After barely surviving a mandatory shutdown in response to the Coronavirus pandemic, the executive class running some of the largest film studios in the world decided that they weren’t quite ridiculously rich enough yet and furthermore they hadn’t taken enough liberties – financial, creative and moral – with those employed by them.

And so the actors and writers collectively said no and downed tools for five months in a dispute over pay (including residual payments in the age of streaming), working conditions, and especially the increasing threat of artificial intelligence being used to not only write screenplays based on algorithms but to steal the likenesses of actors (living and dead) and store them in perpetuity without just compensation.

With Hollywood productions quiet for half the year and none of the “talent” allowed to promote those movies that were completed prior to the strikes, we ended up with a more limited and less enthusiastically received slate of major releases. Not even superhero movies or franchise sequels fronted by Harrison Ford and Tom Cruise were guaranteed hits anymore.

Despite all this, 2023 ended up being a pretty good year for cinema, with plenty of examples of not only memorable blockbusters but of distinct filmmakers leaving their mark and under-represented communities providing vibrancy and freshness to a myriad of new stories. Based upon UK release dates, these are my 10 Best Films of 2023.

Follow me @SSPThinksFilm on X (Twitter).

10. You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah

You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah Review

2023 has been a great year for films about how Gen-Z processes their major life experiences, and this delightful, hilarious little film starring most of the Sandler clan (including Adam as an adorably schlubby dad) is up there with the very best.

As she approaches her her 13th birthday and the Jewish coming-of-age ritual, Stacy Friedman (Sunny Sandler) is determined to make her Bat Mitzvah the most perfect and memorable of her peer group, including that of BFF Lydia (Samantha Lorraine). But things get a lot more complicated as hormones, teenage crushes and petty but damaging psychological manipulation via social media enter the mix.

Five years ago, Bo Burnham made his memorable feature debut with Eighth Grade and told one of the most connective, visceral stories about becoming a teenager in years. Sammi Cohen’s film has the same aim but demonstrates how seismically culture has changed in just half a decade, all through a Jewish cultural lens. There may have never been a more challenging time to be growing up in an always-online age, and Alison Peck’s insightful script in addition to the across-the-board wonderfully naturalistic performances help to make this an unexpectedly profound crowd-pleaser.

9. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 Review

#JusticeforJamesGunn incarnate, the final chapter of the unlikeliest a-hole superhero team’s story shatters expectations and satisfyingly delivers on almost every level.

After years of defending the countless worlds together, the Guardians team has reached a precarious place. Their leader Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) has slumped into a depressed, alcoholic stupor after losing the love of his life Gamora (Zoe Saldaña), and Rocket’s (Bradley Cooper) past as a bio-engineered test subject comes back to haunt him in a very real way. Can the team come together one last time and save the galaxy, and themselves?

Marvel is seen as a pretty risk-averse studio and certainly much of their recent output has been received with a shrug from many viewers, but Guardians Vol 3 shows what happens when one of the best directors they partnered with is left to finish the story he wanted to tell. The action has never been more polished and visually dazzling, the performances from people and animated raccoons alike so honest and full of pain, Gunn’s love of animals so prominent as the team go up against a truly detestable figure who causes pain for the hell of it.

Recommended for you: MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movies Ranked

Scrapper (2023)
Director: Charlotte Regan
Screenwriter: Charlotte Regan
Starring: Lola Campbell, Harris Dickson, Alin Uzun, Laura Alkman, Ambreen Razia

In the middle of a Venn diagram that has circles for “debut feature”, “written and directed by a woman named Charlotte” and “explores parental trauma through the perspective of a young daughter”, there are two films that have both been released fairly recently: Aftersun and Scrapper. It’s difficult to avoid comparing the two when they have so much in common, especially when they’re both (very) British. But actually, the two films really don’t have much in common beyond those surface-level connections. Where Charlotte Wells gave us an ambiguous masterpiece that saw its parental trauma through both pre and post-facto lenses in Aftersun, Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper presents something far more accessible, linear and, in its own way, hopeful.

Georgie (Lola Campbell) is the daughter at the centre of Scrapper’s story. She has had a rough time of it recently with her mother dying, leaving her to live alone under the rouse that a fictional uncle has moved in to take care of her. As a 12-year-old she has now inherited the burdens of being a renter in a single-person household, a pre-teen outcast at school, and, as if she didn’t have enough going wrong in her life, a West Ham fan. When Jason (Harris Dickson) turns up by climbing over her garden fence, things change dramatically. He’s the father who abandoned her, and now he’s here to challenge the new identities that she has had to make for herself. She is no longer solely responsible for paying rent, she has someone in her corner when she needs it, and she now knows who bought her the West Ham shirt that she wears every day.

The problem for Georgie is that none of the things that Jason has turned up promising to be is her mum. To make it worse, this is the person who walked out on the two of them before Georgie even had a chance to remember who he was, so of course she’s sceptical of letting him in. Both literally and figuratively, as she only accepts that he’s here to stay once he foils her plan to lock him out of the house by breaking back in; something that she likely respects deep down, seeing as she has been getting by for the last however long by stealing and selling bikes in the local area. But it does give her cause for concern – who is Jason, what does he do, and why is he here now?

What ensues is a game of cat and mouse that subverts our expectations again and again. Regan is such a skilful writer that she has crafted entirely real personalities for both Georgie and Jason in a swift 84-minute runtime, and as such it’s so easy to slip into Georgie’s cynicism towards him. Perhaps the nicest example is when Georgie is driven to search through Jason’s belongings to find out more about him, and we’re given multiple Chekhov’s Guns to look out for. Whether they all go off or not is really up to us to decide, but it creates a feeling that we’re coming to Georgie’s conclusions about Jason at the same time as she is.

Outside of the two central characters, there are some stranger approaches to storytelling. A theme that runs all the way through Scrapper is the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. Of course, Georgie initially rejects that in favour of raising herself, but we’re given multiple snippets of ‘The Office’-style pseudo-documentary inserts where characters speak directly to a camera about what they think of Georgie. The woman she sells her stolen bikes to, a popular girl from school, and the social services officers who’ve bought her story about a fake uncle, are all featured. They’re largely played for quick laughs though, in a film that is otherwise thought-provoking and heartbreaking. Instead of providing much-needed humour amongst a narrative that would be otherwise difficult to take emotionally (which seems to be at least part of the idea behind them), these inserts simply become distracting.

There’s enough substance in Scrapper that its flaws aren’t enough to supersede its qualities. Charlotte Regan’s debut feature knows the rules of its genres well enough that Scrapper is able to break them in consistently thoughtful ways, even if some might work better than others. That’s what elevates this to being such a worthwhile take on a story that isn’t often told.

Score: 17/24

Recommended for you: 100 Unmissable BBC Films

Written by Rob Jones

You can support Rob Jones on his website: rbrtjones.com
Twitter: @rbrtjones