Okay, here we go with my annual countdown of the top ten films of the year. Starting the list is Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. As well as being a really well executed spy movie, it felt like there was something old school about it. First of course it is the latest in a series that has now been running for twenty seven years, but even beyond this it harked back to movies such as North By Northwest, Modesty Blaise, Billion Dollar Brain and From Russia with Love. I loved it for the journey it took me on, across the globe and through the legacy of this genre of cinema.

Number 9 in my top ten films of the year is Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Adapting Judy Blume, the film captures perfectly everything that has made her book a classic for over fifty years. It is charming and witty and despite its specific focus on early female adolescence, utterly relatable for every one. MCU alumni Abby Ryder Fortson and Rachel McAdams are excellent as daughter and mother and the whole thing just made me warm inside.

If ever a film was going to appeal to me it was Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical hymn to the wonder of making and watching movies, which is my number 8 this year. The Fabelmans is a hugely endearing coming of age story that beautifully shows the rewards and escape that cinema affords, if you are so minded. The brilliant moment where the young protagonist comforts himself with the simple clicking of a running cine camera was the whole film, and a whole life, in wonderful microcosm.

It is hard to put your finger on what makes Past Lives, my 7th favourite film of this year, so great but it has come up in a number of other top tens including taking the 2023 number one spot in Empire Magazine. In the end I think it is a simple story brilliantly executed. The plot centres on two childhood sweethearts reconnecting after years apart on it is just beautifully human.

It had to figure in here somewhere and how great that this year gave us a powerful feminist film, from a great female writer/director and with an exceptional ensemble cast of women. This is a movie that cleverly exposes the hypocrisy and dangers of patriarchy and toxic masculinity in an easy to access way, using a particular female focused environment as a metaphor for the wider community we all live in. It’s is, as has has been said, something that women should take male partners to to challenge them on their own attitudes and to start an essential conversation on both an individual and worldwide basis. This is truly a film Hollywood has needed to make for some time. If you think the film I am talking about is Barbie you are wrong, it’s Sarah Polley’s astonishing Women Talking, my number 6 film of 2023.

On the recent Empire Magazine review of the year podcast they talked about how this has been a really good twelve months for animation. They spoke of the incredible return of Hayao Miyazaki with The Boy and the Heron, there was discussion around Walt Disney Studio’s centenary celebrations and the success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which is not great but is the second highest grossing film of the year. There was also lots of deserved praise for Nimona and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, the latter of which I’ll come back to in minute. As I listened though I was there shouting at my phone, ‘What about Suzume?’ This, the latest film from Japanese director Makoto Shinkai was not even mentioned which they’ll be kicking themselves about when they read this because it is just magnificent and comes in at number 5 on my movies of the year list.

I’ve gone back and forth on these last four choices because any one of them could have been my film of the year. Settling at number 4 though is determinedly British romcom Rye Lane. The charm and wit of this simple but inventive movie just blew me away.

Here it is at number 3 but ask me again at another time and I might place it higher. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is an astonishing film, not only pushing animation forward as a medium, even more than its predecessor did, but also bringing new life and emotion to the superhero genre that has been practically rung dry in the last decade or so. More than any of that though it was a totally gripping, constantly rewarding, often surprising and regularly jaw dropping cinematic experience the likes of which is very very rare, and there’s another one coming.

My number 2 film has not come up on any other movies of the year list I have seen but I absolutely loved it. Yes it was derivative but The Creator was also by turns spectacular and heartbreaking. This is not something that is going to connect with everyone but if you are open to stories about war, sacrifice, human connection and robots then this is really special. It also has what I found to be the most moving performance of the year from seven-year old Madeleine Yuna Voyles.

This is not the first time a Christopher Nolan movie has topped my list so clearly I am particularly attuned to his cinematic sensibilities but Oppenheimer is undeniably an incredible piece of filmmaking. Nothing else has stayed with me in the same way and I am so glad I was not able to see Barbie on the same day as I would not have had the headspace. (Barbie, incidentally came in at number 27.) This is not as heavy as you’d expect from the subject matter but doesn’t compromise on the gravity of what is at the heart of the story. It also uses all the tools of spectacular movie making while still being a microscopic examination of a single person. The contrasts of the film reflect the contrasts in the man, and by that I mean both Oppenheimer and Nolan.