As we crossed the halfway point of the year, I tweeted out a top 10 list of the films released in 2023. The list is pretty representative of my current tastes and, more accurately, what the year in film has been so far: top heavy with a bunch of exciting voices at the (less funded) margins.

But as we prepare for summer blockbuster season to kick off in earnest with Mission: Impossible and the Barbenheimer behemoth, it’s a perfect time to highlight those under-seen and under-discussed films of the year (or released late last year) with more than an arbitrary ranking in a half-assed tweet.

Some preamble on what’s not on this list: the masterpieces that stand head-and-shoulders above the rest (Across the Spider-Verse, Past Lives), freakouts that I need to make time to rewatch and reabsorb (Beau is Afraid, Skinamarink), auteur fare that didn’t connect with me (Master Gardener, Showing Up), the only spon-con I’ll be watching this year (Air) and a film I’ve already written about here (Infinity Pool).

Return to Seoul 

As I watched the excellent Past Lives last month, my mind kept returning to — among other things — Return to Seoul. Both films center Asian women raised away from their birth countries and traverse long periods of time as the women grapple with issues of identity. Ji-Min Park is as unpredictable and captivating as the character she portrays, and her subtle shading of the differences in the character at several points in her mid-20s-to-mid-30s belies a much more experienced actor than someone in their first film role. (119m, VOD)

Please Baby Please

Andrea Riseborough finally got the attention she’s deserved for years with her (stupidly controversial) Oscar nomination for To Leslie. Please Baby Please is about as far from the lived-in (if familiar) indie drama of To Leslie, with an impossibly campy approach that nods to West Side Story and The Wild One via John Waters and David Lynch. Riseborough chews through scenery and scene partners as half of a couple experiencing a queer, gender role-swapping awakening in the 1950s and seems to be having more “fun” than the quietly devastating performances that have made her a cult favorite. (95m, Mubi/VOD)

Sanctuary

Speaking of films where two people grapple with sex and gender roles, Sanctuary locks two of my favorite young actors in a hotel room and lets them figure it out. The most stylized aspect of this one is the dialogue, which makes it feel like a filmed version of a two-hander, but critic-turned-filmmaker Zachary Wigon keeps it visually interesting as the thrills and turns ratchet up. Christopher Abbott brings a cypher-like quality to every role and Margaret Qualley has had my attention since Claire Denis’ underseen Stars at Noon. Hope these two share scenes in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things this year. (96m, VOD)

The Five Devils 

Like Please Baby Please, I came to The Five Devils through the excellent curation of Mubi. This one views what could be, in other hands, a staid family drama through a prism of magical realism that heightens the tragedy and poignancy, like Céline Sciamma’s Petite Maman. While this one hinges on an excellent performance by child actor Sally Dramé, the draw for me was the resurgent Adèle Exarchopoulos, who is best known for the controversial Blue Is the Warmest Colour but recently starred in Zero Fucks Given (a coming-of-age during late-capitalism) and features as an agent of chaos in the highly anticipated (by me, least) Passages. (96m, Mubi/VOD)

Sick of Myself

Diametrically opposed to the measured, observed naturalism of Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up is the blackest-ever-black art world satire Sick of Myself. The joke about last year’s Norwegian smash The Worst Person in the World is that the main character wasn’t that bad, just a little self-centered. The characters in Sick of Myself are that bad, chasing each other down a caustic and misanthropic drain, their appetites for more and more attention unquenched. (97m, VOD)

How to Blow Up a Pipeline

It’s rare that a title this instructive is brought to life this realistically, especially when it’s so radically left-wing. In turning a non-fiction book’s argument for sabotage as a necessary form of climate action into a pulse-pounding action thriller, the filmmakers have delivered a medicinal message with the Hollywood sugar of a getting-the-gang-together caper movie. The more didactic scenes didn’t work for me, but every moment that the film reminded me of Sorcerer made up for it. (104m, VOD)

Rye Lane

The corollary to my theory that every year has one, old-school studio comedy worth a damn applies to rom-coms. Rye Lane takes familiar tropes on a Before trilogy-style walkabout through South London with a visual flare that the Netflixification of the rom-com has nearly snuffed out. Recommended for fans of Spaced, the work of Michaela Coel and anyone looking for an 82 (!) minute date night. (82m, Hulu).

Joyland

Last but not least, an impressive film that I recommend (with some minor reservations). Saim Sadiq’s feature directorial debut won the Jury Prize and Queer Palm at Cannes before being initially banned in his home country. Conservative backlash aside, the queer love story that instigates Joyland is but one facet of a multigenerational family drama about how patriarchy affects everyone. In fact, the infatuation between Haider, the meek son and husband who finds work as a backup dancer, and Biba, the trans woman who stars in the revue, is the least interesting and often the most familiar part of the movie. I would have loved to see the film from the perspective of Mumtaz, Haider’s put-upon wife who chafes as the strictures of middle-class society, or at least have her character serve as more than as a vessel of tragedy. (127m, VOD)

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