Classic silent films, noir, space operas, and everything in between: We managed to rate the greatest films of all time.
To love movies is to disagree with them. That is true of almost every art genre. If you’re passionate about something, you’ll feel driven to passionately defend your favorites and scoff at whatever you believe is unworthy. It’s simply human nature. So we’re fully aware that attempting to name and rank the greatest movies of all time will incite public outrage. But we’re going to do it regardless.
Even yet, we recognize that it will not appeal to every reader. It might even irritate you. But, hey, that’s what these things are for. So shout all you want. We’ll take it. Just remember to keep things civil out there.
Top 10 Best Movies of All Time in 2023
We’re just halfway through, but 2023 has already produced some brilliant films – as well as some awful duds. The Academy Awards eluded Tár in the end, ignoring Cate Blanchett’s career-best performance, but Todd Field’s edgy music drama earns – arguably – an even bigger honor by topping our list of the year’s best films so far.
And the drama has unquestionably been the genre of the year thus far: real-life race saga Till displayed Danielle Deadwyler’s virtuosic skill; gay British jewel Blue Jean debuted a brave new talent in Georgia Oakley; and Return to Seoul was a scalpel-sharp diaspora tale.
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
The greatest film ever made began with the meeting of two brilliant minds: Stanley Kubrick and sci-fi visionary Arthur C Clarke. ‘I understand he’s a nut who lives in a tree someplace in India,’ Kubrick said when Clarke’s name was mentioned as a prospective writer for his planned sci-fi epic, alongside Isaac Asimov, Robert A Heinlein, and Ray Bradbury.
Clarke was actually residing in Ceylon (not India or a tree), but the two met, hit it off, and fashioned a story of technological progress and tragedy (hello, HAL) that’s rooted in humanity, in all its brilliance, vulnerability, heroism, and insane ambition.
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Stoners embraced it as a pet movie after being dazzled by its eye-candy Star Gate sequence and groundbreaking cinematography. 2001 would have drifted into obscurity if it hadn’t been for them, but it’s difficult to imagine it would have stayed there. Kubrick’s terrifyingly clinical vision of the future, complete with AI, still feels prophetic after more than 50 years.—Phil de Semlyen
2. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
Building on the mash-up of animation styles that made Into the Spider-Verse so absurdly bright and introducing a slew of new ones – stop-motion LEGO-motion, anyone? – this dizzying, dazzling sequel is the convincing argument for superhero movies that the tired genre sorely needed.
The Miles Morales version of Spidey, once again voiced with wonder and real soul by Shameik Moore, travels across multiverses and meets hundreds of alternate Spider-people on a personal quest with universal stakes.
The jokes and pop-culture references come thick and fast, delivered with signature Lord and Miller irreverence, and you’ll need numerous viewings to comprehend them all. Which won’t be a problem with a film this engaging.
3. Tár
‘A Portrait of the Artist in the Process of Being Canceled,’ you may say. Cate Blanchett plays Lydia Tár in Todd Field’s psychological character study, a genius-level composer, EGOT winner, and insufferable narcissist whose frosty façade scarcely cracks as charges of sexual misbehavior threaten to derail her career.
Blanchett’s Oscar-nominated performance is well-deserved, but the great acting is bolstered by Field’s subtly off-kilter visual aesthetic, which lends the ‘ripped from the headlines’ tale a sense of Kubrickian uncanniness.
4. Return to Seoul
This fascinating drama eloquently articulates the hurt of a young adopted Frenchwoman as she returns to the nation of her birth and struggles to cope with the past.
Davy Chou, a French-Cambodian filmmaker, follows his brilliantly drawn protagonist, the spiky, chaotic Freddie (Park Ji-Min), as she shrugs off Korean customs, her drunk-texting birth father, and a continuing sense of rejection from the mum who won’t acknowledge her in the hope of regaining control of her inner life. It’s a picture that, like Freddie, will only grow in grandeur with time.
5. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One
Tom Cruise’s eagerness to do literally anything insane to delight us finds its fullest expression in the eighth installment of the dependably great Mission: Impossible films.
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He dashes, freefalls, races, and horseback rides through a succession of jaw-dropping action set pieces, occasionally while chained to Hayley Atwell’s scared franchise rookie, all superbly performed by writer-director Christopher McQuarrie.
What about the plot? It’s difficult to say because this is the first part of a Dead Reckoning twofer with several strands yet to be brought together, but it’s smart-baffling in the best M: I tradition. Also kudos to Esai Morales, who makes A.I. dialogue as sensual as the superbad, Gabriel.
6. All of the Beauty and All of the Bloodshed
Laura Poitras’ documentary has so much going on that it says something about the quality of the filming that it all hangs together so deftly.
The film’s subject, protagonist, and guide is iconic photographer Nan Goldin, who takes us on a tour through New York’s ’70s counterculture, ex-addict Goldin’s quest for justice against the vile Sacklers, the family behind America’s OxyContin epidemic, and the nuts and bolts of social activism. It’s moving, captivating, and artistic in every sense.
7. Rye Lane
Who said rom-coms were extinct? Rye Lane is sparky, passionate, and pisstakey in all the ways that London is, putting a distinctively South London spin on the Before Sunset formula of two strangers meeting, speaking, and slowly falling for each other.
As two young Black Londoners, Dom and Yas, who progressively size each other up and – eventually – like what they see, David Jonsson and Vivian Oparah bring charm, laughs, and very relatable insecurities. Their Salt-N-Pepa karaoke scene is a mic drop moment in every way.
8. Past Lives
Being likened to Wong Kar-wai’s classic romance In the Mood for Love places severely unrealistic expectations on a first-time filmmaker. But Korean-Canadian filmmaker Celine Song’s tender-hearted romance stands out for its emotional intelligence and insight, as much as its genuine love for its characters.
The fundamental relationship unfolds over several decades between a Korean New Yorker (Greta Lee) and her childhood sweetheart (Teo Yoo), who never left Seoul, and her husband, who tries to give her freedom to explore her feelings. It’s a love letter to two individuals and two places, Seoul and New York, in all their chaotic splendor, and it’s one we’ll return to in years to come.
9. The Fabelmans
In recent years, Alfonso Cuarón, Paolo Sorrentino, and Lee Isaac Chung have all parlayed their own childhoods into Oscar-worthy dramas. But, of all of these cinematic reminiscences, Steven Spielberg feels the most open to the potential that it is misremembering or misinterpreting events – and hence the most guileless and honest of the bunch.
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With Spielberg’s on-screen surrogate, Gabriel LaBelle’s Sammy Fabelman, at the forefront, the film’s many moments of hurt and wonder are brilliantly realized.
10. Reality
Sydney Sweeney of Euphoria plays Reality Winner, a 25-year-old NSA translator who was questioned by the FBI in 2017 about leaked information linked to Russia’s suspected interference in the 2016 election.
Tina Satter’s tense thriller brilliantly transforms her verbatim theatre stage work ‘Is This a Room?’ into a kind of verbatim movie, drip-feeding fear in a real-time reconstruction of Winner’s initial interrogation. It heralds the coming of a distinct talent in Satter and provides further evidence of Sweeney’s brilliance.
Conclusion
At the other end of the spectrum, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the Oscar-nominated animation superhero film that restored our trust in superhero films. Marcel The Shell With Shoes On has warmed our hearts, while Hirokazu Koreeda’s Broker is unexpectedly life-affirming for a film about baby trafficking.
Meanwhile, Donkey Odyssey EO has a foot in both camps. Then there’s A.I. horror-comedy M3GAN, a sure-fire franchise starter that’s given us all a new freaky doll to obsess over.
For the purposes of this list, we’re limiting ourselves to films that were released in the United Kingdom in 2023, but whatever your tastes, there have already been plenty of winners worth seeing at your local cinema.
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