenheimer is a genuine masterwork from a director in full command of his craft and easily the best-directed movie of Nolan’s entire filmography. The performances are second-to-none, with Cillian Murphy finally getting his chance to shine as Nolan’s leading man, Emily Blunt once again showing us all why she’s been an Oscar-worthy performer all along, Robert Downey Jr. pulling a complete 180 on his Iron Man persona to demonstrate that if he has anything, it’s the range, and a supporting ensemble so deep and stacked with talent in all the right places they might as well be the single greatest ensemble cast ever assembled for a single motion picture. Josh Hartnett! Matt Damon! Florence Pugh! David fucking Krumholtz! Even the one-scene cameos are powerhouse players! But what sets Oppenheimer’s immaculate cast and insane-level craft work (including amazing editing by Jennifer Lame and Ludwig Göransson’s best musical score to date) apart from Nolan’s other films is its non-confidence about the existence of the atomic bomb. Almost all of Nolan’s other features, even if they deal with some sort of controversial issue, end up feeling like the side they’ve taken is the right one to be on. With Oppenheimer, Nolan confronts head-on the consequences of adding atomic, potentially world-ending weapons to a world that just can’t seem to quit warring with itself. It’s not about the cost of doing the necessary work; it’s about whether the work was ultimately necessary at all, and what kind of world is created when miraculous acheivements are taken out of an artist’s hands for the control of those who don’t understand their power. A singular and visionary work that will be viewed in the years to come as one of Nolan’s greatest films.

​2. The Zone of Interest
 
The one film I knew I had to see before finishing this Top 10 list was The Zone of Interest, especially as it’s not even remotely the kind of film the Academy usually clings to – an avant-garde examination of evil’s regularity, a direct gaze into the eyes but not the heart of hell. Immediately after finishing the film, I was struck by something I had not felt in years: anguish, of a kind that rendered me entirely and helplessly speechless for the duration of my drive home. It feels wrong to describe this as one of my “favorites” of the year, or as a film I “loved,” so profoundly distressing was the film to my soul; it would almost feel evil to describe it that way. And this film is evil incarnate; at least, that is the entire subject. The unsettling sound design and haunting score leave one simply paralyzed in horror at what was witnessed, and I have not been this upset by a film since seeing Schindler’s List for the first time; in more ways than one, this film is even more disconcerting. From my letterboxd review: “The Zone of Interest takes one to such a place of thorough and irreparable discomfort that one cannot understand it except in the context of the evil it depicts, an evil bolstered by its lack of viscerality. There's a purposeful avoidance of grandiosity, of emotionality; there is no peek over the wall to offer some validation that the banality we are witnessing is monstrous, even as we can audibly hear its depravity all around us.” While it doesn’t take my number one spot, this is in my mind the best film of the year, and I so desperately hope that those who see it will understand what it is telling them.

​1. Killers of the Flower Moon
 
When I first saw Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, I considered it to be a fantastic addition to the director’s late-late period work, but I did not consider it a masterpiece. After a second and finally a third watch in theaters, I can confidently say that not only do I consider Killers an outright masterpiece, I also consider it the best of Scorsese’s late-late period films, those ranging from The Wolf of Wall Street to now. Those who have read my writing know how big a fan I am of the director, so his film landing at my number one spot may seem like no surprise, but for a long time, this sat down at the number three spot and was almost beat out by number two. What I ultimately had to consider was: what makes this my favorite film of the year? Is it the brilliantly-told story which contextualizes the mass murder of an entire people by confronting the fact that it was all too easy to do before the FBI showed up and even after they showed up they didn’t seem to actually care how horrific everything was? Is it the phenomenal work of Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, or the career-making turn from Lily Gladstone outshining them both working with a director for which they were the two muses for years? Is it the note-perfect cinematography, the god-like editing that prioritizes pacing over runtime, the severely underrated sound design, and the incredibly-adapted script which turned this from an intriguing and shocking true-crime tale into one of tragedy and complicity? In truth, it’s all of these things, and one more: the ending. I already wrote extensively about Killers of the Flower Moon’s ending in my Top 5 Scenes & Movie Moments piece, but without the ending, this would be just another fantastic addition to Scorsese’s filmography. With it, it feels almost like a goodbye, like Scorsese is pouring every last bit of his heart and soul into whatever he makes now because he feels that he needs to leave something valuable and worthwhile behind when he inevitably passes. He is confronting both us and himself for even considering this epic tale of tragedy – of the white man’s indifference to generational sufferings perpetrated by those in power against those without, of greed, of complicity, of year after year of an entire people being erased – as entertainment in the first place. He reckons with this and with his own shortcomings in not being able to fully tell the story from the Osage perspective, for he is not Osage, and will not be able to do it sufficiently. At the end of it all, the whole thing becomes a radio show, and Scorsese himself pleads with us all: do not forget these people, and do NOT forget what happened to them. It can be all too easy for marginalized people groups, or those suffering genocide, to be ignored or forgotten by those whose status and personhood will never be threatened in this way. And all of that is what makes Killers of the Flower Moon my number one movie of 2023.

Well, we did it! We finished all the Top 10 lists for 2023, and only have one more Top 10 to go! Of course, we also have The Friendly Film Fan Awards nominations, which will be announced live on our Instagram page on January 28 at 2:00 p.m. EST (a full list of nominees will be furnished on the website). What were your favorite films of 2023? Any great work you wanna shout out? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

Honorable Mentions:

• 11. Poor Things
• 12. The Holdovers
• 13. Godzilla Minus One
• 14. Priscilla
• 15. The Iron Claw

 

• Beyond Utopia
• The Boy and the Heron
• John Wick: Chapter 4
• The Killer
• Showing Up
• Society of the Snow
• Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
• A Thousand and One

​Making movies is hard. It’s one of the hardest things to pull off successfully, if one manages to pull it off at all with how few of them actually end up getting made. This is partly why so many film critics and pundits opt out of making “Worst” lists entirely. The creation of art is something to be celebrated in itself, and no one wants to tear down people who work incredibly hard to make their movies a reality. The Friendly Film Fan recognizes this wholeheartedly and wishes nothing but the best for anyone attempting to mount a miracle task such as filmmaking.
 
Unfortunately, not every movie can be good, even with a lot of effort; in fact, there were any number of disappointments from the cinematic year of 2023 (you can view that list here), from superhero movies at least temporarily going bust to a lack of vision from some tried-and-true animation studios to brilliant concepts wasted on poor execution. And yet, inevitably, there were also films that were so bad, so poorly conceived and executed, that they managed to be even worse. Our picks for these lists are not direct reflections on the filmmakers themselves or the people who work tirelessly to make these things happen. They are entirely chosen based on the quality of the films themselves as singular art pieces. Here are our picks for the ten worst movies of 2023.  

10. Silent Night
 
John Woo is back in the action space with a film whose conceptual beginnings are full of potential but whose execution left a significant amount to be desired. An entire action movie devoid of dialogue is a cool concept, and with the right care, could have been one of 2023’s most underrated gems. Unfortunately, a lack of character development, poor editing choices, and some woefully underwritten stereotypes of villains rendered Silent Night not only one of the year’s largest wastes of potential, but also of audience’s time (even with a decent one-er action sequence thrown in for good measure).

​9. 65
 
The crux of 65’s premise – that Adam Driver and Ariana Greenblatt are actually members of an alien species that crash landed on earth 65 million years before humanity came to be – is a brilliant one; it’s so brilliant, in fact, that the reveal of this twist in the marketing for the film stings all that much more. Nevertheless, there really could have been something great here, had the script been in any way developed into something resembling an actual story. As it is, 65 is just two hours of these characters being in the same place at the same time while we know as much about them at the end as we did at the beginning. To take a premise like this and not only ruin the twist but then make it boring anyway is a recipe for one of 2023’s most sincere disappointments. 

​8. The Exorcist: Believer
 
William Freidkin’s The Exorcist is one of the greatest films ever made, full-stop (and might be the greatest horror film ever made if you consider Silence of the Lambs more of a thriller type). So when it was revealed that David Gordon Green, the man behind the Halloween reboot trilogy – of which the last two films were some of the worst of their respective years – would be helming a direct sequel to the 1973 classic, I wasn’t exactly jumping for joy. That said, the trailer was full of all the legacy sequel hallmarks every legacy sequel trailer has: a remixed version of the theme, a return of beloved characters, and a reworked tagline harkening back to the original film. Unfortunately, like the Halloween trilogy before it, Believer not only misunderstands why the original material works, its need for shock value and nostalgia bait crowd cheer moments ends up outright disrespecting the material itself. Ellen Burstyn is utterly wasted in this movie for all the marketing played up her return, and the film’s surprise ending cameo felt cheap and manipulative. The other two films in this new Exorcist trilogy are contractually obligated to be made, unfortunately, so this nightmare won’t be over for a while.

​7. Retribution
 
How do you do Speed in 2023? If you’re Retribution, the answer is that you steal the premise and forget all the key moments and plot points that made Speed make sense. Liam Neeson’s non-retirement from action franchises continues to be a thorn in not only his career’s side post-Taken, but all of our sides as well since they keep making just enough money that he keeps making more of them. And yet, somehow, they just keep getting worse…and worse…and worse. I really hope that his claim of retiring from action filmmaking and getting back to his dramatic roots comes to fruition soon, cause there’s not much more of this I can take.

​6. Love Again
 
This is a bad movie in so many of the ways movies like it are bad movies, so that’s why it’s not as high on the list as some of the others, but if wasted potential wasn’t such a potent problem in this calendar year, it would most certainly be higher. A Celine Dion vanity project to advertise her new song, poorly disguised as a terribly executed story about love and grief, Love Again was sincerely one of the worst movies I saw this year, and if it wasn’t the most interesting character in the whole movie dying in its first five minutes cluing me in to that fact, the insane Skittles advertisements in the middle of otherwise rudimentary scenes would have. I really hope Priyanka Chopra Jonas’ agent starts believing more in her potential as an actress, because between this and Citadel, the year’s entertainment media has not been kind to her. 

​5. Ghosted
 
With the rise of A.I. in the film world, and especially in the wake of this summer’s WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, it seems unfairly insulting to insinuate that Ghosted could have been written by ChatGPT, but when the final product is this generic and seemingly driven by algorithms, it’s difficult not to feel that way despite oneself. Pitching itself as a sort of spy thriller rom-com, this film not only wastes the talents of Ana de Armas and Chris Evans but sucks any chemistry they otherwise might have had right out of the room (and that’s saying something, cause they have chemistry in Knives Out). Truth be told, I don’t even actually remember what the plot of the movie is; I just know I don’t wanna watch it again.

​4. Spinning Gold
 
The story of Casablanca records, the label who signed Kiss and some other prominent acts, could have been an interesting one if it wasn’t so obsessed with itself to the point of parody. But like any over-indulged musical act, it just keeps going well past the point of comfort, all the while thinking that the real problem with its performance is the audience being subjected to it. Irreversibly miscast, cheap-looking, and filled with high school community stage-theater level dialogue, it embodies the exact opposite of the “show, don’t tell” rule of filmmaking, and I hated every minute of it. Jeremy Jordan, you deserve so much better.

​3. Sweetwater
 
If Spinning Gold is overindulgent towards record execs, Sweetwater takes that concept and applies it to the white guys who made sure Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton became a huge NBA star. White savior movies are still all the rage in cinema if you know where to look, but this one isn’t even well-made from a technical standpoint, and the writing verges on parody levels of that kind of storytelling. It constantly goes out of its way to demonstrate how the white coaches and owners of the teams went above and beyond to make Sweetwater the first Black star of basketball, but never once indulges the audience with a show of skill from the titular star himself or seeks to get to know him in any sincere way. I sincerely hope this is the beginning of the end for the white savior narrative biopic, because if they’re this poorly rendered all the time (and keep losing money), they’ll stop.

​2) Nefarious
 
What looked like it could have been an interesting – if somewhat rote – film (is this guy insane or possessed?) quickly turned into lazy right-wing propaganda and evangelical posturing the moment the topic of abortion was brought up in the second act. Up to then, the film wasn’t exactly terrible, but it wasn’t attention-grabbing either. Afterwards, it actually goes so far as to insinuate its protagonist was going to murder someone due to possession, but the performances and direction are so poor that it would be obvious to anyone who could spot a grifter that the protagonist just picked up a weapon under the guise of possession so he could go on a fake Glenn Beck talk show a year later, turn his “experience” into a book, and profit. (This is all notwithstanding the fact that the supposed demon’s name is actually just “Nefarious.”) For a moment there, it seemed as if this film was actually trying something interesting; how sad that any intrigue was squashed so quickly.  

1. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 
​
Even worse than lazy right-wing propaganda, even more annoying than movies that are over-obsessed with themselves, and even more miserable an experience than movies that misunderstand their source material while trying to take advantage of it in the same genre space…are movies like Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. Full disclosure: I wasn’t against the idea of this movie when it was first revealed; after all, any concept can be made into a great film, regardless of how odd the premise is initially – you just need the right story, craftsmanship, and care put into the making of it. Even when the trailers began dropping for it, the idea of Blood and Honey being so bad it’s good, as a sort of unintentional comedy, got me excited to sit in a room with a bunch of people to laugh and cheer at how dumb it was going to be. What a shame then, that the movie isn’t even so bad, it’s good. It’s just a miserably bad, lazily-crafted experience with poor characters, poor dialogue, some truly terrible effects, overlong sequences that go nowhere, stupid characters that are only stupid so the plot can happen, terrible production design, worse costuming, poor makeup, and not even one minute of enjoyable slasher absurdism. Unfortunately, it made money, so it looks like we’re getting a sequel. God help us all.

And those are our picks for the Top 10 Worst Movies of 2023! What were some 2023 movies you saw and hated? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​Dishonorable Mentions:

• After Everything*
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
• Fast X
• Hypnotic

*Removed from Top 10 List for Sheer Hilarity

​Every year, there are any number of films that make our longlist for the Best Movies of 2023, but inevitably, do not make it to the shortlist. As unfortunate a fact as this is, we believe these films still deserve to be celebrated – whether that is due to quality, impact, or how much we personally enjoyed them – beyond merely being added to our Recommended Movies list with everything else. This is the purpose of what we are dubbing the “Pre-Honorable Mentions” list; they’re not quite the best films of the year, but boy do we still like them a whole lot. 2023 was chock full of films we think stood out in this respect, so they’re each getting a shout-out here, with a little diatribe as to why they’re included. There are a decent number of these to get through, so let’s dive right in.

​ 20 Days in Mariupol
 
A tense, on-the-ground documentary chronicling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over a 20-day period, 20 Days in Mariupol had me clutching my armrests waiting to see if filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov was going to make it out alive. More importantly, however, is its documentation of active war crimes perpetrated by Putin’s military as they target civilians, bomb hospitals, and destroy critical infrastructure. Given the current genocide taking place in Gaza, the eerie similarities could not be more timely.

​Asteroid City
 
Wes Anderson continues to be one of the most under-appreciated artists working today by the film industry, evidenced by the fact that Asteroid City – one of his finest works – has picked up little to zero awards buzz since it opened this past summer. While it features many of his trademark Wes-isms, its real power lies in how it deals with grief, the unknown, and the way art touches the soul. Telling the story even if you don’t understand it fully is one of life’s most vital duties, and this film understands that better than almost any.

​Beau is Afraid
 
When it comes to reckless ambition, there are few directors working in the space today like Ari Aster, and that’s some of the highest praise one can give in this context. Beau is Afraid is one of the strangest, most fascinating, most darkly hilarious, and deeply unsettling films of the entire year, entirely unpredictable and unfathomably inexplicable. Even classifying it within a genre feels wrong. And yet, I couldn’t help but be entirely taken with how out there it all was, like Aster decided now was the time to throw everything at the screen that he ever could just to see what would happen, and with the help of one of Joaquin Phoenix’s most layered performances – at least for me – most of it sticks.

​Bottoms
 
Easily my favorite comedy of the year that isn’t attempting a multi-genre jump, Bottoms finds Emma Seligman acing the sophomore directorial assignment by embracing absurdity and drawing on the power of Rachel Sennott’s undeniable comic genius. Adding superstar Ayo Edebiri to the mix and drawing some of the best supporting performances for a comedy in years – including a standout turn for Marshawn Lynch – the fight-club-meets-80s-comedy can’t help but be fun. Sure, it’s not super structurally unique, but how it plays within that structure is a hoot to experience.

​Fair Play
 
While I wouldn’t personally classify Fair Play as underrated, it is one of the more underseen great films of the year, with a screenplay that very nearly makes it into my personal favorites of 2023. Alden Ehrenreich turns in typically solid work, but it’s Phoebe Dynevor who’s the real discovery here, not only outperforming everyone else but elevating herself over the whole affair. I’m already a sucker for fast-talking wall street films with vague dialogue about stocks, trades, markets, etc., but adding a psycho-sexual thriller to the mix was a 4-D chess move I didn’t anticipate. 

​Four Daughters
 
A devastating documentary about a mother whose generationally-ingrained abuse ultimately drove two of her elder daughters to join ISIS (though there was a lot of propaganda involved as well), Four Daughters pulls a fascinating move in documentary filmmaking by having actors stand in for the real-life family with the real-life family coaching them through moments in their lives. Sometimes actors and the family are mixed in a scene, sometimes it’s actors only, but always, the goal is to excavate the trauma borne of these encounters and offer some sort of path for the family’s grief to travel. It’s difficult to describe just how heavy some of these scenes can get, but if you give it a watch, it’s an ultimately rewarding experience. 

​Saltburn
 
Is Saltburn a secret masterpiece, or is it so lost in itself that it fails to make its point coherently enough to make sense? Whichever side one finds oneself on, there’s no denying that this movie has become a lightning rod for young cinemagoers, particularly of the Gen Z variety; you can’t have a conversation about non-superhero movies right now without it coming up, and for good reason. There’s still a lot to love about it beyond its shock-value, from its opulent production design to its beautiful cinematography to the performances of its stellar ensemble cast, most of whom are asked to go uncomfortably transgressive places with their characters. Barry Keoghan, Alison Oliver, and Rosamund Pike in particular do really terrific work here, though Pike’s part is decidedly designed to put her line readings high above the rest. With that, the costume designs, and an effective twist – even if it does ultimately undo the point of the film – it’s hard not to be taken with Emerald Fennell’s sophomore feature.

​Sanctuary
 
After all the sex scene discourse that plagued the walls of twitter this past spring, this movie stands as a prime example of why their necessity doesn’t really matter if the movie knows how to employ them – their form does. A deliciously into itself erotic thriller, Sanctuary makes terrifically fun use of stars Margaret Qualley and Christopher Abbott by pairing them with one of the year’s most hilariously horny scripts. There’s not a lot else I can say without spoiling the film, but there’s not much else to the film either, so if erotic thrillers are something you’re into, or you just haven’t seen a good one in a while, Sanctuary is something you should definitely check out.

​Suzume
 
One of the year’s earliest animated releases from director Makoto Shinkai, whose films Your Name and Weathering With You also had early spring releases in the United States, Suzume is a genuinely stunning and uplifting film about a young girl and a chair; that’s actually not a joke – one of the key characters is a chair. What sets this film apart, beyond its great storytelling and characters, are the same things that set the others apart – stunning animation, and one of the year’s best and most underrated musical scores. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this one, and it still doesn’t have a domestic blu-ray release date, so it may be a long time yet before a rewatch can happen, but suffice it to say, if you saw this one in theaters, you got to experience one of animation’s best in 2023.

​Talk to Me
 
Without question the best straight-up horror film of the year (we’ll get to that “straight-up” part in a different list), Talk to Me is a genuinely terrifying film that lingers with you just long enough that you have to watch it again. Addiction metaphors in horror are nothing new, but to employ them the way this film does is an inspired choice; the teenagers act like teenagers, and teenagers are susceptible to addictive choices, so even when the characters in this film do something obviously stupid, it fits within the story being told. It also has one of the more talked-about endings in horror as of late, and now that a sequel has been officially greenlit, I’m more than intrigued by where this is all meant to be going.

​Theater Camp
 
This is one of the rare exceptions on this list that I didn’t give 4 stars or higher to, because it’s slowly become one of my favorite films from 2023 to return to and show other people. While it had a small release over the summer, Theater Camp still feels underseen by wider audiences who would enjoy the mockumentary-style humor, and those of us who grew up in theater – especially those way more into it than even I am – it’s an absolute riot. One can tell that real passion was employed here, in the script and the direction, for the world of theater – all its flaws, its many players, and especially its unsung heroes: the tech people. Jimmy Tatro, Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, and Ayo Edebiri all do exceptionally great work, but it’s Noah Galvin who’s the real discovery here, and it will be regarded as one of the failings of this year’s Academy Awards that not one of the genuinely great songs written for this movie’s inspired production of the stage show Joan, Still was even shortlisted for the Best Original Song category.

​Wonka
 
While it is true that Wonka isn’t so much a movie about Willy Wonka as it is a Paddington movie with the beloved character plugged into the titular spot, that can’t take away from its charm, its humor, and its heartwarming story of found family and creative passion. Timothée Chalamet’s Willy Wonka may not have the same residual darkness that other iterations of the character have had, but his relentless positivity and comic wit remains just about note-perfect for this story, and the songs – while not the greatest in musical history – are well-written and catchy; I listen to the film’s soundtrack still. Leave it to Paul King to crush all doubters and leave us with a film that can entertain kids just as much as it can subtly charm adults…and in some cases, make them cry a little.

Well, those were all the Pre-Honorable Mentions for the Best Movies of 2023. Come back for our final two end of year lists over the next few days, as we dive into the Best and Worst of what 2023 had to offer. Thanks for reading!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​Each year, there are any number of films that inspire moviegoers to engage in conversation immediately after exiting the theater due to the innate need to share in the experience of what was just seen. You simply have to talk about certain moments, whether they were shocking, heartwarming, profound, awe-inducing, or just plain fun. Sometimes they’re all five, sometimes they’re one or a few combined. In any case, these moments can make our jaws drop, make us laugh, make us think, or give us a catharsis we didn’t even know we were waiting for.
 
2023’s movies were full of these moments, so many of them that whittling the list down to just five of them has been one of our toughest but most rewarding list-making tasks. A few notes before we begin: these are only the best individual movie moments of the year, so films we loved that stay consistently great all the way through, rather than having standout individual moments, are not included here. In kind, some films that appear on this list may not end up making it to our Top 10 Movies of the Year. But that’s the beauty of lists like these; they give us a chance to highlight films we may not otherwise get a chance to praise in such effusive terms, and ultimately, they offer us an opportunity to re-live, reflect upon, and re-immortalize some of the cinematic year’s greatest hits. Here are our picks for the Top 5 Scenes & Movie Moments of 2023! (Needless to say: heavy spoilers apply.)

5. Ginza – Godzilla Minus One
 
Godzilla Minus One is already off to a hell of a start by the time the titular monster reaches the Japanese city of Ginza, the horrors of the enormous Kaiju’s rampage readily apparent to the viewer. It’s once he reaches that place, however, that Takashi Yamazaki’s film kicks into its highest gear, with the monster taking on the form of a great natural disaster as he wrecks everything around him, reducing the city to rubble, crumbling train cars in his jaws, and rendering the city streets craters as he stomps along. And then came the moment in which every viewer’s jaw hit the floor: the atomic breath. We’ve seen Godzilla’s atomic breath in movies before – 2014’s American Godzilla film features a quite famous moment where the Kaiju defeats another monster using it – but rarely have we seen it rendered this terrifyingly. The dorsal fins begin to protrude from Godzilla’s back, the blue glow illuminating them like a timer, and once he’s all charged up, the soundscape is entirely filled by the audio of what these characters call the “heat ray” being unleashed, which in turn unleashes an atomic explosion, wiping nearly everything out for miles around. As the camera takes a low angle, we witness the majesty of Godzilla as he roars into the sky; he has become the embodiment of nuclear terror.

​4. I’m Just Ken – Barbie
 
There are a few different moments from Barbie that could have made this list, but at the end of the day, it’s this showstopping musical dance number in the film’s third act that takes the cake. I’m Just Ken isn’t just lyrically innovative and riotously fun, it also gives the audience further insight into Ken’s frame of mind; plus, every background actor is giving everything to the audience frame by frame. If you look, you’ll notice details that you never noticed before. This is all before the dream ballet dance sequence begins, which may be the best part of the whole thing. The stage is gorgeous, the choreography is iconic, and the conclusion to it all is extremely cathartic. (Look at Kingsley Ben-Adir during the dream ballet’s final chorus – it’s a real treat.) And it’s all led by a stellar turn from Ryan Gosling, who we all knew could do comedy and could sing, but leave it to Greta Gerwig to pull the ingenious move of putting those talents together in one fantastic brush stroke.

​3. Finale – Killers of the Flower Moon
 
(There were no actual images of the scene in question available, so I had to use a regular still.)
​
Perhaps the single most powerful conclusion to any film released in 2023, Killers of the Flower Moon sees Martin Scorsese confronting head-on his own complicity in not fully telling this story by concluding that he can’t fully tell this story – after all, he’s not Osage, and it would take a member of the Osage nation to sufficiently fill in the gaps Scorsese is unable to fully understand. Additionally, the film critiques the very idea of itself as a form of entertainment for mass audiences by criticizing the idea of large-scale crimes which have affected entire generations of people being turned into the true-crime tales we obsess over day after day. How complicit are we in trivializing real pain when these events and other atrocities become the entertainment we so desperately cling to? And how can we hope to rise above these issues if even those who seek to understand them cannot tell the full story? To read my words on it, one wouldn’t be able to get a full picture of just how powerful the ending is, but when seen through one’s own eyes, it’s one of the most profound self-criticizing moments in any big director’s recent filmography. How lucky we are that Martin Scorsese is still seeking to educate, and to learn, this deep into his wonderfully storied career.

​2. Trinity – Oppenheimer
 
Sometimes a great movie moment doesn’t have one individual thing making it great, but a whole host of different tools and history coming together to wow the audience with a showstopping sequence demonstrating the full power of a filmmaker’s capabilities. Christopher Nolan’s directorial vision is on full display in Oppenheimer, but nowhere does everything coalesce better than in the crescendo that is the Trinity Test. Even with the knowledge of history to back it up, Trinity is a masterfully-edited, brilliantly-scored, and perfectly-acted sequence in which our characters wait with bated breath to discover whether or not their atomic bomb will detonate, changing the world and everyone’s lives for the rest of eternity, whether all their work will be for nothing and they’re about to fire a dud…or whether, upon detonation, it will ignite the atmosphere, ending humanity as we know it. From the moment boots are on the ground to the sound dropping out when the bomb explodes to the second Kitty receives a phone call telling her they’ve succeeded in their quest, we are white-knuckled with anticipation, ready to witness history but knowing the horror it will leave in its wake. It’s a moment so arresting, it literally shakes the foundations of cinema. 

1. Ely Cathedral – Maestro 
​
Despite the fact that Bradley Cooper’s sophomore directorial effort has become film twitter’s favorite movie to hate for awards season (a notion I thoroughly disagree with and do not share in), there remains one scene, one moment in the whole of film in 2023 that takes everyone’s breath away the minute it begins and refuses to give it back until the six minutes have passed: the Ely Cathedral sequence. Up to this moment, Leonard Bernstein has languished in toil, his life unable to fulfill him, his work unable to make up the gaps in his heart, and his delicate marriage to Felicia teetering on the edge of calamity. It’s difficult for him to hold on to the life he so loves; yet, when he gets in front of an orchestra, everything else falls away, and we are treated to an awe-inspiring groundswell of magnificent performance, direction, cinematography, and sound design. Cooper spends a full six minutes live-conducting the London Symphony Orchestra through Mahler’s “Symphony No. 2 in C Minor ‘Resurrection’,” his performance and the film itself reaching their ultimate crescendo as he and his baton navigate through every note with such passion it would take a stone heart not to be moved in some way. It’s impossible to describe just how arresting this moment is without one experiencing it for oneself, but in seeing Maestro in a Dolby Atmos-equipped theater, the effect was soul-shaking, a completely transportive, unforgettable, and riveting soundscape surrounding and driven by one of the year’s most spectacularly worthy efforts. I still love Maestro for all the supposed flaws it contains, and the Ely Cathedral sequence remains without question the singular best movie moment of 2023.

And those are our picks for the Top 5 Scenes and Movie Moments of 2023! What were some of your favorite moments in movies this year? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​Honorable Mentions:

• Table Talk – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
• Dance the Night – Barbie
• Blowing the Pipe – How to Blow Up a Pipeline
• Dragon’s Breath/Staircase – John Wick: Chapter 4
• Ending – Past Lives
• Intro/Mumbattan/Escaping HQ – Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
• Intro & Cruel Summer/Reputation Era – Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour
• Joan, Still – Theater Camp

​Greetings, all! Before we at The Friendly Film Fan get to publishing our final “Best Of” lists for the previous year, we’d like to take a moment to recognize some other quality cinema that released in 2023. For obvious reasons, there were several films we enjoyed that couldn’t quite make the forthcoming Pre-Honorable Mentions list, whether it was due to a deficiency in quality or simple lack of space. To that end, the Recommended Movies list is full of films that – even if we didn’t love them completely – we would recommend people check out. Some entries on this list may have appeared on previous lists such as the Underrated or Surprises lists, whereas others are included due to some reconsideration of more negatively skewed ratings we initially gave them; after all, art is all about constant re-evaluation. (And of course, there’s the classic “I liked it, but not enough” reason.) With all that said, every movie on this list has something to offer the viewer, so if you find yourself browsing with nothing to watch, give one of these a try! Here are our Recommended Movies of 2023.

Did you see any of these films? What did you think of them? What movies would you recommend from this year (even if they didn’t make your “Best Of” list)? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan

​Each year, there are any number of movies that fly under the radar for general audiences, whether due to smaller release plans by the studios themselves, release dates that clash with larger movies in the culture at the time, or simply a lack of staying power during their theatrical runs. More often than not, these films will have a decent number of critics and audiences leaving positive reviews, but rarely are they re-considered, re-watched, or re-evaluated in the minds of movie lovers. With all that in mind, we at The Friendly Film Fan believe firmly in giving movies their due which we feel may have been overlooked, underseen, or as the case may be, underappreciated. These are our picks for the Top 10 Most Underrated Movies of 2023.

​10. Sharper
 
While Sharper remains a flawed film by no stretch of the imagination, it seems as though audiences haven’t quite grown to appreciate properly what it actually manages to pull off. A solid mid-budget script about a con artist targeting the billionaires of Manhattan with a lot of moving parts and an ensemble this big is bound to take a few missteps, but on the whole, the film remains a fun ride, complete with one of Justice Smith’s better turns in front of the camera and supporting performances filled with some of our great character actors. It’s imperfect, yes, but this one deserves another look.

​9. Missing
 
A surprise pseudo-sequel to 2018’s highly underappreciated Searching, this film stars Storm Reid as a young girl whose mother goes missing (cue Leo meme) while on a trip to Colombia. Much like its predecessor, the film is entirely told through digital screen technology – laptops, ring cameras, text chains, calendar notifications, etc. It’s rare enough to make a screen-based movie that works as well as Searching does, but to do it twice is a real feat. What ultimately sets Missing apart – without spoiling anything – is that it’s less straightforward than this series’ previous entry while still boasting the same spirit and tonal consistency of the story. There are actually a few twists in the film that one doesn’t expect, and it elevates the film beyond the idea of “let’s just do that again.” While it doesn’t quite have the same impact as Searching due to the lack of novelty in its filmmaking and one or two scenes that don’t land as well, Missing is a genuinely good missing persons thriller, and is well worth your time.

​8. Polite Society
 
The most recent of the films on this list that I’ve seen (thanks in part to Barack Obama’s year-end movies list – keep ‘em coming, Mr. President), Polite Society is one of the more bizarre offerings featured among this pack. A film about a Pakistani girl who dreams of being a stuntwoman having to put her skills to use when it seems that a matchmaking family has nefarious plans in store for her older sister does sound like a fun time, but it’s the stylistic flourishes and fantastic costume design that set this one apart. Although its third act reaches for a level of absurdity at some points that makes it more comical than compelling, the terrifically fun performances – especially that of our lead Priya Kansara – as well as the first half’s quite solid stunt work and unexpected plot development, keep Polite Society singing well past the point where lesser films would have settled for simply entertaining audiences in a more conventional manner.

7. Flora and Son
​
John Carney remains one of film’s most unsung heroes, an artist whose movies are filled with complicated families and hearts too big for the viewer not to feel something by their end. While it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Sing Street, this new entry in his filmography about a woman whose family life is complex to say the least has just as much heart as anything released in 2023, as well as one of the year’s most underrated turns by Eve Hewson (plus a return to films by the Joseph Gordon-Levitt). And of course, as with every John Carney project, it brings with it some very catchy new music.

​6. You Hurt My Feelings
 
A smaller release this year from A24, You Hurt My Feelings finds Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ betrayed and heartbroken after she overhears her husband (played by the always solid Tobias Menzies) telling his friend that he doesn’t like her latest book, despite having told her earlier that he did. As much a film about how we cling to others opinions of ourselves as it is about the lies we tell others in order to “keep the peace,” so to speak, the movie charts how this idea affects relationships, self-confidence, self-doubt, and whether or not protecting feelings is worse than telling a truth that hurts them. There’s no grand revelation here, and no easy answers, but in navigating the issue with delicacy and grace, writer-director Nicole Holofcener forges one of 2023’s most endearing journeys in film. 

​5. The Covenant
 
The second of two Guy Ritchie films released in 2023, The Covenant finds the director operating slightly outside his usual wheelhouse; lucky for us, his care in bringing this story to life means that it can live on for the rest of the world to see. When an American soldier is trapped in Afghanistan, his interpreter (played in a show-stealing performance by Dar Salim) risks his own life to carry him to safety across miles of dangerous terrain occupied by the Taliban. Putting aside the fact that Jake Gyllenhaal just works in a soldier’s part and always will, what ultimately makes the movie worthwhile is just how straightforward it is. There’s a grander point here, yes, about the frustration Gyllenhaal’s character feels regarding even being in Afghanistan and needing to rescue Ahmed so that he can do one good thing to make it all feel worth it, but it’s icing on the cake, not the cake itself. The meat of the story is in the telling of it, and it’s frankly pretty great that we’re still getting mid-budget movies like this one every once in a while.

​4. Chevalier
 
Terrific costume design and a star lead performance by Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Joseph Bologne Chevalier de Saint Georges keep this one afloat just enough to make this list, as well as a show-stopping opening sequence wherein Harrison Jr. plays the violin in an instrumental dual and a final 5 minutes as thrilling as any other film released this year. One of the truly remarkable untold true stories about a Black man rising through the ranks of France’s most esteemed persons, Joseph Bologne was a master of the bow, the baton, and the sword, eventually helping to fund the revolution in France which would claim the life of his one-time friend Marie Antoinette. It’s been a sufficiently long time since I’ve seen this one, so pardon my lack of memory regarding its more detailed elements, but if period piece deserves more attention than it’s been given, it’s this one.

​3. Knock at the Cabin
 
M. Night Shyamalan movies are truly a test of just how much audiences are willing to buy into, but even with his penchant for twists and turns, Knock at the Cabin ends up being one of his most straightforward films to date. Following the disaster that was Old, Shyamalan returns to a more grounded style of filmmaking, following a group of four people who must convince a family staying in a remote cabin to choose someone from within their ranks to die in order to prevent the apocalypse. The tension present in this film is some of the best in any Shyamalan project, but what sets it apart is its lead performance, an exercise in anguish and empathy from Dave Bautista that may rank as the former wrestler turned actor’s greatest on-camera work to date. We all know and love him as Drax from the Guardians of the Galaxy films, but outside of the Marvel machine, Bautista has quietly become one of the best character actors working in the business, and this film has all the evidence to back up that argument.

​2. Thanksgiving
 
I don’t think people appreciate enough just how good Eli Roth’s adaptation of a fake trailer from Grindhouse turned out to be. A sort of Scream-like birth of a new horror franchise has emerged, and with how fun the performances and kills are in this one, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get more holiday-themed horror from Roth as the years go on. After a Black Friday disaster claims the life of one of Plymouth’s citizens, a masked serial killer begins terrorizing those who seem responsible one year later, and with so many people involved in the tragedy, the killer could be any one of them. Thanksgiving is no masterpiece, sure, and the over-the-top performances of some of the side characters can get a little laughable, but on the whole, it’s a deliciously pulpy, bloody B-movie good time that will have slasher fans satisfied by the time it hits the credits.

1. Jules 
​
Perhaps the single most underseen movie released in theaters in 2023, Jules played at my local theater for about a week or so and then was gone before anyone even remembered it was there. A small, heartfelt comedy about an alien that crash-lands in Ben Kingsley’s backyard, the film’s heart, and some of its absurdist sequences (one in particular about dead cats) render it a cut above other films operating in the same space. Ben Kingsley’s performance is of course well-suited to this sort of story, but it’s the richness of the side characters involved that makes it one of the year’s most underrated works. If you happen to come across it on streaming, go ahead and give it a watch. At the very least, it’s a worthwhile way to spend an afternoon. 

And those are our picks for the Top 10 Most Underrated Movies of 2023! Are there any movies you feel were underappreciated this year? Shout them out in our comments section, and thanks for reading!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan