I’m creating my movie best-of lists retroactively. See all of them.
Hard to believe my last retrospective list in this series was almost two years ago. But I recently rewatched what ended up as my top two movies on this list and realized I hadn’t done this movie year yet, so here we are.
I was 10-11 years old in 1998, so the movies I saw at the time were thusly limited: Mighty Joe Young at the theater, Spice World at a sleepover, The Prince of Egypt and The Parent Trap on steady VHS rotation. None of which, alas, made my list, but thanks anyways for the memories…
On to the list…
I knew I loved this movie but a recent rewatch confirmed it’s an all-timer. It’s easy to forget just how dark the premise is, and how deeply the in-movie cast and crew had to commit to perpetuating this illusion for so long in spite of the many ethical concerns. But the concept, the cast, and the execution are all A+ work. And it’s only 1 hour and 40 minutes. So glad it’s that and not some 12-episode limited series.
A foundational cinematic text for my budding cinephile self who saw it at around 12 years old. Funny how the cascade of supporting players (Ted Danson, Dennis Farina, Bryan Cranston, Nathan Fillon) meant nothing to me at the time but now looks both impressive and odd.
This is Peak Romcom. Hanks and Ryan and Ephron and New York City and witty repartee and dramatic stakes and bookstores—it’s all there in a literary love note to love itself. See also: 1940’s The Shop Around the Corner, the movie this is based on.
Unequivocally one of Bruce Willis’s best roles, not to mention the cavalcade of character actors filling out the ensemble. Story-wise it makes no sense, but as a comedic blockbuster adventure there are few better.
Feels like the forgotten Pixar at this point, coming out at the beginning of their run and nestled between the first two Toy Story movies. But it has all the elements Pixar is known for, on top of being a Seven Samurai rehash with insects.
I’ve never forgotten the scene of Bud helping his mom reapply her makeup to cover up her post-transformation color. In a movie that’s basically one giant metaphor, that tactility really packs a punch.
Speaking of never forgetting, there are some brutal moments in this one—both physically and rhetorically.
It would be a while before I became familiar with Terrence Malick and the significance of this movie as his return to filmmaking. But looking back now, it makes for a great contrast with Saving Private Ryan.
As a late-‘90s, midwestern, snow-laden crime noir with peculiar characters, it’s like Fargo’s more serious older brother. And if both of those movies can teach us anything, it’s to never, ever take the money. Very pleasing to see Bill Paxton in a full-fledged leading role, displaying the chops he exhibited in so many supporting roles.
One of the many romcoms I grew up with on steady rotation. It’s been a minute since I’ve seen it but I was always impressed with the humor and drama and romance of it all.
Honorable mentions:
As with last year’s list, I decided to skip the usual pressure to make a top 10 by the end of the year without having seen a bunch of the eligible movies. Instead I took my time, waiting to watch titles as they hit streaming or Blu-ray so I’d have a better shot at a list that more accurately reflected my favorites from 2023.
There are still several I haven’t gotten to yet unfortunately (RIP my moviegoing after child #2). But with the Oscars upon us, I figured now would be the best time to close out another year in movies.
On to my top 10…
Odds are your enjoyment of this will be directly proportional to your enjoyment of the video shorts of Please Don’t Destroy, who wrote and starred in this rather ridiculous romp. I’m a huge fan, therefore I had a great time with this. Does it suffer from the SNL Movie Syndrome of feeling stretched out beyond its sketch-based form? A little bit. Is it also consistently hilarious? You bet.
If you make a documentary related to Back to the Future, I’m gonna watch it. This one also happens to be really well done, making creative use of reenactments alongside Fox’s talking heads, memoirs, and TV/movie appearances to tell his life story. And he’s still funny as hell despite the effects of Parkinson’s. (I had a blast interviewing the movie’s editor and geeking out about all things BTTF.)
There’s just nothing like a Yorgos Lanthimos movie. And there’s no one acting quite like Emma Stone these days. Their creative alchemy yielded this deeply weird, dark, funny, and feminist picaresque that had me alternating between “ha” and “huh?” quite frequently.
I never cease to marvel at the magic of musical theater, whatever the context. To go from absolutely nothing to a collection of songs, complex choreography, manufactured sets and costumes, all combined into an entertaining story? Sign me up every time. Cheers to this ensemble cast of young performers who managed to do that in this mockumentary while selling both the over-the-top satire of showbiz life and the earnest appreciation of doing what they love.
Christopher Nolan, call your agent: I’ve got a long list of supposedly “uncinematic” history books filled with people talking in rooms that Oppenheimer proves should in fact be turned into IMAX-worthy epics.
Weird how David Fincher can drop a sleek “The Bourne Identity meets Adaptation” gem like this starring A-lister Michael Fassbender and have it feel completely forgotten by year’s end. (That’s the Netflix Effect for you, I guess…) This story of an assassin cleaning up a botched job really opens up when you realize it’s actually a comedy, with said assassin the butt of the joke just as often as he is a savvy operator. More Fassbender/Fincher collabs, please.
Much like Oppenheimer, this is an excellent 2023 movie featuring a government contractor being interrogated for their motivations and questionable conduct related to sensitive national security intelligence. Unlike Oppenheimer, it’s only 82 minutes—yet remains a riveting, slow-burn docudrama with an impressive performance by Sydney Sweeney as Reality Winner.
A great coming of age story, family dramedy, exploration of religion, female-centric story, and year-in-the-life movie all in one. Kudos to writer-director Kelly Fremon Craig for sticking the landing in adapting a legendary story while also launching a career in Abby Ryder Fortson and surrounding her with A+ supporting talent.
Reports about the death of multiverse storytelling have been greatly exaggerated. As a middle sequel continuing the story of its predecessor and setting up the third installment, it has structural limitations that prevent it from hitting the same level as Into the Spider-Verse. But, much like its titular hero Miles Morales, damned if it doesn’t overcome the odds to spin an extraordinary web nevertheless.
This documentary follows a Tunisian family whose two eldest daughters succumbed to fundamentalism and joined ISIS, with the spin that the director (Kaouther Ben Hania) has hired actors to play the disappeared daughters and recreate scenes from the family’s history along with the remaining sisters and mother. This unique approach leads to some stunning emotional moments, not to mention a complicated and cathartic journey for the real family as they try to make sense of the ineffable with humanity, gravity, and even comedy. (Another riveting documentary—and favorite of 2021—I had top of mind while watching this was Netflix’s Procession, which also featured real survivors of a different sort reckoning with their trauma through artifice.)
Still haven’t seen: American Fiction, The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, The Taste of Things, Perfect Days
Other movies I enjoyed:
Non-2023 movies I watched and enjoyed:
I read 15 books in 2023, which is the lowest number since I started keeping track in 2010. A few factors contributed to this, including having a second baby in May and opting more often to watch movies in my free time.
So it goes. I’ll get back on the reading train in 2024. Until then, here are the books I did manage to read and enjoy last year.
See previous year in review posts.
My view from the end of all things 2023:
Here’s what this year looked like for me:
Pretty much every year I’ve done this list (since 2007), I’ve published it soon after the beginning of the year to coincide with the bevy of other year-end lists. But every year I’d end up watching more movies after publishing that would have been eligible and affected my list.
So I realized: what’s the rush? This year I took my time and saw what I could to give myself the best chance at an accurate accounting of my favorites of the year. I didn’t see everything I wanted to, but I did my best.
What makes my 2022 film year unique is that, according to my Letterboxd profile, I gave 4 stars (out of 5) to 18 movies, with nothing rated higher that stood out above the crowd. Maybe that says more about me than the movies themselves, but that still left me without a clear frontrunner.
Given that unusual parity, I thought it fitting to do an unranked, alphabetical list this time—something I haven’t done since 2014. All of these movies, plus many of the honorable mentions, stuck with me for different reasons.
On to my top 10…
Richard Linklater’s latest film synthesizes elements from two of his previous ones: it’s the memoiristic nostalgia of Boyhood mixed with the rotoscope animation style of A Waking Life. This is a closely observed, gently told, fantastically wrought, and personally held story that shows off Linklater’s knack for capturing the beauty of the quotidian. (Streaming on Netflix.)
Come for the absolutely gangbusters opening 10 minutes and stay for the tense, heart-pounding drama of Children of Men-meets-The Battle of Algiers in a French apartment complex. It’s hard to watch at times, but also has a “can’t look away” quality that makes it both deeply cinematic and compassionate at its core. (Streaming on Netflix.)
Much like Top Gun: Maverick, James Cameron’s long-gestating sequel offers incredible spectacle, impressive CGI, and powerful emotional beats that elevate its rather rote plot and character development into epic myth. Though, unlike Maverick, the resplendently rendered fictional world itself is the star even above the performers. Bring on the sequels!
I’ve been on a slightly downward trajectory with writer-director Damien Chazelle’s filmography: high on Whiplash, mixed-to-positive on La La Land, then kinda bored with First Man. His latest on Hollywood’s bacchanalian early years is everything but boring and jolted my Chazelle Meter back upward. Also a great (unofficial) prequel/double feature with Spielberg’s cinema-obsessed The Fabelmans.
South Korean writer-director Park Chan-wook is back after 2016’s The Handmaiden with a riveting slow-burn whodunit featuring Park Hae-il as an insomniac detective on a murder case and Tang Wei as his prime suspect—and complicated love interest. Part Gone Girl, part Vertigo, yet fully its own creation, the film combines Park’s technical prowess with a terrifically twisty narrative and a haunting conclusion. Don’t sleep on this one.
In this impressive debut feature from Carey Williams, three college roommates—two Black and one Latino—ready for a night of partying when they discover a young white girl passed-out drunk in their house. How they deal with that turns into a high-wire racial reckoning, tragicomedic social satire, and beautiful portrait of male friendship. Like Superbad meets Get Out. (Streaming on Amazon Prime.)
In a year full of autobiopics (Inarritu’s Bardo, Mendes’ Empire of Light, Gray’s Armageddon Time), Spielberg’s personal tale of the dark magic of moviemaking reigns supreme, and serves as a cinematic Rosetta Stone for his iconic decades-long career. It’s also the funniest Spielberg has been in a while. Michelle Williams and Paul Dano deliver top-notch performances, but it’s Gabriel LaBelle who wins the movie and our hearts with his earnest and affecting turn as the teenaged Spielberg stand-in Sammy. That kid—just like the man he represents—is going places!
A dirty, cringey, and gut-bustingly funny soul-cleanse. There’s just something about this crew of delightful degenerates debasing themselves for the sake of entertainment that warms my heart and makes me laugh harder than just about anything else.
Much like Avatar: The Way of Water, this dominated the box office, saved movie theaters (according to Spielberg), and provoked couch-jumping enthusiasm among its admirers. Though, unlike The Way of Water, it did so with sheer movie-star charisma atop the spectacle. Maverick, Cruise, and movie theaters: not dead yet.
I’ve realized that I will appreciate almost any movie that has something to say about religion, and that’s the case with this adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s excellent novel starring Florence Pugh as a skeptical nurse tending to a “miracle” child in mid-19th century Ireland. (Double feature recommendation: Anne Fontaine’s 2016 film The Innocents.) (Streaming on Netflix.)
Other movies I enjoyed:
Non-2022 movies I watched and enjoyed:
Gotta be honest: 2022 wasn’t a great reading year for me. I read 22 books, which was much worse than 31 in 2021 and just barely better than the 18 in 2020.
A lot of my potential reading opportunities were either taken up by movie watching, Cinema Sugar, or other leisure activities. Not a bad thing, to be clear—just the result of the ongoing calculus I have to make with my limited free time.
But reading is about quality, not quantity. And because my quantity of titles released in 2022 doesn’t justify a top 10 list, I’m gonna try something different and just list the titles I did read this year according to the star rating I gave them out of 5.
There were no 5-star books for me this year (my main man Steven Johnson got the closest), but enough good reading to keep me turning pages. Enjoy!
Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer by Steven Johnson (2021)
Haven by Emma Donoghue (2022)
Blood, Sweat & Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road by Kyle Buchanan (2022)
Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (2009)
How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith (2021)
The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman (2022)
Office BFFs: Tales of The Office from Two Best Friends Who Were There by Jenna Fischer & Angela Kinsey (2022)
Salty: Lessons on Eating, Drinking, and Living from Revolutionary Women by Alissa Wilkinson (2022)
The Twilight World by Werner Herzog (2022)
Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life by Lulu Miller (2020)
A World Lit Only By Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance by William Manchester (1992)
The Writing of the Gods: The Race to Decode the Rosetta Stone by Edward Dolnick (2021)
Book Lovers by Emily Henry (2022)
The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School by Neil Postman (1995)
The Bowery: The Strange History of New York’s Oldest Street by Stephen Paul Devillo (2017)
Everyday Sisu: Tapping into Finnish Fortitude for a Happier, More Resilient Life by Katja Pantzar (2022)
Hero on a Mission: A Path to a Meaningful Life by Donald Miller (2022)
Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age by Dennis Duncan (2021)
The Story of You: An Enneagram Journey to Becoming Your True Self by Ian Morgan Cron (2021)
We Had A Little Real Estate Problem by Kliph Nesteroff (2021)
The World’s Worst Assistant by Sona Movsessian (2022)
American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella (2008)
See previous year in review posts.
My view from the end of all things 2022:
(Not visible: the buffalo plaid pocket square accompanying the bowtie.)
The biggest thing that happened to my family this year was trying to have a second child. It was a long and demoralizing journey that ultimately ended successfully (due in late May), but it’ll take more than a bullet point to say why.
Beyond that, we just kept on livin’. Here’s what that looked like this year:
I’m creating my movie best-of lists retroactively. See all of them.
As usual with this silly but enjoyable series, I started by consulting my logbook for all the movies from 2000 I’ve seen. That initial list of 36 films had some pretty easy cuts (Men of Honor, My Dog Skip) and plenty of titles I liked but knew were bound to be honorable mentions.
Deciding on my final 10 was probably the easiest time I’ve had doing so in a while. Then again, it required me to cheat for the first time.
On to the list…
I mean, it’s one of the greatest films of all time—and not to mention in my Letterboxd Top 4—so what else would you expect? One scene that sticks out: showdown in the kitchen.
A personal and family favorite that’s not only underrated as a romantic comedy but also as a Chicago movie.
Kinda surprised this didn’t hit the #2 spot, but that doesn’t negate my love for it as a musician and former journalism student.
Another great Chicago movie, and one that hit me hard when I saw it in college. So much so that I incorporated it into an essay I wrote for a writing class about my (at the time) brief and unsuccessful dating history. To quote Cusack’s Rob Gordon: “I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and… I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that’s suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.”
Hard to argue with Russell Crowe winning Best Actor for Gladiator, but Tom Hanks winning his third Oscar for this role as a cap on his decade-long hot streak would have been just as good. (See also: my list of top movie music moments.)
An unprecedented three-way tie! It had to be done. All are historical epics (that are just barely historical), led by A-list movie stars at their peak, and became the Holy Trinity of time-wasters for lazy social studies teachers during units on Ancient Rome, the Revolutionary War, and Civil Rights respectively. (See also: Fatherhood in The Patriot and Interstellar and Remember the Titans in my top movie music moments.)
A gorgeous, transfixing meditation on love, modernity, and the things we don’t say.
Of all the indelible moments from this absurdly hilarious mockumentary, “busy bee” sticks out the most.
Throughout middle school I used my Juno email account to send occasional dispatches blurbing the movies and TV I was enjoying at the time to friends, family, my soccer coaches, church family friends—basically whoever I knew who had an email address. (In retrospect they were pretty similar to my Media of the moment series.) All that to say, I remember raving about Frequency in one of those emails. Rewatched it last year and it holds up.
If I’m being honest, this spot is mostly for the supporting character Kronk, who elevates the movie from fairly rote Disney animation fare to sublime quotable comedy.
Honorable mentions:
