Hamptons Critic Bill McCuddy Shares His Top 10 Films of 2023

The past year, 2023, brought us some amazing movies. And the strike by the actors and writers has me worried about 2024. (I’m still optimistic because I love movies. So stay till the end, because I have five movies I’m looking forward to in the New Year.)

Meantime, of the several hundred films I saw in 2023, many of them at this year’s Hamptons International Film Festival, here are my Top 10 Films of 2023. Let the kvetching and moaning begin. I’m used to it.

Top 10 Films of 2023

10. Anatomy of a Fall. Did she do it or didn’t she? That’s the question everyone asks at the end of this French thriller about a woman whose husband dies. I’m now never going on a balcony with my wife, so it was educational in that way. Sandra Hüller is the woman at the center of this courtroom controversy and here’s one verdict that’s assured. Between this and “The Zone of Interest” (also terrific but brutal) she’s a talent to watch.

9. The Taste of Things. Why this isn’t in every conversation about Best Foreign Film for an Oscar, I haven’t a clue. I was rapt along with the HIFF audience I saw it with. Cooking, cooking and more cooking along with a love story with the always solid Juliette Binoche is a recipe for a great night at the movies. Served best with a dry Sauvignon Blanc.

8. Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One proves Tom Cruise is our last living movie star. In a CGI world watching a 60-year-old man do all (or nearly all) of his own stunts, including driving that motorcycle off a cliff–a stunt he insisted on doing eight times even though the director liked the first take–is reason enough to see this. It’s also very good.

7. Nyad is another one I caught at the HIFF. (They don’t pay me for all these shoutouts) Annette Bening is phenomenal as the tough-spirited 60-something Diana Nyad. Her determination to swim from Cuba to Florida is brilliantly staged by doc masters Jimmy Chin and Chai Vasarhelyi (“Meru” and “Free Solo”) and the end pays off like a slot machine. Bening trained for a year in pools. It shows. Give her the gold.

6. How Air has been kind of forgotten in the end-of-year enthusiasm for Oppenheimer (okay, not on this list) and Poor Things (Are you kidding me? No thank you.) is kind of crazy. Ben Affleck, Matt Damon and the sagely brilliant Viola Davis make this story of wooing Michael Jordan to Nike a mandatory Business Degree requirement and a great true story. It shoots and scores.

5. The Killer is on Netflix like everything else these days but it’s a big screen well-oiled assassination machine by master craftsman David Fincher and starring the ‘welcome back’ performance of Michael Fassbender. He’s a man you don’t want to meet in a dark alley because he’s leaving and you aren’t.

4. Past Lives has so many touching moments about love neglected and revisited that it almost aches to write this. Two people who meet as children, are divided and then come back, briefly to examine their past resonated in a way for me that no other film did this year.

3. Maestro is a masterpiece for me because I never thought I’d care about Leonard Bernstein. Bradley Cooper directs and, yes, sorry, conducts a great film about the musical icon. But his real genius is stepping aside in a movie about a man he stars as to give Carey Mulligan the greatest performance of her career. That’s a generosity that’s almost unheard of in modern Hollywood. Bravo.

2. The Covenant is a Guy Ritchie movie that neither feels or looks like one. That’s not a knock because I’ve liked ALMOST everything he’s ever done. Come on, he was married to Madonna when they made “Swept Away.” You wanna say “no” to her? Jake Gyllenhaal is a soldier in the Middle East with a translator who gets left behind in battle. Gyllenhaal has only one choice because this is a movie–he’s gotta go back and rescue him. See it in a room with a high ceiling because you will stand and cheer at the end.

And the number one? “Barbie”? I liked it a lot and I highly recommend you see it a second time because the first time you were washed over in pink (the way I was) and the second time it’s a LOT funnier and really smart. But my I had a better time watching my top choice more than anything else this year.

1. SISU

What? Is that even a title? What’s it stand for? It’s a Finnish term that has no English translation. What it’s about is a World War II prospector in Finland who has a bag of gold and is not letting any Nazi band of bad guys get in his way. And, man, do they try. It’s a live-action Road Runner Wiley Coyote cartoon that I’m sure made Quentin Tarantino say “S***, I wish I made that.” He didn’t. Someone named Jalmari Helander did. Do not miss it.

Honorable Mentions & What’s Next

Honorable Mentions to Dream Scenario, You Hurt My Feelings and The Holdovers which is on a lot of lists and would be a solid Number 11 on mine. I hope Paul Giamatti finally gets an Oscar. He’s the best thing about the film.

I’m guessing you’ve got some catching up to do. I’ll see you at the Oscars where I hope a few of these get some respect. I vote in something called The Critics Choice Awards and we’ve nominated a bunch of these.

And for next year? Well, I’m used to being wrong. Ask Mrs. McCuddy. But here are five films I think I want to see.

The follow-up to Mission Impossible since it was a part one, obviously, although I think I’ve seen the whole story already. Surprise me, Tom. Jump higher, please. Gladiator 2 is a sequel to my 2000 favorite. Paul Mescal has big sandals to fill.

Ryan Gosling has never made a bad movie in my opinion so The Fall Guy is going to have to really suck to disappoint me. There’s another Joker and Joaquin Phoenix needs to make amends for Napolean which sacre-blew.

And Willem Dafoe as Nosferatu next Christmas? Oh, bring the whole family. But keep ’em quiet. I’ll be in the front row.

Year End Bonus: I’ve already seen Netflix’s Society of the Snow (coming January 4) and it’s easily one of the finest films they’ve ever released. The harrowing 1972 tale of that Uruguayan soccer team that crashes in the Andes and how they survived for almost two months is a story I thought I knew from a cheap drive-in movie made years ago. I didn’t. It’s spectacular.

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