The ballots have been sent out for my annual mid-year critics poll concerning the best films of 2023. The goal is to post the results on Friday or, at the latest, Monday.
I’ve been conducting this poll since 2016, it started on Awards Daily and has migrated to World of Reel. Later today, I’ll update this article with past polls results.
Yes, we’re almost six months into the year. It’s gone by very fast and I can’t say it’s particularly been one filled with movie highlights. However, it’s certainly been a better year, so far, than 2022.
I presume Celine Song’s “Past Lives” which is the most acclaimed film of the year, will be topping the mid-year poll. I can’t see any other film winning this one. Critics have gone gaga over Song’s indie film.
These 14 titles have been my highlights of the year so far and they only include one big studio film, the rest are indie and foreign-language. I need to narrow it down to five for my ballot, as do all the participants.
In no particular order —
Matt Johnson’s “BlackBerry,” Albert Serra’s Pacifiction, Paravel/Castaing-Taylor’s De Humanis Corpis Fabrica, Tina Satter’s “Reality” Daniel Goldhaber’s How to Blowup a Pipeline, Tarik Saleh’s Cairo Conspiracy, Eric Gravel’s A Plein Temps, Jean-Luc and Pierre Dardenne’s Tori et Lokita, Cristi Mungiu’s RMN, Dos Santos/Thompson/Powers’ “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” Jalmari Helander’s “Sisu” Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City,” and Dominic Moll’s La Nuit Du 12.
I’m of course not counting the films that I saw at Cannes and Sundance, which still haven’t been released. I’m only counting the ones that had distribution in the US between January 1st and June 2nd.
The timing is interesting. The settlement talks will occur nearly a month after the $7 million-per-day ticking fee start tabulating, which puts real pressure on Paramount to get this done.