2024! We’re here! We did it! Truth be told, we did it 18 days ago, but here I sit with not a word of my probably-award-considered series of year-in-recap articles written. What’s the hold-up? What am I afraid of? I’m afraid to write this article because it means putting 2023 to bed and starting 2024, and I still don’t know if I’m ready for that.

I loved 2023. I loved the fast-paced car chases through urban streets. I loved sieging mansions, taking out each machine gun-armed guard in my path. More than all that, though, I loved my wife who disappeared under mysterious circumstances, but somewhere deep down I know she’s still alive out there somewhere and I have to get her back. So grab as many guns as you can carry, holster them in every conceivable location on your person, and let’s charge fist-first through 2023.

JANUARY

Can we remember as far back as the start of 2023? Can we go back even further, to set the stage a bit, to the end of 2022? Ukraine was pushing back pretty admirably against their Russian invasion that began in February, the FBI “invaded” Mar-A-Lago, and mid-term elections went a good bit better than we had feared. Really not a bad end, all-in-all. How do you start a sequel from there? With things going wrong. 

And boy did they. 

On New Years Day of 2023, Jeremy Renner was pulled under a snow plow and broke over 30 bones. On January 20, Google cut 12,000 jobs. Before we could even get out of January, Meta announced intentions to reinstate Donald Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Kind of a dark open, huh? This all set the tone for January’s one and only blockbuster action flick, Plane. Yup, that was the whole title. “Is it the prequel to Pixar’s Planes?” we all joked. It wasn’t. Instead, Plane gave us about 15 minutes of action star Gerard Butler as a regular commercial airline pilot. He wasn’t flying for the air force or anything, just a basic airliner. Watching Gerard Butler convincingly shake hands with his flight attendant crew and sort through a pre-flight checklist in a typical day on the job was remarkably calming, and perhaps the best part of the film. Then we see that prison convict Mike Colter has to be transported on the plane, and of course they’re flying through a big storm. From here the movie takes more of the beats you’d expect, with the plane crashing and Gerard and Colter having to form an uneasy alliance to rescue the plane’s passengers from the clutches of a remote island terror cell. Given that this was the only action movie we got for January, it really wasn’t a bad one.

FEBRUARY

This month also kicks off heavy, with Tom Brady announcing that he’s finally going to retire. This was followed 6 days later by two massive earthquakes in Turkey and Syria. 

In movies, Marvel tried to regain our attention with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, a real mouthful of a title that marked the first appearance of Jonathan Majors’s Kang The Conqueror on the big screen. Having first appeared in Disney+’s Loki, it’s hard to say the second appearance of this character matches the charm of the first. To be fair, Majors is not alone here. The entire cast of this movie screams charm, and yet not a one of them – Michelle Pfeiffer, Michael Douglas, Evangeline Lilly, Paul Rudd, and even a special guest-starring Bill Murray – could not bring enough to the screen to warm weary Marvel viewers to this lackluster script. There’s still some fun, it wouldn’t be an Ant-Man movie if there wasn’t, and yes Michael Douglas does ride a CGI ant before the film’s conclusion, but I think we all walked out of this one either wanting Iron Man and Captain America to come back or wondering if all of this stuff needs to continue in their absence.

Of course, none of these things were what people were talking about in February of 2023. What people were talking about was Cocaine Bear. With all the title-says-it-all panache of Plane and all the bear of Yogi Bear, this movie was…what people expected it to be, I guess. There will always be a space for the campy Sharknado and Human Centipede films of the world, and this fell right in the middle, landing somewhere between so-good-its-bad acting and fun campiness and just straight up gore and body horror. If you loved it, you loved it, and I can’t take that from you. You can have it.

MARCH

Xi Jingping was elected for a rather unorthodox third term as Chinese president, assuming “elected” is the right word when you are uncontested. He started his new term by meeting with Vladmir Putin in Russia. Donald Trump was indicted for the first of four times in 2023. Taylor Swift kicked off the Eras tour, which is projected to generate $5 billion in consumer spending in the US before concluding. Last but not least, Bill Gates spoke about the AI revolution and how it will change our lives. Some of the best action movies really take their time with exposition before throwing us into the thick of things, and boy is March a good exposition month. Keep an eye on all these themes, we’re going to see them come up again.

True to the density of big news, there was a high density of action movies this month. New York Times film critic A.O. Scott ceremonially hung his hat with a final review of the movie 65, which he described as “familiar survival story terrain” and found to be a rather middling film to end his career on, symbolic of a downfall he felt was reverberating through the entire industry. I don’t share his gloom-and-doom pessimism about movies as a whole, but do share the opinion that this movie was pretty typical survival story fare and kind of an unneeded Alien-meets-Jurassic Park story in a world that already has Alien and Jurassic Park franchises doing fine on their own.

Luckily for Scott, he just missed seeing Operation Fortune: Ruse De Guerre come out the next day. This was Guy Ritchie’s fifth film featuring Jason Statham, third film featuring Hugh Grant, first film featuring Aubrey Plaza, and in my opinion his worst film featuring anybody. I love Ritchie and couldn’t wait to get into the theater for this one, but Hollywood hasn’t seen such a half-baked James Bond wannabe of a movie since…oh, right, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which was also a Guy Ritchie joint.

Scott also missed Shazam! Fury of the Gods, released March 17th, and honestly I can’t say he missed much here either. But it’s not for A.O. Scott. Or for me. It’s a kid’s movie about a kid who becomes a superhero. Viewed through that lens, I’m sure it’s a blast.

Unfortunately Scott missed John Wick: Chapter 4 as well, which I think he would have had some interesting opinions on. The movie seems to be a passing-of-the-torch from Keanu Reeves to younger action contemporaries, with Ip Man‘s Donnie Yen playing a particularly compelling semi-villain and some other promising actors filling out roles with room to grow. At a 2 hour and 49 minutes of run time, 56 minutes shorter than the original cut and still over an hour too long, this movie proved that a short and sweet goodbye is best. 

And in a short sweet goodbye, the cynical New York Times film critic was gone, and the rest of us got to enjoy some old fashioned low-brow fun with Dungeons and Dragon: Honor Among Thieves on the last day of March. I don’t need any critic’s opinion on this movie, it was fantastic. It’s the kind of movie that reminds you why you go to the theater to watch movies. Just a lot of fun. You can check it out on your home TV if you want, that’s fine, but this was up there with Top Gun: Maverick in experiences that made the commute to the theater a joy.

APRIL

Elon Musk insisted on launching a rocket on 4/20, and it blew up within 4 minutes. I’m not sure if the world gave this story the attention it deserved, but I guess I can understand us just being done with talking about that guy. In speaking of guys we’re done talking about, Tucker Carlson was canned from Fox News following a $787 million settlement. Clearly we’re onto the part of the movie where we’re having a bit of fun.

In that spirit, the latest Nicholas Cage movie Renfield brought us a modern Dracula action-comedy that would maybe make more sense as an October release, but was appreciated all the same. Strong comedic performances from a few people we know and love in the comedy world, and quite a few people we don’t.

After this, Guy Ritchie somehow released The Covenant, leading everyone to wonder how one puts out two films in two months, and the nation of Finland brought us Sisu, which I assume was great for people that loved Cocaine Bear but thought it needed more gratuitous gore.

MAY

May means two things, a wild Cinco De Mayo and a strange hangover the next day featuring King Charles and Queen Camilla. Ron DeSantis announced his bid for the presidency, which we all saw coming, but I don’t think we saw Montana banning TikTok. Good on you, Montana. There’s at least one state where I don’t have to listen to people’s phones looping 5-second nonsense.

Speaking of which, Marvel was back with another sequel, the not-long-awaited Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. I’ll be honest with you, I didn’t catch this one. For the first time since Iron Man was released 15 years ago, I’d finally had enough Marvel. With a $359 million box office gross and a relatively warm reception from critics, I’m sure it was fine.

More tragically, I also missed Fast X this month, a mistake I hope to correct as soon as possible. This one did not get a warm reception from critics, but the whole Fast and the Furious thing was never meant for critical review. Having not seen a minute of this movie, I’m going to call it a masterpiece.

What I did see that got a very unwarm critical reception was Bert Kreischer’s The Machine. I’ll agree with critics that the movie had some issues, most notably squandering the talents of an old cynical Mark Hamill in what I consider to be his prime, but this was a good enough time to warrant a trip to the theater. It’s not quite the comedian-turned-action-prodigy level of Bob Odenkirk’s Nobody, but it’s quite impressive for a comedian’s first foray into acting.

JUNE

Alright then. We met the main characters, we had some smiles and laughs, we know what comes next. Days after Ed Sheeran broke the attendance record at Lincoln Financial Field in my fine home city of Philadelphia, a dark cloud came upon us. Literally. Canadian wildfire smoke invaded the northeastern US in a very non-Canadian way, giving us terrible air quality and a lot of hellish photo ops. Before we can even breathe again, a portion of I-95 collapses in northeast Philadelphia. All of this came three months on the heels of a latex spill into Philadelphia’s drinking water, so it’s safe to say the city is a little on edge at this point. If you were not in Philadelphia or the northeast, you were probably paying more attention to Donald Trump’s next indictment, or the implosion of the Titan submersible. Turns out there’s enough bad news to go around for everyone. 

Our consolation prize this month was Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the movie that finally lets us see Donald Glover in a Spider-Man movie after over a decade of Twitter being obnoxious about it. This movie is charming and has a great cast, and does alright as a sequel without all the “this is different” factor we got from the first entry in the Spider-Verse series. 

File Transformers: Rise of the Beasts in “action movies I didn’t see in 2023.” Seems like critics and audiences alike were split right down the middle on this one, so hopefully I didn’t miss too much. 

The month closed with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which I didn’t see either, but Philadelphia had bigger stuff on its plate, okay? These Spielberg reboot franchises know what audience they’re catering to at this point, perhaps to an even greater extent than the modern Jurassic World releases, and it seems like that audience is happy with them. That’s good.

JULY

The plot is really heating up now, huh? The globe agrees, as July 2023 registers an average global temperature of over 17° C, the hottest recorded temperature since 1880. For the people of Arizona, this meant 31 days of temperatures above 110° F. Hell, Seattle even suffered a magnitude 2.3 earthquake. Oh wait, that was from a Taylor Swift concert. Despite all this heat, the good guys still managed to fight back, with SAG-AFTRA beginning a 4-month strike for fair compensation and protections.

You know a place that’s not too hot? The movie theater. And boy would Hollywood like to get people there, given that they’ve lost all promotional opportunities from their striking actors. Lucky for them, July 2023 was Barbenheimer season. Are Barbie or Oppenheimer action movies? No. But I will give Barbie credit for having one of the best battle sequences I’ve seen in film, taking place on a neon pink beach with toy weapons and beachball projectiles flying everywhere.

Who would dare compete with the Barbenheimer box office powerhouse? Tom Cruise, that’s who. Mission Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One began a quite unengaging story of Ethan Hunt facing his most dangerous enemy yet: an AI algorithm. That’s the enemy in this one. Not even a robot, just an algorithm. It’s in the cloud or something I think. The movie doesn’t worry too much about the details, instead focusing on Tom Cruise driving a motorcycle off a cliff to land on a train that then drives off of a bridge. As set pieces go, it’s a pretty great one, and the movie cleanly nets a little under $600 million, but still doesn’t approach Barbie and Oppenheimer’s numbers.

AUGUST

Two powerful images this month: Maui ravaged by wildfires, and Donald Trump’s mugshot. The former president had quite a month in August, kicking things off with charges of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, then skipping the Republic presidential debates. His defamation lawsuit against CNN was dismissed, and before the month was out he had turned himself in to the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, gotten a prisoner number, and made a sour face at a camera.

So yeah, a lot of Trump back in the news. Déjà vu, huh? Art imitates life, and so Jason Statham jumped back into the submarine for Meg 2: The Trench. Not sure who decided the world needed another Meg movie, but it happened and I guess you can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube. This movie was legitimately boring, which is maybe the worst insult you can give an action film. Jason Statham in a CGI submarine shining lights on CGI sea creatures is the worst use of Jason Statham. He does go after a giant shark on a jet ski armed with an explosive harpoon toward the end of the film, but the 90 minute lead-up to this point was not worth it.

After that, DC returned to give Marvel another run for their money with Blue Beetle. Just kidding, this movie was received quite poorly. Taking cues from the late-blooming cult success of Shazam, DC took a note here and replaced their mopey greyscale lighting and 90s-edge darkness with bright colors, salsa music, and a lot of family-friendly jokes. Unfortunately, even superhero movies need competent writers, and this paint-by-numbers family superhero flick hit all of its tropes joylessly and gave us no reason to like any of the characters. Maybe next time, DC, maybe next time.

SEPTEMBER

Typically known as a very un-rock-and-roll month, September generally marks the retail nightmare that is back-to-school season. Perhaps it was in this spirit that Aerosmith launched their farewell tour. Taylor Swift proved rock and roll is not dead, though, attending a Kansas City Chiefs game amidst rumors that the is dating tight end Travis Kelce. This was all anyone could talk about in September, but if you did hear any other rock news it was probably the opening of the Las Vegas Sphere with a residency from rock icons U2. Auto workers also followed SAG-AFTRA’s lead and went on strike, which is pretty rock and roll if you ask me. What wasn’t very rock and roll was Kim Jong-Un’s meeting with Putin in Russia.

One rockstar not calling it quits in September was action rockstar Denzel Washington, bringing us The Equalizer 3 right on the first day of the month. This movie was all over the place, teetering between an Italian travel advertisement and a gratuitously violent snuff film, but it was also a really good showcase of Washington’s range from his 46 year acting career. He sells the charm of an American being stranded in a seaside Italian village and gradually becoming a local, he sells the eerily calm demeanor of a seasoned assassin at work, he even sells the motivation for all the extraneous violence and gore a little bit. Not 2023’s best film, but not bad at all for a third flick in a series.

Keeping things rocking, John David Washington who we might remember from 2020’s Tenet brought us The Creator. Like so many sci-fi movies, this movie brings us the question of if we need yet another movie about humanoid robots and the question of what defines humanity. The answer is of course yes, and this modern Blade Runner copycat could not have come at a better time. I might even commit some sci-fi sacrilege with this one and say it was an improvement on Blade Runner, both visually and in how it explored its themes. It looked and felt good to watch.

I sadly missed Nicholas Cage’s The Retirement Plan this month, although it looked very fun, and I less sadly also missed Expend4bles. I understand the demographic that the Expendables universe appeals to, but unfortunately I have only ever lived in the new age of action films, and have no connection to the golden age of the 70s and 80s when these stars were at the top of their game. There was also a straight-to-Netflix action movie directed by David Fincher that a lot of people talked about this month, but I’m not going to talk about it in light of the strike that was ongoing at the time and my own love of the movie theater. 

OCTOBER

Biden signed America’s first AI executive order, bringing the sci-fi element of 2023 into full focus. Robert F Kennedy announced his bid for presidency, which also seems like something from a dystopian sci-fi or cyberpunk novel. House speaker Kevin McCarthy was voted out, and replaced by Mike Johnson shortly thereafter. Israel was attacked by Hamas, inciting conflict that would last through 2023 and beyond. 

Full transparency here, I didn’t see any movies after September of 2023. I canceled my theater membership, not because of any A.O. Scott-type realizations about the movie industry, but because I wasn’t getting any value out of it. I missed Freelance, an Alison Brie vehicle with John Cena and Christian Slater that earned a slick $9.1 million at the box office. I guess everyone else did too.

NOVEMBER

Don’t worry, I’m not going to end this article on a downer note. After 118 days, the SAG-Aftra strike ended on November 8th with a contract that included, among other things, a clause for AI likenesses. But that’s not even the best news in November of 2023. The best news is of course that Columbia began a campaign to sterilize invasive ‘cocaine hippos’ brought to the island by Pablo Escobar. See, now this is the kind of news that I sit down and write these articles for. Was I just talking down on the juvenile appeal of Cocaine Bear earlier, only to hypocritically make a meal of real life cocaine hippos minutes later? Yeah, that was me.

If you were watching action movies in November, you would probably watching The Marvels or The Hunger Games – The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Honestly, I’d like to see both, they look like the kind of fun action blockbusters that made me buy my theater membership in the first place.

DECEMBER

Two last gifts for the year: Nearly 200 countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels at the UN Climate Change conference, and KISS concluded their farewell tour, gracefully joining Aerosmith in the halls of rock and…no, wait. Oh gosh, I’m sorry. They introduced digital avatars of themselves that will, uh, carry on their legacy I guess?

Our first cinematic gift of December was Silent Night, a bit of a middling return to the screen for The Suicide Squad‘s Joel Kinnamon, but I have faith we’ll see more of this Swedish scamp in years to come. It competed directly with Godzilla Minus One, which I’m told is the 2023 movie to see. Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom is released on December 22nd, marking the end of the DC Extended Universe and the start of the DC Universe. No, I’m not making that up. It’s less confusing than it sounds, but not by much.

And now conclusions. I ended last year’s article with a bold assertion that 2023 would be the triumphant end of a trilogy that started with our emergence from lockdown in 2021, and I’m now prepared to say I was spot on. Ignore all the “wow, last year was a dumpster fire” comments that we see every year and let’s try to focus on the good just this once. We didn’t solve every problem, and in fact a number of new ones came up, but we saw Gerard Butler fly a plane, Chris Pine play a lute, Nic Cage drink blood, Michael Cera take out a team of construction workers, and John David Washington blow up a bunch of robots. We’ve still got a lot to work on, but fortunately we just reached the end of a pretty killer training montage. Tie that headband tight, and give me the most bicep-flexing handshake of all time. It’s time to face the music.

Recommend If You Like pays all our writers. Not everyone does. If you've enjoyed anything we've done, cool. We have a Patreon. If you can't afford to become a patron, please sign up to our mailing list. It's free and we're asking here instead of a pop-up.