CineD Movie of the Year 2023

The Something Awful Forums > Archives > Comedy Goldmine > The Goodmine > CineD Movie of the Year 2023

DMCrimson: Jan 2, 2005; Nap Ghost

I'll get my full reviews in shortly but here's my 2023 list:

10. Day of Wrath (1943)

Wow, the bar to being considered a witch back in the day was incredibly low! The movie can be slow but the ending is perfect.

9. BlackBerry

Yes, the rise-and-fall story as a whole will surprise no one, but the movie has so much fun hitting beats where the true story allows unique touches. And no one gets more fun moments than Glenn Howerton's character imploding in front of you.

8. The Banshees of Inisherin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouTXff7lvq4

The conflict is a flimsy excuse to spend two hours inside this bleak and stunted world with melancholy characters, but what a time you'll have!

7. The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On

You ever find a car that's completely covered in bumper stickers, like, including the hood and roof? Ok, now spend two hours with the guy who's driving it on his quest to find justice in the world. He's also violent and loves talking about himself so, keep happy that you get to watch him on video as a supremely memorable protagonist instead of having to put up with him in person despite how you may feel about his cause.

6. Nostalghia

"That" super-long scene is not only worth the wait, but a fitting capstone to a beautiful Tarkovsky movie.

5. Barbie

No movie this year generated more conversation than Barbie, and a sad amount of it is completely bad faith trying to pretend this was anything but a hilarious & successful cultural icon, but I had one quick addition: Has anyone else talked about the parallels between this and The Lego Movie? Not just as a successful toy-based movie, but how the toy's conflict is really a secondary driver to the creativity and conflict posed by real people who play with the toys? Hell, Will Ferrell appears as a conflicting authority character in both! Keep in mind, I absolutely loved The Lego Movie and the comparison is nothing but praise for the Barbie movie to pull some those themes into a different perspective.

4. How to Blow Up a Pipeline

Triple-A action movies costing hundreds of millions of dollars can't approach the level of tension and stakes within this low-budget movie. You just can't overlook the value of immersion, personal stakes among characters, or a thumping heartbeat synth soundtrack. If you love a good heist movie, this gets to the same feeling without, you know, a bank vault involved.

3. Floating Weeds (1959)

I actually don't like most of Ozu movies or his directing style, so it's a fun dilemma to love this movie for breaking away from why I felt bored with his other work. There�s more interesting camera work and melodrama here than all his other movies put together. The first hour is just like a great Shakespeare comedy that you haven't heard about yet. The second hour is not quite as good as that same comedy collapses into tragedy that piles on top of you.

2. Past Lives

Every other movie in the same moment would've made some ironic distance between what the characters and audience knows, how these two should be destined to end up together. But all praise to this movie to turn that expectation on it's head and allow the main three characters to fully understand the tension way ahead of time to twist the knife into your heart. Everyone knows the score, nothing will be changed because it's already too late. The last meeting before the taxi is the most heartbreaking scene in a movie I've seen in, christ, decades? I've seen a lot of emotionally devastating movies but hard to think of one that tops Past Lives.

1. The Boy and The Heron

I let myself buy into hype if I truly think the media is going to be good, so I get excited about Tears of the Kingdom or Cyberpunk 2077 but didn't buy into "Miyazaki's last movie" as a selling point. Studio Ghibli hasn't released a true classic in a while and what's to say this last idea is any better? Turns out, Studio Ghibli absolutely crushed this last movie and Miyazaki is going out on top. Take the dreamlike logic fantasy world of Spirited Away but now it's The Odyssey about a child finding closure and, surprise, a meaningful endcap to how we build a new world for ourselves instead of continuing a past world out of inertia. What an absolute triumph that ranks among his very best, and arguably is his best.

DMCrimson fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Dec 28, 2023