Your typical Top 10 list has only so many slots and, thus, it is a naturally constrained creature. Therefore, to better reflect my own journey through the cinema of 2023, I decided to supplement the list of 10 Best Films I Watched with an addendum concoction of movies that maybe wouldn’t have made my list of best movies of the year, but which surely made an impression.

Look, there’s no dancing around it. Cocaine Bear is probably the dumbest film I have seen all year. Maybe Meg 2 would be in the conversation, but still… I thought I’d include this movie in here because I had way too much fun for what essentially was Sharknado shot on a Hollywood budget. Also, it seems that Cocaine Bear has enjoyed a rather short life in the cultural conversation as it disappeared from the forefront of the memetic discourse as quickly as it turned up in it. It’s dumb (and I mean really dumb) and it makes absolutely no sense, but it is nonetheless a fun piece of entertainment for anyone wishing to kick back, switch off their brains and just waste time in front of the screen for ninety minutes or so. Plus – make of it what you will – it is one of the last movies Ray Liotta was in before he passed away. (Full review here)

Plane was one of those movies that honestly shouldn’t have been released theatrically in the current climate. Untethered from any known franchise, anchored around the persona of Gerard Butler (who is the new Liam Neeson in many ways), it is nothing but an old school action thriller with guns, explosions and men doing manly things to save whoever needs saving from the evil drug-smuggling people. That’s it. That’s the movie. Still, it was a fun romp that sent me all the way back into my salad days when movies like this ruled the roost. (Full review here)

A hybrid between Black Mirror and Child’s Play, M3GAN is perhaps a natural extension of what Leigh Whannell has been doing with Upgrade and The Invisible Man. It’s a techno-horror that capitalizes on our innate fears of artificial intelligence and effectively captured the spirit of 2023 a little bit ahead of schedule. On top of all that, it is a genuinely fun piece of genre entertainment that doesn’t shy away from indulging in graphic violence and remains suitably self-aware to satisfy those of us who love movies that know they are movies. (Full review here)

One of the two movies (so far) to breach the 1 billion barrier (the other being Barbie), The Super Mario Bros Movie was an absolute blast because – in contrast to many other modern animation efforts – it seemed to understand the assignment, know who its target audience is and, most importantly, what it wants. I know it seems daft but these days it is exceedingly rare to find a kids movie that targets the whole family at the same time without injecting innuendo every now and again and in doing so it reflects the spirit of what Nintendo products have been known to do so well. It’s an innocent and immensely entertaining application of the hero’s journey that is colorful, propulsive and immensely rewatchable. I should know – I saw it twice in the cinema. And now it is primed to enter into a home-viewing rotation because my daughter adores it even more. (Full review here)

It’s rare enough for any horror franchise to remain entertaining or fresh five instalments in, but I think everyone should sit up and take note when a fifth sequel in a long-standing series comes along and blows the bloody doors off (pun intended). Insidious: The Red Door is a movie made with explicit intent to reconnect with the roots of the series and take it out of the weeds it wandered off into. Furthermore, thanks to Patrick Wilson’s intimate relationship with this storyline, it is a movie that serves not only to bring the series back on track, but it also recontextualizes the entire thing as a trilogy about intergenerational trauma, paternal neglect, abuse and grief. (Full review here)

Living with Chucky is both a conglomeration of making-of factoids you’d find accompanying the various instalments in the Chucky franchise and a self-aware look at the legacy of the series. In fact, this self-reflective perspective it offers – courtesy of the fact the filmmaker Kyra Elise Gardner literally grew up immersed in the production of all those movies – is a perfect example of how filmmaking can bring people together. It’s an honestly heartfelt exercise in showing how an iconic homicidal doll is a front for a community of like-minded misfits who came together to make movies and stayed together because of the friendships they made along the way. A true gem. (Full review here)

I’m fully aware I might be the only person out there who had this much fun watching Outpost, a horror about a woman who slowly loses her mind while on an assignment in the woods. It’s a great piece of homage to horror royalty – Stephen King himself – as it capitalizes so effortlessly on what King’s writing could capture, that is the process of someone slowly losing their wits. Outpost is The Shining in the forest that uses its limited budget with great aplomb and provides visceral entertainment that outmatches many better-funded projects. (Full review here)

Eli Roth’s return behind the camera is exactly what you’d expect an Eli Roth would be – a great display of filmmaking acumen, genre IQ, self-awareness and total disregard for what an average viewer would consider good taste. Thanksgiving is a rollercoaster ride through the avenues of 90s nostalgia (and other decades too) that looks like Scream with saturation turned all the way up to max. And that dinner scene? Wowzer! (Full review here)

Directed by William Oldroyd (who previously made the magnificent Lady Macbeth), Eileen is a movie that looks small, literary and insignificant, but it packs immense punch. In fact, I think about this film even many weeks after seeing it and I still discover nuances and meanings I may have missed while watching it. It is an immensely intellectual psychological thriller that uses its negative spaces and silences to a great extent and although it is far from being conventionally riveting, it is nonetheless unforgettable. (Full review here)

This a bit of a cheat because RoboDoc technically isn’t a film, but a four-part miniseries. However, I feel I need to mention it among the biggest surprises of the year for me because I never expected a making-of documentary made explicitly for at-home consumption would be this much fun to watch. It’s honestly the perfect bonus feature you could imagine as an accompaniment to a physical release of Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop. Packed to the absolute brim with facts, interviews, snippets of the movie and everything else you’d wish a Robocop making-of documentary would have, this is a four-hour journey into the magical neverland of Hollywood filmmaking that shows how wild the production of this movie was. Fantastic! (Full review here)