The best movies of 2023

It took a few years, but 2023 felt like the year that Hollywood finally found its footing post-pandemic – which is ironic, considering Hollywood also shut down for large parts of the year. Before all the strikes hit, though, there were indications that the movie industry was coming back to life. There was the #Barbenheimer phenomenon, of course, which helped power the domestic box office to its strongest overall numbers since 2019. But in terms of pure moviemaking, the year was particularly strong.

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30 Napoleon

Napoleon is a spectacle-filled action epic that details the checkered rise and fall of the iconic French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, played by Joaquin Phoenix. Against a stunning backdrop of large-scale filmmaking orchestrated by legendary director Ridley Scott, the film captures Bonaparte’s relentless journey to power through the prism of his addictive, volatile relationship with his one true love, Josephine, showcasing his visionary military and political tactics against some of the most dynamic practical battle sequences ever filmed.

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29 Beau Is Afraid

Following the sudden death of his mother, a mild-mannered but anxiety-ridden man confronts his darkest fears as he embarks on an epic, Kafkaesque odyssey back home.

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28 The Killer

A man solitary and cold, methodical and unencumbered by scruples or regrets, the killer waits in the shadows, watching for his next target. And yet the longer he waits, the more he thinks he’s losing his mind, if not his cool. A brutal, bloody and stylish noir story of a professional assassin lost in a world without a moral compass, this is a case study of a man alone, armed to the teeth and slowly losing his mind.

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27 Barbie

Barbie and Ken are having the time of their lives in the colorful and seemingly perfect world of Barbie Land. However, when they get a chance to go to the real world, they soon discover the joys and perils of living among humans.

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26 Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

In the film, super spy Orson Fortune must track down and stop the sale of a deadly new weapons technology wielded by billionaire arms broker Greg Simmonds. Reluctantly teamed with some of the world’s best operatives, Fortune and his crew recruit Hollywood’s biggest movie star Danny Francesco to help them on their globe-trotting undercover mission to save the world.

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25 May December

Middle aged Gracie lives a happy, well settled life with her husband. Some years ago she was involved in an unsavory scandal but for her it is all in the past. Movie actress Elizabeth is on a visit to this home and she is on a mission. This visit is a part of her preparation to play the role of Gracie in a movie being made. As she goes about talking to the family members Gracie wonders whether Elizabeth will uncover some secrets from her past and will some skeletons be revealed.

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24 The Iron Claw

The true story of the inseparable Von Erich brothers, who made history in the intensely competitive world of professional wrestling in the early 1980s. Through tragedy and triumph, under the shadow of their domineering father and coach, the brothers seek larger-than-life immortality on the biggest stage in sports.

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23 Godzilla: Minus One

Feeling as if he unfairly cheated death too many times, Shikishima, a surviving Kamikaze pilot, is attacked on Odo Island along with many war plane engineers by a gargantuan monster. After the engineers die because of Shikishima failing to distract the monster, an overwhelming amount of guilt weighs on him, especially after a homeless woman and a baby move into his home when he returns. Shikishima, now on a personal mission, teams up with a large group of veterans to finally take down the monster known as Godzilla.

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22 Saltburn

Struggling to find his place at Oxford University, student Oliver Quick finds himself drawn into the world of the charming and aristocratic Felix Catton, who invites him to Saltburn, his eccentric family’s sprawling estate, for a summer never to be forgotten.

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21 The Challenge (Вызов)

Cosmonaut Oleg Bogdanov gets severely injured during EVA at ISS. There is no way he can be brought back in his current state and he is slowly dying. The female thoracic surgeon, Eugenia Belyaeva, is selected from several specialist to fly to space and try to save Bogdanov. She is a very professional surgeon, but not very happy person in normal life: single mom with a teenager daughter, who still cannot forget the death of her husband and believes that she was the reason of it. The success of a surgery at ISS is not guaranteed to say the least, and this medium complexity surgery, if done on Earth, can easily turn into complete disaster in space.

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20 The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes

The story of Coriolanus Snow, years before he would become the tyrannical President of Panem. He is young, very determined and though the Snow family has fallen on hard times, Coriolanus sees a chance for a change in his fortunes when he is chosen to be a mentor for the 10th Hunger Games only to have his elation dashed when he is assigned to mentor a girl tribute named Lucy Gray Baird from the impoverished District 12.

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19 Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers undertake an epic heist to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves brings the rich world and playful spirit of the legendary roleplaying game to the big screen in a hilarious and action-packed adventure.

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18 Wonka

With dreams of opening a shop in a city renowned for its chocolate, a young and poor Willy Wonka discovers that the industry is run by a cartel of greedy chocolatiers.

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17 Air

The movie explores how Nike’s basketball shoe division was struggling in 1984 due to low sales, and how the company’s Marketing VP Rob Strasser and CEO Phil Knight tasked basketball talent scout Sonny Vaccaro to find a new spokesperson for their shoes. Although they considered third draft pick Michael Jordan off limits due to his preference for Adidas and Converse, Vaccaro convinced them that Jordan was a generational talent, and that Nike should pursue him and try to convince Jordan to sign with Nike.

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16 BlackBerry

A company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway.

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15 Gran Turismo

Based on the unbelievable, inspiring true story of a team of underdogs – a struggling, working-class gamer, a failed former race car driver, and an idealistic motorsport exec – who risk it all to take on the most elite sport in the world.

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14 Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One

Ethan Hunt and the IMF team must track down a terrifying new weapon that threatens all of humanity if it falls into the wrong hands. With control of the future and the fate of the world at stake, a deadly race around the globe begins. Confronted by a mysterious, all-powerful enemy, Ethan is forced to consider that nothing can matter more than the mission not even the lives of those he cares about most.

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13 Sound of Freedom

“Sound of Freedom”, based on the incredible true story, shines a light on even the darkest of places. After rescuing a young boy from ruthless child-traffickers, a federal agent learns that the boy’s sister is still a captive and decides to embark on a dangerous mission to save her. With time running out, he quits his job and journeys deep into the Colombian jungle, putting his life on the line to free her from a fate worse than death.

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12 Anatomy of a Fall (Anatomie d’une chute)

The story begins when Samuel is found dead in the snow outside the isolated chalet where he lived with his wife Sandra, a German writer, and their partially-sighted 11-year-old son Daniel. An investigation leads to a conclusion of “suspicious death”: it’s impossible to know for sure whether he took his own life or was killed. Sandra is indicted, and we follow her trial which pulls the couple’s relationship apart. Daniel is caught in the middle: between the trial and their home life, doubts take their toll on the mother-son relationship.

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11 John Wick: Chapter 4

John Wick uncovers a path to defeating The High Table. But before he can earn his freedom, Wick must face off against a new enemy with powerful alliances across the globe and forces that turn old friends into foes.

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10 Elemental

The film journeys alongside an unlikely pair, Ember and Wade, in a city where fire-, water-, land- and air-residents live together. The fiery young woman and the go-with-the-flow guy are about to discover something elemental: how much they actually have in common.

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9 The Boy and the Heron (君たちはどう生きるか | Kimitachi wa Dou Ikiru ka)

When 12-year-old Mahito encounters an enigmatic grey heron in an abandoned tower, an unexpected quest for answers begins. And drawn into a mysterious world, Mahito must now find the truth. But is his feathery guide a friend or a foe? With questions emerging, will the boy unravel the secret of the strange dimension to return home?

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8 Poor Things

From filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos and producer Emma Stone comes the incredible tale and fantastical evolution of Bella Baxter, a young woman brought back to life by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter. Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn, a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents. Free from the prejudices of her times, Bella grows steadfast in her purpose to stand for equality and liberation.

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7 The Holdovers

A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England school remains on campus during Christmas break. He soon forms an unlikely bond with a brainy but damaged troublemaker, and with the school’s cook, a woman who just lost a son in the Vietnam War.

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6 The Covenant

Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant follows US Army Sergeant John Kinley and Afghan interpreter Ahmed. After an ambush, Ahmed goes to Herculean lengths to save Kinley’s life. When Kinley learns that Ahmed and his family were not given safe passage to America as promised, he must repay his debt by returning to the war zone to retrieve them before the Taliban hunts them down first.

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5 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

In Marvel Studios “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” our beloved band of misfits are looking a bit different these days. Peter Quill, still reeling from the loss of Gamora, must rally his team around him to defend the universe along with protecting one of their own. A mission that, if not completed successfully, could quite possibly lead to the end of the Guardians as we know them.

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4 Past Lives

In Korea, Na Young, a girl and Hae Sung, a boy are school mates and good friends. They often walk back home together after school. Na Young moves to Canada and then to New York with her parents. Hae Sung continues living in Korea, does his engineering course, goes through a short spell of military service and then takes up a job. Both keep in touch periodically through video chats where they talk of their past and general stuff. Meanwhile in New York, Na has changed her name to Nora, made a name as a playwright and is happily married to Arthur, an American. Hae is keen to meet Nora and visits her in New York where he spends some time with her and Arthur. What has the future in store for Nora and Hae in their relationship?

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3 Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Miles Morales returns for the next chapter of the Spider-Verse saga, an epic adventure that will transport Brooklyn’s full-time, friendly neighborhood Spider-Man across the Multiverse to join forces with Gwen Stacy and a new team of Spider-People to face off with a villain more powerful than anything they have ever encountered.

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2 Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer, the creator of The Atomic Bomb, is put on trial for his supposed communist ties in the past, all while coming to terms with what it meant to change the history of the world for the sake of winning World War Two. This is the story of how America’s Prometheus was cast out by The Gods for giving mankind an unthinkable gift: power unlike any other, the power to destroy the world; the power of Olympus.

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1 Killers of the Flower Moon

1919, Osage County, Oklahoma. Due to the discovery of oil on their land the Osage people are per capita the wealthiest people in the United States. Having just been discharged from the US Army, Ernest Burkhart returns to the area to work for his wealthy uncle, William Hale. Lately many Osage people have died in suspicious circumstances but nothing is being done about it.

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