Best films of 2023

The graphic below identifies the top 25 films from 2023 that critics ranked on their end-of-year "best of" lists. The full list goes to 100 and if you are interested in seeing it, I'm sourcing the list from a different website this year. The methodology for compilation is ostensibly the same. Here's the detail:

Films are sorted by the percentage of lists they are included on.* This is typically the same as sorting by number of lists included, but can vary when films make lists across multiple years.  For example, if one film makes 10 lists in a year with 100 lists available, it’s ranking will be higher than a film that makes 15 lists when 200 lists are available.  The times a film appears at the top of a list is used as a tie-breaker.

*punctuation errors corrected 

Basically, this is an annual best films comment that I'm posting for 2023. This is the post about the best films of 2022. Below this graphic, you'll find my rankings of these films (by tiers) with a list of the ones I still need to see. As I watch them over time, I'll edit the post but note the changes with yellow highlighting.  

This "best of" comment is distinct from both the annual post on "films of 2023," which is my end-of-year musing about all the films I saw in a calendar year and my annual Oscar post. 

Top-tier films. These are very serious Oscar contenders:

Killers of the Flower Moon

Oppenheimer

Past Lives

American Fiction

The Holdovers

May December

I've seen all but May December since the new year, which means they were not on the December list for 2023. The top 4 5 on this are excellent and are well worth your time. Warning: Oppenheimer is exceptional, but it is both very long and about a subject that I have studied off-and-on since the 1980s. Your interest may vary from mine.  

Incidentally, I joined Letterboxd last October and you can find  my brief reviews of films there. I think I backfilled for all of 2023 and most of the films used in my political science course. 

Second-tier films. These are very good and may garner Oscar support:

Maestro 

Showing Up

Barbie

Maestro was well-made and well-acted, but I wasn't nearly as interested in this story as I was in the stories from the first-tier of films. I didn't find Bernstein's life especially interesting.  

The 2 films after Maestro were both calendar year 2023 viewings. Honestly I thought about putting Barbie in the following tier. 

Third-tier films. These are entertaining but flawed films:

The Killer

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

Asteroid City

Again, nothing new here yet. My spouse and I are trying to find time to see the Oscar nominated movies. 

Fourth-tier films. I found these to be disappointing and do not recommend (if necessary, could remain blank):

N/A

Films yet to see (16 of 25 as of today):

Afire

All of Us Strangers

Anatomy of a Fall

The Boy and the Heron

Fallen Leaves

Godzilla Minus One

John Wick: Chapter 4

Passages

Poor Things
Priscilla

Saltburn

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

The Zone of Interest

Glancing through the rest of the top 100, I've seen the following films already and rank them roughly in this order:

Tar (tier 1, a remnant from last year's list for some critic)

Fair Play (tier 2 or 3)

They Cloned Tyrone (tier 2 or 3)

Reality (tier 2 or 3)

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I (Tier 4 material)