At the end of a year or the beginning of the next one is a time to look back over the previous year’s crop of releases. Traditionally for me, that means two things. The first is looking over the past year’s home video releases which have dwindled to a precious few and have been covered here as they were released. The other is evaluating the year’s theatrical releases that for the first time in many years finds almost all critics and critics’ groups naming the same films. Is that because the same 10-12 films are really that outstanding, or is it because they are the only films that really stood out? Sadly, I think that for 2023, it’s the latter.

For me, there were only three truly outstanding films among those that I have seen – Past Lives, Oppenheimer, and The Holdovers.

Somehow every year reminds me of a previous one on some level. 2023 reminds me of 1993 which was an overall better year for movies. Past Lives compares to that year’s The Wedding Banquet which was my fourth favorite film of 1993. Oppenheimer compares to Schindler’s List which was my favorite film of that year. The Holdovers compares to What’s Eating Gilbert Grape which was my fifth favorite film of that year. In case you’re wondering, The Piano and The Remains of the Day completed my top five of 1993.

Celine Song’s breakout film, Past Lives, is a South Korea/U.S. production in Korean and English as well as Mandarin and French, set largely in New York. Ang Lee’s breakout film was the Taiwan/U.S. production of The Wedding Banquet in Mandarin and English, set entirely in New York. They are completely different stories but deal with the same universal truths and feelings.

The Wedding Banquet was a comedy about a successful Korean transplant, a gay businessman and landlord who plans a marriage of convenience with a female tenant to hide his relationship with his gay lover from his visiting parents. Past Lives is a romantic drama about a boy and a girl who were best friends in South Korea before the girl moved to Canada and then the U.S. with her parents. She became a successful playwright married to an American, he became a successful engineer who never married. Periodically in touch over the years, mostly through internet chats, they will see each other for the first time in decades when he visits New York.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is an epic biographical film about a great man set primarily during World War II whose primary goal was to save lives as time was running out. Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List was an epic biographical film about a great man set primarily during World War II whose primary goal was to save lives as time was running out.
They take place in two separate worlds at the time.

Both had strong lead performances and numerous memorable supporting ones and dominated the zeitgeist of their day in film. Schindler’s List won most of the major film awards of its day despite fierce competition from Jane Campion’s The Piano. Oppenheimer is in the same position despite fierce competition from Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon.

Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers is a comedy/drama centered on a makeshift family of three – a professor, a student, and a cook. Lasse Hallstrom’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape was a drama with large dollops of comedy about a real family of three – a young man, his mentally challenged brother, and his morbidly obese mother. The performances of the three principals are the glue that holds their films together – Paul Giamatti, Dominic Sessa, and Da’Vine Joy Randolph in The Holdovers; Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Darlene Cates in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. It also helps that they are both beautifully written and directed.

DiCaprio is once again playing a mentally challenged man in this year’s Killers of the Flower Moon, but that film is to me more like Scorsese’s 1993 film, The Age of Innocence, than Gilbert Grape. It’s a well-intentioned film that misses the mark. The Age of Innocence suffered from excessive narration instead of just showing the action. Killers of the Flower Moon suffers from excessive length and repeated scenes of suffering and cruelty.

What The Age of Innocence had was three strong performances by Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Winona Ryder, only one of which was nominated for an Oscar, Ryder’s. Most critics agree that Killers has three strong performances as well, those of DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, and Lily Gladstone, only one of which is winning awards thus far, Gladstone’s.

If you’re looking for a comparison to The Piano, it might be a stretch, but the closest I can compare it to is Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things in which Emma Stone gives a stunning performance as a young woman in a strange world, much as Holly Hunter’s Oscar winning performance was in a much different film.

If you’re looking for a comparison to James Ivory’s The Remains of the Day, perhaps it might be Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, which like the former is also about closed off relationships set during World War II albeit under entirely different circumstances.

Of the films that I have seen this year that may not make my top ten are Bradley Cooper’s somewhat interesting but deeply flawed Maestro, Emerald Fennell’s wryly amusing but somewhat misunderstood Saltburn, and Todd Haynes’ half good May December. Less likely are two biographical films that should have gotten more praise from the critics than they did, George C. Wolfe’s Rustin and Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi’s Nyad.

I’m still on the fence about Great Gerwig’s Barbie, which I liked a lot better the second time I saw it than the first.

Of those I haven’t seen, I am most looking forward to seeing Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall, Cord Jefferson’s American Fiction, and Kenneth Haigh’s All of Us Strangers.

Happy viewing.