Top Ten Movies of 2023 (My Opinion)

 Here is my top ten list of the past year. I know it's a little late and my blog is all but dead, but I thought I would post it all the same. Life is out of control and I just don't devote the time I used to in order to promote the films, music, books, or experiences I used to love as much. I never really wanted to be some typical "review person" and looked to be more honest than I have been entertaining- but enough whinging and cringing, let's get to the list. 

10. Cocaine Bear:  An oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converge in a Georgia forest where a 500-pound black bear goes on a murderous rampage after unintentionally ingesting cocaine. Fun, frolicing, violent, and goofy. Worth the time in the theater and will probably be a cult hit in years to come.

9. Last Voyage of the Demeter: Inspired by the brief chapter in Dracula, this story follows a crew as they unwittingly carry the vamiric count aboard their ship and become victims to his thirst.

8. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves - It's been done before. It's been done very badly. A feature length film based on the vague idea of Dngeons & Dragons, a sy-fy channel follow up- none of it based on he world building of any particular setting, but it had dragons and magic and thieves and all that jazz. And it had the enigmatically intense and bizarre performance from Jeremy Irons... But this is NOT that movie. From all the trailers, it felt like a formulaicwith the current Marvel formula. It delivered on all the appropriate fronts and was a great popcorn muncher of a film. 

7. Silent Night: John Woo's return to the American audience with fantastic storytelling technique that required no dialogue and still told a brutal and effective morality tale on the costs of revenge and grief. 

6. Sisu: A gold miner goes on a Nazi killing spree at the tail end of WW2. 

5. Thanksgiving: Eli Roth's "Slasher" film about the title holiday. Good old fashioned gruesome fun. 

4 Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One- One of the most fun experiences I had in the theater and a true to form espionage tale with the Impossible Mission Force led by Tom Cruise 

3. John Wick Chapter 4- Each of the John Wick films introduces a new motif with a nod to certain action films and sub-genres... this was "Once Upon A Time..." and widened the Wick Universe with some interesting twists and a pitch perfect villain. 

2. Oppenheimer: The biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, father of the Atomic Bomb and much more. 

1. Godzilla Minus One: The film that left me in tears- the most appropriate and insightful look into post war Japan, the effects of grief, trauma, and PTSD- the heroic efforts of Japan's people to unite for themselves and solve proplems independently of it's Government. An absolutely perfect film.