2023 was an important year for the film world. The pandemic is over, so a lot of postponed films finally reached the big screen. 2023 had Barbenheimer. Hollywood had two simultaneous strikes going on. Nepotism was the word of the year. 2023 had controversies. 2023 had breakout roles. 2023 had innovations. And personally? While I didn’t see a lot of films over this past year, I did catch some really good ones. There were classic gems I’d never seen and some old favorites I watched again. Let’s dive into my 2023 film recap!
2023 is the first year I chose to document everything I’d seen on my Letterboxd. That means that sharing my stats has become a whole lot easier! Let’s take a look at what I’ve seen.
63. Not a lot. I’ve been a whole lot busier this year, which led to less time to watch a film. Over one film a week is still pretty okay, though. The first film of the year was on the 8th of January and was Netflix’ Glass Onion. The last film I saw was Home Alone, which I watched on the 26th of December. You can’t leave out a Christmas Classic, right?
Now, let’s focus on the positives! The top-rated film in my collection is Forrest Gump, earning a solid 9/10 from me. It continues to hold a special place as one of my all-time favorites, and I often find myself reflecting on why. Forrest Gump stands out as one of the most original movies I’ve ever watched, and you can’t help but cheer for every success the character experiences. I find myself crying every single time towards the end (I’m not spoiling what moment) but they’re tears of sheer happiness.
No roundup of reviews is complete without throwing in some graphs, right? Take a look at this chart I put together, illustrating how I’ve distributed the ratings among the films I’ve watched.
And to show how my ratings compare to those of others, enjoy this graph as well. It displays every single rating I’ve assigned to films I’ve seen in 2023.
I often watch films more than once. This year, I’ve been looking more at films I’d never seen before than in these last few years. There is one film I’ve watched twice in 2023 – which is Barbie. Worth it though! If we take a look at the rest of the films I’ve seen, 47% (30) I’d never seen before. Of those 30 films, 26 were released in late 2022 or 2023. The four older films are Before Sunrise (1995), Always Be My Maybe (2019), Mixtape (2021) and While You Were Sleeping (1995).
If we divide my 2023 films into genres, my favorite genre seems to be romance, closely followed by comedy and drama. It’s interesting to note that what I mentioned on my About Me page still holds true: I’ve watched dramas, romance, musicals, comedies, action, and sci-fi, and unsurprisingly, horror seems to be missing from my 2023 watchlist. A quick fact-check confirmed my initial claim!
I like to decide for myself what film to watch and when. I pick a film to match my mood or I’m home early from work and find just enough time to watch a film before someone else gets home. Below, I’ve included a graph that shows with whom I’m most likely to watch films. It’s pretty obvious I like watching films by myself. Almost 75% of the total, I’ve seen by myself. I’ve seen six films with my brother, seven films with the family, and four films with friends this year.
I watch most of the films I see by myself at home, but what about the rest? I’ve seen 6 films in the cinema this year (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Barbie (twice), The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Oppenheimer and The Banshees of Inisherin). The one film I didn’t watch at home or in the cinema, was at a friend’s house (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse). The other 55 films, I’ve watched at home. 15 on my PC, and the other 40 were on the TV.
Adding up the total runtime of all films watched, I’ve seen 138 hours and 28 minutes worth of films. (Still more than the number of hours I spend watching Formula 1, another passion of mine.) The shortest film I’ve seen is 87 minutes (My Summer Prince) and the longest is 180 minutes (Oppenheimer, done as a double feature with Barbie). The average runtime is 1 hour and 49 minutes (almost my ideal runtime – I like films with a length of about two hours).
2023 was the comeback year for the cinemas. People found their way back to them, something that was feared ever since the pandemic started. The highest-grossing film of 2023 was Barbie (domestic gross of $1,4b), with animation The Super Mario Bros. Movie coming in second with $1,3b. Closing out the top three was Christopher Nolan’s highly anticipated film, Oppenheimer. It hasn’t made the magical $1b mark and seems to be stuck at $954m for now.
Barbie broke a lot of film records in 2023. It became the highest-grossing comedy film ever, the highest-grossing film with a solo female director (you go, Greta Gerwig!), and Warner Bros.’s highest-grossing film ever, beating the last Harry Potter.
We still have award ceremonies to come, but many are expecting Barbie to sweep the nominations and awards. Box-office and award-show film of the year?
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