The year 2023 proved to be a significant one for cinema. While movie studios learned the value of giving creative minds the freedom to tell their own stories, the likes of “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie” took over the box office by storm. But it was also a year that saw mainstream blockbuster films, mainly in the superhero genre, decline slightly in audience interest. While people tuned into fairly unconventional indie films, there was a lot on either side of the spectrum that unfortunately got forgotten.
With the discourse around this year’s Oscar snubs gaining a fair momentum, we take an opportunity to look at some of the most overlooked films of the year. Mainstream cinema will continue to shift, but among 2023’s many big-budget, franchise-led, and smaller films, there were some that simply deserve to be seen by more people. While a lot of the movies here had positive talking points, they certainly weren’t as hotly talked about in the general discourse. Here are ten of the most underrated films from 2023.
1. Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret.
Unlike most great coming-of-age dramas, Kelly Fremon Craig’s extraordinarily delightful “Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret” is as much about the titular protagonist going through notions of puberty as it is about her family floundering for their identities. While her dad flails at yard work, it’s her mother, played excellently by Rachel McAdams in the film, who struggles to make things work as a housewife, that becomes a standout. Amidst all this, we watch Margaret wade into the lion’s den that is sixth grade, with all its attendant politics that 70s America brought.
However, it’s the period setting of the adapted script that transcends this tender film into a timely tale of politics. As the lead finds a much-needed group of allies and a supposed safe space in which the girls talk about their anxieties, the film explores the private and often confusing physical details of changing bodies and how harrowing the journey of navigating these transitions often is. By the end of the story, Margaret may have barely aged. But it’s how she develops as a person — intellectually, morally, and spiritually — that makes the journey so worthwhile.
2. Nanpakal Nerathu Mayakkam
In Lijo Jose Pellissery‘s incredibly restrained and cerebral outing, Mammootty plays a Malayali Christian on his way back home with other locals. In the middle of nowhere, he stops the bus, strides into the home of a bewildered Tamil Hindu family, and claims to be their long lost missing son. What’s the man’s true identity, and why does he appear as two men of differing temperaments and ethnic/religious identities?
One of the two key sequences in the movie sees James waking up from his sleep. By the time the other one comes, you’re unable to tell who he really is. That’s what Pellissery’s film feels, like chasing a half-remembered dream, knowing all too well that we won’t be able to make sense of it after waking up. By injecting a ghost story into a captivating series of slice-of-life vignettes, the filmmaker gives us static long takes with vivid mise en scène and detailed sound design. The captivating choice of an insider turning into an outsider reinforces itself through recurrent visual motifs of the crammed-in inner streets of the village, each wanting to tell a hundred different stories of its own. Somewhere between this journey of the nation’s complicated yet culturally dynamic landscape, the movie elevates itself above its cerebral themes.
3. Three of Us
In Avinash Arun’s sophomore feature, “Three of Us,” Shefali Shah’s Shaijala is a woman diagnosed with early onset dementia. But what she suffers from is not that. While living in the perpetual mundanity of life, she aches to remember and hold on. The desire to reminisce brings her to the childhood home along the Konkan coast she grew up around. In an act of defiance to the inevitable consequences of her condition, she goes around revisiting parts of herself that she left around the corners of this town.
For the most part, a film like this, which silently dropped on Netflix after a limited theatrical run, would easily get forgotten during the high-spirits of making end-of-the-year lists. But perhaps no other film from last year asked us to ruminate on the very nature of memories we create along this beautiful journey of life the way this one did. Additionally, dialogues with soaking poignancy from artists such as Varun Grover and Shoaib Nazeer linger with you, just like the film’s sweeping aesthetic.
4. Rye Lane
Most of us tend to ignore the light-hearted RomComs that often sweep us with emotions while making end-of-the-year lists. In that regard, “Rye Lane” comes across as a quirky, almost psychedelic peephole in the life of the couple and their established community. From its eye-catching costuming to neon lighting to the glaring saturation of everyday markets and street spaces, Raine Allen-Miller’s directorial debut is marked by a distinctive vibrancy despite its sugary template. The film starts with a heartbroken Dom’s (David Jonsson) fateful meeting with Yas (Vivian Oparah) in the gender-neutral restroom of an art exhibit.
What begins as an incidental meet-cute turns into the longest unofficial first date, unraveling into an examination of how we form relations and get over them. It’s this avenue of heartbreak and chance meetup that sparkles a quick connection between the leads. The story works mainly because it presents things the way they feel for them rather than how they are. Despite the melodramatic and heightened overtones, the film earns its empathy with reality rather than through fantasy. The kinetic filmmaking channels itself through adroit fish-eyed lens shots, poppy montages, and heightened flashback scenes that carry an unreal sense of reality that give the movie its distinct black-British sensibility.
5. Afire
Christian Petzold has been one of the most compelling European filmmakers who has quietly been crafting the most impressive filmographies of our times. With his 2023 feature, “Afire,” he gives us one of the most unlikeable protagonists we’ve seen in a while. With an offputting attitude and a rapacious need for affirmation, Leon (brilliantly played by Thomas Schubert) is a young novelist indifferent to the fires brimming around him. As he arrives on the Baltic coast of northern Germany along with his photographer friend, Felix (Langston Uibel), Leon attempts to get distribution of his near-finished second novel. But when he finds that a free-spirited young woman, Nadja (Paula Beer), is already staying there, a mounting sense of insecurity and injustice bridles him into a thoroughly miserable time over the weekend.
For much of the movie’s runtime, Petzold drops the hammer down on Leon. Everything that happens to our lead does nothing to compel him to be any less tetchy about his surroundings. But as Felix and Devid start their own sexual affair, the Rohmer-esque spirit of the vacation goes haywire as it pushes Leon into some unrealized confrontations. But are they really about what he comes across as a person or a greater examination of why art emerges from an individual? As a literal fire emerges in the forests, “Afire” keeps us invested in seeing it through the eyes of a narcissist. It’s only after embracing the feeling of being an unworthy failure that he seems the most alive. By that point, he has already turned a broad tragedy into a personal anecdote.
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6. Which Color?
Some of the most striking films about sociopolitical realities under stringent censorship are ones expressed through an unspoken ambiguity. While being humanist, these films also rely on profound (neo)realism and an unusual mixture of simplicity and complexity, often by mixing fictional and documentary elements together. Individual moments may feel minute, but they are often painted with striking disparities.
At one point in Shahrukhkhan Chavada’s “Kayo Kayo Colour,” we watch the central Muslim family based in Ahmedabad wind up their family dinner. Realizing that it’s been a particularly doleful day, the father turns to his son, smiles, and says, “I’ve got ice cream.” Before letting us savor this powerful story beat, the film fuzzes to black owing to a power cut. Their ordinary reality is plummeted into darkness as desperation and optimism are tinted through the social realities of the state’s marginalized populace. The dystopic nature of the film arises not just from this specificity but also from how the political subtext gradually starts plaguing the lived-in reality.
7. When Evil Lurks
This Argentinian horror flick easily takes the twisted crown of being 2023’s scariest movie. While we’ve seen an increase in the number of gory and slasher films in the past couple of years, “When Evil Lurks” starts with a stomach-churning bang that builds upon a consistently grim story. It all starts when two brothers discover a diseased man possessed by a demon. In this world, such people need to be handled by professional cleaners since killing the person would only cause the evil to spread into the vulnerable minds of those nearby. But when local politicians and the Church don’t seem too keen to help out, the brothers take matters into their own hands.
The victims harboring the demon in Demián Rugna’s feature aren’t struggling with faith or religion. In a lot of ways, the film is as much about the power we give to our personal demons as it is about any leering supernatural force. The underlying bureaucratic indifference and themes of parenting never make the violence on screen feel mean-spirited or crass but rather resolute. It is through this framing device and aplomb of filmmaking that the film elevates above its generic template, becoming an inward psychological study.
8. Polite Society
In the past few years, we’ve seen an increasing representation of Asian and south-Asian communities from the West on celluloid. But perhaps nothing comes close in terms of the high-octane vigor that Nida Manzoor’s gleeful feature, “Polite Society,” provided us. The story follows Ria Khan, a British-Pakistani stuntwoman, who vows to break up her sister’s engagement. Well, that only comes secondary to the prejudices she gets thrown in, which she takes as a challenge in order to become a movie stunt performer, much like her idol, Eunice Huthart.
What begins as a tale of our protagonist’s naivety quickly turns into something more sinister. Mind you, this isn’t a conventional story about tradition coming face-to-face with modernity, but a heightened world where the lead defies categorization just as much as the film does. The action-packed journey the two sisters go through is unlike anything that we saw the entire year, as we also get a heavy defiance of a Jane Austen heroine carving a road for herself. Through this, Manzoor critiques the limitations of obsolete cultural notions and gendered expectations all between well-choreographed high kicks and riveting punches.
9. Showing Up
In her seventh feature film, “Showing Up,” writer-director Kelly Reichardt returns back to the Pacific Northwest to tell the story of a pair of artists based in Oregon. Lizzy (long Reichardt collaborator Michelle Williams) and Jo (Hong Chau) are devoted sculptors and members of a local arts collective. They are not overt rivals competing for attention. Instead, they often compliment each other’s works, living in a world where art often results from passion and not commerce.
Over the course of her filmmaking career, Reichardt has quietly proven to be one of the most prolific contemporary filmmakers. We’ve always seen the industry get saturated with memorable actor-director duos. “Showing Up,” on the other hand, proves yet again what a powerful combination Reichardt and Williams make on screen. The latter delivers a quiet and compelling performance that has resemblance to the character she played in Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans”. But what makes the film work on all fronts is how it avoids the weary cliche of becoming an underdog story. It ruminates on the sweeping magnificence of the creative process.
10. The Monk and the Gun
The struggle of dealing with a religious populace that often reflexively resists change has been fairly unexplored in cinema. Democracy, after all, is a Western invention that slowly but surely has seeped into the East. But during a time of sociopolitical unrest where the avenue of free speech has been hotly debated over the prospects of what an ideal democracy would look like, there’s a danger to a film that almost looks at the system from a skeptical lens. In Pawo Choyning Dorji’s “The Monk and the Gun,” we watch this system of government make its way to Bhutan — replacing the already-established traditional monarchy. Turns out, it’s tough to fight for attention in a village when you’re competing with James Bond over television.
The major thing that retains the film’s innocence is how it takes place in a nation with virtually no subjection to American iconography. The story often takes strange detours, mostly because its characters approach concepts without the centuries of context that accompany them in our minds. While the heart of the movie remains in how the locals navigate this transition, the fact that the McGuffin then becomes a rare Civil War rifle that an American arms dealer is out to get is what gives the film its beat.
