This year, the movies got weird.

Obviously, every year has oddball films, but they were out of control — mostly in a good way — in 2023. It probably has to do with the pandemic derailing big movies and making space for off-kilter projects that were ready to go. It could be because world cinema is veering toward the mainstream in a way it hasn't since Federico Fellini, Ingmar Bergman and leaders of the French New Wave crafted unconventional masterpieces in the 1950s and '60s. And it's undoubtedly influenced by Hollywood studios — in a year when sure things such as Marvel and Pixar underperformed — not knowing what audiences care about. So they're throwing movie spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.

That's how we got Emma Stone eating with her hands and masturbating in front of swank strangers in "Poor Things." That's how we got "The Zone of Interest" (about a family living next door to a Holocaust crematorium), which begins in unnerving darkness, with what sounds like nails on a chalkboard. That's how we got Ava DuVernay's wide-ranging "Origin," a drama based on Isabel Wilkerson's unfilmable book "Caste." That's how we got Barry Keoghan slurping used bathwater in "Saltburn."

And it's how this guy, usually the first to complain about Hollywood churning out sequels and repurposing tired intellectual property, ends up with a sequel and a repurposing in his favorites of the year:

  1. "John Wick, Chapter 4": It's the purest moviemaking of 2023, all about energy, wit and suspense. Yeah, the story is familiar, but the way director Chad Stahelski tells it is thrilling. (Streaming, most platforms)
  2. "Origin": Wilkerson's brilliant "Caste" found connections between the Holocaust, Jim Crow laws, India's caste system, Trayvon Martin's murder and home construction. Miraculously, DuVernay turns that into a heartbreaking movie that clarifies the book. (In theaters in January)
  3. "Anatomy of a Fall": The absorbing German/French/English melodrama is about how a man's death casts suspicion on his wife and a burden on his young son (both Sandra Hüller and Milo Machado Graner are astonishing). (Prime Video, Apple TV+)
  4. "Wonka": Everybody: No way we need another Wonka film. "Wonka": Hold my beer. (In theaters)
  5. "Past Lives": Celine Song's graceful drama insists we can love more than one person at once. (Streaming, most services)
  6. "May December": In Todd Haynes' sly, subtle film, an actor (Natalie Portman) hangs out with the woman she's about to play (Julianne Moore), a sexual predator famous for marrying the younger man she met when he was in junior high. (Prime Video)
  7. "All of Us Strangers": Andrew Scott plays a gay man, reckoning with his family and himself. (In theaters Jan. 12)
  8. "Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret": As the mother of a questioning adolescent, Rachel McAdams gives perhaps the year's most joyful performance in the long-awaited adaptation of Judy Blume's classic. (Streaming, most services)
  9. "Oppenheimer": It lost the box office war to (also good) "Barbie" but Christopher Nolan's drama reckons absorbingly with the driven scientist's story. (Streaming, most services)
  10. "Little Richard: I Am Everything": The rock pioneer built a fascinating myth around himself. The documentary reveals the truth was even more compelling. (Streaming, most services)