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

Godzilla Minus One / Gojira -1.0 (2023)
Director: Takashi Yamazaki
Screenwriter: Takashi Yamazaki
Starring: Ryunosuke Kamiki, Minami Hamabe, Yuki Yamada, Munetaka Aoki, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Sakura Ando, Kuranosuke Sasaki, Mio Tanaka, Sae Nagatani

As visually polished and park-your-brain-at-the-door fun as the Hollywood Godzilla films are, they aren’t exactly overflowing with big ideas or thematic subtext. That’s what the Japanese Toho movies are for. Now, with their most famous character in a shared custody arrangement with Legendary Pictures that currently allows them to unleash a new Gojira film only in years that don’t include a competing US Monsterverse release, they’ve come out of the gate in 2023 with an absolute barnstormer.

In the final months of World War II, Koichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a kamikaze pilot deserter, witnesses the massacre of an engineering crew by an ancient dinosaur-like monster. As he returns to life in a bombed-out Tokyo recovering from the US Pacific Campaign, he gains a new family in Noriko (Minami Hamabe) and an adopted little girl. Soon the creature reappears, now mutated to a colossal size by radiation from nuclear weapons testing, and begins a new path of destruction across a country still in turmoil. 

Refreshingly for a kaiju monster movie, the human element is at the forefront of the filmmakers’ minds and, as evidenced by movies ranging from Jaws to Independence Day, it pays dividends to spend so much time on character development early on so you actually care when their world starts going to hell. The film highlights an unconventional family unit made up of unmarried domestic partners and an unrelated child rescued from the streets, which seems a little anachronistic at first (and Koichi’s domestic setup does give his colleagues pause the first time they visit him at home) but there must have been so many similar relationships formed out of necessity in the immediate aftermath of a costly war. This group of protagonists including military personnel, scientists and civilians of various stripes is perhaps the most compelling in any Godzilla movie. Hugely gratifyingly, everyone – but especially the guilt-ridden Koichi and his insecure partner Noriko, who both need to decide to truly live their new lives – has their own story to tell and their demons to face. 

In addition to often leaving the human element buried under rubble, the Hollywood Godzilla movies also don’t always manage to convey the sense of scale behind all the CG gleam and the dazzle of environmental effects. That’s never a problem here when we’re placed on a level with nuanced and grounded characters going through a waking nightmare and seeing the monster’s impact in their immediate vicinity.

Godzilla is no longer portrayed by a guy stomping around in a rubber suit, but even with modern VFX everything has weight and feels pleasingly tactile, a slow but inevitable doom on the horizon. The VFX teams are clearly proud of their work as aside from a brief prologue straight out of Jurassic Park, the Godzilla action takes place in broad daylight and is never obscured by a choppy edit. Even when he’s not on screen, his ominous presence is felt; an existential threat evoking recent atrocities that requires a nation trying to rebuild to once again make an immense sacrifice. Perhaps even more than the visuals, what gives these set pieces such impact is the punchy sound design that rattles you to your core.

It’s incredible how well the film’s modest budget (under $15million) has been utilised here, director Takashi Yamazaki also supervising the visual effects as he did with the last big screen Toho monster blockbuster Shin Godzilla (2016). There is very little sign of obvious fix-it-in-post work and the real in-camera elements, the subtle VFX used to extend and enhance, and the more explicitly fantastical, blend together beautifully.

Over the decades, directors behind Godzilla movies have alternated between casting the big scaly guy as an unknowable, nigh-on indestructible force (see Godzilla ‘54, and Godzilla 2000) or as a reluctant defender of people and the planet from far worse threats (Invasion of the Astro-Monster, King of the Monsters) and something in-between. Here, Godzilla is terrifying again; pointedly bringing with him the power not only to smash buildings and tear apart warships but the threat of further nuclear devastation, his distinctive dorsal spines now extending row-by-row to indicate a countdown to him unleashing his atomic breath.

The powder is kept dry on Akira Ifukube’s instantly recognisable original theme music until we see a sequence that directly lifts perhaps the most iconic image from the original 1954 movie. Naoki Sato’s new score melds really well with the classic music that is sampled and adds to the gut-vibrating richness of the soundscape as a whole.

Militarism and the tragic waste of war is rightly framed as abhorrent, and Japan’s uncomfortable place caught between the US and the Soviet Union’s post-WWII battle for territory is an interesting point highlighted in the script, but the film stops short of deeply interrogating the feelings of the late 1940s Japanese citizens about the right-wing nationalist ideology and the code of honour that demanded death before surrender that their country so recently operated under. This, along with an (if not predictable then) unsurprising final act are still minor quibbles when everything else is so well executed. 

Godzilla Minus One has a very strong claim to being the best kaiju movie in 70 years. It gives an iconic Japanese monster his power back by combining grounded characterisation, some incisive thematic exploration, and technical excellence. The American Godzilla movies are fun and all, but this is proof not only that you can use dumb spectacle to articulate something really smart but that Japan’s greatest metaphor in pop culture is still awe-inspiring and more relevant than ever. The major Hollywood studios need to take note of this film’s worldwide success and maybe start greenlighting more modest genre efforts with real personality and something to say. 

Score: 22/24

Recommended for you: Showa Era Godzilla Movies Ranked

From being the “other” member of the Monty Python troupe largely tasked with playing grotesque bit parts and interspersing sketches with anarchic animated segments, Terry Gilliam graduated to feature film direction and carved out his own unique path in both the British and Hollywood film industries. Gilliam never compromises on his vision and has paid for it multiple times over his career, some projects taking years to get off the ground or eventually arriving compromised in one way or another. 

In The Film Magazine’s latest Ranked list of a director’s entire body of work, we are looking at the mischievous animator, satirist and once Python who is sometimes prone to get completely lost in his own imagination. These are all 13 Terry Gilliam directed features ranked. 

Follow @thefilmagazine on X (Twitter).

13. The Brothers Grimm (2005)

Conman brothers (Heath Ledger and Matt Damon) arrive in a town under the shadow of a terrible curse and must become reluctant heroes.

Adapting the lives of the famous German author siblings into a story not that far removed from their own macabre fairy tale-spinning sensibilities, The Brothers Grimm sounded like a fascinating prospect on the page at least.

The final film is fine, but it has a tone problem and takes too much time to settle on what it is trying to be. Even the combined charm of Ledger and Damon as the titular siblings can’t save it from being a bit muddy and samey.

Recommended for you: 10 Best Matt Damon Performances

12. The Zero Theorem (2013)

In a dystopian future, a reclusive programmer (Christoph Waltz) is ordered by his shadowy overlords to prove that life, the universe and everything is meaningless.

Terry Gilliam’s long-awaited return to steampunk science fiction 18 years after Twelve Monkeys and 28 years after Brazil was probably never going to meet sky-high expectations.

This definitely has the right look and feel to make it of a piece with Gilliam’s 80s and 90s classics but, despite the best efforts of a thoroughly weird Waltz leading an ensemble of entertaining character actors, this leaves you feeling oddly cold and disconnected.

It’s the hap-happiest season of all. We bring nature inside as we adorn our living spaces with seasonally appropriate trees, and we light up the longer nights with bright and colourful lights. Music from generations long since passed is re-played and re-contextualised, and centuries old iconography is re-evaluated and repurposed.

There’ll be parties for hosting, marshmallows for toasting, and carolling out in the snow. If we’ve been good, we’ll receive gifts (thanks Santa!), and if we’re lucky we’ll eat so much food we can barely move. Almost certainly, we’ll watch a movie. From the Netflix Originals of the current era to the silver screen classics of wartime Hollywood, Christmastime movie watching doesn’t discriminate based on picture quality, colour or the lack thereof, acting powerhouses or barely trained actors – if it works, it works. And if it’s good, we’ll hold onto it forever.

In this Movie List from The Film Magazine, we’ve scoured the annals of Christmas movie history to bring you the very best of the best to watch this holiday season. These films are Christmas classics and beloved cult hits, some culturally significant and others often overlooked. These films are seasonal treats; two advent calendars worth of movie magic from the big-wigs in Hollywood and beyond.

Short films (those with a runtime of under one hour) will not be included here, nor will films that cross multiple seasons but feel like Christmas movies – sorry You’ve Got Mail and Bridget Jones’s Diary. Debatable Christmas movies like Gremlins have also been omitted because of their inclusion in our alternative list “10 Excellent Non-Christmas Films Set at Christmas“. Seasonal classic The Apartment has also been disqualified on the grounds that it covers Christmas and beyond, and is arguably more of a new year’s movie.

These are 50 Unmissable Christmas Movies as chosen by The Film Magazine team members. Entries by Mark Carnochan, Kieran Judge, Martha Lane, Sam Sewell-Peterson and Joseph Wade.

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1. Remember the Night (1940)

Golden Era stars Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray (who would go on to star in The Apartment) spark an unlikely romance when Stanwyck’s Lee Leander steals a bracelet from a jewellery store and MacMurray’s John “Jack” Sargent is assigned to prosecute her over the Christmas holidays.

One of the era’s many beloved studio romantic comedies, Remember the Night features all the elements that would come to define the genre while encompassing some screwball comedy and classic transatlantic accents. The tagline read “When good boy meets bad girl they remember the night”, and it’s likely you’ll remember this seasonal treat too. JW

2. The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

Few things signal classic Hollywood Christmases like Jimmy Stewart, and 6 years before arguably his most memorable performance in the iconic Frank Capra Christmas movie It’s a Wonderful Life, he starred in a seasonal favourite that was just as beloved by critics, The Shop Around the Corner.

This holiday romance from Ernst Lubitsch (who also directed Heaven Can Wait) sees Stewart’s Alfred fall in love with his pen pal who, unbeknownst to him, is the colleague he most despises at his gift store job – You’ve Got Mail has got nothing on this. With some hearty moments and all of the circumstantial comedy of the best movies of the era, The Shop Around the Corner will make you laugh and fill your heart in that special way that only the best Christmas movies can. JW

3. Holiday Inn (1942)

Early sound pictures were revolutionised by famed tap dancer Fred Astaire, and by 1942 he was a certified movie musical megastar. In Mark Sandrich’s seasonal musical Holiday Inn, he teams with would-be Christmas icon and man with a voice as sooth as silk, Bing Crosby. The result is one of the most iconic and influential Christmas movies ever made.

The film’s outdated attitude towards race are cringe-inducing and inexcusable in a 21st century context (there’s a whole sequence featuring blackface), but its other dated sensibilities shine bright amongst more modern and commercial Christmas films; its wholesome aura, classic dance scenes, and era-defining songs making for an unmissable experience. To top it all, Bing Crosby sings “White Christmas” for the first time in this film, cementing it in history as a seasonal classic. JW

4. Meet Me in St. Louis (1944)

Widely acknowledged as one of the holiday season’s best-ever films, Vincente Minnelli (An American in Paris) illuminates his would-be wife Judy Garland in arguably her most established performance, bringing Christmas cheer to all without sacrificing any of the harsh realities facing the American people in the first half of the 20th century.

Featuring the original (and arguably the best) rendition of Christmas classic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, and being anchored by some heartbreaking story elements, Meet Me In St. Louis maintains its power and relevance 80 years on. It offers a Christmas movie that will forever mark the height of its sub-genre, as well as the two filmmaking careers (of Minnelli and Garland) that helped to define the era. JW

Recommended for you: There’s No Place Like St. Louis at Christmas

5. Christmas in Connecticut (1945)

Remember the Night star Barbara Stanwyck is once again front and centre for a Golden Era Hollywood Christmas movie, this time playing a city magazine editor whose lies about being a perfect housewife are put to the test when her boss and a returning war hero invite themselves to her house.

This is screwball comedy with all the spirit of the festive season is as romantic as it is funny, and prominently features the shadows of World War II to gift the film a unique emotionality that has ensured it is rewatched year on year. JW

Over 15 years and 33 films, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has thrown countless seemingly insurmountable obstacles and more than a few apocalyptic events at their line-up of superheroes trying to save the world, the universe and reality itself. Their villains are at the head of all of this; crazed scientists, treacherous government agents, brutal alien warlords, amoral industrialists, gods and monsters and everything in between, an MCU villain can be so many things. Some were unfortunately the weakest elements in the movies they appeared in, being either generic, poorly served by the script or misjudged in their performances, while others ended up being memorable highlights even above the title costumed characters. 

There are often multiple antagonists in these superhero stories so we’ve tried to stick to one villain per MCU film. This is except where it’s the same antagonist carried over into a sequel film, and in cases where there’s more than one threat to our heroes. In these instances, we’ve focussed on the most active baddies or the masterminds of the various diabolical plots.

This ranking will be based on the level of threat the various bad guys pose to our supremely skilled and miraculously superpowered heroes, the diabolical creativity of their respective master plans and the sheer evilness of their actions. Spoilers ahead!

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

31. Malekith – Thor: The Dark World (2013)

“Look upon my legacy, Algrim. I can barely remember a time before the light.” 

A dark elf conqueror with a vendetta against Asgard for a defeat in ancient times, Malekith is reawakened and plots to snuff out the light across the universe (because his kind really like the darkness of the void).

A hugely distinct and memorable villain from the comics became one of the most boring to ever antagonise a superhero movie. Whatever Christopher Eccleston was trying to do with his performance after undergoing many uncomfortable hours in the makeup chair was lost in a brutally hacked film edit and an all-round po-faced determination to live up to the “dark” of the title.

Note: dark is not the same as interesting. 

30. Ivan Vanko/Whiplash – Iron Man 2 (2010)

“You come from a family of thieves and butchers, and like all guilty men, you try to rewrite your history.”

Whiplash is a Stark-hating, parrot-loving nuclear physicist/inventor with arc reactor-powered whips and an army of drones to carry out his revenge.

Mickey Rourke got a lot of jobs in quick succession as various shades of tough guy in this period. The Wrestler this is not, and he doesn’t exactly stretch himself as Ivan, offering a barely passable Russian accent and playing with a toothpick as a poor substitute for a more intricate characterisation as he plots vaguely defined Cold War-fuelled vengeance on Tony Stark and the American Military Industrial Complex.

29. Emil Blonsky/Abomination – The Incredible Hulk (2008)

“If I took what I had now, and put it in a body that I had ten years ago, that would be someone I wouldn’t want to fight.”

Abomination is an unstable British Black Ops asset who volunteers for a series of dangerous experimental super soldier treatments in order to capture the Hulk.

The Incredible Hulk worked best when it was Marvel’s answer to a Universal Monster movie, but one of its weakest elements was having Blonsky as its villain. Roth is fine, but he just wasn’t all that threatening, the character thinly sketched as a violent jerk with a superiority complex. When he finally transforms into his bony green alter ego Abomination for a CG smashathon in Harlem, it becomes almost impossible to care.

Recommended for you: Once More with Feeling – 10 More of the Best Remakes

28. Dar-Benn – The Marvels (2023)

“I always come back.”

Continuing what Ronan the Accuser started, Kree warrior Dar-Benn seeks to unite the two powerful Cosmic Bands in order to open portals across the galaxy to pillage resources from countless worlds to restore her dying planet of Hala and reassert her species’ dominance in the galaxy.

The problem with Dar-Benn is not her evil-for-the-right-reasons master plan or her relative threat level to our heroes (which is considerable considering that with space-magical enhancement she can hold her own against three formidable supes at once), it’s that there’s nothing else to her.

We needed more time for layers to come though Zawe Ashton’s broad, pantomimey performance and she too often feels like a retread of the kinds of villains we’ve seen in the MCU many times before, just a means to an end.

27. Ava Starr/Ghost – Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)

“It hurts. It always hurts.”

The Marvels Review

A scientist’s daughter with an unnatural condition that causes her to painfully phase in and out of the physical realm, Ghost resorts to stealing Pymtech to survive.

Ghost is an admirable attempt to make something interesting out of a gimmicky physics-based villain. The character is let down not by Hannah John-Kamen’s engaging and tortured performance but by her essential irrelevance to the film’s main plot and lack of enough meaningful screen time. It’s almost like they only decided late in the day that Ant-Man and the Wasp should have an antagonist at all, and that may have been the wrong decision for this particular movie. 

26. Ronan – Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

“I don’t recall killing your family. I doubt I’ll remember killing you either.”

Ronan is a Kree fanatic who courts war and is gathering enough power to wipe the planet Xandar from the galaxy.

Ronan, with his war paint, samurai helmet and big hammer has a strong look, and thanks to Lee Pace he is given an imposing presence and a rumbling voice. But you’d struggle to claim he had much in the way of depth as a character. He wants a weapon to destroy a planet because because he’s from a war-like race and that’s about it, though Pace’s affronted expression and confused “what are you doing?” as Star-Lord dances in front of him as he’s trying to trigger an apocalypse is pretty memorable.

25. Darren Cross/Yellowjacket – Ant-Man (2015)

“Did you think you could stop the future with a heist?”

Ant-Man Review

Hank Pym’s protégé, ouster and successor at his company, Yellowjacket seeks to weaponise and sell Pym’s shrinking technology to the highest bidder.

Marvel has a lot of evil CEOs in its rogues gallery and Corey Stoll brings plenty of punchable arrogance to his performance as Darren Cross. He murders rivals and exterminates animal test subjects without second thought, seemingly motivated by Pym not trusting him with the secrets of his technology (though really it’s because he enjoys doing it). 

Cross does have probably the most gruesome villain death in the MCU so far, and it’s no more than he deserves.

“There was an idea…”

Said idea was different to almost every version of the big screen superhero seen previously. Rather than each costumed hero existing in their own sealed-off vivariums, what if they could all share one interconnected universe containing a single ever-evolving and expansive story?

Once the idea gained traction, billions of dollars, and many “phases” of franchise continuity, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) became the envy of every studio with a lucrative intellectual property to siphon and thus many attempts were made to replicate the success of the “Marvel Formula”.

Much like the James Bond series in the decades before it, the MCU is primarily a producer-led franchise, the ultimate mastermind behind the project being Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige, though distinct directors like Jon Favreau, Joss Whedon and Taika Waititi have certainly left their mark on their respective entries in the ongoing series.

What keeps us (and wider box office audiences) coming back, aside from the ever-increasing levels of superhero spectacle and long-form storytelling borrowing liberally from 80-plus years of comic books, is the time you’re afforded to grow to love the characters and their relationships with each other, especially in the ambitious team-up Avengers movies.

In this edition of Ranked we at The Film Magazine are assessing every entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and because fans have very different opinions on the best, the worst and everything in between regarding this series, we’ve attempted to find a balance between average critical consensus and general audience reception, as well as genre innovation and the lasting impact on popular culture, to order all of them definitively from worst to best.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration… Every MCU Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on X (Twitter).

33. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)

“A guy dressed like a bee tried to kill me when I was six. I’ve never had a normal life.”

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Review

The Ant-Man films are probably the most inconstant sub-series in the MCU, quality wise, but because the final chapter of their trilogy tries to go both big and small, it well and truly overreaches itself.

Pitting the Lang/Van Dyne family against Kang the Conqueror in the Quantum Realm, force of nature Jonathan Majors playing a fascinating villain isn’t quite enough to save Peyton Reed’s threequel from being just an eye-catching jumble of mismatched, tonally confusing ideas.

For Kang’s first, less maniacal appearance and the start of this whole Multiverse Saga, make sure to watch Season 1 of ‘Loki’.

32. Eternals (2021)

“We have loved these people since the day we arrived. When you love something, you protect it.”

Eternals Review

Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) is a great director, no doubt, but she was just not a good fit for the MCU in this story of space gods guiding humanity’s progress. Considering the usually grounded and singular vision of her work, this was a particularly crushing disappointment for most audiences.

The ambition and epic millennia-spanning scope of Eternals sadly did not pay off in this jarring, misjudged slog of a final product that couldn’t even be saved by a stellar and diverse cast. 

31. The Marvels (2023)

“Listen to me, you are chosen for a greater purpose. So you must go. But I will never let you go.”

The Marvels Review

The Marvels smartly builds a lot of its appeal around its central team-up of Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau and Kamala Khan as their power usage causes them to swap places across the universe, but their found family warmth and oodles of charisma can’t overcome all the film’s flaws.

This needed more purposeful storytelling, a villain that doesn’t feel like a retread of what came before and more direct confrontation of the darker implications of the story. The musical elements will likely make an already decisive movie more so, but the MCU overall could do with some more audacious imagery like what Nia DaCosta does with alien cats.

Watching ‘Wandavision’ and ‘Ms Marvel’ through beforehand will certainly help you connect with two of the three leads that bit quicker.

30. Thor: Love and Thunder (2022)

“Whosoever holds these weapons, and believes in getting home, if they be true of heart is therefore worthy, and shall possess… for limited time only, the power… of Thor!”

Thor: Love and Thunder Review

Taika Waititi is the kind of distinct voice that gave the MCU a jolt in the arm when it was most needed, and he was vital in reinvigorating the Thor series, but the tonal balance and technical polish certainly felt off in 2022 release Thor: Love and Thunder.

Good performances from Chris Hemsworth, Natalie Portman and Christian Bale, and some memorable set pieces aside, Thor’s latest adventure battling a god-killer with his now superpowered ex-girlfriend Jane Foster at his side feels like too many mismatched stories smashed together.

Recommended for you: Taika Waititi Films Ranked

29. Thor: The Dark World (2013)

“One son who wanted the throne too much, and other who will not take it. Is this my legacy?”

The God of Thunder’s third film appearance tries to live up to its title with a story of dark elves trying to snuff out all light in the universe. Sadly, a late change in director – Alan Taylor taking over from would-be Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins – and extensive Loki-centric reshoots didn’t help an already disjointed film feel any less so.

Thor’s dynamic with his Earthbound friends is still funny and more Loki (shoehorned in or not) is always a good thing with Tom Hiddleston in the role, but the storytelling is inconsistent at best and Christopher Eccleston under heavy prosthetics as Malekith may be the most boring villain in the MCU so far.

28. Iron Man 2 (2010)

“The suit and I are one. To turn over the Iron Man suit would be to turn over myself, which is tantamount to indentured servitude or prostitution, depending on what state you’re in.”

The MCU’s first direct sequel went bigger and darker with Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark fighting a vengeful Russian inventor, a rival industrialist and potentially fatal health problems. Unfortunately, this ended up being a much less focussed, overblown and not all that compelling movie.

Scarlet Johansson makes her debut as Black Widow here, though she’s just a generic sexy spy at this point and not yet given the dimensions other writers would later bestow. The action is decent enough, but you wouldn’t lose out on much of you skipped over Iron Man 2 on your next MCU rewatch.

27. The Incredible Hulk (2008)

“You know, I know a few techniques that could help you manage that anger effectively.”

Lacking the clear intentions and boldness of many subsequent MCU movies, The Incredible Hulk is stylistically old-fashioned but works slightly better if you view this as a big-budget tribute to sympathetic monster movies (this one was made by Universal, after all).

A movie filled with false starts and one-off appearances (most obviously Edward Norton’s Bruce Banner would be recast with Mark Ruffalo for The Avengers in 2012), very little was carried over to the wider franchise right up until Tim Roth’s reappearance in ‘She-Hulk’ fourteen years later.

This is generally uninspiring stuff, with its most interesting man-on-the-run elements cribbed from the 1970s ‘Incredible Hulk’ TV show.

Recommended for you: Where to Start with Universal Classic Monsters

Poor Things (2023) 
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Screenwriter: Tony McNamara
Starring: Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef, Christopher Abbott, Jarrod Carmichael, Margaret Qualley, Kathryn Hunter, Suzy Bemba, Hanna Schygulla, Vicki Pepperdine

Poor Things, adapted from Scottish author Alasdair Gray’s award-winning 1992 novel, is probably Yorgos Lanthimos’ most enjoyable film to date. The maverick director of such distressing work as Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer might still be an acquired taste for many, and he has certainly lost none of his instinctive weirdness here, but this is definitely the most nakedly emotional and laugh-out-loud funny release of his two decade career. 

When brilliant but reclusive surgeon Dr Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) “creates” the remarkable Bella (Emma Stone), a reanimated corpse with the mind of a child, his attempts to gradually teach her about the world in a controlled environment are stymied by the sudden arrival of caddish lawyer Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo). Wedderburn elopes with Bella on a journey around the world where an influx of countless new sensations and experiences allows for the emancipation of her mind and body from the men who would control every aspect of her newfound life. 

The unique tone to be found in all Lanthimos films is something you have to get used to. From the unexplained sci-fi mechanisms of The Lobster to the intentional anachronisms of The Favourite, his worlds don’t quite operate by the same rules as our reality and the sooner you get comfortable with the absurdity of every situation and the darkly surreal turns most character interactions will inevitably take the better time you will have. If you don’t get on with the film’s monochrome first act, which is all queasy fish-eye lenses, gags involving the body and its myriad disgusting functions (including Dr Baxter’s biological need to burp expanding gastric bubbles), and creatures made up of two mismatched animals sewn together leisurely wandering from room to room in Godwin’s mansion, you probably won’t be brought on side by the bizarre sex montages, hallucinatory imagery and gallows humour that follows.

This is a heightened reality that incorporates formal social attitudes typical of the Victorian era the film is set in but also borrows much of its visual language from romantic painting and the carnivalesque films from the birth of cinema. Much like, of all things, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (coincidentally another film about liberation from expectations of your gender) this has a delightfully hand-crafted, sometimes deliberately unreal feel to it with tactile, eye-catching sets representing fantasy versions of different places and cultures with radiant projected backgrounds, like a Georges Méliès extravaganza made with a decent budget and sophisticated modern techniques.

Divided into distinct chapters that mark stages of Bella’s journey across Europe and beyond, each with a unique colour palette and subtly different style of cinematography from Ken Loach regular DOP Robbie Ryan, the film becomes a little more grounded, more magical-realist than surrealist as she gains some understanding about society and her place in it. As Bella’s sexuality is awakened, almost simultaneously her world is thrown wide open and new stimuli rapidly accelerates her from puberty into adulthood and independence.

It’s a nice inversion of the usual tropes established in Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” to have the mad scientist be disfigured and his creation be perfect. As full of gravitas as Willem Dafoe is under impressive prosthetics and as entertainingly foul-mouthed as Mark Ruffalo can be with his slightly wobbly accent, this is Emma Stone’s world and everyone else just lives in it. She really is one of the most fearless and versatile actors of her generation, able to perfectly modulate the inherent uncanniness of her character while always remaining sympathetic, funny and heartbreaking. What is acceptable behaviour in the man’s world Bella Baxter is re-born into puts her at odds with how she expresses and enjoys herself. Fatherly authority Dr Baxter (or “God” as she refers to him), his protégé and Bella’s pushover fiancé Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), and the frankly grotesque Duncan Wedderburn all represent points on the scale of patriarchal abuse who all have their own agendas and all – maliciously or not – seek to exert their authority over Bella. 

One theme Lanthimos comes back to time and time again in his work, notably in Dogtooth and The Favourite, is control. Who has the power and the authority over another and when and how can that balance shift? For all that Duncan Wedderburn preaches the joy of dismissing the restrictions of “polite society”, as soon as Bella is embarrassing him in public by talking brazenly about his bedroom antics and refusing to submit to his every whim, he becomes just as much of an oppressor of her freedoms. He also begins to turn against her as her mental faculties catch up and eventually overtake his, threatening his dominance and his need to feel like he needs to protect her. 

From a decidedly unconventional breakfast table masturbation scene onwards, Bella becomes a joyfully sexual and uninhibited creature, always voicing her wants in the moment whether appropriate or not, gorging on the most delectable food and dancing with wild abandon. She is a big fan of “Furious jumping” as much as possible to the extent that on her arrival in Paris she sees the prospect of sex work to pay her way an opportunity rather than an indignity. Lanthimos is unabashed at portraying Bella’s sometimes elaborate sex scenes but they are usually joyous, sex-positive affairs that never feel exploitative. 

Poor Things is a gloriously against-the-grain comic fantasy that skewers 19th Century sexual politics and particularly the inequalities and prudish attitudes that persist to this day. We need a few more Bella Baxters in this world; curious, resilient and determined to break free from the limitations still imposed by our lingeringly patriarchal society. Yorgos Lanthimos and his creative collaborators have together crafted a strange and wonderful twisted fairy tale that makes us question our limitations, our hangups and our treatment of others.

Score: 23/24

Movies discussed include The Godfather, Seven Samurai, Blade Runner, The Lord of the Rings, Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, Pan’s Labyrinth, and many, many more.

The goal of our top 10 lists here at The Film Magazine was to help showcase our team’s personalities and spotlight movies that are important to film history and ourselves. Everyone’s lists are worth a read, as the different approaches, perspectives, and personal histories brought something unique that other writers had not seen before.

As Kieran noted in his list, these are not necessarily favorite films, though there is some crossover. Jacob’s list aims to cover Western film history from the silent era through 2016, the latest entry on his list. Kieran’s approach was to showcase “the peak of cinematic mastery,” and controversially includes a film trilogy as one entry (a fun topic of debate amongst the hosts). Sam’s list spans genre and history to find the films that impacted him the most throughout his life. Since there are 30 different films discussed, this episode is a bit longer than usual, and is the first of the new livestream episode format. Each approach yielded a list unique to the podcast, and we are proud to present the Second Cut episode on the Top 10 Best Films of All Time.

The Film Magazine’s Team page, with links to everyone’s Top 10 lists in their bio!

Jacob Davis: Jacob’s Top 10 Best Films of All Time

Kieran Judge: Kieran’s Top 10 Best Films of All Time

Sam Sewell-Peterson: Sam’s Top 10 Best Films of All Time

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Join us for our next episode, where we go back to our roots and discuss famous film flops! Because who doesn’t love a box office bomb with a fun story? Elizabeth Taylor’s old Hollywood epic Cleopatra, the Robert De Niro and Liza Minnelli musical New York, New York, and the Michael Cimino western Heaven’s Gate will all make an appearance.

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For requests, suggestions, and feedback, email the hosts at secondcutpod@gmail.com.

Many horror fans are aware of two versions of House of Wax, the macabre Vincent Price film from the early 1950s and the far more questionable one with Paris Hilton from 2005, but some might not be aware that the former was already a remake.

A film from the endlessly versatile Michael Curtiz (who directed the similar horror Doctor X the year before, and most famously Casablanca), Mystery of the Wax Museum was released in 1933 and is most interesting as a record of the short-lived two-strip Technicolor process, now just a curious artefact of film history. Yet its basic plot – a brilliant artist running a failing wax museum who is horribly disfigured and driven mad in a fire set by his business partner – is what is largely replicated in House of Wax (1953). The second remake uses the wax museum setting for its final act but little else, telling a very different type of horror story.

Pre-Code movies (the self-censoring Motion Picture Production Code, A.K.A Hayes Code, that was brought in from 1934) had the potential to be much more gruesome and provocative than those released only a couple of years later, so it may take some by surprise how far a 1933 film is able to go in terms its imagery and themes. In addition to Lionel Atwill’s sculptor Ivan Igor (great horror name) being turned into a scarred killer, the plot also heavily incorporates grave robbery, post-mortem mutilation and substance abuse. 

Mystery of the Wax Museum was re-titled and remade for the first time as House of Wax two decades later, partly in order to capitalise on the latest hot filmmaking trend: 3-D. By the early 1950s, Vincent Price became the most recognisable American horror movie star on the back of this, which serves as a great vehicle for his unique theatrical grandstanding talents. The film, the first colour 3D release from one of the big studios, was directed by Andre DeToth, a longtime (and often uncredited) Hollywood screenwriter and second unit director who ironically could not see 3D himself due to visual impairment.

Both of the first two films hit more-or-less the same story beats with Igor (renamed as Jarrod in the 1953 film) being the under-appreciated Michelangelo of wax sculpture, dedicating everything to his wondrous recreations of iconic and important historical figures, and refusing to create more carnivalesque fare like depicting serial killers and scenes of grisly violence to bring in the punters. The earlier film has the sculptor fixated on his masterwork statue of Marie Antoinette and the latter is dedicated to his Joan of Arc, but both versions of the character find and become obsessed with women who appear to be uncanny real-life representations of their idols; women they want entomb in wax as the centrepieces of their latest art installations which are secretly made up of wax-covered corpses snatched from the morgue.

House of Wax transposed the original contemporary 1930s story to an early 1900s setting to give the filmmakers an opportunity to incorporate misty, gas-lit night-time scenes, and to give the whole affair a more old-fashioned, atmospheric Gothic vibe. It’s a pretty effective horror mystery that nonetheless leans on some outdated tropes, like disfigurement causing madness and someone deviously “putting on” a disability to avert suspicion. Like Mystery of the Wax Museum, the most memorable horror scene towards the end of the film involves our damsel in distress shattering the apparently flesh-and-blood face of her tormentor to reveal the hideously scarred visage hidden beneath.

Changing the setting and some incidental details aside, like giving Jarrod a hulking, silent assistant called Igor after the original mad wax artist, House of Wax is very much a re-tread of the earlier film with better production values and effects. Despite a mixed critical reception and a somewhat old-fashioned horror movie plot, it became a massive hit for Warner Brothers, dominating the box office for weeks and enrapturing audiences with its sensationalism and technological gimmickry.

The second reinterpretation didn’t come for another 52 years and was also very much a product of its time. Like many horror remakes of the early to mid-2000s (Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, The Hills Have Eyes), the film seems determined to explain away every last ambiguity, solve every mystery and present as much graphic violence as it can get away with. 

The 2005 film is essentially… what if House of Wax was also Texas Chainsaw Massacre?

We see a group of teenagers on a road trip that takes them through an isolated former industrial town. There they discover Bo and his brother Vincent (both played by Brian Van Holt), formally conjoined twins who are the only two living residents and have preserved their family and neighbours in eerie wax snapshots of small town life. The wax artist in this version is disfigured by an accident of birth, is completely silent, and wears a pristine mask as he takes his victims to add to his ongoing grisly art project.

Most of the film is a pretty run-of-the-mill slasher with disposable and interchangeable young people being picked off by a crazed killer in increasingly more elaborately brutal ways. Director Jaume Collet-Serra (The Shallows, Jungle Cruise) decides to realistically depict what boiling hot wax hitting your skin then later being peeled off would look like, and some of the bodily mutilation in the movie seems particularly unnecessarily cruel. His film is the least worth your time out of the three but is notable for having the best final act in a House of Wax film, which sees our final two survivors running from Vincent through his vast wax museum that is entirely constructed from the substance and has been set ablaze, melting away spectacularly around them. It’s an almost entirely practical sequence achieved with, among other things, a lot of peanut butter.

This remake, like the majority of similar attempts to relaunch horror franchises around this time, did not go down well. Paris Hilton’s casting was so negatively received at the time by horror fans that the Warner Bros marketing team decided, rather distastefully, to promote the movie as the place to “See Paris Die”. Roger Ebert, damning with faint praise in his review, said the film “will deliver most of what anyone attending House of Wax could reasonably expect… assuming it would be unreasonable to expect very much”. The 2005 film was not the financial success the previous iteration was, though it did spawn a modest cult following of gore hounds.

There’s clearly enough in this story to make multiple remakes seem worthwhile. The ghoulish premise, creepy atmosphere, and memorable prosthetics and effects work in each House of Wax makes them all a certain draw for horror fans, and which one you prefer will depend largely on your taste in scary movies. If you don’t mind hammy acting, then the first two films are probably better-made and are surprisingly technically sophisticated for mid-budget films made 90 and 70 years ago. The modern version offers fairly memorable gore and pleasingly doesn’t resort to CG-shortcuts very often, but it also has the most basic characterisation and is the most insistent on unnecessary exposition of the three films. Give one, or all of them a go; you’ll never look at an uncanny wax model of a celebrity in quite the same way again.

The studio’s now iconic brand of 3D computer animation changed studio animation across the world forever, even causing industry leaders Disney to change from 2D into 3D over the course of the 2000s. Among Pixar’s many hits and acclaimed award winners are Toy Story, the film that changed it all, and Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, Wall-E, Up, Coco, and Soul.

In this edition of Ranked, we here at the Film Magazine have teamed our writers up to complete a joint ranking of Pixar Animation Studios’ feature offerings, judging each film in terms of enjoyability, resonance, longevity, critical acclaim, and artistry.

Written by Mark Carnochan (MC), Jacob Davis (JD), Katie Doyle (KD), Martha Lane (ML), Sam Sewell-Peterson (SSP), and Joseph Wade (JW), these are the Pixar Animation Movies Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on X (Twitter).

27. Lightyear (2022)

Budget: $200million
Box Office: $226.4million
Director: Angus MacLane

Coming out of the lockdown era that had forced many Pixar releases directly to Disney Plus (thus skewing their box office totals), the so-called “2nd Disney Studio” needed a big win with Lightyear that just didn’t come. It barely made its budget back, and with promotional costs taken into account actually made a loss for its parent company. The film was Toy Story, but not quite; a spin-off origin narrative explaining what the Buzz Lightyear toy was based on, a movie from the world of the Toy Story movies. In it, Buzz Lightyear (Chris Evans) fought a mysterious power-hungry evil force, finding his own ragtag group on a quest across galaxies to cement himself as a legend and save humankind.

Conceptually, Lightyear isn’t unlike many other Pixar movies: an underappreciated but cocky hero is humbled before achieving greatness with the only people (or creatures) that are willing to put up with him. This in-movie predictability, paired with the lack of clarity pre-release regarding exactly what Lightyear was, curtailed all of the usual Toy Story-universe excitement. It looks shiny, and some high-contrast space battles make for stunning sequences, while there is enough by way of stakes and twists to ensure an enjoyable time, but Lightyear was a cash-in and people could sense it; an expensive version of those direct-to-video Disney movies from the 1990s.

JW

26. Cars 3 (2017)

Budget: $175million
Box Office: $383.9million
Director: Brian Fee

By 2017, the only reason Pixar were forcing out new Cars instalments is because parent company Disney wanted some of those sweet merchandise profits. In 2011, following the release of Cars 2, Pixar revealed that the Cars franchise had made the company more than $10billion; current figures aren’t available, but even with a large curtailing of revenue, this franchise would be one of the most profitable film franchises of all time. In this fairly inconsequential film, Lightning McQueen plays the archetypal old sportsperson inspired to return for one last shot at glory. It isn’t quite Rocky Balboa, which isn’t even exceptional in the first place, but some of the animation is leaps beyond what was on offer in the first film.

Those charged with gifting this cash-grab with some kind of meaning or heart certainly tried – a feminist subplot indicated society’s advances in representation (both in sports and movies) in the decade since the original film and McQueen’s return to the spotlight held weight for those who enjoyed the original Cars movies – but these strangely designed cars were seemingly only ever destined for children’s bedrooms, the imaginations of those who played with the toys far outliving the impact or influence of this less-than stellar Pixar offering.

JW

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