Metrograph’s Best Film Experiences of 2023
Once again, Metrograph has invited our wonderful staff and everyone who contributed to the Journal in some way—a suite of writers, artists, and filmmaker friends—to contribute to our end-of-year review. Rather than focusing on 2023 releases, we asked people to share with us their best film experience from the past year, whether the movie be new or old, a first-time watch or a beloved favorite.
We hope you enjoy this eclectic list of recommended titles to revisit or to add to your watch lists in 2024. Best of all, some titles are still available to view on Metrograph At Home.
Thanks to everyone who contributed, and happy New Year from Metrograph!
A.S. Hamrah
Museum Hours (2013) – Jem Cohen
Jem Cohen’s uncertified classic, 10 years on.
Aaron Stern
The French (1982) – William Klein
I’ve always wanted to watch this movie. It’s beautifully shot. For several nights I got to fall asleep to it.
Adam Dalva
One Fine Morning (2023) - Mia Hansen-Løve
The father’s letter at the end of the film—such a personal moment—left me in tears.
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Adam Piron
Godzilla Minus One (2023) – Takashi Yamazaki
I keep reminding myself that this is the 37th entry in a nearly 70 year-old franchise, and yet out of any film I experienced theatrically this year I was not expecting to be as moved or blown away by how this film in its own way grapples with its nation’s post-WWII psychic damage and anxieties, simultaneously heightening and dissecting the core elements that made its 1954 namesake a classic.
Alexander Olch
Lust, Caution (2007) – Ang Lee
Stood in the back, intending to rewatch the opening, but it was impossible to leave—every one of us in the sold-out house was completely transfixed.
Alexandra Molotkow
What Happened Was... (1994) – Tom Noonan
I hesitate to call this an essential New York romance, but it is—a first-date plot that’s really about the marriages people make to their loneliness. The city in backdrop is a floating grid of habitats, connected by the practice of looking out at others looking in at us.
Alice Gribbin
Hangover Square (1945) – John Brahm
Turgid melodrama with a deliriously spectacular (heroic artistic, mass murderous) ending.
Andrew Norman Wilson
Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again (1982) – Jerry Belson
City Dudes, at the Roxy.
Annabel Brady-Brown
The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings (1976) – John Badham
Anna Dorn
Passages (2023) – Ira Sachs
A borderline personality disordered bisexual blows up his life to the beat of obscure French techno.
Anna Fitzpatrick
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - Stanley Kubrick
Because I need to wait for the right context to watch, I’ve avoided many opportunities to see 2001 over the years until I was able to catch TIFF’s 70mm screening. It was a nauseating ordeal, one I felt in the pit of my stomach and pulsing through my skull. Five stars!!!
Anna Shechtman
The Stroll (2023) – Kristen Lovell, Zackary Drucker
Beatrice Loayza
Mildred Pierce (2011) – Todd Haynes
Sat through all 330 minutes of this tour-de-force at MoMI one Sunday evening and ate a large potato burek and one bag of M&Ms. When I checked my phone, my mom had sent me pictures of her mini schnauzer in a Santa outfit.
Ben Estes
Miracle in Milan (1951) – Vittorio De Sica
Bingham Bryant
Flower Picking Diary – Ishida Tamizo (1939)
Every time they sing, I have to cry.
Caroline Golum
Co-programming the Metrograph baseball series Put Me In Coach! with Matt Folden.
Chloe Lizotte
Z = |Z/Z•Z-1 mod 2|-1: The Old Victrola (2020) – Andrew Norman Wilson
I liked the ending sequence—with fractal animations and a Donna Summer vocal drone loop (starts at 4:23 here). I also loved that the papier-mâché Pikachu that appears in the film (or a replica, if I’m remembering correctly) was sitting in the auditorium, almost directly behind me.
Christian Lorentzen
Bon Bast (Dead End, 1977) – Parviz Sayyad
Is it a fairy tale about the magic and torture of first love or a how-to spy thriller on the art of deception? Either way or both, Mary Apick’s performance is a dream.
Christian Grass
The Shop Around the Corner (1940) – Ernst Lubitsch
Watched it at Metrograph last Christmas as part of Holiday Classics with friends who were in town in a full theater, and it was a truly magical experience.
Christopher Chang
Nights of Cabiria (1957) – Federico Fellini
I love Giulietta Masina and I love Sweet Charity. How could I not love Nights of Cabiria?
Celeste Von Der Schulenburg
Carnage (2011) – Roman Polanski
If you’re a My Dinner with Andre fan you’ll love this.
Claudia La Rocco
Showing Up (2022) – Kelly Reichardt
Colleen Kelsey
Jewel Robbery (1932) – William Dieterle
2023 was a year where I watched a lot of Kay Francis films. This was perhaps my favorite, not only for the Viennese diamond intrigue and the time-honored rite of passage (leaving your husband for a criminal), but for this line: “Up to now, men have always been brutal because I am lovely.”
Corina Copp
Trenque Lauquen (2022) – Laura Citarella
July: both parts + intermission, The Roxie, San Francisco.
Courtney Stephens
My Girlfriend’s Wedding (1969) – Jim McBride
Dalya Benor
Unrelated (2007) and Exhibition (2013) – Joanna Hogg
Like Waiting for Godot, I love films that are beautiful, but seemingly about nothing. Unrelated and Exhibition are both stunning visual portraits—meditations on the banality of creative bourgeoisie urban life, seen both at home (in a modernist West London townhouse; Exhibition) and on vacation (in Tuscany; Unrelated).
Danielle Burgos
Book Of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000)
A redemptive revisit for the director (on his birthday) didn’t change the film’s cornball Y2gothness, but learning the opening song was Sinatra’s “Witchcraft” before the studio swapped in Manson’s “Disposable Teens” is the context I live for.
Davy Chou
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) – Martin Scorsese
World Premiere at Cannes, May 20.
Dennis Zhou
Youth (Spring) (2023)– Wang Bing
Eileen Myles
The Old Sorceress and the Valet (1987) – Julius-Amédée Laou
It’s French. It was black and white, and featured an old couple’s relationship through a slow abiding dance that returned until you discovered that maybe one of them was a ghost. I felt compelled to tell my actor friend she had to see this film.
Elvia Wilk
Mayor (2020) – David Osit
Eugene Kotlyarenko
Tokyo Twilight (1957) – Yasujirō Ozu
Cinema proves to be the definitive humanist medium.
Fox Maxy
Fancy Dance (2023) – Erica Tremblay
Gabe Klinger
Cerrar los ojos (Close Your Eyes, 2023) – Víctor Erice
Watching Cerrar los ojos in the town where the filmmaker acquired a passion for cinema, San Sebastián/Donosti, and then turning around when the screening was over, and witnessing Erice and actress Ana Torrent in the balcony crying joyfully at having completed a circle in their 50 year filmmaking journey.
Gabriel Jandali Appel
The Sweet East (2023) – Sean Price Williams
At NYFF. Ain’t nothing better than seeing the boys winning.
Gracie Hadland
The Sandpiper (1965) – Vincente Minnelli
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor quiver with a strained tenderness; it’s nearly impossible to imagine the two of them having ever been apart.
Graham Carter
Drugstore Romance (1979) – Paul Vecchiali
Finding out Paul Vecchiali passed away and immediately watching Drugstore Romance: “No one dies.”
Haley Mlotek
A Brighter Summer Day (1991) – Edward Yang
Two hundred and thirty seven minutes perfectly spent at Cinema Moderne in Montreal.
Helena Wittmann
Frauen in Berlin (1982) – Chetna Vora
A real and rare treasure that had almost disappeared. If the filmmaker had not made a secret VHS copy of that film…
Ian Adams
Fog Line (1970) – Larry Gottheim
The outdoor cinema in Rockaway Beach was the perfect setting to enhance the gradually visible landscape which comprises the entirety of Gottheim’s structuralist masterpiece: the wind off the beach, the soft roar of airplanes to and fro from JFK, and the filmmaker himself grinning with his work lighting the audience member’s faces.
Inney Prakash
Hello Dankness (2023) – Soda Jerk
Inge de Leeuw
Spacked Out (2000) – Lawrence Lau
Jennifer Krasinski
Hello Dankness (2022) – Soda Jerk
Jeffrey Crowley
Skinamarink (2022) – Kyle Edward Ball
Weirdo midnight fare for the sleep paralysis demon in all of us, this film’s tones and textures scratched recesses of my sensorial memory like nothing else this year—LEGO anachronisms be darned!
Jordan Cronk
Diaries (1971-76) (1980) – Ed Pincus
Seen in Jeonju, in a sterling restoration by the Harvard Film Archive.
Kaila Hier
A Goofy Movie (1995) – Kevin Lima
On 35mm on Father’s Day 🙂
Keva York
Leave Her to Heaven (1945) – John M. Stahl
Keith Fernandez
Napoleon (2023) - Ridley Scott
Lake Micah
Suzhou River (2000) – Lou Ye
Suzhou River: uncanny film. It would seem to attest that nothing is quite so false as an identity. So here we encounter immediately the question of perspective, as Ye conflates himself with his protagonist and takes for his plot the disappearance of a femme fatale and the materialization of a woman who’s a dead ringer for her. What we’re finally left with is a quandary: Does one ever travel under the sign of himself, or is all recognition ruse, every appellation an alias?
Margaret Talbot
Una Vita Difficile (1961) – Dino Risi
Mark Asch
Times Square (1980) – Allan Moyle
2023 began for me with a perfect movie moment: watching Times Square on TV with a music app open on my phone, counting down from 10, and then, at the exact moment the ball drops and the New Year begins, cuing up the downbeat of “Numb (Encore).” It’s all been downhill since, but at least I have something to look forward to.
Matthew Folden
The Sweet East (2023) – Sean Price Williams
How many people have already said The Sweet East?
Medaya Ocher
Party Girl (1995) – Daisy von Scherler Mayer
Nothing better than Parker Posey, a library, and a dance sequence.
Meg West
Naked (1993) – Mike Leigh
I saw Naked this November at Metrograph, turned to my friend, and said something like, “It’s in my top five… at least… of all time,” then worried it was too soon to make that sort of claim. But I’ve sat with it and I think it’s true. A transcendent movie-going experience that left me feeling very much alive even while looking at the rats and waiting for the train.
Michael M. Bilandic
The Sweet East (2023) – Sean Price Williams
The NYFF Premiere at Alice Tully Hall was one for the books!
Molly Lambert
Bottoms (2023) – Emma Seligman
You know that part in Sullivan’s Travels when Joel McCrea, the director who’s been trying to make a pretentious movie about suffering during The Great Depression, watches all the jail inmates laughing their asses off to a Playful Pluto cartoon and remembers that laughter can be as cathartic as tears in such a deeply fucked-up world? That was me during Bottoms.
Nadja Spiegelman
Full Time (2021) – Éric Gravel
Paced like a thriller, scored to heart-thumping electronic music, this movie about making ends meet as a working-class single mother in France performed the rare trick of keeping me on the edge of my seat and then remaining at the edge of my mind for months to come.
Natasha Stagg
May December (2023) – Todd Haynes
Watching May December in a packed theater of audibly gasping viewers, I had the thought this is a perfect movie multiple times.
Nathan Lee
Nowhere (1997) – Gregg Araki
The restoration of Nowhere, long out of circulation, rescued one of the best films of the New Queer Cinema and was met with rapturous enthusiasm by a new generation of weirdos at the New York City premiere.
Nick Pinkerton
Vase de Noces (Wedding Trough, 1974) – Thierry Zéno
City Dudes, Ghent. The movie is about a young, mentally disturbed man living alone on a ramshackle farm in the dampest, muddiest, bleakest stretch of the Belgian countryside. The man, who speaks only in pre-verbal grunts, passes his days affixing doll’s heads onto confused pigeons, collecting plant life, and sexually interfering with the sow that is his bosom companion, and who subsequently gives birth to a litter of three piglets. I don’t want to “spoil” the rest, but I will say that Vase de Noces contains a scene of an animal palpably grieving that is unlike anything I’ve seen in a film, and that its dirge-like climax contains a cyclical binge of coprophagia and vomiting that’s at once horrific and rather hilarious. RIP Thierry Zéno.
Paul McAdory
Southland Tales (2006) – Richard Kelly
Antic, trolling, gawky, and fixated on the imminent ruination of the world, Southland Tales answers the question “What is the 21st century?” as well as any film I’ve seen, or anyway I like it a lot and take every opportunity to proselytize on its behalf.
Perwana Nazif
Friendship’s Death (1987) – Peter Wollen
Philipp Westermair
John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023) – Chad Stahelski
Phoebe Chen
Trouble Every Day (2001) – Claire Denis
R. Emmet Sweeney
Centuries of Torment (2008) – Cannibal Corpse
A companionable three hours with some nice Buffalo boys who wear Sabres hats, crack jokes, move to Tampa and (along with producer Scott Burns) perfect the sound of death metal.
Roger Mancusi
Bottoms (2023) – Emma Seligman
Shameless Membership plug here, but the over-capacity Bottoms members preview was the most fun I’ve had watching a comedy since sneaking into the Jackass movie 20 years ago.
Sasha Frere-Jones
A Simple Event (1973) – Sohrab Saless
Ted Gerike
Cockfighter (1974) – Monte Hellman
David Jacob Kramer of Family Books (RIP—to the store, not David) reissued this Charles Willeford novel in 2011. I hadn’t seen the adaptation, also written by Willeford, until this year. Absolutely brutal: Homer’s Odyssey with Harry Dean Stanton and many actual roosters .
Thora Siemsen
A Thousand Fires (2021) – Saeed Taji Farouky
2023 Mimesis Documentary Festival in Boulder, Colorado.
Vikram Murthi
The Puppetmaster (1993) – Hou Hsiao-hsien
Walter Reade Theater, 35mm. Engaging with a dense work like this, alongside a rapt audience, on a print replete with age and character makes cinemagoing worth it.
Will Sloan
Godzilla vs. Megalon (1973) – Jun Fukuda
What a thrill to sit on a lawn chair and cheer for Godzilla and Jet Jaguar, seen on a ratty and faded 35mm print in the pleasant open air of Lehighton, PA’s Mahoning Drive-In.
Whitney Mallett
New York, New York (1977) – Martin Scorsese
I partly came out to support Natasha Stagg’s book release at Metrograph, but I’d also just never seen the film and found it so beautiful; I cried so many times.
Yasi Salek
After Hours (1985) – Martin Scorsese
We used to be a proper country (actors had adorable normal teeth).
