Between the two podcasts, staying ahead of the release calendar, hosting film club on Saturdays, and carving out time to watch movies, I haven’t had much extra time to dedicate to reviewing movies like I used to. I am sad about that, but one of the things I have been working on this year is a project I’m loosely calling Movies 365.
My goal is to watch one movie for each day of the year but not necessarily a movie every day. So, I get some days off and also have to pull some double headers. Features, documentaries, short films, or rewatches…it doesn’t matter as long as it counts toward the total. And not every movie has to be from this calendar year.
I am doing well but currently, a bit off the pace, sitting at 175 total through the midway point of the year. However, 66 of those films are 2023 releases in the US and I thought it would be interesting to look back on what has been a good cinematic year so far. July 2nd marked the official halfway point of the year, but I decided not to rush and to enjoy the 4th of July. So, I hope those who celebrate had a safe and enjoyable one!
While I stopped rating movies a while ago, and rankings aren’t my thing either, I still have a loosely organized internal system for delineating quality. So, I tried to organize the list as best I could without spending countless hours in the weeds deciding between things not close to the top of my internal hierarchy. Instead, I’m going to highlight the movies that have stood out to me the most through the first half of the year.
No matter how I slice it, regardless of my favorites, I am pretty comfortable that I can safely say that there are five films from the first half of the year that stand out above the rest.
Spider-man: Across the Spider-Verse
Maybe I’m just a simpleton who is easily amused but if you have read my stuff at all, you’ll know I don’t just slurp up every new comic book film as the next best thing. There is a reason that this movie took over the #1 all-time spot on Letterboxd and forced them to change their formula. Its predecessor won Best Animated Feature in 2019 and I still felt like it was underappreciated. This sequel picks up where that one left off, capturing a huge range of emotion, humor, action, and storytelling. It should be the front-runner for Best Animated Feature again but, more importantly, it’s a fantastic example of how effective animated films can be and should be considered for Best Picture at this point.
Asteroid City
I was in the camp of The French Dispatch getting mostly pushed to the side in 2021 so I am really glad to see so many people rallying around Wes Anderson’s latest. I wound up seeing it twice in theaters and enjoyed it more the second time. One friend described it as “phenomenal fun” and another said it was “one of his funniest”. I am glad they had that experience with it but I see this as one of Anderson’s most personal and serious works. Obviously, his style as a filmmaker only lets it get so heavy but this is a meditation on grief and loss and felt much more existential than his other films.
Past Lives
When it comes to the end-of-year awards season, no movie through the first half of the year had the kind of buzz that Celine Song’s Past Lives did. It’s a beautiful film with incredible intimacy between its characters and Song uses that to tell this story very well. An honest look at not just reconciling feelings from your past but also how adolescent love is different from adult love, where those two share common ground, and what get’s left behind in the process. In the moments after the credits rolled I was less sure about how good I thought it was, but as I gained more distance from it the tenderness and warmth in which it unravels the complexity of its theme continued to grow on me.
Beau Is Afraid
Easily the most divisive choice among the top candidates, Beau Is Afraid is a ‘love it or leave it’ film. I love it, that’s why it’s here, but it’s also a 3-hour anxiety attack and I can totally understand not enjoying that or even being interested. However, it’s a very creative and well-made film too! Ari Aster’s first two films, Hereditary and Midsommar, both look at grief through different lenses and I appreciate that he continued that theme here in examining how generational guilt plays into processing grief. Aster is also incredibly fortunate to have Joaquin Pheonix as the lead here because his steadfast charisma anchors the film while his character is tormented for 3 hours. There’s nothing else like it.
John Wick: Chapter 4
No snapshot of 2023 would be complete without John Wick: Chapter 4 in the conversation. It’s not easy to be exceedingly stylish, packed to the brim with action, and make good use of themes like honor and loyalty in a meaningful way all in the same film. I like this franchise but I wouldn’t call myself its biggest fan and after JW3 (although it was the best-looking movie in the franchise at the time) I wasn’t especially excited for a fourth installment. However, Chad Stahelski made this one even better-looking, more action-packed, and most importantly, more in tune with the core identity of the character and his story. Some of the action scenes do get fairly redundant and add to the lengthy run time, but it’s just so damn fun to experience it all working in unison.
Outside of the “Top 5”, the grouping in this next section is much closer and that’s primarily where the minutia I want to avoid comes into play. Rather than meticulously moving one up and one down in the rankings for countless hours until I inevitably give up, I decided to just group them all together. There are some very good, interesting films in this tier that are worthy of your time and some of my favorites from the year are in this section too!
| A Thousand and One | Tetris | Sisu | Elemental |
| BlackBerry | A Good Person | Inside | Infinity Pool |
| Guardians Vol. 3 | Linoleum | Renfield | How to Blow Up a Pipeline |
| Sanctuary | The Blackening | God Is a Bullet | Chevalier |
| Evil Dead Rise | Dungeons & Dragons | Master Gardener | You Hurt My Feelings |
I am inevitably going to leave a lot of meat on the bone here because there are a lot of movies I have enjoyed this year. Whether that’s the remake of a beloved animated classic, a throwback to 60s era Kaiju, the end to one of the most oddly complete trilogies that nobody expected, a return to form for a horror director with a big reputation, a young director spreading their wings on a Stephen King adaptation, an international film about politics and honor, a tongue-in-cheek biopic parody, a hyper-stylized mystery, a classic Gerard Butler rompy-thriller, or opposite ends of a filmmakers’ creative spectrum, there was a lot to like!
| The Little Mermaid | Magic Mike’s Last Dance | Paint | Full River Red |
| Shin Ultraman | The Boogeyman | Operation Fortune | Plane |
| Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant | Knock at the Cabin | Missing |
I told myself I wasn’t going to spend extra time on this, but it isn’t working out exactly how I planned. Plus, I know I’ve been slacking on the reviews side of things so I felt that this was overdue.
Outside of the top two tiers, there are still 40 films on the board. However, as I mentioned before, I don’t want to spend energy having an internal debate over the merits of whether or not something should be ranked 59th or 60th. So, instead, I am going to close this out by highlightg some indie films I had a good time with but didn’t appear in the top two tiers.
| Door Mouse | Polite Society | Enys Men | Johnny & Clyde |
| Nefarious | Skinamarink | The Old Way | Moon Garden |
Thanks for reading! I still believe word of mouth is the best way to help, so if you enjoy what I’m doing, please tell somebody. And if you have a comment, I’d love to hear it! Liking, subscribing, and sharing go a long way too. As usual, be well, be safe, and have fun no matter how you get your movies!