Top 20 Best Films Of 2023

While 2023 was a turbulent and stressful year for the film industry… it was also a fantastic year for the movies. It built on the momentum from 2022, when blockbusters came back with a vengeance after the lockdowns, and showed a lot of filmmakers going bigger and even taking some genuine risks. Not just delivering big-screen spectacle but actually pushing what certain genres were capable of conveying. What’s more, quite a few filmmakers that I’ve been ragging on for years like Eli Roth, Will Gluck, Guy Ritchie, and Tim Story redeemed themselves with some quality productions this year. Hell, I even got over my problems with David F. Sandberg; regardless of how disastrous that film turned out, this felt like a year where grudges could be forgotten and we were all working towards better days.

It was also a landmark year for yours truly, although if you were going just by what I put up on here, that might require some explanation. FilmInk kept me good and busy through the year, giving me more work than any other year previous, and… honestly, that I got given so many big-name features to look at (quite a few of which will show up on this list) was a solid reassurance that my editor trusted me to get this shit right.

Also, I finally met one of my personal goals and got one of my write-ups up on the review wall at the Dendy Newtown, a cinema I frequent and that tends to have the better selection of all of the cinemas in my ‘area’ (it’s still a bit of a trek from here in the suburbs).

So, as a last hurrah for a pretty damn good year for both myself and the artistic field I’ve dedicated my time to examining, let’s take a gander at my picks for the Top 20 Best Films of 2023. But first…

Top 20 Best Films Of 2019

I’ve gotten into some of the prevailing themes that tie a lot of 2019’s cinematic releases together over the course of these lists. The overwhelming sense of disappointment, the harbingers of what could be even worse movies to come out in the new decade, the inevitable efforts that manage to defy just how much of a letdown the year turned out; that kind of thing. But the main thing I got out of 2019 was that it was the end of the decade that made me the critic I am today.

It has been a wild ride these last ten years, and not only has this blog gone through some major changes in that time in regards to format and length (why I ever thought a 1000-word minimum for my reviews was a good idea is beyond me; I blame Principal Vernon), it has exposed me to films that have helped to shape and give form to my perspective of the entire world. And man, did 2019 give me a lot to think about in that regard, to the point where it might hold some of the most personally formative features of my entire ‘career’. So let’s close out our look at this bizarre year with a countdown of my top 20 favourite films of 2019.