My Favourite Films of 2023

Eternality Tan

May 29

As per tradition, I will give out imaginary awards to the films that I love most or hold in high regard from the preceding year.

Golden Snoopy - Hirokazu Kore-eda for MONSTER

My favourite film of the year. This is Kore-eda operating at his peak as he delivers an intricately structured and revelatory drama about the blind spots in our understanding of human behaviour and empathy.

Silver Snoopy - Christopher Nolan for OPPENHEIMER

This could be Nolan's greatest achievement so far—a stunning biopic imagined as a complex, time-ticking paranoia thriller as the sheer burden of scientific progress meets the retroactive traumatic weight of 20^th-century history.

Bronze Snoopy - Radu Jude for DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD

In this astonishing meta-fiction, Radu Jude continues his refreshing streak of scathingly hilarious, politically-charged social dramas as an underpaid production assistant works overtime on a commissioned safety video.

Bronze Snoopy (Special Mention) - Jonathan Glazer for THE ZONE OF INTEREST

One of the most chillingly unique Holocaust films in decades, Glazer's cold and calculated take on human complicity in enabling atrocities is told from the perspective of a high-ranking Nazi officer raising his family in a luxurious compound built right next to a concentration camp in Auschwitz.

Best Director: POOR THINGS - to Yorgos Lanthimos for making arguably his finest film to date, an erotic surrealist odyssey featuring Emma Stone in a truly stunning performance as a woman brought back to life by an eccentric scientist.

Best Lead Actor: PERFECT DAYS - to Koji Yakusho for a natural and quietly effective performance of restraint in Wim Wenders' contemplative drama about the daily routine of a cultured toilet cleaner who is obsessed with collecting cassette tapes of American oldies.

Best Lead Actress: ANATOMY OF A FALL - to Sandra Huller for her vindictive performance as a wife accused of killing her husband, as she strategically navigates the power dynamics of language in Justine Triet's complex martial exposé-cum-courtroom drama.

Best Supporting Actor: THE HOLDOVERS - to Dominic Sessa for a fantastic breakout supporting performance in his acting debut as a pain-in-the-ass student who finds school discipline difficult to deal with but slowly warms his heart towards his teacher.

Best Supporting Actress: SNOW IN MIDSUMMER - to Wan Fang for her vulnerable performance playing an adult in search of the elusive closure from the familial (and historical) trauma her character's younger self suffered from the 13 May incident in 1969 Malaysia.

Best Ensemble Cast: THE TEACHER'S LOUNGE - to the wonderful ensemble cast of 'teachers', 'staff' and 'students', headlined by an effective Leonie Benesch in a tense and perceptive work that reflects the state of the world within the classroom.

Best Original Screenplay: MONSTER for an extraordinary and sensitive screenplay that is intricate in its 'Rashomon'-esque structure, resembling a cinematic quilt of many interlinking visual and aural threads that transcends itself in the revelatory final act.

Best Adapted Screenplay: OPPENHEIMER for the achievement that is Christopher Nolan's immense screenplay of spectacle and verbosity that upends the style and structure of a traditional biopic, pushing storytelling possibilities to new heights.

Best Cinematography: GREEN BORDER for the stark and sobering black-and-white photography that shaped a politically sharp and urgent humanitarian piece about the refugees that get pushed about at the border between Poland and Belarus.

Best Film Editing: THE TASTE OF THINGS for an utterly compelling work that sees the pleasures of food and romance in cinema make an exquisite return, about a renowned chef and his long-serving cook in their autumnal years whom he one day hopes to marry. Perfect leisurely pacing with quick cuts of food prep and cooking to die for.

Best Production Design: LA CHIMERA for its strong and tactile sense of environment in a magical realist period film about bit-part archaeologists hoping to score life-changing deals.

Best Costume Design: BARBIE for, well, all the wacky, colourful costumes.

Best Makeup & Hairstyling: MAESTRO for ageing Bradley Cooper wonderfully in his unfairly maligned film.

Best Original Score: KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON to the late Robbie Robertson, who gives a guitar-tinged twang to the visuals. The score is sometimes energetic, but most of the time it operates as a self-sustaining, almost wall-to-wall 'musical tiptoe' that seems to be spying on the characters. So good that I had to get the CD.

Best Original Song: SNOW IN MIDSUMMER for the heartbreaking main theme song "The People of May" which encapsulates the tragedy, loss and unresolved trauma of the '513' incident in 1969 Malaysia.

Best Use of Source Music: AFIRE & MONSTER for poignantly using the late Ryuichi Sakamoto's 'andata' and 'Aqua' respectively, in their emotional climaxes.

Best Sound: THE ZONE OF INTEREST for using sound to create an unnerving atmosphere, be it the constant low rumbling of the crematoriums or composer Mica Levi's primal synths.

Best Sound Design: HERE for a textural work about the grandeur of inner and outer nature as Bas Devos' exceptional sensitivity towards the audiovisual experience affords us a sense of meditative calm quite rarely felt in today's European cinema.

Best Visual Effects: EL CONDE for a creative take on how history, politics and religion can potentially work via a mythologizing vampiric mode. There are several shots of Pinochet flying stealthily in the sky, much like Batman—a literal human vampire bat really. These are some of the most poetic scenes in Pablo Larrain's body of work.

Discovery Award (Filmmaking): PAST LIVES - to Celine Song for her confident and poignant debut feature about two Korean childhood sweethearts who meet again as adults in New York.

Discovery Award (Acting): 20,000 SPECIES OF BEES - to Sofia Otero, whose sensitively drawn performance allows us to feel what it is like to be a trans-child who must navigate burgeoning notions of gender identity.

Top 10 Films of 2023: