My 2023 Favorites
Out of 49 movies, 50 shows, 49 books, and a ton of songs these were my top finds of 2023! ⭐ marks my favorite in each category, with the rest in alphabetical order.
Movies
⭐ Nimona
What are the odds a graphic novel beloved by our family gets made and then shelved and then resurrected and then comes out and it’s quite different from the graphic novel but just as beloved by all of us? SLIM, that’s what the chances are! And yet here we are. An absolute delight.
Bottoms
A very worthy and overdue addition to the raunchy high school comedy pantheon. Kinda a lesbian Fight Club (concept?) Mean Girls (tone?) Heathers (body count?!) Booksmart (humor?) mashup.
Decision to Leave
From the great Park Chan-wook, a neo-noir mystery romance, and like all his movies (Oldboy, The Handmaiden) just gorgeous to look at.
Knock at the Cabin
M. Night Shyamalan has had such in interesting career arc. Came onto the scene with the acclamied blockbuster The Sixth Sense and then each of his next six movies were worst than the last, starting with Unbreakable (which was pretty good) and hitting rock bottom with The Last Airbender. But then he somehow pulled the plane out of the nosedive and has made some decent ones, and this one’s such a good high-concept ride.
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
An absolute sweetheart of a movie. About a sentient seashell! I wish I could have been a fly on the wall during that pitch meeting.
No One Will Save You
A home invasion movie with an alien twist, very little dialog, so it’s really just a great excuse to watch Kaitlyn Dever act the heck out of it.
Oppenheimer
Somehow Amelia and I dragged each other to see this despite neither of us being psyched for such a buttnumbathon—some kind of weird mutual bootstrapping—but as soon as it was over we turned to each other “wow that was actually great!”
Puss in Boots: The Last Wish
I really love the dynamism Spider-verse brought to animation and this is such a fun and surprisingly poignant example, with Puss grappling with mortality and even panic attacks.
RRR
Another epic of butt-numbing proportions but the action! The dancing! The brothers-in-arms! The epic sweep! The CGI tiger! A contender for favorite movie of the year.
Rye Lane
Low-key delightful rom-com. Loved our leads. Sometimes there’s no more to say than that.
Significant Other
Twisty little relationship thriller in the woods, I always love when Maika Monroe adds more bullet points to this section of her résumé (The Guest, It Follows, Watcher)
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
How do you make a sequel to a movie that’s in the running for both my favorite animated movie and my favorite superhero movie? Like this, that’s how!
Talk to Me
Favorite horror movie of the year, don’t miss it. Unless you don’t watch horror. In that case you probably definitely want to miss it.
Shows
⭐ The Great
Pour one out for one of the greats, canceled after three seasons, but fear not it ends pretty well (even though they wanted three more seasons 😭). Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult are incredible in this off-kilter bawdy rauchy rollicking comedy/romance/court intrigue/period piece. The laughs and the shocks! For a stretch of season three I worried a bit that they’d lost their way but my fears were misfounded, what a finish.
The Bear
I try not to list shows in multiple years but I’m gonna make an exception for my favorite show. Season two was just as great as season one, even though they broaden the horizons. If I haven’t convinced you to watch this yet there’s nothing for it, and the show has since caught fire so doesn’t need my endless shilling, but you’ll almost certainly hear it from me when season three drops nonetheless :)
Daisy Jones & The Six
I wonder how Fleetwood Mac feels about this show? Didn’t seem like a thing I’d be into but it’s deeply watchable and really feels like it captures a time well, even though I was a little too young then to have any right to that opinion.
Gen V
This superhero spinoff of the The Boys needs every kind of content warning but while I could never recommend The Boys because it’s just sooo misanthropic (lordy I hate myself for being addicted to it) this show has much more heart so I’m gonna go out on a limb and put it here. Your. Mileage. May. VARY.
Good Omens
A wonderful adaptation of the Terry Pratchett/Neil Gaiman book. Michael Sheen and David Tennant are pitch-perfect as the lifelong angel/demon friends grappling with various apocalypsi.
Jury Duty
Delightful entry into the kindness HoF, and a form of reality show? Everyone is in on this hoax jury trial except for ONE GUY. And James Marsden is in it playing himself (is he the most underrated actor of his generation? I think maybe). Anyway, it’s a treat and I won’t ruin it if you haven’t seen it.
Queen’s Gambit
Riveted from the jump, I’m a sucker for a good sports narrative, and Anya Taylor-Joy is perfect. I just loved watching her carve her way up (and down!) through the ranks. The stakes always feel so high, and outcomes uncertain. Plus the costume and set design, good lord.
Scavengers Reign
Wildly imaginative animated show about a handful of people marooned on a very alien planet. The creativity that went into the ecosystem is so frickin' cool and watching the characters grapple with it is so engaging. There’s also a surprising “ugh this fucking guy” element to one of the aliens but I won’t say more than that.
Shrinking
Bill Lawrence left Ted Lasso after two seasons to focus on this show and it is evident in both places (I like how TL wrapped up, but our family is divided on that :). This one is more overtly about mental health, grief, and relationships but no less funny and almost certainly gonna find a spot in the kindness HoF too.
Slow Horses
Gary Oldman oversees Slough House, the shabby branch of MI5 for disgraced agents. The plots are gripping, and Oldman turns in the best performance of an ascerbic genius since Hugh Laurie played Dr. House.
Succession
Modern day court intrigue of the highest order! Incredible performances and dialog, I don’t know if I’ve ever had more fun watching people I hate. I really had to muscle past that baseball scene in episode one. “Shakespearean” gets thrown around, but I’ll still say this gets “Most Shakespearean” in the drama category this year, and The Great takes in in the comedy category.
True Detective
Only watched season one. An incredible season of television, but at the same time doesn’t make me hunger for more? It’s weird. Maybe because everyone is so deeply unlikeable. Dark stuff for sure, but so well done.
Yellowjackets
Cut from the same cloth as Lost. If you were into that, hard to imagine you won’t be into this!
Music
Triaged a few thousand songs and found 266 keepers, depending on how deep you want to go:
Books
Non-Fiction
- ⭐ The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green I absolutely loved this collection of essays (which I later learned was a podcast and is also wonderful), DM me if you want me to send you my favorite chapters (The Yips; Sycamore Trees; and On Love, Vulnerability, and Sunsets).
- Allow Me to Retort by Elie Mystal Excellent and super-readable dive into legal BS around The Constitution, and The Abortion Chapter is an absolute tour de force. Again, DM me if you want me to send it to you.
- Broken (In the Best Possible Way) by Jenny Lawson The Bloggess writing about her mental health struggles in her inimitable funny and open style.
- Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski Sex education has come such a long way.
- Command and Control by Eric Schlosser The history of the management of our nuclear arsenal. Holy shit it’s a miracle we’re all still here.
- Determined by Robert Sapolsky I didn’t need much convincing, but this lays out the case for free will being nothing more than a useful fiction.
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb A therapist discusses therapy through (highly anonymized) accounts of a few of her patients, plus her own experience of therapy as she navigates heartbreak. So interesting and I think maybe the first book I’d recommend to someone who would benefit from therapy but is reluctant.
- Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories that Make Us by Rachel Aviv Mental health essays. Definitely a theme this year!
Fiction
- ⭐ American Rust by Philipp Meyer Resisted this for too long because I thought it was gonna be a little highbrow but turns out it was a gripping page-turner and just beautifully and evocatively written.
- This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohar & Max Gladstone Really interesting short SF book, more of a novella really.
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin A story of friendship and creativity and really engagingly portrayed characters.
- Upgrade by Blake Crouch Kinda a sucker for these sorts of “unlocking human potential” fantasies.