Things I Liked in 2023
7 January 2024
For context, I gave up any sort of pretension at objective “best of” lists long ago. I read, watch, and listen to what I can manage and like what I like. There are always things I miss or catch up on later. But here are things that I thought didn’t suck in 2023.
- Films from 2023 I liked: Fallen Leaves, Priscilla, Barbie, Anatomy of a Fall, May December, Passages, and Afire. I liked to a slightly lesser extent: Master Gardener, Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Lynch/Oz, and The Boy and the Heron. (I liked a lot of horror films as well, but I make them their own list, which will arrive on the website soon.)
- Favorite films not from 2023 that I saw for the first time this past year: Sorcerer, Simone Barbès or Virtue, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, 3 Women, Star 80, and Butterfly Kiss. Two older films I saw in the theater worth mentioning: The Strangler and the restoration of The Trial, which I hadn’t seen since I was a teenager and thoroughly enjoyed.
- Television seasons and/or series I enjoyed: Poker Face, Season 1; The Bear, Season 2; The Fall of the House of Usher; Perry Mason, Season 2; The Great, Season 3; Barry, Season 4; Succession, Season 4; Yellowjackets, Season 2; BEEF; Party Down, Season 3; Abbott Elementary, Season 2; What We Do in the Shadows, Season 5; The 12th Victim.
- I’m never able to keep up with current year book releases (there are so many books to read you guys), but books I read that were 1) published in 2023 or late 2022 and read by me in 2023, and 2) very good: Beware the Woman, by Megan Abbott; Bloom, by Delilah S. Dawson; Don’t Fear the Reaper, by Stephen Graham Jones; Daphne, by Josh Malerman; and Vampires of El Norte, by Isabel Cañas. On the nonfiction front, I loved A Philosophy of Walking by Frédéric Gros. Books not from 2023 that I read for the first time: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, by Patrick Süskind; The Virgin Suicides, by Jeffrey Eugenides; and Picnic at Hanging Rock, by Joan Lindsay.
- Favorite podcasts from last year: You Must Remember This: Erotic 90s, obviously; Ghost Story; American Hysteria in general but the Jack Chick series in particular; and Normal Gossip.
- I dug deeper into my newfound music, opera and related fine arts interests with performances of Carmen and The Flying Dutchman, and a tremendous production of the Frankenstein ballet that made me think art can do absolutely anything. I also attended the symphony for the first time, which was lovely.
- Towards the tail end of 2023, I started getting into computer games and the first one that I loved was Strange Horticulture. I’ll have a lot more to report next year.
(If you really like lists, you can also read what things I liked in 2022 or all of the things I liked lists.)