Top 5 Most Surprising 2023 Movies

Top 5 Most Surprising 2023 Movies

We have finally reached the end of 2023 so that means it’s time to do a bunch of end of the year coverage. Yesterday I shared my picks for the 5 most disappointing movies of 2023. Today I’m sharing my pic for the 5 most SURPRISING movies of 2023 (plus honorable mentions). Let’s get started!

Honorable Mentions:

• John Wick Chapter 4: This one probably seems like a weird movie to include on this list, because it’s regarded as one of the best movies of the year. That’s true and I think it is one of the best movies of the year. But as for me, I’m new to this franchise starting in November of last year. I hadn’t seen a single John Wick film prior to watching them prior to this one coming out. I don’t believe I had this in my most anticipated of 2023, I was excited for it but I expected them to be on par with the first three movies. That I thought were all really good, but not fantastic. I watched this film and I think it’s the best of the franchise. I think pretty safely, I’ll say this is the best film of the franchise. The action here is simply fantastic, it’s all shot in a way that’s truly mind blowing and at points you’re confused as to how they shot some of this stuff. onnie Yen and Bill Skarsgard are great new additions to the film. I loved this movie and therefore it was much better then what I expected it to be. 

• Barbie: The biggest movie of the year that was part of this cultural phenomena with Barbenheimer. I really wasn’t sure what to make of this movie when they first announced it, even with the trailers I still wasn’t sure what to make of it. I was excited for it, but excited for it based on curiosity. I was so curious to see what this movie was. And the final result was a movie that I really enjoyed. I thought it was funny it communicated its ideas in a way that made sense and thought Barbie was an interesting idea to portray ideas of woman empowerment, it made a lot of sense. From there, the two lead performances by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling were fantastic, both are probably going to receive Oscar nominations. And I love how Greta Gerwig was given a lot of creative freedom to this story, it’s her distinct vision over the entire thing. 

5. Wonka: I remember when they first announced this movie, I was rolling my eyes as it felt like a cheap cash grab. Willy Wonka didn’t seem like a character that needed a prequel. So I really wasn’t anticipating this film all that much, however the trailers came out and I thought they really worked. It was so fun and charming and presented this fun movie that I became very interested in. I saw the film just a couple days back and I really liked the movie. I thought it was charming and delightful, which aren’t words I use to describe movies very often. But those words perfectly capture the experience I had watching the film. There's no cynicism in the film, there’s nothing about it that is mean spirited. The cast is part of the reason why it works so well, Timothee Chalamet and Hugh Grant would be the stand outs for me. Both of them wouldn’t have been the obvious picks for their respective roles. But both of them nail the roles they’re given, they can be so much fun. And especially Hugh Grant’s Oompa Loompa had my theater laughing out loud from beginning to end. So easily, one of the biggest surprise of 2023. 

4. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves: I’ve never played Dungeons and Dragons so I wasn’t really interested in this movie for that reason. And it felt like a cheap cash grab that was going to be very generic and forgettable. But the trailers came out and it actually looked really good and my excitement was raised. And the movie premiered about 3 weeks earlier at a film festival and it debuted with a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. I went and saw the film and I thought it was great, it was a whole lot of fun. You get these big sweeping action set pieces and that mixed with the fantastic genre means they can do some very cool things. They have a very fun and charming cast, this movie is a perfect example why Chris Pine is a great leading man in big movies like this. The humor from beginning to end is great, they find ways to make throw away scenes have a joke that’s so memorable. I’m disappointed it bombed at the box office, the chances of it getting a sequel went way down. I hope we get a sequel but I thoroughly enjoyed this film. 

3. Elemental: To state obvious Pixar hasn’t been great in the 2020s, several of the movies have disappointed me. Lightyear was one of the biggest disappointments of 2022. So my expectations for Elemental were pretty low, I thought it was going to be another very generic Pixar movie. The movie we got, I thought was the best Pixar movie in years. Maybe the best Pixar film since Toy Story 4, so easily the best of the 2020s. What worked about this movie is that it mixes the Pixar charm, magic, and emotions with being a romantic comedy. We haven’t gotten Pixar’s version of a romantic comedy prior to this. So it finds a new point to tell its story. Even the world building they do for Element City where all of the different elements live in the city, but fire is viewed separately and has racism thrown into it almost. It also has all of these elements that make it interesting and a lot of fun. The animation style for how they visualize some different elemental creatures looks very cool, mainly the fire people. So in general, this was just another solid Pixar film. It’s not one of the best of all time, but it’s easily one of the best they’ve done a while. 

2. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: Another animated movie that was so much better than I ever anticipated it to be. I’m not a big TMNT fan, I’ve seen the movie from 1990 and 2007 and then some of the animated tv shows. But TMNT isn’t a world I’m super invested in so I went in just because I was a fan of movies and have this movie blog. I watched the film and pretty quickly, this became my favorite TMNT film. And they got a lot of the creative team behind the Spiderverse movies and Mitchells vs The Machines, two movies with great animation styles to them. And I think this comic book style fits the TMNT and the frantic brains of teenagers so well. They find a way to have heartfelt moments in here, they give the turtles an arc as well as Splinter that has great emotional pay off in the third act. The other thing that works about this movie is that it’s very funny, it looks fun at both TMNT cultures and the lore as well as pop culture in general. Some of the jokes are really funny and clever. I was laughing from beginning to end. I’m so glad they already announced a sequel but I feel like there’s so much more to do with this version of this TMNT. 

1. Talk to Me: If you’ve been paying attention to my movie blog, you know that horror isn’t really one of my favorite genres. I’m newer to the genre within the last couple of years. This one wasn’t really on my radar until three to four weeks prior to the film coming out, I heard some good buzz. I was a few weeks late to seeing the film, I was finally able to check it out about a month after it came out. And I was pretty wowed by this movie and what it was able to do. The most impressive part about this movie for me is how it was made on a budget of $4.5 million. They were able to do such creative, brutal, and disgusting things on a budget a fraction of what so many modern day movies are. The other thing about it is it's an Australian film, the movie is made by brothers who are Australian and are YouTubers. They got the money to make this movie, a sequel is in development. I’m totally down for that, I want more in this world and I think there’s a lot of stuff you can do that’s even more brutal and vicious. Easily, Talk to Me was the biggest surprise of 2023, it was so much better than what I expected it to be. And I’m so glad I was able to see this on the big screen.