Gregg’s Triumphantly Terrific Top 10 Films of 2023
And with that, another year of cinema has come to a close. As always, there were standouts, letdowns, pleasant surprises, and your generally fun popcorn films. Reflective of 2023’s greatest pictures, the award ceremonies should be interesting in early 2024. Just when you thought Cillian Murphy was a shoe-in for a Best Actor Oscar, here comes Bradley Cooper in Maestro. That’s a potential coin flip right there. Meanwhile, Carey Mulligan seems to have the Best Actress category all wrapped up, in my humble opinion. Those things aside, the following list, as always, is not totally focused on critical acclaim, but what films I enjoyed the most this year. With the formalities out of the way, let’s get down to business!
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Pleasant Surprises: Ghosted / Tetris / Godzilla Minus One
Biggest Letdown: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Best Popcorn Flick: Extraction 2
Best Acted: Oppenheimer / Maestro
The Film I Most Regret Not Seeing: Golda
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And now, onto my best of the year!
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10. Sound of Freedom
This was a film which did a lot with a little, utilizing a minimal budget to bring to a light a powerful message. Jim Caviezel stars as real life government agent Tim Ballard who goes above and beyond in his attempts to infiltrate and attack the child pornography industry while minimizing human trafficking. The film was full of tension, drama, and heartfelt reunions.
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9. Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 3
The final chapter in the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, at least from James Gunn, who’s since made the jump to orchestrate the rebooted DCU. While the movie dumbed down the character of Adam Warlock, it was still an action-filled, laugh-inducing romp that was reminiscent of when Marvel films were consistently great.
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8. Champions
It was one of the first films I saw in 2023 and is the English version of its Spanish counterpart titled Campeones. While having never seen the foreign film, I can say Woody Harrelson excels as minor league basketball coach who has to serve community service for some unruly deeds. His payment to society is coaching a special needs basketball team and the delivery is both humorous and feel-good.
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7. Gran Turismo
Video games have often struggled in making the creative transition to the big screen. This was not the case for Gran Truismo, which instead of being just a film about car races, became more of a biopic of driver Jann Mardenborough. In real life, Mardenborough excelled at the video game in his bedroom, only to win a competition and become a legitimate race car driver, and a successful one at that. This movie has adrenaline, speed, turmoil, and success all rolled into one.
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6. The Covenant
Of all the Guy Ritchie movies, this one felt the least Guy Ritchie of them all. Jake Gyllenhaal stars as John Kinley, an Army Master Sergeant aided by Ahmed, an Afghani interpreter (Dar Salim) who are seeking to weed out the Taliban. After a catastrophic injury, Kinley is returned to the states, but a bounty is put on the interpreter’s head. Kinley takes it upon himself to head back into Afghanistan under the miliary’s radar to extract Ahmed and his family. In a word, ‘intensity’ best describes this film.
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5. The Iron Claw
This December arrival not only crashed the party of my top 10 list but shot up the ranks rather quickly. Covering the von Erich wrestling family, the New York Times described it best as ‘body slams and broken lives’. It’s a dark tale but one that needed told as we watch the inevitable rise of the four von Erich brothers, only to see their unfortunate descent. While I don’t know if Zac Efron’s performance will be worthy of Oscar talk, it was certainly powerful and the best of his career.
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4. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
Thank Goodness! We finally got a good D&D movie. The fun I continue to have with this Honor Among Thieves cannot be understated. Chris Pine was a great pick to lead the film and Directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein corrected a lot of the errors from its predecessor a few decades earlier. The movie did a great service to fans of the RPG mentioning popular locales and featuring a variety of the magnificent and imaginative races and characters from its worlds. We got adventure, we got humor, and we got dragons. What else could you ask for?
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3. Godzilla Minus One
Well, I can’t say I saw this coming. I don’t know what I expected from director Takashi Yamazaki, but it wasn’t the greatness that Godzilla Minus One delivered. The film excelled in making Godzilla a secondary character and putting the focus on the human element. The lead character is a failed kamikaze pilot who is simultaneously dealing with the shame of that and the PTSD of WWII. The relationships that unfold are well developed, but Godzilla is something to behold here. The CGI is absolutely exceptional and the destruction is tremendous.
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2. Air
Another early 2023 viewing, I just wanted to be entertained and educated by the deal that inked Michael Jordan to Nike and the incredible financial development that ensued. Ben Affleck directs and co-stars as Nike CEO Phil Knight. Matt Damon shines here as the man who closed what would be the most mammoth deal in the history of sports apparel. Air was a fluid, cohesive delivery that got to the point and focused on the events of working up to the deal, rather than putting the entire spotlight on Jordan himself. It was brilliant if nothing else.
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1. Oppenheimer
From the moment I saw the teaser poster in the summer of 2022 and became aware Christopher Nolan was attached to it, I knew this was going to be something special. Nolan masterfully covers the life of Robert J. Oppenheimer, the architect of the atomic bomb, both during the weapon’s development and after the close of the war. The movie does well to highlight the emotional weight that Oppenheimer carried as the result of the destruction and deaths of his creation. Cillian Murphy makes one incredibly strong argument here for an Oscar as does co-star Robert Downey Jr. portraying Lewis Strauss, political nemesis to Oppenheimer. This movie is simply exceptional from start to finish.
