10-ish Best Films of 2023

1. Rebel Moon - Part 1: A Child of Fire (Zack Snyder) - Available @ Netflix

2. The Trace of Your Lips (Julian Hernandez) - Available @ Dekkoo

3. Dreamin’ Wild (Bill Pohlad) - Available @ iTunes

4. Winter Boy (Christophe Honoré) - Available @ MUBI

5a. Full River Red (Zhang Yimou) - Available @ eBay 
5b. Under the Light (Zhang Yimou) - Available @ eBay 

6. Marlowe (Neil Jordan) - Available @ iTunes

7a. Murder Mystery 2 (Jeremy Garelick) - Available @ Netflix
7b. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah (Sammi Cohen) - Available @ Netflix
7c. Leo (Robert Marianetti / Robert Smigel / David Wachtenheim) - Available @ Netflix

8a. Everything Went Fine (Francois Ozon) - Available @ iTunes
8b. The Crime Is Mine (Francois Ozon) - Currently in theaters 

9. All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh) - Currently in theaters 

10. Asteroid City (Wes Anderson) -  Available @ iTunes

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10-ish Best Films of 2023: Cinema at the Tipping Point

2023 is the year that the model of releasing and exhibiting cinema tipped decisively from theatrical to streaming. Half of the films on my 10-ish Best Films of 2023 list were released direct to streaming or in limited theatrical windows by streamers. Meanwhile, the theatrical releases on this list were ignored or belittled by Early Access Media in order to hype the year-long Oscar campaigns for atrocious movies. 

In fact, the two best new filmmakers of the 21st Century—Julian Hernandez and Zack Snyder—get relegated to streaming (#2 and #1 on the list respectively). Ironically, their work most benefits from the largest-screen format (as opposed to most of their visually bereft franchise, indie, and Oscar-pix peers) and (with no peers) whose work most pushes the potentialities of the big screen and the medium. Hence, the brief 70mm Panavision theatrical release of Snyder’s digitally filmed Rebel Moon - Part 1: A Child of Fire constituted the most amazing new moviegoing experience since seeing Hernandez’s 2006 Broken Sky on a giant screen at a New York multiplex as part of that year’s NewFest. Both of their respective most recent 3 films were released for streaming.

So be it.

True artists find a way. As evidenced by his three films this year, Adam Sandler’s revolutionary comedies (3-way tie for #7) and revolutionary deal with Netflix (circumventing Early Access Media) paved the path. The bottomless demand for content provides the economic model that makes the formal innovations of Snyder and Hernandez possible and that provides the opportunity for finding and developing a discerning audience.

That will be cinema’s only hope.