As the 2023rd year of our Lord comes to a close, I thought it would be fun to do a little reflecting on some of the movies I watched this year. I wish there was a way I could see exactly how many movies I watched this year, but alas, I can’t find anything like that on Letterboxd and I don’t have the patience to try and figure it out manually. Just know that it’s a lot of movies. I know that at a minimum, I’ve watched at least 41 movies, because that is how many Matt Damon movies I have watched in my quest to make it through his entire catalog1. With that being said, I didn’t end up watching a ton of movies this year that actually came out this year, but I saw enough to make a list of my favorites. I might even throw in a mini list of what I wish I had gotten around to watching, but didn’t have the time to. Let’s dig in:
Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One
- Budget: $291 million
- Box office: $567.5 million
- Run time: 164 minutes (2 hours, 44 minutes)
- Letterboxd rating: 3.8 ★
- My Letterboxd rating: 4.0 ★
- Rotten Tomatoes: 96% (Certified Fresh ?)
- Accolades – TBD
I saw this as part one of a double-feature day at the movies in July, followed by another film that will be appearing on this list, Oppenheimer. I won’t be doing an entire write-up for any of the movies in this list, but I do need to say that I quite enjoyed this movie. I think part of it comes from having the right mindset – if I took my partner, say, to see this movie, I think she would have walked away feeling incredibly impartial towards it. The plot is pretty blasé and doesn’t really introduce anything outside of the norm for a Mission: Impossible movie. But that’s just it: for Mission: Impossible fans like myself, they don’t need to do that anymore. We got all of the different, interesting storylines and twists out of the way, and now we just get to watch 61-year-old Tom Cruise do things that no other 61-year-old should be doing (including legitimately driving a dirt bike off of a cliff multiple times). It’s a fun action ride for almost three hours, filled with another great soundtrack by Lorne Balfe, and some really underrated performances by Cary Elwes and Pom Klementieff.
Bottoms
- Budget: $11.3 million
- Box office: $12.8 million
- Run time: 91 minutes (1 hour, 31 minutes)
- Letterboxd rating: 3.9 ★
- My Letterboxd rating: 4.0 ★
- Rotten Tomatoes: 90% (Certified Fresh ?)
- Accolades – TBD
This one took me by surprise. I was unfamiliar with the work of Rachel Sennot and Ayo Edibiri, and I am usually not a big fan of the coming of age type movies – granted, this may not be your typical coming of age movie. Following two high school girls who are trying to lose their virginity to cheerleaders, they start a fight club that ends up becoming arguably more credible than Fight Club itself (okay that’s not even remotely true but you should’ve seen your face when you read that). This movie is all gas no brakes from start to finish, and never takes itself too seriously, which is the right call. One moment your stomach hurts from laughing so much (literally any scene with Marshawn Lynch in it) and the next your heart is breaking at how awkward and hard being in high school is. I can’t wait for many more years and projects to come out of the hilarious duo of Rachel and Ayo.
Barbie
- Budget: $128-145 million
- Box office: $1.442 billion
- Run time: 114 minutes (1 hour, 54 minutes)
- Letterboxd rating: 4.0 ★
- My Letterboxd rating: 4.0 ★
- Rotten Tomatoes: 88% (Certified Fresh ?)
- Accolades – TBD
What can be said about this movie that hasn’t already been said? Ryan Gosling and Simu Liu make for incredible Kens, Margot Robbie, Kate McKinnon and Issa Rae are hilarious in their roles, Will Ferrell is perfect as the bumbling Mattel CEO, America Ferrera was kinda a genius pick to play the heart of the story, and Michael Cera outshines everyone by literally a country mile as Allan. Is it way too heavy handed at times? Absolutely. Is the ending scene arguably one of the worst ways they could have ended the movie? For sure. Is it too cheesy at times? Of course. But did it have an incredible joke to laugh ratio? Definitely. Did it make me cry multiple times? You know it. What we all really need to be talking about, though, is how Billie Eilish was able to write a song about a self-realizing Barbie doll, and make it incredibly sad, and also make it one of my most-streamed songs of the year on Spotify. Incredible.
Asteroid City
- Budget: $25 million
- Box office: $54 million
- Run time: 105 minutes (1 hour, 45 minutes)
- Letterboxd rating: 3.6 ★
- My Letterboxd rating: 4.5 ★
- Rotten Tomatoes: 75% (Certified Fresh ?)
- Accolades – TBD2
This movie is certainly not for everyone, as is the tradition with any Wes Anderson film. We are a Wes Anderson household though, so this was a big hit for us. There isn’t a ton of “new” in this movie for Wes, but it just hits all of its marks and exceeds as a Wes Anderson film. Jason Schwartzman is a delight as usual, Scarlett Johansson, Steve Carell, Tom Hanks and Jeffrey Wright feel right at home under Wes’ direction, and Robert Yeoman manages to once again stun with his cinematography. The colors of this movie are exceptionally vivid and bright, and paired with the beautiful landscape of Spain, makes it one of the most aesthetically beautiful movies of 2023. To steal from a review by a good friend of mine who is more eloquent than I: “I love this application of Wes Anderson’s Wes Anderson-iness! Profound yet lighthearted, with plenty of laughs to soften the grief at the center of the plot.” Thanks Val, long live Wes’ quirkiness!
Oppenheimer
- Budget: $100 million
- Box office: $955.2 million
- Run time: 181 minutes (3 hours, 1 minute)
- Letterboxd rating: 4.3 ★
- My Letterboxd rating: 5.0 ★
- Rotten Tomatoes: 93% (Certified Fresh ?)
- Accolades – TBD
Oh boy, where to start with this one. If you weren’t already aware, Christopher Nolan is my favorite director of all time, and I am a sucker for everything he puts out. The way that he is able to tell such intricate and fascinating stories while always finding a way to tell it in a non-linear fashion always brings me such joy – and Oppenheimer was no exception. Is this movie basically just three hours of men standing around and talking to each other? Yes. I won’t disagree with anyone who sources that as their main gripe. But that doesn’t make it bad, or boring, in any way. 12 Angry Men is just a bunch of men (twelve, to be exact) standing around and talking for two hours – but it is also an incredibly compelling movie that has so much depth and heart to it. For anyone who was “bored” by this movie or found it to be too long, I think it really just isn’t for them (which is okay, of course) but again, that doesn’t make it bad. I found the film to be incredibly compelling from start to finish, including the last third. A lot of people felt like that was an entirely different movie, and potentially should have been cut, but I disagree – telling the story of the creation of the atomic bomb cannot and should not be told without the fallout of what happened to Oppie in both his personal and professional life, as well as the larger impact it had on human civilization as a whole. Ending the movie after the Trinity test projects the movie as an action, focused on the actual bomb itself and the climax of it’s on-screen explosion. But the movie is about it’s creator, and the entire timeline of his struggle with the creation, use, and mass production of the most dangerous weapon ever created. Anyways, I’m getting distracted and a little soap-boxy so I will move on. At the end of the day, I can firmly say that this movie is just absolutely incredible, with elite level performances from every department: writing, directing, casting, cinematography, soundtrack, sound design, acting, editing and more. This was far and away my favorite movie of 2023!
As I mentioned at the top, there were a bunch of movies that were released this year that I just didn’t have the time to watch – I kept myself busy with my Matt Damon career retrospective, as well as catching up on older movies that were deserving of a watch (Requiem for a Dream, The Lighthouse, Wind River and The Truman Show, to name a few). With that being said, here are a few of the movies from 2023 that are on my watchlist:
- Napoleon, directed by Ridley Scott
- The Killer, directed by David Fincher
- Miguel Wants to Fight, directed by Oz Rodriguez
- Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese
- Air, directed by Ben Affleck
- Polite Society, directed by Nida Manzoor
- Leave the World Behind, directed by Sam Esmail
- Past Lives, directed by Celine Song
- American Fiction, directed by Cord Jefferson
2023 was an incredible year for me, in terms of movie watching. I downloaded Letterboxd in February, I started this blog in September, and I watched close to 100 different movies in the calendar year. I can’t wait to see what 2024 brings, and I look forward to continuing to watch movies, and sharing my thoughts on them with you!
