Top Movies of the Year

As temperatures are more regularly pushing against 100+ degrees in St. Louis, Sal and I have been looking for ways to be in buildings with air conditioning instead of sitting at home and running ours hard. 

We got a movie pass with Alamo Drafthouse this past summer. Every month, we pay about $18 a person to see unlimited movies. If you see two movies, it's paid for itself. 

Separate from Alamo, I had a goal to try and see an average of a movie a day in 2023, and I was able to hit that mark on December 28th. Three days before I had to. I was flipping through the stats and realized that this year was an incredible year for movies. It felt like things finally were back on track post Covid. 

Here are my top movies of 2023. 

20. Champions: Woody Harrelson has got to be one of my favorite actors. This is sort of a "Mighty Ducks" situation where a guy is punished by getting put in charge of a bad basketball team and has to work with them. Real heartwarming and uplifting story.

19. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes: Did this one need to happen? No, not really. Did they make a film that stands on it's own and doesn't feel like a cash grab? (Cough, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, cough) Yes, actually. I think this movie gives some interesting meat to the backstory of the Hunger Games universe. 

18. Bad Press: This was one of my favorite documentaries from True/False this year. Small newspaper on a Native American reservation starts looking into shady politics happening in the community. The story on it's own is intriguing, but the protagonist is such a foul mouthed, endearing person, that she really carries you through the entire thing. 

17. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: I didn't expect this to be such a fun film. Lot's of great jokes and they manage to capture the chaos of a tabletop game. 

16. Dream Scenario:  Mass populations of people start dreaming of Paul Matthews (Nic Cage's character) even if they've never met him. He becomes somewhat famous out of this phenomenon. But soon he starts interacting with people who he's had sex with or tried to murder in their dreams and things get weird. Cage is just given free reign to spread his wings and do Nic Cage things. 

15. Hell House Origins: The Hell House series is a fantastic paranormal franchise. They did a trilogy that ended in a way where there's not a clean cut way forward. Instead, they went backward to start giving you information on why there are so many spooks in the area. Terrifying clowns, ghosts, missing friends make this worth a watch.

14. Napoleon: Napoleon was really fun to see in theaters. It's been a long time since I've seen a movie on the big screen with the sprawling battle scenes. Screenplay is funny, pokes fun at Napoleon rather than worship him. Some pizazz was missing. I can't really put my finger on it and it might just be the sheer amount of epics this year that knocked this down the list. 

13. The Pope's Exorcist: Russel Crowe is hilarious in what should be a weighty movie about a priest fighting a demon. It's sort of nice to get the levity from the main character not being too serious. It especially made The Exorcist: Believer look like an amateur's possession movie. 

12. Bottoms: Bottoms was hilarious. Essentially Fight Club for high-school women trying to date each other. I didn't expect it to go so far into the absurd, but the characters play it like these are all normal things that happen in real life. Marshawn Lynch is fantastic and should be used in film more often. 

11. Saltburn: I thought Saltburn was going to be a class war story. A battle between the rich and not. This movie was not that at all and I couldn't predict what was going to happen from one scene to another. Part Talented Mr. Ripley, part Cruel Intentions, and part American Psycho. I don't know that this is for everyone, but I loved it.

10. Red Herring

Red Herring is probably one of the most emotionally charged experiences I've ever had in a movie theater. I laughed, I cried, and I left thinking about life and death. 

By the end, you feel like you are friends with this fantastic person and start the grieving process for someone you've never met in real life. And then we had the pleasure of the main subject and director, Kit, being there in person for a Q&A. 

9. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

There was a time where I liked Indiana Jones more than Star Wars. Unfortunately, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull so thoroughly tempered that love, that I had a real low bar going into the fifth Indiana Jones film. 

Folks... they did it. They pulled off a good Indiana Jones movie 15 years after the movie where people said Harrison Ford was already too old for. 

This was a love letter to what made Raiders and Last Crusade great. Travel all over the globe, Nazis getting punched, a fun opening scene that doesn't directly have something to do with the McGuffin of the film. 

Indy is believable in his age and what he does. The side characters are full of heart and capable. They aren't relying on Indy to get them out of every situation. They even do that weird de-aging thing and it looks good. You get to see a 35 year old Indiana Jones punching Nazis again. 

I'm almost scared to watch it again to find that my initial experience wasn't true and was a side effect of having a few beers with a buddy. 

8. Theater Camp

Theater Camp starts off as a Christopher Guest style Mockumentary. Soon the characters stop talking to the camera, which makes you forget this is a fake documentary, and you start to think this is real life. 

The theater camp is struggling financially and something happens to the owner who always manages to pull off funding. It's a story about unlikely people trying to save something they love. It being a theater camp gives free reign for have really out there personalities.

I loved how positive the movie was and how everyone came together. 

And what a hell of a run Ayo Edebiri has having. Give me more Ayo!

7. The Holdovers

The Holdovers is based on students who have no where to go during the Christmas holidays. It takes place at a boarding school where Paul Giamatti's curmudgeon teacher has to take care of these students. 

The character development and growth is so perfect in these short two hours. I figured I'd like this, but didn't expect it to become one of my regular holiday watches. This feels like The Family Stone where we'll put it on yearly. 

6. Barbie

Barbie had me feeling weird about being at the theater. (I had to sit alone and was surrounded by mother/daughter combos), but I loved it. 

The set design and clothes were spot on. I remembered so much from playing Barbie's with the next door neighbors in the early 90s. 

I loved Ken's ridiculous transition into the patriarchy because it worked in the absurdity already established in Barbie world. I loved that the movie was able to poke fun at the parent company, something a lot of companies don't have the guts to do. 

And not that everything needs to be a franchise, but the movie leaves open solving other "Barbie" problems. 

5. Killer's of the Flower Moon

I saw this twice in theaters within a couple days. I had to keep reminding myself that this was based off of real people and real events, otherwise you feel unfulfilled by Leonardo DiCaprio's character arc. You keep saying, "There's no way someone would act this way." Yet they did. 

It was also wild seeing so much familiar backdrop as Sal and I were in the Tulsa area just last year. 

Now I put this squarely in the middle of Scorsese's films as far as enjoyment, which sounds like a slight, but it's Scorsese. It's hard to beat things like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Good Fellas, Gangs of New York, The Departed, The Wolf of Wallstreet... I mean you get it. Guy puts out mostly bangers. 

4. Asteroid City

I love Wes Andersen. His way of having absurd characters exist in the real world is rich for comedy. His aesthetic pops when everyone else is going with muted Earth tones, Wes goes for bright colors inspired by 60s pop art. Even in this movie, which takes place in the dessert with nothing but muted Earth tones, Andersen pops color. 

Asteroid City takes place in a fictional Roswell, New Mexico type area. Huge asteroid dots the land and aliens are constantly spotted. What happens when a bunch of people visiting Asteroid City see an alien? What would be the government protocol?

And then it gets really meta and the lines between a story and art blur. 

3. The Iron Claw

I intimately know the story of the Von Erich family and their tragedies. I went into this movie knowing it was going to be one of the saddest things ever put to film. Yet, I was not prepared for the amount of tears I'd have in the theater. 

About 30 minutes into the movie, we get our second tragedy and a girl behind us said, "Oh god." And all I could think of were the half dozen other things she was about to experience. 

The Iron Claw is mostly a story about a tight knit family that just happen to wrestle. Really, the only thing holding this back from number one is you get a dollar store Ric Flair. If you don't know who Ric Flair is, you might be OK. But I do, and I know the promos being referenced, and they just weren't good. 

2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse came out in 2018 and it was such a beautifully crafted human story. Lot's of tears, lots of laughs, cool animation. It was a superhero movie for people that don't care about superheroes. 

Across the Spider-Verse continues that. Being Spider-Man is second fiddle to the trials you face in life. Young love, loss of loved ones, finding your identity. 

It was great. It had all of the charm of the first one. 

Weirdly, the server at Alamo warned everyone that there weren't after credit scenes. I was thankful for the heads up, but I realized why this deserved that warning when other Marvel movies do not. It ends on an all time cliff hanger and very abruptly. I for sure thought the credits were going to wrap the story going on. 

1. Oppenheimer

Math nerds doing patriotic stuff. There's nothing about this I should care about, but the entire crew did a fantastic job of making this a very human movie. 

I especially loved the fragility of egos. Everyone that thinks they are the best at some point gets checked. 

This was especially a treat seeing it on an IMAX screen. The atom bomb blast rattled my lungs. It was truly awe inspiring and we didn't even see the real blast. 

It's incredible how much power and resources our government is willing to put behind a weapon race when there are so many other things that would benefit all of American with this same sort of push. I don't know that we will ever see another concerted effort of so many resources and minds again unless there's an asteroid headed our way.