by Ian Hrabe, Staff Writer 

I don’t often feel FOMO, but the one time I really feel it is at the end of the year when everyone’s year end lists for movies are dropping and I’m stuck on the sidelines. Books and music I can handle, there’s easy access to those wherever you live, but living in Kansas it often takes a while for movies to make its way to my neck of the woods.

That said, even when it does, having two kids and a full time job makes it nigh impossible to fit in a date night with the missus to catch the latest prestige cinema at the KC metro’s (admittedly pretty excellent) arthouse theaters. That means instead of me waiting for a movie to have a limited run, I’m using JustWatch to see where the good new stuff is streaming (and whether or not I’ve burned my free trials for *checks notes* Starz, Mubi, Movie Poopshoot, etc). So years back, in an effort to satisfy both my love of movies and my love of making ranked lists about movies, I started setting Oscar Night as my deadline to see all the stuff I wanted to see. There’s still usually one movie that would make the list that I won’t catch until later in the year, but that’s pretty much standard practice for any cinephile not operating as a full time film critic right?

Looking at the history on my AMC Theaters account, I saw two movies in theaters this year: Lightyear and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. There is also a cancellation for Everything Everywhere All at Once which we had to miss because one of the aforementioned kiddos got sick, and if you’ve seen that movie you know how much missing that in theaters stings. Hey, at least I tried, right? Anyway…

Honorable Mentions

Roald Dahl's Matilda the Musical
Directed by Matthew Warchus
Streaming on Netflix

Considering that a good 50% of my movie intake is family fare, there’s usually one movie every year (Non-Pixar Division) that totally exceeds all of my expectations and threatens to make the year end list. This year it was the film adaptation of the musical based on Roald Dahl’s Matilda. Not only were the songs by Tim Minchin fantastic, clever, creative, and wonderful, but this movie version of the West End/Broadway show established itself as the definitive version of this story. No shade to Danny DeVito’s 1996 American adaptation, which is a nostalgic cornerstone for pretty much every millennial of a certain age, and full of the weird stuff you never see in family movies these days, but this one has it all. And did I mention that the songs are great? And the performances from Emma Thompson as the Trunchbull and Lashana Lynch as Miss Honey anchor the film’s tone with their comedic villainy and pure heart, respectively? It takes a lot for a kid movie to elevate itself to something I would watch without my kids (like the way I’ll keep watching Bluey even after they’ve gone off to do something else), and this is one I’ll watch again on my own so no one can see me belting out “School Song” and crying along to “Still Holding My Hand.”

RRR
Directed by S.S. Rajamouli
Streaming on Netflix 

Every cinephile has their blindspots, and mine is any Indian cinema outside of the films directed by Satyajit Ray. That said, when a movie gets enough buzz, at some point I’m eventually gonna check it out, and that was the case with RRR. I can’t remember the last time I watched a movie that butted heads with my own movie-watching sensibilities, and it is incredibly hard to find the words to describe just how joyful that experience was. RRR operates in the Quentin Tarantino mode of historical fiction, in which S.S. Rajamouli takes two famous revolutionaries who fought against the British Raj and never met and asks: What if they were best friends? The result is a film that is unapologetically over-the-top that blends blissfully insane action sequences, dance numbers, and a story of male friendship together so seamlessly it feels like witchcraft. It took a while to pin down my feelings, but when I did, RRR immediately got shortlisted for my year end list. Because RRR’s whole vibe is pro wrestling, and I love pro wrestling.

Good Luck to You, Leo Grande
Directed by Sophie Hyde
Streaming on Hulu

I was strong-armed into watching this and ended up loving pretty much every second of it. Pulling off a solid two-hander requires the cast, writing, and direction to basically be flawless and it gets pretty close here. Emma Thompson is, of course, phenomenal because when is she not great? Her scene partner Daryl McCormack though, damn. It’s never not a thrill seeing a relatively unknown actor deliver a career-making performance. This is one of those quiet movies that flies under the radar, and it’s a shame because the way this grapples with an aging woman’s sexuality is touching, funny, and absolutely worth a look.

Glass Onion
Directed by Rian Johnson
Streaming on Netflix

Glass Onion offers kinder, gentler skewering of the rich than The Menu or Triangle of Sadness, but it’s also more elegant in its takedown and does a better job at highlighting the absurdity of a small group of people having most of the wealth. Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is back on the case, and while Glass Onion has a little bit of sophomore album syndrome since you just can’t replicate the breakout of Knives Out, Johnson shifts gears enough to make this feel like a totally different movie while still operating with the same ruleset. The cast is out of this world, delivering performances from actors I don’t even like (Kate Hudson) and actors who I want to see get more opportunities to show how great they are (Dave Bautista, Janelle Monae). It’s just...a whole lot of fun. Where Johnson really shows his bonafides though is with this movie’s twist, which is just so bafflingly great that I wish I could talk about why I love it without giving it away. I’m signed up for however many Knives Out mysteries Johnson wants to give us, preferably around Christmas every few years please and thank you.

Living
Directed by Oliver Hermanus
Screened for MovieJawn, currently available on VOD

My kneejerk reaction to what is essentially this movie’s logline—a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru—was enough to stack the deck against this one, so that when the review opportunity came up here at Moviejawn I jumped on it. Ikiru is one of those movies that made such a heavy impact on me when I saw it, that I felt I was adequately prepared to take this pretender behind the woodshed. I mean, you know how this one ends right by virtue of where I am talking about this movie. I wish I had footage of my animus towards this film dissolving in real time, because there is nothing I like more about loving movies (or books, or music, or any kind of art really) than being proven wrong.

Screenwriter (and one of our greatest novelists) Kazuo Ishiguro adapts Kurosawa’s original to post-war London, and the premise about a man who works his whole life to the point where when he finds out he has terminal cancer, he realizes he hasn’t really lived at all, and decides to do something about it. Japanese salaryman culture parallels the western world’s work-until-you-die mentality, and the casting of character actor Bill Nighy in the lead is the engine that makes this whole thing go. His Oscar nomination was the closest thing to a sure thing I saw all year (outside of the big obvious ones) and seeing someone who has been a great supporting player in everything he has been in finally get to spread his wings as a leading man is what makes an already excellent remake a must watch.

10. The Fabelmans
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Rented on VOD once it dropped to $5.99

Steven Spielberg telling the Portrait of an Artist as a Child Prodigy could be obnoxious if Spielberg hadn’t spent the past 50 years making some of the greatest movies of all time. Some might rankle at the young Spielberg analog’s ingenuity, but I just felt the most joy I’d felt from any Spielberg movie since 2002. The reason why The Fabelmansworks though is that at its core it is a family drama anchored by Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, who do some of the best work of their careers as Mr. and Mrs. Fabelman. The Fabelmans feels like the capstone to Spielberg’s career, and while I’m not exactly saying he won’t make another movie this good, it just does so much to explain why he makes movies and why the movies he makes are so damn good.

9. Catherine Called Birdy
Directed by Lena Dunham
Screened for MovieJawn, currently streaming on Amazon Prime

One of my favorite things about watching a ton of movies is watching a filmmaker who I have essentially left for dead rise from the grave and turn in a great film that rights the ship. I talked a lot about this in my initial review for this movie, but my main takeaway is that when not working from an original script–Catherine Called Birdy is based on Karen Cushman’s 1994 young adult novel of the same name–Dunham is a more than capable filmmaker. The story itself is a coming-of-age tale set in medieval England, and while films from that period usually focus on how goddamn awful it would have been to be alive in the middle ages, this one is full of joy and wit. A lot of this movie’s positive energy comes from its lead Bella Ramsey, who won all of our hearts as the tiny badass Lady Mormont in the last season of Game of Thrones and is currently blowing our minds in The Last of Us. Ramsey, as you probably already know, is one of the best young actresses currently working and has an undeniable magnetism that elevates anything she works on. Considering that Catherine Called Birdy’s script is rock solid, her work here is the sort of stuff that propels a lovely little bildungsroman into Best of the Year territory.

8. Triangle of Sadness
Directed by Ruben Ostlund
Rented on VOD a week before it hit Hulu

The ghosts of Luis Bunuel and Jonathan Swift are alive and well in Ruben Ostlund’s skewering of the ultra-wealthy. 2023 saw a number of movies that took aim at the Haves, and would you look at that, three of them are on my list (or at least list-adjacent). What’s most interesting is how all three films—Triangle of Sadness, Glass Onion, and The Menu—all find different paths up the social commentary mountain. Where Glass Onion is a light, comedic caper and The Menuis as close to Vantablack as you can get in a dark comedy, Triangle of Sadness operates in the Phantom of Liberty/Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie mode of social comedy. Where it beats out those other two movies though is that it emphasizes the comedy in black comedy. The wealthy are an easy mark, sure, but Ostlund’s underlines the utter absurdity of wealth with some truly show stopping sequences that blend disgust and laugh-out-loud funny in a way that feels utterly weird and utterly wonderful.

7. Turning Red
Directed by Domee Shi
Streaming on Disney+

As a parent, you spend a lot of your time watching bottom of the barrel kids fare. It feels like Netflix has a whole category for “The absolute worst animated show you have ever seen that your kids will want to watch ad nauseum” (I’m looking at you, Booba). While 95% of the kids stuff I am subjected to in a given year, you can always rely on Disney and Pixar to bail you out, and man did they ever bail me out in 2022 with Turning Red.

While some people couldn’t get past the fact that it is, allegedly, “AbOuT pERiOdS!1!,” Turning Red uses a big, furry metaphor–in this case, a red panda–to talk about growing up and the physical and psychological changes that are inherent with puberty. While the “I DON’T WANT MY KIDS WATCHING THAT” contingent will always be strong anytime Disney like, doesn’t make another Cars movie, for the rest of us that outcry usually means the movie is going to be pretty good. That said, all Pixar movies–save for The Good Dinosaur and those aforementioned Cars movies–are at the bare minimum, “pretty good,” and Turning Red made my top ten because it’s one of the best movies Pixar has ever made. Almost all of that is due to director Domee Shi who brings a personal touch and distinctive style that helps this one stand apart from the movies usually at the top of the “Best Pixar Movies, Ranked” lists that every outlet seemingly has an obligation to publish anytime a new Pixar movie drops. With all the chatter about the movie’s big metaphor and puberty, one thing that gets overshadowed is just how damn FUNNY this movie is. Like laugh out loud, slapping your knee, needing to pause and rewind because the jokes land so perfectly. Which is why I have seen Turning Red a couple dozen times in the past year, and it’s one I’ll gladly let the kids put on anytime they want.

 6. After Yang
Directed by Kogonada
Streaming on Showtime

Kogonada basically ensured I was going to be a fan for life with his stunning 2017 debut Columbus, and here he capitalizes on all that goodwill with a kinder, gentler sort of science fiction movie. There are no laser gun fights or dystopian societies, this is a story about a family and their daughter’s malfunctioning robot companion. It’s like one of Isaac Asimov’s robot stories but with big feelings standing in for big ideas. Robots are frequently used as a device for the human characters to grapple with their own humanity, especially when the robots become more and more lifelike. After Yang is no different, but in Kogonada’s hands this story feels wholly original. It’s sci-fi, sure, but at its heart this is a family drama that just happens to be set in the future. Colin Farrell and Jodie Turner-Smith anchor this film with a pair of lovely, down to earth performances, but the real star of the show is a breakout performance from Justin H. Min (The Umbrella Academy) as the titular Yang. Yang functions almost like a macguffin in this movie, as the film’s plot centers on trying to get Yang repaired, but it’s what comes out of that process that makes this film so surprising and beautiful.

5. Nope
Directed by Jordan Peele
Streaming on Peacock

 For his third feature, Jordan Peele trades in his thinky, socially-conscious horror for…thinky, socially-conscious horror, but disguised as a big dumb action movie. It’s both his most fun film to watch, and in my opinion, his best film yet. That the film has been divisive continues to baffle me, because it’s the most cohesive film Peele has made to date, the cast is incredible (Keke Palmer in particular gives a star-making performance), and the movie is basically Jaws with aliens. The social commentary is still there, just not as in your face as with Get Out and Us which should make it more broadly appealing. And yet here I am, defending a movie that feels like it’s going to be considered a classic in 15 years. Oh well, they’ll come around eventually. This is a future cult classic that doesn’t deserve to be a cult classic because it deserves to be adored in its time. Alas, for now I’m gonna continue being haunted by that murderous chimpanzee and appreciate that I get to be alive at the same time Jordan Peele is making movies.

4. Tár
Directed by Todd Field
Rented on VOD a week before it hit Peacock

If Todd Field wants to go full pre-2012 Terrence Malick and give us one all-timer of a movie every decade or so, I’m here for it. In his first film since 2006’s Little Children, Field delivers an unquestionable masterpiece. That said, while Tár is one of the year’s finest pieces of filmmaking, you have to argue that there’s a 50/50 split in the credit between him and the film’s star Cate Blanchett (although that depends on if you want to apply the old saw about directing being 90% casting). The narcissistic composer Blanchett crafts could easily be the capstone of her illustrious career, and I think everyone would just have to be OK with that. It is one of the most singular performances of…the decade? The century? Let’s just say all-time, and that it’s both a shame and a pleasure that we get to see a showdown between her and the equally transcendent Michelle Yeoh for the Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role category at this year’s Oscars. Two absolute titans whose combined body of work is a sort of thespian gold standard. I digress. Blanchett’s performance is something akin to an out of body experience. It’s the sort of thing where you can imagine her communing with the gods or whatever, and that paired with Field’s script and direction makes this film one that should easily slot into every Top 10 Movies of the 2020s list in 7 years.

 3. Everything Everywhere All at Once
Directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert
Also rented on VOD a week before it hit Hulu, why does this keep happening to me

That a movie this batshit crazy is the betting man’s pick to sweep the Oscars feels both psychotic, but also maybe on brand for the Academy who have been getting really weird lately. I’m not sure if it’s their “initiative” to make the Oscars less white which, I mean, obviously isn’t working if you just look at the nominees, but they did give Parasite top honors in 2020 so at least we know they’re willing to consider movies that aren’t Oscar bait box-tickers like, say, Green Book. I digress. Everything Everywhere All at Once was the best time you had going to the movies last year. You know it, I know it, the whole world knows it. It’s just a matter of where it slots in on your year end list. If you haven’tseen the Daniels’ masterwork, I’m both shocked and jealous that you get to watch this movie for the first time. What’s so wonderful about this wonderfully weird movie is that it doesn’t engage in weirdness for the sake of weirdness, but backs that weirdness up with a multiverse dabbling story (Marvel, eat your heart out) about a lady (Michelle Yeoh) trying to do her taxes. I mean, that’s a little simplistic, and how we get from there to me having intrusive thoughts about Racoocoonie and hot dog fingers is part of this movie’s magic.

2. The Banshees of Inisherin
Directed by Martin McDonagh
Streaming on HBO Max

 This feels like the story McDonagh has been working his way up to as a director, and the more you treat it like a story the better. A fable, an allegory, whatever, though it’s certainly more than the sum of its parts. Those being: Irish Civil War ever-present across the water, the way small towns suffocate and breed a sense of rot via isolation, the way isolation breeds rot in the soul, tinges of Orson Welles’ Cuckoo Clock monologue from The Third Man, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson reuniting and delivering some of the greatest chemistry you have ever seen between two actors. Though McDonagh was a playwright first, this is the film of his that feels most like a play and maybe playing to his strengths is the reason why it’s his best film in his outstanding filmography.

1. Aftersun
Directed by Charlotte Wells
Rented on VOD, who wants to bet it’s on Hulu next week

Different types of movies serve different purposes, but for me, what I want every time I go into a movie is for it to crack me open. When I watch a movie that does that, I understand why people go to church. That requires a synthesis of style, craft, and storytelling, and it’s something Charlotte Wells does like a veteran in her remarkable debut feature. What makes this my favorite movie of the year is how subtle this movie is until it isn’t. At first you feel like you’re watching one of those dime a dozen quiet little indie movies. You know, a story about a father and a daughter going on holiday together. One of those lovely little character studies that is going to examine their relationship. A movie that is altogether fine, but probably not year-end list worthy.

Halfway through you start asking questions, and in a way the movie almost becomes a mystery in the subtlest way possible. Why are we seeing this? Who is curating these memories for us? Wells keeps things close to the vest throughout, but by the end you can see the throughline if you squint, and it should be enough to leave you absolutely shattered. Wells never holds your hand or spells it out for you, and lets you find that throughline when you’re still processing the movie in the wee hours of the morning. Paul Mescal is rightly getting a ton of attention for his performance as the movie’s sad dad, but his scene partner—newcomer Frankie Corino—is just as important to making this whole thing tick and deserves just as much praise. The biggest takeaway though is that cinema has a new rising star in Charlotte Wells, and I can’t wait to spend the next handful of decades watching her movies.