The 10 best films of 2023

If you had asked Nostradamus 12 months ago what Dazed would name as the best film of 2023, the first thing he’d say is that he died in 1566, and not only can’t predict the future but has no idea what happened in the past 457 years. But he’d swiftly follow that by positing that 2023 would be the year of Zendaya, with both Challengers and Dune 2 pushing for the top spot, and that under no circumstance would the biggest money-maker be a Greta Gerwig-directed, Pavement-referencing comedy. Fast-forward to December: Challengers and Dune 2 were delayed to 2024; Barbie was a smash hit; and, in fact, Hollywood decided to pay its writers and actors fairly in time for the release of… Wonka?

2023, in retrospect, has been painful for the movie industry. Already struggling to recover from the pandemic, theatres have faced superhero fatigue (even Marvel movies have tanked at the box office, and not because one of them is called Tank-Man), studios postponing major releases (or, in Warner Bros’ case, even cancelling them), and cinemagoers being extra picky when they work from home during a cost-of-living crisis and still have the streaming platforms they joined during lockdown because they forgot to cancel in time.

Even so, it’s become clearer and clearer – or blurrier, depending on your Wi-Fi connection – that the Golden Age of TV has died, or abruptly cancelled by Netflix just as you were getting into it. Most shows are too long, too meandering, and too much like something that, 10 years ago, would have been a movie, not least because they often are literal adaptations of past movies. Moreover, the actual films that have been straight-to-streaming have largely been disappointments – that’s why they skipped cinemas, duh.

To be fair, 2023 has witnessed undeniable movie events. There was “Barbenheimer” (memorable because you cosplayed for a Mattel marketing exercise and a humourless biopic), the Taylor Swift concert movie (memorable because you could check Twitter during it and no one would tell you to put your phone away), and Killers of the Flower Moon (memorable because you ran out in the middle to pee, and are still wondering if you’re allowed to make a judgement on a film you didn’t see in full, even if that judgement is that it needed an intermission).

In actuality, if you paid attention – instead of doing your job, you spent your day getting angry on movie subreddits – 2023 has been fantastic for cinephiles. Letterboxd culture means repertory cinemas are often filled with young audiences for dusty 35mm prints; film festivals offer so many esoteric choices that you have to guess how much faster you are than Google Maps’ prediction for how long it takes to walk between theatres; and, each week, there’s always at least one movie worthy of the big screen, even if it’s often only playing on one big screen, in a cinema that’s considered expensive for London.

With all that in mind, here are Dazed’s picks for the best films of 2023. Scroll down to nod in agreement or shake your fist in fury at our countdown – bear in mind, we’ve only included movies that had their world premiere this year. You might think that art is subjective, and that it can’t be ranked like a sport. You’re wrong!

10. PASSAGES (dir. Ira Sachs)

In Passages, a love triangle goes wrong. Very wrong. So much so, Ira Sachs’ Parisian drama really centres around a hate triangle: when an egomaniac filmmaker, Tomas (Franz Rogowski), cheats on his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw), with a teacher, Agathe (Adèle Exarchopoulos), Tomas proposes that the trio form an open relationship. Less open, though, is the communication. With Tomas displaying increasingly toxic behaviour, things go from bad to worse to somehow even worse than worse – the raw emotions are all captured by Sachs’ minimalist but effective mise-en-scène.

Read our interviews with Ira Sachs here and Franz Rogowski here

9. HOW TO HAVE SEX (dir. Molly Manning Walker)

“Best holiday ever!” screams Tara (Mia McKenna-Bruce) with her two best buds as they set out on a boozy, post-GCSE trip to Malia to remember – except it will be for the wrong reasons. As the only virgin of the group, Tara is especially anxious to get laid, but when she loses her cherry, it’s ultimately traumatising. Although the guy got Tara to say “yes”, the encounter is far from consensual, and it’s all compounded by Tara internalising her pain as she continues to fake a smile. That the drama in Molly Manning Walker’s debut feature isn’t out of the ordinary is what make it’s so powerful.

Read our interview with Mia McKenna-Bruce here

8. ALL OF US STRANGERS (dir. Andrew Haigh)

Even if All of Us Strangers is based on a 1987 Japanese novel, it’s hugely personal to Andrew Haigh. Shot in the director’s childhood home, the time-travel romance depicts a depressed screenwriter, Adam (Andrew Scott, absolutely mesmerising), who, in the present, is trying to write about losing his parents at the age of 12. Visiting the house he grew up in, Adam encounters his mother and father as they were before they died; in this supernatural twist, Adam can speak to his parents as an adult, which also means coming out as gay. With Paul Mescal in a supporting role, the poetic, poignant drama expertly showcases the power of love.

All of Us Strangers is out in UK cinemas on 26 January 2024

7. FREMONT(dir. Babak Jalali)

A dry, droll, black-and-white comedy set in a San Francisco fortune cookie factory, Babak Jalali’s Fremont follows Donya, an Afghan refugee who’s battling trauma, insomnia, and deep loneliness. In the lead role is Anaita Wali Zada, a first-time actor who, like Donya, fled Afghanistan, and in Donya she imbues a quiet, recognisable pain and an existential quest to belong somewhere. Cowritten with Amanda director Carolina Cavalli, Fremont zigs slowly and poignantly when you expect it to zag, climaxing with a wonderful third act in which Donya crosses paths with an introverted mechanic played by Jeremy Allen White.

Read our interview with Babak Jalali here.

6. THE DELINQUENTS (dir. Rodrigo Moreno)

Even if The Delinquents is technically a comedy crime-drama about a heist gone wrong, it couldn’t be further from Ocean’s 11. Selected as Argentina’s Oscar submission, the three-hour, slow-burn oddity starts with a thief who successfully steals from a bank and willingly turns himself in; from there, the plot consistently surprises the viewer, culminating in a second half that’s so drastically different from the initial robbery that you forget it was part of the same movie. Don’t read anything beforehand – just go see it, and expect to quit your job afterwards.

The Delinquents is out in UK cinemas in 2024.

5. ANATOMY OF A FALL(dir. Justine Triet)

Awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes, Justine Triet’s whodunit is a murder-mystery in which a male author is found dead, and the only suspect is his novel-writing wife, Sandra (Sandra Hüller). Hugely watchable and grimly comic (50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” is central to the narrative), Anatomy of a Fall offers a compelling examination of, well, a compelling examination. When the prosecution brings up Sandra’s bisexuality and relationship troubles, it’s apparent that it’s her personal life, not so much her whereabouts that day, being dissected in court. For extra intrigue: Triet wrote the film with Arthur Harari, who also happens to be her husband.

Read AnOther’s interview with Justine Triet here

4. THE BEAST (dir. Bertrand Bonello)

Set simultaneously in 1910 Paris, present-day LA, and a version of 2044 in which a soul’s memories can be wiped (it’s the nightmare version of Past Lives), The Beast is a romantic sci-fi thriller in which Léa Seydoux and George MacKay (he learned French for the film) play three couples who thrive or barely survive depending on their societal boundaries. As if Nocturama wasn’t provocative enough, Bonello’s audacious love story tackles time-travel, the 1910 Great Flood of Paris, and one of MacKay’s characters being a murderous incel who re-enacts Elliot Rodgers’ YouTube videos.

The Beast is out in UK cinemas on 19 April 2024.

3. PAST LIVES (dir. Celine Song)

It’s often said that the past is a foreign country but that’s especially true in Celine Song’s melancholic love-triangle drama. A New Yorker who was born in Seoul, Nora (Greta Lee) is happily married to an American author, Arthur (John Magaro), but her heart also aches for her childhood sweetheart, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo); when the trio have pasta and drinks, the conversation crosses boundaries both emotional and lingual. Admittedly, not everyone loved it, but perhaps the killjoys, in their next life, can appreciate the poetry within the silences and 35mm imagery that captures dreams disappearing in thin air.

Read our interview with Celine Song here.

2. POOR THINGS (dir. Yorgos Lanthimos)

With the lavish, painterly production values of The Favourite and the cruel humour of The Killing of the Sacred Deer, Poor Things is Yorgos Lanthimos doing whatever he wants on a massive scale. Adapted from an Alasdair Gray novel, the Greek auteur’s sci-fi comedy stars Emma Stone as Bella, a grown woman who’s brought back to life via an unborn baby’s brain. Experiencing food, sex, and everything else for the first time, Bella escapes the scientist (Willem Dafoe) who rescued her, and sets off on a tour of the world with a baffled but horny lawyer, Duncan (Mark Ruffalo). A must-see on the big screen.

Poor Things is out in UK cinemas on 12 January 2024

1. BEAU IS AFRAID (dir. Ari Aster)

You may not have understood it, you may not have liked it, you may not have even stayed for the end of its 179-minute running time. Either way, Beau Is Afraid provoked a response in viewers, and, for us, it was one of utter awe – that the director of Hereditary and Midsommar would cash his blank cheque on a nightmare comedy that’s so obviously going to lose money, and that A24 allowed it to happen.

Side-splittingly hilarious, unpredictable from scene to scene, and absolutely gorgeous as Joaquin Phoenix traverses from one fantasy world to another, Ari Aster’s unnerving third feature is the kind of audacious, vivid explosion of visual punchlines, dream logic, and storytelling twists that makes it a thrill to step into a cinema, unaware of what to expect. Whether it’s the gigantic penis monster or an animated sequence that flips the movie on its head, the highlights are mind-boggling and even better on a rewatch.

Read our interview with Ari Aster here.