This year, the movies got weird.
Obviously, every year has oddball films, but they were out of control — mostly in a good way — in 2023. It probably has to do with the pandemic derailing big movies and making space for off-kilter projects that were ready to go. It could be because world cinema is veering toward the mainstream in a way it hasn’t since Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman and leaders of the French New Wave crafted unconventional masterpieces in the 1950s and ‘60s. And it’s undoubtedly influenced by Hollywood studios — in a year when sure things such as Marvel and Pixar underperformed — not knowing what audiences care about. So they’re throwing movie spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
That’s how we got Emma Stone eating with her hands and masturbating in front of swank strangers in “Poor Things.” That’s how we got “The Zone of Interest” (about a family living next door to a Holocaust crematorium), which begins in unnerving darkness, with what sounds like nails on a chalkboard. That’s how we got Ava DuVernay’s wide-ranging “Origin,” a drama based on Isabel Wilkerson’s unfilmable book “Caste.” That’s how we got Barry Keoghan slurping used bathwater in “Saltburn.”
1. “John Wick: Chapter 4”: It’s the purest moviemaking of 2023, all about energy, wit and suspense. Yeah, the story is familiar, but the way director Chad Stahelski tells it is thrilling. (Streaming, most platforms)
2. “Origin”: Wilkerson’s brilliant “Caste” found connections between the Holocaust, Jim Crow laws, India’s caste system, Trayvon Martin’s murder and home construction. Miraculously, DuVernay turns that into a heartbreaking movie that clarifies the book. (In theaters in January)