2024 Oscar Predictions: ‘Twas the Oscar Squad Before Christmas

As the Oscar Squad readies for the holiday season and New Year’s, we thought it would be a great time to share a few thoughts on the Squad’s personal favorite films of 2023. Oscar Squad updates follow — kind of a holding ground until the short lists come out this Thursday. Once we’re back in 2024, we will have predictions for all categories.

Until then, Happy Holidays from our family to yours!

Oh and feel free to drop your favorite film from 2023 in the comments below!

Sasha Stone

It’s always an embarrassment of riches when David Fincher makes a movie and The Killer is no exception. I wait for his films like we used to wait for new albums to release at the record store. The Killer is the work of a master from the writing to the acting to the editing to the sound to the score. But the director’s eye is what makes this a Fincher film. The Killer is about dodging fate. Even if we can’t outrun what threatens us, we’ll do our best to live our lives like slivers, mostly unseen. An assassin whose works starts to fill up inside him, almost threatening to take him down. But ultimately, he prevails for the same reason a predator in the wild prevails. Prioritizing survival. Trusting no one. Sticking to the plan. What a funny, brilliant masterpiece this film is. The period at the end of the sentence is that it’s been almost completely ignored by the awards race, thus guaranteeing its place in the pantheon. A crisp salute to the master. And the best film of the year.

Jalal Haddad

Last February, I stumbled into the theatre by chance and blindly experienced Goran Stolevski’s Of An Age. I was slowly overcome by the film’s seemingly straightforward narrative, exploring the relationship between two young queer men set across two 24 hour encounters, 11 years apart. Through this framing, Stolevski is able to honestly and intimately explore queer infatuation, first love, heartbreak, the idea of soulmates, and how time can heal and rip open those same wounds. Nearly a year later, Of An Age has stuck with me and in equal parts continued to haunt and bring me comfort. It may have been overlooked in the awards conversation this year, but I hope audiences continue to discover this Australian indie on Peacock, maybe even as a double feature with Celine Song’s Past Lives, a film that might be the perfect companion piece to Of An Age.

Mark Johnson

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is the rare film that prevails on every single level. Teeming with exquisite visuals (Hoyte Van Hoytema), penetrating dialogue, a hypnotic score (Ludwig Göransson), and many outstanding performances, Oppenheimer surpasses all expectations. Nolan’s script is a powerful reminder to learn from history, with its significant scale and relevance. It cautions against repeating WWII’s devastating actions while exploring the profound impact of a world-changing figure. A compelling and substantial lesson for us all to heed. A film for the moment and for history, Oppenheimer is grade-A cinema and the early favorite to be crowned the best film of the decade.

Shadan Larki

I’m picking Ava DuVernay’s Origin as my favorite film of 2023. I’ve watched over 300 films this year, and Origin stands in a class by itself as something inventive, thought-provoking, and utterly unshakable. Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, delivering a masterstroke of a performance, stars as author Isabel Wilkerson who embarks on the process of writing her best-selling non-fiction book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents.” While grieving the deaths of her beloved mother (Emily Yancy) and husband (Jon Bernthal), Wilkerson throws herself into her work, researching how the Caste system has led to injustices in Nazi, Germany, the Antebellum South, India; and how the class structure is rooted in modern-day America’s ongoing struggle with racism. Ava DuVernay has made a film that blends genres, exploring history and humanity, grief and love, art and creativity—all at once and with singular vision and artistry. I’ve never seen anything like Origin before, and I offer it my highest regard and recommendation.

Megan McLachlan

To sum up Past Lives as a romance does it a disservice. It’s so much more than that, highlighting one woman’s singular experience of emigrating to North America and shedding the girl she left behind. It’s about connection to each other as much as it is to oneself. And it has one of the most emotionally satisfying endings of the year.

Ben Morris

When Oppenheimer started, I was immediately unclear where I was or what was happening. Then internally, I just knew given time the film would get there. It not only did but it blew me away. I cannot remember the last time that a film floored me like this one did. It brilliantly told its story, showing Oppenheimer’s life and the building of the atomic bomb, as well as the psychological and political fallout for him and those around him. It defies easy description why it works so well. Jumping around in time and situation yet always feeling effortless in its decision. Giving us just enough of its characters to take in the issues but never making it easy to understand where everyone is. It leaves a lot to think about, both in the issues of nuclear war as well as how this brilliant film works!

Joey Moser

There are films that feel tailor-made for you, and this year, for me, that has to be All Of Us Strangers. I don’t love it solely because it’s a queer film, because its themes and emotions can resonate with anyone. I think Andrew Haigh’s film speaks to me, because both of my parents are gone, and, sometimes, that leaves more questions than answers. How do you live with that uncertainty for the rest of your life? A lot of Haigh’s wades in deep emotions, but Strangers feels more personal. The quartet of actors–Paul Mescal, Claire Foy, Jamie Bell, and the resplendent Andrew Scott–trust the material so deeply and embrace its thorniness and heartbreak.

Clarence Moye

It’s a strange thing to say that the film you loved most of 2023 was a film like The Zone of Interest. Jonathan Glazer’s film isn’t one that I’ll likely revisit again and again as I would perhaps Barbie or Killers of the Flower Moon or The Killer or even The Holdovers. Yet, The Zone of Interest is a fascinating cinematic experiment that works brilliantly. What if you could interrogate the Holocaust through those who led it? How would a family exist knowing that they literally live next door to a concentration camp? Do they acknowledge it? Does it change their family dynamic? The answers come eventually, and they’re not always what you’d expect them to be. Glazer’s film sits atop my list as the best 2023 has to offer because it dares to explore the humanity of evil, not just its banality.

David Phillips

As a person who watches a lot of musical documentaries, I recognize every loving trope and cliche that is typically embedded within nearly every one of them. However, with American Symphony, I was completely caught off guard. Like many, I knew Jon Batiste as the bright-smiling, light-fingered piano player and bandleader of the Late Show With Stephen Colbert. A documentary built around the idea of him attempting to record a grand musical statement–a symphony accompanying the entire breadth of American music, to be performed at Carnegie Hall–was certainly an intriguing idea for a film. However, when his partner Suleika Jaouad has her long in remission leukemia return, the film becomes something else altogether. As Batiste (with Jaouad’s blessing and enforcement) attempts to continue with the completion of his symphony, he does so while constantly worrying for her health, and trying to find time to be a caregiver as well. Director Matthew Heineman is known for shooting in war zones (he was nominated for best documentary for Cartel Land in 2015), and his camera is so unflinching as to feel almost too intimate. It’s an astonishing film that turns the musical documentary/biopic completely on its head, and it’s my very unexpected choice for best film of the year.

Marshall Flores

Oppenheimer is the incredible culmination of everything Christopher Nolan has done to this point with his impressive career, maintaining his unique and exacting sensibilities as a filmmaker within the context of big budget studio work. Nolan choosing to adapt an intimidatingly dense 600-page biography of one of the most consequential minds of the 20th century into a feature film was an audacious decision; that he, with the help of a terrific A-list cast and crew, succeeded in telling the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer and the triumph and tragedy of his nuclear gadget with non-stop propulsive intention over the course of three hours is nothing short of a cinematic miracle in my mind. By no means a “feel-good” film, but far from being a chilly, purely intellectual exercise either. Like the very best of the cinematic form, Oppenheimer is challenging, existentially probing, and gives viewers the space to connect to its themes through introspection and rumination – and there is plenty to ruminate on in the unstable, dire state of the world we currently reside in. Oppenheimer is far and away not only the best film of 2023, but among the very best of the century thus far.