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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Jacob Thomas Jones​

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Honorable Mentions:

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​Dishonorable Mentions:

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

*Removed from Top 10 List for Sheer Hilarity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

​Honorable Mentions:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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:

• Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
• Haunted Mansion
• Infinity Pool

​Well, the time has finally arrived. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to The Friendly Film Fan for the penultimate piece of the 2021 movie season. It certainly has been a journey getting to this point, but I am so excited to finally bring you my picks for the absolute best films of the past year – or at least the ones that became my favorites. If you happened to read my Honorable Mentions piece, then you already know how tough a decision-making process putting this list together ultimately was, with several films I loved having to get cut from the top spots right at the last minute. I would certainly encourage you to check out all of those films as well, so I’ll leave a link to that piece here, as well as a link to my Recommended Movies of the past year that couldn’t quite make the cut for “Best Of” consideration. But now, it’s zero hour, so let’s get right down to it. Here are my picks for the Top 10 Movies of 2021.

​10. Red Rocket
​
It’s difficult to describe just how thoroughly Sean Baker has become the most interesting indie darling in A24’s back pocket to watch, but what can I say? The guy just knows how to make movies. Chronicling the journey of a disgraced former pornstar as he arrives back in his Texas hometown, this tale of greed, ineptitude, and unbridled selfishness is one of the most incisive commentaries on the dangers of charismatic toxic people one can witness if it’s given a chance. Simon Rex turns in a truly Oscar-worthy lead performance here, with newcomer Suzanna Son nearly stealing the show as the redheaded Strawberry (the film makes a point about that being her name). What makes this odyssey so compelling is not that Rex’s Mikey is a real piece of shit, but that it’s still so fun to watch him work anyway; we know he’s a toxic personality, we know he’s not to be trusted, but Red Rocket sails on Rex’s charisma so much so that we can’t help but be pulled into his orbit anyway. The film’s careful balance of authenticity and storytelling inside a community seldom seen on the silver screen may be partly created, partly found, but it’s Sean Baker’s assured writing and direction that bring forth the rest of what makes this movie so damn great.

9. Licorice Pizza

Paul Thomas Anderson’s films have always had their lovers and their haters, and more than a few have shared problematic elements, but those elements aside, the guy still makes some of the most compulsively watchable films ever put to screen, and despite its own shortcomings, the rest of Licorice Pizza essentially coasts on that same level of quality. The more problematic aspects of the central romance and some of the movie’s weirdly-placed jokes are addressed in the writing, but they’re not really the point of the film. This isn’t so much a story about its central protagonists as it is about the world around them, and what it’s like to inhabit that world of 1973 Los Angeles, specifically Hollywood at that time. And boy, what a world it is to inhabit. Not only is Licorice Pizza a sweet, charming story about two people falling in love, it also features a whirlwind of memorable supporting characters, including Bradley Cooper’s show-stealing turn as producer Jon Peters in the film’s absolute best ten minutes of runtime. Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman are brilliant in the film as well, with Haim herself having come dangerously close to an Oscar nomination for her acting debut (the film itself only garnered three nominations total), and Hoffman doing his late father the proudest he could ever be. This film may not be the top of PTA’s filmography, but if this is coasting for him, that tells you by itself just how strong the man’s filmography actually is.

8. Dune

My most anticipated movie of the year, and boy oh boy, did it ever not let me down one bit. Spider-Man may have made more money, but Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Part One of Frank Herbert’s iconic sci-fi novel is the defining epic of the 2021 movie season as far as craft is concerned. Massive in scope and towering in its worldbuilding, Dune is every bit the filmmaking-forward tentpole it needed to be in order to fulfill the promise of Villeneuve’s filmmaking potential. What was once thought unfilmable has been made tactile, and the performances of Dune’s massive ensemble cast set against its absolutely awe-inspiring production design, visual effects, sound, and perhaps Hans Zimmer’s best score since The Lion King cement even further that snubbing Villeneuve for a Best Director spot is one of the worst decisions the Academy has made in the 21st century. Maybe the biggest movie star under 35 in the world right now, Timothée Chalamet kills it as Paul Atreides, his performance as steely and reserved as it ever needed to be to pull off this character, which makes it a fantastic benefit to watch performances as strong as Oscar Isaac’s, Rebecca Ferguson’s, and MVP Jason Momoa’s work around him. There are so many things to say about the things Dune does well that noting its ending does feel like pure set-up for another film (which hadn’t yet been greenlit when it was released) and it’s not quite as emotionally involving as some of Villeneuve’s other works feels like a moot point. This is bid-budget, theatrical filmmaking as it should be, and if there is a chance to watch Part One and Part Two of Dune on a massive theater screen back-to-back, you can be damn sure I’m taking it.

7. The Worst Person in the World

This and my #6 spot have switched back and forth more times than I can count, and will probably switch again once I get a chance to watch them back-to-back, but placement really doesn’t matter where it concerns my #6 pick and The Worst Person in the World. Joachim Trier’s final film in his unofficial “Oslo trilogy” (which I still think the Criterion Collection should make available as a trilogy) is a beautiful, poignant ode to the time in everyone’s lives when they’re trying to figure out who they are and what that means for how they love. Featuring the best lead actress performance of the year by Renate Reinsve and a show-stopping supporting turn from Anders Danielsen Lie, the Nordic submission for Best International Feature is more than worthy of the award, regardless of whether we all know what it’s eventually going to Drive My Car anyway. Beautifully shot, wonderfully scored (when there is music), and chock-full of moments you’ll remember forever, this one is a real stunner and I would implore anyone who has a chance to see it in a theater to do so. Finding this film just before I made my Top 10 was extremely difficult, but I am so glad I finally did, because it’s just the most wonderfully cathartic experience to witness, and while it’s nearly impossible to describe why, it’s one of those films that best fits the old adage: you’ll know it when you see it.

6. CODA

Siân Heder’s CODA (which is an acronym for Child of Deaf Adults), a remake of the 2014 French film La Famille Belier, may not seem at first like one of the best movies of the year on its face, but the Sundance hit has a funny way of sticking with you all the way to the end, like a friend you’ve realized has just always been there. A landmark case in representation of deaf actors in mainstream American cinema, each and every moment of the film further emphasis the immense talents of its fantastic ensemble cast as its protagonist Ruby, the only hearing person in her family, simultaneously pursues her passion of music and acts as her families anchor for the hearing community that they live in. Emilia Jones is fantastic in this movie, as are Daniel Durant and Marlee Matlin, but the real show-stopper here is Troy Kotsur, whose tender and often hilarious father figure shares with Jones some of the film’s most emotional and moving moments (the truck bed scene is a real knockout for both). Truth be told, there is no grand revelation, no incisive commentary, no single big “a ha” thing that CODA brings to the table that other films haven’t also addressed, but when a film is this well balanced and watchable purely based on the strength of its cast telling a human story about human issues, that’s all it needs. The film is streaming on Apple TV+ right now, and I would encourage everyone to give it a shot.

​5. West Side Story

Rounding out the Top 5 is Steven Spielberg’s definitive statement that everyone who ever doubts him needs to re-evaluate their appraisal of the legendary director (who’s now been nominated for Best Director for every decade in which he’s made movies). West Side Story isn’t just one of the best remakes ever made of a film that not only do movie fans already love, but that actually won 10 Oscars in 1962, it’s also Spielberg’s first musical ever. Factoring all that in, it’s frankly the biggest miracle in the world that this 2021 adaptation works at all, much less that it works at the level it does, which may cement Spielberg as the greatest filmmaker of all time. Every update to the story speaks to the modern world, everything that was cut doesn’t feel like it’s actually missing. Tony and Maria get updated characterizations that speak to the more nuanced conflicts of their central romance, Doc being Rita Moreno instead of someone we didn’t know adds so much weight to the part, actual Latinos and Latinas being cast as the Puerto Ricans takes care of the very obviously problematic brownface problem the original film had. Everything in the new West Side Story is working at the top of its game. There’s a marvelous debut from lead Rachel Zegler, show-stopping turns by Mike Faist and Ariana DeBose (the latter of which is in the lead to win an Oscar this year), a truly underrated David Alvarez, stellar production design, brilliant cinematography, phenomenal sound, immaculate costuming, and behind it all, masterful direction. This is the musical this year that most reminded me why I love movies and more specifically, why I’ve always loved musicals, and I couldn’t be more thrilled with the way it all turned out (okay, except for Ansel Elgort, but we don’t need to open that whole can of worms right now).

4. Nine Days

Nine Days going nomination-less at this year’s Oscars was a tragic inevitability from the beginning; it had already been delayed from the summer of 2020 into August of 2021, and by that point, so many delayed films were already releasing that the stellar debut of writer and director Edson Oda got so lost in the shuffle, even many of the critically-decided awards shows seem to have forgotten that it even released at all. Sony Pictures Classics is sneaky good at getting their films into the Oscar nominations list when they have something to push, but it seems that may have been in vein, which is a shame, since it needn’t have been. Edson Oda’s life-affirming odyssey about living is one of the most beautiful celebrations of all the joy and the sorrow that is human life that I’ve seen in a very long time. There isn’t really another way to describe just how thoroughly this film sticks to one’s soul after the credits roll; it’s just beautiful. The performances of the ensemble cast are essentially perfect, the violin-centered score by Antonio Pinto is stunning, and the way the film crafts moments to both celebrate and examine the various facets of living life in the modern world, and how wonderful but also difficult that can be, as well as reckoning with the parts of it we don’t understand, is seldom this poignant. Nine Days may have fallen off the radar for many pundits and awards ceremonies post-Sundance debut, but for me, it will always have a special place amongst the films of 2021.

3. Flee

To truly understand what makes Flee rank so high when The Worst Person in the World might be a better International Feature or when Summer of Soul might be more successful as a documentary, one has to understand first as an Animated Feature, and then as the other two things. The first film to be nominated in all three of these categories at the Oscars, Flee is an absolutely stunning example of what makes animation such an essential medium in the filmmaking space. This is not a story one could do in live-action or pure documentary format; it needed the medium of animation to be properly told, and my god, was it ever properly told. By far the best animated film of 2021, the story of Afghan refugee Rashid Aitouganov, who is on the verge of marrying his husband, recounting his perilous journey fleeing to Denmark is told and recounted with such respect and reverence by director Jonas Poher Rasmussen that it never feels as if he gets in the way of the story being told. This truly is a remarkable feat of filmmaking for all involved, and the best case yet for why animation is not just an added benefit, but entirely essential to filmmaking itself. It is currently streaming on Hulu in both subbed and dubbed versions (but c’mon, you know the subtitled version is better).

2. C’mon C’mon

The absolute best film to go entirely nomination-less at the Oscars this year, Mike Mills’ latest feature, C’mon C’mon, might well be his absolute best yet, an absolute stunner in black-and-white with a screenplay so perfectly calibrated, it’s frankly insane that the film didn’t get awards attention from almost anyone. Joaquin Phoenix and Woody Norman’s chemistry if off the charts in this film, the latter of whom turns in maybe the best supporting performance of the entire year. Gabby Hoffman is also great for how little she actually ends up being in the film, but it’s really the connection between Phoenix and the apparently British Norman that keeps it going. As much as it’s a film about pseudo-parenting, it’s also about just figuring life out, whether as a kid or an adult. Chock-full of philosophical wonder and a genuine sense of deeply human vulnerability, it wraps the viewer in a warm hug and fills them with meaningful contemplation they’ll keep with them for as long as they possibly can. This is not just one of A24’s most inspired productions, it might well be their second-best film ever (still behind Moonlight, but then again, what isn’t?).

1. The Power of the Dog

Yes, its first half is slow. Yes, it’s not exactly the most exciting or even all that arresting Western you’ll ever see; this is not an action movie, this is not a thriller or in any sense a traditional Western. In fact, it’s almost an anti-Western in practice. But Jane Campion’s latest movie for Netflix is not only one of the best the service has ever produced, it’s one of the most layered in the resurgent director’s entire filmography. How does one not make a movie for 12 years, and then come back and make one of the most stunningly-crafted, expertly-directed, methodically-told works ever set in this genre which reckons with – in all the most difficult ways – the very subjects that this genre has always had its most bad-faith enthusiasts try to avoid? Apparently, like this. The Power of the Dog is more than just a stunning work of art in terms of its craft and the skill therein, more than just an expertly performed examination of generation-permeating abuses and how they infect everything around them, more than just an unshakably discomforting study on queerness in the Western genre unlike any other that has come before: it is a reckoning with all of these things, which it demonstrates in a single sequence near the film’s end in the biggest filmmaking flex any filmmaker in 2021 ever made. Brilliant from top to bottom, there is not one film from the past year more ready for re-analysis, more ripe for re-contextualization, or more apt to be studied in film studies classes for how it weaves so many things together with not so much as a few lines of dialogue and a shared look or two. This is a film anyone who truly engages with it will mulling over for a long, long time, and the one I’m most eager to revisit from 2021. Jane Campion didn’t just make one of Netflix’s best movies ever; she made the best movie of 2021.

And those are my picks for the Top 10 Movies of 2021! What did you think of these films? What are your Top 10 Movies of the past year? Let me know in the comments section below, and thanks for reading all of our content over the past year! We understand that things ran a little dry for a while, but we are working hard to get right back to it over the next year. We’re so excited to continue this journey with you all in 2022 and beyond. Stick around for more 2022 content, coming soon!
 
- The Friendly Film Fan