Top 10 Movies of 2023

Some years I do a TV and Movies countdown and some I pick one or the other. This year it’s going to be my favourite films of 2023 though it must be said I really enjoyed the recent Boat Story, The Tourist and the incredible Happy Valley… plus Doctor Who has been great too.

I went to see about 40 films this year and there were lots of good films, several very worthy and memorable films and one which I thought one of the most amazing experiences I’ve lived through at the cinema… and that includes one film being abandoned when the roof water tanks ruptured and trying to watch a Wesley Snipes action film as a real life drugs deal was happening two seats away!

Today in the U.K. it is Boxing Day, a day synonymous with Christmas. Crazy weird people will go and waste money on things they don’t need just because it’s half price. Some trust tour guides go out to work but for most people it’s a day to curl up on the sofa, pig out and watch something good on the telly.

If you find one of these 10 films then you won’t go far wrong.

10. The Killer

I’m not one to watch films on the small screen unless at least I’ve seen them on the big screen. Just like after all these years I don’t get people watching things on their phones, films should be seen on the biggest and best screen possible with no distractions.

The Killer however is a Netflix film and so television it was.

This is a very meticulous  film about a very meticulous, some might say neurotic man in the shape of  Michael Fassbender’s assassin. We watch him sleep sitting upright on the construction site of a Paris WeWork.

As he laments on all topics from philosophy to politics to morality, we see his very tight, meticulous routine. He depends on his smartwatch to monitor his heart rate. He only wears clothes that will make him look like every other tourist. He eats a McDonald’s breakfast but not the bread. Everything is completely intentional, and nothing is left to chance. 

So the audience is as surprised as we are when he misses his target and accidentally kills a civilian. He races against the clock to clean up the mess he has just made. However, there is a protocol for things like this. It results in the Killer’s partner being assaulted to within an inch of her life.

The remainder of the film sees the The Killer eliminate all those involved in his partner’s attack, and make sure every last one of them violently pays the price whether they are sympathetic characters or not.

One of the things I liked about the film is how The Killer doesn’t soften his personality or learn anything about himself. What you see is what you get.

9. Thanksgiving

If there is one genre of film I watch more than any other it is horror, of one sort or the other. This was my favourite this year. An axe-wielding maniac terrorises residents of Plymouth, Massachusetts, after a Black Friday riot ends in tragedy. Picking off victims one by one, the seemingly random revenge killings soon become part of a larger, sinister plan.

I watched my first horror film before I was of school age and growing up in the 1980’s watched dozens if not hundreds of horror films and this one reminded me of some of them. It’s very slick and suspenseful for a slasher film. I’m not sure I’m meant to laugh at people getting murdered but some people kind of deserve it (oh I could put some political names here). There are fun and imaginative deaths and for once I didn’t totally get who the murderer was.

8. Empire of Light

Set in an English coastal town in the early 1980s, the film is about the power of human connection during turbulent times. It stars Olivia Colman, Micheal Ward. Olivia plays a middle-aged duty manager of a struggling cinema in a struggling town. She is struggling too with her mental health which is not helped by her sex pest boss.

Then young, inspiring and charismatic Stephen comes in and sweeps her off her feet (as we Stephens do). 

It’s a beautifully shot film and set around 1981, a time I just about remember that was very tumultuous in the U.K. and Stephen being a black man allows the film to also show what life was like for some new arrivals to these shores.

I had waited months to watch this film and it didn’t disappoint.

7. The Creator

Some films just sort of appear out of almost nowhere and having enjoyed M3gan a few months earlier, I thought ‘Why Not?’

As a future war between the human race and artificial intelligence rages on, ex-special forces agent Joshua is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI. The Creator has developed a mysterious weapon that has the power to end the war and all of mankind. As Joshua and his team of elite operatives venture into enemy-occupied territory, they soon discover the world-ending weapon is actually an AI in the form of a young child.

The Creator is a completely mind-blowing in terms of its visuals and the scope of its futuristic vision of society. It really did create an entirely new world though often only a little away from the one we live in today.

Perhaps they could have cut 10 minutes from the film but I just remember what a ride it was and thinking how they don’t really make films on this scale any more.

6. Eileen

Eileen is apparently based on a book, not that I’ve read it. I partly went to see this film because it looked just by cup of tea and also because it stars Thomasin McKenzie who came to my attention in the utterly brilliant Last Night In Soho during Covid.

In 1964 Massachusetts, a young secretary becomes enchanted by Rebecca, the glamorous new counsellor at the prison where she works. Their budding friendship soon takes a twisted turn when Rebecca reveals a dark secret.

Eileen is a boring young lady in a boring job with boring interests and a boring town. Even her bullying father says how boring she is but when she meets Rebecca she becomes entirely infatuated. In fact her father says she has almost become interesting.

It’s a slow burning film with lovely period detailing as we wait for something to happen and then all of sudden something happens in a huge and shocking way.

Anne Hathaway plays Rebecca and I must say she is generally someone I’ve just never taken a liking to. Kind of the epitome of a cookie-cutter Hollywood actress. She has 55 entries on IMDB and until now have only seen 2 of them, the trailers for the others having put me off and the 2 that I did see, well she failed to live up to my minimal expectations.

In Eileen though she is tremendous and I read at the time how some thought it her best performance ever. I didn’t know she could act!

When the very unexpected crunch point hits in this film, one just doesn’t know what’s happening, what’s happening next or how on earth it’s going to play out.

It’s rather Film Noir and I left very satisfied and rather shocked at what I had watched.

5. Oppenheimer

Unless you’re a huge fan of Barbie then Oppenheimer doesn’t need much of an introduction. During World War II, Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves Jr. appoints physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer to work on the top-secret Manhattan Project.

Oppenheimer and a team of scientists spend years developing and designing the atomic bomb. Their work comes to fruition on July 16, 1945, as they witness the world’s first nuclear explosion, forever changing the course of history.

If you enjoy Christopher Nolan films or wonder The Imitation Game about Alan Turing or The Theory of Everything about Professor Stephen Hawking then you’ll like this.

Cillian Murphy is wonderful in it as all us Peaky Blinder fans knew he would be. It is a very sombre film and a little predictable on how the establishment stitches Oppenheimer up afterwards.

It’s hard to put a good gloss on the invention of Nuclear Weapons unless you’re wanting to invade Ukraine but sometimes films aren’t there just to entertain or even make you happy. This is one of those.

4. Killers of the Flower Moon

Based on David Grann’s broadly lauded best-selling book, “Killers of the Flower Moon” is set in 1920s Oklahoma and depicts the serial murder of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation, a string of brutal crimes that came to be known as the Reign of Terror.

Killers Of The Flower Moon is quite epic in terms of its runtime, theme, and achievement in introducing to the wider world what surely must be one of the most overlooked stories of modern American history.

Everything in the long trailed advertising made me think this was the film for me. Not least seeing Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro onscreen together let alone the chance to enjoy another and surely one of the last great films by Martin Scorsese.

The acting is strong all round here and I was particularly taken by Lilly Gladstone who plays Mollie Burkhart. There is gorgeous cinematography aplenty and a powerful and slowly evolving story that becomes ever more engrossing.

I don’t really have any problems with the film or its epic length, this is the sort of stuff I love. I suppose I do have a problem with the contents of the film. Not just the conspiracy of so many members of the white community to get their hands on these oil rich hands but perhaps more so the women of the Osage Nation.

I don’t expect any better of white men of the era and position depicted in this film. Of course they are underhand and only have eyes for oil and money… but what made so many Osage women blind to this as it just seemed obvious from the start to me and that was without knowing anything about the history.

It’s a fantastic film though and any critique above is not on the film but the sad real life events it depicts.

3. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Who doesn’t love a bit of Indiana Jones? I remember watching the very first film when it came out? The chance to see one last adventure with someone who loves history and hates Nazis as much as I do was something not to be missed.

I’m glad this one got away from the sometimes infantile approach of George Lucas that was so evident in the previous film a decade or so ago with the Crystal Skulls. It would have been a bit tragic to bow out on a low.

This was everything I hoped the film would be and I think better than we might have any expectations for it to be also.

I think the Roger Ebert sites says something along the lines that the film is never boring without every being exciting and to a degree I understand the sentiment though it’s kind of what I expect from Indiana Jones having watched it for 40 years. Nevertheless there were sequences that were exciting to me and funny too and I remember thinking how life will be a little poorer for never having a new Indiana Jones chase to experience. I’m sure most fans will really enjoy Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Harrison Ford’s age isn’t ignored and is almost integral to the plot.

For a more in-depth look at this most recent and possibly final Indy film then click on https://stephenliddell.co.uk/2023/07/04/indiana-jones-and-the-dial-of-destiny/

2. The Great Escaper

Based on a true story that made national news about pensioner Bernard Jordan who in 2014, absconded from his care home in Hove, Sussex UK to attend an event in France marking the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings. After the local Police were notified the care home got a call that evening to say Mr Jordan had been found safe and well in France. He returned a few days later having made his way to the event.

This was a film I’d been waiting to see for a long time. In fact I wrote a blog post almost a decade ago when Mr. Jordan did his Great Escape.

It’s a wonderful film with a wonderful spirit. The dialogue is witty and meaningful and it marks the final appearance of Glenda Jackson who died shortly after filming was completed.

It’s also said this will be the final film for Michael Caine who came out of retirement just to play the part. For anyone like me who grew up and spent 50 years watching his career and his almost uniformly brilliant films, you have to see this. What a world away from the brilliant Zulu, Get Carter, The Italian Job and The Man Who Would Be King. The Great Escaper is brilliant too, a bit sad, a bit funny. 

Bernard Jordan was brilliant and so in a different way has Sir Michael Caine been.

1. Saltburn

Actor Barry Keoghan stars as Oliver Quick, a “scholarship case” attending Oxford University in 2006 alongside hundreds of the poshest young people in the land. He got there by relentless hard , even his tutor was shocked that he read the Reading List the previous summer whereas the other students largely got their places through legacy, family names, and donations.

Struggling to find his place at Oxford University, student Oliver Quick finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton, who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family’s sprawling estate, for a summer never to be forgotten.

A month or two after watching Saltburn, I still can’t get over how enjoyably shocking this film is.

Saltburn is a story told with fantastic cutting wit about the a certain type of upper class. The kind of vaguely aristocratic, disorderly decadent, and woefully snobby folks who boast appalling wealth and privilege. It has the outrageousness in parts of a film like Babylon and scenes that can be equally traumatic, hilarious and exhilerating.

For a more complete look at my favourite film of 2023 then head below.

I’ll definitely be watching this one again, just not on a phone!

Saltburn – Film Review