Recommended Movies of 2023

by Jacob Thomas Jones

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

• Air
• Amerikatsi
• American Fiction
• Anyone But You
• Blue Beetle
• The Boogeyman
• Chevalier
• Cobweb
• The Color Purple
• The Covenant
• The Creator
• Creed III
• Dream Scenario
• Dumb Money
• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
• Elemental
• Evil Dead Rise
• Flora and Son
• Godland
• Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3
• How to Blow Up a Pipeline
• Joy Ride
• The Little Mermaid (2023)
• M3GAN
• Missing
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
• A Haunting in Venice
• The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
• Jesus Revolution
• Jules
• Knock at the Cabin
• Moving On
• Napoleon
• No Hard Feelings
• North of Normal
• Nyad
• Polite Society
• Reality
• Rye Lane
• Scream VI
• Sharper
• Shazam! Fury of the Gods
• Sisu
• The Starling Girl
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
• Thanksgiving
• Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
• The Unknown Country
• You Hurt My Feelings

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