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Which 2023 releases kept you gripped?
Tell us in the comments which films you thought were best this year and we’ll feature a selection in our readers’ round-up
Tár
As it turns out, the film of the year was in the bag from a UK release date of January 13. Despite the rest of 2023 producing a lot of memorable cinema, nothing quite equalled Todd Field’s crackerjack fictional biopic of a flawed cultural titan, played by a career-best Cate Blanchett. (Though to bring things up to date, it would also make a fine double bill with sparky new Leonard Bernstein biography Maestro.)
On Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video and other digital platforms
The Beasts
A real criminal case inspired Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s hard-to-shake Spanish thriller about a French couple resettled in the tough rural enclave of Galicia. But the film operates on a far higher plane than standard true crime: a research of bitter friction between neighbours that feels tied up both with modern Europe and something much more primal.
On Amazon Prime Video, iTunes and other digital platforms
Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One
In 2022, Tom Cruise was credited with saving the film industry after the success of Top Gun: Maverick. A year on, his latest outing as rogue agent Ethan Hunt proved a let-down at the box office. More fool the box office, which missed out on the most giddily inventive action blockbuster since the great Mad Max: Fury Road.
On Paramount+, Amazon Prime Video and other digital platforms
Anatomy of a Fall
The year has had two superb French courtroom dramas about women facing judgment. Alice Diop’s Saint Omer was a near-verbatim account of the real trial of a French-Senegalese woman accused of killing her child; Anatomy of a Fall posed profound questions about marriage and morality in Hitchcockian style, with a grandstand performance from star Sandra Hüller.
In cinemas now
20 Days in Mariupol
In the second year of the Russian invasion, Ukrainian journalist and filmmaker Mstyslav Chernov released his urgent documentary of the first weeks of the conflict. The result was flawless war reportage: a stark, you are here panorama of a city under siege, with the courage to ask itself what purpose a camera has in the face of atrocity.
On Curzon Home Video, Amazon Prime Video, Mubi and other digital platforms
Reality
The spark of a bold creative gamble met a flammable American moment in Reality. For her portrait of the 2017 CIA interview and arrest of whistleblower Reality Winner, director Tina Satter took every line direct from the official transcript. And yet the film transcended mere reconstruction, instead becoming a gripping, sometimes surreal invitation to rethink our preconceptions about both politics and drama.
On Amazon Prime Video in the UK and Hulu and Max in the US
The Damned Don’t Cry
Vivid colour adorned The Damned Don’t Cry, the second film from British-Moroccan director Fyzal Boulifa. But the lush aesthetics made a loaded backdrop for a sad and hard-edged story, a melodrama of a single mother and teenage son adrift in modern Tangier that cemented the status of Boulifa as a rising star.
On Curzon Home Cinema, iTunes, Amazon Prime Video and other digital platforms
EO
After other directors made close-up documentaries about pigs and cattle (Gunda and Cow), veteran Jerzy Skolimowski made one of the most remarkable films in his long career with the story of a grey donkey, on a lone journey though Europe. The odyssey had shades of austere grandmaster Robert Bresson, but Skolimowski spiked it with his own personality, and a vivid 21st-century century pop.
On Amazon Prime Video, Mubi and other digital platforms
Napoleon
It feels a little admire trolling to include Ridley Scott’s costume epic on this list, given the rage it has induced in historians and haters. And yes, the film is often ridiculous. But something in the sheer, brazen movie-ness of it all is hard to resist, with a provocative question about the will to power set right in the middle, and oddly perfect turns from Joaquin Phoenix and Vanessa Kirby.
In cinemas now
Tish
Paul Sng’s Tish is an inspired documentary about photography, life, and the last half century in British society. The title introduces the subject: Tish Murtha, a vastly talented photographer from north-east England, whose frank, affectionate studies of street life locally and in London long went overlooked. The film helps set the record straight, and makes a moving portrait itself.
In UK cinemas now
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