A Year of Going to the Movies 2023: A Top Ten and Bottom Ten List

This year I saw 63 films theatrically. Just under half of those were revival screenings. The Loft theater here in Tucson (very early into the year) began showing classic Hollywood films on Thursday mornings and I partook in some of those. All in all, for the purposes of this annual list, I saw 180 2023 releases. As I go month to month, I will put cinema lessons that I learned when applicable. 

This year, I am not considering a film made to have its premiere on a streaming service  for inclusion on either list. I certainly have nothing against those films, but since only one such film, Tina Satter's Reality, was deserving of top ten placement for me, I decided I would rather just highlight good, new 2023 streaming content first and save the list work for films that got some sort of theatrical.

For television/stream recommendations, the US premiere of Naked Attraction was an extreme water cooler moment. John Larroquette still has it and then some on the modern Night Court. Fraiser has a talented supporting cast,especially Anders Keith. Only Murders in the Building celebrated its best season yet(those acting "white room" scenes were brilliant). Dick Tracy Zooms In was a great deal of fun. And Merry Little Batman, which premiered on Prime, shows (if The Flash did not already show this) that Warners is all mixed up on what it should keep and what it should let go.

Since I am naming fine artful experiences, Terence Blanchard's Absence Tour was the best concert I attended all year. The best podcasts were as ever Naschycast, The Bloody Pit, Screen Drafts and Twitch of the Death Nerve. And Hand-Held Horror was the best new book I read.

January 

Films I saw theatrically in January: Night of the Creeps (1986), The Old Way, Skinamarink, The Hitch-Hiker (1953), Living (2023), Missing, Maybe I Do

Screening of the month: Living a worthy remake of a Kurosawa film featuring a masterful sad sack performance from Bill Nighy.

I often spend January getting a theatrical head start. I like to hit the theater at least 50 times a year. Why not hit the beginning hard in case something impedes you later? January 2023, I remember convincing anyone in earshot to see Skinamarink. Kyle Ball's very original film captures a child nightmare and was a good buzz release. I liked it and Robbie Banfitch's The Outwaters. I feel like I was riding a good wave of experimental horror until Enys Men came out and left a bad taste in my mouth. I understood people that hated the nebulous nature of experimental horror after watching Enys Men. 

It's funny. I thought horror had a great year overall. Sequels were good. Many of the originals were original. I went to horror conventions too and had a great time. But none of these horror films I have mentioned so far were good enough for my top ten. In fact, the only horror film I outright loved was a January release. It ranks as the sixth best of the year, The Devil Conspiracy. Nathan Frankowsky has a very strange career. He made a very nice historical biopic called Te Ata (2013) and a very bad documentary starring Ben Stein, Expelled (2008). His The Devil Conspiracy is about the Shroud of Turin and exceptional DNA; it's about Lucifer and Saint Michael sparring.

It packs so much creativity in a five million dollar budget. This and Godzilla Minus One offered big bang for (by Hollywood standards anyhow) little buck. Devil Conspiracy also features my third favorite 2023 actor performance, Joe Doyle as Michael (right behind Chad Coleman's mostly stoic but occasionally warm turn in The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster and Elias Koteas frightening middle management baddie, Vic, in The Baker). The scene where he hears "Devil Inside" on the radio and changes it to "Send Me an Angel" is one of many reasons this will be a major cult film in the future.

A horror film that arrived dated (pandemic horror) and will be soon forgotten is Fear. It ranks second on my worst of the year list. It is a film I caught in theaters February (but am listing here since it was a January release). My wife and I watch a good deal of horror in the cinema. This was one of our worst experiences in years, just poorly shot and simple in premise yet oddly hard to follow. 

Another January release that failed mightily enough to rank fifth in my worst of the year was House Party; it was blessed with a good trailer that highlighted the only three funny moments in this reboot. So if it made money, that’s why. 

 February 

Films I saw theatrically in February: Fear, Planet of Dinosaurs (1977), Marlowe, Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts Program (2022), Cocaine Bear, Funny Games (1997)

Screening of the month: Funny Games (1997) This screening went so well that my wife and I watched every Micheal Haneke film a short time later. Our opinions on those watches can be found somewhere on this blog page.

Lessons of the month: Iconic characters moving into the public domain are going to make for some fun films. Also, some movie titles are just fun to say.

I spent a good portion of February asking co-workers if they were going to see Cocaine Bear. I don't get many opportunities to mention cocaine at work and have it be fully appropriate. The jokes on me though because Cocaine Bear was not actually fun at all and wasted the great Alden Ehrenreich and the very good O' Shea Jackson Jr. The movie just never found the right tone and ranked 10th on my worst of the year list. Still it was fun to talk about. In October, I did not have the courage to bring up Dicks: The Musical with co-workers.

Also released in February, Winnie the Pooh Blood and Honey not a very good movie but much more fun than Cocaine Bear. It lived up to its high concept and made me hunger for the killer Mickey Mouse film we all deserve. One thing nobody deserved was the release of the inept Disquiet, an incomprehensible slice of horror starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers who I hope never ends up in anything this bad again. It ranks forth on my worst of the year list.

And speaking on worst of the year, here it is. The worst film of 2023, a documentary that told me nothing. I left this film not understanding the passionate fans that call themselves FredHeads. 

I grew up saving my allowance to call the 1900 Freddy number as a child and could not have been more enamored of Robert Englund than I was at let's say nine. 

But FredHeads did nothing to remind me of that long ago affection. It left no insight into what is relevant about Freddy today. And its running time (139 mins) was insane. I got a decent hint of that nostalgia feeling later in the year seeing Dylan's New Nightmare with a convention crowd. That sort of sequel to New Nightmare is available on YouTube.

 March

Movies I saw theatrically in March: It Happened One Night (1934), Scream 6, No Bears (2022), The Heroic Trio (1993), Moving On

Screening of the month: No Bears (2022) It's Jafar Panahi's best film. I believe I wrote about it on my best of 2022 post as I will probably add things to this write up when I catch up with them too.

Lesson of the month: Running into friends at the theater is great. 

I often make plans with friends to see films at the theater. And this works out great particularly when Dbox or 3D or some other cool element is involved. A couple of us had a blast at Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part 1. It's a Wonderful Knife was a fun meet up screening.

Another great way to see films with friends is the unplanned run-in. I took my wife to see The Heroic Trio one Saturday night, and we ran into a co-worker. He had just gotten out of a screening of Everything Everywhere All At Once and decided to join us. We had a great time and nice conversation afterwards. I remember he said he liked Heroic Trio better than EEAAO. And that is the kind of gonzo opinion I can get behind.

Another thing I can get behind is Louis Garrel's directorial career. The Innocent is the fifth best film of the year. It is a crime film that is really character driven, and these are splendid characters, the ex-con who married a nice but batty woman. The son of this woman who works at an aquarium and harbors a crush he doesn't feel he can act on or doesn't even know he has because he is a somewhat recent widower. The film has many great at work scenes that have the humanity and light touch of his father's (Philippe Garrel's) best directorial efforts.

April

Movies I saw theatrically in April: The Super Mario Brothers Movie, Enys Men, Duck Soup (1933), Sullivan's Travels (1941)

Screening of the month: Duck Soup (1933) It is one of the best comedies of its era. 

I had minor surgery at the beginning of May. There was prep for it and appointments, and it weighed on my mind. It certainly led to me watching a great Marx Brothers film and a Preston Sturges' classic around the end of the month. There is always a chance you can die with any surgery. I didn't want to die with Enys Men or Mario as my last film in a cinema.

May

Movies I saw theatrically in May: Perfect Blue (1997), Mildred Pierce (1945), The Wizard of Oz (1939), Master Gardener, The Doom Generation (1997), Maximum Overdrive (1986)

Screening of the month: Mildred Pierce (1945) I always wanted to see it because Groucho Marx referenced it a lot on radio shows and in letters to friends. Despite the previous sentence, I am not all that old.

Just before a planned hernia surgery, I fell down a flight of stairs and ended up with seven hernias and a collapsed lung. I was in the hospital for three days, had two weeks off of work but within a week, I was back at the cinema. I watched a lot at home too. M3gan I thought was fun. My wife and I got our pictures taken with Amie Donald at Mad Monster Party. She was very sweet. The only time I ventured out to see something new this month was an early morning screening of Master Gardener. It ranks third on my top ten list. I think it is Paul Schrader's best film. 

It features Sigourney Weaver giving a career performance, a reverence for the somewhat idiosyncratic world of high level gardening (gardening wisdom works as life wisdom here, sort of like Being There but in that way alone) and most importantly, the romance of two lost souls hiding on the road from their past absolutely works. It asks a lot of the audience and is insanely optimistic about the human capacity to forgive. Paul Schrader has called this a fable. And (without giving anything away) maybe he is right. I just know I left the theater feeling love conquers all, and I never before felt that warm towards a Schrader film. 

I have nothing but warm feelings about late period Jane Fonda. Even as I think Book Club 2 is the fourth worst film of the year, she was the best thing in it. It just had nothing to do with books or comedy. If it was as much about books as 80 For Brady was about football, it would have helped. Jane should have been in Maybe I Do, she could have done justice to the role Susan Sarandon faltered. Jane was the best thing in that Kraken cartoon, and she was downright great in the downbeat Moving On, a film that hovered around my ten best.

June

Movies I saw theatrically in June: The Boogeyman, Carmen Jones (1945), Transformers: Rise of the Beasts

Screening of the month: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts I had a fantastic time at this silly film, maybe the most fun event picture of the year. And the 3D was fantastic.

Lesson of the month: Films can lead one down weird rabbit holes.

I was reading a Yahoo article. And Yahoo posts many links to articles that I am not even sure readers should consider articles. This one was about Carmen Electra on Only Fans. And she said that Prince named her Carmen based on the 1945 film that I viewed in June. This took me by surprise, and I had to read more about it. The dynamic Prince seemed more like  Carmen. He certainly never seemed like Harry Belafonte's hapless Joe.

The great film of June was a documentary on one of my personal heroes Yogi Berra called It Ain't Over. I am not all that old. I just had ESPN Classics. The film was made with his family's help and makes the case for him as a kind manager, a brilliant pitchman and maybe baseball's greatest catcher. It was just the kind of deserved hero worship I needed to witness. In April, My wife and I got quite the chuckle from Damon's ridiculous go for broke speech in Air. This documentary (in no way, unlike the Affleck, a cynical exercise) ranks seventh on my year end list; the director blessedly spent a good amount of time on the Yogi-isms. His sayings and the books that resulted when he became a late in life writer were meaningful.

July

Movies I attended theatrically in July: Joyride, Indiana Jones: Dial of Destiny, A Night at the Opera (1935), Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part 1, Final Cut, Cobweb, Astroid City

Screening of the month: A Night at the Opera (1935) The stateroom scene alone is better than anything else this month.

The Busey genes are strong. I watched Night Caller 2 this year and that had Jake Busey. It was a very watchable film, and he was great. The picture above is Luke Busey from a scene in Cobweb. The Busey guys just look like one man during the three stages of life. Luke is great in Cobweb. The film, however, is terrible and ranks nine on my worst list. All the acting is fine in the film. It is the writing, the leaps in logic and unclear character motivations; it's also the poor effects that let the production down. The ending is laughable.

August

Movies I saw theatrically in August: Go West, Cat Video Fest, Gadar 2, Vermeer the Greatest Exhibition, Contempt (1963), Dylan's New Nightmare, American Graffiti (1973), Fast Five (2011)

Screening of the month: Contempt (1963) Palance & Bardo.

August was my busiest month at the cinema. I think this was because my dog passed on at 16. It messed me up and left me scrambling for concerts, conventions and films to fill the considerable void. These things offered not quite enough distraction even when they were as great as Godard or George Lucas. Speaking of Lucas, I grew up around Modesto so I am always wanting to see American Graffiti on the big screen. I love how much of the music informs the plot,and though I have never been a car person, I love the lifestyle on display here. There is a statue of Lucas in the town square of Modesto. There are annual screenings that I used to attend. Watching this even in Arizona feels like home.

I can also think back to when I was a child watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the big screen and leaving the theater play fighting with my friends.  I must admit the new version Mutant Mayhem does nothing to make me that happy or happy at all really. In fact, it is the most aggressively annoying film I saw this year. The animation is an eyesore and the characters are shrill. Producer Seth Rogen's attempt makes for number seven on my worst list.

I should blow raspberries to Vermeer the Greatest Exhibition  and Klimt & the Kiss (the latter I only attended in November because I was waiting for someone in a record shop near the theater playing it and that meeting got delayed by a couple hours). These films were like an app you use to walk around at a museum. At the museum though you can look at the real art. These were very non cinematic and would both make a worst of list if I had stayed to see them finish instead of leaving roughly an hour in both times. They were not my bag.

Odd musical movements are my bag though which is in part why The Elephant 6 Recording Co.ranks all the way at two on my best of the year list. This is a documentary about a  collective that happened because one man (Bill Doss) took a chance and  hit the road on a tour (with a band called the Apples) even though he had little musical experience, outside of home recording and no real money to travel, bravery of the young artist (it's enviable). He eventually spearheaded a co-op release company (contained mostly to a small part of the country) that had a roster of interesting artists I have never heard of (Neutral Milk Hotel, Elf Power, Chocolate USA to name a few) often in costumes (one band dressed as appliances), bands who would have done it all for free if they already had means. This is synth, but it feels akin to the birth of punk; I needed to take notes on the film and hit discogs after viewing, so it was quite instructive for me.

September

Movies I saw theatrically in September: RL Stine's Zombie Town, Haunting in Venice, Altered States (1980), Scalper Night Caller 2, Saw X

Screening of the month: I really enjoyed the 2001: A Space Odyssey vibe of Altered States (1980).

Lesson of the month: Seeing films because they are shot in your neck of the woods is probably not a good enough reason.

My lesson of the month should have seemed obvious. No amount of Chandler footage is going to make a Rob Schneider movie more worthwhile. Daddy Daughter Trip ranks at eight on my worst year list. Rob looks distractedly strange, and the only one who doesn't try too hard and leaves the film with her integrity intact is Jackie Sandler.

Expendables 4 is the film where Stallone kills a little person because he beat him at thumb wrestling. It ranks third on my end of year. And I might be being kind because I like the other three in the franchise.

Those two films aside, September was not all bad. It produced two fantastic documentaries about dying concepts. The famous author is not a dead concept. But the literary lion might be. A literary lion is the guy who writes an event book every five or more years and is invited on 60 Minutes or (at the time) Tavis Smiley, not to just shill it but to talk about concepts and ideas in serious and meaningful ways. This kind of author for a brief time seemed like the conscience of America. 

Radical Wolfe, the documentary does a more than credible job of convincing the viewer about the merits of the lion Tom Wolfe. You leave the film wanting to read long novels, and that is good enough for number ten on my best list.

I feel like the last few decades have been all about IP reboots. Things that were popular trying to take up cultural space again. Ghost Busters has finally become an appropriate family film franchise. The new films seem closer to the 80's cartoon, which is what kids really responded to in the 1980s. 

Again I am not that old. 

I tended to resist or dislike this kind of reboot or nostalgia project this year. 

The popular erotic thriller had a short run about 30 years ago. Like porn in theaters and literary lions, I am not sure it will ever reach its past heights. Yahoo would have you believe that young generations hate eroticism, but that cannot be completely true because they seem to like Sydney Sweeney.

We Kill For Love is a nearly 3 hour documentary on the lost art of the straight to cable erotic thriller. It is so exhaustive it should come with a 600 page book. The style of the thing mirrors its subject. This is the best film of the year. I left it wanting to see all the movies it lists, but they are gone. In a culture that many claim has access to everything, these films are mostly gone. Maybe Vinegar Syndrome will resurrect some titles one day, but maybe they won't. This year has been a tough year in many ways. Some of the films I responded most to were about the things that fall away. Thank God this record of 90's erotics exists though.

October

Movies I saw theatrically in October: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), When the Cat Comes (1963), Dicks: the Musical

Screening of the month: Dicks: the Musical This is my second favorite Larry Charles' film, just a constant stream of laughs and catchy music.

I took my wife to see one of her favorite films, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as part of the classics series I mentioned earlier. We had seen it theatrically over fifteen years ago at the historic Castro in San Francisco. We had a great time. Dicks the Musical we saw because of its title, and we got out early that day and were looking for something to do. We left the theater giddy. The sewer boys and Nathan Lane help propel this to top nine of the year.

November

Movies I Saw Theatrically in November: Terrifier 2 (2022), It's a Wonderful Knife, Thanksgiving, Wild at Heart (1990), Klimt & the Kiss

Screening of the month: Wild at Heart (1990) is Willem Dafoe's finest work. 

The Stones and Brian Jones is somewhat standard in its way. What saves it and ranks it at eight on my best of list is the urgency of the project. Every one that has something to say about Jones (and the muses of his life get a lot of time here) is pushing eighty and there is a possibility he can be pushed right out of history. What makes this film great is Nick Broomfield.

Quentin Tarantino likes to pretend that artists should get out of the game around the age of 60. Maybe that would have actually made sense for Nick Broomfield (who is 75 now) since he is known for somewhat confrontational documentaries where he is the narrator and often the protagonist. I wrote a piece for Mubi once about Broomfield. I love his films, and I love how he can pivot. Marianne and Leonard (2019) was a personal documentary about Broomfield's past and Marianne Ihlen who he knew in the biblical sense and who was Leonard Cohen's muse. As a young man, Broomfield met Brian Jones, the man who helped with the founding of the Rolling Stones. He made this film to look back, and Broomfield in this warm, sad nostalgia period is a treasure.

December

Movies I Saw Theatrically in December: Godzilla Minus One, Modern Times (1936), Nowhere (1997), Manos the Hands of Fate (1966)

Screening of the month: City Lights (1936) I have come to the realization over time that not only is this an all timer, it may be the funniest comedy ever made. This screening I especially delighted in the cocaine scene.

Lesson of the month: There are better days ahead.

If you are kind enough to read this blog to this point, you may ask yourself why did he stop at four movies without seeing the Oscar December films? There are still several days in December. The answer is the picture above, my new puppy Lily Pad. I wanted to wait a year; my wife and I made it only four months without a dog in the house. There is training and spending time with her. Today I made her mad. And I do not remember the last time I had a pet mad at me. I felt bad, but life goes on. And honestly, outside of Fallen Leaves and Zone of Interest (which isn't playing anywhere near me there is little I am excited about. For this month, I can say Minus One was very well made. I just never warmed up to the lead, not because I have an issue with kamikaze fighters that choose not to fulfill their missions. It is more because the female lead was so much better than him as a character. And he never even tried that gun against smaller Godzilla. It would not have helped, but it might have helped the way I viewed him after that scene. Still, it hovered around my top ten. I commend Toho for doing something different (in this case embracing old school Hollywood melodrama) with the property. And I will see any Godzilla film with a great interest and excitement. I am going to enjoy Lily for the holiday season and hit 2024 hard sometime in January. Happy Xmas everybody. Below are both lists in total. 

Update: The Zone of Interest I caught in late January of 2024. It was amazing. I thought it was a very good, blunt, film that used sound to its best advantage. But then that ending happened with the flash forward and the real historical (co-lead) in pain perhaps from guilt. It ranks forth on this list, bravo. 

Worst of the year

10. Cocaine Bear (95mins) director Elizabeth Banks

09. Cobweb (88mins) director Samuel Bodin

08. Daddy Daughter Trip (100 mins) directors Rob Schneider and Andres Augilar

07. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Mutant Mayhem (99mins) director Jeff Rowe

06. Disquiet (85mins) director Michael Winnick

05. House Party (95mins) director Calmatic

04. Book Club 2 (108mins) director Bill Holderman

03. Expendables 4 (103mins) director Scott Waugh

02. Fear (98mins) director Deon Taylor 

01. FredHeads (139mins) directors Paige Troxell and Kim Gunzinger

Best of the year

10. Radical Wolfe (76mins) director Richard Dewey

09. Dicks: The Musical (86mins) director Larry Charles

08. The Stones and Brian Jones (93mins) director Nick Broomfield

07. It Ain't Over (98mins) director  Sean Mullin

06. The Devil Conspiracy (111mins) director Nathan Frankowski

05. The Innocent (100mins) director Louis Garrel

04. The Zone of Interest (105mins) director Johnathan Glazer

03. Master Gardener (111mins) director Paul Schrader

02. The Elephant 6 Recording Co. (93mins) director CB Stockfleth

01. We Kill for Love (163mins) director Anthony Penta