We did know this would be the case to be fair, but hoooo boy it was a tough opening to the year for movies. It’s been a good while since I’ve started a fresh year with so few options on the near horizon outside of the previous year’s American film schedule off-cuts. For a while there it looked like Dune Part II was the only actual 2024 film worth anticipating, and I might have hit the ten-movie mark around June or something.
Luckily, a couple of odd streaming releases caught my attention when friends recommended them, and then around late April the various layered impacts of last year’s Hollywood strikes began to ease off, and suddenly a flurry of intriguing stuff began to hit our big screens. So we just make the customary April slot for the year’s first ten way-too-brief cinematic summaries, and it’s been a surprising amount of fun getting there. Here we go:
What a strange, fascinating year this was for film.
The cinematic quality absolutely showed up in 2023: multiple mega-budget discussion magnets rolled onto big screens without even one (1) superhero in them – and some of the movies that did feature comic book origins were even quite good! We got gigantic big-screen showcases and intimate streaming-friendly art pieces waiting to be picked apart. We got new Scorsese, new Fincher, new Scott, and new Nolan joints within one calendar year, and they all looked expensive – which just seems crazy in a post-lockdown world.
Speaking of which, the last of the major pandemic-delayed movies may be behind us now, but we may be in for a wave of strike-delayed features – hopefully made by fairly-compensated people – over the next couple of years.
I saw 28 new-release films in 2023, which was always going to come far below my 2022 tally, but almost everything I saw this year was worth my time, and some of these may even be worth yours! To close out the year as always, these are my top ten favourite movies of 2023.
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VR BEST OF 2023 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you agree with me 100%, go buy a lottery ticket. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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10. Barbie
Our first entry seemed for a while like it could have gone in either an ultra-shallow or overly-pretentious direction, and it kind of did neither. Frustratingly uneven given the ridiculously stacked roster of people involved both in front of and behind the camera, Barbie is still a relentlessly entertaining ride from the triumphant set design of its opening scene to those loopy, abstract final minutes. And sure, it has prompted remarkably varied discussions about quality, thematic payoff and commercial realities among my friends and family that I have and will likely continue to enjoy over time – which will always give a movie extra points in my book – but it also gave us two of the best musical sequences of the year, one of Kate McKinnon’s most unhinged cinematic turns, and that career-highlight performance from Ryan Gosling.
9. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I
I’ve found the seventh Mission Impossible film exceedingly hard to quantify over the last half-year, largely because after they made two of the greatest action movies ever back-to-back, Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie decided to lean into more character-focused territory – and tell only half a story – for their third Mission Impossible project as a team. Thus many of the narrative choices the script makes are yet to be resolved, and for once the action isn’t uniformly excellent enough to make up for this: the movie features only the second-craziest vehicular chase down a Roman staircase this year (and unbelievably, the year’s third-most-intense action scene on a European staircase altogether); the realities of the pandemic clearly also limited the volume of real-world stunt magic this time around.
But just to be clear, I still love this movie; Ethan’s established crew (Ilsa Faust aside) is handled as endearingly as ever, newcomer Grace makes a fantastic entrance, and the lead character’s continued transformation into the ultimate ride-or-die partner keeps the stakes impossibly, entertainingly high.
I love writing this list each and every year, at least in part because a “scene” in a movie can be great for so many different reasons. Some years, however, a single genre or sub-genre of film dominates my watch list so heavily that some of the fun range gets lost. 2023 was one of those years, but because said source of dominance happened to be non-superhero action movies, I don’t mind one bit. This was a year teeming with examples of kinetic, pulse-pounding filmmaking craft – among other kinds of standout moments, of course – and I’m so excited to dive in. So let’s do that.
There are, naturally, a ton of spoilers on this page, so tread carefully.
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VR BEST OF 2023 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you agree with me 100%, go buy a lottery ticket. Respectful disagreement is most welcome
MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW!
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10. No Sleep Till Brooklyn – Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3
Hey, I didn’t say there’d be no superhero action scenes – and if you’ve seen Guardians 3 you had to know this one was going to show up. The hallway brawl at the climax of the movie is three crucial things all in one: a magnificently-choreographed speed-shifting one-shot filled with faux-gore and crowd-pleasing team-up moves; an amazing song from a series famous for its amazing soundtracks; and most importantly, an emotionally resonant fist-pumper of a final combat moment for the Guardians team, spearheaded by the film’s emotional centre Rocket Raccoon and finished by the effectively all-new, all-different Gamora. Marvel’s best three minutes of the year.
9. Village Raid – The Creator
A testament to the enduring power of great shot selection and sound design, the US Army raid on a fishing village at the climax of The Creator’s second act is an effective microcosm of the whole film: it looks way better than it has any right to, it doesn’t hide from utilising gorgeous wide shots that would showcase blemishes easier, and it packs an immense serving of dread into a lean package. Extended sections of the scene have no music at all, and the ominous accelerating clunks of the self-destruct tin can robots obscured by weapon smoke is bone-chilling partially because of this – and partially because of their pre-sprint dialogue.
It’s time to dip into the first of our three movie lists, and with that comes somewhat of a return to regular service as far as standout celluloid characters are concerned. After the class of 2022 brought an unusually high percentage of protagonists to the table, 2023’s roll is once again all about those dastardly villains and spicy supporting characters.
Although we aren’t in full-on spoiler territory yet, sometimes talking about what makes characters so impactful necessitates a mild plot detail or two, so keep an eye out for that if you see a movie title you would still rather watch first.
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VR BEST OF 2023 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. If you agree with me 100%, go buy a lottery ticket. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
Some spoilers may follow.
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10. Joyce – A Haunting in Venice
A Haunting in Venice is an ensemble murder mystery, so Joyce doesn’t have as much screen time as the trailers may lead you to believe, but I don’t blame the film’s marketing team for wanting to push Michelle Yeoh’s presence hard after the stellar couple of years she’s had. It’s also completely justified in the movie itself, as her creepy charisma as Joyce reverberates through every scene in which she holds the frame. Joyce’s is-she-conning-us / is-she-for-real commitment essentially transitions another standard Hercule Poirot mystery into the first full-on horror story of Kenneth Brannagh’s 21st century run with the character – and it absolutely elevates the movie – but it’s the wry smiles and flowery undercurrent of disdain in her dialogue that gets Joyce onto the list to kick us off.
9. Bowser – The Super Mario Bros Movie
A modern take on a Super Mario Bros movie was probably always going to lean comedic for as many side characters as it could get away with, but Nintendo’s own games – particularly their Mario-centric RPGs – have already poked a whole mountain range of fun at the absurdity of Bowser enough times that some fans worried Illumination’s perspective on the classic villain may come off a bit tired. But then the film cast Jack Black, and those concerns went away immediately. The movie well and truly lives up to the potential of a Bowser/Black pairing and then some, as the hammy specialist commits to the role wholeheartedly; if anything, the biggest surprise is how menacing he makes Bowser sound at the right times.
Here we are already – much slower than last year but still far too quickly. It’s been an eventful middle third of the year for film: a pair of megaton Hollywood strikes with wide-reaching (and justified) implications, no less than three big-name blockbusters releasing as “Part Ones” like it’s the early 2010s all over again, the official end of the ill-fated DCEU, and of course the irresistible juggernaut that was Barbenheimer. The news cycle has been juicy, and the movies haven’t been half-bad either. Most of them, anyway.
And so we arrive at the first movie milestone within a year that couldn’t possibly live up to the cinematic majesty of 2022… could it?
Nah, it couldn’t. But maybe?
Though 2023 perhaps opened with a bit of a stutter after the dust settled from the customary late-Australian Oscar buzz period, by mid-April we are in the thick of a release schedule that has already delivered surprises and quality in equal measure. I know I’ve missed one or two word-of-mouth gems so far and you can be sure I will catch up on them by year’s end, but here’s my first batch of ten (you could argue it’s technically nine) new-release films for 2023:
This has been the year’s final countdown on Vagrant Rant for a decade now, but it’s usually a relative breeze to put together after the competitive stress of the album and videogame lists – which in fairness do tend to require more time investment. But it also rarely feels like the biggest list of the year, despite its prime slot.
And yet here we are. Not since 2014 has my top ten movies ranking been this ridiculously stacked; I probably wouldn’t hesitate to throw the entire thing at last year’s list and watch it displace the majority of 2021 like an Archimedes dream. Three films that provided mentions on both the characters and scenes lists this year don’t even make the overall top ten here. The Black Phone, Elvis and After Yang don’t even make the honorable mentions. I tried to fit them. I don’t know what else to say; it really was so much fun to watch movies in cinemas this year, and that did not seem likely for the majority of this decade thus far.
I finished 2022 with 41 new-release movies in the can – yes, including Morbius – and because I doubt I’ll ever get up to a number that high again, we’re going for a full deck of ten (still un-ordered) honorable mentions to close out the year – hey, that’s still only covering under 50% of what I watched so it doesn’t feel gratuitous, right?
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VR BEST OF 2022 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is as likely as avoiding MCU fatigue. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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10. The Batman
For the first time in ten years, the best superhero movie of the year came from DC. Anything is possible, folks; especially when a movie looks and sounds this good. Sure, this is a Batman story with eyebrow-raising things to say about Bruce Wayne, his allies and his enemies; and the vast majority of the new classic character interpretations justify themselves. But this isn’t just a comic book – it’s a movie, and I mean, just look at it. You could probably just overlay the red-and-black film logo over the entire film and it would barely look out of place; shadows and blood-red highlights define a stunning vision for Gotham City courtesy ofPlanet of the Apes trilogy director Matt Reeves. That main score is also evocative and weirdly catchy, and it’s bolstered by the best use of a Nirvana song since Weird Al gargled marbles.
9. The Stranger
This was surely Netflix’s best-ever year for exclusive new films (I’d love to comb through properly and confirm that though), and The Stranger is a compelling start to that argument. Based loosely on a gut-churning true story, this tale of an undercover cop trying to make friends with a slippery drifter suspected of cold murder is rendered scarily relatable by Joel Edgerton’s anxious two-sided performance. Sean Harris is even better as the mark in question, and the cinematography makes the isolating open plains of Western Australia feel as bleak as the claustrophobic interior shots rife with unsettling buzzing. The Stranger is definitely more about the journey than the destination, but what a journey.
Another year, another increasingly personal and petty list full of stuff that upset me personally about the media I consumed in 2022. And in a year filled with more deeply upsetting stories about the people who work on said media, that is absolutely worth repeating more than ever: this list exists as a chance to whinge and complain about the end products that make their way into consumer’s hands and have a bit of fun getting a bunch of first-world problems off my chest. As a normally quite optimistic person, I wouldn’t bother to start this otherwise positive two-week-long celebration with a negative list if that wasn’t the case. And my oh my, were there some petty things to complain about in 2022. Time to dig in.
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VR BEST OF 2022 DISCLAIMER
This list represents my opinion only. I am not asserting any kind of superiority or self-importance by presenting it as I have. My opinion is not fact. To agree with me 100% is as likely as avoiding MCU fatigue. Respectful disagreement is most welcome.
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10. No Hands on Deck Down Under
We are entering another golden age for dedicated portable gaming, roughly a decade after it was given its last rites across media outlets the world over. The Playstation Vita and the Wii U sure as hell didn’t save it from the threat of casual phone gaming, but the Nintendo Switch sure did – and now years later there’s a burgeoning handheld PC market bubbling up to fill the processing power gap left by the Switch’s ageing components. The golden child of this movement? Valve’s Steam Deck, which has been in the hands of enthusiasts and influencers overseas for over a year now. Every few months Valve announces a few more worldwide territories for the hardware’s launch, and every few months Australia fails to make the cut. Thank goodness for the AyaNeo range.
9. The Dinosaur Movie That’s Somehow Too Big
2022 was actually a really good year for movies; I personally found actual disappointments not only hard to come by, but vastly outnumbered by genuinely wonderful surprises. Alas, I can’t very well have this entire list be videogame-related, so I’m giving a dishonourable shout-out to Jurassic World: Dominion. Somehow a perfect fan-servicing cast and more onscreen dinosaurs than ever added up to an overblown, unfocused mess unwilling to pick a lane or convincingly land any punches. All-up there was probably one 2022 movie more disappointing than Jurassic World: Dominion, but this was still probably the least fun I had in the cinema all year.
I don’t know, I’ve never done a third one of these within a single year before; I’m not sure what else to title this one.
This probably still would’ve felt like a bonus list even if we weren’t living through one of the best cinematic years in recent memory; but here we are, so I’ve enjoyed somewhat of an unfamiliar feeling of lightness to accompany this third batch of 2022 films. Every new release is like an extra sprinkling of spice on a delectable banquet; the usual slightly anxious anticipation of wondering when the next good movie will hit just isn’t there for me at the moment.
Which is great because while the pleasant surprises keep on coming, the quality over the American summer blockbuster season thus far has been a bit all over the place.
So, uh, this happened. Never had to do back-to-back movie summaries before – but don’t say I didn’t warn you. It turns out that this is a pretty huge cinematic year.
I don’t know what feels more surreal: The near-certainty that this is the most new release films I’ve ever fit inside a month across my whole life, or the fact we live in a world where I could manage a whole nineteen movies before the first Marvel release of 2022. And a lot of those movies are good! Who knew!
Some of them are even really good; in fact I’m feeling bold enough to say that come the end of December, if my overall movie of the year somehow isn’t on this page I’d be shocked. In that unlikely case we would have truly enjoyed a special 2022.
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