My Top 20 Cinematic Sequences of 2023

Can I tell you a secret? I’m so bored by “top 10 movies of the year” lists. Don’t get me wrong, I understand why we all make them—and I always spend my year building up my list and curating it toward the end, just for fun. Even so, as a vessel for self-expression or communication, these lists aren’t much to go on. Most of our lists feature roughly the same few movies shuffled and ranked slightly differently, there’s always pressure to include something obscure or unlikely to prove you’ve got unique taste, and at the end of the day they don’t usually say much about the person making them anyway!

That’s why I’ve decided something this year: I’m not going to be focusing on “top 10 movies of the year” lists anymore. I’d like to write about something with a lot more specificity and excitement: my favorite scenes and sequences from the movies of this year.

Here’s my logic: there are movies I watched this year that barely cracked the top 20 or 30 on my ranking, but they nevertheless had remarkable sequences that I loved and wanted to appreciate anyway. Not every movie listed here is one that I’d consider the best of the year, but they all have something I wanted to honor. No ranking, no rating, no particular order, just some assorted highlights. Somebody else could make this list using the exact same movies and choose entirely different scenes that personally touched, provoked, dazzled, and moved them—and that’s what makes it personal. It’s been a pretty amazing year. I’ve included clips where I can find them, and images where I can’t. This is my list!

“Can You Hear The Music?” - Oppenheimer

When I think about the cinematic moment from 2023 that I’ll probably remember for the rest of my life, it’s sitting in that massive IMAX 70mm theater for Oppenheimer and witnessing the “Can You Hear The Music” sequence for the first time. The line, which comes from Kenneth Branagh’s Niels Bohr and also became the title for the Ludwig Göransson musical composition underscoring the sequence, speaks to something that I love about Oppenheimer as a whole: it’s a movie that flows from scene to scene with an engine that feels equal parts ethereal and grounded. It allows us to be fully present in individual moments of Robert Oppenheimer’s life while also experiencing the broad tapestry of all these events together, and how they relate and interplay with each other.

The “Can You Hear The Music” sequence condenses so much time into such a short span, and it tells us everything we need to know about Robert: he’s a scientist with the soul of a poet, he’s uniquely compelled by the intangible and terrifying inevitabilities of the cosmos, and sometimes he’s crippled and immobilized by his own inner world. That’s not to mention the sheer craft of this sequence; it looks amazing, it sounds amazing, and for 2 minutes it really feels like being elevated to another plane of existence. It’s the moment I knew that I was in more-than-capable hands.

“Start A Band” - Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse

I feel like there are other scenes that I could’ve chosen to represent what I love about Across The Spider-Verse—the scene with Gwen & Miles swinging to “Mona Lisa” or the sequence of Miles trying to deliver the cakes come to mind—but the ending was what truly cemented the movie as a masterful middle chapter for me. The word that suits this scene most accurately is culmination; Daniel Pemberton’s insane musical score swells to incorporate almost every theme and motif he’s ever dreamt up, the reveal of an alternate Prowler Miles feels so logical and yet so surprising and brilliant, and the themes of the movie about “doing your own thing” and “writing your own story” suddenly give way to weighty questions that challenge everything we’ve assumed. Was Miles really meant to be Spider-Man, if there’s a world that’s literally burning because the spider bit him instead? How will Gwen and the gang find him before he disintegrates into pixels? What will happen to Earth 42? Will Miles save his father and demonstrate his agency over his own story, or will he fail and be forced to confront the inevitability of pain and loss? It’s no wonder that every theatrical screening I attended resulted in literal screaming when that “To Be Continued” title card hit. It’s a masterful cliffhanger that leaves nothing but interesting questions about where things will go next—and exhilarates you beyond belief, too. “Start a Band” and “Can You Hear The Music” are my two most-listened musical tracks of the year.

“Barton Men Don’t Lie” - The Holdovers

Once again, there are too many sequences to choose from when trying to pick a favorite from The Holdovers—but the one that stands out to me as a crystallized expression of the whole film might be the sequence where young Angus Tully finds out that his teacher Paul Hunham never actually graduated Harvard. In fact, he got kicked out for hitting a fellow classmate with his car. It’s a hilarious moment, especially when the cashier hands Paul his pint of Jim Beam and says “there you go, killer,” but it’s also one of many moments where we are reminded that people who seem to be set in their ways can still surprise us and reveal layers we never expected. In fact, in this moment it’s Paul Hunham’s hypocrisy which shows Angus his humanity; Paul insistently tells Angus that “Barton men don’t lie,” but his entire career at Barton Academy is literally built on a lie about his own qualifications. Rather than this proving that Paul is a fraud, it actually convinces Angus that he’s a real person with real experiences. By the end of The Holdovers, I felt such a rich sense of every character’s inner world—their hopes, their fears, their woundedness and regret beneath the surface—and their need for each other felt greater than ever. That’s cinema, baby.

The Performance of "Joan, Still" - Theatre Camp

It feels like more often than not, movies tend to pull me in at the start and slowly lose me as they go along—but with Theater Camp, the third act is where it’s at. Theater Camp is a mockumentary profiling a struggling performing arts summer camp in upstate New York, with the whole summer spent preparing for an original musical about the camp’s eccentric founder named Joan—who is currently in a coma. Before we see the final product, every aspect of the show seems like it’s going to be a total disaster. But in typical theater kid fashion, somehow the characters manage to pull together and allow the show to go on…and watching it all come together and payoff is uniquely satisfying, hilarious, and heartfelt. It’s probably the closest “third act performance” catharsis I’ve seen onscreen since Jack Black and the gang performed at the Battle of The Bands in School of Rock. When the kids in Theater Camp all sing, “Camp isn’t home, but is it kind-of? Kind-of, it is, I think it kind-of is!” my heart melts and I totally understand what they’re expressing. The whole sequence is a wonderfully chaotic celebration of those short-term experiences of belonging and community we tend to find and lose and find again—and like any good finale, it makes the whole movie feel worth it to get here. Oh and also, there’s a whole song about doing cocaine in the 70s.

“The Dog Days Are Over” - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

Behold, the scene on this list that had me sobbing like a baby. I think what makes this final “dance party” sequence in Guardians Vol. 3 so affecting is its commitment to the difficult emotions of saying goodbye; rather than having the original Guardians team ride off into the sunset together with the door open for more Feige-approved adventures in the future, Gunn acknowledges the melancholic fact of real life: sometimes, the best and most beautiful things (and relationships) only last for a season. I love that the “breakup” of the Guardians team isn’t because of a character death or a defeat, either: it’s that Peter Quill knows deep down that he needs to pursue relationship with his real family, Mantis wants to find an identity outside the people around her, Nebula and Drax have hearts to give children the love they never received, and Gamora has a new found family of her own. Watching this sequence in the theater—especially after seeing the 3-movie marathon—felt almost like attending my own college graduation. It’s one of the best and most truly fulfilling endings I’ve ever experienced.

Nuclear Threat at the Dubai Airport - Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One

It’s wildly ironic that the most thrilling sequence in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One is the one with no stunts or spectacle—just Tom Cruise nonchalantly strolling around an airport doing flirtatious close-up magic with Hayley Atwell, and Simon Pegg having his sanity sent through the ringer by an AI chatbot. The nuclear threat turns out to be nothing but mind games from The Entity, but I guess that’s a testament to the idea that often the most terrifying threats are the ones left to the imagination. Particularly, I love the moment where the team is finally forced to tell Ethan that there’s a nuclear bomb in the airport and he’s only got 20 seconds to figure out how to stop it. It’s so obvious that any attempt would be futile, but you can still see Cruise’s frantic eyes searching, searching, searching for a clever way out. The gears in his head are turning at lightspeed and his inner voice is screaming, “no, this can’t be it.” Acting, baby. It’s so good. Also: Shea Whigham running around that airport looking totally exhausted. Hard to complain about that.

Joe Smokes His First Joint - May December

“I can’t tell if we’re connecting, or if I’m creating a bad memory for you in real time.” The line comes out of Charles Melton’s mouth with so much honesty and sensitivity, and it immediately cuts right to the core. The strangeness of this scene is hard to explain: Joe, who was groomed as a middle-schooler by a woman 30 years older than him and married her right after turning 18, is sitting on the roof with his college-age son when his son offers him a puff of a joint. Joe has never smoked one—and between his son and himself, he almost seems like the younger one. Charles Melton authentically plays Joe as though he’s been stuck in a state of suspended animation since his trauma occurred, too dutiful (and too ashamed) to acknowledge that the events that defined his life may have been deeply wrong. Getting high momentarily melts his secure exterior and reveals the fears and vulnerabilities he harbors, mainly for his son and their relationship. It’s marvelous acting, but it’s also the heart of the film; May December is a movie filled with deeply messed-up people who are unable to acknowledge (to themselves, or others) that they’re messed-up. Joe is the the first character who (with the aid of drugs) acknowledges his insecurities and regrets with honesty and love.

The Party Scene - Missing

Missing is a movie that probably won’t be cracking anyone’s top ten lists this year—it didn’t crack mine either—but I still feel pretty passionate about making sure it gets some appreciation anyway. When the same team produced Searching in 2018, I made a video essay about how many brilliant editing and storytelling techniques were used to make the “digital thriller” framing device as effective as possible. Missing takes all of those techniques to a whole new inventive (and time-consuming) level—and the most impressive example of that evolution might be the party sequence that occurs around the beginning of the film. The sequence makes use of doorbell cameras, Instagram stories, texts and calendar alerts, Venmo payments, and it flows from moment to moment with storyboarded precision. According to the editors, it took over a year to complete this section alone. Watch it above, and click here for an in-depth video about how the whole film was edited using Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects. It’ll blow your mind.

A Collapsing Kingdom - The Boy & The Heron

Many of the reviews that I’ve read for The Boy & The Heron have articulated its “message” as something about “the power of children to shape the world for good.” I don’t think that’s what it’s about at all. When our young protagonist Mahito is presented with the choice to become the master of the marvelous and revelatory dreamworld we’ve experienced throughout the preceding 2 hours, he rejects it on the basis of his own inner corruption. The world begins to collapse, and Mahito and his young companion (who turns out to be his mother, Petite Maman-style) narrowly make it out as the very fabric of this reality falls apart like a puzzle in a bathtub. The final goodbye they share before returning to their ordinary lives is heartbreaking, beautiful, and deeply personal for its creator. I wrote in my review for The Boy & The Heron that, “if anything, this feels like Miyazaki looking for a successor to his kingdom of dreams & madness and realizing that there can be none. the only kingdom worth preserving—and the only world we can shape—is our own life and relationships.” And let’s use properly momentous language here: the sequence is transcendent. Joe Hisaishi’s score finally lets loose into something that sounds like what you’ll hear when you get to heaven. The hand-drawn animation reaches heights that feel like a prophetic vision of the end of the world—and yet it’s somehow magnificent. This is one of the greatest living artists of our era pouring his heart and soul into one last triumphant finale…until he decides to make another one.

Questions for a Corpse - Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves

When I heard that the new Dungeons & Dragons movie was being directed by the dudes who made Game Night, I had insanely high hopes. I don’t know if the movie ever fully reached the same highs as its comedic predecessor, but some moments of indulgent silliness came close: chief among them, the scene where Chris Pine gets just 5 questions for a re-awakened corpse and wastes all of them with his clumsy word choice. The whole thing perfectly captures the energy of a hapless D&D campaign with a perpetually-trolling DM, and it’s got some enjoyable practical makeup effects (plus, in the Australian version, voices from Aunty Donna) to boot. I don’t know why any intelligent film executive would ever greenlight a sequel given the poor box office on this one, but I’d sure try to convince them if we ever happened to be in the same elevator. Ya know, after begging them to acquire and release Coyote vs. ACME.

The Failed Assassination - The Killer

Like its protagonist, The Killer is a movie that takes its time before pulling the trigger. The first 20 minutes of the film are spent meticulously preparing for one perfect shot. Well, not that kind of shot—but you’d be forgiven for confusing the two, because this is clearly a bit of self-parody on David Fincher’s part, paralleling the art of contract killing with the art of contract movie-making. The difference is, David Fincher really is precise—and The Killer only thinks he’s precise. After those 20 minutes of prep for the kill (accompanied by the most self-serious voiceover you’ll find this side of Pattinson’s Batman) this supposedly uber-prepared and flawlessly accurate killer misses his shot and sends the whole movie into a tailspin. It’s one of the best punchlines of the year because it causes you to rapidly reevaluate all the “sigma male” pontificating you’ve just witnessed and realize how funny it was all along. It’s Fincher’s greatest skill applied with killer patience and precision. He doesn’t miss.

“You Dream in a Language I Don’t Understand” - Past Lives

“I was just thinking about what a good story this is,” muses Arthur to his wife Nora in Past Lives. If I was writing a list of the top 10 characters of 2023, I think Arthur would definitely make it up there. As he so keenly acknowledges in this scene about halfway through the film, laying awake in bed with Nora and reflecting on the events so far, “if this was a story, I’d be the evil white American husband standing in the way of destiny.” He’s right; even for the audience watching the film, our every initial impulse is to search for reasons to hate his guts. We all know that Nora was meant to be with Hae-Sung! This scene, however, bestows Arthur with such gentle self-awareness of his role in the story that we have no choice but to empathize and understand him. Rather than a shallow love triangle about forbidden romance, the film evolves into something far more compassionate and mature. And as someone who is also married to a wife who speaks a different native language, I love what Arthur says about Nora dreaming in Korean: “It’s like there's this whole place inside of you where I can't go.” It’s a sequence that radiates specificity and empathy, much like the rest of the movie surrounding it.

The Boat Attack - Godzilla: Minus One

I was so torn between including the Ginza attack sequence and this boat chase in the new Godzilla, but I eventually decided on the boat attack because of its sheer creativity and newness. The Ginza attack later in the film is spectacularly effective and harrowing, but it’s still pretty traditional Godzilla stuff. This sequence, the first time we’ve encountered Godzilla in his adult form, presents something wholly different: a hodgepodge team of ex-soldiers who are forced to confront Godzilla in the middle of the ocean using nothing but a janky wooden boat and some old naval mines. The whole thing quite obviously takes some inspiration from Jaws, but with a foe who seems like an entirely different level of formidable. Not to mention: an integration of practical and computer-generated VFX that feels so visceral and terrifying, and a cast of great characters who immediately become distinct and memorable. It’s a thrill.

The Paris Staircase Fight - John Wick Chapter 4

How does a series like John Wick continue to outdo itself forever? I’m pretty sure Chad Stahelski decided that there’s no way that it can, because he wisely called it quits here—but as with some of the other endings on this list, the finality gives this sequence new vitality. John is so close to his goal. He’s just got to get up one more flight of stairs. And suddenly, everything is against him: fists, guns, and even gravity. It all culminates in the best moment of shocked laughter this year: a comically-long tumble down the stairs, right back to where we started, that works as both an excellent punchline and an impeccable stunt. Stahelski gives you something amazing, takes it all away, and then gives it back even better—with Donnie Yen this time. What more can you ask for? There are a lot of awesome scenes in this movie—the overhead fight with exploding bullets and the Arc De Triomphe fight are amazing too—but I think what puts this an inch above the rest is the way that it sells one of the core elements of John’s character: his sheer exhaustion. By the time he gets to the top of the stairs and must face his final showdown, we want nothing more for him than rest.

Ken Discovers The Patriarchy - Barbie

Speaking of shocked laughter: Greta Gerwig’s willingness to even say the word ‘patriarchy’ in a comedic context felt pretty bold when it happened—and it certainly ruffled the feathers of all the Ben Shapiros of the world. I remember feeling the entire theater tense up and then quickly erupt into giggling as we all realized just how absurdly on-the-nose this premise was going to get. This is the scene that cements Ryan Gosling as the comedic core of the movie. When the woman at school asks him for the time and he narrows his eyes and says, “you respect me?” it’s just so funny; the closest comedy comparison I can muster is Will Ferrell in Elf. Beyond that, though, the sequence expertly depicts the experience of an essentially marginalized person receiving basic human dignity for the first time. This empowerment quickly goes too far, of course, but the core emotion is fundamentally empathetic for Ken’s situation—and the ways that systematically disenfranchised people can (somewhat understandably) turn to unhealthy alternatives to make their voices heard. Plus: fur coats and horses and brewski-beers in the mini-fridge.

The Train Tracks Scene - Wes Anderson’s The Swan

I loved all four of the Roald Dahl short story adaptations by Wes Anderson on Netflix this year, but The Swan became my favorite for two reasons: its strange and honest presentation of childhood darkness, and the hypnotic lull of Rupert Friend’s reading voice. This culminates in a sequence where the child protagonist, in some moments played by a child and in others played by Friend himself, is tied to the railroad tracks by two bullies and forced to lay completely still while a train passes over him. There is no real train in this sequence, and the shot remains entirely focused on Friend’s face the entire time; the only evidence of the terror we have is Friend’s third-person narration explaining his thoughts out loud in the moment. Despite those limitations, it’s an intense scene in an intense short film—like an audiobook crossed with a tone poem. Like much of Dahl’s work, it’s a frightening and yet uniquely enchanting bedtime story.

Peter Returns to Fight Hook - Peter Pan & Wendy

Of all the movies on this list, Peter Pan & Wendy is probably the least likely to wind up on any other lists of the best films of 2023. The film was carelessly dumped on Disney Plus back in April after initially being slated for theatrical release, and after a couple days of reactionary conservative commentary about “woke Wendy,” it quickly faded out of public consciousness forever. I had high hopes for Peter Pan & Wendy because it was being directed by David Lowery, the guy behind The Green Knight and A Ghost Story; I even wrote a defense of the film before it came out. I think the most disappointing thing about the final product was its sheer brevity; clocking in barely over 90 minutes, the film breezes past with such a quick pace that when the credits roll you’re mostly left thinking, “man, that’s it? I felt like we were just getting started.” It feels like the whole story takes place over the course of an hour or two. Even so, as far as these artless Disney live-action remakes go, I’d rank this up there with Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella as one of a very small number that really deserves to exist. If Peter Pan & Wendy had released in theaters, giving it the chance to feel like a legitimate experience instead of just empty streaming ‘content,’ I think we’d be talking about it with more appreciation. The film is beautifully shot with lavish practical locations and setpieces, and the score by Lowery’s longtime collaborator Daniel Hart is celestial and majestic. This scene, where Peter returns to fight Captain Hook after his apparent death, leads into a very gripping final showdown (on a flying pirate ship) that I’ve watched a couple dozen times. The use of wide-lenses and natural light is effective and distinct, Jude Law is having a ball hamming it up as Hook, and the imagery genuinely feels mythic and grand. Eventually, the flying ship begins to do a barrel roll upside down, which inventively transforms the setpiece mid-swordfight. It’s really, really astute direction of a final action sequence in an adventure movie. I can’t wait to see what David Lowery does next.

Religious Family Reunion - Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret

I’d hoped to include a different scene on this list from It’s Me, Margaret: the scene where Rachel McAdams tries to paint an orange bird outside her window before it’s scared away by the doorbell. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a single clip (or even an image) of that scene online. This scene is equally profound, though: after an entire movie spent following Margaret quietly exploring the differences between her parents’ religions and wondering why her two families have never met, the inlaws finally collide with explosive awkwardness. Kathy Bates raises her glass and says “l’chaim” to everyone at the table and pointedly boasts about her granddaughter going to synagogue, Rachel McAdams’ evangelical parents try to convert Margaret as soon as they’ve got her alone, tensions run high and defensive voices are raised, and eventually Margaret cracks and declares that she doesn’t even believe in God anyway. This is the emotional low-point of the film, of course, but it’s stuck with me all year because of its uncomfortable emotional honesty. It’s a firm demonstration of the truth that a person (child or otherwise) cannot be convinced or argued or pressured into sincere belief in God. Margaret needs to come to discover her beliefs on her own, and her family needs to stop viewing her as an ideological object defined by the “side” she chooses to take in their interfaith conflict. It’s really hard stuff, and I was glad to see a movie in 2023 so directly interested in thinking about faith—even when it’s messy.

“I Still Don’t Understand the Play” - Asteroid City

I still don’t understand Asteroid City. I’ve fallen in love with it anyway, though. Just when you thought that the film (about a town within a play within a writer’s mind within a TV show) couldn’t get any more metamodern, its protagonist literally steps out of the scene, climbs onto a balcony outside the soundstage, and reflects on a deleted sequence with the actress who would have played his wife. By going through the motions of their unused dialogue, Schwartzman’s character (and his character’s character) find some peace in the narrative they’re all living and telling. It’s a hypnotic reflection on the power of stories to help us learn to feel, even when we know they’re fiction. As the audience, we are fully aware of every artificial and constructed element of the scene we’re watching—but it’s strangely moving anyway. Wes Anderson is a meta-magician.

The Radio Play - Killers of The Flower Moon

Speaking of fictional plays, here’s a totally different one. Killers of the Flower Moon might be best described as devastating in an understated way, depicting the rot at the core of society with such frankness that it sometimes feels uneventful. And that’s the great sin that it aims to confront. After a damning lack-of-confession from Leo DiCaprio’s Ernest Berkhart (which functions as its own form of confession) in the closing moments, we suddenly find ourselves in a totally different setting: an FBI-promoting radio play summing up the real-life events that follow what we’ve seen so far. The vibe, if anything, feels upbeat—like it’s all nothing but entertainment. Good ol’ FBI, you saved the day again! “Entertainment” is exactly what Marty hoped Killers of The Flower Moon wouldn’t become—but in these final moments, he confesses his sins and admits that his hands are still unclean. It’s interesting how metamodern this sequence is, not entirely unlike Asteroid City. Marty is critiquing the way that media (and stories) can dumb-down and sensationalize truly evil facts for audiences, absolving them of their guilt and allowing them to separate themselves from the events, but he’s also criticizing himself for being part of it. Is it even possible, in our modern for-profit filmmaking landscape, to tell a story about such atrocities without commodifying them in the process? Marty seems unsure. In the final moments, he breaks the fourth wall and tries to set the story straight: “There was no mention of the murders.” Devastating indeed.

That’s my list! And to be sure, it’s nowhere near comprehensive. There are movies I still haven’t been able to see yet, like Poor Things and Ferrari and Menus-Plaisirs. There are also movies which are in my top 10 of the year but didn’t have individually distinct sequences I’d include here, like Sophia Coppola’s Priscilla. And then there are movies with scenes that I liked, but simply didn’t crack this list, like Wonka or Napoleon. Even so, it’s been a really great year for cinema—as most years are, if you look hard enough. I’m fully anticipating that the final chase in Furiosa will crack the top of this list next year.