The Top 10 Best Films Of 2023
Jacob Smith
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It’s that time of the year again and we have reached the point where I take it upon myself to rank the top 10 movies of 2023. While only a few good movies got mainstream attention in 2023, the year was great for character-driven films, historical dramas, and Asian thrillers. If you are unfamiliar with a few of these movies, I suggest you check them out — they are worthy of your precious time.
After sitting through 107 movies this year, from all around the world, it was all well worth it after finding some hidden gems. So, without further ado, let us all welcome 2024 with some of the best movies of 2023!
10. Sympathy For The Devil
Starting off this year’s list with our #10 film, Sympathy for the Devil. For the last decade, Nicholas Cage has been associated with numerous VOD movies that he used to financially pull himself out of debt.
Sympathy for the Devil is a film about a young dad only referred to as the driver as he arrives at a Las Vegas Hospital awaiting the birth of his new child while his wife is in labor.
However, before he has an opportunity to enter the hospital he is interrupted by a man only referred to as the passenger (Cage) who holds him at gunpoint and demands that he drives him to where he needs to go.
A film that is a glamorous ability to paint a beautiful picture with the limited tools in it’s arsenal is exactly the type of filmmaking the American film industry needs to get back to.
Cage and Kinnaman are effectively the film’s only two actors to the film lives and breathes on their dynamic. Sympathy for the Devil is a sleeper hit of a film and without getting into spoilers, a manic Nicolas Cage seems not so crazy but the time we get to the ending.
9. Plane
It’s rare to get an action thriller in movie theaters that doesn’t have any strings attached. A movie that isn’t trying to push a female lead in the role of a man, a film that isn’t trying to push some woke lecture disguised as cinema, and a film that doesn’t stop the story mid-film to add a LGBTQ character to please the GLAAD Lobby and Sarah Kate Ellis.
Plane is a film that is precisely what it claims to be; a film about a plane. The film stars Gerald Butler as a commercial pilot taking a small group of passengers and a prison transport on a short flight.
When a massive storm in the region threatening to make things difficult for the pilots, after the plane is struck by lightning, the flight makes an emergency landing on the island of Jolo — a remote area of the Philippines ruled by heavily armed anti-government militias.
The story never overcomplicates itself that it becomes hard to follow or loses the plot. The film is straight to the point, so much so it almost feels like a throwback to the type of film that you would see in the 1990s when action movies reigned King.
All of the classic tropes of action movies are here from explosions to gunfights to strong masculine protagonists. Plane is exactly the B-movie that moviegoers need in the time when A-films are failing their audiences.
8. No More Bets
Gambling has become a huge part of American culture and Western culture in general. Much like the fine print of a contract, the dangers and the negative ramifications of gambling are rarely ever discussed when the industry is looking for popularity. The #8 position goes to No More Bets — a film that comes straight out of China.
No More Bets follows the story of a programmer named Pan Sheng (Lay Zhang) who is lured overseas by a supposed high-paying job. However, it turns out he and a group of his peers are duped by the promise of employment when it is a slave camp-like fraud factory.
The film mirrors real-life issues and what goes on behind the scenes of so many offshore betting accounts across the world.
The film is an exposé on the dark side of money as so many people are willing to do anything to obtain it whether it is detrimental to themselves and those around them. No More Bets is an eye-opening film that everyone should watch before investing their funds in shady overseas booking odds.
7. Godzilla Minus One
It’s been a rough go for Godzilla fans here in the United States of America for the last couple of decades. The reason why Godzilla Minus One is one of the monster’s best films to come out in the last decade due to its ability to make the audience care about its human characters; it’s done brilliantly.
Godzilla Minus One is a redemption story about a man consumed by cowardice. A man struggling to live with the guilt of a failed mission is given a second opportunity to be the hero when his town needs him the most. Minus one is a throwback to the early days of Godzilla, a monstrous beast that only cares about killing and destroying everything in its sight. For those who grew up in the age of Godzilla where it was nothing more than cheesy costumes and a low budget thriller.
This film was produced for less than $15 million. A far cry from the near $200 million budgets that we have seen from the American productions over the last several years. One thing that can’t be denied is that Godzilla minus one is an absolute win for Godzilla fans minus one combines a great emotional story, great pacing and enough onscreen disaster to rival Disney’s current financial state.
6. The Iron Claw
If you’re a fan of pro wrestling, then you know all about the Von Erich family, the rise of a pro wrestling dynasty that came to fame in the 19 eighties had a tragic and I do mean tragic fall. My #6 is a film for all the pro wrestling fans out there.
The Iron Claw is a great film for ‘normie’ audiences who had not been previously disposed to how pro wrestling worked during the territory days of the 1980s. If you’re a hardcore fan, or if you’ve been watching wrestling long enough, a lot of these names that you see in this film will be very familiar to you: Rick Flair, Dusty Rhodes and Harley Race.
This is a film that is all about family values. Zac Efron’s portrayal of Kevin Von Erich is the avatar that the audience uses to identify with the family when it comes to the Von Erich’s family, they only have two things, family and wrestling.
Efron deserves a lot of credit for the physical transformation he went through in order to portray the character. The Iron Claw is certainly one of the top films of the year. however, it’s not going to be an easy watch for anyone, especially if you have a checkered past with your own family. Pro Wrestling may be fake, but this story certainly isn’t.
5. Sound of Freedom
The first film in the top 5 goes to the film that angered Hollywood the most in 2023. Sound of Freedom is a movie that was shot in 2018 under the 20th Century Fox banner was shelved by Disney after the merger. In the years that followed, members of the media began to smear the credibility of Tim Ballard and his outfit Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.), an anti-sex trafficking organization that has conducted multiple sting operations around the world.
Media outlets such as Vice News and Slate criticized the organization and questioned its legitimacy by trying to connect the organization to QAnon. The media sought to damage the credibility of Tim Ballard and his efforts to expose child sex trafficking around the world. Sound of Freedom is one of the most important films to come out in the last couple of decades and it only scratches the surface of a much bigger problem. While the reality of these activities may be shocking and disturbing, the media doesn’t want anyone to know the people who funds and runs these types of endeavors.
This film forces the audience to accept the reality that they can no longer ignore. While it is not sexually explicit, much of the content of this movie is very hard to watch as it puts children in compromising positions. It’s not the portrayals that make these scenes uncomfortable, it is the reality that this is happening to children every day in Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the United States of America. If every major media organization in the world wants you to not watch something, that is exactly what you need to be watching.
4. Switch
Being one of the most famous people in the world has its upsides. The riches, the women, and the ability to write your own ticket in life. However, the fantasy of fame has been shaken by the reality of the cost. The next couple of movies on this list take us to South Korea.
This brings us to Switch, a film that mixes the concepts of Freaky Friday and A Christmas Carol — finding itself being one of the most positive, heartwarming films of the year. The art of comedy has really tanked over the last couple of decades in the American cinema industry. The message of this film is family over fame.
Park Kang lives the life of a vapid actor who has nothing to show for his life outside of material things. The plot strips him away from his status and forces him to focus on things in life that are actually important, the things in life that he has lived away from for most of his life.
At first, he rebels against the idea of being a stay-at-home dad and dealing with young kids and learning how to be a husband. But he realizes that this is the one piece of his life that he has taken for granted and grows to appreciate it so much more. Switch is a feel-good traditional comedy that stands out as one of the best films to come out this year. A well-paced movie that leaves audiences with a positive outlook of life which is a luxury in modern cinema, so take it when you can get it.
3. The Childe
The Childe asks a very tough question: between a charismatic assassin and the head of a dangerous corporation, who do you trust when both sides have a gun playing at your head? The Childe is a story about a boxer Marco (Kang Tae-Ju) growing up in the Philippines.
Born to a Korean father and a Filipino mother, Marco struggles with his identity but he also struggles with the declining health of his mother.A borderline psychotic hitman shows interest in Marco right away, the closer that Marco gets to Korea the more he realizes that he has been brought there under false pretenses.
The film makes you sympathize with the protagonist who is born with Korean and Filipino backgrounds which is usually a result of sex tourism in the region. When he seemingly finds his family to bring in a sense of belonging, it turns out that he’s just a pawn and a much bigger plan. The film is certainly bloody and brutal much like audiences have been used to with the John Wick franchise.
The Childe is a film of perspectives. Audiences are seeing three different perspectives play out at the same time giving us different sides of the story. Kim Seon-ho becomes the center of every scene he’s in. He is the primary focus of the film as the plot pushes forward. For a movie that pushes two hours, the pacing is excellent and the story never drags on to the point where you can feel its run time. The Childe straps its audience into its seats and proceeds to bring them along the ride to a very satisfying conclusion.
2. Tetris
On paper, a movie about Tetris should not be exciting unless you were around in the late 1980s to remember the craze that video game created.
The film is placed in the backdrop of the late 1980s at the cusp of the fall of the USSR and Germany. The relations between the United States and Russia at the time were still volatile and a man wanting to buy the rights of a video game was viewed as an enemy of the state as a man was seen as capitalism opening the doors to the country.
Taron Egerton gives a strong performance in this movie as video game designer Henk Rogers and it takes a film that could have come out flat with the subject matter of the film and makes it a very engaging story that never loses its pace throughout the course of the early two hours.
Sofia Lebedeva, who is still young in her career, does a very impressive job with the limited amount of screen time that she has — playing essentially two different characters as a naive interpreter versus a more Stern KGB officer defending the National Security of the country.
Tetris is an absolute diamond in the rough of dark pile of streaming service films that does the job of a major motion picture.
1. Oppenheimer
The #1 of 2023 shouldn’t be a big surprise. They’re only a handful of filmmakers left in Hollywood that inspire actors to bring their A-game and Christopher Nolan is one of them.
Oppenheimer is the strongest acted film in 2023. The movie has a catalog of big-name actors including Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, and others who poured their hearts and souls into the characters that they portray. Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt will certainly be getting a second look when Academy Awards season rolls around next year.
The really impressive feat about this film is that even actors who you wouldn’t expect great performances from knock it out of the park. Alden Ehrenreich, who was once criticized by Lucasfilm for not having enough talent and needing acting lessons less than 5 years ago, puts on a performance that is one of the most standout jobs in the film.
Nolan’s ability to direct talent is nothing short of impressive, being able to get the absolute best out of his actors for this movie. While the movie has pacing issues in the 1st act, once the wheels get turning audiences become engrossed in the story to the point where they won’t even notice its 3-hour runtime.
There isn’t much more to say about this film that doesn’t go into spoiler territory. Oppenheimer is a film that gets an A+ for effort from everyone who is associated with the filmmaking process, and their reward is a movie that deserves to be seen on the big screen.
NEXT: The Top 10 Best Films Of 2022
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