2023 is coming co a close and with that comes an opportunity to look back upon the year and reflect on what it meant and formulate a trajectory for the next twelve months. With that, I think it’s a great opportunity to begin by counting down the Top 10 Films of the Year!

Air was easily the feel-good experience of the year for me and a movie that took me completely by surprise. I fully realize it has been since touted a “movie for dads”, which is fine, but it doesn’t change the fact that Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (flanked by a whole host of great folks) just know how to put an entertaining movie together. (Full review here)

An “elevated” elevated horror, Talk to Me was both a greatly entertaining piece of genre filmmaking and an intellectual journey of self-reflection for the recent decade of horror. Smart, scary and visually inspired, this piece from Down Under was a true breath of fresh air. (Full review here)

A follow-up to X, Ti West’s Pearl serves to further cement this filmmaker as one of the foremost voices in the mainstream of horror filmmaking. This Technicolor phantasmagoria is a visually rich and thematically resplendent treaty on our own relationship with entertainment and how cinema wields immense power to warp the way we perceive reality. Also, Mia Goth’s performance is an absolute standout! (Full review here)

Perhaps one of the biggest surprises of the year for me, Barbie was a blast that continued Greta Gerwig’s unbroken streak of great movies. In all honesty, I never expected to emerge loving it as much as I did, let alone for it to effectively dwarf the other side of the Barbenheimer phenomenon, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. It’s an insanely clever movie that speaks to both sexes and never forgets that it’s primary function is to entertain. (Full review here)

Directed by Daniel Goldhaber, How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a stunning exercise in tension and release. It’s a festival of palpable suspense packed into a lean piece of cinéma vérité that puts you in a chokehold for its entire duration. It’s the closest to what would happen if Harmony Korine directed a remake of The Wages of Fear. (Full review here)

Again, what a surprise! In the year of the Flopbuster, a movie in the longest-running cinematic franchises must come along to show Hollywood how it’s done. Brimming with Spielbergian sensibilities and anchored in Japanese neo-realism, Godzilla Minus One is a fantastic piece of entertainment that wows with its scale and grips the heart with its humanity! Amazing filmmaking! (Full review here)#

A stunning feature debut from Molly Manning Walker, How to Have Sex is a beautiful piece of experiential filmmaking that marries the philosophy of cinéma vérité with a personal perspective of the female gaze. A great movie about coming of age, toxic relationships, consent and more! (Full review here)

Another fabulous directorial debut! From Charlotte Regan comes Scrapper, a beautifully woven piece of magical realism and a modern-day fairy tale about growing up, stepping up to the plate and making peace with heart-rending loss! (Full review here)

Another masterpiece from Martin Scorsese, Killers of the Flower Moon is a phenomenal opus that not only earns its hefty running time, but it utilizes every second of it to great effect. Scorsese clearly sees this movie as an opportunity to reflect upon the history of America, which he religiously documented all throughout his long-standing career, and uses this bone-chilling story to bring to light the many historical abuses one could find while inspecting the foundations of The Land of the Free. (full review here)

Past Lives is best described as a poem of cinema. A beautifully soulful exploration of longing, loss, friendship and love, this movie touched my heart in ways only a handful of films have. It’s an instant favourite of mine that I will gladly count among the most important films I have seen in recent years, maybe even in my life as a whole. A wonderfully told story that makes stunning use of both its visual nagative spaces and the breathing spaces in between the lines of dialogue, Past Lives is a modern classic I cannot recommend enough and – at least as far as I am concerned – the best and most impactful film of the year! (Full review here)