It’s that time of year! Below are my top 5 movies of the year! These are not reviews, but the link to my full thoughts are included below. I didn’t have time to see every movie in 2023, but there were still a ton of them I saw and some were duds but a lot of them were memorable. There are still some films to see coming in the beginning of 2024 but here it is for now!
Honorable Mentions: Killers of the Flower Moon and The Hunger Games: A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
5. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One
This movie was sincerely overlooked this year, which is surprising considering Tom Cruise is a huge action movie star and the franchise has historically gotten better with each movie. While this movie isn’t quite as good as Mission Impossible: Fallout, it still delivers constant action thrills and a tense final act that left me on the edge of my seat. Action movies these days can be stale, but this film proves that they can still be just as thrilling as they used to be.
4. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
The original film was my favorite movie of 2018, and its sequel proved to be a worthy successor. It’s a film that uses the multiverse concept wisely and takes the characters through the multiverse as opposed to bringing the multiverse to the characters. It provides a core story that also introduces fun new characters and sets the stage for an epic finale that will hopefully come out soon! Superhero movie fatigue may be a thing, but this proves there is still some great life left in them!
3. Godzilla Minus One
One of the biggest surprises of the year for me as I barely heard of this film until 2 weeks after it had released. After seeing it, I couldn’t stop thinking about the amazing journey this film took me on. Not only does it have epic Godzilla level action, but it also prioritizes its human characters and delivers an emotionally powerful story that shows it’s okay to keep on fighting to stop all the hurt and suffering. Definitely an underrated film this year, and one worthy of being checked out.
2. John Wick: Chapter 4
Keanu Reaves is one of the big action stars of the 90s, and remains an icon today in closing out one of the best action franchises of all time. This movie pushes the limits of action films, providing death defying practical stunts with real hand to hand choreography that grips you into the fight. It’s to the films credit that nothing feels repetitive from previous films and they have found ways to keep the action fresh and engaging. Plus John Wick climbs up a flight of stairs and falls all the way down, kills 17 guys using oncoming traffic, utilizes an incendiary shotgun in a one-shot sequence, and beats ninjas with nunchucks. What else could you want!!??
1. Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite directors of all time, so any film he put out I was going to go see. But I didn’t expect to absolutely love and watch 6 times in 70 mm IMAX (the most times I’ve ever seen a movie in theaters), a historical biopic made with no CGI that is 3 hours long. Nolan shows that he is one of the best directors working today and provides a gripping and haunting tale of the man who created the atomic bomb. The story is very well paced and intersects beautifully between the past and present timelines to provide a balanced narrative. Taking out the highly unnecessary sex scenes, this is in my opinion a perfect Nolan film and easily takes my number one place this year.
Raj Reviews 