The best sci-fi movies of 2023 were either fresh takes on age-old sci-fi concepts or fascinating pivots for recognizable names. The Hideaki Anno renaissance continues with a pair of navel-gazing, action-packed Shin movies, while a new Godzilla (though not Shin Godzilla) blew everyone out of the water late in the year. Quentin Dupieux also got in on the tokusatsu fun with his cigarette-pushing parody. A stunning Spider-Man sequel, a tear-jerking Marvel movie and a Hunger Games prequel deal deftly with their IP, while smaller original movies like Aporia, Biosphere, No One Will Save You and Asteroid City (yes, it counts as a smaller movie!) snuck under our skin with their odd, compelling imaginings of our current and future societies. Then there were the clones, resurrections and mutants that broke our bodies down and rebuilt them into something new, different and, perhaps, better for it. As the entertainment industry finds itself further and further bogged down by IP — especially when it comes to genre films, which so often are pushed to the poles of blockbuster or microbudget — deconstruction will become one of the most important tools in our filmmakers’ tool boxes. The best sci-fi movies of 2023 deconstructed themselves, and us, to find something that speaks more honestly to our reality.
Here are the 15 best sci-fi movies of 2023:
15. Shin Kamen Rider
Hideaki Anno’s ongoing existential crisis has been extending past his Evangelion work, weighing tokusatsu films like Shin Godzilla and Shin Ultraman down with the crushing angst of violence and survival. Shin Kamen Rider applies this emotional realism to its various animal mutants while keeping Anno’s penchant for extreme camera angles (like shots from below the corner of a desk, so you can only barely see the people talking) and the cartoonish physics of the source series. Sosuke Ikematsu’s Takeshi Hongo AKA the grasshopper-augmented Kamen Rider leaps and twirls through the air, crushing heads and pounding blood from the faces of his enemies, only to be horrified by the beast he becomes. Discussions of power, loneliness, isolation, and our responsibilities to one another ground Shin Kamen Rider, even when Kamen Rider faces a completely hideous bat-man. Yes, there’s a bat-man, a wasp-woman, and a spider-man — even those exhausted by superhero movies might be tickled at the off-putting realism invested in these familiar combinations. Anno amps up the energy with his editing (co-cut by Emi Tsujita) and keeps shocking us into the perspectives of his absurd characters through phone camera footage and shots you’ll swear came from a GoPro. It’s silly, dense, inventive and exhilarating. The non-stop plot, seeing Kamen Rider facing down his fellow mutants one after another, combined with the ever-evolving visual style, can be overwhelming — even disorienting. But, as is often the case with Anno, there’s meaning in the madness and ennui in the eccentricity. Blending an old-fashioned brawler with a ’70s serial, prestige TV depression and the “from the mind of a child” maximalism of Hausu, Shin Kamen Rider is a delightful deconstruction that still believes in heroes.—Jacob Oller
14. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 isn’t the first Marvel mini-series to reach the vaunted trilogy mark – it’s not even the first one this year. But it does seem to represent the best shot at what the MCU seemed to initially promise: a series of movies that exist within a broader cinematic universe while satisfying their own wants and needs as a distinctive set. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 sprawls into Rocket’s backstory, depicted in full flashback scenes rather than an expositional prologue; meanwhile, in the present-day rush to retrieve a McGuffin that will save Rocket’s life, the Guardians visit a squishily organic corporate headquarter as well as Counter-Earth, a planet serving as a desaturated copy of the original, repopulated by genetic experiments. These are Star Trek planets all the way, weird and conceptual rather than practical (or imitative of Star Wars). The Guardians have made their headquarters in Knowhere, a gigantic space station located in the skull of an ancient godlike being; it’s a more nomadic version of Trek, where none of these misfits have a traditional home base, reinforced by the way these strange new worlds offer more gimmickry than comfort. Maybe that’s why, despite teasing certain characters and plot points in previous installments, the Guardians sequels never feel like they’re showing the audience stuff to whet their appetites for some later adventure. The places they visit aren’t designed to be returned to over and over; even Knowhere, first seen back in the 2014 film, makes for a pretty hodge-podge status quo. The Avengers movies, minus maybe an hour of Endgame, have bloated past a simple super-team-up of six or seven heroes; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 essentially assumes that responsibility, and its sense of all-inclusive epic is gnarlier, as well as more awkwardly emo. Despite Star-Lord’s cheesy reverence for ’80s pop culture, the sense of loss pervading the Guardians characters is genuine: Star-Lord lost his mother early in his life. Drax is a warrior hiding the pain of losing his family. Rocket, we learn, has been separated from childhood friends. Gamora doesn’t experience her alternate self’s lost lifetime, but her friends do; Star-Lord spends Vol. 3 struggling to accept this alternate version of the woman he loved (who does not love or even especially like him). Reset continuity isn’t a get-back-to-business-as-usual free card; it’s genuinely melancholy, rather than paving the way for Guardians Vol. Infinity. Beneath their testy camaraderie and found-family affection is the nagging feeling that the good times, however hard-won, can’t last. That limited time is often true in a larger series that produces lots of movies, sure, but it’s due in large part to an unwieldy master plot that keeps moving even when the characters should be allowed to rest. Rocket, Groot, and the rest sometimes appear to be actively fighting against the kind of universe-traversing destiny that’s supposed to keep their universe humming. Gunn rolls those inconveniences and limitations right into the story, and comes up with a protracted, messy goodbye that feels entirely justified in its messiness – even in the moments where it’s overstaying its welcome or overplaying its emotional hands.–Jesse Hassenger
13. No One Will Save You
Kaitlyn Dever heroically carries what’s essentially a one-woman show as townie Brynn Adams, a lonesome soul fighting off bug-eyed gray trespassers. That’s…pretty much it. She’s seen scribbling letters to a presumed deceased Maude Collins before the flying saucers appear, but then sci-fi terror begins and Duffield channels everything from Signs to The McPherson Tape. Brynn dashes around her creaky wooden childhood home, Brynn hides from alien entities, and Brynn flees from an unknown fate should the cosmic outsiders catch her in their spaceship tractor beams. The craftsmanship behind No One Will Save You showcases Duffield’s strengths with restricted resources. Visual effects studio DNEG nails the creation of traditional X-Files-lookalike aliens down to their bulbous craniums and slender-freaky figures, but that’s only one component. Duffield does a splendid job collaborating with cinematographer Aaron Morton to frame his interstellar guests as stalkers, often peering just out of frame before swelling in size and entering with emphasis. No One Will Save You adheres to a golden creature feature rule by showing Brynn’s adversaries early and never shying away from full-screen reveals, which wafts an appropriate air of confidence. As Brynn cowers behind refrigerator doors or turns her hatchback into an impromptu firebomb, the aliens always hold their impressive on-screen presence. —Matt Donato
12. They Cloned Tyrone
There are period films that revel in accumulating accurate and/or eye-catching details of production design and costumes to evoke a particular era, and science fiction films that world-build with all of the imagination their budget can afford (though maybe not as many of those as we’d like). Juel Taylor’s They Cloned Tyrone occupies a fascinating middle ground between the two: A more-or-less contemporary movie that looks like a period piece, and a sci-fi picture that stashes its wildest elements underground, sometimes literally. It has a tinge of Blaxploitation that stops shy of parody – a visual sense underlining the way that urban neighborhoods can be left behind as time marches on, lending them a sense of both neglect and integrity. The movie starts out following Fontaine (John Boyega), a drug dealer in an enclave of an unnamed city, referred to only as the Glen. Mostly, his workday entails collecting debts, as well as light maiming – at one point, he hits another dealer with his car. Despite this attack, Fontaine doesn’t seem like he’s itching to resort to violence; while hitting up local pimp Slick Charles (Jamie Foxx) for some money, he’s appropriately threatening but not ice cold. He’d rather just get his money and keep on grinding. Just after his visit to Slick Charles, there’s evidence that this head-down, money-first approach is preferable, as Fontaine’s earlier foray into vengeance comes back around, and the wounded dealer and his flunkies shoot Fontaine dead. Or so it seems. He awakes with a start, back in his home, and proceeds through the same routine we’ve already seen: Checking on his mom, swinging by the liquor store, collecting debts. Slick Charles and one of “his” girls, the perpetually dissatisfied Yo-Yo (Teyonah Parris), are particularly surprised to see him, because they’re pretty sure they saw him die. This unlikely trio – the taciturn Fontaine, the goofier and citrus-obsessed Slick Charles, and the Nancy Drew-inspired Yo-Yo – team up for an impromptu investigation, as Fontaine realizes he didn’t just have a particularly strange and vivid dream. On a scene-by-scene basis, They Cloned Tyrone is well-crafted entertainment, buoyed by its three major performances. Boyega affects a stoic movie-star minimalism in the tradition of Clint Eastwood or the more restrained performances of Tommy Lee Jones, making his brief moments of levity all the more effective. Foxx, outfitted in stereotypical pimp gear, makes a potentially doofus-y (or even, depending on the context, kind of vile) character likable in his oddly chipper demeanor and oddball references. (In general, the movie’s pop-culture references are just about perfect: Not obscure for obscurity’s sake, but left-of-center enough for genuine novelty.) And Parris in particular feels like a revelation, a firecracker amateur detective who knows her way around funny banter. Taylor and his co-writer Tony Rettenmaier make some smart implications about cultural assimilation and, eventually, the process of opting in to your own exploitation. What sets the movie apart from so many post-Get Out sociological thrillers, though, is the cleverness and style of the path Taylor lays out for his endearing characters. —Jesse Hassenger
11. Shin Ultraman
Although Shin Ultraman is another story that builds towards an apocalyptic scenario, it makes the most of this premise through imagery that appropriately communicates the grandeur of this concept and the cosmic dread it inspires. For those unfamiliar, Ultraman is a long-running Japanese TV show following a superhero who grows to giant proportions so he can battle similarly large monsters. It’s a tokusatsu series, a term used to describe the FX-heavy live-action productions that followed in the wake of Godzilla (1954), and that frequently feature either kaiju, masked do-gooders such as Kamen Rider or Super Sentai (which was adapted into Power Rangers in America), or combine them in the Kyodai Hero subgenre, which the original 1966 run of Ultraman helped popularize. Shin Ultraman is a standalone film that reimagines this setup and was written by Hideaki Anno, the legendary creator of anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion, and directed by Shinji Higuchi, who has collaborated with Anno in the past and worked on several tokusatsu projects. While this is another case of a beloved series being reenvisioned, Shin Ultraman is far less interested in altering tone or texture to cater to contemporary audiences. It doesn’t make the proceedings “grittier” or more nakedly self-aware. Instead, its special effects and aesthetic seek to directly replicate the campy thrills of a posing, laser-beam-launching vigilante who battles big lizards and nefarious aliens. Shin Ultraman even feels structured like a TV show, with a sequence of initially separate threats that escalate over time, including subterranean monsters, Machiavellian would-be conquerors, and an almost unfathomable final foe. This earnestness very much works in its favor, and it’s this last enemy, which threatens the destruction of everything, that sets up the film’s most compelling plotline. As the protagonist faces defeat, the leaders of Earth resolve to keep their impending demise a secret from the rest of humanity as a last act of mercy. However, while there is a palpable sense of grim resignation here, what we see next is a firm counterpoint to these undercurrents of cosmic nihilism. Higuchi and Anno deliver a montage of people going about their daily lives: Working, playing and just simply existing, intercut with images of the looming villain as an elegiac score plays. We may be tiny, but our lives still mean something, and it’s this affirmation that keeps these characters going even when Ultraman is routed and it seems like things are over. More than just introducing a planet-destroying threat to up the ante, Shin Ultraman’s near-apocalyptic conclusion gives its characters a chance to slay this lingering hopelessness and embrace their small place in a greater cosmos.—Elijah Gonzalez
10. Aporia
Build a relationship, a home, a family, a life with the person you love over the years, and you will still occasionally give them The Look, the one that says, “who are you, and how well do I know you?” It’s the look Sophie (Judy Greer) gives her husband, Mal (Edi Gathegi), partway through Jared Moshe’s Aporia, when through the miracle of technology she puts the wrong things right and effectively brings him back from the grave. Mal starts out the film in the ground, seen only in flashbacks to better days before getting struck by Darby (Adam O’Byrne), a drunk driver, and dying. Then comes Jabir (Payman Maadi), a family friend and erstwhile physicist from an unidentified country who makes a living in America driving indifferent fares around town. Jabir has a remedy for Sophie’s grief, but it’s a doozy both existentially and ethically, in the tradition of so much science fiction cinema. Jabir has built a device one could generously call a “time machine” the way one could call a hellfire missile “demolition equipment.” It can’t send Sophie back in time, but it can send a burst of quantum-mechanical energy straight into Darby’s brain and kill him, before the day he kills Mal, which means Mal never dies and Sophie’s life doesn’t fall apart. Presented with her personal version of the ultimate time travel question – would you kill baby Hitler? – Sophie dithers, then pulls the trigger. The good news is, Mal is back, and everything’s back to normal. The bad news is, Darby has a family, Sophie has a conscience, and one morally suspect decision leads to a whole bunch of better-intended ones with their own imperfect outcomes. Greer, in one of her too-infrequent starring roles, plays to Sophie’s anxieties as well as her wants all at once, a tight-wound ball of nerves. Every time she disperses her tension, every time she talks with Mal and Jabir about disaster scenarios, the tension whips right back around like a boomerang, and she starts her emotional cycle all over again. It’s a performance that suits Greer’s reputation for playing unhinged types, reminding viewers that her reputation as a comic actor is built on a well-rounded skill set. Moshe is a gentle filmmaker, evinced by his realist aesthetic, unadorned by special effects, and his intrinsic compassion for Sophie’s dilemma. He cares. But he is necessarily stern, because for a movie like Aporia to work, a director has to mean what they’re saying, and he holds little back. Our actions matter, big or small, and now’s a good time for the sci-fi genre to give us a needed reminder.—Andy Crump
9. The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
Eight years ago, when the tragic-yet-hopeful tale of Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) came to a close in The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, that was supposed to be it. Author Suzanne Collins’ book trilogy was maxed out by Lionsgate, which they finagled into a movie quadrilogy that only semi-compromised her potent, dystopian examination of the true costs of war and retribution. But then Collins went and surprised everyone in 2020 by releasing a prequel novel, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, that reveals how young Coriolanus Snow came to embrace his dark side, laying the path to his decades-long authoritarian rule in Panem. Following Collins’ lead, franchise director Francis Lawrence, producer Nina Jacobson and a gaggle of below-the-line department heads have also returned to the Hunger Games world for an adaptation that adheres closely to the source. Screenwriters Michael Lesslie and Michael Arndt literally port over the three-part structure of the book to peel back the curtain on how the pivotal 10th anniversary of the annual Hunger Games turned Snow (Tom Blyth) into a Machiavellian monster. As they say, “timing is everything,” which certainly rings true for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which is being released into a world where two wars are currently being waged with sobering brutality. Those conflicts stay top of mind as the film’s narrative tackles the timely concerns of the fallout of post-war retribution, the moral rules of engagement concerning civilians and whether humans have the capacity to be better than their basest instincts for survival. Improving upon what he learned directing Catching Fire and the two Mockingjay films, Lawrence executes two very strong acts, Part I: “The Mentor” and Part II: “The Prize.” They cast well with the charming and astute Blyth, who ably carries these two acts as Snow pulls us into his perspective as he precariously navigates the politics of his ruling class, with his genuine admiration for his feisty charge, Lucy Gray Baird (Rachel Zegler). Eschewing the bells and whistles of the Arenas in his previous films, Lawrence presents a far more merciless approach to these stark Games that have none of the razzle-dazzle of what will come in the future. These Tributes are unleashed inside a closed building and given rusty farm tools to track one another down. The deaths are unflinching and intimately blocked for the most impact. The hefty two hour and forty-five minute runtime is only really felt in the oddly paced and overstuffed Part III: “The Peacekeeper.” Set in District 12, the narrative gets bogged down with the most soapy and least vital storylines of the movie. Yet, even with its last act problems, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is an effective return to the cautionary tale that is Panem. Through Snow’s journey, we’re reminded of the terrifying escalation that violence incites, and what we lose when apathy and power trample all.—Tara Bennett
8. Biosphere
It makes a lot of sense that in Mel Eslyn’s feature debut Biosphere, the last two people left on Earth after the apocalypse are Billy (Mark Duplass), the most recent U.S. president, and Ray (Sterling K. Brown), the head honcho’s life-long best friend/trusted advisor. It would also make sense to want to avoid them; most rational, hierarchy-hating individuals would rather face the noxious toxins of a scorched planet that spend 106 minutes listening to the fears and desires of two dudes who almost certainly had a hand in the fall of civilization. Yet Billy and Ray immediately endear themselves to viewers, recounting Mario fan theories and decades-old drama that recruits even the most hardened of anti-American cynics into their bro-y camaraderie. This isn’t your usual capsule film about how two people cope with the encroaching end of humanity, though. Weirdly (and rather beautifully), it’s a story about the proliferation of life despite, say, some initial biological setbacks. When one of the men begins to notice staggering changes to his own body, questions of gender, sex and procreation eventually arise, making things a tad awkward for a lifelong best friendship predicated on cisgender heterosexuality. Once initial hesitations subside, however, the bond between the two transforms and strengthens into something wonderfully unexpected. With a script co-written by Eslyn and Duplass, Biosphere retains the distinct brand of organic conversational comedy that’s been present in the duo’s collaborative crossover for the past nearly 15 years. (Eslyn originally met Duplass and Lynne Shelton while working on their 2009 film Humpday, and is now the president of Duplass Brothers Productions.) While Biosphere and Humpday in particular both deal with the social construct of sexuality and the consequences (and potential joys) of eschewing these stark labels, Eslyn’s effort is able to heighten this investigation through a sci-fi lens and static setting, leaving society behind to engage in a narrative experiment that could only exist with such complete destruction of American social and political mores. To that point, the film feels on par with a successful stage play, especially as it pertains to the filmmaker’s utilization of a single location and ability to generate intense chemistry from the two actors involved. Biosphere’s interrogation of gender, sexuality and biology isn’t some cheap, thoughtless ploy to speak to any semblance of a “current moment,” but rather begs deeper questions about the precarious nature of human life. More aptly, Eslyn’s film asserts that humanity’s future survival – and potentially its only hope – relies on a shift in our collective thinking regarding who we are and how we can help each other.—Natalia Keogan
7. Smoking Causes Coughing
After half a decade focusing on high-concept silliness, like the giant-fly tragicomedy Mandibles and the leather-jacket thriller Deerskin, Dupieux follows his more ridiculous impulses by letting the midnight horror anthology stay up until Saturday morning, blending gore and guffaws in an amiable, breezy comedy. The Tobacco Force, a supergroup of “avengers” empowered by carcinogens, composes the film’s framing ensemble. A Power Rangers-like tokusatsu parody, they are like Dupieux’s Danger 5—a retro satire of form that revels in how desperately adult so much of its juvenile source material is. Where Danger 5 made running gags of the sexism and repetitive plotting of the spy/adventure serial, Smoking Causes Coughing utilizes eye-popping colors and frequent splashes of blood for its heroic team. But Smoking Causes Coughing avoids repeating The Boys or The Suicide Squad’s self-aware jabs at skin-tight costuming, empowered immaturity or mad villain plots by avoiding awareness altogether. Instead, it leans into the low-fi pulp aesthetic of cheapy TV and the bumbling clownishness particular to Dupieux’s brand of comic incompetence. Harmless stupidity is where Dupieux thrives. Smoking Causes Coughing plays to these strengths, being both sublimely silly and unpredictably, addictively light. The comedy flows into and out of its nested stories without a care in the world, feeling like a loose showcase for all the goofy, horror-adjacent ideas Dupieux had over the pandemic. Because the superheroes spinning these tales are themselves odd, stunted cartoons, their horrific fables are decidedly more absurd than anything else; think Drunk History but for turning the ramblings of a little kid into bloody short films. One centers on a thought-enhancing helmet that drives its wearer to, logically, attack her doofus friends. Another, told by an inexplicably talking barracuda, involves the best wood chipper joke since Fargo. The common thread linking these tales from the dorkside is slangish, intentionally undercooked dialogue that emphasizes the discord between the gruesome content and childish delivery. Naturally, Smoking Causes Coughing is too laid back to be much more than a feature-length smoke break from the heavier nonsense on the factory floor. But for those with a surreal sense of humor, hang up the “gone to lunch” sign and enjoy your union-mandated, 80-minute dose of French comedy.—Jacob Oller
6. Poor Things
Yorgos Lanthimos’ off-kilter, pastel-drenched Poor Things opens with static shots of silken embroidery. It is hard to ascertain the images themselves, threaded so neatly in a near-identical gray. But the slippery, elusive texture is integral to the film, which weaves together something thick and rich with detail. What follows is narrow in its focus and big and engulfing in its scale: The story of a young woman who must overcome the experiments enacted against her while embracing her changing body and irrepressible urges. As such, this adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s book of the same name is difficult to summarize, loosely following Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) as she grows to embrace adulthood despite the overbearing tutelage of her de facto father God (Willem Dafoe). Once introduced to the dashing and cocky Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), Bella recognizes the pitfalls of her sheltered life and endeavors to travel around the world, experiencing life anew before marrying her father’s sweet and bumbling assistant Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef). Lying in the genre gulf between science fiction and straightforward drama, Poor Things also finds time to unleash Stone’s ability as a physical comedian, building a sticky, entrancing bodily language that lives somewhere between twitchy, childlike enthusiasm and mystical knowingness. She wanders through their eclectic family home with an unsteady gait, crashing into delicately hung porcelain displays and cackling rather than cowering at the destruction which follows. It is a deliciously amoral journey, the kind that has already secured Lanthimos ample praise over the course of his career. But this is perhaps the filmmaker’s most garish and confident endeavor, using Bella’s naive perspective to design a world so heightened that it exists somewhere between a nightmare and a dream. Somewhat surprisingly, Poor Things feels like it is in conversation with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, right down to Stone’s robotic, doll-like physique. Where Barbie feels shallow and tentative in its understanding of what it means to physically grow up, Poor Things is bold and radically (at times uncomfortably) honest. It will satisfy fans of Lanthimos’ previous work and perhaps win over new viewers who are desperate to engage in the kind of coming-of-age stories that propel the genre forward. —Anna McKibbin
5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem
A visual tour de force of hybrid 2D and 3D animation, Mutant Mayhem is not only the most authentically New York version of the Turtles yet, it’s arguably the most inventive. Rowe, Spears and production designer Yashar Kassai have rendered the brothers as if they’re hand-drawn, complete with messy sketch lines, doodle flairs and a graffiti aesthetic. This is the ultimate paint-outside-the-lines take on the Turtles and it works on every level. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is swinging for the fences with its story and voice performances to ambitiously, quantifiably shake up the artistic rut that theatrical computer animation has been stuck in for the last two decades. Another plus is that the brothers are voiced by non-adult voice actors Nicolas Cantu (Leo), Brady Noon (Raph), Shamon Brown Jr. (Mikey) and Micah Abbey (Donnie), who recorded together, and were encouraged to excitedly talk over one another like a gaggle of real, tight-knit brothers would do. It translates into rapid-fire, organic quips and seemingly effortless timing that conveys a rapport that is singular to this iteration. It also elevates the script so that it doesn’t sound like it was written by a bunch of 40-year-olds trying to be hip and young. Rowe and Spears have a firm hold on their pacing, especially in how they use comedy to enhance their action beats. They also chart a progression to the brother’s battle prowess that is satisfying and pays off in satisfying full-circle moments. There’s also much to be admired in their choice to frame a lot of sequences with hand-held camera blocking, which leans into the unpredictable youth of the heroes that works so well in the gritty New York environs they’re sparring in. The filmmakers are also delightfully experimental throughout the Mutant Mayhem, using inspired live-action inserts, segueing into different artistic styles (including a homage to Eastman and Laird’s comic art) and embracing the asymmetrical character design that gives the film a fresh and energetic looseness. Rowe and company prove that there’s no strength to the myth of IP fatigue when you have the vision and passion to reinvent with such bold and fun intention.—Tara Bennett
4. Infinity Pool
Heartbeats and cumshots are the alpha and omega of Brandon Cronenberg’s vacation in White Lotus hell, where the tourists loosen their collars and let loose their lizard brains. The limbic system and the most basic biological processes of life dominate Infinity Pool, the filmmaker’s descent into a slimy, sexy, terrifying world where death is just another game for rich people. It’s a hit-and-run satire of Western nonsense, dismantling the havoc our destination-hopping upper-crust wreaks on other cultures and the faux-mystical enlightenment hawked by gurus and Goop fools—those too wealthy to have real problems, those aspiring to achieve this status, and those taking lucrative advantage of both. In this tropical trial, they spill into each other, forever and ever. Ego death has nothing on Brandon Cronenberg’s brilliantly warped resort. The dangled, juicy lure isn’t subtle: A seemingly normal couple being approached by weird (probably swinging) Europeans always leads to trouble. We’d be fools not to be suspicious of Gabby (Mia Goth) and Al (Jalil Lespert) when they come up to their estranged hotel-mate couple James (Alexander Skarsgård) and Em (Cleopatra Coleman). One of them is played by Mia Goth, which is a sure sign to hightail it back to your room and flip the “do not disturb” sign. But James is a novelist, with one bad book to his name (The Variable Sheath, a fantastic fake title) that only got published because he married the rich publisher’s daughter. Gabby’s proclaimed fandom strokes the part of his ego that’s all but shriveled up and crumbled to dust—he’s weak, he’s hungry for it, he’s the perfect mark. When the white folks inevitably do something irreversibly horrible to the locals of Li Tolqa, their unprepared alienation in their culture is disturbingly hilarious. They don’t speak the language, and can’t read the forms the cops ask them to sign. But it’s stranger than that. Brilliant production design, location scouting and cinematography lock you into a late-night freakout. Getting too deeply into what exactly happens in Infinity Pool is like outlining the recirculating edge of its title’s horizon-flouting construction. It won’t take away from its pleasures, but you can’t really understand until you’re in it. Until Cronenberg drives you down an unlit backroad, long enough that you start wondering if you’re dreaming or awake. But what’s clearest in this gallows comedy is that its characters exist. The people who think they’ve solved reality, the conceited class with the luxury of being horny for death, because death has never been real to them. Infinity Pool’s inspired critique of this crowd is fierce and funny, its hallucinations nimble and sticky, and its encompassing nightmare one you’ll remember without needing to break out the vacation slideshow.—Jacob Oller
3. Godzilla Minus One
Big G returns in utterly triumphant fashion in 2023’s Godzilla Minus One, which immediately feels like the most direct corollary to Gojira that the series has ever produced, while thoughtfully modernizing so many of its elements. Wisely, despite the transition to full-on CGI effects to bring Godzilla to life, the creators still capture his stiff, upright movement as it’s always been, the physical remnant of having been played by a man in a suit. Rarely, however, has the sheer mass of the monster been captured so vividly and terrifyingly as it is here, as we watch whole sections of roadway buckle and leap into the air after each of his thunderous footfalls–not to mention the incredible destructive spectacle of his atomic breath. This Godzilla is genuinely terrifying, a rampaging beast without an ounce of mercy or nobility to him. This likewise results in the odd situation where we actually find ourselves genuinely rooting for the human characters to vanquish and defeat Godzilla for once, a rare state of mind for the Godzilla series that is empowered by Minus One‘s sympathetic protagonist Kōichi Shikishima, a man trying desperately to find either a reason to live or the courage to die following the horrors of the second world war. He’s surrounded by salt-of-the-earth Japanese citizens who band together to overcome a truly impossible-seeming obstacle, with an unexpectedly hopeful depiction of human ingenuity and selflessness. An absolutely outstanding kaiju film in general, and one of the few to ever successfully make the human characters an effective center of the action.–Jim Vorel
2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse webs its way into a far more jaded world, one overstuffed with superhero sequels, and specifically, multiverse storytelling. And yet Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse swings in and, yet again, wipes the floor with its genre brethren by presenting a sequel that is both kinetic and deeply emotional. The script by Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Dave Callaham (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) smartly builds upon the foundation of its already established characters, their relationships and the ongoing consequences from the first film to further explore the lives of secret teen superheroes Gwen Stacy (Hailee Steinfeld) and Miles Morales (Shameik Moore) a year after the first film. The writers do so with a clear agenda to not only best themselves visually, but by upping the game of the now-familiar multiple-timeline tropes. Together with the talents of directing team Joaquim Dos Santos (The Legend of Korra), Kemp Powers (Soul) and Justin K. Thompson (Into the Spider-Verse), Across the Spider-Verse—across the board—swings for the cinematic fences in the rare sequel that feels like every frame has been crafted with the intention of wringing every bit of visual wonder and emotional impact that the animators, the performers and the very medium can achieve. The hybrid computer-animation meets hand-drawn techniques established in the first films returns with a more sleek execution that’s a bit easier on the eyes, which affords the animators to get even more ambitious with their array of techniques and character-centric presentations. The depth and breadth of the animation and illustration styles are jaw-dropping. There are frames you just want to fall into, they’re so beautifully rendered and conceived. If there’s any critique, it’s that the more action-centric sequences are almost too detailed, so that the incredible work of the animators moves off-screen so quickly that you feel like you’re not able to fully appreciate everything coming at you. As a middle film in the trilogy (Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse is due in theaters in 2024), it’s a joy to be able to say that Across the Spider-Verse stands well on its own, based on the merits of its story and stakes. There’s also a killer cliffhanger that sets the stage for a third chapter that doesn’t feel like it’s cheating its audience like some other recent films have done (cough Dune cough). In fact, repeat viewings of Across the Spider-Verse to bridge the gap until the final installment next year sounds like a great way to savor this film as it so richly deserves.—Tara Bennett
1. Asteroid City
While The French Dispatch crammed an impressive amount of narrative into its kinetic structure, Asteroid City’s journey to the intersection between California, Arizona and Nevada feels positively placid. The film is a story within a story, structured as a television show about a playwright trying to put together a production called “Asteroid City.” We bounce back and forth from the TV movie about the creation of the play, to a production of the play itself using the same characters, switching between black-and-white sequences narrated by a Rod Serling-like Bryan Cranston, and the Kodachrome splendor realized in the desert setting on the virtual stage. Thus, we have actors being actors playing actors, the kind of narrative playfulness that’s too often ignored when focusing on Anderson’s iconic visuals and soundtrack choices. The result is a meta-narrative constantly folding back on itself (in one of the film’s more playful moments, Cranston’s character accidentally appears in the color sequence, and quickly sees himself out), an alien invasion adventure story and family drama wrapped within the setting of a classic Western, where offramps literally lead nowhere and the seemingly regular shootout down the main street is the only interruption to what otherwise bucolic setting. From the opening moments, the immaculate production design explodes off the screen, the onscreen filigrees and dynamic color scheme a feast for the eye. There’s a mix between the stagey and the decidedly down to earth, with hand-painted signs advertising milkshakes dwarfed by background rock formations that are as theatrical as any Broadway flat. It’s but one way the film toys with our perception of the characters, both believing in their small and intimate moments, but always made aware of the artifice. There are of course many cinematic references, from the schlock of ‘50s sci-fi to more than a hint of Close Encounters that also fueled last year’s Nope. There are also echoes to many of Anderson’s own films. There’s so much joy on screen, so much playfulness, that it’s perhaps churlish to complain about any missteps. While not as deeply moving as some, or downright thrilling as others in Anderson’s filmography, it’s a journey to the desert well worth taking.—Jason Gorber