We want to try something different at Ready Steady Cut this year. Instead of waiting until the end of the year to name the top films, we thought of keeping a running list of 2023’s very best films throughout the year. This way, we can maintain the progress of movies not just around the award season blitz but during the lonely cold months.
There are some exceptions to the list we are curating. Any film that was given a limited release or eligible for the 2022 awards season – but opening in a wide release in 2023 – will not be included in this list. Also, any film released in a film festival without finding distribution, for example, at Sundance or SXSW, will be excluded until finding a release date,
Please scroll down and read the list of the Best Movies of 2023 So Far! Make sure to check back at the end of every month for updates like what has been added, dropped, and mistakes rectified in cultivating the year’s best films! Also, if you want to delve into more best movie lists, check out our Best Movies On Netflix 2023 article too.
Last updated: May 3rd, 2023
Best Movies of 2023 So Far
25. Infinity Pool (2023)
Ready Steady Cut film critic Ricky Valero called Infinity Pool “A twisted, weird, disturbing ride.”
Official Premise:
“James and Em Foster are enjoying an all-inclusive beach vacation in the fictional island of La Tolqa when a fatal accident exposes the resort’s perverse subculture of hedonistic tourism, reckless violence, and surreal horrors.”
Director: Brandon Cronenberg
Cast: Alexander Skarsgård. Mia Goth and Cleopatra Coleman
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87% (202 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.1/10
24. Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023)
A tense, intriguing thriller that leans toward the horror genre. Luther: The Fallen Sun is a wicked crime novel that comes to life.
Official Premise:
“Brilliant but disgraced detective John Luther breaks out of prison to hunt down a sadistic serial killer who is terrorizing London.”
Director: Jamie Payne
Cast: Idris Elba, Cynthia Erivo, Andy Serkis
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 68% (93 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.4/10
23. Cocaine Bear (2023)
There’s life before Cocaine Bear and after. You may feel dumber going out than in, but the greatest cocaine-infused bear horror B-movie ever made is a glorious, gory good time.
Official Premise:
“An oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists, and teens converge on a Georgia forest where a huge black bear goes on a murderous rampage after unintentionally ingesting cocaine.“
Director: Elizabeth Banks
Cast: Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Margo Martindale, Ray Liotta
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 67% (299 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.0/10
22. You People (2023)
You People is a funny take on Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner that is timely, relevant, and uncomfortable for all the right reasons.
Official Premise:
“Families and cultures clash when two LA millennials from different backgrounds fall in love and face the ultimate relationship test: meeting the parents.”
Director: Kenya Barris
Cast: Eddie Murphy, Jonah Hill
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 41% (126 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 5.5/10
21. Somewhere in Queens (2023)
Official Premise:
“Leo and Angela Russo live a simple life in Queens, surrounded by their overbearing Italian-American family. When their son ‘Sticks’ finds success on his high-school basketball team, Leo tears the family apart trying to make it happen.”
Cast: Ray Romano, Laurie Metcalf
Director: Ray Romano
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90% (50 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 7.6/10
20. Clock (2023)
Official Premise: “A woman enrolls in a clinical trial to try and fix her seemingly broken biological clock after friends, family, and society pressures her to have children.”
Cast: Dianna Agron, Melora Hardin, Jay Ali
Director: Alexis Jacknow
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 79% (29 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 5.1/10
19. Plane (2023)
There is nothing more than what mainstream critics like more: A Gerard Butler action spectacular. With Greenland and Cop Shop strumming the approval cords since the pandemic, his current film Plane has gotten the same praise.
Official Premise:
“A pilot finds himself caught in a war zone after he’s forced to land his commercial aircraft during a terrible storm.”
Directors: Jean-François Richet
Cast: Gerard Butler, Mike Colter, Yoson An, and Tony Goldwyn
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 77% (162 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.5/10
18. Peter Pan & Wendy (2023)
Peter Pan & Wendy is a grand family adventure film that superbly deconstructs the hero/villain cliches.
Official Premise:
“Wendy Darling, a young girl looking to avoid boarding school, meets Peter Pan, a boy who refuses to grow up. Wendy, her brothers, and Tinker Bell travel with Peter to the magical world of Neverland, where she encounters an evil pirate captain.”
Cast: Alexander Molony, Ever Anderson, Jude Law
Director: David Lowery
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 67% (96 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 4.4/10
17. Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)
Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre is a consistently entertaining action spy thriller carried by Jason Statham’s combination of brute-force action and deadpan comic relief.
Official Premise:
“Special agent Orson Fortune and his team of operatives recruit one of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars to help them on an undercover mission when the sale of a deadly new weapons technology threatens to disrupt the world order.”
Director: Guy Ritchie
Cast: Jason Statham, Aubrey Plaza
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 51% (129 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.3/10
16. Faraway (2023)
Faraway is a funny and sweet romantic comedy about people of a certain age
Official Premise:
“Zeynep is unhappy. That’s why she flees to a Croatian island, where her deceased mother bought a house long ago. She hopes to find peace and relaxation finally – but she hasn’t reckoned with Josip, who still lives on the property.”
Director: Vanessa Jopp
Cast: Naomi Krauss, Goran Bogdan
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 60% (5 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.7/10
15. M3GAN (2023)
The first big hit of 2023, M3GAN has made 146 million dollars in the first month of the year alone, on only a 12 million dollar budget.
Official Premise:
“A robotics engineer at a toy company builds a life-like doll that begins to take on a life of its own.”
Director: Gerard Johnstone
Cast: Allison Williams, Jenna Davis, and Violet McGraw
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93% (304 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.4/10
14. Narvik (2023)
Erik Skjoldbjærg’s Narvik is a stunning-looking war film that’s naturally gripping and does an above-average job playing up the moral dilemmas despite, at times, being frustratingly inert.
Official Premise:
“By April 1940, Narvik, a small town in northern Norway, routinely has 85% of the iron ore used by Nazi Germany’s war machine transported from its port. Attempts to disrupt this process over two months of fierce winter warfare caused Hitler to be handed his first major defeat.”
Director: Erik Skjoldbjærg
Cast: Kristine Hartgen, Carl Martin Eggsbø, Cristoph Gelfert Mathiesen, and Henrik Mestad
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100% ( 6 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.6/10
13. Chevalier (2023)
Official Premise:
“Based on the true story of composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner, who rises to heights in French society as a composer before an ill-fated love affair.”
Cast: Kelvin Harrison Jr., Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton
Director: Stephen Williams
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82% (108 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.6/10
12. Knock at the Cabin (2023)
Knock at the Cabin is a tightly wound, well-paced, and exceptionally made thriller with satisfying flaws to pick at and debate.
Official Premise:
“While vacationing at a remote cabin in the woods, a young girl and her parents are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand they make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse.”
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Cast: Dave Bautista, Jonathan Groff, Ben Aldridge, Nikki Amuka-Bird
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 67% (324 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.1/10
11. Boy From Nowhere (2023)
Boy From Nowhere is a raw, gritty, poetic film about the rape and pillaging of cultural identity and history.
Official Premise:
“After losing his father and home, a lost and gentle young boy is brainwashed into becoming a child soldier for the local rebel faction.”
Director: S.J. Finley
Cast: Gary Jumawan, Nack Nack Abugyan
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100% (5 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 10/10 (1 vote)
10. Missing (2022)
This stand-alone sequel of the surprise smash hit Searching. Missing is an anxiety-ridden and armrest-grabbing. This is the type of old-fashioned thriller that trades star power for a good story that audiences are clamoring for.
Official Premise:
“After her mother goes missing, a young woman tries to find her from home, using tools available to her online.”
Director: Will Merrick and Nick Johnson
Cast: Storm Reid, Joaquim de Almeida, Ken Leung, Amy Landecker, Daniel Henney, and Nia Long
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 87% (139 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 7.1/10
9. Boston Strangler (2023)
Boston Strangler is an engrossing and, at times, spinetingling crime film told with a captivating sleuth-like obsession.
Official Premise:
“Loretta McLaughlin was the reporter who first connected the murders and broke the story of the Boston Strangler.”
Director: Matt Ruskin
Cast: Keira Knightley, Carrie Coon
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 68% (130reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.5/10
8. Rye Lane (2023)
Ready Steady Cut critic Amanda Guarragi calls Rye Lane “…an electric, vibrant, and razor-sharp rom-com for the new age of modern dating.”
Official Premise:
“Two youngsters reeling from bad breakups who connect over an eventful day in South-London.”
Director: Raine Allen-Miller
Cast: David Jonsson, Vivian Oparah
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 99% (91 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 7.5/10
7. Air (2023)
Air has outstanding performances from Matt Damon Viola Davis, and is a return to filmmaking form from Ben Affleck
Official Premise:
“Air follows the history of shoe salesman Sonny Vaccaro, and how he led Nike in its pursuit of the greatest athlete in the history of basketball: Michael Jordan.”
Director: Ben Affleck
Cast: Matt Damon, Viola Davis, Ben Affleck, Jason Bateman
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92% (293 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 7.7/10
6. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves is a hilarious breath of fresh air.
Official Premise:
“A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.”
Director: John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein
Cast: Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriquez, Hugh Grant, Regé-Jean Page
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 90% (282 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 7.5/10
5. Creed 3 (2023)
Creed 3 is a crowd-pleaser effort, with Jonathon Majors at his ferocious best and Phylicia Rashad is sensational.
Official Premise:
“After the events of Creed II (2018), Adonis “Donnie” Creed is thriving in both his boxing career and family life. When a childhood friend and former boxing prodigy, Damian “Dame” Anderson, resurfaces after serving a long sentence in prison, he is eager to prove that he deserves his shot in the ring.”
Director: Michael B. Jordan
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Tessa Thompson, Jonathan Majors, Wood Harris, Florian Munteanu, Phylicia Rashad
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 89% (318 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 6.9/10
4. Tetris (2023)
Tetris already had the building blocks to be something great and put a fresh spin on the Cold War-era film by making it a behind-enemy-lines legal 8-bit western where everyone makes up the rules as they go.
Official Premise:
“The story of how one of the world’s most popular video games found its way to players around the globe.”
Director: Jon S. Baird
Cast: Taron Egerton
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 82% (175 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 7.4/10
3. How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023)
How to Blow Up a Pipeline is a volatile political thriller that’s a throwback to 70s counterculture that sparks a hair-raising tension.
Official Premise:
“A crew of environmental activists plot a daring plan to disrupt an oil pipeline.”
Director: Daniel Goldhaber
Cast: Ariela Bare, Kristine Froseth, Lukas Gage, Sasha Lane, Marcus Scribner
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 95% (75 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 7.5/10
2. A Thousand and One (2023)
Film critic M.N. Miller says,“The result is a thematically rich and vivid experience brought to life with staggering purpose.”
Official Premise:
“After unapologetic and fiercely loyal Inez kidnaps her son Terry from the foster care system, mother and son set out to reclaim their sense of home, identity, and stability, in a rapidly changing New York City.”
Director: A.V. Rockwell
Cast: Teyana Taylor, Josiah Cross, William Catlett
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 97% (105 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 7.1/10
1. John Wick: Chapter 4 (2023)
Film critic M.N. Miller says, “John Wick: Chapter 4 is the crowning achievement in director Charles Stahelski’s fluorescent-colored neo-noir martial arts western opus—one of the most awe-inspiring stunt-driven movies you’ll ever be fortunate to see.”
Official Premise:
“John Wick uncovers a path to defeating The High Table.”
Director: Chad Stahelski
Cast: Keanu Reeves
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 94% (337 reviews)
IMDB Rating: 8.2/10
And that completes our Best Movies of 2023 list. What’s your favorite movie so far? Comment below.
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You have s*** taste in movies.
Yeah, like Katie David said:
“You have s*** taste in movies”
Where is Popes Exorcist ?!?!
I won’t fault your list because of minor oversights. Your list is great, thank you. But kindly add Pope’s exorcist and Guy Ritchies’ the covenant