By Original-Cin Staff

How was your year at the movies? Or conversely, how was your year on the sofa while streaming something from one of the various platforms competing for viewers with original content, much of it excellent and almost certainly Oscar-bound?

As usual, interesting trends emerged in 2023. Some of the best and most acclaimed films came not from Hollywood but from Europe (The Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, Fallen Leaves), adaptations soared (Killers of the Flower Moon, American Fiction, All of Us Strangers, BlackBerry, Priscilla) while seemingly untouchable superhero films showed signs of serious decline (The Marvels, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Ant-Man). As you’ll see, even the mighty Disney took a hit in 2023.

Then of course there was the cultural phenomenon known as Barbenheimer, which saw two gigantic but wildly different movies — Greta Gerwig’s giddy, pithy, and pink-saturated Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s weighty and stone-cold serious Oppenheimer — blow the doors off the box office and not at the expense of one another.

Really, 2023 was quite a year. We at Original-Cin were once again privileged to view movies of all stripes, from festival selections to tiny documentaries, shorts to features, series to animations, with the hope of casting light on the good stuff and casting a pall on the timewasters. We sincerely hope you enjoyed reading as much as we enjoyed writing.

As the year draws to a close, we look back on the films that most excited — and disappointed — us in 2023. Here’s looking ahead to another 12 months of cinema on screens large and small. (And stay tuned for our upcoming list of 2024 films we are most excited to see).

Jim Slotek

Take My Word For It…

Dream Scenario. I’m gobsmacked that this, one of Nicolas Cage’s career-best movies, has no awards traction. He plays a nebbish college professor who suddenly turns up in millions of people’s dreams. Then things go south. Surrealist and funny.

John Wick: Chapter 4. The series ended in the best way, setting a relentless Looney Tunes violent action bar that will be hard to top. The subsequent prequel TV series proved there is no replacing Keanu.

Who’s Yer Father? The premise resembles the SCTV sketch Magnum P.E.I. Deliciously lowbrow as the comedy is, it works particularly well delivered with a Maritime accent and plenty of salty colloquialisms.

Cocaine Bear. Extremely loosely based on a real incident, and a hilarious guilty pleasure. You know a movie that opens with a coked-up, enraged bear bashing its head against a tree is not only going to be over the top, it will be beyond visible range of it.

The Royal Hotel. Two broke women tourists in Australia seek to solve their insolvency by taking a job as barmaids in an Outback mining town. Cue the menacing leers and innuendos of the local men and snaggle-toothed women. Horror of the human variety.

Dumping On the Mouse…

Haunted Mansion. Weird how the best classic Disney rides make the worst movies, and a lame ride like Pirates of the Caribbean turned into pure gold.

Elemental. Suffice to say, the decline of Disney animation has been literally hard to watch.

Liz Braun

You wouldn’t exactly call Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest entertaining — it concerns the commandant of Auschwitz — but it is absolutely riveting. So is Anatomy of a Fall, directed by Justine Triet; it's a psychological thriller about a woman accused of her husband’s murder. Weirdly, both films star Sandra Hüller.

If you like your movies dark and chewy, watch out for Michel Franco’s Memory, with Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard, and/or The Eternal Memory, a documentary from Maite Alberdi, both under-the-radar gems about love, loss, and identity. Otherwise, 2023 was a great year for documentaries (Smoke Sauna Sisterhood, Four Daughters, Anselm) and a ho-hum year for “blockbusters” (Barbie, Maestro)… depending upon who you ask, of course.

Thom Ernst

It was frustrating to see the lukewarm reception given to director Ari Aster’s masterful dip into Lindsay Anderson territory with the absurdist, allegorical comedy horror Beau is Afraid. Critics and audiences responded mostly with a “meh” attitude towards the film when — if the world were in proper working order — it deserves its own ticker-tape parade. Joaquin Phoenix practically implodes when playing a passive man who absorbs every unsettling obstacle flung at him through a series of conflicts that could be real or could be medicinally enhanced. The movie is strange, sure, but it’s also funny and entertaining; like I said, Lindsay Anderson territory.

More perplexing than frustrating was watching the love rain down on the all-too-familiar beats of director John Carney’s Flora and Son, the recent feel-good music-comedy, from the UK. Carney once had a firm grip on love amidst turmoil, hope among cynicism, and with a certainty that music heals all. Flora and Son seemed repetitive following Carney’s Once (2007), Begin Again (2013), and Sing Street (2016). Part of the issue is we’ve seen it before, and the other part is the disconnected performance from the usually dynamic Joseph Gordon-Leavitt.

And a raspberry to anyone attempting to excuse the mess that was The Exorcist: Believer. (I’m looking at you, A.A. Dowd). All hope for forgiveness was lost the moment director-writer David Gordon Greene confessed — with cavalier dismissal bordering on arrogance —to having no particular affinity towards the original.

Karen Gordon

Best Films of 2023: The Zone of Interest. In this subtle, haunting movie, Jonathan Glazer, aided by his brilliant cast, asks us to contemplate how ordinary people can close their minds to committing horrible crimes against others. Also, Anatomy of a Fall. In Justine Triet's beautifully plotted drama, Sandra Hüller plays a woman accused of murder when her husband is killed in a fall. And Perfect Days. In Wim Wenders’ Tokyo-set drama, Kôji Yakusho plays a man living a very routine life.

Some small enjoyable movies that have slipped below the radar: Showing Up. Director Kelly Reichardt teams again with Michelle Williams, who plays an artist trying to prepare for an art show, while dealing with the interruptions and frustrations of day-to-day life.

I love a good New York comedy. In Nicole Holofceler’s You Hurt My Feelings, Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays a writer who overhears something that throws her confidence for a loop. Bottoms, Toronto’s Emma Seligman’s second film, is a wildly comic queer story about two best friends who want to find girlfriends before they graduate from high school.

If you want a challenge, try Ari Aster’s three-hour opus Beau is Afraid. Joaquin Phoenix stars in an unpredictable movie that (I think!) is a metaphor for anxiety and mommy issues. Critics either loved or hated it. You’ve been warned.

Kim Hughes

Not surprisingly, some of the best films I saw this year screened at festivals and are just now opening/streaming or soon will. These include The Teacher’s Lounge, Ilker Çatak’s feature debut, a genuinely white-knuckle drama (and TIFF selection) about a young and popular teacher who, despite noble intentions, becomes embroiled in a theft case plaguing the school where she works. It had subtext that kept it top-of-mind for days; it arrives January 19.

I’d also encourage anyone to seek out Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera featuring a brilliant, Italian-speaking Josh O’Connor as a troubled 1980s-era tomb raider. The film occupies that liminal space between real and illusory. Also, director Axel Petersén’s nervous, fabulous thriller Shame on Dry Land, about a group wealthy Swedes, most up to no good, on perennially sunny Malta.

Finally, director Janis Pugh’s gentle dramedy Chuck Chuck Baby about two women, former classmates, who fall in love and find their true selves amid spontaneous, colour-saturated musical set-pieces that might have been lifted from off-off-Broadway was the year’s hand-down heart-warmer alongside Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret.

John Kirk

I’m a predictable geek when it comes to my nerdy choices for fan-favourite feature films on the silver and small screens this year. My first highlight for 2023 was Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. Why? Because we live in an age when technology finally exists to bring the full scope of magic and fantasy that is the Dungeons & Dragons game experience to life to the movies. I’m grateful and so are a legion of fans like me. Can’t wait for the second one!

My second highlight is another geeky delight: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. If it isn’t for the scintillating animation that drove an entire theatre of comic artists (who were viewing with me at the time) into a frenzy of joy, then it was the way in which the classic Peter Parker story was re-introduced with Miles Morales as the hero for a new generation of Spider-Fans.

But please, for the love of all things nerdy, avoid No One Will Save You. The pointless dialogue-free story of an alien invasion that forces you to sit and wait for a frustrating ending that completely invalidates the protagonist’s efforts. Unlike the title, I hope I just saved you.

Chris Knight

When Evan Rissi asked if I would host a Q&A at the local premiere of his first feature Going In, I was flattered but also flustered. What if the film was terrible? Well, no worries. I can honestly recommend this fun, funny action flick, which is not only set in 1989 Toronto but feels like a lost film from that time. My only complaint is that it never got a theatrical run, or the VHS release that seems in keeping with its ethos. You’ll have to watch it on demand but do watch it!

This feels like more of an ask, but do also catch The Delinquents, Argentina’s submission to the Academy Awards this year. Yes, it’s three hours long. Yes, it’s subtitled. But it’s also like a master class in filmmaking, with its gorgeous score, creative camerawork, and inventive edits. It’s a funny, philosophical tale about a guy who steals from the bank where he works, with a plan to get caught, do the time and then retire with the loot he’s passed along to an unsuspecting accomplice. In a word, yes.

Hardly a hot take here, but Marvel has to slow the heck down. This year saw the release of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and The Marvels — all adequate, none amazing, all requiring some previous familiarity with the franchise. In other words, homework! The MCU is in disarray thanks to its parting ways with Jonathan Majors after his assault conviction, but the silver lining might be that the studio can step back and consider how to attract viewers in the future rather than just count on them to show up.

Liam Lacey

The Under-Appreciated: At a time when many movies pander politically, I was drawn to a few underrated serio-comic films featuring comically prickly protagonists. Christian Petzold’s drama Afire features Leon (Thomas Schubert), a priggish, socially awkward young novelist in a cottage forest retreat, in a film that shifts from cringe comedy to climate disaster movie.

In Nicole Holofcener’s deft comedy You Hurt My Feelings — about the importance of white lies — Julia Louis-Dreyfus stars as an author who goes into an emotional tailspin after she overhears her supportive husband tell a friend he thinks her new novel is bad.

Randall Parks’ witty directorial debut Shortcomings, adapted from Adrian Tomine’s 2007 graphic novel, is about Ben, a pretentious 30-ish Japanese American aspiring filmmaker, whose girlfriend ghosts him after moving across the country to take an internship.

And one of my favourite Canadian films this year was Adrian Murray’s micro-comedy Retrograde, starring Molly Reisman as an aggrieved millennial who goes to excruciating efforts to get a traffic citation quashed to prove her worth. These are films about the kind of absurdly misguided people we know and sometimes are.

Bonnie Laufer

Call me nostalgic, but one of my favorite movies of 2023 was Are You There God? It’s Me Margaret. I was nervous with anticipation as to how this childhood book written by beloved author Judy Blume would transform on the screen. But within the first five minutes, I let my guard down. Abby Ryder Fortson couldn't have been any better as Margaret, nailing all the feels of a 12-year-old going through puberty, making friends, and crushing on boys. Added bonus was Kathy Bates as her adoring Jewish grandmother. Their scenes together were magic. I’ve seen this film three times and loved it more with each viewing. I promise, even if you didn’t read the book as a kid, you will have a big smile on your face and even shed a few tears while watching this one.

The Holdovers is also an absolutely delightful movie that is bound to be a holiday classic. It took way too long to reunite Paul Giamatti with his Sideways director Alexander Payne, but as they say, good things are worth waiting for. Giamatti is wonderful as a curmudgeonly teacher at a New England prep school who stays on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students who have nowhere to go. His bond with actor and newcomer Dominic Sessa just lights up the screen and restores your faith in “good teachers.” If I could go back in time and be stuck at a prep school for the holidays. I’d be all in with this gang!

Under the radar was Quiz Lady. Why didn’t anyone think about pairing Sandra Oh and Awkwafina before this? These two were born to play sisters and are absolutely hysterical as they team up to pay off their mother’s gambling debts. I have never laughed so hard at Oh’s comedic timing during one not-to-be-missed hospital scene. Currently streaming on Disney+. Check it out, you won’t be disappointed!

The biggest timewaster was My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3. I watched this on a plane, and I wanted to jump out. I had high hopes for this reunion spearheaded by our Canadian gal, Nia Vardalos. Third time is definitely NOT a charm. Don’t bother! The only upside for Vardalos is scoring a free trip to Greece. Opa!

Year In Review: 2023’s Best, Worst, and Weirdest Movies

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