Overstreet's Favorite Films of 2023 — The Top Ten
And so we reach the top of the heap, the culmination of my annual countdown. Here are my ten favorite movies of 2023, each with a poster, a synopsis, a trailer, & my very own video commentary. Enjoy!
[Update: Apparently, so many people saw the link for this top ten list on Facebook that the rush of traffic crashed it… along with other Meta services like Instagram! Amazing. Thank you, faithful readers! I am so encouraged.]
It has been such an extraordinary year in cinema — particularly for women who make movies and for movies about women. It felt like a vision of a future I’d like to see, one that corrects a history of patriarchal imbalance in the arts.
Before I count down the top ten, you might want to review the first two parts of this — posts that are free for all readers.
I’ll preface my countdown here by saying that I’m so, so glad that I avoided the rush in November 2023 when critics started posting their top ten lists. Waiting until March gave me the chance to catch up with so many movies I missed — including three that would not have been on this list otherwise.
If you’re surprised to find certain titles missing — like Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days — let me remind you that I don’t count movies that weren’t playing here in Seattle (either in theaters or streaming) during the 2023 calendar year. Perfect Days opened in February 2024, so I will include it on my 2024 list.
Here we go… the top 10!
10.
Fremont
Director: Babak Jalali
Writers: Jalali and Carolina Cavalli
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “Donya, a lonely Afghan refugee and former translator, spends her twenties drifting through a meager existence in Fremont, California. Shuttling between her job writing fortunes for a fortune cookie factory and sessions with her eccentric therapist, Donya suffers from insomnia and survivor’s guilt over those still left behind in Kabul as she desperately searches for love.”
A video review of Fremont from my office:
The trailer for Fremont:
9.
Showing Up
Director: Kelly Reichardt
Writers: Reichardt and Jon Raymond
Synopsis via Letterboxd: “An artist on the verge of a career-changing exhibition navigates family, friends and colleagues in the lead-up to her show and finds that the chaos of life becomes the inspiration for more great art.”
My synopsis (from Looking Closer):
Lizzy is a sculpture artist striving to make progress in her work while also meeting the demands of a bill-paying job. And it’s not a particularly exciting job, but it’s the kind of job so many artists find they have to manage in order to afford having any time at all for their true calling.Lizzy is, arguably, a little better off than some of us who are always striving against daunting challenges to live a life of creativity. At least she gets to work in an environment surrounded by other artists and art students, where the employers appreciate the imagination. (This runs quite contrary to artists in academia who often learn the hard way that their administrators don’t understand, respect, or care about creative work.) Specifically, Lizzy works a desk job at the Oregon College of Arts and Craft — an actual art school that recently closed.
But an artist who works among other artists also faces distinct challenges. In fact, as I live and work in various circles of visual artists and writers, Lizzy’s challenges are so familiar to me — so specifically and piercingly personal to me — that I emerged from the theater feeling like I’d just grieved my way through the tortured testimony of a close friend.
Don’t get me wrong — I mean that as a recommendation. While Reichardt’s characteristic truth-telling makes some aspects of this poignant portrait rather painful, Showing Up is, above all, a comedy. And a very funny one.
A video review of Showing Up from my office:
The trailer for Showing Up:
8.
Asteroid City
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