 by Jacob Thomas Jones 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:
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 by Jacob Thomas Jones 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:
 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  by Jacob Thomas Jones 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:
 by Jacob Thomas Jones 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  by Jacob Thomas Jones 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 Honorable Mentions:
 by Jacob Thomas Jones Disappointment is a fact of life, and as with every year, there are any number of disappointments on the cinematic calendar – films that fail to live up to expectations, potential, or both. Not every movie released in one calendar year can live up to the expectations placed upon it, whether by audiences or critics. Sometimes trailers can artificially inflate the idea of what a movie is (after all, the job of a marketing campaign is to sell people on the film’s quality), whereas at other times the very concept of a film in the minds of moviegoers can shape it into something more than it can ever hope to be. Think Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness having to follow the enormous expectations fans set on it after Endgame and WandaVision, or Yesterday failing to live up to its quite solid trailer by hiding its protagonist being the worst guy ever. The former of these remains a good film nonetheless, but the point remains that they both fell short of expectations and potential. To that end, it’s time to get into the nitty gritty, and mourn what could have been. These are our picks for the Top 10 Most Disappointing Movies of 2023.  10. The Creator To start off this list, we’re including two entries we still think have a good bit to offer, and we would consider good films at the end of the day. The problem with these titles is that they could have been genuine masterworks with the right scripts, whether it’s a lack of emotional connection to the characters, or some re-workings in the actual plotting of the films. The former of these two curses finds itself attached to our #10 choice: The Creator. Gareth Edwards’ sci-fi epic had a solid set of trailers that sold it as Apocalypse Now meets Blade Runner, but the film itself – despite looking and sounding like one of the best films of the year – fails to overcome a script devoid of emotional investment. As John David Washington’s protagonist character embarks on his journey to protect an A.I. child despite being ordered to destroy it, we’re clued in to more of his history, but that history never seems to end up mattering in the present tense, and despite a solid ending to the film, it’s all left feeling a little dry due to Washington’s performance being somewhat wooden. Still, from a technical standpoint, The Creator is one of the most stunning movies released in 2023, and I’m still very much looking forward to what he can do with the right script.  9. Elemental The second of the two “good” films on this list, Elemental finds Pixar operating on autopilot, neither innovating their script-writing nor animation itself. The film looks very nice on the whole and features on of the best scores in a Pixar film since at least 2015, but the story doesn’t reach the same unexpected emotional highs of the studio’s previous efforts. In focusing on the interracial love story element between dual protagonists Ember and Wade, which the film is ill-equipped to handle the harsher nuances of, it bypasses a more interesting immigrant story for Ember herself. That’s not to say that the film doesn’t work – it certainly still does, to a degree – but it doesn’t live up to its ultimate potential in exploring its most compelling avenues.  8. Next Goal Wins How far has Taika Waititi fallen? Probably not that far overall, but nonetheless, his film about the worst soccer team in the world – American Samoa – lacks the comic punch that his more successful films have offered, though not for lack of trying. While it does get back to the heart from his earlier projects, Next Goal Wins can’t reconcile that with a story that’s probably still too recent to have a compelling narrative arc. There are one or two genuinely heartfelt scenes – the one in the bathroom comes to mind – but others go on for far too long, some jokes are too repetitive, and the characters are rarely offered genuine emotional insight. Overall, the film fails to coalesce into something larger than its individual moments are able to offer.  7. It Lives Inside Culture-based horror is difficult to pull off, so it’s no mark on It Lives Inside that its ambition may have been a little too large, but as it happens, the film still doesn’t really work. Even with the intrigue of Indian-based monster stories and demonic entities being offered here, the horror in the film doesn’t take full advantage of its many opportunities to do things we haven’t seen in a horror movie before. Most of the scares are fairly rudimentary, the characters lack the depth necessary to get the audience to invest in this story, and while the ending teases something interesting, what came before is simply too unmemorable for it to mean something concrete.  6. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 I enjoy My Big Fat Greek Wedding. As one of the foundational rom-coms of the 2000s, it’s got a charming little footprint on the whole of the genre, becoming one of its most iconic entries. The second of the films works less, but still has some fun to offer. Unfortunately, the law of diminishing returns is on full display here as the family heads to Greece in order to mourn Toula’s father and find his best friends from before he moved to the U.S. There are a few new interesting characters, but the film feels unfocused, as if there were a few different ideas for the kind of movie it was supposed to be, none of which ever made it to a final draft. The comedy is appropriate but repetitive, the performances feel largely phoned-in, and we don’t really get any emotional insight into the characters other than what we already know. It’s a real shame this movie franchise fell so far; it could have been one of the greats.  5. Renfield A story about Dracula’s assistant where Dracula is played by the great Nicolas Cage? How could this not live up to every expectation placed upon it? Ultimately, Cage is the thing that works best about the film, but even with its largely farcical story about co-dependency and learning to love oneself, Renfield ultimately leaves very little left to chew on.  4. Champions The idea of Champions is a premise designed to emotionally manipulate moviegoers of all sorts as it follows a temperamental basketball coach preparing to coach a team of players with down-syndrome to a regional championship title, but even emotionally manipulative films can be great if they’re focused on the right characters. Unfortunately for this one, its focus is too heavily on Woody Harrelson’s protagonist and doesn’t let the audience really get to know the team he’s supposed to be coaching in a meaningful way. Every time conflict arises, the film focuses on his feelings about it, rather than taking the time to get closer to the more interesting characters. There are one or two scenes which almost get the film into the right groove, but it always ends up going with the less compelling story.  3. Wish Disney Animation Studios has been a stronghold of animated storytelling for the last several years, often churning out some of the medium’s great works. We got both Moana and Zootopia in 2016, we got Encanto in 2021, and since 2010, we’ve had two Frozen movies, Tangled, and Big Hero 6. But last year, the studio debuted a little film called Strange World, which boasted some interesting concepts but zero meaningful connections with audiences and no box office receipts to back itself up. This year, Wish was purportedly meant to be a celebration of Disney’s 100-year run, harkening back to its classic villains and animation styles, with any number of callbacks to different characters and films along the way. The resulting film is one which has all the pieces of a Disney animation classic, but none of the heart, and very little lyrical ingenuity. Fans were quick to point out that some of the songs failed to move the plot along and often repeated plot points from earlier in the film that the audience already knew about, but another thing I noticed is that so much of its plot hinges on the villain turning on a dime into a character he wasn’t before. And that happens with more than a few characters; they act completely out of where they’re written to be emotionally, and it makes the film’s conflict feel artificial rather than organic. Truth be told, it’s thanks to the talents of voice star Ariana DeBose that the film works at all.  2. The Last Voyage of the Demeter A contained thriller set on a ship crossing from Europe with Dracula on board based on one chapter of the acclaimed novel sounds like one of the year’s most rewarding efforts, but The Last Voyage of the Demeter features so little of the iconic vampire that the journey feels more akin to In the Heart of the Sea, which similarly avoids the central intrigue of its story in order to tell a different one that’s not nearly as interesting. True, the production elements of Demeter do a fair bit to put it in the good graces of audiences who’ve grown weary of film relying too heavily on CGI-based effects, including an impressive makeup job on the creature aboard the ship, but the film spends so much time building up how terrifying this creature must be that the audience is robbed of how terrifying it is. The trailer wasn’t exactly doing it any favors in the first place, but Last Voyage remains one of the most thorough wastes of potential the past year has had to offer.  1. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny I was rooting for this one from the get-go. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a really good writer! James Mangold is an excellent director, the one who brought Wolverine into the greatest X-Men film to date; this guy knows how to do I.P.! Yet even with all of that potential, this film barely puts its mark above Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and some would argue fails to live up to even that very much not good film. This thing is is rife with script issues, plotting blunders, and little to write home about in terms of character development. Some decent visual effects in the film’s prequel sequence de-age Harrison Ford well enough to look like his younger self, but the movements of the body don’t match up, leaving the action sequences feeling slower than they’re meant to, and the framing of those sequences clunky and overwrought. Even the film’s final sequence, the most ambitious by far in the Indiana Jones canon, can’t measure up to the heights of Raiders or Last Crusade. If disappointment could be condensed into a single film this year, it would be this wildly overwritten, messy, and sub-par conclusion to the Indiana Jones legacy. And those are our picks for the Top 10 Most Disappointing Movies of 2023! What movies let you down this year? Any we left off the list? Let us know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading! - The Friendly Film Fan Dishonorable Mentions:
 The Friendly Film Fan Makes its Final Predictions for the 95th Academy Award Nominations. Greetings, readers! It’s been a while. There will be time for explanations later, Where did he go? Where has he been? How is he so unbelievably handsome and only getting more so every day but also staying so humble about it? All things in due time, but right now, there is lots to get into and not a lot of time to get into it, so here we go! Oscar nominations are tomorrow morning! Every year, I post nomination predictions; this year I did slip a little bit in that department, BUT I am back one last time to give you all my rundown, now that all the major pre-cursors have revealed their own nominations, of what I think stands to compete at this year’s awards ceremony. Each nomination field will include my selections for what’s most likely to be nominated in said category, as well as the presence of 3 “wildcard” picks, which are outside possibilities that could sneak in under the right circumstances. Sometimes these wildcard selections are very likely spoilers, some are somewhat possible, and some are genuine long shots with only the slimmest of probabilities, but one thing is always clear on nomination day – the possibilities are endless. So, without further ado, let’s dive right in. These are my final predictions for the 2023 Oscar Nominations! BEST PICTURE Predicted Nominees:
BEST DIRECTOR Predicted Nominees:
BEST ACTRESS Predicted Nominees
BEST ACTOR Predicted Nominees
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Predicted Nominees:
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Predicted Nominees:
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE Predicted Nominees:
BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM Predicted Nominees:
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Predicted Nominees:
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Predicted Nominees:
BEST FILM EDITING Predicted Nominees:
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN Predicted Nominees:
BEST COSTUME DESIGN Predicted Nominees:
BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING Predicted Nominees:
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE Predicted Nominees:
BEST ORIGINAL SONG Predicted Nominees:
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Predicted Nominees:
BEST ORIGNAL SCREENPLAY Predicted Nominees:
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS Predicted Nominees:
BEST SOUND Predicted Nominees:
BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT Predicted Nominees:
BEST ANIMATED SHORT Predicted Nominees:
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT Predicted Nominees:
And that’s it! What do you all think will wake up to nominations tomorrow morning? Are there any true wildcards you’re expecting? Let me know in the comments below, and thanks for reading! More soon!
- The Friendly Film Fan  The Friendly Film Fan Makes Its First Pass at Predicting Next Year's Academy Award Contenders. It is finally time. For those of you who have stuck around with me for a while, you know that there is one season I look forward to more than any other: Oscar season. Every year, the best of the best come out to show off what they can really do, and it’s always been fascinating to me to witness old legends mounting triumphant returns as new faces are celebrated and auteurs of all sorts crafting meaningful and provocative stories. Typically this season begins about halfway through the major festival circuit which occupies some of September and most of October. However, before that season begins in full force, it’s always fun to speculate what will make it through the sheer volume of content coming to theaters to contend for Hollywood’s highest honor. Of course, there are always great movies that get overlooked or passed over, whether due to lack of notoriety or simply how long it’s been since the initial release. But there are also films whose trajectories come out of nowhere, rocketing to triumphs no one expected and shaking up the hierarchy of what voters can expect. CODA won all of its Oscar nominations last year (including Best Picture), whereas mere weeks before awards were handed out, it landed firmly in third or fourth place on most predictions lists. Parasite was expected to lose to Sam Mendes’ 1917 for the big prize and ended up being the first non-English-language film to ever pull off that kind of win. There’s always something to keep film enthusiasts and voters on their toes, but for now, we’ll work with the playing field we have. For those of you who are unfamiliar with how I make these predictions lists, they typically come in fours. The first three are all varying degrees of Nomination Predictions – one very early, one further into Oscar season when most of the films have been released and thus given either a boost or a humbling, and one just before the Oscar nominations are announced. Each of these feature guesses for every respective category in the Oscars program based on the number of nominees in said category, plus three “wildcard” picks that could steal a spot from one of the predicted nominees. For the first two of these lists, however, the Short Film predictions are not included, both due to lack of accessibility and the sheer volume of eligible or submitted Shorts remaining unknown until the Academy reveals their shortlists closer to Oscar night. (For those of you who do want an idea though, count on at least one of the Disney+ or Pixar shorts to make it in Animated Short.) The fourth predictions list is a set of Winner Predictions based on the field of nominees, typically posted the day before the Oscars telecast. We have a lot to get through, and a lot that could change very soon, so let’s get started. Here are my ridiculously early Oscar nomination predictions for the year 2023!  BEST SOUND Predicted Nominees:
Over the past few years, Best Sound has become one of my favorite categories to reckon with in predictions lists, and one of my favorite aspects of film in general (so it figures that the Academy combines Sound Mixing and Sound Editing just as I had the difference between them figured out). The hum of Dune’s Ornithopters, the roar of Top Gun: Maverick’s F-18 engines, the subtle in-helmet vibrations of Gravity, the near-deaf acceptance of Sound of Metal – all of these things are some of my favorite elements of their respective stories, so predicting what will likely succeed in this realm and what will just miss the cut is very fun. There are, as always, the mainstays of the music biopic, a famous (and occasionally infamous) occupant of these nominations lists, so Elvis, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, and TÁR seem like smart choices here, as do the other genre mainstays in movies about moviemaking, such as Babylon and, to a less explicit extent, Nope. That leaves only the tentpoles for consideration, barring Empire of Light or White Noise having ridiculously good sound. And the tentpoles this time around are undeniable; Avatar is almost sure to get in, and while it’s not on the list at the moment, Black Panther’s previous chapter was nominated in both of the aforementioned sound categories before they were merged, so Wakanda Forever has a decent chance at repeat success. Frankly, Top Gun: Maverick is in the lead to win it all and shows no signs of slowing down, but let’s also not forget how thrilling it was to hear the Batmobile power on for the first time in The Batman, or how the dark knight’s boots were made to sound like an ominous demon was approaching. Both of these films more than deserve to be here at the end of the day, and honestly, I wouldn’t be mad at either of them taking the gold.  BEST VISUAL EFFECTS Predicted Nominees:
This category can seem fairly easy to predict at first, but in reality, it’s difficult to tell beyond about three or four selections what fits the bill for a Visual Effects nomination in the eyes of the Academy. With Shazam!: Fury of the Gods now being pushed to 2023, we come closer and closer to having Thor: Love and Thunder appear in a VFX predictions list it has no business being near. That said, there’s still plenty left in its way that could break into the list instead. Avatar: The Way of Water, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Jurassic World: Dominion seem like forgone conclusions given how those films rely almost entirely on VFX to deliver spectacle, and the notion that no film but Forrest Gump has beat James Cameron at the VFX game since 1986, so it’s likely his movie wins this category again, especially as the advancements in VFX and Motion Capture tech made specifically for Avatar are one the film’s primary selling points. That leaves a number of things on the table, including Everything Everywhere All at Once, a film whose VFX seems relatively small or subsidiary to the story around them, but which are immensely impressive once one learns that the whole VFX team consisted of just five people. Other notable candidates include The Batman, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Bullet Train, Nope, and Netflix’s animated Pinocchio. Top Gun: Maverick is also an interesting case here, as Tom Cruise’s films are famous for their reliance on as much practicality and in-camera action as possible, but there are still plenty of digital effects in the film if you know where to look for them. With that in mind, I doubt Academy voters will bolster it to 1917 levels, as even the practicality in that film was thoroughly mixed with those VFX.  BEST ORIGNAL SCREENPLAY Predicted Nominees:
Original Screenplay works largely in the opposite fashion from Adapted, where the number of options is ultimately what cripples certainty, but even then, there are pathways to follow and patterns to note. A class satire like Triangle of Sadness has its best shot at a nomination here, while this category is also often reserved for the wild indies and audience favorites that otherwise may not have made it to picture. Everything Everywhere All at Once will likely still land in Picture as it’s simply too good of a film to deny, but it’s still pretty out-there as movie premises go, so it would fit that second qualifier nonetheless. International films, too, have increasingly become mainstays in the screenplay categories over the past few years, with Parasite winning Original Screenplay in 2019 and Drive My Car being nominated for Adapted in 2021. In that spirit, Bardo and Decision to Leave both feel as if they have decent shots of breaking through. There are your mainstays, such as the Spielberg one (The Fablemans), the one about movies (Babylon), and the other one about movies (Empire of Light), but personally I’m more partial to rooting for those fringe picks to break in, even if TÁR is likely to suffer the same fate as Spencer by attaining a Lead Actress performance and little-to-nothing else.  BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY Predicted Nominees:
Most of the time, the Oscar categories can be difficult to predict due to a wealth of options at one’s disposal with no clear path for which ones will end up staying the course all the way to the nominations announcement, but Adapted Screenplay is a different beast in that its difficulty is in finding more candidates beyond the obvious. A Harvey Weinstein scandal drama a la Spotlight, a Noah Baumbach adaptation of a beloved novel, a female-led ensemble piece built on conversation, and a follow-up to the 2021 Best Adapted Screenplay winner The Father from the same writer of that film all feel like choices destined to eventually hear their titles called, but once outside of those, it becomes difficult to find adaptations that could conceivably compete. This makes Darren Aronofsky’s adaptation of The Whale a candidate almost by default, as it’s the only Academy-like choice left that seems unquestionably of quality, at least on paper. Till may land here, but isn’t exactly a hot contender elsewhere, and Glass Onion may fall prey to a Knives Out curse, missing a nomination in its best-bet category. That leaves Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin left to shake up the race and not much else. McDonagh has been a welcome guest of the Oscars before, and has even been nominated in the Best Original Screenplay category twice, but hasn’t appeared in this one and hasn’t won an Oscar since his win for Best Live-Action Short with Six Shooter in 2006. That doesn’t spell great expectations or hot competition for a category with all but one near-guaranteed candidates; nevertheless, when the nominations do come, the winner may well be hotly contested.  BEST ORIGINAL SONG Predicted Nominees:
This is the hardest category to predict nominations for because if you’re not in the music business or not watching literally everything that’s released in a given year and keeping track of whether or not there’s a song it has to show for itself, it’s the category to which pundits and predictors have the least exposure by far. There’s simply no way to tell which songs from which films will even be submitted, or even if some obscure film people haven’t seen has enough support to bolster a song nomination when it has nothing else to push for awards consideration. That said, there’s a decent amount to work off of so far. Almost every year, there’s an obligatory Diane Warren-written song attached to a film one isn’t considering that gets nominated and then loses her yet another Oscar (this would be the 15th loss for the icon), so one of the spots will go to that, and the team from The Greatest Showman has written the music for the upcoming children’s film Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, which stars Shawn Mendes as a singing CGI crocodile (yes, that’s actually what I meant to write there), so that could very likely land at least one song on the board, although neither of their songs from Dear Evan Hansen made it, so it’s less likely than you might think. News was released on August 24 that Harry Styles had written a song for Florence Pugh to sing in their movie, the Olivia Wilde-directed Don’t Worry Darling, so that will almost certainly appear here if for no other reason than Styles being a mega-star and the fact that he wrote it for Pugh, who is inarguably the biggest young movie star of the moment. For the others, there are the obvious picks, such as Lady Gaga’s “Hold My Hand,” and probably “Nobody Like You,” the boy band song from Pixar’s Turning Red. “Turn Up the Sunshine” from Minions: The Rise of Gru doesn’t seem like it’s heating up the box office or anything, but it could land a spot here if Illumination plays their cards right, and the same franchise has landed a nomination in this category before. Then, there are some more fringy, outlandish picks that nonetheless could break through in the way that “Husavik” from Eurovision Song Contest did two years ago. “Dosti,” which doesn’t appear on this list but does seem very prominent on many others, seems to be the most famous one from the Indian smash hit RRR, but it’s unclear whether it can clear the International Feature barrier in its way, and although “Good Tonight” from The Bad Guys doesn’t have the greatest lyrical ingenuity, it is – as the saying goes – a bop. It remains to be seen whether the rap-fused hybrid of “Hound Dog” in the song “Vegas” by Doja Cat from Elvis is too fringe for the Academy’s taste, but as it’s one of the only prominent songs still being played from a movie this year apart from “Hold My Hand,” I wouldn’t count it out just yet.  BEST ORIGINAL SCORE Predicted Nominees:
This is the only category where I have four wildcards instead of three. Hopefully the following will explain why. Though both Hildur Guðnadóttir and the Avatar franchise have both been nominated in this category before (with Guðnadóttir having won for her work on Joker), the former’s work is on a film which will already contain a lot of other music with which it would have to significantly compete (and not likely win), while the latter’s first score was composed by the late James Horner; The Way of Water’s music, however, was composed by Simon Franglen, whose music I’m not familiar with enough to confidently assert that this category will be one of Avatar’s bevvy of nominations, though he did co-compose themes with Horner for Walt Disney World’s Pandora theme area. As it stands, the presumed competition is already stiff, with all five predicted nominees being previous winners, one of whom is John Williams, and two of whom – Justin Hurwitz and Ludwig Göransson – won their respective awards within the past decade, Göransson for the same franchise. This also may be the best chance for Michael Abels to finally be nominated for his work on a Jordan Peele project, having been passed up for Us, which is authentically a horror score, whereas Nope retains some further elements of old spaghetti western music to mix in with its more sinister moments. Göransson’s task this time around, though, is a bit more challenging this time around, as Academy rules stipulate that at least 35% of the music in a given film must be brand-new (original) score, and Marvel Studios does like to re-use a lot of themes for big moments, so it’s likely that the original Black Panther themes from the 2018 film play in Wakanda Forever’s most climactic segments, ditto Avatar. Where this rule may come in handy, actually, is in assessing the chances of Top Gun: Maverick to break out of the wildcard category, as the new music composed for it by original Top Gun composer Harold Faltermeyer, as well as Hans Zimmer and Lady Gaga under production from Lorne Balfe, measures a little over 50% of the total music used, thus qualifying it for competition in this category. Gaga’s main contribution is essentially form the love theme of the movie in conjunction with her song “Hold My Hand” as the film’s closing anthem (the song also plays in the background during Maverick’s second visit to Penny’s bar, The Hard Deck, when he first encounters Amelia), whereas Zimmer and Balfe focused on the action scoring, and Faltermeyer ensured his themes were woven in appropriately. Scores that tie in with closing songs often have a good chance at selling their chances for nominations here, especially if the theme is as essential and befitting to its film as this one is to Top Gun: Maverick, so it’s within the realm of possibility that the score could be just flying under the radar until the time comes to begin the attack (campaigning). On the other hand, new scores based on pre-existing material don’t often land in this category, and Maverick’s themes may feel too tied into its predecessor’s legacy for the music branch of the Academy to consider honoring it over something brand new.  BEST MAKEUP & HAIRSTYLING Predicted Nominees:
Another category where genre fare can actually score some pretty decent nominations in is Makeup & Hairstyling, though inevitably, there will come along a film with relatively plain, unassuming makeup that gets nominated over something more deserving, so watch out for The Fablemans or Don’t Worry Darling to knock out something The Batman or The Woman King further down the line. In fact, the latter may have a better shot at staying in, as the former could end up competing with the other design-heavy superhero movie this year in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. The original Black Panther was not nominated in this category, but with the introduction of Atlantis and Namor the Submariner, entirely new makeup designs and hairstyles for the underwater nation are sure to be one of Wakanda Forever’s many highlights.  BEST COSTUME DESIGN Predicted Nominees:
The second of the two design categories Black Panther won in 2018, the Ryan Coogler follow-up to that film may well be competing with another that also centralizes its story on a tribe of African warriors in The Woman King. Then again, if the Academy simply isn’t feeling that they need to reward Marvel Studios with a second costume design Oscar and feels that the latter film’s looks aren’t distinctive enough, it could easily reward the fanny-pack-wearing looks of EEAaO or the period pieces of Babylon or Don’t Worry Darling. Truthfully, there’s not much in the way of outlandish costume design this year apart from Baz Luhrmann’s maximalist Elvis biopic, but it remains to be seen whether simply recreating the icon’s looks will be enough to push it past entirely new conceptualizations.  BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN Predicted Nominees:
The last time a Black Panther movie was at the Oscars, it won three of them, and two of those three wins were in design categories. Production Design was one of those two, so even competing with all the design work in Avatar, Empire of Light, and Babylon, it should fit pretty snuggly into this category’s lineup. The shakiest prediction I have here is Everything Everywhere All at Once, but given the sheer level of creativity in the most minute details and frame background of every shot of that magnificent movie, I find it difficult to count it out. Other candidates with elaborate set designs could include the mysterious Don’t Worry Darling which is plastered in old-timey shiny 50s aesthetics and Amsterdam. The Woman King or Rian Johnson’s upcoming Glass Onion could also appear here, but the former is much more likely to succeed in Costume Design and we don’t really have any significant footage of the latter yet.  BEST FILM EDITING Predicted Nominees:
A nomination in Best Film Editing is often an indication that whatever appears there makes it to the Best Picture lineup, but not always an indicator of winnings at the end of Oscar night. For the past three years, Film Editing and Sound have gone hand in hand, with Ford v Ferrari winning Best Sound Editing in 2019 (at the time, the category was split by Editing and Mixing – 1917 won Mixing but was not nominated in Editing), while Sound of Metal and Dune took home both categories in 2020 and 2021. One of the old adages about the Academy’s voting process for this category is that – rather than voting for the Best Editing – they vote for the Most Editing, which bodes well for the two most popular predictions in this category, the hyper cross-cut multiversal edits of Everything Everywhere All at Once and the frenetically fast-paced aerial sequences in Top Gun: Maverick. Top Gun has the edge in sound here, but as we’ll get to later, may not be as safe in this category as one might think, given that EEAaO is more likely to land a Best Picture nomination. Then again, the wildcard picks – with the exception of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – are widely expected to land Best Picture nominations as well, so any of these could be knocked out.  BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY Predicted Nominees:
There are two simple truths when it comes to the cinematography category that every awards pundit worth their salt abides by as scripture: never bet against James Cameron or his team, and never exclude Roger Deakins when he’s in the race. While Avatar: The Way of Water and Empire of Light are the most obvious picks here, however, there’s also room for Janusz Kaminski to receive another nomination after unexpectedly breaking into a tough category last year for his work on Spielberg’s West Side Story. Given that The Fablemans has been dubbed “Spielberg’s Roma” by most people familiar with the project, it seems not simply possible but inevitable that Kaminski is capturing something special here, even if Linus Sandgren swoops in anyway for his first win since La La Land in 2016, which he also shot for director Damien Chazelle. Genre fare isn’t the most popular in this category, but it’s not unheard of, especially as two other Batman films – Batman Begins and The Dark Knight – did land nominations here, and as Greig Fraser is the reigning winner for his work on Dune, it seems likely that this is one spot where The Batman has a real shot at breaking through. Other possible candidates include Hoyte van Hoytema for Jordan Peele’s sci-fi thriller Nope, which seems the most likely to leave its spot for a nomination given that Hoytema has been nominated in this category once before for Dunkirk, but could also fall to Darius Khondji for Bardo. AGI is fairly picky about his cinematographers, and led his longtime shooting partner Emmanuel Lubezki to two back-to-back wins in this category, so it's not out of the question he could do it with someone new.  BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE Predicted Nominees:
Admittedly, Best Documentary Feature is a tough nut to crack if you don’t live in an area where people are talking about these sort of things all the time. I’ve only seen one of my predictions myself and only one of them besides that is even widely available for people to watch (Navalny is on HBO Max…for now). This makes predicting the category quite tricky, as one has to rely on the reputations of studios and their marketing campaigns for each movie when predicting it this early in the game. Other predictions are due to some films having fall festival debuts (such as Descendent) – which typically means the film is gearing up for an awards run once released – or on the notoriety of their subjects; Moonage Daydream, a documentary about David Bowie from Neon, is sure to make an impression on Academy voters, so it could have a real shot at a win here. Then again, this is the same branch that failed to nominate The Rescue, so what do I know?  BEST INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM Predicted Nominees:
Most submissions for Best International Feature have not yet been made in this category, apart from Decision to Leave and The Quiet Girl being official picks, so this one runs largely off of speculation, but it’s widely expected that Bardo, RRR, and Triangle of Sadness will appear here (the last being submitted by Sweden, as it was coproduced by both Sweden and France, but the latter has more options at their disposal for submission). Essentially everything else comes down to word of mouth and great campaigning, with no less than four possible choices for France (including Claire Denis’ Both Sides of the Blade) and a slew of other films which could also get in if submitted, such as Argentina, 1985 and Alcarras. That said, since Bardo comes from Alejandro González Iñárritu, and is on track to be an eventual Best Picture nominee, it’s most likely not to just get nominated for this category, but outright win it when all is said and done.  BEST ANIMATED FEATURE Predicted Nominees:
Yet another film I don’t understand how more pundits aren’t paying attention to is The Bad Guys, DreamWorks’ genuinely good animated film that released in April. It certainly isn’t likely to win the category, but its absence among predictions is curious, especially considering Animated Feature is the one category (apart from Best Picture) that the entire Academy is allowed to vote on for nominations, rather than it being decided solely by its own branch. The Bad Guys remains a fairly popular film post-theaters, and I don’t see that popularity waning enough for it not to be here. Currently, the leader of this race is actually Guillermo Del Toro’s adaptation of Pinocchio (the second of two Pinocchio films releasing this year), but as it’s released by Netflix, it remains to be seen whether the Academy will go for rewarding it over something more tradition, such as Disney Animation’s upcoming sci-fi flick Strange World. Lightyear may be Pixar’s better-looking candidate in this category, but given its lukewarm reception, box office failure, and the re-evaluation of Turning Red’s success amongst critical bodies, it’s likely the latter is the one that actually makes this category. The true curiosity is A24’s Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, which has been deemed eligible for Best Animated Feature, but remains uncertain as it would rely on Academy members deciding that there was enough animation within its live-action setting to feel appropriately placed here.  BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Predicted Nominees:
There are only two categories where Triangle of Sadness seems to have the best shot at landing a nomination – this is one of them. That said, this seems like a race between Paul Dano and Ke Huy Quan more than anything. The former is starring in Steven Spielberg’s The Fablemans, which currently leads the Best Picture race, while the latter is tour-de-force of movement and emotion as Quan is put through the acting wringer multiple times in his stellar comeback performance. Dano could also be submitted for The Batman, but genre films don’t tend to ace this category – The Dark Knight notwithstanding – and it seems like the Academy would be more likely to go after Colin Farrell in that film instead (though he, too, has The Banshees of Inisherin to rely on for awards attention). The variable here is really Christian Bale, who stars in David O. Russell’s Amsterdam, and is supposedly the only real above-the-line push for that film. Russell’s films do have a tendency to be nominated for a lot of performance awards at the Oscars, so even if it land nothing else, Bale could easily get in here.  BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Predicted Nominees:
This category pretty much reflects the GoldDerby top five odds beat-for-beat, but of the wildcard candidates present, Laura Dern may actually be the most likely to break though on either name recognition or the Academy doing what the Emmys did and ignoring Sadie Sink for a nomination she most likely will deserve (especially since she’s acting opposite surefire Best Actor candidate Brendan Fraser). Two nominations for The Son here seems unlikely, and the same goes for Everything Everywhere All at Once, whose other contender is Jamie Lee Curtis in one of her most outrageous parts. Logically, Samantha Morton would be next in line for the Weinstein scandal drama She Said, as she appears to play a crucial role in getting the story out, and doesn’t have other competition in this category from her own film (barring an unbelievable Zoe Kazan performance). Then again, as with all categories, there may be a performance no one’s considering that could come in and shake things up significantly by the time we get to January.  BEST ACTOR Predicted Nominees
This category seems the most locked-up at the moment, but don’t underestimate the presence of Bill Nighy here. Sony Pictures Classics, a studio which has always been sneakily good at getting their films into major Oscar races, in the distributer behind Living, a film whose trailer heavily features Nighy showing off his performing chops. GoldDerby currently has Nighy as the fifth most likely nominee, but I’m not quite ready to give up Adam Driver in this category yet, especially considering he was also nominated in this category for Noah Baumbach’s previous Oscar contender, Marriage Story, and has returned to work with Baumbach again for the New York Film Festival opener, White Noise.  BEST ACTRESS Predicted Nominees
Perhaps the category whose fifth candidate is most difficult to predict, Best Actress – per usual – is absolutely stacked with top-tier talent. The only predicted nominee about whom I’m not almost 100% certain is Naomie Ackie, who portrays music icon Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance With Somebody, which releases in December. Portrayals of musical icons almost always land in this category somewhere, especially if said portrayal is the film’s main selling point, but it could very easily come about that one of the wildcard candidates takes that spot. Andrew Dominik’s Blonde stars Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe, so Armas could be that film’s only true contender, as she’s the most likely to break through the stigma of its NC-17 rating (provided costumes and hair & makeup don’t come through). Viola Davis, too, could break through here as the leader of an all-female African warrior tribe in The Woman King, though whether the performance can crack the top five we’ll know in just under a month. That leaves Danielle Deadwyler as Emmett Till’s mother in Till, a film which has stirred up some online debates around centering Black trauma in storytelling, and whose only shot at a nomination is likely to be Deadwyler herself. Very little of the performance has been seen, so for that, we’ll simply have to wait and see.  BEST DIRECTOR Predicted Nominees:
How most pundits still don’t have James Cameron in their running for Best Director, I will likely never understand, but it’s not as if this category is all-but-guaranteed. Sarah Polley could very easily squeeze in here for her female ensemble piece Women Talking and there’s no sure bet that Daniels or Iñárritu stay put. If New York Film Festival opening night pick White Noise hits especially hard, Noah Baumbach could see a slot picked up, and Sam Mendes is hot off a nomination in this category for his last film, 1917 (which was originally pegged to win this award and Best Picture), which had the unfortunate task of coming out in the Parasite year. Other unlisted candidates include Park Chan-wook, whose film Decision to Leave is South Korea’s official submission for International Feature, a category which has been known to cross over in Best Director any number of times. That said, it would be difficult for almost any of these predictions to be knocked out completely, so a Directing nod for Decision to Leave – while not out of the question – remains unlikely at this stage.  BEST PICTURE Predicted Nominees:
There are several contenders I did not list in this category, but not for lack of enthusiasm. Palme d’Or winner Triangle of Sadness is absent here, as is Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin and David O. Russell’s ensemble piece Amsterdam. The reason for these exclusions largely come down to the sheer number of Best Picture slots being capped at 10, per the Academy’s expansion of the category in 2010. Palme d’Or winners, as well, don’t have a stellar track record for being nominated in this category unless they’re considered outright masterpieces, such as Parasite (the latest Palme d’Or winner to Best Picture nominee translation before that was Amour in 2013). Neither Blue is the Warmest Color nor Titane were even nominated in the International Feature category in their respective years, and in fact it was Drive My Car – which lost the Cannes prize to Titane – which was nominated for Best Picture last year instead. Triangle of Sadness is not a foreign language film, so it doesn’t have that working against it as the aforementioned do, but it still seems unlikely to crack these 10 predictions, especially considering the wildcards at play. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s franchise predecessor was the first superhero film ever to be nominated in this category, and if it nails its farewell to Chadwick Boseman, groundswell support could carry it the rest of the way. Another film facing a similar fate is Top Gun: Maverick, which is Paramount’s highest-grossing domestic film ever and the sixth highest-grossing domestic release of all time, having recently passed the likes of Avengers: Infinity War. The Tom Cruise-starring blockbuster could land a nod here by knocking out Bardo or Avatar: The Way of Water, as those seem to be the shakiest candidates. Until such a time comes, however, where either Alejandro González Iñárritu or James Cameron are no longer Oscar darlings or unbelievably good filmmakers, their movies will remain on this list. And those are my ridiculously early Oscar nomination predictions for 2023! Obviously, all of these guesses are pure speculation and pattern recognition at this point, and the final predictions list is bound to look quite different post-festival season, but for now, what’s there is all I can speculate about. What are you predicting in these categories? Is there anything I’m sorely missing? Am I putting too much faith in Avatar and not enough in Top Gun? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading!
- The Friendly Film Fan |
