spoiler-free

Top Ten Movies of 2023

2023 has been an extraordinary year for movies. Many masters of cinema of the past few decades gave us new entries into their canon, most of which were fantastic and in some cases may be one of their final entries. Looking at my list, I see a few patterns. 2023 was certainly an excellent year for the black comedy, particular mixing dramatic genres like horror, thriller or melodrama with dark humor. It is also a year of existential dread about the state of the world (what year isn’t, these days?), and how various people might approach their place in it. Of the 63 movies I saw in 2023, these were my favorites:

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Top “Everything But Movies” of 2023

Better late than never, here are my top “everything but movies” of 2023. As usual, the rules are simple: any media that I consumed in 2023 is eligible, with the exception of movies that were first released in 2023. So that includes all television, video games, musicals, books, albums, older movies, live events, TikToks, Quibies, or puppet shows. Here were my favorites of the year!

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Top “Everything but 2022 Movies” of 2022

I really enjoyed having an outlet for other media last year, so I’m going to continue the tradition. The idea of this post is to pay tribute to my favorites of other art of the year, be it TV, video games, books, live performances, or even non-2022 movies. The rules of this post are basically anything can qualify, whether it came out in 2022 or before, so long as I experienced it in 2022.

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Top Ten Movies of 2021

While the movie-going status quo has changed significantly, 2021 welcomed us back to movie theaters and saw the return of blockbusters in a big way. Many of the larger films were holdovers unreleased in 2020, while indie films from the festival circuit continued to get major platforms on streaming services. Of the record 85 films I saw this year, I’d say around 2/3rds of them were from home, but most of my favorite experiences of the year were still in theaters. Here are my picks for favorite movies of 2021:

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Top Ten Movies of 2020

What a year. There are about a thousand things from 2020 that are more important to talk about than the state of movies, but that’s what I’m going to write about. I saw a record 81 movies from the 2020 season, thanks to a combination of accessibility, length of the Oscar season (it’s April….), and too much dang time spent at home. Of course, the downside from a movie-going perspective is that all of those movies were seen at home. Of the 13 movies in this article, I saw literally all of them from my couch. So what movies had an emotional impact on me from the comfort of my living room? Here is my [spoiler-free] take on 2020.

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‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ Justifies Its Own Existence

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but Zack Snyder’s Justice League justifies its own existence. Actually, I’ll go even further than that: I truly enjoyed the Snyder Cut, despite thoroughly disliking the 2017 theatrical cut. The new version is overly long for a theatrical film, but in an era when Marvel is turning out hour-after-hour of content as TV shows, this HBO Max feature finally makes some sense of what Zack Snyder was getting at in his otherwise largely incoherent DC movies. As an exercise in unadulterated auteur theory, it’s pretty good and thoroughly interesting, warts and all.

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Top Ten Movies of 2019

2019 was one of the best years for film of the decade thanks to a late surge in quality towards the end of the year.  I saw a personal record of 78 movies this year, and had an incredibly difficult time putting together this list.  As always, this will be a [spoiler-free] take on the films in question.  Without further ado: (more…)

The Best Movie Stuff of 2019

There have been so many memorable movies of 2019!  Even outside of my top 10 of the year, there are tons of things, movie “stuff” if you will, that are worth talking about.  This post will be pretty much entirely [spoiler-free], so feel free to read on even if you haven’t seen the films.   Without further ado, here are some of my favorite movie elements.  (more…)

Top Ten Movies of 2018

2018 was an extremely rich year for very good movies, even while perhaps lacking in true masterpieces.  Somehow when making this list, I went from not having enough films to fill it in November to making extremely difficult cuts in February.  Out of the 61 movies I saw this year, it was very difficult to narrow the list to only 10 (plus four extras), and there are probably another dozen that could easily be swapped in.  Here are my favorites of the year.

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The Best Movie Stuff of 2018

2018 has been a hell of a year, and in many ways has felt like an eternity.  In that eternity, we’ve gotten a huge variety of great films.  Here are some of my favorite elements and moments from film in 2018.  This will be mostly [spoiler-free] unless otherwise noted. (more…)