2023: a tumultuous, but also exciting year for cinema that saw the bottoms fall out of once unstoppable franchises and the rise of new and old masters. Characterized by surprise blockbusters, stinging excavations of the human condition, and a few bold oddities, this year was a cornucopia of great film. So much so that for the first time ever, I’m expanding the usual top 10 to a top 20.

My favorite horror movie, 2008’s Australian cult sleeper - Lake Mungo - is celebrating its 15th anniversary this week. Within the walls of a mockumentary, dread and sorrow percolate into a devastating crescendo as the Palmer family grapples with the specter of death, and there’s nothing quite like it. A terrifying haunted house yarn that belies its tragic, shattering underbelly, Lake Mungo is a masterwork of grainy apparitions, mounting unease, and quiet restraint. Minor spoilers ahead…

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is astounding. Delivering a multiverse story in service of its characters rather than the other way around, directors Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson elevate this Spider-sequel with jaw-dropping craft and a keen deconstruction of the wall crawler’s metafiction. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the closest a movie has ever come to the joy of reading a great comic book, splash pages and all.

In 2013, filmmaker Anthony Chen’s first feature, Ilo Ilo, won the coveted Caméra d’Or at Cannes. Centered around the inseparable bond between a 10-year-old Singaporean boy and his Filipina nanny, Chen’s full-length debut deployed a specific lens — a family weathering the 1997 Asian financial crisis — to tell a universal story exploring the nooks and crannies of our shared humanity. Flash forward to exactly a decade later, Chen makes his triumphant return to Cannes (in the Un Certain Regard section) with The Breaking Ice, a moving, humanist snapshot of China’s lost youths told through a ships-in-the-night friendship.

Colors! Personality! Stakes! James Gunn closes out the Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy with the wildly vivid Vol. 3. Crafting an intimate farewell against the fabric of Marvel cosmic, Gunn brings something that rarely finds its way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe: finality. It’s one last hurrah as the Guardians race against the clock to save a grievously injured teammate, touring through James Gunn’s warped imagination in a surprisingly personal goodbye. Like many superhero movies, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is overlong and stuffed to the brim with talented-but-shortchanged actors, but it helps that this is the best looking Marvel movie of the last ten years. Minor spoilers ahead…

John Wick has always been the action franchise of the decade, but Chad Stahelski’s Chapter 4 is next level: the type of exhilarating, metal-as-hell ballet of bullets that blows the doors off action filmmaking. There hasn’t been a take-your-breath-away feast for genre fans like this since Mad Max: Fury Road or The Raid. Minor spoilers ahead…

Welcome to my dispatch from this year’s SXSW Film Festival. As usual, I won’t be writing full reviews of everything I see at the festival, but there are plenty of notable films in this year’s slate that I still wanted to cover. Here are the capsule reviews for 2023’s SXSW: Tetris, Furies, If You Were the Last, and Late Night With the Devil. Minor Spoilers Ahead…

Every single Evil Dead movie is a bloody, gruesome delight, and now the tradition continues with Lee Cronin’s Evil Dead Rise. A decade after a deadly-serious reboot turned the franchise on its head, this new installment finds a bond between sisters shredded by a disgusting waltz of Deadites, guts, and gore. Alyssa Sutherland brings her A-game as a twisted, cackling fiend: a physical performance for the ages. Minor spoilers ahead…

Michael B. Jordan marks his confident and kinetic directorial debut with Creed III. Carving a propulsive parallel to Adonis Creed’s journey to cement his legacy, Jordan sheds the Rocky franchise DNA by charting his own path of blistering performances, formal verve, and anime-inspired showdowns. An electrifying tempest of fists and sweat, Creed III fully transcends what could have been a journeyman effort. Jonathan Majors is astonishing. Minor spoilers ahead…

Brandon Cronenberg follows up his 2020 sci-fi stunner Possessor with another carnival of grotesque delights in Infinity Pool. Conducting a brand new phantasmagoria of bloody satire and goopy violence, the younger Cronenberg pushes stars Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth to uproarious new extremes. It’s a sick blast. Minor spoilers ahead…

Kyle Edward Ball delivers one of the scariest movies of the decade with a lo-fi stunner that reaches into the crevices of vestigial instinct. Uncanny in its ability to bottle the ineffable childhood dread of past-your-bedtime nightmares, Skinamarink mines a whole new mode of horror from its swirling grain, sinister corners, and dark spaces. Minor spoilers ahead…

After two-plus years floundering in the pandemic, it seems that the film industry is finally regaining its legs. This year, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water blasted off, the Daniels’ multiverse-hopping stunner Everything Everywhere All at Once was the sleeper hit of the year, and old masters in their late eras such as Steven Spielberg and David Cronenberg returned in top form. It might have been harder than ever to whittle down a top ten in 2022, but it was an absolute delight to journey through the year’s cinema. Here are my 10 favorite movies of 2022, along with some honorable mentions:

Avatar: The Way of Water is the most compassionate blockbuster of our time. A dazzling gallery frame around cinematic technology in the hands of one James Cameron, its wild spectacle, unbelievable detail, and technical wizardry will blast the eyeballs out of your sockets, but its honest and sincere undercurrents just might be its secret weapon. Like its predecessor, Avatar: The Way of Water is an essential theatrical experience. This film was viewed in IMAX 3D with variable frame rates and reviewed accordingly. Minor spoilers ahead…

The superstar team of Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner, and Janusz Kaminski ripping another one out of the park is the least surprising development at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The entirety of Spielberg’s being splashed upon the big screen, The Fabelmans sidesteps the treacly sentimentality of your typical autobiography to deliver a moving form of self-therapy: the legendary director’s heart and soul, delivered through his masterful craft. The Fabelmans is Spielberg’s most personal film, and one of the year’s best. Minor spoilers ahead…

Ryan Coogler pulls it out of the fire with the overstuffed, gorgeously wrenching Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. A powerful tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman combined with Marvel myth-making at its most thoughtful, the film admirably attempts to fill an irreparable void left by its star’s untimely passing. Wakanda Forever strikes sometimes delicate, sometimes clumsy balance between an all-caps comic book movie and an intimate tour through the stages of grief. Letitia Wright, Angela Bassett, and Tenoch Huerta are the most formidable trifecta Marvel has seen in years. Minor spoilers ahead…

“The closer you look, the harder you fall.” Park Chan-wook cross-pollinates a police procedural with a swooning, femme fatale romance and it’s every bit as good as you think it will be. Swirling around two lost souls navigating a web of murder, deceit, and desire to desperately cling to their perverse affair, Decision to Leave is a sensual puzzle box — and one of the year’s best films. Tang Wei is sensational. Minor spoilers ahead…

Director Martin McDonagh reunites with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson in The Banshees of Inisherin, a darkly comedic portrait of an imploding friendship amidst mounting pettiness. Men and their decimated kinships unraveled upon the screen, richly textured and frequently uproarious, it’s McDonagh at his best as he explores evaporating bonds, crushing loneliness, and enmity in grotesque escalation. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are unsurprisingly in top form in what will likely be my favorite film of the year. Minor spoilers ahead…

Don’t Worry Darling, Olivia Wilde’s thoroughly mediocre followup to her 2019 directorial debut Booksmart, is buoyed by its dazzling below-the-line craft and a handful of electric performances. Florence Pugh and Chris Pine shine with arresting magnetism, but their contributions are mostly illusory: This story of a concealed malevolence lurking underneath a patriarchal “paradise” is, unfortunately, only skin deep. Minor spoilers ahead…