The 20 Best Movies of 2023 (So Far)

“After Love” (dir. Aleem Khan)

Mary (Joanna Scanlan) loved her Pakistani husband so much that she converted to Islam for him, and spent her life wearing a head scarf while living a quiet life in rural England. Genevieve was so enamored with a married man that she had a decades-long affair with him while raising his illegitimate child. When Mary’s husband dies and Genevieve begins to suspect that her lover isn’t returning, they’re drawn together by the shared experience of grieving the person you’ve given your life to — and by the fact that they’re both hung up over the same guy.

Aleem Khan’s feature directorial debut is a slow, meticulous examination of the role that devotion plays in our lives and the gaping void that can be left when you lose the basket with all your eggs in it. It’s an imperfect little film about the imperfect little relationships that life often thrusts us into at our lowest points and a reminder of how certain kinds of people can keep affecting us long after they’re buried. Anchored by Scanlan’s nuanced lead performance, the film ends up a beautiful, jagged exploration of the messy nature of being human. —CZ

“Air” (dir. Ben Affleck)

Today, there are 37 different variations of Air Jordan models available. From the basketball court to the streets and even the catwalk, the Nike sneakers have become a staple of American culture. Director Ben Affleck’s “Air” invites audiences into Nike headquarters to experience the story behind the popular shoe that was built solely for the legendary athlete for which it is named: 

Set in 1984, Affleck stars as Nike founder Phil Knight. An ambitious, rebellious, and passionate leader who likes to live by Douglas McArthur’s famous quote that “you are remembered for the rules you break,” Knight thrives on taking risks, a trait which endears him to the slumping company’s go-for-broke basketball guru Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon). Affleck’s fun and zippy film takes more of a better safe than sorry approach, but what “Air” lacks in boldness it makes up for in sure-handed satisfaction, as this free throw of a corporate fairytale hits every shot it takes from the line, and leaves you pumping your fist at the prospect of millionaires turning into billionaires — and also for the equity that Air Jordans earned for the athletes themselves, a profit-share model that Affleck extended to the entire crew of his film. —MM

“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” (dir. Kelly Fremon Craig)

Judy Blume never talked down to kids or adults, and such is the spirit that drives Kelly Fremon Craig’s film adaptation of the author’s most beloved book, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.” It’s an adaptation that Blume long resisted, at least before “The Edge of Seventeen” filmmaker and her mentor and producer James L. Brooks pitched their idea to her, but Blume’s book translates beautifully to the big screen with same zip, pep, and good humor of Blume’s books.

A wonderfully specific story about a pre-teen girl eagerly anticipating the arrival of her first period, “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is also a story that doubles as a deeply universal tale of searching for life’s meaning at any age. That’s the magic of Blume’s books: Ostensibly for kids and young adults, the author treats all of her characters and their concerns as being worthy of examination. The stakes might seem different for, say, Margaret’s mom worrying about reconnecting with her parents after they cut her off long ago over her choice of husband versus her sixth-grade daughter agonizing over when she’ll need her first bra, but here these people and their problems are all important, all vital, and all worthy of respect. “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” isn’t just the best Blume adaptation currently available, it’s also an instant classic of the coming-of-age genre, a warm, witty, incredibly inspiring film that is already one of the year’s best. —KE

“Beau Is Afraid” (dir. Ari Aster)

A sickly picaresque guilt trip that stretches a single Jewish man’s swollen neuroses into a three-hour nightmare so queasy and personal that sitting through it feels like being a guest at your own bris (in a fun way!), Ari Aster’s seriocomic “Beau Is Afraid” may not fit the horror mold as neatly as his “Hereditary” or “Midsommar,” but this unmoored epic about a zeta male’s journey to reunite with his overbearing mother eventually stiffens into what might be the most terrifying film he’s made so far.

Mileage will vary on that score — the scares are typically less oh shit Toni Collette is spidering across the ceiling and more oy gevalt, Joaquin Phoenix’s enormous prosthetic testicles are causing me to squirm under the weight of my own emotional baggage — but anyone who would sooner die for their mom than answer the phone when she calls should probably mix a few Zoloft into their popcorn just to be safe. Those people should brace for a movie that triggers the same cognitive dissonance from the moment it starts, often relying on that friction to propel its plot forward in lieu of dramatic conflict. Most of all, they should brace for a movie they’ll love in an all too familiar way: unconditionally, but with a nagging exasperation over why it feels so hard. —DE

“Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” (dir. Pierre Földes)

At this point, Haruki Murakami’s trademarks are known to anyone with even a passing interest in contemporary literature. The author’s stories — many of them considered unfilmable until a recent string of major adaptations — unfold like steam rising off a lake, flowing in seemingly directionless patterns before forming something indescribably beautiful. His protagonists are often ambitionless men who appear content to let life happen to them. But as they get sucked into increasingly surreal adventures, their passive dispositions and willingness to go along with things quickly make Murakami’s bizarre plots seem relatively normal.

Pierre Földes’ delightful new animated anthology “Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” shows that even the most Murakami-esque source material can be turned into cinema in the right hands. The film adapts several of the author’s short stories (from his collection of the same name), while also taking bits of material directly from larger works like “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.” The end result — set during the aftermath of the devastating 2011 Tōhoku earthquake, and following an ensemble of middle aged characters as they deal with the trauma in different ways — is a film that’s less notable for the journeys of its characters than for its ability to bottle up Murakami’s creative ethos. Anyone who is unfamiliar with his work could watch this movie and leave with a pretty solid understanding of what all the hype is about. —CZ

“The Blue Caftan” (dir. Maryam Touzani)

When an aging couple operating a struggling Moroccan dress shop hire a dashing young apprentice, some of the first words out of his mouth are “I work fast.” That also describes the approach of “The Blue Caftan” director Maryam Touzani, who sets up its straightforward premise so quickly that you’d be forgiven for thinking you had the entire film figured out within five minutes. A closeted gay tailor, who fights with his wife about money, begins mentoring a young man who’s more beautiful than any item in his shop. Gee, what could possibly happen here?

But rather than use that premise to blow up the status quo, Touzani meticulously works backwards, illustrating that there was so much more to these relationships than we could have possibly guessed. Working with an intricacy that rivals that of the craftsman at the center of her film, the auteur crafts a surprisingly warm story that subverts expectations at almost every turn. While “The Blue Caftan” is a film about a gay man exploring his sexuality, the love story at its core is really one between him and his wife. It’s about the friendship and understanding that can form over the course of a lifetime spent together, no matter how unusual the arrangement. As much as anything else, Touzani’s delightful sophomore feature is a defense of the institution of marriage, a reminder that each human soul is worth a lifetime of exploration to someone. —CZ

“The Eight Mountains” (dir. Felix van Groeningen & Charlotte Vandermeersch)

“The Eight Mountains” lovingly adapts Paolo Cognetti’s novel of the same name, a valentine to brotherhood and a shape-shifting tale of self-discovery, resilience, nature and love — platonic but more steely than any rock you could climb. Pietro (Luca Marinelli, at his strongest physically and most tender emotionally) is haunted by the octet of mountains that surround the peak of Meru, and by the hope that climbing them might resolve some of the angst that has attended him since childhood. Every year he returns to the alpine village he first visited as a boy, and reconnects with his best friend Bruno (Alessandro Borghi, the film’s hurricane heart and spiritual guide). Their friendship deepens with every passing summer, until the rocky paths of adulthood reveal the true meaning these two men have always maintained for each other. 

Belgian filmmaker Felix Van Groeningen goes bigger and purer than his previous work with the help of his partner Charlotte Vandermeersch who — after starring in a number of her husband’s films — now co-writes and co-directs alongside him. Together they instill such affection in every frame, infusing the crisp mountain air with grace and levity where “The Broken Circle Breakdown” and later “Beautiful Boy” were so stifled by the harrowing stories they were telling that it could often be hard to enjoy the light that pierced through the clouds. —EK

“Godland” (dir. Hlynur Pálmason)

The life and work of writer-director Hlynur Pálmason seems suspended in a liminal space between his homeland of Iceland and the neighboring Scandinavian nation of Denmark, where he studied filmmaking and has now raised a family. And nowhere is that interstitial status more evidently reflected than in his third and finest feature yet, “Godland,” an arrestingly beautiful and philosophically imposing bilingual historical drama about the arrogance of mankind in the face of nature’s unforgiving prowess, the inherent failures of colonial enterprises, and how these factors configure the cultural identities of individuals.

As in Pálmason’s previous studies of seemingly mild-mannered male characters on the brink of a violent outburst, “Winter Brothers” and “A White, White Day,” his latest maps the mental and physical decay of Lucas (Elliott Crosset Hove), a 19th century Danish priest of the Lutheran faith tasked with overseeing the construction of a church in a remote corner of Iceland, at the time still a territory part of the Kingdom of Denmark. What follows is a voyage of visual splendor and divine contemplation, terrifying and breathtaking in equal measure. —CA

“John Wick: Chapter 4” (dir. Chad Stahelski)

The “John Wick” franchise has evolved from a small-scale tale of revenge for the death of a wife and the killing of a do to a globe-trotting epic that spans continents, dozens of characters, and an intricate mythology. In its fourth chapter, director Chad Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves bring this franchise back to its roots while expanding the world and the story to bigger and bolder places. The result is not only the best movie in the franchise, but also one of the best American action movies since George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road.”

After going to war with essentially the entire world, and causing the deaths of hundreds of people, “Chapter 4” finally starts pondering the question of just how far John Wick is willing to go for revenge, how many people close to him he’s willing to endanger, and whether it was all worth it. At this point, this is no longer about the killing of his wife and dog, it’s about burning down a system that always resented Wick for abandoning it.

Each setpiece takes advantage of the different locations and crews to deliver wholly unique fight scenes, and it continues to be a delight to see Keanu Reeves’ John Wick constantly be out of breath, knocked down, and then beaten up before he stands back up. The last arc, in particular, should be placed in the Louvre, with a fight in the middle of a transited Arc de Triomphe. —RM

“Joyland” (dir. Saim Sadiq)

The first Pakistani film to premiere at Cannes, Saim Sadiq’s “Joyland” rides a fine line between sweet and foreboding right from its opening shot, in which an unseen adult man waltzes mischievously with his nieces while shrouded in a bedsheet. His life, and his liveliness, are carefully concealed; he exists as if between the worlds of the living and the dead. The man is Haider Rana (Ali Junejo), a soft-spoken husband to an outspoken wife, and this film uses him as its magnifying glass to zero in on social rigidities — gender and sexuality in particular — and the quiet, often painful ways in which they manifest.

A daring film given its conservative cultural backdrop, “Joyland” hinges on Haider’s sudden infatuation with a transgender woman named Biba (Alina Khan) who leads a popular underground theater act. Biba seems to awaken something within Haider, and the more time he spends around her, the more he becomes a version of himself he cannot be at home — a transformation that threatens his marriage and reputation in the process (“Joyland” pairs nicely with “Zindagi Tamasha,” a banned Pakistani queer drama directed by one of this film’s producers, Sarmad Khoosat, in which dance leads similarly to a tale of social and masculine unraveling).

“Joyland” may tread dangerous ground, but it has no qualms about exploring how the tension between religious conservative norms and modern sexual freedom can often be awkward and absurd. Its story may be linear and simple, but it feels always on edge, always unpredictable, as if its most human moments could lead either to harrowing disaster or to unconstrained euphoria. —SA

“Mars One” (dir. Gabriel Martins)

Sometimes, the simplest stories are the most monumental. A boy wants to be an astronaut, a girl falls in love, a father lives out his dreams through his son. This is the stuff of life — nothing more, nothing less. Watching a film like “Mars One,” from Brazilian filmmaker Gabriel Martins, is a humbling experience. Why over-complicate this business of storytelling when one can make such moving magic out of everyday experiences?

Set in the wake of the election of Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, “Mars One” follows a single working-class family as they long for more, love each other, self-reflect, and struggle to make ends meet. Where a lesser film might pick one character to focus on, “Mars One” nimbly centers each of its four main characters, elegantly weaving their stories into a poignant familial whole. All relatable, flawed, and charming in their own ways, they antagonize each other without anyone losing their humanity. Martins strikes a delicate balance that’s unusually satisfying from a narrative perspective. It’s refreshing to witness characters grow outside the traditional beats of most American dramas. There is an abundance of heroes’ journeys in waking up every day and pushing past surviving to thriving. —JD

“M3GAN” (dir. Gerard Johnstone)

There are many fun games to play during the riotously campy and delightfully self-aware killer robot horror comedy “M3GAN,” but the best is the most simple: Which one of these weirdo human suckers will this murderous android bump off first? (A much less predictable game, but just as edifying, is trying to guess when M3GAN will break into song; yes, song.) And while the final death tally might be a smidge lower than you might expect from a Blumhouse joint, this film from director Gerard Johnstone can’t help but delight its audience. After all, it was built to do just that.

Please welcome to the stage: M3GAN! Or, “Model 3 Generative Android,” a hilariously and obviously evil robot meant to protect and play with kids, but clearly more interested in murder as sport. Why does Alison Williams’ desperate tech guru — so clearly not a kid person — think her obviously demented invention is going to be every child’s new best friend? The logic is thin, but Cooper and Wan do a fine job selling the wackiness of a world gone mad for anything that might be viewed as a tech innovation. Nimbly blending camp and social satire and actual terror, that “M3GAN” is poised to crack the murder-doll pantheon and stay there forever. Oscars! —KE

“Pacification” (dir. Albert Serra)

It would be a severe understatement to say that Albert Serra’s Polynesia-set “Pacification” avoids the touristic travel-porn clichés of most films about foreigners in a tropical locale. A drifting and rigorously introspective study of colonialism at the edge of apocalypse, “Pacification” stars Benoît Magimel as De Roller, dispatched from Paris to serve as the High Commissioner of a country that’s still controlled as a vestige of the French empire. Over the course of the film’s droning 163-minute runtime, De Roller’s rudderless existence is capsized — gently at first, and then with soul-crushing force — by rumors that France is preparing to resume nuclear testing near his adopted island nation.

Serra has invoked the ’70s conspiracy thrillers of Alan J. Pakula when talking about “Pacifiction,” but the specter of nuclear weapons testing isn’t what the film is “about” as much as it contributes to an atmosphere of uncertainty and fragility. It’s a narrative throughline on which Serra hangs other issues and ideas in this very episodic movie. Think of a Frederick Wiseman documentary but as a narrative feature; Serra almost made it like a documentary, filming 180 hours of footage (via three cameras at once for each scene, so really 540 hours of footage), and with the script revised and improvised on the fly.

“Pacifiction” is far too oblique to be fully an heir to the Pakula conspiracy thriller tradition. After all, it’s possible weapons testing will never resume here. But isn’t it disturbing enough that it’s considered at all? “Pacifiction” is vital because it’s a movie for a culture constantly patting itself on the back but in desperate risk of repeating all its previous mistakes. Where every little bit of progress is imperiled. We delude ourselves into thinking colonial exploitation was left behind in the 20th century (along with nuclear tests). Or maybe we choose to ignore what’s right in front of us. —CB

“Plan 75” (dir. Chie Hayakawa)

A scripted drama inspired by a 2016 mass murder at a Japanese assisted living facility, Chie Hayakawa’s “Plan 75” imagines an alternate present in which the Japanese government has created a social welfare program in which citizens above the age of 74 can volunteer to be euthanized in exchange for $1,000. But that cash pittance isn’t the real incentive, as the program is designed to target people who have no one to spend it on: lonely pensioners with tedious jobs who feel like leaving the world before their time might be more gracious than overstaying their welcome. 

The minute Plan 75 was signed into law, it put an unbearable onus of expectation on every Japanese citizen of a certain age. Now it’s as if, with each breath, they have to justify their continued existence to everyone they meet. And to themselves. That kind of pressure could force the hand of even the most beloved and well-supported person in their twilight years, let alone a semi-frail and seemingly family-less hotel maid like Michi (Chieko Baisho). From the moment this movie starts, it’s only a matter of time before she numbly begins to fill out the paperwork and prepare herself for cremation.

“Plan 75” is held together by the contemplative nature of its approach and the gentleness of its argument, both of which allow this movie to annihilate the economic case for euthanasia without alienating those of us who believe in the right to merciful end-of-life care. The scariest thing about Hayakawa’s film isn’t its familiar depiction of a society that privileges human output over human dignity, but rather its soft dystopian sketch of a society that’s able to soft-shoe around dehumanization and/or sell it as an act of grace. —DE

“Polite Society” (dir. Nida Manzoor)

British-Pakistani siblings Lena (Ritu Arya) and Ria (breakout star Priya Kansara) have always strived to carve their own path in the world, but as Lena’s dreams of being an artist start to wane, Ria’s aspirations to become a world-class stunt performer take on a much more important cast. She’s gotta turn her love of ass-kicking into something that can do nothing less than save her entire world.

For her first feature film, “We Are Lady Parts” creator Nida Manzoor weaves a hyper-creative coming-of-age tale about (pause to take a big breath): fighting the patriarchy, gut-punching feminine expectations, “The Matrix,” Islam, martial arts, family dynamics, high school dynamics, fresh-pressed juice, romance, friendship, forced leg waxing, possibly evil hybrid alien babies, diplomacy, computer hacking, and one seriously cool convertible. But Manzoor’s stuffed-to-bursting “Polite Society” is held together by one haunting question: What happens when your best friend opts to take her own life path?

That’s exactly what happens to Ria when Lena gets engaged to a rich but untrustworthy doctor. But while her increasingly dramatic suspicions alienate her from just about everyone, she’ll fight to the death for her sisterly bond. Big laughs, zippy editing, and incredible fight sequences recommend the film, but it’s the profound emotion at the heart of that relationship that makes it special. —KE

“R.M.N.” (dir. Cristian Mungiu)

Chekhov’s gun has seldom fallen into hands as steady and menacing hands as in Cristian Mungiu’s poorly titled, expertly staged “R.M.N.,” which finds the elite Romanian auteur extrapolating the personal tensions that gripped his previous work (e.g., “Beyond the Hills” and the Palme d’Or-winning “4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days”) across an entire Transylvanian village. The result is a socioeconomic crucible that carefully shifts its weight to the same foot that Mungiu always loves to rest on your throat; a slightly over-broad story of timeless xenophobia baked full of local flavor and set right on the cusp of a specific moment in the 21st century.

When bull-headed Matthias (Marin Grigore) quits his job at a German slaughterhouse by assaulting his racist boss, he has no choice but to return to the financially dispossessed hometown he’d left when the local mine shut down — the same place where a trio of migrant workers from Sri Lanka are about to be scapegoated for everything that goes wrong during a brutal winter. Pulling harder and harder at the tension between complex socioeconomic forces and the simple human emotions they inspire, “R.M.N.” masterfully spins an all too familiar migration narrative into an atavistic passion play about the antagonistic effects of globalization on the European Union. It will take your breath away. —DE

“Rye Lane” (dir. Raine Allen-Miller)

A winning rom-com in a dwindling sea of bad ones, Raine Allen-Miller’s debut feature takes a simple premise and infuses it with warm performances and a distinct sense of place. Dom (“Industry” breakout David Jonsson) is reeling from a break-up with his longtime girlfriend when Yas (Vivian Oparah) hears his whimpers in the loo at an art show. He’s sobbing, she’s intrigued, and the two soon find themselves walking around the South London neighborhood of Peckham as they navigate their respective heartbreaks. The script, from Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia, frames these two as a traditional odd couple: Whereas Dom shrinks from confrontation, Yas barrels headfirst into it. He’s an accountant. She’s a costume designer. Can I make it any more obvious?

Watching the film, audiences will long for Allen-Miller’s heroes to get together, but will also likely also crave the burritos they eat and itch to grab some pints and crisps with them. “Rye Lane” offers both a vibrant window onto an under-exposed area of London, and a calling card for an emerging director who knows that the story of two people falling for each other should be as visually engaging as anything else in theaters. —EZ

“Suzume” (dir. Makoto Shinkai)

In “Suzume,” Makoto Shinkai’s seismic anime about saving the world from natural disaster, the legendary giant catfish Namazu — which Japanese mythology identifies as the source of all earthquakes — is replaced by a snake pit of burning, writhing, fire-red worms, who escape from a hellish netherworld bent on causing geographical devastation.

If that all sounds too geologically serious, think of Japan as a teenage girl, and the earthquakes as ripples of youthful angst that always feel more like a tsunami than temporarily ennui. In this epic, moving story that is simultaneously about trying to saving the world and confronting the inevitability of grief, we follow young Suzume’s adventure across the length, breadth, and depth of her country — from Miyazaki on Kyushu island up to Ehime, through Tokushima and Kobe, passing Tokyo, up to Miyagi, and finally through to Tōhoku, Suzume’s birthplace, and the site of the 2011 earthquake that killed her mother (along with 20,000 other people). 

“Suzume” doesn’t lean into tragedy as spectacle, however: it is a spiritual journey through the very fabric of a land, anatomizing how we navigate nostalgia for home and grief for lost loved ones when both have been long-destroyed by the senseless strike of an invisible force. With it all packaged into a story of cosmic reconciliation between Suzume and her inner child, the emotional heft of this thing breaks the Richter scale. —SG

“A Thousand and One” (dir. A.V. Rockwell)

There are two bruising lines that bookend first-time feature director A.V. Rockwell’s “A Thousand and One,” a vivid portrait of Harlem life from the early 1990s to the mid-2000s.

“There’s more to life than fucked-up beginnings,” Inez, a woman living life in New York on her own terms and brilliantly played by R&B super-artist/actress Teyana Taylor, tells her young son Terry (Aaron Kingsley Adetola). She has kidnapped him out of the foster care system, which has kept them separated after her stint in Rikers Island beginning in 1993, and now hopes to give him a better life. But at the end of the movie, after a decades-spanning, bittersweet bond forms and fizzles between them and shattering revelations are had, she tells the older Terry (Josiah Cross), “I fucked up. Life goes on. So what?”

A searing protest against the inhumanity of gentrification in a city whose policies and policing are already so punitive towards poor Black families, “A Thousand and One” serves as a sobering reminder of how fucked-up beginnings can hopefully bring about better endings. Cross is crucial to the success of the film’s unforgettable final scenes, but it’s Taylor who anchors Rockwell’s direction and screenplay with her powerhouse performance. Taylor has worked with the likes of Tyler Perry in comedies, but her turn here — as fiercely committed to the character as Inez is to Terry — signals a major dramatic talent. —RL

“Tori and Lokita” (dir. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)

The tragic story of two young Cameroonian refugees who come to Belgium and pose as siblings in order to share the smaller one’s asylum status, “Tori and Lokita” is the angriest movie the Dardenne brothers have ever made, a distinction that shouldn’t be taken lightly in the context of filmmakers who’ve spent the last three decades carving diamond-sharp moral dramas from the plights of Belgium’s most dispossessed people.

Like most of the duo’s work, “Tori and Lokita” leverages the irreducible nature of human dignity against the ever-worsening apathy of human civilization. Like much of their work — including the Palme d’Or winner “Rosetta” and the 2002 masterpiece, “The Son” — the film’s threadbare story hinges on effectively parentless children whose need for support leads them towards danger. And like the best of their work, which this sobering return to form represents from its curious first shot to its furious last beat, its premise pulls tighter until even the simplest actions are endowed with breathless intensity. 

The Dardenne brothers may not be known for mincing words, but “Tori and Lokita” pioneers never-before-seen degrees of words un-minced. The final moments of their latest film hit you in the stomach with several lifetimes’ worth of unresolved outrage, as the social ills they’ve spent the last 30 years trying to dramatize toward visibility have only gotten worse — and hope that much harder to find. “Tori and Lokita” ends much like it started, with someone facing the camera, aware they’re being watched but with no good reason to believe they’re being seen. —DE