Best movies and TV shows of 2023
• From ‘Barbenheimer’ and ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ on the big screen to ‘The Last of Us’, ‘Succession’ and ‘The Bear’
In a year in which the future of cinema seemed to hang in the balance and threaten to become overwhelmed by hammering computergenerated imagery (CGI) and safe bet franchises before the and screenworker and actor strikes came along to sound the apparent death knell of Hollywood’s 2023 hopes, things on the big screen turned out not to be so bad after all.
On the small screen a number of singular and innovative shows returned or said goodbye and a few newcomers breathed muchneeded inventive life into an arena that like its big-screen counterpart had increasingly felt as if it was sliding into a depressing abyss of algorithmsatisfying uniformity.
Here is a small selection of some of the year’s films and TV shows that, while sometimes flawed and demanding much of viewers, demonstrated committed ambition to keep the moving image full of imaginative possibility and spirit.
FILMS
BABYLON
Damien Chazelle’s epic, frenzied reimagination of 1920s Hollywood began with a monstrous elephant poop and ended with a 2001: A Space Odyssey-style homage to the magical history of the movies.
In between it offered some of the most memorable scenes of debauchery and filmmaking madness from a golden age when the possibilities offered by the movies seemed infinite and all-consuming to those who dedicated their lives to making them.
Sometimes exhausting, often darkly satirical and always visually awesome, it’s the movie about movies that the uncertainty of 2023 needed to kick-start it into all hands-ondeck, go-for-broke mode.
BEAU IS AFRAID Psychological horror whizz kid Ari Aster took a hard left turn with this ambitious surreal journey through the troubled mind of a bedraggled, beleaguered, schizophrenic loner trying to get home to see his overbearing mother, who might or might not be dead.
It is a dark, discomforting, psychological comedy telling cinema’s ultimate Jewish mother joke through the lens of a very bad acid trip.
Aster makes excellent use of the off-kilter edginess of star
Joaquin Phoenix and the film proves an ambitious departure for its director. Though it asks great patience from audiences, it pays off handsomely for those willing to submit to its unabashed, singular weirdness.
‘BARBENHEIMER’
The most-hyped and eagerly awaited US summer movie opening weekend in recent cinema history ended up delivering two of the year’s most different but satisfying films.
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie was a smart, fun-filled demonstration of how to take existing intellectual property and turn it into raucously enjoyable movie magic. All the while it also managed to make some sly but pertinent feminist-positive critiques of the gaps that still exist between the dreams sold by the world’s most iconic doll and the real world inhabited by the women who grew up playing with her.
Christopher Nolan’s visually spectacular IMAX biopic took the tragic story of its protagonist, nuclear-bomb father Robert J Oppenheimer, and wove it into a memorably powerful tale of the consequences of technology worship and the messy, destructive aftermath of ideological dogma. It offered big-screen spectacle and hardhitting social relevance in a year when both technology and ideology have engulfed the world in uncertainty, chaos and tragedy.
KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON
Eighty-one-year-old Martin Scorsese continued his strong run of late-career creations with this dazzlingly skilful execution of the complex, long and dramatically engaging and tragically true story of the nefarious, murderous machinations of greedy white American capitalists among the oil-rich Osage nation in the 1920s.
Featuring the first Scorsesedirected appearance of his two favourite collaborators — Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro — and a standout performance from Lily Gladstone, the crime saga is told from the perspective of the bad guys and makes a determined and necessary effort to stare one of the many shameful moments of US history squarely and uncomfortably in the face.
PAST LIVES
The smallest and most quietly effective of the films on the 2023 list, playwright Celine Song’s feature debut is a deeply personal and universally resonant drama about identity and the emotional and physical distance that life’s journey can carve between people who may have meant so much to each other in childhood but who find it hard to recognise one another once they’ve grown up.
NEW TV SHOWS
BEEF
Ali Wong and Steven Yeun proved worthy adversaries in this engagingly black-humour series about two Asian Americans on different sides of the class divide whose lives become maniacally intertwined after a road rage encounter.
A surprising and ultimately thought-provoking show that slowly peels away the layers of its initial premise about two strangers getting furious with each other to look at the bigger factors that determine where their fury comes from and how far it might drive them.
JURY DUTY
A superior example of the mockumentary drama that used its smart premise to full and always delightfully entertaining effect.
When an unsuspecting nice real guy is called to serve on the jury in a court case, he’s soon embroiled in a series of absurd events that, unbeknown to him, are curated by the directors and the rest of the cast who are all in on the joke and manage to keep the wool over his eyes with hilarious results.
THE LAST OF US HBO’s adaptation of a cult apocalyptic video game turned out to be one of the smartest and most engaging dystopian thrillers in ages. In a zombieinfested future laid waste by a deadly fungal disease, two very different survivors are thrown together in a dangerous journey to provide some small sliver of hope for the future of humanity.
Carried by the strong performances of its odd couple central duo, played by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, it’ sa show that skilfully melds its genre thrills with a solidly relatable humanity and empathy that lifts it above the usually messy and disappointing previous efforts to bring video games to life on screen.
RAIN DOGS
Daisy Mae Cooper shines in this bleakly comic dissection of the hardships of life in the margins in post-Brexit Britain.
Weaving Dickensian social drama with biting satire of class and sex, it’s an uncomfortable but authentic show that finds humour and hope in its emotionally grinding story about the daily struggle to survive of an ordinary working-class single mother and her daughter.
I’M A VIRGO
Boots Riley took his uniquely sharp knife to the superhero genre in this modern-day fairytale about a 13-foot teenager in a show that took aim at everything from the inanity of its own genre to the inequities of capitalism and the emptiness of digital-era pop culture with wit, imagination and singular angry disdain.
RETURNING AND ENDING TV SHOWS
SUCCESSION
The most talked-about show of the year offered a final goodbye to the venal, back-stabbing Roy brats and an early surprise that pulled the rug out of the expectations of its fiercely devoted fan base as it finally sort of answered the question of who would succeed Logan Roy as king of his global media empire.
Brilliantly curse-fuelled, sharply withering and surprising to the end, creator Jesse Armstrong’s modern onepercenter melodrama left the stage in style and showed the wisdom of knowing when and how to take a bow.
THE BEAR
The second season of Christopher Storer’s love letter to Chicago and the gruelling high-pressure world of restaurant work returned for a season that engagingly expanded the backstories and personal stories of its cast of eccentric, damaged characters, while offering viewers insights into the frustrating realities of the service industry.
It also delivered the most tense, uncomfortably highpressure, high-stakes and emotionally excruciating family gathering episode in TV history.
BARRY
Bill Hader’s darkly funny existential hitman comedy came to a fittingly bleak but still emotionally relatable conclusion with sometimes unbearably awkward but always quietly devastatingly funny aplomb.
Its distinctive blend of highneurosis angst, Hollywood fame satire and quietly observed emotional heart made it a uniquely executed comic gem that offered creator and star Hader plenty of room to shine both in front of and behind the camera.
TOP BOY
The British crime saga about the divisions between two friends embroiled in the world of drugs and gangs in the tough environment of black, workingclass London came to a nailbiting emotional and dramatic end as it kept audiences on the edge of their seats waiting to see who would emerge as the “top boy”, and whether the emotional and psychological price would be worth it.
Comparisons to The Wire have haunted the show but it proved in this tense, short and sharp final season that it holds its own unique place in the pantheon of TV crime drama.
RESERVATION DOGS
Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo’s bittersweet comedy about a group of disaffected Native American youngsters living on an Oklahoma reservation executed with a memorably eccentric and universally relevant season that left its loyal and rewarded fans with warm smiles.